RW Updates has a Widget
The first useful thing we’ve done on Leopard so far? We’ve made an RW Updates Dashboard Widget. Cool huh? If you’re not a regular RSS reader and don’t have time to go to the web site, just pop open your Dashboard and have a quick update on all the latest from RW Updates.
You can download the RW Updates widget here.
Day one with Leopard.
I picked up my copy of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard from the Apple Store area of BestBuy (it must be a new thing, I didn’t question it) last night. I rushed in at 6:00pm sharp to beat the crowds (the Apple rep there told me there would be a lineup) only to find a lonely unmanned stall with a full compliment of Leopard boxes locked behind glass… not a single copy sold. I swear I am the only Mac user in Kitchener Ontario… Anyhow, I spent the evening downloading all the latest releases of all my apps (VersionTracker Pro.app is the bomb for that stuff), and backing up my drives, and backing those up on more drives, and so on. Then this morning I pulled out TechTool Pro and ran the full suite, to get me all optimized and what not (I would hate to copy over a mess of frags and discombobulations to the new setup). I also had a fresh new 500 Gb SATA drive ready to migrate to. Once I felt safe and secure, I popped in my Leopard DVD. No, I did not perform any sick, Apple product disrobing ceremony and no, I most certainly will not post pictures of how I opened the box.
So all went smoothly despite all the FUD I had read on MacFixit over the last few days. The install and migration took all of about two hours, including updating apps that didn’t make the cut so well and resetting keyboard shortcuts that got jumbled in transit. So here are a few thoughts;
Finder…
Cooler than before… but it still sucks. Path Finder still blows it out of the water from a productivity standpoint.
Coverflow
Coverflow is cool if you don’t keep anything in folders, but not so cool when you actually organize your life. You know where coverflow is cool? In iTunes! ‘Nuff said.
Quick Look…
Path Finder has had that built right in for quite some time and still does it better IMHO.
iChat…
I might have to open that app for the second time since it’s introduction way back when… I do think the desktop sharing is going to be cool though
Time Machine…
Now here is a great piece of software that is going to get in the wrong hands and generate all sorts of false security. For a guy like me this is cool because I will still do my regular cron backups, but I will have time machine going too. Why? Because time machine only keeps backups for as long as there is space n the disk to hold it. You can’t just keep shoveling crap into and figure it will be there for all time. I guess what I am saying is, don’t start arbitrarily cleaning off your main drive without a care in the world because you think Time Machine has got your back. I still recommend a daily regiment of backup, preferably automated.
The Dock…
There is a lot of extraneous visual information here that really impedes productivity. Until I get used to seeing reflections and transparencies and swoopty Web2.0-like lines and what not, I am going to struggle to see active versus inactive apps. This isn’t a huge deal for me though since I rarely use the dock but still, trying to spot those shining lights is a little tough, especially if you use the default star-scape desktop background.
Stacks…
Could be cool and I definitely plan to really play around with it. This is one of those new features, like expose, that might be a sleeper concept but something that everyone should use to make life faster. As of right now though I have the two default stacks. I have one for my Downloads folder (which I made myself and put in a special place, so how did it know where to find it?) and one for my Documents folder. And my documents folder is not one that should ever be sprung open without fair warning. It’s a big, scary, messy, unorganized place that should strike fear into all those who stumble upon it unsuspectingly.
Front Row???
Did I miss this in the press release somewhere? I have a Mac Pro… which has no IR capabilities… therefor Front Row is disabled… except now??? I did try to hack it a long time ago, but the hack never worked. Or did it?
Speed…
For all the griping that I may have had with all points above, that all pails by comparison to the fact that Leopard is FAST. Nothing add up to productivity like speed and Leopard has bags of it!
Was it all that bad to have made the switch? No, I am actually glad I did. The experience so far has been enjoyable… I just complain a lot. It was a quick and painless transition that could not have been any easier. WELL worth the $129 price tag… worth double if you ask me.
Dave comes on board the RW Update train
Dave Cantù has put up a blog especially for RW Updates. He admittedly is not a blogger under normal circumstances but couldn’t pass up the opportunity to be seen and have his message distributed by RW Updates.
Thanks for coming on Dave, we are glad to have you.
Nilrog has been added
RW Updates is happy to include Nilrog’s place, the home of the @STASH and HIGH-LIGHT plugins, in our Daily Digest.
Welcome aboard Roger!
