Super Ginormous

Author: Chris Harrison

  • Announcing AJAX Libraries API: Speed up your Ajax apps with Google’s infrastructure

  • Dreamweaver, Fireworks CS4 Betas Released

    Fresh from the Adobe Labs comes betas for Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 and Adobe Fireworks CS4. It should be noted that if you’ve been using CS3, there is a new unified interface that’ll be appearing in CS4 that may take some getting used to.

    Also, if you tested the Photoshop CS3 beta when it was released, I can’t stress enough that you should not install this software on a machine that is mission critical for your business. This is beta software. It may have problems. It may cause difficulties if you decide to upgrade to CS4 when it’s released.

    Caveat emptor.

  • Simple Form Redirection

    Recently, a friend asked if I could come up with a simple form that would allow you to enter a value into a field, hit the submit button, and have it take the user to a URL with the value they entered in the field appended to the URL. I’m not great with JavaScript, but I figured it’d be a good learning exercise for me.

    Scripting is an area I have never been comfortable in. I can work with existing code without any problems, but writing my own has always been a challenge for me.

    Here’s what I came up with:

    <form action="http://subdomain.example.com/" method="post" name="redirect">
<input type="text" value="" name="url" id="" />
<input type="submit" value="Submit" name="submit"
onclick="this.form.action=document.redirect.action + document.redirect.url.value;" />
</form>

    View Code on Snipplr

    To use this, simply change the URL set in the form action to your own URL. Once the user hits submit, the form will post to http://subdomain.example.com/XXXX where ‘XXXX’ equals the value of the text field. Obviously, there’s no validation whatsoever. Also, the domain needs to have a slash after it or it’ll fail in IE. If a user enters a value that doesn’t pair up with a URL that resolves, it won’t work.

  • Accountability

    Accountability isn’t just weekly meetings with a ‘partner.’ [It’s] having friends who’ll punch your face when you need them to. Andy Thompson

  • Webmonkey is Risen! The definitive web resource of yesteryear is back from the dead and better than ever.

  • Why Zappos Pays New Employees to Quit – And You Should Too. “It’s a small practice with big implications: Companies don’t engage emotionally with their customers—people do. If you want to create a memorable company, you have to fill your company with memorable people.” Fantastic read, really.

  • Why Twitter Matters

    Why Twitter Matters. I’m amazed to see Twitter come so far in only 14 months. I’m coming up on my one-year anniversary on Twitter, not counting the time when I first had a Twitter account and closed it…

  • Adopt SciFi.

  • Google Doctype – an open encyclopedia/reference library written by web developers for web developers.

  • Why Adobe Updater?

    This video cracked me up this morning. I feel that guy’s pain.

    I’ve had a love/hate relationship with the Adobe Updater for some time now. I realize that using CS3 won’t get any better without updates, but I hate how the Updater interrupts my workflow when it needs to run an install.

    I shouldn’t have to close my browser(s) in order to install Adobe program updates, especially if said update is not Acrobat-related. I shouldn’t have to close down apps that aren’t applicable to the program that’s being updated. I shouldn’t have to wait ages and ages for updates to install themselves.

    Of course, if it really bothered me enough, I’d simply disable the Adobe Updater altogether and check for updates when it was convenient for me, but then, I probably wouldn’t keep my software as current as I’d need/want it to be.

    How could Adobe Updater work better?

    • You should be able to schedule when it checks for updates. “Every week” is too ambiguous. Usually, I’m in the middle of something when when Adobe Updater prompts me to upgrade. (Every Tuesday at 3am would be just dandy for me.)
    • You should have the option to choose whether Adobe Updater will automatically upgrade your software or await feedback from you. (Currently it downloads the updates and prompts you to install them OR you you have to explicitly tell it to download the updates when you’re ready for them. I want it to go ahead and install the updates too, if that’s my preference.)
    • You shouldn’t have to close down applications in order to install the updates. If I don’t close down the applications I have open, force a reboot in order for the installation to complete.
    • If updates don’t work or timeout, direct me to the Adobe website where I can manually grab the available updates.

    What do you think? What do you like or dislike about the Adobe Updater? What do you think could be done to improve it?