February 7, 2010
I'm a diehard Mac and Firefox user, and if I were Queen of the Universe, everyone else would be, too. My royal aspirations aside, I realize that I have to take into consideration The Browser That Can't Be Named when developing a site. On average, about 58% of all people are still using some version of TBTCBN. At my place of employment, I'm sorry to say, that number is even higher—up to 68% of ASU's web visitors are poor, misguided souls.
Because I develop locally on a Mac with MAMP, I don't test in TBTCBN as much or as often in the process as I should. Until now. This weekend I discovered a few tricks for MAMP and VMWare Fusion that will make testing in TBTCBN a whole lot easier.
Get MAMP working in VMWare
- In VMWare Fusion, go to Virtual Machine > Settings > Network. Make sure your Network settings are set to Bridged.
- In MAMP, click on Preferences > Ports and check that your MAMP ports are 8888 and 8889.
- Find your Mac's IP address. From the Apple, go to About This Mac > More Info... > Network and find the "IPv4 Address." It's usually something like 192.168.xxx.xxx.
- Open VMWare and start WIndows. In My Computer, click on Local Disk (c:), and navigate to the file located at C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts. Open /hosts using Notepad. You'll see a list of at least a few IPs followed by a site name. Add your Mac's IP address and a name for your site. For instance, I added:
192.168.0.23 myawesomesite - Now you should be able to open http://myawesomesite:8888 in IE.
I work primarily with Drupal, and this setup works like a dream for me. However, I've read that this may not work with some applications, such as WordPress, which require a a base URI of localhost:8888. Because IE has it's own separate localhost, "localhost:8888" won't work, which is why we renamed it to something else (like myawesomesite).
A couple more tips I picked up along the way that may help streamline your process:
- Say good-bye to good old MultipleIE. IE8 (yes, I named it) is the only IE you really need if, like me, your organization no longer fully supports IE6 (yay! ASU). The Developer Tools for IE8 allow you to switch your browser mode to IE7, which is pretty nice, considering it's TBTCBN.
- You can set IE to open when you start your Mac. Open IE in VMWare, and switch to Unity view. The IE icon will appear in your dock. Right-click on the icon and select Keep in Dock and Open at Login.
- In MAMP, I had a problem with relative paths not working on my local site, which was at http://localhost:8888/myawesomesite. I discovered it's easy to reset the location of your root directory In MAMP. Click on Preferences > Apache, and set your "Document Root" to your site.
- 1 comment
January 17, 2010
You'll probably seen this scene "re-subtitled" a bunch of different ways. This is the first time it's made me laugh out loud. Thanks to Nick Lewis for the link...and the chuckle over "Hitler Finds Out That Drupal 7 May Release Without Panels."
January 2, 2010
Happy New Year! In celebration of 2010 and my resolution to keep this blog up-to-date again, I decided to redo the place. I wanted a fresh new look to go with my fresh new posts. It's another Drupal Zen subtheme, and I'm calling it "Spare" because, well, it is.
I love the clean, classic look of minimalist design, and it's a perfect fit for another of my (intended) 2010 rallying cries--"Content is king!" With minimalism, there's no hiding behind a snazzy graphic. You've either got it or you don't. And if I don't, I'd certainly like to know about it.
"Spare" is also about simplifying things. I don't know about you, but with kids, dogs, a well-used house and a more than full-time job, simplifying my life sounds pretty darn good. To do that, I had to take the new design more than skin deep. I disabled almost all the contributed modules that I've accumulated over the years, with the exception of CCK and Views, which let's face it, are practically core anyway. I'll probably flip the switch back on for a few modules, but I'm surprised and pleased with how few of them this blog really needs to keep running.
Simplify. Minimize. Cut the deadwood. Get to the chase. Meat and potatoes... Well, you get the idea.
If you're thinking about designing a minimalist site, here's a couple of nice showcases to inspire you. SmashingMagazine has a really lovely collection of screenshots. speckyboy's list is all WordPress themes, but don't let that stop you.
Happy simplifying!
