New Hidden Mars Edit feature

MarsEdit

I know it's been a while since I've last posted anything on this blog, but I've got something really cool to share...

I'm usually not one that gets too involved with too much software by submitting bug reports and being whiney and cry about features that I think are missing or to diss software outright without giving it a chance (sorry Microsoft you've had your chances and missed them all! -- Not a big fan)

But I digress...

As you might already have noticed I'm a fairly large fan of MarsEdit, the amazing Mac blog publishing application... and I made a feature request of a sort on the MarsEdit forum.

The request was due to having a certain setting in Blogger that I had that wasn't really average, and was messing up how Blogger and MarsEdit interacted causing the format of my posts to get a little messed up.

Specifically my problem was:

... the line break tags disappear and are substituted with a hard return when the posts are imported into MarsEdit.

I have Blogger's "Convert line breaks" setting (in Settings > Formatting) set as "No" to take advantage of more advanced layout options that can be achieved through MarsEdit.

I can't remember what release I noticed they started to disappear, but I've been secretly hoping somehow it'd get fixed...

And maybe now that I've mentioned this hopefully it will be sooner!

[The developer] probably automatically assume[s] that Blogger blogs won't have that option on, and to keep Blogger from adding line break tags after every line - even if there is already a line break tag at the end of the line... which was a Blogger integration bug that was in one of the earlier releases of MarsEdit as I recall.

And having to redo the formatting every time I wanted to update a post or view and copy a section from one post to another was a little annoying... so I provided my point-of-view to the developer of MarsEdit, Daniel Jalkut through the MarsEdit Forum.

I wasn't necessarily expecting a whole lot, just hoping that he might do something to fix it or show me some other way to work with the little inconvenience I was having regarding MarsEdit... It was really no biggie!

He did get back to me on the forum rather quickly with a response and saw that there was something he could do to the app that might help out.

After hearing very little in the meantime, even after a software update that happened a long time ago, I was curious if Daniel already implemented the change or was considering it for a future release.

And as it turns out...

Yes, it's true you can make a difference in the programs you love!

Daniel had implemented a hidden feature in MarsEdit for the ultimate compatibility with Blogger blogs that have the "Convert line breaks" setting set to "No"!

Here's all you have to do:

1. Quit MarsEdit if it's open.
2. Open Terminal.app on your mac (Application/Utilities/Terminal.app)
3. Copy the following:

   defaults write com.red-sweater.marsedit DisableBloggerMarkupMassage -bool YES

4. Paste that line (one single non-carriage-return line) into the Terminal window
5. Then hit the return key
6. Open MarsEdit
7. Then for each of your Blogger blogs that you have do the following:
   1. Select the blog so that it's highlighted in blue in the list on the left blog list
   2. If the blog's Preview Text Filter setting (accessed through the toolbar's "Show Settings" button and in the "Composing" tab for the blog's settings) isn't set to "None", change it to "None"
      [click OK after checking &/or changing]
   3. Then when the blog is still selected / highlighted on the left, click on the "Refresh" button in the toolbar (the circular blue arrow)
8. See the changes

Now your Blogger blogs - when they're reloaded - will have the <br /> tags intact when opening the Post for Editing, and will also render previews correctly when you select a post.

NOTE: This setting affects all Blogger blogs in MarsEdit, it isn't a blog-specific setting but is universal in that regard... So make sure you have all your Blogger blogs in MarsEdit to have the "Convert line breaks" setting set to "No" when you use this special hidden feature!

It would be cool if someone else can benefit from this new feature too... hey, I know:

Why not let me know if you like this feature or use it by leaving a comment below?!

Also, give tons of thanks to Daniel Jalkut the MarsEdit developer for implementing this new hidden feature!

Click Here To Read The Full Article By Itself.

My MySpace Profile Is Open

I finally made my MySpace profile public. If you want you can check it out at www.myspace.com/bvanscoter...

I think I out-did myself with the cool theme that I applied to it... I created the images and decided to go with a Bleach theme for it (at least for now).

I'm a little into that show!

I really like how this video puts together a bunch of scenes from Bleach to some killer music:

Bleach - Ichigo's Resolve

As well, I thought this video was quite sweetly put together... because it goes so well with the story-line of the series:

Bleach - Red September

After having my profile closed to public viewing so I could get it all themed properly with CSS and what-not... I finally made my profile public.

Which means you can view my profile without any limitations right now!

And while you're at it go ahead and add me as a friend!

Click Here To Read The Full Article By Itself.

