Blogs

It's that wonderful time again! CodeIgniter 1.7.0 has been released, so it's time to upgrade.

http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/installation/upgrade_170.html

Upgrading looks fairly straight forward - here are some notable changes (http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/changelog.html):

I went to the Live Diggnation at the end of the Future of Web Apps Expo. Excellent show - I really hope they come back again next year! :) (video below)

Here's my first "Flickr picks" picture selection. Every now and then I'm going to pick some photos from Flickr with a particular theme. I thought some nice autumnal pictures would be a good place to start as it's one of my favourite seasons for taking pictures (winter being the other).

The great thing about autumn is not only the colours from the leaves but also the moody weather - rain one minute, sun the next - it really creates a stunning atmosphere.

Double Bows
by Nicholas_T

What is hotlinking?

Hotlinking, sometimes called image leeching or hot linking, is where another website embeds an image which is stored on your web host. So, for example, if you want to add an image to your website, you can upload the file to your web host then embed the image into your HTML referencing the source for the image as the location of the file on your web host. When someone accesses the HTML page where the image is embedded the file will be downloaded from your web host. If you don't protect against hotlinking, someone could embed that same image on their web page, which means that every time someone accesses their page, the image will be downloaded from your web host and drain your bandwidth. Don't do this, it's not cool and some sites see it as stealing.

This really is one of the strangest software bugs I've come across!

The Problem

Dreamweaver crashes and won't open again. When you try and open Dreamweaver it just closes straight away, with nothing more than a glimpse of the splash screen.

The Solution

One of the CSS files in the site you were working on has a file size which is a multiple of 8kb (mine was 24kb). You can try anything; rebooting, reinstalling, but Dreamweaver won't play ball if the file is still there. You need open the CSS file in another text editor and add a few dummy lines of comment text to increase the file size slightly; you should then find Dreamweaver will open again normally.

Thanks to David Powers for this. Please feel free to leave any comments below.

Took my little Flexifoil Buzz (Petrol) out for a fly today. Pretty cool kite actually. It was a little smaller than I had imagined it, but it's very responsive even under light winds, and very nippy once the wind picks up.

No idea what this means, but I thought I'd post it in case anyone else was having the same problem - don't you just love spurious error codes?

I was trying for a while to sign on to MSN messenger but I kept getting error code 80048834 (ohhhh...that one....). After some help from Google I came across a forum post where a couple of people were having the same issue. Anyway, for people skimming this post I'll jump straight to the solution...

Drupal 6 was released today! After having a play with the beta and release candidates...well, I don't have to say; this really is a phenomenal release! Here are some of my favourite new features which I'm looking forward to using:

• Extended logging - You can set Drupal for OS level logging
• Batch API - A progress bar can track tasks running in the background through multiple HTTP requests
• Scripting from the command line - This is really cool! You can now run Drupal code through the command line
• Forum improvements - Granular permissions can allow more control over forum moderation
• Sticky table headers - Does what it says on the tin
• Drag and drop features - Again, the tin...
• CSS only theming - Define regions etc. in .info files without writing any php code, then set styles in CSS

Well done to everyone who has been clearly working hard on this!

It's incredible how rapid the development of Drupal has become. Drupal 6 is only just around the corner and we're already talking about what improvements and features we'd like to see in Drupal 7! Drupal 5 has been absolutely fantastic. I've found it not only a great content management system, but also an excellent framework for building applications.

Anyone who wishes to officially request a new feature for Drupal 7 may do so on the Drupal website by submitting a new issue. Some things I'd like to see would be:

• Some kind of media management system - not just for images, video and audio but maybe also PDFs and other attachable or embedded content
• More core forum features
• Built in WYSIWYG editor as I almost always use TinyMCE, which is great, but it would be nice not to have to install and upgrade it separately from the core
• Improved node access control system
• Automatic upgrade of core system and modules
• Site backup for both files and database

I noticed recently that if you're using POP with leave mail on server (LMOS) enabled, authenticating and downloading new messages can become progressively slower. So much so that the email client can even time out, leaving the mailbox locked so you can't even log in again for a while.