First of all, I have to say that my job is only the catalyst for the changeover.  I’ve since started developing my own site on a Ubuntu machine and love the one-on-one computer interaction over SSH.  While it is possible to transfer files via SSH on a Windows machine,  you will need programs like Putty and WinSCP to play nice with Unix.  As most Web servers are currently running on some sort of Linux OS, I was really missing out on a lot of capabilities and a general understanding of what was happening on those servers I pay for every month.   By running Windows and working purely with FTP clients, I was working with a fraction of the power I now have over SSH.

The other big pull for me was the freedom that is associated with Linux.  Linux and many of the programs available to the OS are free of charge, regardless of whether or not the machine is used for business.  Since these projects are open source, there is constant development and progress and the programs are often more intuitive and ground-breaking.  I also appreciate knowing what is going on under the hood.  I do not have a computer science degree, but as someone who was raised on a Windows machine, I appreciate being able to get my hands dirty if I need to.  Like I said, its all about the freedom.

If it were up to me, I would completely switch over to Linux and I don’t think I would look back.  My primary trade as a designer limits me on OS choice, and I still can’t give up PC games.  You’re probably thinking that I need to get a Mac.  Apple computers have a Unix OS and support all the design software in the world.  And you’d be right.  I’m coming around slowly.

I will probably have a Windows machine for the forseeable future.  I will miss gaming too much (even though that is becoming less of a pull as time flies out the window) and I will need a testing platform for various Web sites and applications.  Honestly though?  Thats about all I need it for.  I suspect I’ll be purely Unix in a few years.

<? // check for UA, convert UA string to lower case
$navigator_user_agent = ( isset( $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ) ) ? strtolower( $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ) : '';

// Check browser and select CSS file
if (stristr($navigator_user_agent, "msie 6")){
echo '<link href="css/alternate.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />';
}

else{
echo "<link href='css/style.css' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css' />";
}
?>

If all went well you should now have a script that selects an alternate CSS file for your IE6 visitors. You can use else-if statements if you would like to add more contingencies. Another upside to this is if you’re using non-valid CSS (like *html for IE) you can shuffle it all away in another file that the W3C validator will never see. Devious!

Make sure you find your user agent string! Some of these are similar and will contain the names of other browsers, so be specific when you use a keyword to search the UA string.

Create a new text file, copy the code into the file, and rename it to .vbs  Don’t forget to change the directories and string fields to suit your needs.  I’m not too big on VB, so I modified another script to get me started, but the search and replace functions are specific to our job (rearranging ‘the’ in the folder name).

Set oFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set oFolder = oFSO.GetFolder("z:\Movies")
RenameSubFolders(oFolder)
set oFolder = Nothing
set oFSO = Nothing

Function RenameSubFolders(myFolder)

For each oSubFolder in myFolder.SubFolders
dim pos
pos=InStr(oSubFolder.Name,"The ")
If pos = 1 Then
oSubFolder.Name = Mid(oSubFolder.Name, 5) + ", The"
RenameSubFolders(oSubFolder)
End If
Next

End Function

This script searches for a string in a folder name and places it at the end of the said folder name.  So, for instance, I have a ton of folders named “The (MovieName)”  This script renames them to “(MovieName), The”.  Like I said, I’m old school and use file directories for everything (no I-Tunes, thank you) so alphabetical order is very important.  Rather than taking the hours to rename a bunch of folders, I took an hour to toy around with some Visual Basic.  Totally worth it.

So in the end, I really don’t understand why people don’t use scripts more often, especially for the growing media libraries that most people have on their computers.  I guess it all comes down to I-Tunes and similar applications.

I’ve found some shortcut references for my most-used Adobe programs. If you are planning on becoming a designer, or just want to improve your speed, shortcuts are key (pun intended).

Illustrator
KeyXL (web)

InDesign
Adobe Forums (PDF)

Photoshop
Trevor Morris Photography (PDF)

I finally got Linux running in Windows so I can test on Konqueror. As I suspected, it worked about the same as Safari, another KHTML browser. Anyway, the easiest way I found to get Linux running in Windows can be found here. It’s just a matter of running KMD on a virtual machine. I originally tried to get it to run using Cygwin, which was a waste of time.

Another issue I ran into a while back was testing with IE6 and below.  Having two versions of Explorer on the same OS is nearly impossible.  Microsoft released a VPC image running IE6 for this reason.  It is available here.

And if you haven’t heard yet, a beta version of Safari 3 is available for download.  You can get it here. 

Many of the best AJAX apps activate by using custom triggers that do not qualify as valid HTML. I used to think that all was lost, and that there was a mandatory trade between functionality and usability. This is not so: doctype information may be appended to include your triggers.