PHP File Upload Problem Solved!

I finally managed to solve the PHP File Upload Stalemate!

Thanks, in part, to this forum thread... and a bunch of tinkering around in my php.ini file...

I realized that the directives that I modified from:

memory_limit = 8M
post_max_size = 8M
upload_max_filesize = 2M

And changed to:

memory_limit = 8000M
post_max_size = 7000M
upload_max_filesize = 6000M

Was causing me to get the following in my HTTPD/error_log:

[error] PHP Warning: POST Content-Length of 363120480 bytes exceeds the limit of -1249902592 bytes in Unknown on line 0

More specifically it appears that it was the fact that there was just too much of a differential in the post_max_size and the upload_max_filesize that was causing the error...

Which was why PHP would overflow to the negative value... and is considered a feature - though not too many people (probably including myself) would really consider such as a feature!!

I was able to fix the error by modifying my edits of the directives to:

memory_limit = 8000M
post_max_size = 6000M
upload_max_filesize = 6000M

And now it works like a charm!...

So far at least with the large 346.3 M file I tested it with. Hopefully it will still work with larger files!

Now it's pretty much off to the races to finish testing the rest of my project.

One set-back down and very likely several more to go!

Click Here To Read The Full Article By Itself.

Missions Conference 2008

I just finished putting together a page for my church's website for it's upcoming Missions Conference this weekend.

The Missions Conference is a two day event this upcoming weekend on Saturday April 26th and Sunday April 27th...

I know, it might be a little short-notice for a lot of people.... and that's because I hadn't thought about putting a page up on the website for it, until I was asked about the possibility of doing that for the church this last Sunday by one of the elders.

Part of the reason I wasn't inclined to make too many modifications to the church's website was when my computer's hard disk blew up I didn't back up a lot of my application support files, which is where the iWeb files for the church's site were...

And if I were to make any changes I would have to go back into iWeb and re-input all the pages from scratch, or hand code any edits or additions... which isn't a really simple task with the way iWeb creates its pages.

But all in all I spent a few hours tinkering around with creating and writing up the Missions Conference 2008 page and putting links in several of the other pages on my church's website.

Since I practically lost the working iWeb file for the Church's website, I will then begin to recode the site to create a template for it with php to make it a whole lot easier to manage and work with! -- Which was what I was hoping to eventually do anyways!

Click Here To Read The Full Article By Itself.

PHP File Upload Stalemate!

In one of the projects that I have been working on that I've been most hopeful about keeps leading me to one error after another in a stalemate!

This project involves file uploads to a server.

I am doing this with an Apache Server (on Mac OSX) and PHP 5.

I've successfully - or so I think - reconfigured the php.ini file to allow for the capability to upload larger files.

Which is almost identical to this php.ini example, except for the following directives:

memory_limit = 8M
post_max_size = 8M
upload_max_filesize = 2M

Which I've changed to:

memory_limit = 8000M
post_max_size = 7000M
upload_max_filesize = 6000M

And now when I try to upload a large file, which is a .dv video file (one of the larger files I first came across on my computer)... I get the following in my HTTPD/error_log:

[error] PHP Warning: POST Content-Length of 363120480 bytes exceeds the limit of -1249902592 bytes in Unknown on line 0

Now 363120480 bytes is about 346.3 M and is the approximate size of the file I'm trying to upload.

But 1249902592 bytes is 1192 M, and that doesn't match any of the limits I've set in my php.ini file!

Plus 346.3 M < 1192 M!!!

I don't know what's up with the 1249902592 byte-value being negated in the warning - it doesn't make any sense... or is it just a dash in front of the byte-value?

Also, the first time I tried to upload the .dv file the server timed out or something... and got the "this server dropped connection" (or similar) message in Safari.

But that only appeared the first time I tried to upload the file and didn't appear any time after... Which is Totally Bizzare!

I've tried looking in the httpd.conf file for any possible settings that might be hanging things up and countlessly poured over all the directives in the php.ini file... but to no resolve!

Even changing the PHP directive max_execution_time = 30 (because it would normally take about 30 seconds for the upload to fail) to max_execution_time = 300 does nothing... It will still fail after about 30 seconds.

Click Here To Read The Full Article By Itself.

New Blog Design

Today I finally was able to work through and put together phase two of my site design, and that was of redesigning this blog's site template.

I made the site template of this blog much like the template of my website at www.benjaminvanscoter.com, by taking the template and style that I was using and modifying it to fit within the template I have on my site.