RapidWeaver tip: Add native search
One of the first things any visitor to a website looks for is a way to search within the site. One thing that has been sorely missing from RapidWeaver is native, integrated search functionality. Understandably it would be tough to get a desktop app to somehow construct a back end database on a remote server, though I bet it’s not impossible on mac since they run Unix, as do most server environments. But I think Dan and company have their hands full with more pressing, killer features.
That being said, I thought it was time to revisit this old thread and see how much further we could take this idea of integrated search. So without further delay:
How to add native search to your RapidWeaver site
Create a new MySQL database on your host server.
This will vary from host to host but here is a rough idea:- Login into you hosting control panel.
- Go to you MySQL management area.
- Create a new MySQL host server (we’ll call ours “mysql.yourdomain.com”).
- Create a new MySQL database (call it “isearch” and apply it to the host server you just created).
- Create a new username and password, i.e. isearch_admin, yourpassword (write them down because we will need them later).
Install iSearch2
- Download iSearch2.
- Unzip the package contents.
- Via an FTP client, upload the folder “isearch2″ and it’s content to the home folder of your host server, i.e. “public_html”, “html” or “home” depending on your host.
Configure iSearch2
Configure your basic settings in “isearch2/inc/config.inc.php”:$isearch_sql_server = 'mysql.yourdomain.com';(depending on your host, this might be “localhost”)$isearch_sql_username = 'isearch_admin';(this is the username I told you to write down ealier)$isearch_sql_password = 'yourpassword';(and this is the password I told you to write down earlier)$isearch_sql_database = 'isearch';(this is the name of the database we created)$isearch_admin_password = 'adminpassword';(this is the password you will make up to administer iSearch from a browser)
Note: Consult your hosts help documents if you have any difficulty in this area.
Index your site
iSearch2 needs to compile the contents of your site into an indexable database:- In a web browser, go to “http://yourdomain.com/isearch2/admin” and login using the isearch admin password you created here.
- Enter your email address and home page URL.
- In the last large text box, enter the urls that you don’t wish index in the search database separated by a space. I highly recommend excluding all folders that contain xml or other files intended to be read as RSS. These will fair well in searches but will result in the user trying to open RSS feeds when they may not intend to do so or may not have a means of reading RSS (like Internet Explorer users)
- Click save.
- Click “Spider” and wait. If it’s a big site it will take a while.
- Test the service by going to “http://www.yourdomain.com/isearch2″ and performing a search for a common term on your site. Did it work? Good! Carry on.
Note: To have iSearch2 stay up to date you can set a Unix “cron” job or Windows Scheduled Task on your server to run the spider engine. Use PHP from the command line as follows (replace “http://www.yourdomain.com” with the full file path to your sites root directory):
Unix :/usr/bin/php -q /http://www.yourdomain.com/isearch2/admin/reindex.php cmd
Windows :c:\php\php -q c:\http://www.yourdomain.com\isearch2\admin\reindex.php cmd
Make a search page
In RapidWeaver:- In the lower left corner, click the “+” button and add an HTML page (top level is preferable).
- In the Page Inspector, set your name, folder and file names appropriately.
- In the content area paste in the following:
Note: the%base_url%in the action attribute will allow RapidWeaver to write the proper path to the isearch program. Keep in mind that you have to properly set the base url in RapidWeaver (Site > Show Site Setup > Publishing) for this to work. It is assumed that you will enter your home domain there in this exact format: “http://www.yourdomain.com/” (note the trailing forward slash)
- Publish your new search page and give it a spin… Still working? Good! Carry on.
Search all over
Search from anywhere on you site by copying the code from here and pasting it anywhere on your site.Make it sexy
You probably noticed the results page is nothing short of terrible looking. I bet you want to make it look like the rest of your site, right? Ok, here is how:- Open the source of your published search page (the one you just finished making) in a text editor.
- Highlight from “
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC...” to just before “<!-- iSearc search form -->” and copy it. - Open the file “/isearch2/index.php” and replace from “
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC...” (at line 19) to “</head>” (line 29) with the code you copied. - Go back to source code of your search page and highlight and copy from the end of “
</FORM>” to the end of the code. - Next, go back to the file “/isearch2/index.php” and replace from “
</body>” to “</html>” with code you just copied. - Save you changes.
Note: I advise that you put your RapidWeaver search page in a folder on the top level. This will prevent broken link in the code that you just copied and pasted.
WARNING: It should also be noted that some RapidWeaver generated code, apostrophes in particular, can break the php code. I recommend doing a search and replace on the RapidWeaver code you pasted in and swap all apostrophes with .
