Saving the web, like saving the world, isn’t something you do once and then forget about it. You always have to be on the lookout for threats to our freedom of communication. Sometimes, those threats creep in through the backdoor. Continue reading
Regular readers of this blog will know I’m a huge fan of Firefox (the ultimate browser for developing web apps) and Sitepoint (a set of wonderful resources for web developers and designers).
What makes Firefox the best tool for web developers (and others)? It’s the extensions. And now, for a limited time, Sitepoint is offering a middlingly useful extension, CodeBurner for Firefox, which gives you access to their wealth of HTML and CSS reference material, right from your browser. This used to be an addon to the awesome Firebug extension, but now is stand-alone.
To celebrate the release of this new version of CodeBurner, Sitepoint are giving away a PDF book on developing Firefox extensions. This is supposed to be a limited time offer (30 days) so hurry up! (On the other hand, once you give away a PDF for free, it’s kinda hard to start charging for it.)
Sitepoint has a tremendous library of books for sale, and they’ve really hit a sweet spot in the market: I’ve purchased nearly every title they’ve ever published. Their books are well written, professionally edited and delivered in a timely fashion. Their customer service is also beyond reproach. I once complained a book had arrived slightly damaged, and received another copy a few days later. Top notch.
OK, gotta go now. I’m keen to get into developing my own FF extension!
I spent most of last night viddying Google Tech Talk videos on YouTube. They’ve got terrific stuff there. Too bad about the res.
One of the videos was about , a commercial product which takes HTML/CSS and converts it to a paginated PDF, suitable for printing in book format. (Yes, a dead tree type book.)
Awesome. Except for the price.
Too bad, too, because I could really use something like this. A couple of years ago I did a project for a company called CityFax, in which we had to produce, and email out documents in PDF format. We used a very serviceable PHP library to generate the PDF pages; but it was grueling work putting them together. Why learn a new language if you can do the same thing with the tools you already use every day? (i.e. HTML and CSS)
So I went in search of an open source version of this tool. And sho’nuff my brothers, it’s out there. XHTML2PDF, is an open source, dual license project which produces PDF’s for a living. It’s written in Python, but has command line versions for OS X, Linux and Windows.
Next time I need to generate a PDF, this is my go-to tool.
Wherein our hero (yeah, that’s me) finds his father was right (again). Has his picture taken with pr0n stars. (OK, not really.) And proves, once again (as if it really needed to be proved again) that he is an altakaker. Continue reading
My very ingenious colleague, Sean “D-List Internet Celebrity” Carruthers, hacked his new car’s keyfob to disable its panic button when he bends over.
My solution would be to STOP BENDING OVER like that.
But, hey! Different strokes dude.
