Wil Linssen's feed

Print stylesheet toggler bookmarklet

Wil Linssen — Wed, 14 Aug 2013 12:49:04 +0000

I’ve made a bookmarklet to toggle the print stylesheet on and off. It just swaps anything that’s 'print’ or 'all’ to 'screen’ and vice versa.
Print styles

It’s on GitHub

Internal IP address from Alfred

Wil Linssen — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 16:10:45 +0000

If you use the Powerpack with Alfred you’ll know you can use addons. I’ve just made one that will find your local IP address and copy it to your clipboard. The trigger word is 'loip’.

Download and use at whim!

Auto delete Dropbox public files after 2 weeks in OS X

Wil Linssen — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 10:43:19 +0000

This little shell script will run once a day to delete any files that were created over 2 weeks ago using crontab and find.

Installing

Just fire up Terminal, and type crontab -e then paste in the following on a new line:

You can of course adjust the path to whatever it is on your system.

Write and save that and you’ll get a message saying crontab: installing new crontab. Now at 16:00 every day, any file that was created (includes copied) in the folder more than 2 weeks ago will be deleted.

Uninstalling

If you need to delete the cron job, just run crontab -e again and remove the line.

Mapping escape to clear searches in Vim

Wil Linssen — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 11:20:33 +0000

Quick pref to map escape to :noh so you can clear searches more easily, because typing :noh every time is a pest.

" Hit escape to clear a search
:nnoremap <esc> :noh<return><esc>

Pop that in your .vimrc or .gvimrc whichever you’re using, and start a new buffer to see the effect.

Archive your Git repo easily

Wil Linssen — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 11:41:00 +0000

I’ve just had to back up a load of Git repositories, and it got pretty annoying tapping in their names every time. You can use this command to zip up your repository into a tar file that will sit next to your repo.

So if your repository is at ~/User/Project/my_project/.git/ the zipped version will live at ~/User/Project/my_project.tar.gz. It’s a bit easier.

Flickr short URL bookmarklet

Wil Linssen — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 09:16:30 +0000

I was getting annoyed with the whole view source > find canonical link > copy shenanigans when trying to get a Flickr short URL so I’ve put this little chap together.

The bookmarklet is available on it’s own page here.

Dan Wellman's jQuery UI 1.7 book

Wil Linssen — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 09:18:42 +0000

The jQuery ui is essentially a set of pre built, ready to use JavaScript widgets based (obviously) on the jQuery framework. They can be really useful straight out of the box, or as the foundation for something more complex, and they also come packaged with a decent set of CSS themes.

According to Dan Wellman himself, his book is written for…

...front end designers and developers who need to quickly learn how to use the jQuery UI library. To get the most out of this book you should have a good working knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript ,and will need to be comfortable using jQuery, the underlying foundation of the jQuery UI.

Like he says, it assumes you have some jQuery experience, but I don’t think you need a lot: perhaps just a decent grasp of selectors. One thing I think the official jQuery and UI documentation lacks is real-world examples. That’s obviously a deliberate thing so as not to restrict your imagination, but it can make it hard to envisage any kind of practical application. I think the examples in this book are a great way to learn the limitations, and structure of the UI.

The book is separated into chapters covering the following:

Introducing the jQuery UI
The CSS framework
Individual widgets
Drag and drop
Resizing
Selecting
Sorting
UI effects

The chapters regarding the UI widgets are thorough and enormously useful, they’re structured so that if your experience level is greater you can skip to the bits you’ll find more useful. The widget chapters are structured thus:

Introduction to the widget with a nice diagram and an overview of it’s methods and properties
Implementation covering, the code you’ll need to get the basic widget up and running
Custom styling tells you what you need to do to extend or create a CSS theme
Configurable options explanation
Detailed explanation of the widget’s methods and applications with examples
Summary

I’d recommend the book to anyone who’s new to the jQuery UI, the practical examples are a far better way to learn than trawling through the docs on the official site. As your experience level increases the book will become more of a reference, it’s a handy thing to have around if you’re planning to use the UI. It’s well written and engaging, and the diagrams, examples and structure make it easy to pick up quickly. Similarly, if you are using it as a reference it’s easy to dip in and out without having to hunt around too much for what you’re looking for.

If you want more information about Dan Wellman or indeed the book, you can always visit Dan’s website. The book itself is available from Pakt Publishing for £25.19 (at time of publishing this review.)

