Interactive Llama

In WordPress Administration under Options->Reading, there is an option to set a “Front page” and “Posts page.” The front page setting is fairly straightforward. If you do not want your latest blog posts (index.php) as your homepage, you can set a static page and its template as the root page (http://www.example.com/). This is great for an under construction page, too.

Posts Page

What is a post page? If you have disabled the default homepage (explained above) and made it a static template page, then where are your latest posts? They are on this page.

1) Create a page (Write>Write Page) and make the “Page Slug” on the sidebar whatever URL slug you want to be the location of your posts. I recommend making it be the same as your custom structure (Options>Permalinks, e.g. – “blog” as in “/blog/%postname%/”).

2) Go to this Options->Reading and in the drop down box for “Posts Page” you can now choose your newly created page (e.g.- “Blog”).

The contents of this page (i.e.- “Blog”) will never really be accessible. Now if the user goes to “http://www.example.com/blog” then they will see the latest posts instead of an error.

I upgraded the poetry knook today from WordPress 2.1.3 to 2.3. Including backing up the database and user files, the process took about an hour. Be sure to follow the upgrade steps (in order!). I have heard that logging into administration during an upgrade can cause problems.

WordPress 2.3, which was released back in September, includes among other things: a native tag system, plug-in and platform upgrade notification, post management interface improvements, roll your own dashboard, and roll your own RSS libraries. Many of these items have been addressed by plug-ins. Tagging especially comes to mind. I love Ultimate Tag Warrior and use it on all my blogs. (more…)

A new HTML standards for email clients advocacy site has sprung up. It’s called Email Standards Project. I sincerely hope that it is able to make a difference. I’ve personally had issues with the major discrepancies in email clients at my job. I’ve heard that Microsoft Outlook 2007 is unfortunately using the Word HTML engine instead of the Internet Explorer Engine. The full list of clients that are on the Average or Poor list are:

• Apple .Mac
• Google Gmail
• Lotus Notes 8
• Outlook 2007
• Windows Live

This is based on their acid test. If you are involved in developing internet applications or sites and aren’t familiar with acid tests (and you should be!), visit WebStandards.org for the web browser acid test.

So what’s a person to due in the mean time–structural tables and inline CSS, of course! That’s what! So barbaric and so 1999! Here is a tutorial on what HTML/CSS you can use across multiple email clients.

Today, I came home to see the dreaded “DISK BOOT FAILURE – INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER” notice from Windows XP. This has already happen recently–a little over a month ago. This time though I knew what I was doing.

All my personal data (photos, music, program installation files) are on a separate drive that I then backup every week to an external hard drive. This separates the data from the hard disk that contains the operating system and creates a second copy. Separating the data from the operating system also allows for an easier backup, since the whole drive and be duplicated. I use Retrospect Express that came free with my external hard drive to copy and verify the external drive.

Most likely my master boot sector (MBR) became corrupted and so I told the Windows XP installation CD to install a second copy of Windows. This fixes the master boot sector and allow me to boot into the previous version. Walla! The problem is fixed.

Now if I could only figure out why the hard drive’s master boot sector become corrupted in the first place. My first thoughts were heat, but then why would only the boot sector be corrupted. If you have any ideas, please post them!

Have you ever seen a book on Amazon or another website and wondered whether your local library had a copy of it?

I have to admit as much as I like my library, Indianapolis Marion County Public Library. I do not care for the web interface with it’s URL session ids and timeouts and JavaScript linking! So I try to stay out of the website until I want the book. I saw LibraryLookup on 43 Folders. I tried LibraryLookup, but was annoyed with the ISBN interface. BookBurro looked promising but it only worked on 20-some library. I’m not a member of any of those libraries.

I decided to roll my own Firefox Search Plugin–which is very simple to do. You just have to know the query keywords for your library (such as isbn, keyword, title). The IMCPL is an IPAC system and uses “UTL” for its title keyword. Just drop this Firefox Search Plugin for IMCPL Title Browsing or this Firefox Search Plugin for IMCPL Keyword Search in your Firefox Search Plugins folder and restart Firefox. You will need Mozilla Firefox 2.0 or greater for this.

The Firefox Search Plugins folder for PC is C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firfox\SearchPlugins

The Firefox Search Plugins folder for PC is for OS-X that’s /Volumes/Macintosh HD/Users/{user name}/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/{profile number}.default/searchplugins/

That’s all there is to it. Here are the few lines of the code for the Indianapolis Marion County Public Library for title browsing:

<search
name="IMCPL"
method="GET"
action="http://catalog.imcpl.org/ipac20/ipac.jsp"
queryCharset="utf-8">

<input name="term" user>
<input name="index" value="UTL">
<input name="spp" value="50">
</search>

With the prevalence of DHTML, much less AJAX, I have begun to use separate Cascading Style Sheets for development and publishing. Since styles override each other, the easiest way to accomplish this is to add a second style sheet link after the publishing CSS link and comment it out when one wants to test the page.