Sure, it might not be perfect or all that glamorous... (as I think of that terrible PCD or whoever sings it song)... but it looks good and will do the job for the time being.

Now I can work on posting about a lot of the stuff that I've been holding off on!

Click Here To Read The Full Article By Itself.

My New Website

Yesterday I finally finished up the the last few pieces of my new website at http://www.benjaminvanscoter.com/.

This isn't the very first upload of my site, and in fact was a complete overhaul of what I put there originally. (I didn't post about my original upload because I didn't come around to it, but if you might have seen the link on the sidebar of this blog when I first loaded my original content.)

If you never saw my original site, then you won't notice how different and totally sweet the new design and flow is of my newly updated website.

I made several changes to the template structure, and colors... perhaps most noticeable right away would be the new header image and background to the menu bar on the top.

Also I made some file-structure changes so that it isn't so flat and complicated to edit.

As starters I changed the Home page to be more of an overview of my skills and qualifications where you can then check out what you are most interested in.

You might particularly notice that the About page isn't just one page loaded with tons of information but is more of a landing-page where you can pick and choose to check out whatever your interested in.

Also, I changed the Portfolio and Services pages to be more expandable and more like landing-pages as well.

I've also added a bunch more content from my experiences with Underachieving and learning from the Rich Dad Series as well as my education

My Resume though remains almost entirely the same, but with the addition of file icons at the bottom.

Now my website will be more suitable as a means for me to let people know what I'm doing or involved in and am interested in as well as for others to learn about me and what I can do.

I even have a Resources section where I keep a list of some of the resources I use and others could benefit from.

Of course I have bigger plans for this site... like implementing easy page bookmarking links and a whole bunch more information, resources and perhaps some more services... but what is currently there now will suffice for the time being.

So go ahead and check out my website!

Click Here To Read The Full Article By Itself.

Stat Tracking On OPCRochester.org

It's been a while since I last made my church's website opcrochester.org active again.

But before that it had been down for a long time... which I might say was mostly due to a web-host that I bought a reseller package through and had the my church's - Covenant Orthodox Presbyterian Church's - website hosted on totally disappearing out of the ether!

But for the most part it was mostly in part my laziness that didn't get it back up despite the pastor & his wife and other people in my church asking me about it from time to time for one reason or another.

Now I have done one more thing with the Covenant Presbyterian Church website to enhance it a little more, and that is to add Google's Analytics tool to it.

Of course it isn't something that anyone looking at Covenant Orthodox Presbyterian Church's website would notice, but will give and anyone at the church who might be interested in such a better idea of the usage and usefulness of the website.

Click Here To Read The Full Article By Itself.

Browser Oddities... Going Insane

Today I was working on creating a template for the new site I'm creating for my cousin's insurance company, VanScoter Insurance, LLC.

But there were several things about CSS and various browser oddities that were quite simply driving me insane to try to get the stuff to display correctly!

The first thing that was bothering me was figuring out how the heck to get Internet Explorer to center a container "div" tag... a <div id="container"> that encompassed all the of the pages contents.

Obviously <div id="container"> was inside the <body> tag

Through a ton of trial and error and examining other style sheets I finally figured out what was required to get the container to center in the window.... using css:

body {
    /* whatever params */
    text-align: center;
    /* any other params */
}

#container {
    /* whatever params */
    text-align: left; /* for inheritance purposes */
    margin: [top] auto [bottom?];
    /* any other params */
}

The left and right margins can be centered on Mozilla engines using auto... but for some reason Internet Explorer needs to have the text-align: center; property set in the body (which really isn't technically the right use or interpretation of the property).

Also, because of inheritance in CSS, if you don't want everything on your page to be centered you'll need to redefine text-align to be left or whatever else when defining your container id's properties.

I was glad when I figured that out... cause it was a problem that I hadn't been able to figure out since I started re-doing my cousin's website.

The second thing that was bugging the heck out of me was how the CSS float property was interpreted in the Mozilla engine... particularly with nested elements.

Mozilla does a really strange thing when interpreting the nested divs when floating them, take a look...

Here's the basic HTML background:

<div id="container">

<div id="sidebar">
<p>Many</p>
<p>....</p>
<p>Many</p>
<p>Lines</p>
<p>of</p>
<p>Contents</p>
</div>

<div id="main">
<p>Not as many lines</p>
<p>of contents.</p>
</div>

</div>

Now if you do something like this in CSS:

#sidebar {
    /* whatever params */
    float: left;
    /* any other params */
}

As long as there are more lines in the <div id="sidebar"> tag, you will wind up with something that like this when rendered in the Mozilla engine:

As you can see the <div id="container"> doesn't continue to the bottom of the <div id="sidebar">, but merely just ends wherever the <div id="main"> ends.

