Software Salariman

Outlook Locks Newly Created Folder / Directory

2011-12-14T11:30:00.002+11:00

When saving an attachment in Outlook 2007, you can create a new folder in your filesystem first. However, Outlook locks that folder, so you can't move or rename it. You can unlock that folder by ... Saving the attachment in another folder. Creating another folder (though not a sub-folder of the one you just created). Restarting Outlook. There's an extra method listed in Folder or drive lock

Google ChromeFrame incompatible with Oracle Hyperion DRM

2011-12-05T10:20:00.001+11:00

If you have installed the Google ChromeFrame add-on for Internet Explorer (MSIE) 7 or 8, you may find that you cannot login to Oracle Hyperion Data Relationship Management (DRM) 11.1.2.1. After MSIE loads the DRM login page, you may see some Javascript errors and when you press the Log on button, nothing happens. Coincidentally, I started seeing this error message on another web site: ERROR:

Specify Rows or Columns for Excel AutoFit

2011-12-02T18:00:00.000+11:00

If you use the Excel AutoFit Method to resize cells to display their contents nicely, remember to specify whether to AutoFit rows or columns in Excel, i.e. use Range().Columns.AutoFit or Range().Rows.AutoFit, not just Range().AutoFit. If you don't specify rows or columns, Excel produces Run-time error '1004': AutoFit method of Range class failed.

Minimal JavaBean introspection example

2011-11-26T06:20:00.000+11:00

Just playing with JavaBeans, so here's a small example to create a simple JavaBean, set a property and read it. import java.beans.BeanInfo; import java.beans.IntrospectionException; import java.beans.Introspector; import java.beans.PropertyDescriptor; import java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException; import java.lang.reflect.Method; public class SimpleBean { private final String name = "

Grep -f: No blank lines

2011-11-11T09:03:00.001+11:00

If you search for a list of patterns in a data file using grep like below, don't include a blank line in the pattern file otherwise grep prints the entire data file. grep -f patterns.txt data.txt It's as if you had typed: grep "" data.txt See GNU Grep Manual

Create an MSIE Favorite using VBA & WSH

2011-09-18T17:00:00.000+10:00

A little sub-routine to create MSIE Favorites for MS-Office users. It uses Windows Scripting Host (WSH) which has a shell object that has functions to find a computer's Favorites folder (SpecialFolders()) and create a URL shortcut (CreateShortcut()). Option Explicit 'Add references: '1. Microsoft Scripting Runtime (Scripting namespace) '2. Windows Script Host Object Model (IWshRuntimeLibrary

Avoid multiple instances of a task in Windows Task Scheduler

2011-05-29T17:00:00.078+10:00

Using Task Scheduler, one way to run a task more often than once a day was to repeat the task within the day. For instance, if you wanted to run a task every hour, you would repeat the task once an hour for that day. Now, if the task's running time is longer (e.g. the task is delayed by a slow network connection) than the repeat interval then another instance would be started even if you specify

Running Batch Files in Vim Ex-Mode

2011-04-16T17:00:00.026+10:00

To modify a file using vim in ex-mode, you should be able to do this: vim -esn < modify.ex File.txt. The -esn option starts vim in ex-mode, a non-interactive session and no backup is created. The modify.ex file can contain a sequence of editing commands, ending with wq to write and close the file. However, in a Windows cmd session, the editing commands in modify.ex are executed but vim doesn't

Configure NetBeans to Statically Link MinGW C & C++ Libraries

2011-03-26T17:00:00.001+11:00

Installed MinGW g++ 4.5.2 and got the following Windows error when trying to run a C++ program I just compiled: The program can't start because libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll is missing from your computer. After fixing that error, Windows displayed a similar message regarding libstdc++-6.dll. Basically, g++ doesn not statically link the C and C++ standard libraries with an executable by default. In Windows

Leading Semicolon Comments a Line in CMD FOR /F

2011-03-05T17:00:00.000+11:00

I wondered why the following CMD script was not processing some lines ... for /f %a in (test.txt) do @echo %a ... with this sort of test where the semicolon is a field separator. All the lines were processed when the field separator is a space, tab or comma. x;y;z ;y;z When I ran the script, the echo command is only called for the first line. It turns out that, by default, for /f regards