Delicious and Fever sitting in a tree

Wil Linssen — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 09:19:17 +0000

I use delicious a lot, and I’ve been using a very small network with no real enthusiasm, until recently that is! I found myself becoming lazier and lazier with my delicious bookmarks, frequently just scavenging my network’s bookmarks for interesting things and saving them to my own. The people in my network are pretty on the ball (and it this point I should qualify that network is a bit of a misnomer – they’re just people who I follow.) So actually I just cut out the middle man and added my network’s feed to my reader, in this case Fever. This is where the magic happened – all the popular or more noteworthy things that several people had bookmarked instantly popped up in the hot section: good times!

I put forward this tip hesitantly, because if everyone was lazy like this – there would be no new bookmarks: bad times. It’s always good to discover new things rather than just get fed them, so this is a nice way to simply bolster your bookmarks.

So basically, to get noteworthy delicious bookmarks: build up a decent network – perhaps browse the individual’s networks in your own to find new people, then subscribe to the feed in Fever – et voila, popular bookmarks in the hot section. If you’re really lazy, and you can’t even be bothered to build your own network, you could even just subscribe to someone else’s network like mine.

Wanted!

Wil Linssen — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 09:19:53 +0000

Yesterday it was announced that I’ll be starting a new full time gig at Erskine Design as their new front-end developer. I’m absolutely thrilled to bits to have won the role, and equally so about the possibilities it opens up for me: working with that team.

It does however mean that I’ll be leaving the space I was sharing with The Dandy Collective, and it was lovely to get a warm goodbye from @onecopywriter. I learned a lot while I was there from some seriously talented word smiths and designers: and they’re bloody good eggs to boot! I know they’re looking to have someone come and fill in the gap the office, so if you’re a freelance creative / geek type I suggest you flock to their doors with your raison d’etre as it were.

It also means I won’t be available for freelance projects any more, and I’ll be looking for someone (maybe a couple of people) to take over any unserviced work I have here. If you’re a dab hand at ExpressionEngine and you’ve got an eye for good design I’d like to know about you, so get in touch!. I daresay there might be some other people who’d like to know you too.

The person I’d like to take over some of my commitments would need to be an ExpressionEngine wizard, which would include extending it with Modules etc. If you reckon it might suit you, I’d love to hear from you: you can use the form in the footer to drop me an introduction and preferably your rates too. Thanks!

ExpressionEngine plugin - retrieve custom field info in your templates (saef)

Wil Linssen — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 18:25:43 +0000

This plugin will let you retrieve all custom field info for use in stand alone entry forms or anywhere else. If the field has options there’s a variable pair for that. There’s no restriction on formatting either so you’re free to use it how you will.

The project is available on GitHub publicly, feel free to donate via Pledgie if you have the inclination!

Example usage for a text field

Example usage for a relationship field:

URL ABC

Wil Linssen — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 18:23:40 +0000

A nice little idea from Tim Van Damme:

A simple game: Go to the address bar in your favorite browser, and type one letter. Start with “a”, end with “z”.

The more astute among you will notice there are some gaps, that’s basically because I clear out my history every now and then – and no it’s not why you think .

NME's top 50 albums of the noughties on Spotify

Wil Linssen — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:22:06 +0000

The NME have compiled a fairly comprehensive list of the greatest albums of the last decade, and although I’m not sure I’d agree with all of them, I do with a lot. So helpfully I’ve created a Spotify with all of them on. I suggest you whack it on random and enjoy!

Open the Spotify playlist of the NME’s greatest albums of the last decade.

There were a few albums missing, most glaringly Arcade Fire’s Funeral and Radiohead’s In Rainbows (which I’d have as my number 1.)

ExpressionEngine entry excerpts outside of the search page

Wil Linssen — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:20:23 +0000

If you need to use an excerpt for an entry perhaps inside an entry loop with several weblogs this plugin will automatically select the correct excerpt field then format and truncate it to a specified length.

I’ve just moved the code to GitHub, you can download it there and raise any issues you might have.

