After some research I found it’s due to Apache 1.3.x or 2.0.x 32bit register limits. Apache 2.2.x changed it to a 64bit register so that limit is no longer an issue for people running newer versions.

Anyone else have experiences dealing with this limit?

After all that build up I’m sad to say there really isn’t much of a difference. URI vs URL is actually very similar to Whisky vs Scotch – how’s that for a memory jogging association? Any good bartender that knows their jigger from their jeroboam will tell you that Scotch is really just a whisky that was produced in Scotland. A URL is actually a URI that identifies the location of the resource. For another explanation, A URL is a URI but a URI is not necessarily a URL just like scotch is always a whiskey but a whiskey is not necessarily scotch.

Another little tidbit I discovered while researching this is that there’s another abbreviation called URN that identifies a resource by name in a particular namespace and is also a URI. So for example 1400082471 is the ISBN URN of the book Dreaming in Code.

So to recap, a URL is a URI that identifies a location (hence the last word of the abbreviation being location) and URN is a URI that identifies a name (hence the last word of the abbreviation being name). For all you right brain visual learners out there, check out the diagram to the left as a reminder.

Not really the most groundbreaking of topics but I thought it was cool to know the difference (what little difference there is at least) especially considering it’s a part of what I do on a daily basis. Hopefully someone out there feels the same.

Myspace redesigned logo with a more recognizable version also shown in the small overlay in the corner.

In an effort to combat the growing ranks of social networks like Facebook and Twitter, Myspace has introduced a new logo and website design that attempts to “Focus on Social Entertainment for Gen Y”. I must admit that although my first reaction was to chuckle at the literal space in the new logo, I started to realize how well the new design as a whole was executed.

Gen Y Appeal

I think they hit it pretty spot on with the appeal to their Gen Y audience. With a very large portion of screen real estate on these newly revamped pages devoted to what’s new in entertainment, it’s much easier to keep up with what’s trending. Also you’ll notice some funky graphics when you roll over the logo on the homepage, these change on each load of the page. Clicking around I also found random deer heads, stuffed animals and hand drawn graphics strewn about for good measure. Overall the design and functionality improvements focus on the main community that Myspace has left (in my opinion at least), artists and the Gen Y audience. Overall I found it was much nicer to look at than previous incarnations and it was indeed easier to see what was going on in Movies/Music/TV without being quite as daunting as I recall it being.

Taking Cues From the Competition

I noticed when I logged in – for the first time in several months mind you – that the header has a similar section of graphical representations for messages, requests and notifications. It’s not hard to spot the similarities to their Facebook counterparts. Same goes for the new logged-in homepage where you have a big box to “share what you’re into.”, also a comfortable familiar addition for those used to Facebook. Though this addition has a welcome new feature that brings the term “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” to mind, you can also choose to share the same thing to your attached Facebook and/or Twitter accounts.

Overall Opinion

For those with a severely low attention span – better but deep down it’s still just MySpace. The new logo is growing on me, and the new features are neat even though they’re arriving a little late in the game. But when you drill down deeper, it’s still the same old site overrun with profiles like ☆★Babee♥Grrrl★☆ and Ŝûƥêŕ Č₤ë√é® that insist on using sparkling animated GIF backgrounds and cramming their pages full of “I’m most like ____ on the Jersey Shore” quiz results. Sad part is I can’t think of a viable way of getting past that part of the MySpace tradition, as corny as the results may seem to most of us the freedom granted to users necessary for it to be possible wont be given up without a price.

Below is the introductory video to the redesigned MySpace:

While I haven’t changed the format much I think many that knew the old site will agree that there’s plenty more going on with the first incarnation of StevenWoodson.com. Including those groovy clouds floating by on the homepage and a brand new portfolio of selected projects I’ve had the pleasure of working on. So go forth and explore my loyal visitors, and feel free to contact me with any comments/suggestions if you’re so inclined.

And perhaps if you’re looking close enough you’ll find some Easter eggs laying about here and there

Snippets

Can’t live without my whole slew of snippets I’ve amassed over the years. I’ve never understood why there isn’t an easier built in way to import/export snippets, instead we’re stuck looking for the Dreamweaver Snippets folder which seems to be different across operating systems and Dreamweaver versions. But I digress, at least once you do find the right folder it’s a simple copy/paste from there.