December 28, 2009
It's almost 2010, and in the spirit of New Year's resolutions, I've decided to try this blogging thing again. Yes, it's been a long time. I've been absent from the blogosphere for almost two years. With Twitter, Facebook and the hundreds of other social networking sites out there, blogs lost some of their lustre for me. Why spend time writing a post when you can just Twitter the info in 160 characters or less to your friends?
But I've missed the longer format of the blog post. Here, I can write more leisurely and at greater length about what I'm thinking or doing. Maybe I'm just long-winded, but tweets and FB updates don't give me enough room to expand on an idea and really express myself—like reading the teaser on the back cover and never the book. Alone, they can give a fractured, erratic portrait of a person.
So after a long absence, I'm going to try to write regularly here. We'll see how it goes. New Year's resolutions don't have a great track record...but you never know.
October 19, 2008
I love the iPhone. The design, the features, the functionality—it's as close to a perfect little device as you can get. Unfortunately I can't summon up the same level of enthusiasm for AT&T. Although AT&T agrees that, yes indeed-y, I'm in their coverage area, 50% of my calls consistently have been dropped since the day I brought my shiny new baby home. Some days I'd be better off sending homing pigeons or signaling from the roof with a lantern like Paul Revere.
When I emailed AT&T about the situation, I received a lovely response informing me that AT&T doesn't guarantee "in-vehicle or in-building coverage." This gave me a moment's pause, as you can imagine. No buildings and no cars? That leaves...what? The backyard? Imagine my neighbors' reaction on seeing me at 10 o'clock, chatting with my mom in the middle of our street in my night gown. "Oh, hey ya', Bob! Coverage is great tonight. Love the new lawn gnome."
If I were AT&T, I probably would have put that bit about the guarantee at the bottom of the email, not the top. A defensive stance never goes over well with irate people who have just paid you for a service you can't deliver. Instead, like some political personalities who shall go nameless, they would garner a lot more good will and maybe even some sympathy if they just came right out and admitted "Alright. Yeah, we screwed up. The coverage sucks. But we're working hard on it. Honest. Just give us a little more time."
Common sense tells us it's a waste of time and energy to deny the obvious. Much better to just acknowledge a mistake, take your medicine, and instead spend your energy on correcting the problem. But common sense doesn't seem to have a lot of fans these days. Just look around.
April 7, 2008
For the past month or so, I've been playing around in my sandbox with an elastic layout. Things were coming along pretty well, when suddenly I threw a fit over the increasing slowness of my web host, DreamHost. I've been with them for about 3 years and we've had our ups and downs, but lately my patience has worn thin.
The middle of a redesign is probably not the best time to switch web hosts. But considering this is primarily a playground, I've thrown caution to the wind and uploaded the whole darn dev site to Media Temple. I've heard a lot of good things about them and am hoping like mad that they're true.
So a word of warning while this half-constructed heap of code changes home—watch for teetering beams and chunks of falling plaster.
This ought to be interesting.
March 26, 2008
I thought if I started acting like a real developer, maybe it would improve my code. So, I decided to install and start using MAMP on my Mac to develop locally. Mind you, this programming stuff doesn't come naturally to me. I had to ask a few questions now and then of some of my developer friends, but eventually I sort of got it working. Now I've got another problem with MAMP. Somehow it's causing very strange problems in Adium, my IM client.
Here's a screenshot of Adium when I first fire it up:
And here's another after just a few moments:
I can't figure out what's wrong. Anyone have any ideas?
March 2, 2008
It's been a good, long while since I wrote a blog post. Between work and family, there just hasn't been time. I've been super busy for months now, but not without some benefits.
For one thing, I've been learning tons. I've been working on picking up more PHP and delving a bit more into backend Drupal work, as well as doing more accessibility and usability work and learning more about user experience design. I guess you could say I've been branching out every which way.
As a reward for all that hard work, I'm going to DrupalCon in Boston. Although the conference doesn't start until tomorrow, Jon and I flew in for a long weekend to soak up some history and not a little seafood. I can now state pretty definitely that the Union Oyster House has the best clam chowder I've ever eaten, and Mike's Pastry has Boston Cream Pie to die for. Not to be missed.
It might be cold here in Boston, but with good food and four whole days of Drupal learning, it's weather I'm happy to put up with.
- 1 of 17
- ››