It works by using the search excerpt setting in Admin › Section Administration › Section Management › Edit Section Preferences › Administrative Preferences see the screenshot:

All you do is pass it an entry id and optionally a word limit and trailing string:

{exp:linssen_excerpt entry_id="{entry_id}" word_limit="10" trailer="... read more"}

Would result in “Quod littera Investigationes ii parum nunc. Amet suscipit hendrerit wisi… read more“

It’s probably best to use it inside an entry loop, but you can happily send it a standalone entry id and it will work just fine, here’s the full code I recommend it with:

{exp:weblog:entries weblog="weblog"}
  {exp:linssen_excerpt entry_id="{entry_id}" word_limit="10" trailer="... read more"}
{/exp:weblog:entries}

I’d appreciate some feedback, just in case it’s buggy etc. so let me know!

jQuery UI 1.7 book by Dan Wellman - a precursor

Wil Linssen — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:19:11 +0000

Dan Wellman has just launched his new book about the jQuery UI and his publishers have sent me a copy to review. I’ll have more on that later, but I’m certainly looking forward to reading it; here’s how he describes the book

An example-based approach leads you step-by-step through the implementation and customization of each library component and its associated resources in turn. To emphasize the way that jQuery UI takes the difficulty out of user interface design and implementation, each chapter ends with a `fun with’ section that puts together what you’ve learned throughout the chapter to make a usable and fun page. In these sections you’ll often get to experiment with the latest associated technologies like AJAX and JSON.

I really like the idea of the 'fun with’ sections, quite often the biggest barrier to absorbing a text book is the tedium of the examples.

Flaws in quantifying online advertising success

Wil Linssen — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:17:28 +0000

the number of people who click on display ads in a month has fallen from 32% of Internet users in July 2007 to only 16% in March 2009, with an even smaller core of people (representing 8% of the Internet user base) accounting for 85% of all clicks.

Jack Loechner – MediaPost

Interesting stuff there indicating an 'alarming’ drop in click through rates. Jack goes on to talk about how advertisers are using these figures to express a flaw in the system, and how they are wrong to do so.

The internet is a constantly evolving entity but equally so are the people who who use it, just because we’re not clicking ads as much as we used to doesn’t make them ineffective. We still see, read and hear them and that’s worked just fine for television, radio and print advertising up until now. Just as he says:

online display ads generate significant lift in trademark search, online and offline sales, and brand-site visitation across all verticals, among those internet users who were exposed to the online ad campaigns – whether they clicked on the ad or not.

Interesting stuff, and useful for those of us who use or implement online advertising.

ExpressionEngine 2.0 & CodeIgniter

Wil Linssen — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:15:30 +0000

no longer is ExpressionEngine limited to interacting with extensions or modules. No, with CodeIgniter entire applications can interact with your ExpressionEngine install.

Kenny Meyers – EE Insider

That is very very exciting news. Surely that sneaky little tid-bit is one of the most important parts of this new launch?

I’d expect to see some serious applications getting built for EE now, none of this bolting on existing apps in separate frameworks nonsense (especially if that other app is Magento – continuing my love hate relationship with that bastard.)

Web users don't read

Wil Linssen — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:13:28 +0000

It’s a theme I’ve noticed in many books and usability blogs.

The plain fact is users will not read anything you put on the screen.

Jeff Atwood

Your users won’t read your carefully written copy: they’ll look at the pretty pictures, scan the words then click what they think best suits their agenda, often at the expense of the usability. If they get it wrong they’ll just go back and start again.

Political debate and Twitter

Wil Linssen — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:11:13 +0000

Watching BBC’s now infamous Question Time with the odius Nick Griffin last night I found myself constantly refreshing my Twitter feed to see what my friends were saying. I was taking part in an audience debate outside of the studio, in real time and thoroughly enjoying it.

Twitter had provided a platform for millions of people to share their views and thoughts about the debate. In fact it was mostly just people sounding off about how abhorrent this political figure was, and a fantastic opportunity for @realnickgriffin to get some great tweets out. Actually though, that in itself is indicative of general public opinion for the BNP: nobody likes them.

the oxygen of publicity: let’s mix it with the methane of a “Pork Farms” based dinner and repurpose it as the Zyklon-B of patriotic fervor.

@realnickgriffin

If Twitter users are representative of British voters, how have the BNP garnered so much support recently. I’d have to blame voter apathy and disillusionment in the major parties. The few who are voicing their opinions in capital letters on Twitter are the ones who will be out there voting against the BNP.

I think the BNP supporters are most likely just people who haven’t fully understood their politics (by which I mean fascism.)

A brand new website

Wil Linssen — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:09:11 +0000

Out with the old and in with the new! My old site was a couple of years old, and I’d thrown it together over a day or two, it has served me well but it’s time for a change. I’ve also switched to ExpressionEngine, which I’ve been wanting to do for a while.

I’ve rushed the site out because my previous host has unfortunately succumbed to the financial crisis and I was running out of time; I thought rather than spend the time moving the old stuff over, I’d just get the new one up!