Style some more
iSearch2 allows for some extensive control of it’s style. You can begin to control these styles by adding the following CSS selectors to either the styles.css in the theme, live on the site or directly into the file “/isearch2/index.php”:
Configure some more
Remember the admin panel (“http://yourdomain.com/isearch2/admin”)? If you poke around in there you can set a HUGE number of options that allow for differences in the way the results are delivered, advanced versus simple search, help menus, how partial results are handled… Go ahead and have fun with it.Some Examples
To see this search engine in full effect try it out on seyDesign or on Merrifield Photography.
I must be famous
So what does it say about ones perceived popularity when there is a squatter on your domain name. That’s right, at long last I decided it was time that I register adammerrifield.com (thought about for years) and when I tried I was turned down with the message, “ADAMMERRIFIELD.COM is already taken.”
Oh poop! I am sure it’s simply a coincidence, but I can’t help but think that someone has taken to squatting on any domain I might be interested acquiring. I won’t go into which ones, but they are all closely associated to me or my company. What for? Oh well. I will just go and register a WAY cooler name (lets see if the squatters can read my mind).
Gary Fong, if you’re reading this…
There is a pretty neat phenomenon that occurs when you start using one of Gary Fongs flash diffusers. It’s not the fact that you notice how many others in your industry use them. It’s not the fact that your flash images become quite amazing with greater control. And it’s not the act that you are overwhelmed with the desire to buy the entire collection once you’ve tried just one.
No, it’s not any of these. It’s the fact that if you blog about Gary Fongs products you will become acutely aware of the fact that you are now being visited by a familiar and recurring ip address as a result of the same set of key words. That’s right; you become a regular stop in Gary Fongs vanity search. Gary Fong himself has laid eyes on my site, which is really cool even if it is only to see what we (photographers) are saying about the whale tail or light sphere. How do I know it’s him? I didn’t until he wrote about it on his blog a while back (the actual post escapes me now), admitting that he does such searches to see what the views and reviews are saying. So that’s when I went back and checked the ip’s of all hits on my site that had to do with Gary Fong related searches, and sure enough about 99% of them were the same. Hey we all do it, right?
So what about that WhaleTale review I have been promising for so long? It’s coming. It’s taking a while because I shoot with it on all the time (yes, even my recent outdoor weddings) and can’t bring myself to remove it for comparative studies. And now that LightSphere Universal and The Origami are due out soon I would love to get my hands on those so I can compare all three! Gary, if you are reading this, I would LOVE to get my hands on these two new products… 
Elbow deep in php search engines
I have been playing around with a php search engine (since so many people request a good site search) and did quite a bit of mucking around to find a simple way to do things that might make for a good RapidWeaver snippet entry or a RapidWeaver tutorial… Well… a tutorial I might eventually have. A snippet? Not so likely.
If there is anything I learned from the last snippet I released it’s that not everybody is code savvy and not everybody enjoys digging in to html and php. While I really don’t mind supporting 50-60 responses in a thread for a free bit of code, I must honestly say I can’t afford the time right now.
Fear not though, when I have a moment I will sit down and write the definitive tutorial to have a completely integrated and seamless (not to mention built in) backend searching solution for RapidWeaver based sites. It will be advanced but if you are not afraid to get your hands elbow deep in code than I think you will find it well worth your while. To get an idea of what I have been working on, go over to seyDesign and try the little search box in the sidebar.
Stay tuned…
It feels good to be loved… or at least listed.
There is no better adoration than unsolicited love. I mean, it’s nice to get on list that you subscribe to, and it’s nice to get on lists that you submit to, and it’s nice when your friends and colleagues support you… But when you get an email like this:
We just added your website ( http://rwupdates.com ) to our gallery on http://cssflash.com If we might have published any wrong infos about your work, please let us know by replying to this email.
Feel free to add further beautiful webpages, referring backlinks to us, or just tell your friends about our new project.
It’s updated several times a day.
See you later and never stop creating nice stuff!
…there is just no better feeling.
RapidWeaver tip: Adding links in the sidebar
There is one thing I get asked a lot; How do make a link in the sidebar? It’s as easy as it is in the main content area, it’s just as obvious so here is a quick guide to help you out.
- Open the Page Inspector panel.
- Select the sidebar icon (second from the top left).
- If you haven’t done so already, enter your text.
- Select the text you wish to link from.
- Click the “+” (plus) button in the bottom left hand corner of the panel.
- Enter the URL or Page you wish to link to, enter a title and click ok.