Archive for November, 2008
A driver for your Darwin-based keyboard woes
I built this driver in 2007, to support Leopard Darwin on my wife’s laptop (hmmm where’s the “wink wink nudge nudge” smiley when you need it?)
I am offering a full driver for download, but it’s only so that you could use my keyboard fix if you do not currently have an ApplePS2Controller.kext that support plug-ins.
The point of this driver really is to provide keyboard support for laptops that see their built-in keyboard as PS2 — ie the vast majority. Therefore the piece that is really interesting to you is ApplePS2Keyboard.kext (in ApplePS2Controller.kext/Contents/PlugIns/)
There are other drivers that do just that, out there, but unfortunately many of them fail to properly detect the keyboard.
So, here goes. If you have a laptop running Leopard Darwin but your built-in keyboard is not working, give this driver a try.
ps: Come to think of it, you may find this kext useful if you are using a desktop with a recalcitrant PS2 keyboard as well.
pps: Miracle! After a year of having misplaced the source code, I found it on a USB stick. It’s now available at Github.
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Twitterified 1.2 is out: multi-accounts, mouse gestures, visual ignore…
Based on the very helpful feedback I received from the Twitterified client users, here is version 1.2’s log:
- Multiple accounts support:
– Multiple accounts using the same server
– Accounts using multiple servers (Twitter, Identi.ca…)
– Underlying architecture to eventually support any third-party server as long as they are compatible
- Better error reporting
- Better error recovery
- Mouse Gestures support
- Tweets can now be marked “read”
- Obviously new tweets are now easily identifiable
- The application window height is now a setting
- It is now possible to “ignore” someone using the collapsable boxes
Due to the client’s support for multiple accounts, if you are upgrading, you will have to re-enter your credentials. It’s a one-time thing.
Note, too, that starting with v1.1, the client offers to update automatically when a new version is out.
Showing two accounts…
-
Sorry, Jeremiah, ignoring you for the purpose of this demo…
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Use Mouse Gesture to mark all Tweets “read”
If you are not using Twitterified yet, go get it!
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Four Top Wordpress Code Highlighters Reviewed
I recently ran a whole lot of Wordpress code highlighting plug-ins through the grinder and ended up selecting four that, in my opinion, are the worthiest of the lot.
Writing a code highlighter plug-in proves to be a fairly difficult exercise. Your plug-in needs to be smart about its content, or the result will invariably be a disappointment. For instance, if the plug-in is activated using the <pre> tag, then it needs to maintain a stack/counter of <pre> and </pre> tags so that finding a <pre> tag in the code being highlighted doesn’t abruptly terminate the code parsing, disfiguring your blog in the process. I noticed the issue with SyntaxHighlighter, but the other plug-ins may also suffer from it.
SyntaxHighlighter
Tag: [sourcecode language='css']code here[/sourcecode]
My main issue with this plug-in is that it works in visual mode; hence, your source code formatting (tabs etc.) is lost. Other than that, it works well and support a wide range of languages and it offers several very nice features such as ‘copy to clipboard’ or ‘print’. My hope, right now, is that I did not use it correctly.
Rating: 
Highlight source Pro
Tag: <pre lang="enc__php" class="17">code here</pre>
I do not like the use of the class arguments, as it means “start numbering with line 17″ which totally breaks XHTML compliance.
Note the smart use of the enc__ prefix, which, when presents, means that the code being highlighted is encoded using HTML Entities. Add the prefix, you can use the higlighter in visual mode; omit it and work in HTML mode.
Rating: 
FV Code Highlighter
Tag: {code type=php}code here{/code}
Cute display, which will feel immediately familiar to Dreamweaver aficionados. Support PHP, HTML, CSS and XML.
Rating:
WP_CODEBOX
Tag: <pre lang="php" line="1" file="example.php" colla="-">code here</pre>
In my opinion, this is the winner. It works well, looks good and support more languages than any of the others — I counted about 70 different formats!
You can display the code box collapsed or expanded, offer a link to download the code, etc.
Rating:
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Flex: How I worked around MOUSE_OUT’s inefficiencies
In Twitterified Client v1, one of the features I really wanted available right off the bat, was that when a user moves their mouse pointer over a twitterer’s avatar, an overlay image is displayed. This image is a menu of sort, allowing the user to send a direct message, a reply or access a more advanced menu. Of course, when the mouse pointer exists the avatar’s region, the overlay image needs to quietly go. Being the Flex newbie that I am, I thought that a straightforward implementation would work:
_imageOverlayPanel.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_OUT, onMouseOut); |
In onMouseOut(), I would detach _imageOverLayPanel, remove the listener, and move foward. Unfortunately, when moving my mouse around at a reasonably fast speed, I found out that the overlay panel did not go away, and after a while I had several avatars “polluted” by that overlay panel. I started “tracing” the MOUSE_OUT event and found out that, at least in AIR applications, there is no guarantee that such an event will be triggered. Ouch.
I experimented with, instead, using a timer that would kick in every 500ms and check whether the mouse pointer was still in the avatar’s region. It worked very well but felt a bit clunky and there was a risk of race condition with mouse events.
In the end, I settled for an approach using MOUSE_MOVE, which feels “cleaner” and works almost as well as the timer method:
stage.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_MOVE, onMouseMovePossiblyOut); |
private function onMouseMovePossiblyOut(event:MouseEvent):void { if(!_imageOverlayPanel.parent) return; var pt:Point = new Point(event.stageX, event.stageY); pt = _imageOverlayPanel.globalToLocal(pt); if(pt.x < 0 || pt.y < 0 || pt.x > _imageOverlayPanel.width || pt.y > _imageOverlayPanel.height) { _imageOverlayPanel.parent.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_OVER, onImageMouseOver); // innerWrapper resumes listening to mouse_over events _imageOverlayPanel.parent.removeChild(_imageOverlayPanel); // overlay panel is detached from innerWrapper } } |
Note that the trick, here, is that I add my mouse listener to the stage rather than the image overlay itself. This allows me to receive mouse events that happen outside the overlay’s region; they are the ones I am interested in.
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Twitterified taking off: is private beta a mistake?
Somehow, seemingly out of nowhere, Twitterers have started to notice Twitterified. I guess a few positive reviews help.
But would Twitterified have received these positive reviews, had it not moved to open beta? I think not. The service was in closed beta for a couple months, which allowed me to kill a few gremlins I found in the system, but even so it did not attract enough adventurous users for its own good. So, I followed the “old” web 2.0 advice: release the product (early), even if you feel that it is not ready. Of course, I need to keep an eye on all feedback and fix problems as soon as they are reported. I do not think that an open beta can work any other way. Fortunately, due to the tool’s nature, feedback can be found in a very obvious place 
I consider myself lucky because I already have some experience with scaling applications — thanks to clicdev.com and past experience as a web host — and as a very clueless user interface “victim” I do spend a lot of time thinking about all the ways that an application could confuse me. But even so, that’s no reason to dwell in closed beta country. When I look around, it seems that no matter how talented and how successful web entrepreneurs have been, products launched as closed beta have always had a hard time making it as a mainstream product.
Not that I am thinking of Twitterified’s minuscule critical success as anything mainstream, or that I would dare compare its audience to Pownce! But, interestingly, when I look at Pownce and who its backers are, it doesn’t seem to have achieved the success it seemed poised to. Of course, I am not singling out Pownce. It just happens to be one of the projects I found really interesting.
In conclusion, I do not think that I will every launch anything in closed beta again. It’s just not worth it!
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