Category — Technology

If you develop web pages, and are at all concerned about consistency between FireFox and IE, you must read this post!

I have used the Web Developer plugin for FireFox for quite some time.  It is a lifesaver when you are developing web pages, as you can easily see all of the styles and markup that is being applied to a specific area of your page.  The problem is that it only works in FireFox, leaving IE out in the cold.  Since IE is the real pain in the rear when it comes to Web Dev, the lack of a similar tool has been a major PITA.

Well, a two hour witch hunt for an IE only CSS bug lead me to scour the net for something to make the pain go away!  The fix?

IE HTML Element Spy, an IE7 Add-On.  I LOVE THIS TOOL!!!

It works a little differently than Web Developer, but it really gets the job done.  I litterally spent the last 2 hours trying to debug a DIV that wouldn’t line up with the top of a page.  It was completely impossible to find out why - the thing worked fine in FireFox, but not IE.  Installing IE HTML Element Spy lead me right to the problem - a burried IE only CSS rule that put a 30px padding at the top of the sidebar.

Voila!  Problem solved.

So, 2 hours and not a single clue using my own powers of debugging versus 2 minutes and a fix with IE HTML Element Spy.  Which would you prefer?!  Yeah, me too!

Download that puppy now!

Frackin’ IE.

IE HTML Element Spy, IE CSS Bugs, CSS

Well, the title of this post isn’t really fair, as neither AT&T nor RIM have actually given a release date for the new Blackberry Bold.  BUT, according to sources over at Crackberry, its looking like an October release for the Bold on AT&T rather than the nebulous “end of summer” that has been floating around up until now.

AT&T has an exclusive on the phone in the States - whether the exlusive is a permanent thing or only until a certain date isn’t exactly clear.  Doesn’t really affect me either way, as I’m tied to AT&T for the forseeable future.

My reasons for wanting the Bold:

• GPS.  This was the one feature that I had been waiting for them to integrate into the Curve.  My patience ran out and I bought a Curve sans the GPS.  Literally, the day that my Curve arrived at my doorstep, RIM announced the Curve with the GPS.  I haven’t been quite sane since.
• 3G network.   Nice!  Internet speeds that make using a mobile device, well… useable.
• Wi-Fi.   Cool service.  Neat for a quick IMDB while being a couch potato.  I’d say it wasn’t necessary given the 3G network, but see my next comment for why it IS necessary.
• Cell service over Wi-Fi for when I’m in my office.  For those of you who haven’t heard me complain about this in the past, my office is otherwise known as the Bermuda Triangle of cellphone service.  One minute its there, the next minute its gone.  Five Bars!  No Bars!  Two Bars!  No Bars!  Not good for conducting buisness.
• Much faster processor means no waiting for Apps or email to open.
• New BB OS, with such “advanced” features as HTML email.
• The camera is supposed to be a bit better too.

Overall, its a very nice improvement from my current 1st generation Curve.  The Curve made a BlackBerry man out of me - I’d been loyal to my Treo for FAR too long.  I’m hoping the Bold continues the trend, if they ever release the darn thing.

Blackberry Bold, RIM

Not that many folks would ever need this, but I was doing a little surfing on how to stream media to my Wii (more on that later) and came across this really cool idea for keeping sensitive information hidden.  It involves using TrueCrypt and creating a hidden operating system on your PC.

I haven’t tried it yet but its just too James Bond-ish to not mention.  This adds one more check box on my journey to being a super-spy:

1. Sharpshooter.  Check!
2. Lots of gadgets.  Check! Could use more though…
3. Seeing/married to hot chick.  Check!
4. Crazy cool encryption technology.  Check!
5. Svelte and athletic.  Damn.  Not so much.
6. Wins at poker.  Frack.
7. Insanely fast and expensive car (helps with #’s 2 and 3 above).   Aw forget it!  Who wants to be a super spy anyway!  *sniff*

TrueCrypt, Hidden OS, James Bond

Here’s another esoteric tech tip that may help a soul or two who are currently ripping their hair out and cursing Asus with a fury.

If you have Asus’s P5N-D Motherboard, which is based on NVIDIA’s 750i chipset, and are getting a Blue Screen of Death referencing an NVGT.sys error on Windows XP, dispair not!  There is hope!

The problem is a crappy driver for the SATA drive controller, and as of yet, Asus (in their Heart Touching wisdom) has not fixed the problem.  The cure is simple though.

Surf on over to NVIDIA.com and select Download Drivers.  Under Option 1 select:

Product Type: nForce
Product Series: 7 Series
Product: nForce 790i  (yes, the 790, NOT the 750)

and, the rest of the stuff that fits your needs.

For quick reference, the English XP version of the above download is here.

The long and the short of it is that you need to install the “Media Shield” portion of the 790i drivers on top of your 750 board.  DO NOT INSTALL EVERYTHING!  Just the Media Shield portion.

