Plugin upgrade notifications and one-click installs are great for both developers and users alike, but there is one thing about them that I find irritating as a user, and easily avoidable as a developer: displaying reasons to upgrade.
Read the rest of this entry »
jQuery Tools is the new kid on the block when it comes to jQuery-based user interface libraries. What it offers is a solid foundation of widgets at an extremely small file size (5.8 KB minified).
I decided to ditch jQuery UI on a recent project when I couldn’t get tabs & accordions to play nice together (also, their site was down when I needed it so I took that as a sign). This was a great opportunity to try jQuery Tools and I have been very impressed thus far.
To use the minimal tabs interface you can simply follow the instructions on their site, but if you want to nest tabs inside one another you’ll need to change things slightly. I’ll demonstrate below:
Read the rest of this entry »
One killer feature of Ruby on Rails (for me) is script/console. Being able to interact with your code and data inside the full Rails environment is a powerful tool for development. Some days I practically live there, and if I get carried away, I do a lot of my testing there too (bad, I know).
I love Ruby and Rails, but being a contract developer means I go where the money is and recently that has been in WordPress plugin development. I enjoy developing for WordPress, but I’ve been spoiled by Rails and I often long for an interactive console for WordPress.
As a result, I’ve been developing (and using) a Wordpress plugin built for Wordpress developers. It provides an in-browser console where you can “play” with the code you’re working on.
If a picture is worth 1,000 words, this screencast will be worth at least a bazillion of ‘em:
Read the rest of this entry »
Ever wanted (or needed) to see your iPhone’s network traffic? All you need is a wireless LAN and the cross-platform proxy application, Paros. There are other proxy server’s that can be used, but Paros was built for web application security assessments, so it provides an intimate hook into the HTTP request/response flow. Let’s get started!
Read the rest of this entry »
OS X ships with PHP5 installed but it does not have readline() support compiled in. Anybody using PHP from the command-line will want this, as it allows handy things such as tab completion and scrolling through command history using the up arrow.
Thankfully, MacPorts has a readline variant that can be easily installed:
sudo port install php5 +readline
If you execute the command above, apache2 will come along for the ride because it’s a default variant for the PHP5 port. If you don’t want apache2 (OS X ships with apache2 anyways), modify the command to look like this:
sudo port install php5 -apache2 +readline
Not sure if your PHP install has readline support? Execute this one-liner to find out:
<? echo function_exists('readline') ? "yes\n" : "no\n"; ?>