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• A Few Link Building SEO Tips

  The more links that you have leading to your website, the more traffic you will get. You cannot have too many links. If you also have outgoing links, then your site ranks higher in the search engines.

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• ?Oracle????SELECT????UNDO

  - by Liu Maclean(???)

  ????????Oracle?????(dirty read),?Oracle??????Asktom????????Oracle???????, ???undo??????????(before image)??????Consistent, ???????????????Oracle????????????? ????????? ??,??,Oracle?????????????RDBMS,???????????? ?????????2?????: _offline_rollback_segments or _corrupted_rollback_segments ?2?????????Oracle???????????ORA-600[4XXX]???????????????,???2??????Undo??Corruption????????????,?????2????????????????? ??????????????_offline_rollback_segments ? _corrupted_rollback_segments ?2?????: ???????(FORCE OPEN DATABASE) ????????????(consistent read & delayed block cleanout) ??????rollback segment??? ?????:???????Oracle????????,??????????2?????,?????????????!! _offline_rollback_segments ? _corrupted_rollback_segments ???????????: ??2???????Undo Segments(???/???)????????online ?UNDO$???????????OFFLINE??? ???instance??????????????????? ??????Undo Segments????????active transaction????????????dead??SMON???(????????SMON??(?):Recover Dead transaction) _OFFLINE_ROLLBACK_SEGMENTS(offline undo segment list)????(hidden parameter)?????: ???startup???open database???????_OFFLINE_ROLLBACK_SEGMENTS????Undo segments(???/???),?????undo segments????????alert.log???TRACE?????,???????startup?? ?????????????,?ITL?????undo segments?: ???undo segments?transaction table?????????????????? ???????????commit,?????CR??? ????undo segments????(???corrupted??,???missed??)???????????alert.log,??????? ?DML?????????????????????????????????CPU,????????????????????? _CORRUPTED_ROLLBACK_SEGMENTS(corrupted undo segment list)??????????: ?????startup?open database???_CORRUPTED_ROLLBACK_SEGMENTS????undo segments(???/???)???????? ???????_CORRUPTED_ROLLBACK_SEGMENTS???undo segments????????????commit,???undo segments???drop??? ??????????? ??????????????????,?????????????????? ??bootstrap???????????,?????????ORA-00704: bootstrap process failure??,???????????(???Oracle????:??ORA-00600:[4000] ORA-00704: bootstrap process failure????) ??????_CORRUPTED_ROLLBACK_SEGMENTS????????????????????,??????????????? Oracle???????TXChecker??????????? ???????2?????,??????????????_CORRUPTED_ROLLBACK_SEGMENTS?????SELECT????UNDO???????: SQL> alter system set event= '10513 trace name context forever, level 2' scope=spfile; System altered. SQL> alter system set "_in_memory_undo"=false scope=spfile; System altered. 10513 level 2 event????SMON ??rollback ??? dead transaction _in_memory_undo ?? in memory undo ?? SQL> startup force; ORACLE instance started. Total System Global Area 3140026368 bytes Fixed Size 2232472 bytes Variable Size 1795166056 bytes Database Buffers 1325400064 bytes Redo Buffers 17227776 bytes Database mounted. Database opened. session A: SQL> conn maclean/maclean Connected. SQL> create table maclean tablespace users as select 1 t1 from dual connect by level exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats('','MACLEAN'); PL/SQL procedure successfully completed. SQL> set autotrace on; SQL> select sum(t1) from maclean; SUM(T1) ---------- 501 Execution Plan ---------------------------------------------------------- Plan hash value: 1679547536 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | Id | Operation | Name | Rows | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)| Time | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | 1 | 3 | 3 (0)| 00:00:01 | | 1 | SORT AGGREGATE | | 1 | 3 | | | | 2 | TABLE ACCESS FULL| MACLEAN | 501 | 1503 | 3 (0)| 00:00:01 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Statistics ---------------------------------------------------------- 1 recursive calls 0 db block gets 3 consistent gets 0 physical reads 0 redo size 515 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client 492 bytes received via SQL*Net from client 2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client 0 sorts (memory) 0 sorts (disk) 1 rows processe ???????????,????current block, ????????,consistent gets??3? SQL> update maclean set t1=0; 501 rows updated. SQL> alter system checkpoint; System altered. ??session A?commit; ???? session: SQL> conn maclean/maclean Connected. SQL> SQL> set autotrace on; SQL> select sum(t1) from maclean; SUM(T1) ---------- 501 Execution Plan ---------------------------------------------------------- Plan hash value: 1679547536 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | Id | Operation | Name | Rows | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)| Time | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | 1 | 3 | 3 (0)| 00:00:01 | | 1 | SORT AGGREGATE | | 1 | 3 | | | | 2 | TABLE ACCESS FULL| MACLEAN | 501 | 1503 | 3 (0)| 00:00:01 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Statistics ---------------------------------------------------------- 0 recursive calls 0 db block gets 505 consistent gets 0 physical reads 108 redo size 515 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client 492 bytes received via SQL*Net from client 2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client 0 sorts (memory) 0 sorts (disk) 1 rows processed ?????? ?????????undo??CR?,???consistent gets??? 505 [oracle@vrh8 ~]$ ps -ef|grep LOCAL=YES |grep -v grep oracle 5841 5839 0 09:17 ? 00:00:00 oracleG10R25 (DESCRIPTION=(LOCAL=YES)(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=beq))) [oracle@vrh8 ~]$ kill -9 5841 ??session A???Server Process????,???dead transaction ????smon?? select ktuxeusn, to_char(sysdate, 'DD-MON-YYYY HH24:MI:SS') "Time", ktuxesiz, ktuxesta from x$ktuxe where ktuxecfl = 'DEAD'; KTUXEUSN Time KTUXESIZ KTUXESTA ---------- -------------------- ---------- ---------------- 2 06-AUG-2012 09:20:45 7 ACTIVE ???1?active rollback segment SQL> conn maclean/maclean Connected. SQL> set autotrace on; SQL> select sum(t1) from maclean; SUM(T1) ---------- 501 Execution Plan ---------------------------------------------------------- Plan hash value: 1679547536 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | Id | Operation | Name | Rows | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)| Time | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | 1 | 3 | 3 (0)| 00:00:01 | | 1 | SORT AGGREGATE | | 1 | 3 | | | | 2 | TABLE ACCESS FULL| MACLEAN | 501 | 1503 | 3 (0)| 00:00:01 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Statistics ---------------------------------------------------------- 0 recursive calls 0 db block gets 411 consistent gets 0 physical reads 108 redo size 515 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client 492 bytes received via SQL*Net from client 2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client 0 sorts (memory) 0 sorts (disk) 1 rows processed ????? ????kill?? ???smon ??dead transaction , ???????????? ?????undo??????? ????active?rollback segment??? SQL> select segment_name from dba_rollback_segs where segment_id=2; SEGMENT_NAME ------------------------------ _SYSSMU2$ SQL> alter system set "_corrupted_rollback_segments"='_SYSSMU2$' scope=spfile; System altered. ? _corrupted_rollback_segments ?? ???2?rollback segment, ????????undo SQL> startup force; ORACLE instance started. Total System Global Area 3140026368 bytes Fixed Size 2232472 bytes Variable Size 1795166056 bytes Database Buffers 1325400064 bytes Redo Buffers 17227776 bytes Database mounted. Database opened. SQL> conn maclean/maclean Connected. SQL> set autotrace on; SQL> select sum(t1) from maclean; SUM(T1) ---------- 94 Execution Plan ---------------------------------------------------------- Plan hash value: 1679547536 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | Id | Operation | Name | Rows | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)| Time | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | 1 | 3 | 3 (0)| 00:00:01 | | 1 | SORT AGGREGATE | | 1 | 3 | | | | 2 | TABLE ACCESS FULL| MACLEAN | 501 | 1503 | 3 (0)| 00:00:01 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Statistics ---------------------------------------------------------- 228 recursive calls 0 db block gets 29 consistent gets 5 physical reads 116 redo size 514 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client 492 bytes received via SQL*Net from client 2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client 4 sorts (memory) 0 sorts (disk) 1 rows processed SQL> / SUM(T1) ---------- 94 Execution Plan ---------------------------------------------------------- Plan hash value: 1679547536 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | Id | Operation | Name | Rows | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)| Time | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | 1 | 3 | 3 (0)| 00:00:01 | | 1 | SORT AGGREGATE | | 1 | 3 | | | | 2 | TABLE ACCESS FULL| MACLEAN | 501 | 1503 | 3 (0)| 00:00:01 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Statistics ---------------------------------------------------------- 0 recursive calls 0 db block gets 3 consistent gets 0 physical reads 0 redo size 514 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client 492 bytes received via SQL*Net from client 2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client 0 sorts (memory) 0 sorts (disk) 1 rows processed ?????? consistent gets???3,?????????????????,??ITL???UNDO SEGMENTS?_corrupted_rollback_segments????,???????????COMMIT??,????UNDO? ???????,?????????????????????????(????????????????????),????????????????? ???? , ?????

