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I’m writing to announce the availability of my project AnnieDeBrowsa™, in the ActiveState Firefly repositories.
Check it out at Firefly project name AnnieDeBrowsa
A sub-component of AnnieDeBrowsa, WinPath offers perhaps the most obvious benefit an AnnieDebrowsa? installation. To access WinPath™, extract AnnieDeBrowsa™ to a directory of your choice (i.e. http://localhost/anniedebrowsa), and click the link to “path2url.phtml”.
Winpath is handy for navigating to a PHP file from a source without a native server-mapping function. Once AnnieDeBrowsa is available on your HTTP server, send a URL directly to your web browser, as in the following example [ see FIG 1 ] Let’s assume there exists a file on your HTTP server which you’d like to preview in your web browser. Perhaps the file is the very beginning of a new project, or a bit of JavaScript? embedded in a PHP-powered document that you whipped up for testing, such that previewing the results requires loading the file in the browser as a proper HTTP URL– but, you have no bookmark or “awesome” assistance.
Such a scenario is not uncommon– and it’s precisely what Winpath was developed to accommodate: observe the portion of the example URL, just after “?winpath=” (a URL-encoded variable assignment). There, information about the location of a system file is passed through HTTP_REQUEST to Winpath, by appending onto the URL itself, the full path to the desired file. The string assigned at ?winpath= is retrieved and processed into an HTTP URL, creating an HTML anchor which opens a window, with your new file loaded as you wanted– in one simple click. Note: Winpath is effective for Linux and Windows system paths (and other paths can be included with only minor tweaking, if you’re PHP savvy).
Why is this different than typing, for example, http:// localhost / path / to file / etc? Because, now you can send Winpath URL’s to your browser from virtually any text editor, from the command-line history, from “start > run” and “run” history, and even Windows Explorer (with minor adjustments in Folder Options), thereby alleviating the annoyance of tedium in repeatedly typing fresh URL’s directly into the browser. Thus, AnnieDeBrowsa™ makes it a cinch to preview new URL’s at any time, from virtually anywhere!
FIG. 1:
http://localhost/AnnieDebrowsa/index.php?winpath=/home/user/public_html/project/index.php
Depending upon the nature of the search I want to perform, I often use grep, a GNU Operating System application, common to the Linux operating system. grep is available for Windows, so I use it there when I can for its unique ability to scan file contents. Not only does grep provide a means of locating a desired string of text from a collection of files on the filesystem, it is also an exercise in the use of regular expressions, and Command Line syntax.
When executing grep, one has the option to use basic, extended, or Perl compatible Regular Expressions. As there are several options for executing a search, I often reference the --help option on the command line, or the included HTML help files. The following excerpt from section 5.5 of the Grep [for Windows] HTML help manual explains the difference between the default grep behaviour (basic regex), and that of egrep†
In basic regular expressions the metacharacters `?’, `+’, `{‘, `|’, `(‘, and `)’ lose their special meaning; (more…)
text string added for more copy options
Web developers often encounter situations in which it is necessary to preview fonts. As technology develops and the restrictions are lifted on how fonts may be used on the web, web developers will be trying new things, which will require more testing.
For English speaking developers who have adhered to the core web fonts for so many years, a fortunate trade-off to that restriction has been the peace of mind that the MS Core Fonts support ISO-8859-1, the standard encoding for language characters of the Western European character set.
Outside of the very short list of serif and sans-serif typefaces commonly used in web design, it is not altogether uncommon that any given font-family might not contain all of the characters of ISO-8859-1, cp1252, or Windows-1252 (each, a recognized encoding of what is, essentially, an identical character set). In the context of ISO-8859-1, and the text sample below, I recall to mind the usual suspects, which include such commonly occurring characters as “brackets”– both square and curly, the “greater-than / less-than” symbols, and the octothorpe. Often it is the fantasy font-family, the highly-styled or derivative type face which we discover supports only the basic, alphanumeric symbols. While fantasy fonts may be best at adding personality in decorative placements, the omission of character glyphs commonly used in regular typed language tends to prohibit fantasy fonts, for instance, from showing up as the property value of a global stylesheet selector.
I created this text block as a quick reference cheat-sheet for identifying what characters may or may not be supported by any particular font family. The concept is simple. Use it, as is, in your own markup where different font-family values may be applied easily for testing basic character support.
~!@#$%^&*()_+
`1234567890-=
QWERTYUIOP{}|
qwertyuiop[]\
ASDFJKL:'
asdfjkl;"
ZXCVBNM<>?
zxcvbnm,./
©2009 NoviceNotes™
©2009 J Sabarese
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Maintaining standards theory, the following is true of the primary text block, above:
Consider the eight rows of text in the sample, instead as 4 double-rows (or row pairs) to more easily correspond with the physical keyboard. Thus, each row pair (or double-row) represents one row of the standard US keyboard, where each member of a pair indicates the same keyboard row, either with or without depressing the <SHIFT> key (e.g. a single keyboard row is typed with <SHIFT> depressed, to represent uppercase characters, and likewise without for lowercase chars).
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Depending upon the topic, how technical the details, and the purpose of the text, I recognize that the inspiration behind writing and the discipline of refining it are not necessarily equal means to the same end. As the former is required before the latter can take place, I hope to change my habits as author/ editor, that I might not concern myself to be so studied. At least, I hope to impose less restriction on what I publish– that I might regard the content of NoviceNotes™, less as a reflection of myself (assuming the site might cast into the minds of readers, something of an image of who I am), and more as a collection of notes; to recall my former tendency to share the little discoveries, that I might place more importance on recording what I’ve learned in hopes that others might find something insightful in it.
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