For those of you that aren’t used to it, before the Internet we had things called desktop applications! Delphi was (and still is) my personal favorite tool to build this kind of application.
A few weeks ago, I was requested to build a small software that needed an irregular window shape. Intead of loose time searching through the Windows API, follow this tip: use Delphi Odd Form. It allows you to shape your application with a simple image. The form will be just like the outline of that image. You just have to scan the image and include the resulting .PAS file in your project. Then, call the right function and voilá: a custom shaped form facing you!
Javascript offers you a way to build modal dialogs on web pages. You must have seen it on one of these Web 2.0 sites: you click somewhere, a small box appears from nowhere and prevents you from clicking anywhere else, but on itself. It’s cool!
Rails is full of those one-liners to help our life. Mix them together and you have a one-liner for these boxes. It’s a plugin, and it’s called Redbox. Take a look at it!
I love Firefox! Using it since it’s early days, back in 2004, we did have time to talk and get to know each other. As any other love affair, there’s a thing I don’t like about FF: it’s memory use.
Sometimes I open like 70-80 tabs at once, on one or two windows. I’ve seen my memory use get up to 300MB. And I’m sure some of you have used even more. Well, there are a few things we can do about that, and they are all on your about:config page. Read more…
A colleague at work, Chico Ary http://chicoary.wordpress.com/, came to me talking of a new language “Ruby”, and a web framework built on top of it, “Rails”. I must admit that at the time I did not give it much attention, just making a mental not to take a look on it.
What a shame. I’m sorry Ary! Rails speeds up web development on a way that makes it bleeding fast! To give you an example, I was working on that time customizing an open source application built on PHP. It was a job that had already taken me 4 months, not counting the months the application itself took to be developed by the community. I took the hard decision to abandon PHP and rewrite the application from scratch after I met the power of Rails. And, believe me, 15 days later, 65% of the software was already ported on a much more scalable way. Now, 2 months later, the software is at production stage and I’m working on bugs and new features.
And, best of all, Ruby, the underlying language, leaves the code readable for anyone. Give it a try, get Rails here and Ruby here.
Looks like the name for a 10-day intensive shell script class, right? Well, actually, Shell Revealed is the name of the blog mantained by the Windows Vista Shell Developers. Just in case, the Windows Shell includes things like the explorer.exe process, Windows Explorer, the Desktop, Start menu, User interface and stuff.
Since we are all bound to the wills of the giante, it’s worth a look, specially on the new APIs, like Taskdialog. Quite interesting.
First things first: I’m a Firefox evangelist. The problem is: people do use IE. There’s nothing we can do about that – even if we convert everyone to a browser (a real one, I mean), today, at this right moment, most people use Internet Explorer.
So you face a deal: your javascript is working perfectly on Firefox, but problems arise on IE. What should we do? Read more…
If you are interested in GNU/Linux and other free software, then you probably already know this website. If you’re not, feel free to take a look at it. It is full of how-tos, explaining, step by step, complicated procedures like configuring an anti-spam server for your company. Worth a while! HowToForge.com .
The local Ubuntu teams of various countries are giving free* stickers stamped with “Powered by Ubuntu”. It’s quite like those Intel(r) Pentium(r) 4 Inside, “Designed for Windows XP” sort of thing.
Now, the asterisk (*) on “free” is there because you pay the posting expenses. You get an envelope and adress it to your self, for it will be used by the Ubuntu Team to send the stickers to you. Place on this envelope enough stamps to pay the trip. Then you get another envelope and fill you as the sender and the ubuntu team as the receiver. Place the first envelope (it’s stamped, isn’t it?) inside this new one. Stamp the new one and send to the Ubuntu Team.
After a few weeks you should receive back 4 stickers like those described above.
For thoso who don’t want to go to another website, the Brazil’s comunity address is:
Comunidade UbuntuBR
A/C Etiquetas Ubuntu
Av. Rui Barbosa, 2095 cj63
Santana – Sao Jose dos Campos/SP
CEP: 12211-000
Pictures of the stickers and other comunities address are available at System76‘s site.