Code Collapse

Introduced in Dreamweaver 8, code collapsing was the feature I never knew I missed until I had it. I write a lot of OOP code and that comes with several files full of functions, in order to keep them more organized I generally tend to collapse each function so it doesn’t feel as daunting. I’ve found a cool way to keep my code collapsed while still having the ability to edit it which is great when I’m going back into a file for small updates and don’t want to have to expand and re-collapse code. I found that if you put your cursor directly to the right of the collapsed code block and hit Shift+HOME it expands the code but leaves a light blue outline around it. This makes the code editable while retaining the collapse, once you move away from that block it collapses right back into place. Give it a go, it’s really helps my workflow and keeps me more organized. Although I did recently find one caveat, it appears to not work in very large files. I tried this method in a file that’s 1230+ lines and nada, hopefully this becomes a definite feature in an upcoming release because it just seems like the next logical step in collapsing code to me.

Code Hints

I’m sure anyone that’s used Dreamweaver’s Code View has seen code hinting but did you know you can call up Code Hints whenever you want? Sure can! Just hit CTRL + Space and biggity bam! There’s hints available for HTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP. There’s tag libraries available for several languages and you could even make or add your own if you were willing to take the time. Dreamweaver does a good job at pulling up code hints based on the section of a page you’re on. Say you’re in a script block at the top of an HTML page, hitting CTRL + Space will bring up all the javascript hints rather than those for HTML.

Show/Hide Panels

One of the biggest things that helps me while coding is having a big screen to see more of the code at once, but when I’m on a smaller screen there’s still an easy way to maximize that real estate, hitting F4 hides all the various panels I have open leaving the whole screen free to see my code. Hitting F4 again restores the panels for those times you need to see your files, snippets, properties, etc.

Find and Replace

Good ol’ find and replace, where would we be without this wonder of a function? Well there’s a couple things you may not know about it, there’s several options that I find useful on a regular basis. One, obviously, is the ‘Find in:’ select box that allows you to perform a replace on a selected block of text or even a whole website at a time. Second is the awesome ability to use Regular [removed]also known as ‘VooDoo’) in your find queries. This is a great way to change several blocks of content that are not quite exact but really close. I could go on and on about RegEx but I think that’s best left to another article. There’s also the option to search through the source code or through the text on the page, you can even search through the text in a specific tag only (like a paragraph tag). Give it a real once over the next time you use it, you’ll most likely find something that you hadn’t noticed before.

Well that’s it, just a few things I use on a daily (sometimes hourly) basis that might be of use to you other code monkeys out there. Feel free to add onto this list in the comments, I’m sure there’s a few features I’ve missed.

The first is a Java application called ‘Sloppy‘ that helps you deliberately slow down your browsing to see how pages (and perhaps most helpfully Flash) load. With a variety of connection speeds from 9.6k (ugh) to 3Mb (as if you get that in the first place) to choose from you can be sure your applications run at their best no matter the connection. And from my tests today on a Flash preloader it appears to update the connection speed in realtime, when I went from 56k up to 256k there was a noticeable increase in the loading speed. Very cool! That site has a few other gems, however, so go check out the main site at www.dallaway.com as well.

The second tool is a Flash & javascript application called SWFUpload. This nifty script provides you with advanced browser upload control in a sleek and unassuming package. Perhaps the best feature is the ability to select multiple files to upload and they all run one at a time until the whole queue is complete. This could be an amazing feature for a photography website or for companies with digital asset management systems with users that find themselves uploading folders of content at a time. Be sure to check out the demos while you’re at it, there’s several there to play around with.

I need to quit slacking on this blog, sorry folks for the long delay… those of you that stuck around this quiet place at least.

gBrowser? No, Chrome

Looks like the rumors from several years ago were pretty accurate; Google just released a new browser named Chrome that they have apparently been working on for several years. This thing has been in the rumor mill for ages but it was kept so closely guarded that no one but a select (very) few even knew the project existed. There’s been several dozen reviews/ criticisms written on the browser and it’s features, namely Incognito (a.k.a. porno) Mode where no history or cookies will be recorded for that window, the new super-duper awesome V8 Javascript Engine that multiplies the JavaScript performance of websites through this browser, and it’s speed both in page and javascript rendering. So many articles that I felt it worthless to write anything like that myself so I decided to link to what I found to be the most interesting ones here so you can check those out.

Fanning the Flames

The main reason for this article was just for me to be able to say that although I was initially against YET ANOTHER browser crowding the marketplace I’ve actually become quite smitten with the little browser that could (and probably will, in many respects). Not to use, oh dear no for my heart is still with another, but as I mentioned in that past ‘Google Browser’ article I love how things like this light the fire under everyone else. This is ultimately going to spur on so many new developments in browser technology faster than it would have happened otherwise. The fact that many things like the aptly named V8 Javascript Engine is open sourced is going to make progress all the faster and, according to their comic, they’re hoping that’s the case as well.