Negate Numbers as String in Gawk

2011-02-12T17:00:00.033+11:00

I had to negate numbers in a data file. My initial script simply negated the required field. Here a test: gawk "{ print -$1 }" 123 -123 123.45678 -123.457 I wanted to preserve all the digits after the decimal point so I tried printf() (the multiple double-quotes is to escape double-quotes in Windows CMD): gawk "{ printf("""%10lf\n""", -$1) }" 123 -123.000000 123.45678 -123.456780 123.456 -

NTFS Compression versus Compressed (zipped) Folders

2011-01-01T17:00:00.005+11:00

A New Year posting! While playing with WMI to compress folders, I realised that NTFS compression is different from ZIP files. At the start, I wondered why my script didn't seem to create any ZIP files even though the call to SWbemObjectEx.Compress procedure was successful. Turns out that my test folder was being compressed in NTFS but I wasn't looking for it correctly; in Explorer, the folder's

Creating ZIP files with VBA / VBScript

2010-12-11T17:00:00.071+11:00

I wanted to create a Windows scheduled task to regularly compress a log file on several servers. The simple solution would be to install a command-line ZIP program and write a CMD script. After some searching, it became more interesting to write a VBScript program that uses the Compressed (zipped) folder feature in the Windows Explorer. The result is the ZipFile VBA and VBScript program at the

Converting VBA Programs to VBScript using SED

2010-11-27T17:00:00.222+11:00

Writing VBScript programs can be a pain without an IDE with early-binding to ensure that the name and arguments of procedures are correct and you have start the Microsoft Script Debugger to debug your code separately from your editor. How very 90s! On the other hand, MS-Office has an IDE for writing and debugging VBA programs. What's more, since VBScript is very similar to VBA (and VB), it can be

GameMaker 8.0: First Impression

2010-10-17T17:00:00.001+11:00

Finished GameMaker (GM) Tutorial 1, the Fruit Game. The GM IDE is pretty basic and allows you to build a simple 2-D game without too much fuss. The generated executable is 2.3 MB, which is pretty good considering that the game engine is included. After using other mainstream IDEs such as Visual Studio and NetBeans, my preferences for the IDE would be: Use a tab and property sheet for each

Automatically Update Last Row in Range Formulas

2010-10-15T17:00:00.041+11:00

In OpenOffice Calc, worksheet formulas that apply a range of rows, such as SUM(), need to be updated when an extra row is added just above the cell with that formula. For example, if you start the following worksheet values and formulas ... A 1 4 2 7 3 9 4 =SUM(A1:A3) ... then when you insert a new row between rows 3 and 4, OO-Calc does not automatically update the second argument to the

Starting Excel 2003 Faster

2010-10-11T17:00:00.001+11:00

I start two or three Excel 2003 sessions at the same time so that I can use multiple displays and work on a couple of tasks at a time. To start a new Excel session, you launch it from the Windows Start menu instead of opening an Excel file in Explorer (opening an Excel file loads it in the active Excel session). A new Excel session has, by default, a Task Pane (a panel titled 'Getting Started')

Name Log Files in a Consistent Format

2010-09-13T17:00:00.004+10:00

I expect developers to program like I do, which didn't happen this week. The task is to concatenate log files in a folder into a single file to import into a database. The Windows command to do the job is for /f %a in ('dir /b *.csv') do type %a >> dest.csv. (dir /b lists entries in a folder without any heading.) While testing using echo in place of type, I noticed that due to the way dir sorts

SetLocal EnableDelayedExpansion in CMD Scripts

2010-09-10T13:39:00.002+10:00

In a Windows CMD for loop, variables within the loop aren't, by default, resolved into a value for every iteration of the loop. Here's a script that should list all files in a folder. @echo off for /f %%a in (*) do ( set test=%%a echo %test% ) However, when you run the script, only the first file found is output (the variable test is only set in the first iteration of the loop). Turns out

