Apr 17

Web Accessibility Toolbar for Opera

Hot off the presses. Download the Web Accessibility Toolbar for Opera if you are an Opera user or develop for Opera as a supported browser.

The Web Accessibility Toolbar has been developed to aid manual examination of web pages for a variety of aspects of accessibility. It consists of a range of functions that:

  • identify components of a web page
  • facilitate the use of 3rd party online applications
  • provide links to references and additional resources.

The Paciello Group

Apr 13

Set up Dreamweaver to color code alternate file types

I’ve been stymied lately by Dreamweaver, my preferred coding program. I still hold onto this program because I know it’s key commands and color coding. However, I’ve been working in a new template system and the internal files have a new file extension.

I don’t know if it is a Yahoo! secret system, so let’s just call this new extension .ted. I like the way that sounds. So, how do I get this new .ted file to look like a .php file in Dreamweaver’s code view? I tried to find the information on the Macromedia Adobe site and only came up with documentation about the preexisting .inc files.

David A found this page: Changing and adding file extensions recognized by Dreamweaver MX. It solved the issue.

Dreamweaver has a series of text and xml files that let you customize it’s functionality. You’ll need to open these files in something other than Dreamweaver. I used XMLSpy but Notepad would be just as peachy. There’s a txt file, Extensions.txt, that lists all of the file types recognized. Add your new file name at the top and then under the subcategory. I added .ted under php.
You then need to open MMDocumentTypes.xml and add the new file extensions in the appropriate win and mac file extensions fields.

This may sound complicated but it is pretty easy. I’d give it a 1 star on the difficulty ratings.

I was hoping that I could set up multiple .ted files, i.e. css.ted, php.ted, and js.ted. Dreamweaver doesn’t like these double file type strings. So just choose the category that best fits your programming field.

Finding this information could take you hours, possibly days. Adjusting the files and living a much happier coding life will take about 5 minutes. Now stop staring at black text and make it purty!

Apr 09

Looping and Reg Exp helpful links

I’ve been dragged into the world of command-line processing and Unix. Arrggh. These links have been helpful for me over the past couple weeks. The first is a new post by Christian Heilmann on looping.

Apr 06

Goodbye Amazon Badge

I have been neglecting this site’s coding for too long. I was shocked this morning to find a ton of gibberish in the edit css window in Firefox/Web Dev Toolbar. I was able to track it down to a huge mangled mess of JavaScript coming from an Amazon.com badge. I first installed the badge while reviewing a book.
Here’s a brief snippet of the junk code:

<script src="function%20%28iterator%29%20%7B%0A%20%20%...
20%7D%0A%20%20%20%20%7D%0A%7D"
type="text/javascript"></script>

<script src="function%20%28iterator%29%20%7B%0A%20%20%...
%7D%7D%29;%0A%20%20%20%20return%20result;%0A%7D"
type="text/javascript"></script>

<script src="function%20%28iterator%29%20%7B%0A%20%...
%0A%20%20%20%20return%20result;%0A%7D"
type="text/javascript"></script>

<script src="function%20%28iterator%29%20%7B%0A%20%20%...
29;%7D%29;%0A%20%20%20%20return%20results;%0A%7D"
type="text/javascript"></script>

<script src="function%20%28iterator%29%20%7B...
%20%20%20%20return%20result;%0A%7D"
type="text/javascript"></script>

<script src="function%20%28iterator%29%20%7B%...
%0A%20%20%20%20return%20results;%0A%7D"
type="text/javascript"></script>

It’s pretty ugly stuff. This is only about 10% of the code inserted into the pages. Hopefully it’s just a small bug on the Amazon badge service that is sending the encoded scripts. Regardless, it’s pretty nasty to import over 40 script tags with a complete library of Amazon js files. Check your site’s generated code if you are using Amazon’s associate program. You too may have this junk.