Paint the Tiger, Carve the Swan

I’m working on a website at the moment, and to make stuff easier I created a new VirtualHost entry in my /etc/httpd/httpd.conf file. However, after creating it, and putting a new entry into /etc/hosts, I was still unable to access it. The machine name resolved fine, but was showing the root of the main server, not the virtual host.

[Fri Sep 21 09:15:51 2007] [error] Cannot resolve host name memake — ignoring!

Turns out the hostname entry must be put in before the httpd master process is (re)started, else it whinges about not being able to find the hostname. Restarting the server again made it work perfectly.

Moral of the story: /etc/hosts before /etc/httpd/httpd.conf

View Comment (1)  

I’ve just finished developing a fully-AJAX website. It’s somewhat static in the sense there is little interaction, but I’ve used XMLHttpRequest instead of links for the pages.

You can see it at http://jaquiehagan.com.

Basically, the home page is the only one that needs to be loaded. If you click on any of the dropdown menus (done with CSS, rather than JS, to make it more compatible; this includes using csshover.htc for IE, since they aren’t simple A tags), it loads the side menu from the server. Choosing an item from this side menu loads the final menu, and the image(s) that need to be displayed. This final menu swaps out the different images in the main image pane.

Why do this using JS? It might make a difference to the bandwidth used, although I probably overcompensate for this in that I preload images rather than wait on the user to click on them. More importantly, and if you turn off JavaScript and load the page, you will see the effect I had to remove.

This site uses hidden-frame forwarding to allow a nice URL to remain in the address bar, even though it is hosted on a different server. By doing this, on a refresh the frame turns grey before loading, which causes a flash of grey, which is unnerving.

I guess more than this it was a proof of concept that I could build a site that uses JavaScript for navigation, making it more like a multimedia site than a plain website.

It does break one usability guide, which I am still working on. If you click on the back button in your browser, it will take you out of the site.

Finally, it degrades nicely if a user doesn’t have JavaScript turned on. The required pages are all there (and generated from the list of images and menus), and are used by older browsers.

The Awakening [Mellow Mix] • York • The Chillout Session

View Comments (0)  

Boom Swagger Boom:

Firefox Mac OS X Native Form Controls Preview

Now, there’s really only one reason I use Firefox, other than the fact I can then use the same browser on Windows. Okay, I guess there are two then… I’ll try again:

There’s one big reason I use Firefox on Mac over Safari or Camino. Simply, I’m not that big of a fan of the Aqua controls. Sure, they are okay as part of an application, but, when building web sites, and viewing them, it’s kind of nice to be able to change the appearance of buttons and other form controls.
(more…)

View Comments (3)  

I’ve had to use a text-only browser over the recent days, since Internet Sharing is being screwed up by my router. I could, I suppose plug my switch back into the network, and disconnect the router, but then I have to worry about IP addresses again, since the router is also the DHCP server.

Anyway, it’s been an interesting exercise. Some sites are well designed, and using them in links is possible, easy even. This site, for instance, shows up very well in links, and is easy to navigate around in. Credit where it is due, this is mainly due to Patricia, and the Wordpress team. The backend for instance is similarly easy to navigate around.

Gmail is satisfactory. It whinges about missing JavaScript, but still seems to work. Not sure if the emails I have been sending have been working, but we’ll find out. Actually, I’ll take that back. It doesn’t seem to send emails properly. Dammit.

Whirlpool and WildIT do not work very well at all. Sure, you can view stuff, but you cannot log in properly, which prevents you from seeing the really important data, and adding your own comments.

Yellow Pages seems to work okay, as long as you don’t mind only looking at the first page of results.

Well, hopefully my ADSL churn will come through in the next couple of days, as I’m sick of it already.

View Comments (2)  

This is very cool. Better than Live Search. I might be able to implement this, and even include the abililty to get multiple pages worth of results.

And, it should be possible to do it so the search results appear in the sidebar, too. I’ll definitely look into this one.

(Thanks Kreaper!)

View Comments (3)  

I had an HTML file I wanted to look at the source of, so I right-clicked on it in Windows, and chose “Edit”. Tell me Mr Gates, why on earth would I want to edit it in Word? I’ve never ever opened or saved an HTML file from Word, I’m not about to start now.

I expected it to load up in Notepad, which would have been bearable (a real text editor would have been better), but not Word.

View Comments (4)  

Whilst troubleshooting Gmail for Hosted Domains mail delivery issues, I came across Google Apps for Your Domain. It doesn’t appear on my Dashboard, but does on Jaq’s.

It allows for publishing of web pages, stored on Google’s servers, under your domain name.

I’m playing with it now.

View Comment (1)  

I’m pedantic about some interesting things. The one I’m best known for amongst my RealWorld™ friends is probably improper apostrophe use (I was tempted to put in apostrophe’s), although your/you’re is close!

One other thing I’m a bit tetchy about is correct image format selection.

Now, as far as most casual computer users are concerned, computer images are computer images. However, there is one big difference between the two main types of image format. Lossless images, which includes formats such as PNG, BMP and TIFF, and Lossy images, which includes JPEG.
(more…)

View Comments (3)  

…but not as much as Internet Explorer.

I’ve tried to make my blog, and by definition the template itself, work with every OS/Browser combo I can. And I’ve noticed one big similarity between Opera and Internet Explorer. Stuff that doesn’t work in one tends not to work in the other.

That is, Opera is almost as crappy as IE.

For example, I wrote a script that creates a list of links in the current post, and it failed in both of these browsers. The worst thing about this is that it’s damn near impossible to test (easily, at least) without making a change, reloading, repeating.

With Firefox, you can easily get a JavaScript Bookmarklet that opens a JavaScript Shell, allowing you to experiment with commands, a-la python. Which can then be used to create the final script.

At least Opera allows you to see what’s going wrong with JavaScript. IE’s pathetic attempt at error reporting (popping up a dialog box on each error is a real quick way to get yourself turned of, error reporter) is unproductive. Opera can display errors, which quickly enabled me to figure out what was wrong with my script. I think.

View Comments (0)  

I think I might rewrite all of this site’s scripting using a framework.

Probably Yahoo’s stuff, that looks very cool: YUI.

View Comments (0)