Restoring Standard Outlook Forms

2010-08-01T17:00:00.002+10:00

If you can't see any of the standard Outlook forms, there are two solutions: Clear your Outlook forms cache: In Outlook, select menu item Tools, Options. In Options dialog, select Other tab. In Other tab, press Advanced Options… button. In Advanced Options dialog, press Custom Forms… button. In Custom Forms tab, press Manage Forms… button. In Forms Manager dialog, press Clear Cache button,

Fixing Broken Image Links in Outlook

2010-07-29T17:00:00.002+10:00

If Outlook stops displaying images embedded in HTML e-mail, the fix is to delete files in its temporary file folder. On my WinXP computer, that temporary folder is: C:\Documents and Settings\>\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\OLK. To find the location of Outlook's temporary folder on your PC, open an e-mail message with a Word or Excel attachment, open the attachment and

Invisible USB Drive

2010-07-25T17:00:00.000+10:00

If you plug in a USB drive and Windows doesn't assign a letter to it, you can assign a letter yourself using the Disk Management console: Run diskmgmt.msc In Disk Management window, locate the box corresponding to your USB drive. Select context menu item Change Drive Letter and Paths.... Assign a letter to your drive. This problem happened after I had mapped a remote drive to Z: then plugged

Vim Delete Lines With Regex

2010-07-13T17:00:00.002+10:00

To use vim to delete all lines that have a specific string: :g/s1/d. To delete all lines that don't have a specific string, add an exclamation mark before the string: :g!/s1/d. If there are alternative strings to match (logical OR), insert an escaped vertical bar, e.g. :g/s1\|s2/d.

VBA One-liner to Concatenate Excel Cell Values

2010-05-31T17:00:00.004+10:00

Here's a VBA one-liner to concatenate a column of Excel cell values, with a separator, into one string: Join(Application.Transpose(), ","). The column range is an Nx1 array, Transpose() returns a one-dimensional N-element array and Join() function a one-dimensional array as the first parameter. To concatenate values from a row of cells, you have to use Transpose() twice like this:

Avoiding #N/A in Range VLOOKUP

2010-05-27T17:00:00.012+10:00

I was using VLOOKUP to put percentages in buckets. Here's the lookup table: a b 1 0 1 2 25 2 3 50 3 4 75 4 And here's the formula I added to my data sheet: =VLOOKUP(input, A1:B4, 2, TRUE). When the fourth parameter, Range_Lookup is set to TRUE, the function will match a range instead of an exact input value. If the input value was greater than 0 (e.g. 0, 25.5), VLOOKUP returns a bucket

Rudimentary C# COM Interop Client for Excel

2010-05-23T17:00:00.002+10:00

I started writing some basic C# COM Interop clients for Excel to keep a hand in C# and be able to develop more sophisticated applications than VBA could provide. Here are some basic things I learnt and a complete working example to read data from an Excel workbook. Configure your project Add to this project reference in the IDE: GAC (or COM) Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel. Add to the source

Excel Inplace (or embedded) without ActiveWorkbook

2010-05-19T17:00:00.009+10:00

An Excel workbook in a SAP InPlace view (or embedded in within a window) stopped working, displaying a run-time 1004 error: Method 'Sheets' of object '_Global' failed. The problem was caused by a UserForm dialog in that workbook which the user can open to enter a value. The code in the dialog then filtered the data in all the sheets based on the user's input. The code failed when it tried to call

Start External Program to Debug a Class in Visual C# 2008 Express

2010-05-17T17:00:00.003+10:00

While playing with an automation server for MS-Excel, I wanted to debug my class method by starting Excel in Visual C# Express and using the formula in a worksheet. After the usual couple of minutes of hunting through the project property sheets, it dawned on me that you can't define the start program in the Visual C# Express IDE. So I reopened my project in SharpDevelop (another .Net IDE),

Prevent VBScript in Custom Outlook Form From Executing

2010-05-13T17:00:00.001+10:00

My custom Outlook form added some canned text in the message object in the Item_Open() function. Annoyingly, when I open the form in design mode, the Item_Open() is called, cluttering up the message object. It turns out that you have to hold down the Shift key when opening a form to prevent VBScript in the form from executing. Holding down the Shift key while starting MS-Access also prevents