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• mime_content_type vs Fileinfo

  - by almost dead

  What is the difference between them? And why is Fileinfo mentioned to be a replacement for mime_content_type?

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• C++ circular dependency - namespace vs struct

  - by Dead or Alive

  Please educate me. Why does this compile: struct compiles { struct A; struct B { B(const A &a) : member(a.member) { } int member; }; struct A { A(const B &b) : member(b.member) { } int member; }; }; while this does not: namespace doesnt { struct A; struct B { B(const A &a) : member(a.member) { } int member; }; struct A { A(const B &b) : member(b.member) { } int member; }; } (in MSVC 9.0)

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• Upload big files with cURL

  - by almost dead

  Does it effect memory to upload files with cURL (CURLOPT_INFILE, etc)? Any issuses I should be aware of before starting to upload big files (50MB, 1oooMB, etc) with cURL?

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• How to create a constructor in a php class?

  - by almost dead

  All methods in my php class must connect to the database, so I think it is a good idea to connect to the database in the constructor function (in the first place, to speak so). Is it normal to do so? And how to create a constructor in PHP?

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• Active State Image Display

  - by fmz

  I have some images that need to change, based not only on hover, but also on active state. If you look at the page here: http://site427.mysite4now.net/tazthedog/site1/ There are some tabs with Screen Printing Quick Links, etc. The tab image is associated with the link and displays properly. The icon in tabs defaults to the gray and turns blue on mouse over, however, I also need it to be blue on the "active" state. Here is the css: .quick-links em:hover { background: transparent url(../images/quick-links.png) 10px 9px no-repeat ; display: block ; float: left; } Here is the html: <ul class="tabs"> <li class="quick-links"> <a href="#quickLinks" id=""> <em> <span>Screen Printing Quick Links</span> </em> </a> </li> <li class="distributor-ql"> <a href="#distributorQL" id=""> <em> <span>Dealer &amp; Distributor Quick Links</span> </em> </a> </li> </ul> I tried adding a .quick-links em:active... but that doesn't maintain it. I know there is a way to keep the icon blue while in the active state, I just need a little help to understand what that is. Thanks!

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• Break all hardlinks within a folder

  - by Georges Dupéron

  I have a folder which contains a certain number of files which have hard links (in the same folder or somewhere else), and I want to de-hardlink these files, so they become independant, and changes to their contents won't affect any other file (their link count becomes 1). Below, I give a solution which basically copies each hard link to another location, then move it back in place. However this method seems rather crude and error-prone, so I'd like to know if there is some command which will de-hardlink a file for me. Crude answer : Find files which have hard links (Edit: To also find sockets, etc. that have hardlinks, use find -not -type d -links +1) : find -type f -links +1 A crude method to de-hardlink a file (copy it to another location, and move it back) : Edit: As Celada said, it's best to do a cp -p below, to avoid loosing timestamps and permissions. Edit: Create a temporary directory and copy to a file under it, instead of overwriting a temp file, it minimizes the risk to overwrite some data, though the mv command is still risky (thanks @Tobu). # This is unhardlink.sh set -e for i in "$@"; do temp="$(mktemp -d ./hardlnk-XXXXXXXX)" [ -e "$temp" ] && cp -ip "$i" "$temp/tempcopy" && mv "$temp/tempcopy" "$i" && rmdir "$temp" done So, to un-hardlink all hard links (Edit: changed -type f to -not -type d, see above) : find -not -type d -links +1 -print0 | xargs -0 unhardlink.sh

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• Automatic clicking on Link build with Javascript by using watin

  - by BEC Roland

  I am trying to be able to automate the process of clicking on links built in javascript using watin. In the source code of web page, the links look like href="#", so i think these links works with Javascript. Runscript doesn't work with a Javascript code like "link.click". When i use a "link.flash()" i can see the link flash so i'm sure the script click on the links but there is not effect ( and the script doens't crash ) . Have you any ideas for resolve this problem ?

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• How to let users post links/images to Facebook, Twitter, Buzz etc... from a Rails based website?