Thanks to this forum thread / post by Variable, I got the solution to this problem.

All it takes is an extra line or two to get it to work!

Here's the new HTML (changes bolded):

<div id="container">

<div id="sidebar">
<p>Many</p>
<p>....</p>
<p>Many</p>
<p>Lines</p>
<p>of</p>
<p>Contents</p>
</div>

<div id="main">
<p>Not as many lines</p>
<p>of contents.</p>
</div>

<div id="fillcontainer"></div>

</div>

And here's the new CSS (changes bolded):

#sidebar {
    /* whatever params */
    float: left;
    /* any other params */
}

#fillcontainer {
    /* whatever params */
    clear: both;
    /* any other params */
}

And now you will correctly have something that looks like it should:

Internet Explorer would render it like the above picture without the addition of the <div id="fillcontainer"> and the extra CSS code.

At least Internet Explorer correctly nests div tags when they're floated, unlike Mozilla... which is the only one thing I can think of that Microsoft has ever done right!

It might be simple, but you want everyone to see the website you create the same no matter what browser they use -- and it's stupid little browser oddities like this that drive people like me insane!

Click Here To Read The Full Article By Itself.

Genius Work-Around

Like I was saying in this post I started working on this cool little script in JavaScript that moves HTML objects around on a website, a really cool script overall for all sorts of floating message effects....

And after I got home from work a little after 7:00 AM this morning I have been working on giving it classes to be smart... actually, to move more than one HTML object around in a totally customizable fashion.

However, when doing such I ran into a little problem... apparently a problem a lot of people have with Classes or Objects and the setInterval() method...

Especially when you try to do this:

setInterval("ObjectName.methodName()", this.pinginterval);

Which made making my script work with classes a whole lot harder than I thought it was going to be!

And Nothing Here Is Or Was Helpful!

So I found my own super-Genius - with a capital G - workaround!!!

Instead of doing this ...

setInterval("ObjectName.methodName()", this.pinginterval);

... I did this ...

setInterval("functionName('"+ObjectName+"')", this.pinginterval);

This works for me because my Classes or Objects are in an array:

var Objects = new Array('ObjectName1', 'ObjectName2', ... 'ObjectNameN');

So as long as I kept passing the ObjectName as a parameter to each subsequent function I could then call anything I want from the Class or Object simply by using:

Objects[ObjectName].Paramater

What tripped me up and had me pulling my hair out trying to figure out what was wrong with a particular line I typed, was a simple syntax error - when I typed:

setInterval("functionName("+ObjectName+")", this.pinginterval);

Instead of typing:

setInterval("functionName('"+ObjectName+"')", this.pinginterval);

Did you see it?

I forgot to include the single quotes around the function's parameter...

So basically when the line I typed was processed by the browser it would have seen functionName(strObjectName); instead of functionName('strObjectName'); as it should be in proper syntax.....

A stupid mistake that sent me hunting and trying to figure out what was wrong with it for about a half hour!

And now after I finished the script the time is 3:30 PM

I've been working on it for about 7½ hours. (Once you factor in eating and watching TV for a bit as I pulled my hair out to find a solution!!)

This all just goes to show one thing....

I AM A GENIUS!!

And that's final!

Click Here To Read The Full Article By Itself.

JavaScript Action Text

I am working on this cool little script in JavaScript that will move HTML objects around on a website, a really cool script overall for the unblockable 'pop-up' floating messages and other really cool object moving uses.

I am going to be using this script on the new website I am creating for my cousin's insurance agency (VanScoter Insurance Agency) to create something that looks like the moving text on Noto Insurance's website... but the major difference is that with the script I am making it won't use flash, which is harder for search engines to read and index, and will load faster.

But, to make so that it can move multiple HTML objects on the same page that are different CSS Classes (which is how each object is identified on the page) I am needed to figure out how to use classes in JavaScript.

Web Developer's Journal

So when researching how to create and use classes I found this Tutorial on WebDevelopersJournal.com that describes how to create functions and classes...

And as it turns out, classes are easier to define and create in javascript than I thought they would be.

So once I get home (I'm doing this post at work - The Ridgemont Wegmans) I am going to fix up my script.

Click Here To Read The Full Article By Itself.