Adding Text To Message Body in Outlook Custom Form

2010-05-11T17:00:00.002+10:00

I had a simple request to add some canned text to the message body of a Outlook custom form when the form was first opened, so I did this in VBScript: Sub Item_Open() ... Item.HTMLBody = "Blah blah blah" ... End Sub Yet when I created a new item, the message body was empty! The same problem occurs with Item.Body. After the usual bit of trial-and-error, I discovered that the text only

Outlook To: Field Unexpectedly Shrinks

2010-05-01T17:00:00.001+10:00

While developing a custom Outlook form, I found that the To: field would unexpectedly shrink to a few pixels tall and pull the remaining controls in the form upwards. The problem occurred when I added Item.Recipients.Add "test" in my VBScript code to populate the To: field with a dummy e-mail address then clicked in the To: field. (I was using a dummy address to avoid accidentally sending test

Notes on Developing Outlook 2003 Forms

2010-04-19T17:00:00.003+10:00

I just finished developing a simple e-mail workflow system implemented using Outlook forms and VBScript and thought I should jot down some things that made development easier: Configuring Your Development Environment Disable Outlook Autosignature, otherwise your signature is inserted into the message object each time you create a new form and you cannot clear the text in the message object

Visio Shape Positioning Annoyance

2010-03-01T17:00:00.004+11:00

In technical diagrams, I align the positions and dimensions of shapes with a grid so that the spacing and sizes are consistent. Using Visio 2007, after I resize a page using File, Page Setup, Page Size, Size to fit drawing contents, every shape's position is slightly modified. For example, if I position a shape at x = 40mm, y = 30mm, the shape's position becomes something like x = 40.0847mm, y =

Vista Ctrl+Space IME Toggle Workaround

2010-02-23T17:00:00.001+11:00

If you start using Windows Vista Input Method Editor (IME) for Chinese, you may find that you can no longer use Ctrl+Space in some applications (e.g. to select a column in Excel, to activate autocomplete in IDEs such as VBA, Netbeans or Visual Studio, or to activate Firefox Ubiquity). One workaround is to define a different hotkey, such as Ctrl+Shift+F12, to toggle the IME. If you have only one

VBA Is*() Functions Only Apply To Variant Types

2010-02-21T17:00:00.002+11:00

VBA has several informational functions prefixed with "Is", such as IsNull(), IsMissing() and IsEmpty(), that only work with Variant types. I didn't realise it until I tried to apply them to non-Variant variables and noticed that they didn't work as I expected or always returned the same result. For instance, if you define optional parameters for a procedure, you can only test if they are used

Simple cache in Excel using VBA static variables

2009-12-07T17:00:00.002+11:00

Static variables in VBA functions, like their counterparts in C, retain their values between function calls. A common use for static variables is to maintain a running total or count. This article describes how static variables can be used for cacheing in Excel VBA, compares the performance of a simple approach versus a cache in Excel, and some discussion for using this approach. Excel

R1C1 notation in Excel VBA

2009-12-03T17:00:00.001+11:00

Excel supports both A1 and R1C1 notation for referencing cells in formulas. Almost everyone uses A1 notation but it can be easier to use R1C1 notation to generate column references in VBA. For instance, to generate a formula that references a column in A1 notation, you need a function that returns A to Z for the first 26 columns, then returns two letter column names (such as AA) for columns past

Excel VBA programming with run-time errors

2009-12-01T17:00:00.006+11:00

When writing VBA programs for Microsoft Excel 2003, you quickly find that you have to detect and handle run-time errors in your programs. VBA provides On Error and Resume statements for handling run-time errors. This article discusses how run-time errors can be used, explicitly or implicitly, in VBA programs. Let's start with a script below, which calls the WorksheetFunction class' Match()

VBA IIf() as a ternary conditional expression (sometimes)