I’ll certainly be improving and debugging over the next few weeks, so it may well change appearence radically (or not – depending on how much time I have!) If you come across any indescrepencies or bugs I’d love to hear from you, perhaps send me an email hello@wil-linssen.com or come and find me on Twitter.

Let me know what you think!

ExpressionEngine autocomplete search / jump menu with jQuery

Wil Linssen — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 04:24:00 +0000

This tutorial will show you how to build an text input that will give autocomplete / auto suggestions via AJAX straight from an ExpressionEngine template then redirect straight to the entry. It could be used for searching, or shortcuts to particular entries, I have it working for the latter on a recent project. It will allow you to …

Start typing parts of an entry
Scroll through the autocompleted suggestions that pop up
Click one (or use the keyboard shortcuts)
Get redirected to the relevant entry on the relevant page

View the demo here (search for resorts)

Download the template files here

1) Get all the bits you need!

This functionality depends on the following bits, so go get them downloaded and included in your site:

2) The templates

The index page is where we’ll house the autocomplete
The 2 javascript files will do the work for us
The single_entry template is where we’ll redirect to show the full entry
The _autocompleter is the template that will dynamically look up the entries as we type them

If you so wish you can download all the templates instead of reading through all the code here.

The index template

Include the Javascript and add a little CSS for the markup, there is some default css included with the autocompleter plugin. Then we’ll need to make the form and that all important input text box:

<h2>Autocomplete</h2> 
<!-- Form action can be anything - make sure it degrades nicely --> 
<form id="quickjump" action="/index.php/autcomplete/results/" method="post"> 
  <fieldset> 
    <p><label for="quickjump_title"></label><br /> 
    <!-- We'll scan this text field for matching entries --> 
    <input type="text" size="20" id="quickjump_title" name="quickjump_title" /></p> 
    <!-- Again the search button is just so it degrades --> 
    <button type="submit">Go</button></p> 
  </fieldset> 
</form>

We’ll then write the JavaScript to call the autocomplete plugin and handle the results

<script type="text/javascript"> 
$(document).ready(function(){ 
  // Autocomplete 
  $("input#quickjump_title").autocomplete("/index.php/autocomplete/_autocompleter/",{ 
    cacheLength: 0, 
    minChars: 3, 
    formatItem: function (row) { return row[0] }, 
    formatResult: function (row){ return row[1] } 
  }).result(function(event, item) { 
    //redirect to the URL in the string 
    window.location.href = "{path="autocomplete/single_entry"}"+item[1]; 
  }); 
}); 
</script>

You’ll notice the autocomplete url we’re calling is one of the templates, it must be referenced with /index.php/template_group/template/ with all slashes intact as well as index.php. The second part of that function will redirect the user to the single entry page with the correct url.

JAVASCRIPT ALTERATIONS

I mentioned I’d altered the script to use $_POST ajax calls rather than sending them in the url with $_GET. This means you can be a bit cleaner with the url you pass as well as enjoying a bit more security (if you enjoy that sort of thing;)

Firstly you’ll need to alter the jquery autocomplete source, lucky for us jQuery have made it really simple – we’ll use the $.ajaxSetup function to ensure we’re posting not getting the results. Download the complete pack and open the uncompressed file, then inside the request function we’re going to set the params for ajax calls just before the $.ajax({ call. At the time of writing that’s at about line 361. Just add the following:

$.ajaxSetup({ type: "POST" });

Make sure it’s before that $.ajax({ call.

You can now remove the /index.php/ part of the request url so it will look like

$("input#quickjump_title").autocomplete("/index.php/autocomplete/_autocompleter/",{ 
...

The _autocompleter template

This template needs to have PHP switched on at the input stage (see the template options)

Pretty simple once we’re in though:

{exp:weblog:entries weblog="thoughts" search:thought_body="<?php echo $_GET['q'] ?>"}
{exp:char_limit total="20"}{exp:html_strip}{thought_body}{/exp:html_strip}{/exp:char_limit}|{url_title}
{/exp:weblog:entries}

I’m using it to access my thoughts weblog, your settings will probably be different, you can adjust as you need. What we’re returning though are pipe separated rows “excerpt|url_title” the autocompleter plugin will do the rest. The PHP is just picking the variable from the url (passed by AJAX) and using the search parameter in the entries tag.

Single entry template

You probably don’t need me to help you here, it’s just a template to pick out the single entry based on the url:

{exp:weblog:entries weblog="thoughts" limit="1"}
<h2>{title}</h2>
{thought_body}
{/exp:weblog:entries}

Simples.

As usual, any questions post them up – I mean to revise and improve this post over time and I’d appreciate your feedback.