Monthly Archives: October 2006

Adobe Flex Builder 2 for Mac Beta

Go grab it from Adobe Labs
I’ve been using it for a while now and can say that it has helped me be more productive compared to my old method of using TextMate and the Flex SDK, mainly because the build times out of Flex Builder are a couple of seconds while the SDK takes 10-30 [...]

Posted in Flex | Leave a comment

Ensure that rails sessions remain valid over subdomains and https

If you’re using Active Record Store for your sessions (keeping sessions in a database) you may ‘lose’ your sessions when jumping to a subdomain or to a https connection (in my case it was the latter).
Here’s how to make sure your sessions don’t go walk about.
Add this line to your ‘config/environments/production.rb’ file
ActionController::CgiRequest::DEFAULT_SESSION_OPTIONS.update(:session_domain => ‘.mydomain.com’)
obviously replacing [...]

Posted in Ruby on Rails | 7 Comments

Use a partial form with form_for

I’m sure the cool kids know this already but it gave me a problem so I thought I’d post it.
When using “render :partial => ‘form’”, where ‘form’ is being rendered for a ‘new’ and edit ‘view’, you need to pass a local variable for your model object.
Originally I had
<% form_for :product, @product, :url => { [...]

Posted in Ruby on Rails | 18 Comments

Use javascript/prototype to get a text field value for link_to_remote

This one was a headache, and by headache I mean I was literally pounding my head on the desk trying to figure it out.
I wanted to use link_to_remote to create a model from another model’s form. The example being a ‘Product’ model that belongs to a ‘Group’, the user would select which group a product [...]

Posted in JavaScript, Ruby on Rails | 8 Comments

Media Temple Tames the Beast – New Ruby on Rails Hosting Service with Mongrel

For a long time deployment has been the giant stinky Grey elephant in the beautiful Ruby colored room. Rails makes developing an app a joy but for many, including me, deployment has been a bit of a nightmare. If you wanted shared hosting you went with folks who seemingly built their Rails set up by [...]

Posted in Cool Shise, Mongrel, Ruby on Rails | 18 Comments

Education on Demand

Other than doctors or scientists I’d say there’s no other industry than web development that requires more continuous education. I probably spend about 25% of my work week either learning something new or looking something up (usually the latter!)
I used to make treks to the bookstore but lately I’ve been buying stuff online, the first [...]

Posted in Misc. | 1 Comment

Debbugging Your Web Apps

Debugging has come a long way in the last few years, the current crop of tools is making web development faster and easier than ever before.
A great tool I found today is FireBug (late to the party as usual). It let’s you what’s going on under the hood of the browser including JavaScript, CSS, HTML [...]

Posted in ActionScript, JavaScript, Ruby on Rails | Leave a comment

Designing Interfaces (the Book)

Found a great site that’s a companion to the book ‘Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design’ by Jenifer Tidwell. Split into sections like ‘Getting Around’, ‘ Organizing the Page’ with images and descriptions of interface solutions it’s good place to pick up UI ideas you may not of thought about.
If the book is as [...]

Posted in Design | Leave a comment

Flex Example Apps

The number one search on here is for “flex example apps” so I know it’s not only me looking for some guidance to get started with Flex 2.0.
I didn’t get into Flex the first time round, the price point was just a bit too high for a small business like mine to buy it. Now [...]

Posted in Flex | 2 Comments

The Ruby on Rails Rich Internet Application Software Development Kit by Adobe

Or RoRRIASDK, say that ten times fast!
The kit features six examples – and growing – of Flex/Fash with Ruby on Rails goodness including my Flash Remoting with Rails MP3 player tutorial. Big Ups to Mike Potter of Adobe for setting up the SDK and allowing me to contribute to it.
There’s also an Adobe PHP SDK [...]

Posted in Flash, Flex, Ruby on Rails, Shameless Self Promotion | Leave a comment