2009-11-29T17:00:00.003+11:00

VBA doesn't have a ternary conditional expression (e.g. C-style ?:), which leads to a long-winded conditional statement like this when you just want assign a value to the same variable based on a condition: If Then x = 1 Else x = 2 End If In C-style languages, you would just write x = ? 1 : 2. You can mimic the ?: ternary operator using VBA's IIf(expr, truepart,

Optimising VBA for Excel 2003: Avoid EntireRow.Insert

2009-11-23T17:00:00.000+11:00

While optimising an Excel 2003 VBA program to write thousands of rows of data, I noticed that Excel's EntireRow.Insert consumed most of the program's processing time. To quantify the time, here's a simple test that just inserts rows into a workbook ... Option Explicit Sub Insert10kRows() Dim wks As Worksheet Set wks = Sheets("Sheet1") Dim intI As Integer For intI = 1 To 10000

SharpDevelop MSB3105 Error for duplicate form

2009-11-21T17:00:00.001+11:00

When you create a new Windows Application project in SharpDevelop 3.1, the IDE creates a default form called 'MainForm'. If you add an existing form with the same name to this project then build this project, you may get this error: The item "MainForm.Designer.cs" was specified more than once in the "Sources" parameter. Duplicate items are not supported by the "Sources" parameter. (MSB3105).

Local data files in Visual C# Express 2008

2009-11-17T17:00:00.000+11:00

While learning data binding for Windows.Forms, I noticed that changes made to data in the DataGridView weren't written back into the local SQL Server database file when the form was closing, even after calling TableAdapter.Update(). Turns out that Visual C# Express 2008 (and VS 2008 in general) copies your local data file each time you build your project to the output folder. The original version

Microsoft Word MailMerge Run-time error '5922'

2009-11-15T17:00:00.002+11:00

When a MS-Access 2003 VBA script tried to open MS-Word and run the mail merge function, VBA displayed this error message: Run-time error '5922': Word was unable to open the data source The problem was tracked to this statement: Dim objWordApp As Object Set objWordApp = CreateObject("Word.Application") With objWordApp ... .ActiveDocument.MailMerge.OpenDataSource Name:

Visual Studio 2008 Express Data Source Limitations

2009-11-05T17:00:00.001+11:00

Visual Studio Express 2008 for C# or VB only allows you to choose a limited number of data sources in the IDE. Open the Choose Data Source dialog using menu item Tools / Connect to Database, and in the Data Source list, there are only three items: Microsoft Access Database File Microsoft SQL Server Compact 3.5 Microsoft SQL Server Database File According to VS 2005 express: ".NET Framework

Visual Basic short-circuit evaluation of expressions

2009-11-03T17:00:00.001+11:00

Visual Basic seems to be the only language that evaluates all the operands of AND and OR operators instead of implementing short-circuit evaluation. In all other programming languages, such as C# or Java, expressions are evaluated from left to right, and the evaluation of expressions in statements exp1 AND exp2 and exp3 OR exp4 stop when exp1 = false or exp3 = true, respectively. This difference

Changing indent and tab size in Visual Basic 2008 Express

2009-10-29T17:00:00.003+11:00

Minor annoyance in Microsoft Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition: To change the indent and tab size in Options dialog, Text Editor Basic / Editor node, you have to highlight the number in the field, then type in a new number in the Tab Size and Indent Size text fields. You can't delete the existing value first, then type in a new one. 2-Nov-2009: In Visual C# 2008 Express Edition, in Options

Hiding Facebook Application Posts

2009-10-19T17:00:00.001+11:00

Following a tip from Steven S., I've hidden posts from friends' Facebook applications that don't interest me, resulting in a much cleaner home page. In only a month, I found that I have hidden more than a hundred (!) applications, which led me to wonder if Facebook shouldn't provide a reverse option, to only show certain applications instead. To hide applications, I can imagine that there is a

Blog Comment Spam

2009-10-15T17:00:00.001+11:00

What a pain in the nether regions when spammers decide to use your blog as a vehicle for their crap advertisements. My blogs are moderated, so I see every comment before they are posted. I only twigged that my blog was being spammed when I saw the same comment twice for different postings on the same day (that spammer was enthusiastic). It seems (naïve, perhaps) that any comment with a URL,

