This is really not so much a blog entry as it is a question… why don’t browsers “ship” with jQuery and other common frameworks?

Years ago, browser vendors competed over JavaScript engine features, nowadays they compete over JavaScript engine performance. Thanks to cross-browser frameworks (with jQuery being the most prominent) features and compatibility are no longer an issue. Isn’t it time for browser vendors to compete on features such as pre-loading different JS framework versions and replacing remote loads of these with already cached versions?

In the meantime, I hope every web developer sticks to a CDN-hosted version of these libraries. The Google Libraries API is a well-known jQuery host by now, but Microsoft also hosts a couple of libraries for you at their ASP.NET CDN. Beware though that using one of these CDN’s just for one or two requests might result in yet another DNS query upon loading your site. To me, the caching advantage is worth it.

All services in this list offer free source code hosting to open-source projects, and some also have free starter plans available.

I recently came across the PyCharm IDE and almost instantly fell in love.

PyCharm is made by JetBrains, the developers of IntelliJ IDEA and ReSharper – these guys have proven their ability to create full-featured, developer-friendly IDEs in the past and its obvious they used their knowledge to create PyCharm, too.

While PyCharm supports Django and GAE out of the box, it can certainly be used for other frameworks. Sean has written some excellent instructions to debug Pylons with PyCharm and the steps required to debug Pyramid are exactly the same:

1. Click “Run” > “Edit Configurations”
2. Press “Insert” and choose “Python”
3. Give the configuration a name, e. g. Pyramid
4. Insert the script to paster:
   C:\Python27\Scripts\paster-script.py
5. Insert the script parameters WITHOUT –reload:
   serve C:\path\to\development.ini
6. Choose the right Python interpreter from the dropdown

Some details about the blog API in CommunityServer 2008.

Blogs

GET /api/blogs.ashx/blogs/

Returns a paged list of all blogs visible to the current user.

Response

Status: 200 OK <BlogList>  <Blog>    ...   </Blog>  ...</BlogList>

Parameters

GET /api/blogs.ashx/blogs/{blogId}

Returns data about a specific blog.

Response

Status: 200 OK  <Blog>    ...   </Blog>

GET /api/blogs.ashx/blogs/{blogKey}

Returns data about a specific blog.

Response

Status: 200 OK  <Blog>    ...   </Blog>

GET /api/blogs.ashx/blogs/{blogQuery}

Returns a paged list of blogs matching the query parameter(s) visible to the current user.

Response

Status: 200 OK <BlogList>  <Blog>    ...   </Blog>  ...</BlogList>

Parameters

GET /api/blogs.ashx/blogs/{blogId}/members

Returns a list of members of the specified blog.

Response

Status: 200 OK <MembershipList>  <Member>    ...   </Member>  ...</MembershipList>

GET /api/blogs.ashx/blogs/{blogId}/members/{userId}

Returns the specified member of the specified blog.

Response

Status: 200 OK  <Member>    ...   </Member>

GET /api/blogs.ashx/blogs/{blogId}/posts

Returns a paged list of posts in the specified blog.

Response

Status: 200 OK <BlogPostList>  <BlogPost>    ...   </BlogPost>  ...</BlogPostList>

Parameters

GET /api/blogs.ashx/blogs/{blogId}/posts/{blogPostId}

Returns the specified post in the specified blog.

Response

Status: 200 OK  <BlogPost>    ...   </BlogPost>

GET /api/blogs.ashx/blogs/{blogId}/posts/{blogPostId}/comments

Returns a paged list of comments for the specified post in the specified blog.

Response

Status: 200 OK <CommentList>  <Comment>    ...   </Comment>  ...</CommentList>

Parameters

GET /api/blogs.ashx/blogs/{blogId}/posts/{blogPostId}/comments/{blogPostCommentId}

Returns the specified comment for the specified post in the specified blog.

Response

Status: 200 OK  <Comment>    ...   </Comment>

GET /api/blogs.ashx/blogs/{blogId}/posts/{blogPostId}/trackbacks

Returns a paged list of trackbacks for the specified post in the specified blog.

Response

Status: 200 OK <TrackbackList>  <Trackback>    ...   </Trackback>  ...</TrackbackList>

Parameters

GET /api/blogs.ashx/blogs/{blogId}/posts/{blogPostId}/trackbacks/{trackbackId}

Returns the specified trackback for the specified post in the specified blog.

Response

Status: 200 OK  <Trackback>    ...   </Trackback>

GET /api/blogs.ashx/blogs/{blogId}/posts/{blogPostId}/ratings

Returns a list of ratings for the specified post in the specified blog.

Response

Status: 200 OK <RatingList Sum="X" Average="Y">  <Rating>    ...   </Rating>  ...</RatingList>

GET /api/blogs.ashx/blogs/{blogId}/posts/{blogPostId}/ratings/{username}

Returns rating by user with {username} for the specified post in the specified blog.