  - by wgpubs

  I'd like to offer users the ability to post images / links to articles from my web application to Facebook, Twitter, Buzz and any other social network. A perfect example of the functionality I'm trying to replicate is mashable.com ... where each social network is represented by an icon that a) shows the number of shares AND b) allows users to click on it to post to that specific network. Don't know if it matters ... but the site is built using RoR. Thanks

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• Just a small problem regarding javscript BOM question

  - by caramel1991

  The question is this: Create a page with a number of links. Then write code that fires on the window onload event, displaying the href of each of the links on the page. And this is my solution <html> <body language="Javascript" onload="displayLink()"> <a href="http://www.google.com/">First link</a> <a href="http://www.yahoo.com/">Second link</a> <a href="http://www.msn.com/">Third link</a> <script type="text/javascript" language="Javascript"> function displayLink() { for(var i = 0;document.links[i];i++) { alert(document.links[i].href); } } </script> </body> </html> This is the answer provided by the book <html> <head> <script language=”JavaScript” type=”text/javascript”> function displayLinks() { var linksCounter; for (linksCounter = 0; linksCounter < document.links.length; linksCounter++) { alert(document.links[linksCounter].href); } } </script> </head> <body onload=”displayLinks()”> <A href=”link0.htm” >Link 0</A> <A href=”link1.htm”>Link 2</A> <A href=”link2.htm”>Link 2</A> </body> </html> Before I get into the javascript tutorial on how to check user browser version or model,I was using the same method as the example,by acessing the length property of the links array for the loop,but after I read through the tutorial,I find out that I can also use this alternative ways,by using the method that the test condition will evalute to true only if the document.links[i] return a valid value,so does my code is written using the valid method??If it's not,any comment regarding how to write a better code??Correct me if I'm wrong,I heard some of the people say "a good code is not evaluate solely on whether it works or not,but in terms of speed,the ability to comprehend the code,and could posssibly let others to understand the code easily".Is is true??

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• Drupal: Can Book layout menu be added and expanded in the primary menu?

  - by kelly

  I'd like to take a book menu and just add it right to the primary links. Any way to do that? It can appear alreayd in the Navigation links but I'd like it to expand to deeper child levels. Also, I'm using a theme (Newswire) that creates a suckerfish menu from the primary links, so if I can automatically add my book pages to the primary links that would be ideal... Sample Book Layout

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• Can only access asp.net app on localhost

  - by Kevin Donn

  I'm trying to get an asp.net application up on IIS on a Windows Server 2008 machine. I can hit the app from localhost, no problem. But I can't access the app using the server's domain name either locally or from another machine on the network. But here's the odd part. I can access a normal file on IIS using the domain name, both from a browser running on the server and from a browser running on another machine on the network. Here's a synopsis ("http" converted to "htp" below because I don't have enough points to have all these links in my message): From IE on the server itself: works htp://localhost/foo.htm works htp://localhost/App works htp://test.foo.com/foo.htm dead htp://test.foo.com/App From IE on another machine (inside or outside my subnet): works htp://test.foo.com/foo.htm dead htp://test.foo.com/App And when I say "dead" I mean the request times out. Any ideas?

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• Do I have a bad SD card?

  - by User1

  I'm trying to copy data from my computer to an SD card. After a few hundred megs, I keep getting the following errors in dmesg: [34542.836192] end_request: I/O error, dev mmcblk0, sector 855936 [34542.836284] FAT: unable to read inode block for updating (i_pos 13694981) [34542.836306] MMC: killing requests for dead queue [34542.836310] end_request: I/O error, dev mmcblk0, sector 9280 [34542.837035] FAT: unable to read inode block for updating (i_pos 148486) [34542.837062] MMC: killing requests for dead queue [34542.837066] end_request: I/O error, dev mmcblk0, sector 1 [34542.837074] FAT: bread failed in fat_clusters_flush [34542.837085] MMC: killing requests for dead queue These were all files I copied from a smaller SD card. I just want to transfer them to my new, larger card for my phone. I tried the same experiment with different files on a different machine and the card failed again. Reading data from the old card went fine. My systems are older and the new SD card is new (16GB Class 4). Could this be that my computers are too old? Is there a definitive test to verify if my SD card is bad?

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• jQuery .live fireing multiple times!

  - by cstrzelc

  Greetings Guru's, This is a little hard to explain, but I'll give it a shot. I have a quick question regarding to the .live() function in JQuery. I'm going to simplify the example here. I have a page "index.php" that has a container "#display_files_container" which is populated with anchor links that are generated dynamically by a different page "process.php". The links are loaded into that same <div> when those links are selected based on the attributes of that link. See Examples: INDEX.PHP <html> <head><title>index.php</title> <!-- this function below loads process.php and passes it the dirid variable via post. I then use this post variable inside of process.php to pull other links from the database --> <script language="text/javascript"> $('.directory').live("click", function() { $('#display_files_container').load('plugins/project_files/process.php', {dirid: $(this).attr('dirid')}); }); </script> </head> <?php /*This code initial populates the link array so we have the first links populated before the users clicks for the first time*/ some code to fetch the $current_directory_list array from the database initially.... >? <body> <div id='display_files_container'> <?php /*Cycle through the array and echo out all the links which have been pulled from DB*/ for($i=0;$i<$current_directory_count;$i++) { echo "<a href='#' class='directory' dirid='".$current_directory_list[$i]['id']." '>".$current_directory_list[$i]['directory_name']. "</a> "; } ?> </div> </body> </html> PROCESS.PHP this file includes code to populate the $current_directory_list[] array from the database based on the post variable "$_POST['dirid']" that was sent from the .click() method in index.php. It then echo's the results out and we display them in the #display_files_container container. When you click on those links the process repeats. This works..... you can click though the directory tree and it loads the new links every time. However, it seems to want to .load() the process.php file many times over for one click. The number of times process.php is loaded seems to increase the more the links are clicked. So for example you can click on a link and firebug reports that process.php was loaded 23 times..... Eventually I would imagine I would record a stackoverflow. Please let me know if you have any ideas. Are there any ways that I can assure that .live() loads the process.php file only once? Thanks, -cs

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• Restricting joystick within a radius of center

