Raible Designs

Macs and the 1-button mouse.

The most annoying thing about my Mac (G4 Titanium Powerbook) is that it only has 1-button on it's built-in mouse. This is especially annoying because I can plug in a two-button mouse and it is recognized and usable by OS X. Why didn't they include a 2-button mouse by default? My wife (a very savvy Windows user) hates it so much she refuses to use my laptop.

This morning, I found an article (via MyAppleMenu) about Apple's history with the one button mouse and the possible move to a 2-button mouse.

So while Apple’s decision to go with a single button was one of the many choices that made the original Mac such a groundbreaking machine, it’s time for Apple to reconsider.

Longtime Mac devotees may disagree, but an official Apple two-button, scroll wheel-equipped mouse has, in fact, no apparent drawbacks. [1 Button, 2 Or 3?]

Roller Upgraded to 0.9.6.1!

I upgraded this site to use the latest Roller version and everything appears to be humming along rather nicely. I did run across one issue in that I had to re-number all my Blogrolling bookmarks. It appears the priority now has the opposite effect it did in the last release. I also somehow (I don't remember updating it) managed to set my homepage to the Contact page when testing everything, so I don't know if that's an upgrade glitch or human error. Probably the latter, updating it via the Editor UI fixed the problem (after I downgraded and the problem was still there!). Update: it appears there is a bug in this release, where only pages that don't have an underscore (_) show up in the drop-down of available homepages. This bug has been documented in JIRA.

BTW, the blogs are rated by update frequency, and I have some new ones to add soon. Since I'd like to keep this list at a reasonable size, the once-a-week updaters will be gone. I've been using NetNewsWire lately to read blogs - so I'll still be reading, just not referring.

I especially like the new referers feature, (Dave Rules!) which can be called using macros.showReferers(), macros.showReferers(max) or macros.showReferers(max, maxWidth). To get rid of the dot to the left of each link, simply add the following to your site's stylesheet:

ul.rReferersList {
    list-style: none
    margin-left: 0;
    padding: 0;
}

Enjoy!

Wiki Evaluation.

I'm conducting an evaluation of wiki's to use on this site. I'm taking a look at Gareth Cronin's Very Quick Wiki, Russell Beattie's SimpleWeb, and Ghoot Emaho's Chiki. My only criteria is that it must be an Open Source Java-based implementation. If you know of any others, let me know.

Update 1: I got a note from Ugo Cei of Be Blogging to check out Open Wiki. Unfortunately, it's an ASP implementation, so it doesn't satisfy my only criteria. It really looks very slick, and I especially like the attempt to follow web-standards (indicated by the w3c icons on the bottom right).

Update 2: Brad Smith (no blog in e-mail) sent me a head-up about JSPWiki this evening. This one looks pretty cool - it's got a RSS feed and statistics. Just to be fair, SimpleWeb has an RSS feed as well.

I've begun my first phase of the evaluation and will update notes in this post accordingly - after I'm done, I'll add to to my Articles list. Keep the suggestions coming - I'll eval as many as I have time for and hopefully keep the list growing.

Nice Photos!

I wonder what kind of digital camera James Duncan Davidson has? He's posted some really nice pictures of his hike up Yosemite falls on Monday.

Struts Goodies.

I went searching on the Struts User List this afternoon and found a couple treats. The first is that you can make $135 for each Struts bug you fix. The second is StrutsCX (Struts with Castor XML and XSLT - but without JSP.). Sounds cool, downloading now.

Update: I installed StrutsCX on this server so you can try it out. Pretty cool stuff. I wonder how difficult it would be to switch from Castor XML to Castor JDO, and then generate the whole thing using XDoclet. BTW, did you know you can install WAR files in Tomcat by 1) ftp-ing the file to your server, and 2) using a url in your browser? Pretty cool - here's the one I used to install simpleweb today:

http://raibledesigns.com/manager/install?path=/simpleweb&war=jar:file:/home/raible/webapps/simpleweb.war!/

Sun Certification Summit.

Want to get certified in just one, two or three days? If so, you could attend the Sun Certification Summit, November 10-13 in Colorado Springs. It's almost worth it considering how many hours you would spend studying for these certifications.

The all-inclusive fee of $1,295 per person includes all conference activities, student materials, Web-based courses, meals and lodging. One price fits all. You choose how aggressive you want to be, and take as many sessions as you want.

Would you click OK?

I attempted to fix some nested <td> errors in a JSP today using Dreamweaver MX's Cleanup XTML feature - but I received this dialog instead. Would you click OK?

I get pages rendered in this same language sometimes using Netscape 4.7 - maybe Windows XP is slowly dying? BTW, I used the file-upload feature of roller for the first time with this post - worked very slick. I'll probably be using it from now on!

A Tutorial.

Struts meets Swing. Thanks Erik. I hope that I never have to use this. I dread that day that I have to write a Swing app over a web app.

The Zone and The Wall.

I've certainly been in The Zone before:

Sometimes, you just have one of those days. One of those days where you manage to find flow, and stay in it. One of those days where you move from test, to code, back to test, back to code with ease.

But what about those days you feel like you're pounding your head against the wall. No matter what you do or try it just doesn't work. Or you're trying to fix a bug and just can't seem to find the problem. And when you do, it was sooo simple - ARRRGGHHH! I battled with The Wall all day yesterday writing installation scripts for my current project. I was lucky enough to get it all working by the end of the day, but I think I scared the bejeezus out of my cat a time or two.