If the user doesn’t exist or didn’t rate the post, the whole list of ratings for the specified post is returned!

Response

Status: 200 OK <int>  X</int>

Blog Posts

GET /api/blogs.ashx/posts/{blogPostId}

Returns the specified post.

Response

Status: 200 OK  <BlogPost>    ...   </BlogPost>

GET /api/blogs.ashx/posts/{blogPostQuery}

Returns a paged list of posts matching the query parameter(s) visible to the current user.

Response

Status: 200 OK <BlogPostList>  <BlogPost>    ...   </BlogPost>  ...</BlogPostList>

Parameters

GET /api/blogs.ashx/posts/{blogPostId}/comments

Returns a paged list of comments for the specified post.

Response

Status: 200 OK <CommentList>  <Comment>    ...   </Comment>  ...</CommentList>

Parameters

GET /api/blogs.ashx/posts/{blogPostId}/trackbacks

Returns a paged list of trackbacks for the specified post.

Response

Status: 200 OK <TrackbackList>  <Trackback>    ...   </Trackback>  ...</TrackbackList>

Parameters

Blog Comments

GET /api/blogs.ashx/comments/{blogPostCommentId}

Returns the specified comment.

Response

Status: 200 OK  <Comment>    ...   </Comment>

PUT /api/blogs.ashx/comments/

Creates the sent comment.

Request

  <Comment>    ...   </Comment>

GET /api/blogs.ashx/comments/{blogPostCommentQuery}

Returns a paged list of comments matching the query parameter(s) visible to the current user.

Response

Status: 200 OK <CommentList>  <Comment>    ...   </Comment>  ...</CommentList>

Parameters

Blog Trackbacks

GET /api/blogs.ashx/trackbacks/{trackbackId}

Returns the specified trackback.

Response

Status: 200 OK  <Trackback>    ...   </Trackback>

GET /api/blogs.ashx/trackbacks/{trackbackQuery}

Returns a paged list of trackbacks matching the query parameter(s) visible to the current user.

Response

Status: 200 OK <TrackbackList>  <Trackback>    ...   </Trackback>  ...</TrackbackList>

Parameters

Blog Groups

GET /api/blogs.ashx/bloggroups/

Returns a list of all blog groups visible to the current user.

Response

Status: 200 OK <BlogGroupList>  <BlogGroup>    ...   </BlogGroup>  ...</BlogGroupList>

GET /api/blogs.ashx/bloggroups/{blogGroupId}

Returns data about the specified blog group.

Response

Status: 200 OK  <BlogGroup>    ...   </BlogGroup>

The Microsoft Action Pack Subscription (MAPS) has been a cheap way for very small businesses and self-employed technicians as well as students to get their hands on many of Microsoft’s software offerings for a small yearly fee.

Now the software giant introduced a similar discount for self-employed developers, featuring some of the same software that makes up the regular MAPS subscription as well as valuable MSDN subscriptions with Visual Studio and other pricey development tools. The new program called “Action Pack Development and Design” is available immediately for web development and design companies through https://partner.microsoft.com/global/program/40132997.

This list contains all the customizations I have made to the Thesis theme, in order to ease upgrading later on.

Putting categories before pages in Thesis menu

Using Thesis with a WordPress multi-site installation

Making post images work with my multi-site installation

/wp-content/themes/thesis_17/lib/functions/post_images.php:

// BEGIN Claus 20100609 Multi-site
// if (@getimagesize($image_path)) {
// END Claus 20100609 Multi-site

$post_image['output'] = $open_link . '<img ' . $image['class'] . $image['attributes'] . ' alt="' . $image['alt'] . '" />' . $close_link . "\n";
// BEGIN Claus 20100609 Multi-site
// }
// END Claus 20100609 Multi-site

/wp-content/themes/thesis_17/lib/scripts/thumb.php:

// BEGIN Claus 20100610 Multi-site
function cleanSource($src) {
// remove http/ https/ ftp
$src = preg_replace("/^((ht|f)tp(s|):\/\/)/i", "", $src);
// remove domain name from the source url
$host = $_SERVER["HTTP_HOST"];
$src = str_replace($host, "", $src);
$host = str_replace("www.", "", $host);
$src = str_replace($host, "", $src);

return $src;
}
// END Claus 20100610 Multi-site

Reading Asnio inspired me to implement drop caps on this blog, and searching for an easy way to add them I came across Miguel’s post on adding drop caps to all posts in Thesis at once.

Apparently, Thesis has a built-in CSS class called “drop_cap” that can be manually added to posts. Adding this class to the first letter of posts manually isn’t a viable solution, Miguel writes, and I couldn’t agree more – it’s prone to be forgotten as well as ugly, because it violates the rule of separation of content and layout.

