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Weekly Roundup - September 1st 2008

Posted September 1st, 2008 in Weekly Roundup

This is my weekly roundup for the week of August 25th to 31st 2008, where I look back at the posts I made over the past week as well as useful and interesting articles on other websites and blogs that I might have read.

Articles posted on my blog

Monday: Weekly Roundup - August 25th 2008
Tuesday: View Outlook 2007 emails as plain text
Wednesday: Test if a file exists with the BASH shell
Thursday: 9 More Free Windows Apps
Friday: PHP CLI counter for long running processes
Saturday: No post
Sunday: No post

Interesting articles found offsite

CSS

Kilian Valkhof looked at the :not() pseudo class in CSS3. This allows you to select e.g. all divs except for the one specified in not().

Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer 8 beta 2 was released. As always with beta versions of software like Internet Explorer it's a good idea to try it out on either a testing machine or a virtual machine so you don't cause any issues with your regular computer.

jQuery

Dave Shea at A List Apart posted how to use CSS sprites with jQuery, using animation in a menu as an example.

James Padolsey at Nettuts posted how to create a CSS switcher with jQuery along with the demo here. It also uses some PHP code in the backend to change the CSS when each page is presented but you could use any scripting language behind the scenes to do this.

Mootools

Antonio Lupetti posted an introduction and some basic tips for using Mootools in his Woork blog. Mootools is a Javascript framework similar to jQuery and Prototype etc.

And in a similar vein, CatsWhoCode posted basics + 5 useful tips for Mootools which also covers the basics and then 5 tips: Styling differently even and odd element of a list (or any container); Inverting background and color of an Element on Click; Retrieving and modifying Elements data; Adding a fading effect to your link; and Make your vertical menu sexy.

ConsiderOpen.com posted how to do drag and drop with Mootools.

Photography

US PCWorld looked at the upcoming Canon EOS 50D. I have a Canon EOS 10D myself which I bought 5 1/2 years ago and would love to upgrade to this new model :)

And NZ PCWorld looked at the Nikon D90, a digital SLR which has video recording capabilities.

PHP

Dougal Matthews had an introduction to PHP's magic methods: __call __callstatic __set __get __autoload. The page linked to is the category page with links through to his posts about these functions. Presumably more posts will be added to in time.

The Open Source PHP website at open.srcphp.com features an easy to browse gallery of the best Open Source PHP projects. Each project features screenshots plus community driven comments, ratings, and bookmarking. They also provide a hosted demo install that's refreshed every couple hours so you can immediately evaluate a working installation.

SOAP

W2O2 posted 6 different ways of testing a web service, listing the following applications/test suites: Axis2 Generated Client; Axis2 ServiceClient API; REST/POX based invocation; SOAPUI; Apache JMeter; and WSO2 WSAS TryIt.

SSH

gamexe.net posted a beginner's guide to SSH, showing where to get the PuTTY SSH client, opening an SSH session with PuTTY, how to log into an SSH server and some basic commands.

UNIX

In this older post, Michael Stutz at IBM's Developer Works posted 10 good UNIX usage habits: make directory trees in a single swipe; change the path; do not move the archive; combine your commands with control operators; quote variables with caution; use escape sequences to manage long input; group your commands together in a list; use xargs outside of find; know when grep should do the counting -- and when it should step aside; match certain fields in output, not just lines; and stop piping cats.

WordPress

Shoemoney previewed WordPress 2.7, looking at some of the new features in the new major release which is scheduled for November.

Misc

CrazeeGeekChick posted a list of 25 must have apps that can run from a thumb drive for geeks, including portable Firefox, Ifranview, 7-Zip portable, UTorrent and TightVNC.

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