Blogs

NetNewsWire Now a Free Feed Reader

In 2007, surveys and bloggers declared the impending demise of the desktop feed reader. My switch from Endo to the online reader service Rojo over a year ago seems to put me in with the shifting mob. But I've wanted to try out NetNewsWire for some time now, and now there's nothing to stop me.

Flexible and Efficient HTML/CSS Form Layout

HTML 4's fieldset, legend, and label tags took longer to find their way into my toolbox than I'd care to admit. In fact, it took Dreamweaver's use of them for form design a few years back to bring them to my attention. Since then I've combined several useful tips from experts to create my own standard form layout style sheet. I'll share my thoughts behind my form style sheet, basic usage examples, and the HTML and CSS source for you to download and try.

Install Apache 2 and PHP 5 with MacPorts

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4/2/08 - Added php.ini settings to use the proper MySQL socket at /tmp/mysql.sock.

3/23/08 - After going through these instructions on a new Leopard system, I made a few minor updates. The steps should now work for Leopard as well as Tiger.

While options abound, MacPorts may be the easiest option to configure a local web development environment on your Mac. I'll mention a few of the other options and then share the steps I've used to install Apache 2 and PHP 5 with MacPorts.

To build with package managers, with pre-compiled binaries, or from source... that is the question

I remember how excited I was when Mac OS X was initially released. Finally I had real development tools available on my platform of choice. I could run a web server with middleware to develop database-driven web sites on my laptop. The only problem was that although having Unix file management skills, at the time, I had absolutley no experience compiling the required Unix software from source.

The Future of Social Networks: Building a WAN to Connect the LANs

Like other web geeks, I'm often asked by friends and acquaintances, "Are you on __________?" <-- insert the "current" social network here

My reply is usually a groggy "Huh?" So no, I don't have a Facebook or MySpace account; and yes, I'm probably missing out on something, and I'm okay with that for now.

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