“dev.css” contains “display: block;” within all classes that in the publishing CSS contain “display: none;” much like that below:

.profile_box { display: none;} (index.css)

.profile_box { display: block; } (dev.css)

I’ve noticed some Google searches related to the Flash Back button post, so I thought I’d post on the Flash JavaScript Integration Kit.

You can call Actionscript function from JavaScript and call JavaScript from inside ActionScript. One use I’m considering using it for is for a new portfolio idea.

–Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

NOTE: This article is only valid for ActionScript 2. In ActionScript 3, movieclip depths start at 0 and are contiguous. If you have 2 objects within a container, they will be at depths 0 and 1, respectively. You cannot have one at depth 0 and the other at 3 leaving 2 empty depths (depths 1 and 2).

So you want to change the depth of your pictures and text in Flash with ActionScript?

Check out this tutorial, Depths – How they work in Flash, at Kirupa.com. The first page you should already know if you been doing coding ActionScript professionally for some time. It is the second page that is the most interesting:

Major points of the second page:

• Timeline Zone: Flash places static items on the timeline in depths -16,384 to -1.
• Dynamic Zone: Dynamically placed movieclips are in 0 to 1,048,575 (and can only be removed from this range)
• Reserved Zone: Dynamically placed movieclips can be in 1,048,576 to 2,130,690,04, (but can’t be removed)
• The exception to these zones is createEmptyMovieClip method. There is no limit for the depth when creating an empty movieclip.
• The timeline refreshes when gotoAndPlay() is called. Timeline refreshes do not keep dynamically placed movieclips on the screen if they were placed there by a frame in the future of the timeline. Example: A movieclip is dynamically created (or swapDepths is called, placing the movieclip in the “Dynamic Zone”) in frame 10. A refresh occurs in frame 5, when gotoAndPlay(5) is called. The dynamically created movieclip (from frame 10) dissappears.
• If you use swapDepths to bring a movieclip which was placed on the timeline originally to a depth above 0 (not the Timeline Zone), then in a timeline refresh, that clip will not be removed in the clearing of the depths (the refresh) and a new instance of the same movieclip will be placed at its original depth, thus duplicating it and causing runtime errors that Flash Player will not flag.

So what is one to do? If you just swapping movieclips back and forth, like in this template for the Renaissance Pointe, then call swapDepths() with a negative value.

Looking for an Actionscript 3 tutorial?

You might try this tutorial on swapDepths for Actionscript 3.

I have already posted on Parallax (multi-plane) scrolling. Visit the previous post for more information on the process.

This is the script I used on the MB2 site. View a simplified sample movie of the new proportional version.

On the previous post, the scrolling can continue as far as you want. The mouse’s distance from the center of the page controls the speed of the scroll.There is another possible scrolling technique that uses the width of the screen to proportionally control were one is in the scrolling plane (background). This technique is best with smaller (in width) scrolling planes. The sensitivity of the mouse will be to strong if the scrolling plane is too large. This is the technique used by Macromedia in their Experience Studio 8 site (mentioned in previous post).

In this version, the distance of the mouse from the center of the masked window affects the speed. Scrolling will only occur over the distance of the of green gradient of the “middleground.”

The following is the gist of the ActionScript that is attached to movieclip, _root.main_mc.middlegroundContainer.middlegroundScrollContent,
in an onClipEvent handler:

onClipEvent (enterFrame) {
if (_root.objectsScrollable) {
if (_root.main_mc.middlegroundContainer._xmouse -390 ) {
endX = _root.main_mc.middlegroundContainer._xmouse;
}
_x = (_x + (-endX -_x) / 15);
_root.main_mc.foregroundContainer.foregroundScrollContent._x = (_x * 1.75);
_root.main_mc.backgroundContainer.backgroundScrollContent._x = (_x /4);
}
}

Download the source file in Flash MX 2004 format.
Download the published movie in Flash Player 7 format.

–Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com

By default, viewers can tab through a Flash movie. This is so that those with hearing disabilities, photo epilepsy, motor disabilities, cognitive disabilities, blindness or low vision can navigate a Flash site by using the tab key on their keyboard. For many applications this is good, especially Flash applications that include forms. Problems arise when one has scrolling clickable buttons off the screen.

Do we want users to able to click buttons that off the screen? This could break many Flash movies.

The way to stop users from tabbing a particular button is by setting the movieclips property, “tabEnabled” to false. Well, that’s a pain to do for every movieclip in an entire application. To disable tabbing through all clickable buttons, add the following line of Actionscript to the main timeline of your movie.

MovieClip.prototype.tabEnabled = false;

This will cause all movieclips created by Flash to disable tabbing.

–Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com