Load this Firefox bookmark in the sidebar

Bookmark a page in Firefox. Right click on the bookmark and select "properties." There's an option for "Load this bookmark in the sidebar." If you check that button, every time you click on that bookmark, it will open up in your sidebar. Pretty darn handy. Can't believe I didn't know about this before. Of course, the only things I bookmark locally anymore are internal apps.

This doesn't work in SeaMonkey though.

Everybody else is doing the Ajax Whois, why not me?

A buddy at work fell in love with the Ajax Whois and wanted a version on his own linux site. I've been playing around with a lot of Ajax stuff lately so I thought I'd give it a go using Ajax (javascript) and PHP. Here's the resulting code. It's just a quick and dirty solution because I had some technical difficulties working on his crappy server. I couldn't upload anything (like the brilliant prototype js library) so I had to bake most of the js from scratch except for a line borrowed here and there, most notably from this guy. Of course the other informal rule was that it had to be completed during spare time at work today. It's just two files, index.php and whois.php (rename the saved files with .php extension). Download and enjoy your own web based ajax whois. Just be careful not to get yourself blacklisted by doing tons of searches in a short time period.

Zend Studio Tip of the day -- Bookmarks

Ever need to refer to 2 or more different places in a file while in Zend? You can bookmark the sections for easy manuvering through the file. Put your cursor on the line you want to bookmark, and either right click the line number on the left or hit "F2." Voila! A green bookmark has been setup.

How do you use this puppy? Easy. Take a look at the right hand side of the editor window and you'll see a green line that is clickable, right next to the scroll bar. Clicking there takes you to that bookmark. Even cooler, if you hover over the bookmark line there, it will pop-up the line of code that is bookmarked.

If you need to remove the bookmark, you do the same thing, right click on the line number of hit F2 again.

Until next time... Happy Zending!

AOL Instant Messenger – Triton, Norton, Password problems

So I thought I’d forgo using my GAIM today, even though it's totally working correctly... and even though it completely connects to all my instant message accounts... and see if the new AOL Instant Messenger called Triton did anything interesting. It turns out it does not. The thing hardly even works. Ugh. Why do I even bother?

Frustration # 1

When I installed it, it left my old AOL messenger in there instead of just upgrading that one.

Frustration # 2

I couldn’t figure out which ports to open on my Norton software firewall. Even though I explicitly gave AIM6.exe permission to access the Internet, it was trying to use some odd port that I don’t have opened. I’m afraid it’s too new for the port info to be out in the wild yet. This one’s a deal-breaker for me, but it gets worse.

Frustration # 3

I had forgotten my password so I clicked the “forgot password” link which brought me to https://my.screenname.aol.com/ where I was able to answer some pre-determined security questions and then change my password. However, while the screens there reminded me to only use letters and numbers for the password, the web form neglected to check for other characters.

So without realizing this restriction, I used a symbol in my password. Of course when you get into AIM Triton (with no firewall of course), it keeps coming back that your username/password is incorrect. Because it sees that symbol and freaks out. This one stumped me for a good few minutes. You have to go back and change your password to not use any funny characters. This is form validation 101 people. Filter input. And give appropriate error messages.

Back to GAIM I go.