  - by Phil

  I'm using Unity3d iOs and am using the example joysticks that came with one of the packages. It works fine but the area the joystick moves in is a rectangle which is unintuitive for my type of game. I can figure out how to see if the distance between the center and the current point is too far but I can't figure out how to constrain it to a certain distance without interrupting the finger tracking. Here's the relevant code: using UnityEngine; using System.Collections; public class Boundary { public Vector2 min = Vector2.zero; public Vector2 max = Vector2.zero; } public class Joystick : MonoBehaviour{ static private Joystick[] joysticks; // A static collection of all joysticks static private bool enumeratedJoysticks=false; static private float tapTimeDelta = 0.3f; // Time allowed between taps public bool touchPad; // Is this a TouchPad? public Rect touchZone; public Vector2 deadZone = Vector2.zero; // Control when position is output public bool normalize = false; // Normalize output after the dead-zone? public Vector2 position; // [-1, 1] in x,y public int tapCount; // Current tap count private int lastFingerId = -1; // Finger last used for this joystick private float tapTimeWindow; // How much time there is left for a tap to occur private Vector2 fingerDownPos; private float fingerDownTime; private float firstDeltaTime = 0.5f; private GUITexture gui; // Joystick graphic private Rect defaultRect; // Default position / extents of the joystick graphic private Boundary guiBoundary = new Boundary(); // Boundary for joystick graphic public Vector2 guiTouchOffset; // Offset to apply to touch input private Vector2 guiCenter; // Center of joystick private Vector3 tmpv3; private Rect tmprect; private Color tmpclr; public float allowedDistance; public enum JoystickType { movement, rotation } public JoystickType joystickType; public void Start() { // Cache this component at startup instead of looking up every frame gui = (GUITexture) GetComponent( typeof(GUITexture) ); // Store the default rect for the gui, so we can snap back to it defaultRect = gui.pixelInset; if ( touchPad ) { // If a texture has been assigned, then use the rect ferom the gui as our touchZone if ( gui.texture ) touchZone = gui.pixelInset; } else { // This is an offset for touch input to match with the top left // corner of the GUI guiTouchOffset.x = defaultRect.width * 0.5f; guiTouchOffset.y = defaultRect.height * 0.5f; // Cache the center of the GUI, since it doesn't change guiCenter.x = defaultRect.x + guiTouchOffset.x; guiCenter.y = defaultRect.y + guiTouchOffset.y; // Let's build the GUI boundary, so we can clamp joystick movement guiBoundary.min.x = defaultRect.x - guiTouchOffset.x; guiBoundary.max.x = defaultRect.x + guiTouchOffset.x; guiBoundary.min.y = defaultRect.y - guiTouchOffset.y; guiBoundary.max.y = defaultRect.y + guiTouchOffset.y; } } public void Disable() { gameObject.active = false; enumeratedJoysticks = false; } public void ResetJoystick() { if (joystickType != JoystickType.rotation) { //Don't do anything if turret mode // Release the finger control and set the joystick back to the default position gui.pixelInset = defaultRect; lastFingerId = -1; position = Vector2.zero; fingerDownPos = Vector2.zero; if ( touchPad ){ tmpclr = gui.color; tmpclr.a = 0.025f; gui.color = tmpclr; } } else { //gui.pixelInset = defaultRect; lastFingerId = -1; position = position; fingerDownPos = fingerDownPos; if ( touchPad ){ tmpclr = gui.color; tmpclr.a = 0.025f; gui.color = tmpclr; } } } public bool IsFingerDown() { return (lastFingerId != -1); } public void LatchedFinger( int fingerId ) { // If another joystick has latched this finger, then we must release it if ( lastFingerId == fingerId ) ResetJoystick(); } public void Update() { if ( !enumeratedJoysticks ) { // Collect all joysticks in the game, so we can relay finger latching messages joysticks = (Joystick[]) FindObjectsOfType( typeof(Joystick) ); enumeratedJoysticks = true; } //CHeck if distance is over the allowed amount //Get centerPosition //Get current position //Get distance //If over, don't allow int count = iPhoneInput.touchCount; // Adjust the tap time window while it still available if ( tapTimeWindow > 0 ) tapTimeWindow -= Time.deltaTime; else tapCount = 0; if ( count == 0 ) ResetJoystick(); else { for(int i = 0;i < count; i++) { iPhoneTouch touch = iPhoneInput.GetTouch(i); Vector2 guiTouchPos = touch.position - guiTouchOffset; bool shouldLatchFinger = false; if ( touchPad ) { if ( touchZone.Contains( touch.position ) ) shouldLatchFinger = true; } else if ( gui.HitTest( touch.position ) ) { shouldLatchFinger = true; } // Latch the finger if this is a new touch if ( shouldLatchFinger && ( lastFingerId == -1 || lastFingerId != touch.fingerId ) ) { if ( touchPad ) { tmpclr = gui.color; tmpclr.a = 0.15f; gui.color = tmpclr; lastFingerId = touch.fingerId; fingerDownPos = touch.position; fingerDownTime = Time.time; } lastFingerId = touch.fingerId; // Accumulate taps if it is within the time window if ( tapTimeWindow > 0 ) { tapCount++; print("tap" + tapCount.ToString()); } else { tapCount = 1; print("tap" + tapCount.ToString()); //Tell gameobject that player has tapped turret joystick if (joystickType == JoystickType.rotation) { //TODO: Call! } tapTimeWindow = tapTimeDelta; } // Tell other joysticks we've latched this finger foreach ( Joystick j in joysticks ) { if ( j != this ) j.LatchedFinger( touch.fingerId ); } } if ( lastFingerId == touch.fingerId ) { // Override the tap count with what the iPhone SDK reports if it is greater // This is a workaround, since the iPhone SDK does not currently track taps // for multiple touches if ( touch.tapCount > tapCount ) tapCount = touch.tapCount; if ( touchPad ) { // For a touchpad, let's just set the position directly based on distance from initial touchdown position.x = Mathf.Clamp( ( touch.position.x - fingerDownPos.x ) / ( touchZone.width / 2 ), -1, 1 ); position.y = Mathf.Clamp( ( touch.position.y - fingerDownPos.y ) / ( touchZone.height / 2 ), -1, 1 ); } else { // Change the location of the joystick graphic to match where the touch is tmprect = gui.pixelInset; tmprect.x = Mathf.Clamp( guiTouchPos.x, guiBoundary.min.x, guiBoundary.max.x ); tmprect.y = Mathf.Clamp( guiTouchPos.y, guiBoundary.min.y, guiBoundary.max.y ); //Check distance float distance = Vector2.Distance(new Vector2(defaultRect.x, defaultRect.y), new Vector2(tmprect.x, tmprect.y)); float angle = Vector2.Angle(new Vector2(defaultRect.x, defaultRect.y), new Vector2(tmprect.x, tmprect.y)); if (distance < allowedDistance) { //Ok gui.pixelInset = tmprect; } else { //This is where I don't know what to do... } } if ( touch.phase == iPhoneTouchPhase.Ended || touch.phase == iPhoneTouchPhase.Canceled ) ResetJoystick(); } } } if ( !touchPad ) { // Get a value between -1 and 1 based on the joystick graphic location position.x = ( gui.pixelInset.x + guiTouchOffset.x - guiCenter.x ) / guiTouchOffset.x; position.y = ( gui.pixelInset.y + guiTouchOffset.y - guiCenter.y ) / guiTouchOffset.y; } // Adjust for dead zone float absoluteX = Mathf.Abs( position.x ); float absoluteY = Mathf.Abs( position.y ); if ( absoluteX < deadZone.x ) { // Report the joystick as being at the center if it is within the dead zone position.x = 0; } else if ( normalize ) { // Rescale the output after taking the dead zone into account position.x = Mathf.Sign( position.x ) * ( absoluteX - deadZone.x ) / ( 1 - deadZone.x ); } if ( absoluteY < deadZone.y ) { // Report the joystick as being at the center if it is within the dead zone position.y = 0; } else if ( normalize ) { // Rescale the output after taking the dead zone into account position.y = Mathf.Sign( position.y ) * ( absoluteY - deadZone.y ) / ( 1 - deadZone.y ); } } } So the later portion of the code handles the updated position of the joystick thumb. This is where I'd like it to track the finger position in a direction it still is allowed to move (like if the finger is too far up and slightly to the +X I'd like to make sure the joystick is as close in X and Y as allowed within the radius) Thanks for reading!

