Category Archives: How-to & Tutorial

Howto: Install Gnome Shell 3.x on Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot)

29-09-'11
Post Header: 'How-to'

I have been working for many years with the Gnome 2 shell now, but the recent positive reviews on Unity and Gnome 3 have also reached me. As I am not a huge fan of Unity for variety of reason (including its lay-out and lack of customization), I have decided to try out Gnome 3 within Ubuntu. Since Gnome 3 is finally ‘supported’ for Ubuntu, the method of upgrading Gnome has slightly changed. Using the second beta of Ubuntu I have written this small article so everyone install Gnome 3 within Ubuntu. Read more »

Howto: Upgrade PlayOnLinux to version 4.0 on Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal)

26-08-'11
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Under Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) I have been using PlayOnLinux for a while to install a variety of Windows programs (for example: Internet Explorer 7). After my upgrade from the 10.x Ubuntu series to the newest 11.04 version, I noticed that I was no longer able to install any programs within PlayOnLinux. The Ubuntu repositories offer version 3.8.8 of PlayOnLinux (at the moment of writing) resulting in the message ‘Sorry, PlayOnMac 2.5 and PlayOnLinux 3.8 are no longer supported.’ when attempting to install software. This short blog describes how you can update your PlayOnLinux version to the newest 4.x series that works correctly under Ubuntu 11.04. Read more »

Howto: Run Internet Explorer 8 under Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) in VirtualBox

23-08-'11
Post Header: 'How-to'

As a web developer, I am constantly aware of the problem that every browser seems to have a mind of its own when rendering a webpage. Especially earlier versions of Internet Explorer are a big problem for a lot of developers as these browsers were not updated with new options and/or visual fixes (only security updates). As a result, most web developers want to test their creations in various versions of Internet Explorer to make sure that everyone can experience their website as intended. Earlier, I wrote an article that explained how you can run Internet Explorer 7 under Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx. However, the package provided by PlayForLinux seems to be broken now and I had to find a new way to test websites before putting them online. In this blog I will explain a new method that actually runs Windows within Ubuntu enabling developers to exactly mimic the conditions of real users. Read more »

Howto: Implementing ‘text-overflow: ellipsis’ for FireFox using MooTools 1.3

07-02-'11
Post Header: 'How-to'

Almost two years back, devongovett published a small JQuery plugin on his blog. The goal of this plugin was to allow developers to add the ‘text-overflow: ellipsis’ behavior to their websites in all browsers using JQuery. This CSS3 feature adds an extra option to the ‘text-overflow’ property that allows developers to automatically add three ending dots (e.g. ‘…’) to website content that is to large to fit their container. All browsers except FireFox support this new CSS3 feature and it was suspected that this feature would therefor be added to FireFox 3.1 (released June 30, 2009 under version number 3.5). Currently, I am running the most recent stable version of FireFox (being 3.6) and developers are still waiting for Mozilla to include this feature in their browser. For one of my current projects I also required the ‘text-overflow: ellipsis’ behavior so I rewrote the script from devongovett to work with MooTools 1.3. Read more »

Howto: Prevent multiple instances of JEdit

17-01-'11
Post Header: 'How-to'

I recently switched to JEdit to create new PHP project, as I was having problems with my GEdit application. Though I initially liked most of the featured offered by JEdit and its various plugins, I was annoyed by the fact that every file opens in a new Window making my workspace look really messy. On the internet I could not find an solution with ease, but two articles for Linux and Windows gave me an idea on how to fix the issue on both platforms. In this article you will find the solutions I used that are based on the information found on those pages. Read more »

Howto: Solving the FireFox opacity-bug

05-01-'11
Post Header: 'How-to'

A friend of me notified me that one of my latest creations seemed to have a color-bug in its tagcloud at the bottom. Using Linux and various browsers, I could not reproduce anything that looked like the problem he described, so I fired up my Windows machine and started FireFox and Chrome. On this Windows machine the problem was easily identified in FireFox, but in Chrome and other browsers everything seemed fine. After various tests I concluded that the issue was a FireFox-only issue which made texts with a lowered opacity look really odd colored. Read more »

Howto: Making MeeGo 1.1 work on an eeePC 1000H

28-11-'10
Post Header: 'How-to'

Two years ago I bought an eeePC 1000H for all my e-mailing, webbrowsing and textwriting on the road. In addition, this netbook is a perfect tool to try out new software like the MeeGo 1.1 operating system. The eeePC 1000H is supposed to be supported completely by MeeGo 1.1 according to this page, but today I found out otherwhise. In this article I have combined information from many sources that helped me to get MeeGo 1.1 up and running on my eeePC 1000H. As the hardware of this netbook is comparable to other netbooks in the eeePC-family, this article might also be of interessent to users of other netbooks (e.g. eeePC 901). Read more »

Howto: Backwards compatibility for Request.JSON in MooTools 1.3

29-10-'10

Recently, MooTools released a brand new version of their JavaScript library with new exciting features like the new Slick engine. Though I was at first very excited about this, my excitement was gone within seconds when I noticed that all JavaScript parts of my website did not function properly anymore when using the backward compatible version of MooTools 1.3. After some research, I noticed that calls using Request.JSON were failing on the whole website, attempting to call the ‘onFailure’ method I defined in the options. Realizing this must have been one of the ‘big changes’ that would break backward compatibility, I browsed to the blog with information about the new MooTools 1.3 release. But after reading the whole page I could not find a mention of the issue I had: the issue is not mentioned in the ‘Notable changes in 1.3′-list, neither is it discussed in the blog itself. I realized the new documentation would have to help me out and after some playing with the code I figured it out. Read more »

Howto: limit your internet speed for testing purposes (Linux)

02-10-'10

I was developing an upload class with progress bar this week which required me to limit my Internet upload speed to just a few Kilobytes. Without this limitation, the progress bar (which belonged to a form accepting small files) would immediately reach 100 percent as the upload was completed in an instant. Though there are various bandwidth shapers for Window available, I ran into the problem that such a tool was not easy to find for Ubuntu. Researching the options, I found a small program called ‘Trickle’ which will not only help during test session, but might also be a nice addition during daily desktop usage. Read more »

Using CSS3 properties in Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8

21-07-'10

As most of the developers know, Internet Explorer has been lacking the new features of CSS (level 3) for a few years now compared to other A-grade browsers. This has been a problem for many web developers, because Microsoft refuses to update older and recent browsers with features requested by developers worldwide. This week I found a nice article in dutch on Tweakers.net about a recently released behavior library called CSS3 PIE. The library, which will only be loaded in Internet Explorer due to the fact that other browsers do not support behavior files, adds support for various CSS (level 3) properties that are commonly used on Web 2.0 websites in Internet Explorer 6+. Currently only few properties are supported, but the developer is planning to add additional properties in the future. Using a demo from one of my previous articles, I tested some of the features in Internet Explorer 7 and 8 to find out more about this library. Read more »


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