Fully Trusted Self-Signed SSL Certificates for Local Development
Getting fully-trusted self-signed certificates in Firefox requires setting up a self-signed certificate authority.
Category Archives: Miscellaneous
How (misusing) Slack is Ruining Work
Rani Molla recently published a great article on how misusing Slack makes it harder to get work done, not easier.
If WordPress Uploads Fail on a Dreamhost Shared Plan
TL;DR: DreamHost kills processes on their shared hosting plans if they run too long, which can screw up all kinds of things in non-obvious ways. To fix it, either disable lots of plugins, or upgrade to a better hosting plan. I spent too much time this week trying to track down this issue for a […]
FireFox Resizes When Switching Monitors
My normal setup is to plug my Macbook into two external monitors, and leave the clamshell itself closed. and then when I travel I disconnect it and just use the built-in monitor. Lately I’ve been running into a problem when I open up Firefox on the Macbook, after disconnecting from the external monitors. Everything is […]
Getting Access to Raw, Layered Design Files
Every once in awhile I run into a situation where a graphic designer refuses to share copies of the original layered art they created with others working on the project, or with the client. This has never really made any sense to me, because as a developer, I always give the client the raw source […]
Why Reading is Important
Corey Freeman makes a good argument for why it’s important to read content in its entirety, rather than just scanning it.
Designers Shouldn’t Write Code
A discussion came up recently on the Seattle WordPress Meetup discussion board that hits on a big pet peeve of mine — designers writing code. After replying with my own thoughts, I wanted to see what other people were saying about the topic, so I did some searching and came across this essay by Davide Casali. […]
(Well Organized) Options, Not Decisions
The “Decisions, not options” philosophy argues that giving users too many options can make tweaking a piece of software a difficult and frustrating experience. When a user wants to make a small change, and they find themselves presented with five pages of disorganized options, many will simply give up rather than wade through each one […]
The Importance of Usability Testing
Shane Pearlman just published an article on the importance of usability testing that has some good advice. One of the tools mentioned is usertesting.com, which looks like an easy way to get feedback on projects.
.htaccess Auth Exceptions by URL
CSS-Tricks has a useful snippet showing how to make exceptions to .htaccess password protection based on the requested URL.
Discouraging Trolls
Jeff Atwood wrote a fascinating article on different methods to use to discourage trolling on social websites, including some discussion of their ethical merits. I wasn’t aware of slowbanning and hellbanning before, but I think they’re very clever ideas.
Exotic Data Visualization Techniques
Check out A Tour Through the Visualization Zoo for a good introduction to the concept of data visualization and some interesting examples of the more exotic techniques being used to describe complicated data sets.
Podcasting Guide
PoducateMe has created a comprehensive guide to podcasting that covers planning, equipment, recording, editing, hosting, feeds, etc. I think it’s just the right depth of information to get started with; it touches on all the major topics and gives some practical recommendations, but doesn’t overwhelm you with too much information. Update: The Reel Reviews podcast […]
Why RSS is Important
Kroc Camen makes a good argument for why RSS is important and points out how web browsers can better support it.
How to Backup Placemarks in Google Maps
Google doesn’t give you a link to export placemarks that you add to a saved map, but you can change the ‘output’ parameter in the iframe URL from ’embed’ to ‘kml’ to download an XML file with all of the map details, including the placemarks and custom icons. I got an error when trying to […]
Software Bloat
“A Printer driver is a folder with one ‘.ini’ file, and a couple of ‘.dll’s and that’s it. It is not a 50 MB download. It is not an IE Toolbar, and Side Pane. It is not half-baked photo software. It is not a splash screen when your computer starts. It is not a tray icon.” – Kroc […]
Choosing a Video Format for the Web
Nettuts+ has a good article detailing the current state of the various video codecs supported by desktop and mobile browsers. Basically, there’s still no single format with universal support; Flash is still the best option for the desktop, and H.264 is the only option for mobile devices. In the future browsers will natively support HTML5’s […]
How to Find a Twitter User’s RSS Feed
Twitter has always offered RSS feeds for user’s tweets, but unfortunately they stopped publishing the URLs awhile back. The feeds are still active, though, so you just have to manually figure out the URL. The first thing you’ll need to do is use this website to find their ID based on their username. Then, just […]
Developing Mobile Sites
If a client wants their site to be mobile-friendly (and is actually willing to pay for it), then the best way is to create a separate site designed specifically with mobile users in mind. Little Springs Design discusses this in their article about Mobilizing vs Miniaturizing. If the client’s on a tight budget then you’ll […]
Conflict Between Comodo Firewall and Cisco VPN Client
There’s a conflict between Comodo Firewall and the built-in firewall in Cisco’s VPN client which can cause blue screens. You’ll see a DRIVER_IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL error caused by inspect.sys or vsdatant.sys. One way to work around it is to install the VPN client without the built-in firewall: msiexec.exe /i vpnclient_setup.msi DONTINSTALLFIREWALL=1 The other way is to remove vsdata.dll, vsinit.dll and vsdatant.sys […]