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, August 23, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, August 23, 2014Popular ReleasesDIII Save Editor: ROS Alpha 1.2.14.100: initial Ros alpha release please report all bugsSEToolbox: SEToolbox 01.044.014 Release 2: Fixed Ship name not saving. Fixed broken cubes view Bug. Fixed cast VRage.MyFixedPoint error when opening games with Meteors. Added checkbox when Importing 3d model to Export ship, to fill it as solid.CS-Script Source: Release v3.8.5: Fixed problem with the warnings getting hidden in case of the successful compilation cs-script.7z - CS-Script Suite (binaries, documentation, samples) cs-script.ExtensionPack.7z - CS-Script Extension Pack (additional binaries and samples) cs-scriptDocs.7z - CS-Script DocumentationOutlook 2013 Backup Add-In: Outlook Backup Add-In 1.3: Changelog for new version: Added button in config-window to reset the last backup-time (this will trigger the backup after closing outlook) Minimum interval set to 0 (backup at each closing of outlook) Catch exception when data store entry is corrupt Added two parameters (prefix and suffix) to automatically rename the backup file Updated VSTO-Runtime to 10.0.50325 Upgraded project to Visual Studio 2013 Added optional command to run after backup (e.g. pack backup files, ...) Add...babelua: 1.6.7.0: V1.6.7.0 - 2014.8.21New feature: add a file search window ( ctrl+1 or ALT+L ), like The file search in VC Assistant; Stability improvement: performance improvement when BabeLua load/unload; performance improvement when debugger load lua files;Open NFe: RDI Open NFe 3.0 (alpha): Atualização para o layout 3.10 da NFe.MSSQL Deployment Tool: Microsoft SQL Deploy Tool v1.3.1: MicrosoftSqlDeployTool: v1.3.1.38348 What's changed? Update namespace and assembly name. Bug fixing.SharePoint 2013 Search Query Tool: SharePoint 2013 Search Query Tool v2.1: Layout improvements Bug fixes Stores auth method and user name Moved experimental settings to Advanced boxCtrlAltStudio Viewer: CtrlAltStudio Viewer 1.2.2.41183 Alpha: This alpha of the CtrlAltStudio Viewer provides some preliminary Oculus Rift DK2 support. For more details, see the release notes linked to below. Release notes: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/release-notes/1-2-2-41183-alpha Support info: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/support Privacy policy: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/privacy Disclaimer: This software is not provided or supported by Linden Lab, the makers of Second Life.HDD Guardian: HDD Guardian 0.6.1: New: package now include smartctl 6.3; Removed: standard notification e-mail. Now you have to set your mail server to send e-mail alerts; Bugfix: USB detection error; custom e-mail server settings issue; bottom panel displays a wrong ATA error count.VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.62: changes NEW: Added Support for 'MadImage.org' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgSpot.org' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgClick.net' links NEW: Added Support for 'Imaaage.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'Image-Bugs.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'Pictomania.org' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgDap.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'FileSpit.com' links FIXED: 'ImgSee.me' linksExchange Database Recovery With and Without Log Files is Possible: Exchange Recovery Application: This Exchange Recovery Software comes with free trial edition which helps users to inspect the working capability of the recovery process. Download free demo version and repair inaccessible mailboxes from EDB file without any obstructions.Linq 4 Javascript: Version 2.4: Minor Changes Made Added Count() and Count(with where clause) Distinct will now use a dictionary instead of a custom dictionary object Organize the unit tests. The variable names will actually make sense and won't be 2 letters. SelectMany will now use the queryable logic.Office / SharePoint 2013 Continuous Integration with TFS 2012: 1.1.0.1: Fixed the following issues in TfsDropDrownloader: Updated to make it work with VS 2013 (including VS 2013 updates) in addition to VS2012. Extend the timeout of downloading drops from 100 seconds to 1 hour. Added more trouble shooting information in the output.CRM Solution CommandLine Helper: CRM Solution Cmd Helper 1.0.0.4: Includes : - Bug fix = Export argument validation : check directory path existence (thanks mszlapa)Office To PDF: OfficeToPDF 1.4: Adds support for additional file types: * mpp (requires MS Project >= 2010) * vsdx, vsdm (requires MS Visio >= 2013) * csv * odt, odc, odp * pot, potm, potx Improves stability and clean removal of COM objects. Adds new flags: * /verbose - to be more verbose when running * /markup - to allow document markup in the PDF when converting Word documents * /excel_max_rows - adds a maximum limit on the number of rows a worksheet can contain when converting Excel documents * /pdfa - crea...MongoRepository: MongoRepository 1.6.6: Installing using NuGet (recommended)MongoRepository is now a NuGet package for your convenience. Step-by-step instructions can be found in Installing MongoRepository using NuGet Installing using BinariesYou can also choose to download the binaries instead of using NuGet. There are 2 downloads: mongorepository_full.x.x.x contains all binaries required (MongoRepository and the 10gen C# driver) mongorepository.x.x.x contains only the MongoRepository binary Make sure you reference MongoReposit...Cryptography Enumerations JavaScript Shell: Cryptography Enumerations JavaScript Shell 1.0.0: First ReleaseCMake Tools for Visual Studio: CMake Tools for Visual Studio 1.2: This release adds the following new features and bug fixes from CMake Tools for Visual Studio 1.1: Added support for CMake 3.0. Added support for word completion. Added IntelliSense support for the CMAKEHOSTSYSTEM_INFORMATION command. Fixed syntax highlighting for tokens beginning with escape sequences. Fixed issue uninstalling CMake Tools for Visual Studio after Visual Studio has been uninstalled.GW2 Personal Assistant Overlay: GW2 Personal Assistant Overlay 1.1: Overview1.1 is the second 'stable' release of the GW2 Personal Assistant Overlay. This version includes just a couple of very minor features and some minor bug fixes. For details regarding installation, setup, and general use, see Documentation. Note: If you were using a previous version, you will probably want to copy over the following user settings files: GW2PAO.DungeonSettings.xml GW2PAO.EventSettings.xml GW2PAO.WvWSettings.xml GW2PAO.ZoneCompletionSettings.xml New FeaturesAdded new "No...New Projects3D Projectile: A 3D Projectile program showing the motion of a ballASP.NET Web Application Starter Kit: This project template is an ASP.NET solution skeleton for a typical web application or single-page application (SPA).Behaving - Behaviour Tree for C#: Behaviour is a Behaviour Tree implementation in C#.Kinect Stream Saver Application _SDK 2: This application is developed based on a sample called "ColorBasics-D2D C++" developed by Microsoft corporation. (Compatible with SDK 2: K4W v2 Dev Preview)MVC Bootstrap Paginator: The MVC Bootstrap Paginator is lightweight and easy to use. It's works out of the box and requires minimal configuration.NuGet Reference Switcher: NuGet Reference Switcher is a Visual Studio extension which can be used to automatically switch NuGet DLL references to project references and vice-versa. QKit: A WP8.1 library that provides various controls and classes that will help developers quickly and easily augment their apps to behave more like native apps.SharePoint 2013 Document Icon Linker: Links the document icon in library views to the document.SharePoint Autocomplete People Search: SharePoint People SearchWADM: WADM