Auto-arranging multiple application windows in Vista

2009-09-24T17:00:00.001+10:00

If you're taking notes or eyeballing a couple of documents at once on screen, you might tile your application windows so that they are arranged side by side and fill up the screen. In Working with windows, Arranging windows automatically, the Vista desktop provides two commands for tiling your windows: Show Windows Stacked and Show Windows Side by Side. (If you Cascade Windows, your windows are

Floating IFRAMEs in Blogger

2009-09-03T17:00:00.001+10:00

In my other blog, I wanted to show images to one side of the text, like this: XXXXXX +--------+ XXXXXX | iframe | XXXXXX +--------+ XXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX The images, generated by Amazon, are within an iframe element. After some false starts, I found that the simplest solution was to wrap the iframe elements in a div element, and float the div:

Microsoft Access 2003 finding the minimum and maximum column values using a VBA function

2009-08-27T18:00:00.003+10:00

If you may have to write a query in MS-Access 2003 to get the maximum or minimum of the values of two columns, you could use the iif() expression like this:iif(n1 > n2, n1, n2) or iif(n1 < n2, n1, n2) to obtain the maximum or minimum, respectively. The expression becomes more complicated when you have to compare three columns: IIf(n1>n2, IIf(n1>n3,n1,n3), IIf(n2>n3,n2,n3)) Such

Google Reader and Firefox's maximum popup limit

2009-08-14T18:00:00.000+10:00

If you browse using Firefox and use the Google Reader keyboard v shortcut that I wrote in an earlier post, you may find that Firefox will eventually generate this message, Firefox prevented this site from opening a pop-up window, although you have added www.google.com to the Allowed Sites - Pop-ups dialog. This behaviour occurs because Firefox prevents any site from automatically opening too many

Keyboard shortcuts for navigating Google Reader and Gmail

2009-08-12T18:00:00.004+10:00

After using any application for a while, I start using some keyboard shortcuts to speed up common operations. Desktop applications usually have keyboard shortcuts while web applications don't; luckily for me, two of my most used Google applications, Reader and Gmail, have keyboard shortcuts. You can find the list of shortcuts easily so rather than going them, I'll just highlight useful keystroke

Read 'Times Online' article comments earliest first

2009-08-09T18:00:00.003+10:00

The comments appearing after articles in the Times Online are displayed in reverse chronological order (latest first), which I find difficult to read, so I wrote this GreaseMonkey jQuery script to click the Oldest first link after the page is loaded: // ==UserScript== // @name Timesonline.co.uk earliest comment first // @namespace kamhungsoh.com // @description Show an article's

OpenOffice Calc AutoInput capitalization annoyance

2009-08-05T18:00:00.002+10:00

When you enter text in a cell in OpenOffice Calc, you might find that your text is incorrectly capitalized and you cannot correct it! For example, while writing a vocabulary list, I entered 'sun' and it was capitalized as 'Sun' (maybe referring to a certain technology company). If you type Ctrl+Z to undo this capitalization, all the text in the cell is removed, not just the capitalization. It

java.sun.com - improve online readability

2009-07-12T17:00:00.008+10:00

Since I read a lot of Sun Java development documentation online, here is a more readable style. I only applied a small number of changes to avoid accidentally screwing up the site's presentation: Set text columns' maximum width to 30em. Elements which may be naturally wide, such as (for images) and

 (for sample code), are not affected. Text is easier to scan if the columns aren't too

Blogger full window width edit box

2009-07-05T17:00:00.001+10:00

The text pane in Blogger's edit page is rather cramped and becomes full when you're writing more than a couple of paragraphs. After looking at Blogger Wide Screen Editor, I thought it should be possible to write a style to automatically fit the edit box in a browser's window. My Blogger full window width edit box style just changes the width of

elements from fixed values to auto so the

CSS inheritance and selector specificity for max-width

2009-06-28T17:00:00.000+10:00

While finding it easier to read text using narrower columns using my custom CSS definition, I noticed that it didn't work on pages that use table rows for grouping sections, such as the following structure: table tbody tr td p … Here's the CSS definition I was using: @namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml); @-moz-document domain(java.sun.com) {