Miguel’s suggested solution has the advantage of requiring only a single change and can even be done through the web (assuming one uses the fabulous Thesis theme and OpenHook plugin). I don’t like the fact that it increases bandwidth on each page though. This could be remedied by including an external CSS file instead of inline CSS in Miguel’s code, but doing so would increase frontpage loading time and – unless properly cached – probably use up even more bandwidth on subsequent page loads.

What I would suggest instead is to add a CSS class such as “single” to the <body> element in the hook code (see Miguel’s post for that) and then target these pages from the regular custom.css file, like this:

body.single div.entry-content > p:first-child:first-letter { /* ... */ }

Unfortunately I don’t know how to add a class to the body element programmatically in WordPress, I just assume it is possible judging from my knowledge of other CMS. Thus I came up with this alternate CSS-only solution instead, which works for me:

.custom .post:not(.teaser) .entry-content > p:first-child:first-letter{font-size:3.3em;line-height:.76em;padding:.05em .12em 0 0;color:#ccc;float:left}

While this snippet has the advantage of not requiring any PHP, it has some other shortcomings one needs to be aware of. Unlike Miguel’s solution it targets all posts that aren’t teasers, whether these are on single post pages or not. Second, it uses the CSS3 :not selector, which isn’t supported in Internet Explorer 8, but works in the current versions of the other 4 major browsers (Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera). That’s okay for my purposes, there’s no rush (to support IE users), but your mileage may vary.

Are you using WordPress, Thesis and Chrome and wish there was a way to count the characters in the title and meta description fields, so you don’t type more than the search engines will display?

Here’s a quick hack that worked for me:

Please note! This requires a current version of Chrome, or Firefox with the Greasemonkey extension. Please leave a comment whether it works for you.

If you want to try it, click the following link:
Install user script

Do:

• Include your keywords.
• Write compelling, informative and concise.
• Describe your content honestly.
• If there are different sections in the description, identify and separate them clearly.

Don’t:

• Reuse the same “boilerplate” description on several pages.
• Duplicate information from the page title.
• Use more than 160 characters.
• Simply reuse AdWords ads.
• Write a meta description in every case. For example, a page listing dozens of blog entries targeting many different keywords might be better of with the SE-generated snippet of text surrounding the users search phrase.

Just a short reminder for myself…

SHOW DATABASES;
SHOW TABLES;
SHOW CREATE TRIGGER <trigger-name>
SHOW CREATE PROCEDURE <procedure-name>

If you run a popular web community based on Telligents CommunityServer platform and allow everyone to register without e-mail verification for convenience, spammers are likely to know this too.

These user profiles pollute your authority and you probably want to delete them, but first you have to identify them. I found the following query helpful for this purpose:

SELECT
U.UserName
FROM
aspnet_users U
JOIN
aspnet_profile P
ON
U.UserID = P.UserID
JOIN
CS_Users CSU
ON
CSU.MembershipID = U.UserID
WHERE (
P.PropertyValuesString LIKE '%<a %<a %<a %<a %<a %<a %<a %<a %<a %<a %<a %<a %<a %<a %<a %<a %<a %<a %<a %<a %'
OR
P.PropertyValuesString LIKE '%position:absolute%'
OR
P.PropertyValuesString LIKE '%overflow:hidden%'
)
AND
(SELECT COUNT(*) FROM CS_Posts P WHERE P.UserID = CSU.UserID) = 0

Make sure to check your results for false positives! Once you are sure you got all the culprits and nobody else, iterate over it and delete each spammer e. g. by running

CommunityServer.Users.DeleteUser(CommunityServer.Users.GetUser(userName));

While the code is simple the reason I don’t include it here is because I want you to think about what you are doing and not blindly copy/paste it and accidentally delete “real” users – you will likely have to customize the above SQL snippet to achieve this.

This error can occur in MySQL 5.1 when the database files were created on a previous version of MySQL.

To resolve it, run “mysql_upgrade” as Administrator/root.

Copy dte*.olb from C:\Program Files (X86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\MSEnv to C:\Program Files X86\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE.

Thanks to Howard Little.

Getting the error “Filen kan ikke kopieres, fordi filen med det angivne navn ikke eksisterer. Undersøg venligst om du har angivet det korrekte filnavn.” after you install and activate the Danish translation of Drupal?

• If you are on Windows: check the temporary folder setting under admin/settings/file-system. If it is set to /tmp, change it to an existing path.
• If it is set to a valid path, make sure the PHP/web server user can write to it.

Thanks to Andreas Haugstrup.

Comparison of some popular Content Delivery Networks (CDN) targeting SMB customers.

Please note:

• Prices are based on the lowest usage range or contract, and might be significantly cheaper with higher commitment and/or usage.
• Prices do not include upload bandwidth/bandwidth to pull from origin server or requests or other fees (where applicable).