abeger - Developer IT

Microsoft Office 2011 Mac: Reminders don't interact correctly with Spaces or Expose

- by abeger

I'm using Microsoft Office 2011 on Snow Leopard. I'm a heavy Spaces user. Whenever Microsoft Office Reminders pops up a reminder, it brings up the reminder in my current screen. However, if I do something else before dismissing the reminder pop-up, I can't easily find the pop-up again: Clicking on the icon in the dock does nothing and the pop-up vanishes when you use Expose. Left with no other choice, I simply end up clicking through each screen, moving windows around to hunt down the pop-up again. Is there any easier way to locate that pop-up? Is there a way to get the pop-up to behave like a normal window?

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How do I access variables with hyphenated names in Smarty?

- by abeger

I've got a PHP page that parses an XML file with SimpleXml, then passes that object to a Smarty template. My problem is that the XML file has hyphens in its tag names, e.g. video-player. In PHP, this is no problem, I just use $xml->{'video-player'} and everything's fine. Smarty, on the other hand, throws a fit when I try to use that syntax. The only solution I've come up with so far is to use a variable to store the name, e.g., { assign var=name value="video-player" } { $xml->$name } But this isn't terribly graceful to say the least. Is there another, better, approach to referring to a hyphenated variable name in Smarty?

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Is a confirmation screen necessary for an order form?

- by abeger

In a discussion about how to streamline an order form on our site, the idea of eliminating the confirmation screen. So, instead of filling out the form, clicking "Submit", seeing a summary on a confirmation screen and clicking "Confirm", the user would simply fill out the form, hit "Submit", and the order's done. The theory is that fewer clicks and fewer screens means less time to order and therefore the ordering experience is easier. The opposing opinion says that without the confirmation screen, user error increases and people just end up canceling/changing orders after the fact. I'm looking for more input from the SO community. Have you ever done this? How has it worked out, compared to a traditional confirmation screen setup? Are there examples of a true "one click and done" setup on the web (does Amazon's 1-click have a confirmation screen? I've never been courageous enough to try it)? EDIT: Just to clarify, when I say "confirmation screen", I mean a second step where the customer reviews the order before placing it. Even if we did do away with it, the user would still receive a message saying "your order has been placed".

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Which CMS plugins for Wordpress should I use?

- by abeger

I'm looking into setting up a very simple site (static pages and an image gallery) with Wordpress for a non-web-savvy client, so I'd like to simplify the Editor role's admin interface as much as possible. Looking through Wordpress's plugin directory, I found several plugins that "CMS-ify" the admin side of things, hiding menu options and the like. Are there any "admin-cleaning" plugins you'd recommend? Are there any other plugins I should look into?

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Is there a way to combine IN and LIKE in MySQL?

- by abeger

I'm currently running a query like this: SELECT * FROM email WHERE email_address LIKE 'ajones@%' OR email_address LIKE 'bsmith@%' OR email_address LIKE 'cjohnson@%' The large number of OR's bothers me. Is there a way to condense this up with something akin to an IN operator, e.g.: SELECT * FROM email WHERE email_address LIKE ('ajones@%', 'bsmith@%', 'cjohnson@%') Or is this just wishful thinking?

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How can I change the color of a Google Maps marker?

- by abeger

I'm using the Google Maps API to build a map full of markers, but I want one marker to stand out from the others. The simplest thing to do, I think, would be to change the color of the marker to blue, instead of red. Is this a simple thing to do or do I have to create a whole new icon somehow? If I do have to create a new icon, what's the easiest way to do that?

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First-time contractor question: how do I handle web hosting?

- by abeger

I've started doing a little freelance web work and I've got to build a site for a client. The client doesn't currently have a hosting service, so either I or they are going to have to set it up. Traditionally, how does this work out? Do I set it up and then transfer ownership to them when I'm done? Do I leave it to them to set it up? If they're going to be paying for the hosting directly, does that affect anything? Basically, I'm brand new at all this and any and all advice on how to handle hosting would be greatly appreciated.

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How do I get developers to look at our bug tracking page regularly?

- by abeger

We've recently started using Trac and are still trying to figure out the best way to use it in our environment. It's great, but it will only be effective if developers look at it once in a while and I'm trying to figure out how to instill that habit in them. I've contemplated several solutions, such as: forcing them to use Trac as their homepage (too draconian) handing out bookmarks to the RSS feeds (same problem--no one will look at them) automatic email notifications (won't drive them to the site and might just annoy them more than anything else) What are some other solutions? What have you tried that worked?

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Looking for a simple CMS with WYSIWYG and image gallery

- by abeger

I'm building a new site that consists entirely of: 8-10 pages of static content that rarely changes (like once every few months or once every year) An image gallery Since I don't plan to be the primary maintainer of the site, I'd like to use a CMS with some security and a WYSIWYG editor so non-web-savvy people can tweak the site when necessary. I started out using Drupal, but started wondering if it was overkill. So, two questions: 1) is it overkill? 2) What CMS would you recommend for a project this simple?

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