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, August 22, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, August 22, 2014Popular ReleasesQuickMon: Version 3.22: This release add two important changes. 1. Config variables at the monitor pack level (global to entire monitor pack for all Collectors) 2. The QuickMon (Windows) service now automatically reloads monitor packs that have been changed since it was started. This means you don't have to restart the service for changes to take effect.SSIS ReportGeneratorTask: ReportGenerator Task 1.8: New version of the SSIS Report Generator Task that supports SQL Server 2008, 2012 and 2014. In addition to minor bug fixes Multi-Value Parameters and Execution Information were integrated. The complete variable and parameter assignment is now a string and can be set dynamically.Corefig for Windows Server 2012 Core and Hyper-V Server 2012: Corefig 1.1.2 ISO: FixesUpdated Hyper-V scripts to use version 2 of the WMI tree. Updated the Hyper-V check for saved VM to look for the proper identifier. Fixed text issues with the licensing tab (thanks to briangw for rooting this problem out). EnhancementsNew (and improved) version number in Corefig.psd1.Outlook 2013 Backup Add-In: Outlook Backup Add-In 1.3: Changelog for new version: Added button in config-window to reset the last backup-time (this will trigger the backup after closing outlook) Minimum interval set to 0 (backup at each closing of outlook) Catch exception when data store entry is corrupt Added two parameters (prefix and suffix) to automatically rename the backup file Updated VSTO-Runtime to 10.0.50325 Upgraded project to Visual Studio 2013 Added optional command to run after backup (e.g. pack backup files, ...) Add...babelua: 1.6.7.0: V1.6.7.0 - 2014.8.21New feature: add a file search window ( ctrl+1 or ALT+L ), like The file search in VC Assistant; Stability improvement: performance improvement when BabeLua load/unload; performance improvement when debugger load lua files;File Explorer for WPF: FileExplorer3_20August2014: Please see Aug14 Update.Open NFe: RDI Open NFe 3.0 (alpha): Atualização para o layout 3.10 da NFe.ODBC Connect: v1.0: ODBC Connect executables for both 32bit and 64bit ODBC data sourcesMSSQL Deployment Tool: Microsoft SQL Deploy Tool v1.3.1: MicrosoftSqlDeployTool: v1.3.1.38348 What's changed? Update namespace and assembly name. Bug fixing.SharePoint 2013 Search Query Tool: SharePoint 2013 Search Query Tool v2.1: Layout improvements Bug fixes Stores auth method and user name Moved experimental settings to Advanced boxCtrlAltStudio Viewer: CtrlAltStudio Viewer 1.2.2.41183 Alpha: This alpha of the CtrlAltStudio Viewer provides some preliminary Oculus Rift DK2 support. For more details, see the release notes linked to below. Release notes: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/release-notes/1-2-2-41183-alpha Support info: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/support Privacy policy: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/privacy Disclaimer: This software is not provided or supported by Linden Lab, the makers of Second Life.HDD Guardian: HDD Guardian 0.6.1: New: package now include smartctl 6.3; Removed: standard notification e-mail. Now you have to set your mail server to send e-mail alerts; Bugfix: USB detection error; custom e-mail server settings issue; bottom panel displays a wrong ATA error count.VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.62: changes NEW: Added Support for 'MadImage.org' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgSpot.org' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgClick.net' links NEW: Added Support for 'Imaaage.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'Image-Bugs.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'Pictomania.org' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgDap.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'FileSpit.com' links FIXED: 'ImgSee.me' linksMagick.NET: Magick.NET 7.0.0.0001: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 7-Beta.CMake Tools for Visual Studio: CMake Tools for Visual Studio 1.2: This release adds the following new features and bug fixes from CMake Tools for Visual Studio 1.1: Added support for CMake 3.0. Added support for word completion. Added IntelliSense support for the CMAKEHOSTSYSTEM_INFORMATION command. Fixed syntax highlighting for tokens beginning with escape sequences. Fixed issue uninstalling CMake Tools for Visual Studio after Visual Studio has been uninstalled.GW2 Personal Assistant Overlay: GW2 Personal Assistant Overlay 1.1: Overview1.1 is the second 'stable' release of the GW2 Personal Assistant Overlay. This version includes just a couple of very minor features and some minor bug fixes. For details regarding installation, setup, and general use, see Documentation. Note: If you were using a previous version, you will probably want to copy over the following user settings files: GW2PAO.DungeonSettings.xml GW2PAO.EventSettings.xml GW2PAO.WvWSettings.xml GW2PAO.ZoneCompletionSettings.xml New FeaturesAdded new "No...Fluentx: Fluentx v1.5.3: Added few more extension methods.fastJSON: v2.1.2: 2.1.2 - bug fix circular referencesJPush.NET: JPush Server SDK 1.2.1 (For JPush V3): Assembly: 1.2.1.24728 JPush REST API Version: v3 JPush Documentation Reference .NET framework: v4.0 or above. Sample: class: JPushClientV3 2014 Augest 15th.SEToolbox: SEToolbox 01.043.008 Release 1: Changed ship/station names to use new DisplayName instead of Beacon/Antenna. Fixed issue with updated SE binaries 01.043.018 using new Voxel Material definitions.New Projects1thManage: GDT for erevery oneCreateProjectOnCodePlex: This is the first project for CoderCamps.HEAD FIRST C# LAB 1 : A DAY AT THE RACES: This has been provided for educational purposes and general discussion to improve coding practices associated with the resources detailed within Head First C#.Introduce Audit logging to your EF application using Repository & Unit of Work: Introduce Auditing in your application that uses Entity Framework by utilizing the Repository and Unit of Work design patterns.License Registration (C++): Allow to create demo version, activate or not a module.MS Word SharepointWiki Plugin: Scope of the Plugin is to enable a Post to a Sharepoint Wiki from within MS Word with Formatted Text and Images.Send My Zip: This app will help you to send the files were zipped then send the email about password information. This project is currently in setup mode and only availablewinhttp: this is a project for http/https download.Wix Builder: WixBuilder focusses on easily generating a WiX script from a project ouput, compile and link it into msi installer using the WiX Toolset.XiamiSig: ????????。