Another big reason that I’m now willing to welcome Google Chrome with open arms is because it’s using the open source WebKit Rendering Engine (also utilized by Apple’s Safari) so your sites should render pages the same as Safari. You are testing your sites in Safari right? Right?

Sorry, this post ended up having way more links than I originally anticipated. I think they’re all good reads/resources though so when you get a chance check them out! And as always i’d like to hear what you thought about this article, Google Chrome, and the state of web browsers in general either through comments or via the contact form!

http://www.uncontrol.com/ – Algorithmic art at it’s finest. I found this through a link to "#55 – Clock" but have found any other one I click on is just as fascinating. Best of all they graciously open sourced these projects and provide them for download.

http://www.firerift.com/ – Who knew a CMS could have such a cool commercial? Looks like a promising alternative, it’s coming very soon so we’ll see if it can live up to that commercial.

http://photosynth.net/ – I’m sure many of you are familiar with this 3D photo offering from Microsoft, I remember being wowed by it a long while ago. But it just got better, they’ve opened it up to the public so now anyone can register and upload photos that can ultimately be shared with those of someone else. Can’t wait to see what monuments are made ’synthy’.

http://fallingsandgame.com/sand/fall1.html – Not much for inspiration but it’s an awesome way to get away for a few minutes and clear your head. Deceptively simple game with no real point but still manages to be extremely fun.

Apache Module mod_expires

The first thing to do is extend the amount of time text, images, css, flash and javascript are stored in the users cache. To turn this on we need mod_expires to be active, we then use the expression ‘ExpiresActive On‘. We then set a default expiry for everything which is generally set to 6 hours (300 seconds) from the time of access. This is set using the expression ‘ExpiresDefault A300‘. Alternatively we can set it to expire a set amount of time since the file was last modified using M instead of A as in ‘ExpiresDefault M300‘. Then, if need be, we can take a more granular approach to expiration times by setting expiration by filetype using the expression ‘ExpiresByType [mimetype] [A|M][seconds]‘. So to set GIF images to expire one week from time of access we’d use ‘ExpiresByType image/gif A604800‘.

FileETag Directive

The FileETag directive configures the file attributes that are used to create the ETag (entity tag) response header field when the document is based on a file. Because we’re manually setting expirations we don’t require these headers so it’s easiest to just turn it off using the expression ‘FileETag none‘.

Compressing PHP Pages

The following requires the PHP installation to have the zlib extension enabled, which it should be by default. We use the expression ‘php_value output_handler ob_gzhandler‘ to turn on compression of the final php pages sent to the users browser. It’s noted on the PHP.net website that turning this on via the php.ini ‘zlib.output_compression‘ is preferred if available to edit.

Apache Module mod_deflate

As of Apache 2.0, there’s an available module that compresses the server output before sending to the user, called mod_deflate. This module must be turned on in order to work.  I set this up to compress by filetype so it looks like ‘AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml text/css text/javascript text/x-javascript application/javascript application/x-javascript‘. There are ways to set this up even on a per browser basis but since the browser negotiates with the server before any files are transferred, it’s not necessary.  If the browser is not compatible with compressed content, the server will provide the content uncompressed.

It’s also worth noting that Apache version 1.3 had a method for serving compressed content called mod_gzip.

Final Notes

Using these methods I’ve decreased pageload and bandwith on my site, after adding it my ySlow score for the homepage went from a D(64) to a B(83) and there was a noticeable increase in pageload speed as I was navigating the site. Many people stress that including this code into the httpd.conf file is better because it loads faster and isn’t reloaded every page load as the .htaccess file would be but my being on a shared environment I haven’t tried it myself..

Final Code

ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault A300
ExpiresByType text/javascript A2592000
ExpiresByType text/x-javascript A2592000
ExpiresByType application/javascript A2592000
ExpiresByType application/x-javascript A2592000
ExpiresByType text/css A604800
ExpiresByType image/gif A604800
ExpiresByType image/png A604800
ExpiresByType image/jpeg A604800
ExpiresByType text/plain A604800
ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash A2592000
ExpiresByType application/pdf A604800
ExpiresByType text/html A300
FileETag none php_value output_handler ob_gzhandler AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml text/css text/javascript text/x-javascript application/javascript application/x-javascript

.js .asa .css .cs .config .inc .txt .as .asc .asr .vb

and now it’s…

.js .asa .css .cs .config .inc .txt .as .asc .asr .vb .ini .htaccess

That’s it! You can add any other file types you want Dreamweaver to open from here too. No more notepad for htaccess edits!