After doing that with my own P5N-D, I haven’t experienced a single BSOD.

Maybe Asus will fix this eventually, but I wasn’t going to suffer through the headache while they take their sweet time.  With the advent of the 790 chipset, I don’t expect them to be rushing to fix things on the older/cheaper set.

You can read more about this topic on the NVIDIA forums here.

Good luck!

IMPORTANT UPDATE!

Melle dropped a note to say that NVIDIA has released new WHQL drivers for nForce that are compatible with the 750i.  Early reports say that this driver fixes the BSOD problem with the P5N-D.

Check out the dirvers here:  http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_winxp_15.23.html

I haven’t installed these on my system yet so I can’t vouch for them personally, but given NVIDIA’s common architecture I would expect them to work anyway.  This is great news!  Thanks Melle!

NVGT.SYS, P5N-D, Asus motherboard, BSOD

I can’t believe I’m going to break my blogging hiatus with an esoteric post on how to fix an annoying error when upgrading to Wordpress 2.5.1.

But, I’m going to…

For those of you who have upgraded Wordpress only to have the following error flash across your screen:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function wp_register_sidebar_widget() in xxxxxxxxx/blog/wp-admin/includes/dashboard.php on line 32

when you try to log into the WP-ADMIN dashboard, there is a simple cure - IF you happen to be using the K2 theme for your blog.

The problem is that earlier versions of K2 used their sidebar system, which required you to disable widgets for Wordpress.  Well, the new admin screen doesn’t like that one bit and it makes it so that you can’t log in.

What’s the cure?  Simple - remove the K2 plugin from the Active Plugins option in the database.

How do you do that?  Log into phpmyadmin and go to the wp_options table and select Browse.  Look for the active_plugins entry (mine was option_id #39) and click the pencil to edit the entry.

The entry will probably look something like this:

a:3:{i:0;s:0:"";i:1;s:19:"akismet/akismet.php";i:2;s:29:"disable-wordpress-widgets.php";}

What you need to do is delete out the disable-wordpress-widgets entry, or it may be named widgets-removal.php or something similar instead.  How do you do this?  Simply remove the quoted call to the php file, and the "i" and "s" entries immediately prior to that call.  So, in my install, the entry above becomes:

a:3:{i:0;s:0:"";i:1;s:19:"akismet/akismet.php";}

It looks much more complicated than it really is.  Once that entry is gone, you can go back to the wp-admin section and log in without a hitch.

As an aside - the latest versions of K2 have a checkbox in their theme options to handle this problem.  To avoid the issue, I’d recommend upgrading K2 first, then upgrading wordpress to 2.5.1.  OR, for those who are reading this prior to the WP 2.5.1 upgrade (if there indeed are any!) - simply use the wp-admin plugin screen to disable the "disable wordpress widgets" plugin before you upgrade.  Then, this will all be a moot point. 

I warned you it was esoteric.

Anyway, you can read more here: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/164296

You can also handle this a different way by reading this entry as well.

K2, Wordpress 2.5.1, Wordpress Upgrade Problems

So, in case you’ve been under a rock, Microsoft has put in an unsolicited bid to buy Yahoo! for $31 a share, or $44.1 billion.

Score one for Google - they sure have upset the apple cart to prompt such an unprecedented move.  And, at the same time - OUCH for Google.  They’ve finally pissed off the giant.

Check out more information here.

Really, the biggest question in my mind is how will this be branded?

• Microsoft Yahoo!
• Yahoo! by Microsoft
• Microsoft, the Yahoo! people
• Microsoft, the company formally known as Yahoo!
• Yahoo!, the company formally known as Microsoft
• YaMicHrooSoft
• And, my personal favorite, Soft MicroHooYas!

 My biggest fear?  They they will put a yodeling paperclip in all their advertising.   **Shudders-to-the-Bone**

Just wanted to let you know about a very cool FireFox extension called DownloadThemAll! It is a download manager / accelerator that is built right into FireFox. It has contextual menus so that you can right click a link and immediately start downloading, or you can queue up downloads, etc. While that is neat, the feature that I was looking for was the acceleration. By downloading multiple chunks of a file at the same time, the overall speed of your download is greatly increased.

I started downloading a 1.76GB game demo and I.E. was giving me 50K / sec download. 50K ??? What the heck? So, I looked for an accelerator that would fit in the browser. After installing DownloadThemAll! ? I was getting anywhere from 400 - 1800K / sec. Dang! Pretty nice speed boost. I left mine on the default 5 parts at a time so as to not be too rude to the file server. In fact, check out this screen cap of sustained 1.7 megabytes per second download:

Of course, your mileage may vary based on your Internet connection, file size, server speed, network congestion, black cat crossing your path or gremlins on the wire. Still, I’m pretty happy with this little piece of software. The price sure was right: FREE!

FireFox Add-on, DownloadThemAll!, download accelerator