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• nginx + apache subdomain redirection fault

  - by webwolf

  i really need your advice folks since i'm experiencing some troubles with nginx & apache2 subdomains configs first of all, there's a site (say, site.com) and two subdomains (links.site.com and shop.site.com) whose files are physically located at the same level of FS hierarchy as the site.com itself my hoster has configured both apache and nginx by my request, but it still doesn't work as it used to both of subdomains point to the main page of site.com for some unknown and implicit (for me) reason :( my assumption is that's happen because site.com record is placed first in both configs?!.. please help me solve this out! every opinion would be appreciated =) nginx.conf: server { listen 95.169.187.234:80; server_name site.com www.site.com ; access_log /home/www/site.com/logs/nginx.access.log main; location ~* ^.+\.(jpeg|jpg|gif|png|ico|css|zip|tgz|gz|rar|bz2|doc|xls|exe|pdf|ppt|txt|tar|mid|midi|wav|bmp|rtf|js|swf|avi|mp3|mpg|mpeg|asf|vmw)$ { expires 30d; root /home/www/site.com/www; } #error_page 404 /404.html; # redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html # error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html; location = /50x.html { root html; } # deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root # concurs with nginx's one # location ~ /\.ht { deny all; } location / { set $referer $http_referer; proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080/; proxy_redirect off; proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; proxy_set_header Referer $referer; proxy_set_header Host $host; client_max_body_size 10m; client_body_buffer_size 64k; proxy_connect_timeout 90; proxy_send_timeout 90; proxy_read_timeout 90; proxy_buffer_size 4k; proxy_buffers 4 32k; proxy_busy_buffers_size 64k; proxy_temp_file_write_size 64k; } } server { listen 95.169.187.234:80; server_name links.site.com www.links.site.com ; access_log /home/www/links.site.com/logs/nginx.access.log main; location ~* ^.+\.(jpeg|jpg|gif|png|ico|css|zip|tgz|gz|rar|bz2|doc|xls|exe|pdf|ppt|txt|tar|mid|midi|wav|bmp|rtf|js|swf|avi|mp3|mpg|mpeg|asf|vmw)$ { expires 30d; root /home/www/links.site.com/www; } #error_page 404 /404.html; # redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html # error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html; location = /50x.html { root html; } # deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root # concurs with nginx's one # location ~ /\.ht { deny all; } location / { set $referer $http_referer; proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080/; proxy_redirect off; proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; proxy_set_header Referer $referer; proxy_set_header Host $host; client_max_body_size 10m; client_body_buffer_size 64k; proxy_connect_timeout 90; proxy_send_timeout 90; proxy_read_timeout 90; proxy_buffer_size 4k; proxy_buffers 4 32k; proxy_busy_buffers_size 64k; proxy_temp_file_write_size 64k; } } server { listen 95.169.187.234:80; server_name shop.site.com www.shop.site.com ; access_log /home/www/shop.site.com/logs/nginx.access.log main; location ~* ^.+\.(jpeg|jpg|gif|png|ico|css|zip|tgz|gz|rar|bz2|doc|xls|exe|pdf|ppt|txt|tar|mid|midi|wav|bmp|rtf|js|swf|avi|mp3|mpg|mpeg|asf|vmw)$ { expires 30d; root /home/www/shop.site.com/www; } #error_page 404 /404.html; # redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html # error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html; location = /50x.html { root html; } # deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root # concurs with nginx's one # location ~ /\.ht { deny all; } location / { set $referer $http_referer; proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080/; proxy_redirect off; proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; proxy_set_header Referer $referer; proxy_set_header Host $host; client_max_body_size 10m; client_body_buffer_size 64k; proxy_connect_timeout 90; proxy_send_timeout 90; proxy_read_timeout 90; proxy_buffer_size 4k; proxy_buffers 4 32k; proxy_busy_buffers_size 64k; proxy_temp_file_write_size 64k; } } httpd.conf: # ServerRoot "/usr/local/apache2" PidFile /var/run/httpd.pid Timeout 300 KeepAlive On MaxKeepAliveRequests 100 KeepAliveTimeout 15 Listen 127.0.0.1:8080 NameVirtualHost 127.0.0.1:8080 ... #Listen *:80 NameVirtualHost *:80 ServerName www.site.com ServerAlias site.com UseCanonicalName Off CustomLog /home/www/site.com/logs/custom_log combined ErrorLog /home/www/site.com/logs/error_log DocumentRoot /home/www/site.com/www AllowOverride All Options +FollowSymLinks Options -MultiViews Options -Indexes Options Includes Order allow,deny Allow from all DirectoryIndex index.html index.htm index.php ServerName www.links.site.com ServerAlias links.site.com UseCanonicalName Off CustomLog /home/www/links.site.com/logs/custom_log combined ErrorLog /home/www/links.site.com/logs/error_log DocumentRoot /home/www/links.site.com/www AllowOverride All Options +FollowSymLinks Options -MultiViews Options -Indexes Options Includes Order allow,deny Allow from all DirectoryIndex index.html index.htm index.php ServerName www.shop.site.com ServerAlias shop.site.com UseCanonicalName Off CustomLog /home/www/shop.site.com/logs/custom_log combined ErrorLog /home/www/shop.site.com/logs/error_log DocumentRoot /home/www/shop.site.com/www AllowOverride All Options +FollowSymLinks Options -MultiViews Options -Indexes Options Includes Order allow,deny Allow from all DirectoryIndex index.html index.htm index.php # if DSO load module first: LoadModule rpaf_module modules/mod_rpaf-2.0.so RPAFenable On RPAFsethostname On RPAFproxy_ips 127.0.0.1 RPAFheader X-Forwarded-For Include conf/virthost/*.conf