For instance, I use a modal window system called LightWindow that has “author” and “caption” triggers to relate data to the script when a user clicks on an image. Neither of these triggers will validate under the XHTML 1.0 DTD. Here’s the code to fix it:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"
[
<!ATTLIST a author CDATA #IMPLIED>
<!ATTLIST a caption CDATA #IMPLIED>
]>

This is how it breaks down:

<!ATTLIST element attribute dataType #IMPLIED or #REQUIRED>

Since my elements relate to linked files e.g.(<a href=) that I want to open with LightWindow, I use the element ‘a’ for link. The attribute is what you are using to communicate with your app and is also what is causing your document to not validate. The dataType can likely just be left as CDATA as it handles any kind of data. It is also likely best to leave the type defenition as #IMPLIED or optional for these purposes. A more in-depth article can be found at A List Apart.

Fix invalid symbols by changing them to HTML

If you are using a script in your document that is called using symbols such as the ampersand ‘&’ or equals ‘=’ these will cause the validator to choke. Consider using their HTML forms amp; and #61; (with ampersands in front) respectively. A complete list of symbols and HTML translations is available at the Web Design Group’s site.

For example, a line on my site used to look like this:

<link rel=“stylesheet” type=“text/css” href=“combine.php?type=css&files=dlinn.css,lightWindow.css” />

But now looks like this:

Still having problems with CSS?

Yeah, me too. We’ll just have to hang in there until the newer standards (that have existed for years) are adopted or hell freezes over.

http://dithered.chadlindstrom.ca/javascript/browser_detect/index.html

The specific browser type is combined with other browser information in the .userAgent variable, so you have to write some script to search through it. Its easier than it sounds. Here is the code:

var ua = navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase();
if (ua.indexOf('safari/') != -1){
alert("You're using Safari, moron!")
}

Told ya! Substitute ’safari’ for whatever you need to identify.

Edit - This script searches through the user agent string.  Visit this site to find strings for the browser you are trying to identify.

I worked on an Apple machine for a year, and I enjoyed the OS. I cant say I enjoyed the machine, a 700mhz G4 that would crash if you looked at it funny. In any case I found myself flicking my cursor to the corner of my monitor even when I was back on my Windows machine.

Meet Switcher, like OSX’s Expose feature but for Windows Vista. This program uses Vista’s built-in desktop rendering system, making it fast and flawlessly integrated. It works great with multiple monitors, and just like Expose and Flip 3D, it continues to render your window content in real time. To make things even better, version 2.0 is set to come out soon.

Input is very configurable. I set switcher to activate on mouse wheel down, though it is possible to use corner activation just like OSX.

Visit Bao’s Blob for Switcher.

• If your site’s root folder is in another directory on your server, make sure you create an .htaccess file in that directory. There may be an .htaccess file in your public_html folder already, but unless that is your site’s root folder, you should not change it. Once you edit and place this file in your site’s root, all CSS and Java files accessed in their respective directories will be redirected to the combine.php script.
  
• With the .htaccess file in mind, you need to place your combine.php file in the same directory, or edit your .htaccess file to point to combine.php.
  
• Combine.php will compact and compress your files and send them to a cache folder that you need to create, again, in your site’s root directory. This way the client’s browser will access the cached files and wont request new files needlessly.
  
• Once you have everything in place, you need to call your files in a way that the combine.php script recognizes. Here’s an example:
  <script type="text/javascript" src="combine.php?type=javascript&files=prototype.js,effects.js,lightWindow.js"></script>

If everything went as planned, you will use less bandwidth, your site may load a bit faster and your visitors will never know.

MiniAjax.com (careful, this loads a bit slow)
MooTools
Prototype (doesn’t play with MooTools; see moo.fx)
Lightbox

If you are a Web standards kind of person, you’ll know what I mean when I say AJAX is leaps ahead of Flash. I am still reluctant to learn action script for this reason, but that will depend on my future employer’s preferences (a whole other can of worms). When AJAX is implemented properly, client computers can have JavaScript completely disabled but they will still load all the content that the gracious Web developer hath provided them; they will only forfeit smooth Java-powered navigation. Try that with Flash.

So here I am trying to make myself more marketable by learning how to code JavaScript and PHP for the sake of creating my own AJAX apps. Lucky for us, there is a lot of information online and in local bookstores. I have compiled a small list of reading for people like me who do not come with a computer science degree. I’ll try to keep most of it online, but for your sake I suggest you go to a bookstore, grab some java coffee (ok, that was lame) and a Java/AJAX book. There should be plenty. I like to use a notepad and rewrite anything I’ll need to know. It saves money and it’s a great way to learn.

W3C Schools
AjaxLessons.com
Rasmus’ 30 second AJAX Tutorial
AJAX for Dummies (See also Java and XML for Dummies)

Ok, that’s all for now. I will continue to post what I find in hopes that someone out there will learn with me. We’re in this together.