CSS max-width versus width properties for text columns

2009-06-24T17:00:00.000+10:00

It's easier to read on a web page if the columns aren't too wide. This presentation Ideal line length for content suggests setting the values of the min-width and max-width CSS properties around 30 em. Columns of 30 em sounds very narrow for a PC-based browser, but I expect it makes sense for browsers on handheld devices. Using the Stylish Firefox add-in, here's my Narrow Paragraph rule for

Installing and configuring Subversion for personal use

2009-06-21T17:00:00.000+10:00

I decided (finally!) to migrate my version control system from CVS to Subversion so that I could have atomic transactions when committing multiple files. There's plenty of tutorials on using and setting up Subversion on the net, so here's the simplest way to get started on Windows … Install and run Subversion on Windows Create a repository. Import a project into the repository. Check-out a

Escaping special characters in Windows International Keyboard

2009-06-17T18:00:00.002+10:00

The Windows International Keyboard allows you to enter letters with accent marks. For example, to type é, just type Apostrophe e. But what if you just want to enter (or escape) an apostrophe (for example, when entering a string literal while programming)? The trick is to type a space after the apostrophe, as per this bullet point in the support page: If you press the space bar, the symbol (

Merging multiple blog feeds into Facebook Notes with Yahoo Pipes

2009-06-14T18:00:00.006+10:00

I started a second blog, Vibogafi, for writing about media, and wanted to display updates from that and this blog using the Facebook Notes application. Notes only allows users to import one RSS feed, so I had to merge both my RSS feeds first. One aggregation or mashup system that came to mind was Yahoo Pipes. If you have a Yahoo account, then you can create your personal pipes. I followed the

Localize dates in Scientific American

2009-06-10T18:00:00.004+10:00

Scientific American formats dates in its pages as m/d/yy, while I prefer d/m/yy. Like an earlier post about formatting dates in Blogger's Dashboard, this Greasemonkey script uses a regular expression to find date strings in a page, and switches the month and day values. // ==UserScript== // @name Scientific American localize dates // @namespace kamhungsoh.com // @description

Reformatting post dates in Blogger Dashboard

2009-06-07T18:00:00.003+10:00

In the Blogger Dashboard, the posting date of your entries are in mm/dd/yy format and Google doesn't provide a way to localize it or choose a date format. Here's how you can use a Greasemonkey script to convert dates in Dashboard to dd/mm/yy format. The dates in Dashboard have this structure: 3/6/09 The following script uses jQuery to iterate through

Filtering busy mailing lists in Gmail

2009-06-03T18:00:00.005+10:00

I subscribe to a busy mailing list and find that I only keep some of the messages and delete the rest. Then I realised it would be less work to automatically delete all messages from this list first and only keep the ones that interested me. Here's how I set up my mailing list filter in Gmail: Specify the criteria (e.g. the mailing list name). Mark Skip the inbox (Archive it). Pick a label

Simple loading of HTML fragment using jQuery AJAX

2009-05-31T18:00:00.005+10:00

jQuery provides a simple load() function to load an HTML fragment using AJAX. To test it, create a test data file called data.html:

Item 1
Item 2
Item 3
Item 4

Next, create a target HTML file called testLoad.html in the same folder with the following jQuery statement: <

Selecting parent or ancestor of a node in jQuery

2009-05-29T18:00:00.003+10:00

When manipulating an HTML document (especially one that you didn't generate), it can be easier to find a node by matching its descendant's unique id or class attribute and value first, then selecting that descendant's ancestor (which is the node you wanted to in the first place), compared to finding that node by referring to its position in the DOM, which is not obvious and isn't easy to maintain

Zebra-stripe table rows with jQuery's custom selectors

2009-05-27T18:00:00.000+10:00

I thought I had a simple way to zebra-stripe table rows in jQuery: $('table tbody tr').each(function(i) { $(this).addClass(i%2 ? 'OddRow' : 'EvenRow'); }); While I was looking up jQuery selectors, I found that the library has two custom selectors, :odd and :even, to select the odd and even elements in a matched element set, respectively, so you could zebra-stripe a table like this: $('

