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10. June 2007

CSS Hacks Overview

We all hate tweaking our css to conform for multiple browsers. Even though things got alot better with the latest browser releases, sometimes elements need to be positioned by the pixel in any browser and you have to adjust your css for each of them.

Here is a site covering most of the possiblities to handle css for different browsers, highlighting quirks that work on special versions and browsers.

Link

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24. May 2007

.htaccess generator

Easy way to generate a .htaccess online:

Link

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Lately I had to change permissions for a lot of files at once. When working on the shell this can be quickly done using the linux find command.

If you want to adjust permissions on all php files, you can do :

Some more info for the find command at Linux Manual

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24. May 2007

Late nights

portalZINE NMN | Development meets Creativity | A.GraefI have been heavily multitasking the past few weeks. Had to get all my sites and services back up, after the long downtime.

Also finishing the upgrades for the Pro modules over at pro.portalZINE, making them 0.8 compliant.

Apart from that, I am working on two projects, that keep me really busy.

One project revolves around in house solutions and a custom set of functionality.
Will have to meet a deadline for that soon, so long nights are nothing new here LOL

The other project is more design related and gladly keeps the split work a bit in balance.

Also working on implementations for jabber and email on my Messenger module and currently laying out the foundation to make it 100% standalone.

Cheers
Alexander

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23. May 2007

Openfire Jabber Server

portalZINE NMN | Development meets Creativity | igniterealtime.org.eeaab52c949eb8f136041c1e2679ded6Openfire has the highest feature score at jabber.org.

“Openfire (formerly Wildfire) is a real time collaboration (RTC) server dual-licensed under
the Open Source GPL and commercially.
It uses the only widely adopted open protocol for instant messaging, XMPP
(also called Jabber). Openfire is incredibly easy to setup and administer, but offers
rock-solid security and performance.”

Its one of the most amazing jabber servers out there, if you can run java on your server. It provides a plugin system, that allows you to integrate more functionality into it and they have a vivid community.

I am running it locally aswell, to test jabber implememtation for my software projects.

Give it a shot.

Cheers
Alexander

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As a developer we daily look for oportunities to sell ourselfs and our products. We seek new frontiers by advancing our skills and constantly looking at new technologies. We work on new innovative products, that we hope will conquer the world. The question always remains, are we actually producing and advancing for our clients? Do clients really need all the functionality and options they purchase. On the desktop market it has been known for a long time, that products present more functionality than the common customer will ever need.

Why
The problem with products is, that we want to target a broad range of customers. We are producing one single product that satisfies as many potential customers as possible. So even if a customer does not need a set of features, another might just be looking for those. Another reason is the constant competition feature set, we are being compared against. If one provides an innovative feature, we have to provide that and another feature to set us apart. Feature sets are just like the “GHz run”, we had on the pc hardware market for years. The customer
So where is the customer in all this? Well he sits on the outside, facing the fact, that it is getting more more difficult to make any conclusive decisions in a short period of time. When evaluating options for a project, it gets difficult to find a perfect fit. Customers take the options that fit their target goals as close as possible, living with the fact that many of the features they paid for are not required at this stage of their project. At this stage :), well some of those features might actually become handy in the following phases, evolution of the project.

So where does that leave us as developers ? Well the classic product is not dead, as many customers just accept the fact that they pay and get more than they currently need.

If you are a customer with a set budget, its a complete different ball of wax. You would want to get the most out of that money. In that case the classic product is of no use.

Custom package
The goal is to provide the customer with a custom package that provides only the required set of functionality. For us developers this means building custom reusable blocks, that represent one or a combined set of functionality. These blocks would be combined to a package, that represents the project requirements. This means faster development, easier scheduling and to the point budgeting. You build once, reuse again and again. Especially with so many new and converging technologies, its easier to streamline each functionality into a solid block. As soon as your toolbox is filled, you can build anything with ease.

The solution
Still having the technology out of a toolbox, does not make it a solution. As a developer you are forced to think more and more like a consultant, wisely providing your customer with the right set of functionality.

This makes development alot more interresting for me, than providing the classic product ;)

Classic product development is not dead, but under the surface those products are often repackaged blocks, streamlining the invested development time for more than one product.

Such toolboxes are often advertised as frameworks or application development platforms, which abstract common functionality.

Cheers
Alexander

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2. March 2007

PSPad Editor

portalZINE NMN | Development meets Creativity | pspad.com.6666cd76f96956469e7be39d750cc7d9If you are looking for a simple feature rich unicode development editor, you might like to take a look at PSPad.

  • work with plain text – the editor has a wealth of formatting functions, including a spell checker
  • create web pages – as a web authoring editor, PSPad contains many unique tools that save your time
  • want
    to use a good IDE as a compiler – PSPad catches and parses
    compiler output, integrates external help files, compares versions and
    much more…
  • comes in many languages
  • and is freeware :)

link

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24. February 2007

Welcome

The development site is finally back. After the reopeneing of the main portalZINE site, this is the 2nd site that goes back online. I will have the complete portalZINE triangle back together soon :)

Starting next week, I will be sharing some more inside into my daily work and the puzzles I am facing.

Once all sites are back in shape, I will also be sharing some old & new developments of mine again.

Cheers
Alexander

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