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:
<div style="float:right"> <iframe> ... </iframe> </div> <p> ... </p>
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 expressions are hard to get right, and let's not even consider writing one to compare four columns! (In case you were wondering, we can't use Access' max() and min() aggregate functions because they operate on rows.)
Access allows you to call VBA functions in queries, so we can replace the long and cumbersome iif() expression with a call to a custom VBA function. In the rest of this article, we will:
Here's a simple VBA function one to find the maximum of a list of values (just change the name and reverse the comparison to find the minimum):
Function max_value(ParamArray n() As Variant)
Dim i As Integer
Dim ret As Variant
ret = n(0)
For i = 1 To (UBound(n))
If ret < n(i) Then ret = n(i)
Next i
max_value = ret
End Function
The ParamArray declares n() as a variable argument list (or varargs in C). Using ParamArray means that the function is not restricted to a pre-defined number of parameters, and using a Variant means that the function will work for different types of data, such as numbers and dates.
The body of the function just loops through all the values in the argument list and returns the largest value.
If you have a table called Number with fields n1, n2, n3, n4, n5, you can call this function in a query, just like any other built-in function, like this:
SELECT max_value(n1, n2, n3, n4, n5) as max_value, n1, n2, n3, n4, n5 FROM [Number];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 popups.
According to Lifehacker's Increase Firefox's Maximum Pop-up Count, the number of pop-up windows a site is allowed to show is controlled by the dom.popup_maximum variable. By default, it is set to 20, so to avoid hitting the limit, I increased this value. Of course, now my browser is more vulnerable to a pop-up window attack or runaway script from all sites listed in the Allowed Sites.
Perhaps a better solution is to have a per-site limit?
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 sequences for navigation and suggest mnemonics to remember them.
Both applications support ? to show and hide their keyboard shortcut help page.
Note that Google uses the terms conversation or thread interchangeably in their online help. Unlike Reader, Gmail doesn't have shortcuts for browsing labels (or tags).
So, there's a very short list of keyboard shortcuts for that I've found useful for navigating Google Reader and Gmail; I hope it'd be useful for you too.