Read 'The Economist' article comments earliest first

2009-05-26T18:00:00.001+10:00

A simple GreaseMonkey script using jQuery to show the comments to articles in The Economist, from earliest first. Basically, this script looks for tags with specific text in their href attribute and appends &sort=asc. It's shorter and easier to read than the original plain Javascript version. See Also GreaseMonkey jQuery script in userscripts.org GreaseMonkey plain Javascript version,

CSS @media for Firefox Stylish Add-in

2009-05-25T18:00:00.000+10:00

In an earlier entry, I wrote about using the @media print rule in a CSS file to insert the value of URLs in the print version of a web page. If the webmaster of the site didn't provide this rule, can you still print the URLs? If you are using the Firefox Stylish add-in, you can provide your own CSS file to apply to a web site. I tried this: @namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml); @-

XPath selectors no longer supported in jQuery

2009-05-24T18:00:00.000+10:00

It's old news, but being new to jQuery, I didn't realise that XPath selectors were no longer supported by this library until I read Upgrading to jQuery 1.2 (jQuery is now up to version 1.3).

Show URL When Printing a Page

2009-05-23T18:00:00.001+10:00

When you print a web page, you'd naturally expect to see the URL of a link, instead of just the name of the link (usually the underlined text). If you are the webmaster of a site, you could generate a different page formatted for printing (for example, look for the print link in many news sites). Another way is to add the following rule into your CSS file: @media print { a:after { content:" (

Playing with PHP Data Objects (PDO)

2009-05-21T18:00:00.001+10:00

Just migrated the database access code of my PHP sample page from the original (and old) mysql_* functions to PHP Data Objects (PDO). Some advantages of making this change: You can write more general code because your application is not tied to a specific PHP database extension library. PDO is similar to other database APIs, such as ADO or JDBC, so it was easier for me to write code in PDO than

Configuring Apache and PHP libraries

2009-05-18T18:00:00.000+10:00

Problem when configuring Apache, PHP and MySQL on Windows XP. Here's my environment: Microsoft Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3 Installed apache_2.2.11-win32-x86-no_ssl.msi as a service. Installed php-5.2.9-2-win32-installer.msi Used Apache 2.2 option Added MySQL and MySQLi extensions. Installed mysql-essential-5.1.34-win32.msi. Checked that the PHP configuration file, php.ini, has

Rename Folder in Google Reader

2009-05-11T18:00:00.000+10:00

Oh, erm … you can't rename folders in Google Reader. The workaround is to move all your subscriptions from one folder to another folder, then delete the original one. Here's the steps: In the Subscriptions panel, select Manage Subscriptions. The Settings page should be displayed. In the Settings page, filter your subscriptions by the name of folder you want to remove using the Filter by name,

Modify URL to Read Comments From Beginning

2009-05-08T18:00:00.000+10:00

When I read responses or comments to articles, I prefer to read them from the earliest to the latest. Some sites order comments in reverse (that is, latest to earliest). If a site's comment link can take an 'order' argument, just modify that URL to specify your preferred order and save yourself an extra click. Below is a sample GreaseMonkey script that can specify the order of comments in The

Simple Data Grid Using PHP and jQuery

2009-05-06T21:00:00.002+10:00

Introduction This article walks though the process of writing a simple Web-based data grid application for browsing a database table, using the PHP Web scripting language, jQuery Javascript library and MySQL DBMS. Requirement and Design The grid is just an HTML table, with filters for each column and pagination controls at the bottom of the table. The filters are implemented using drop down

Internet Explorer Submit Button Bug

2009-04-25T18:00:00.004+10:00

While testing a simple form in Firefox and MSIE 7, I found that my server-side program got different values for HTML submit buttons depending on the browser. Below is a test HTML file to demonstrate the problem. Copy and paste the text below into a test file, open the file in your browser and press the Test button.