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• Zen and the Art of File and Folder Organization

  - by Mark Virtue

  Is your desk a paragon of neatness, or does it look like a paper-bomb has gone off? If you’ve been putting off getting organized because the task is too huge or daunting, or you don’t know where to start, we’ve got 40 tips to get you on the path to zen mastery of your filing system. For all those readers who would like to get their files and folders organized, or, if they’re already organized, better organized—we have compiled a complete guide to getting organized and staying organized, a comprehensive article that will hopefully cover every possible tip you could want. Signs that Your Computer is Poorly Organized If your computer is a mess, you’re probably already aware of it.  But just in case you’re not, here are some tell-tale signs: Your Desktop has over 40 icons on it “My Documents” contains over 300 files and 60 folders, including MP3s and digital photos You use the Windows’ built-in search facility whenever you need to find a file You can’t find programs in the out-of-control list of programs in your Start Menu You save all your Word documents in one folder, all your spreadsheets in a second folder, etc Any given file that you’re looking for may be in any one of four different sets of folders But before we start, here are some quick notes: We’re going to assume you know what files and folders are, and how to create, save, rename, copy and delete them The organization principles described in this article apply equally to all computer systems.  However, the screenshots here will reflect how things look on Windows (usually Windows 7).  We will also mention some useful features of Windows that can help you get organized. Everyone has their own favorite methodology of organizing and filing, and it’s all too easy to get into “My Way is Better than Your Way” arguments.  The reality is that there is no perfect way of getting things organized.  When I wrote this article, I tried to keep a generalist and objective viewpoint.  I consider myself to be unusually well organized (to the point of obsession, truth be told), and I’ve had 25 years experience in collecting and organizing files on computers.  So I’ve got a lot to say on the subject.  But the tips I have described here are only one way of doing it.  Hopefully some of these tips will work for you too, but please don’t read this as any sort of “right” way to do it. At the end of the article we’ll be asking you, the reader, for your own organization tips. Why Bother Organizing At All? For some, the answer to this question is self-evident. And yet, in this era of powerful desktop search software (the search capabilities built into the Windows Vista and Windows 7 Start Menus, and third-party programs like Google Desktop Search), the question does need to be asked, and answered. I have a friend who puts every file he ever creates, receives or downloads into his My Documents folder and doesn’t bother filing them into subfolders at all.  He relies on the search functionality built into his Windows operating system to help him find whatever he’s looking for.  And he always finds it.  He’s a Search Samurai.  For him, filing is a waste of valuable time that could be spent enjoying life! It’s tempting to follow suit.  On the face of it, why would anyone bother to take the time to organize their hard disk when such excellent search software is available?  Well, if all you ever want to do with the files you own is to locate and open them individually (for listening, editing, etc), then there’s no reason to ever bother doing one scrap of organization.  But consider these common tasks that are not achievable with desktop search software: Find files manually.  Often it’s not convenient, speedy or even possible to utilize your desktop search software to find what you want.  It doesn’t work 100% of the time, or you may not even have it installed.  Sometimes its just plain faster to go straight to the file you want, if you know it’s in a particular sub-folder, rather than trawling through hundreds of search results. Find groups of similar files (e.g. all your “work” files, all the photos of your Europe holiday in 2008, all your music videos, all the MP3s from Dark Side of the Moon, all your letters you wrote to your wife, all your tax returns).  Clever naming of the files will only get you so far.  Sometimes it’s the date the file was created that’s important, other times it’s the file format, and other times it’s the purpose of the file.  How do you name a collection of files so that they’re easy to isolate based on any of the above criteria?  Short answer, you can’t. Move files to a new computer.  It’s time to upgrade your computer.  How do you quickly grab all the files that are important to you?  Or you decide to have two computers now – one for home and one for work.  How do you quickly isolate only the work-related files to move them to the work computer? Synchronize files to other computers.  If you have more than one computer, and you need to mirror some of your files onto the other computer (e.g. your music collection), then you need a way to quickly determine which files are to be synced and which are not.  Surely you don’t want to synchronize everything? Choose which files to back up.  If your backup regime calls for multiple backups, or requires speedy backups, then you’ll need to be able to specify which files are to be backed up, and which are not.  This is not possible if they’re all in the same folder. Finally, if you’re simply someone who takes pleasure in being organized, tidy and ordered (me! me!), then you don’t even need a reason.  Being disorganized is simply unthinkable. Tips on Getting Organized Here we present our 40 best tips on how to get organized.  Or, if you’re already organized, to get better organized. Tip #1.  Choose Your Organization System Carefully The reason that most people are not organized is that it takes time.  And the first thing that takes time is deciding upon a system of organization.  This is always a matter of personal preference, and is not something that a geek on a website can tell you.  You should always choose your own system, based on how your own brain is organized (which makes the assumption that your brain is, in fact, organized). We can’t instruct you, but we can make suggestions: You may want to start off with a system based on the users of the computer.  i.e. “My Files”, “My Wife’s Files”, My Son’s Files”, etc.  Inside “My Files”, you might then break it down into “Personal” and “Business”.  You may then realize that there are overlaps.  For example, everyone may want to share access to the music library, or the photos from the school play.  So you may create another folder called “Family”, for the “common” files. You may decide that the highest-level breakdown of your files is based on the “source” of each file.  In other words, who created the files.  You could have “Files created by ME (business or personal)”, “Files created by people I know (family, friends, etc)”, and finally “Files created by the rest of the world (MP3 music files, downloaded or ripped movies or TV shows, software installation files, gorgeous desktop wallpaper images you’ve collected, etc).”  This system happens to be the one I use myself.  See below:  Mark is for files created by meVC is for files created by my company (Virtual Creations)Others is for files created by my friends and familyData is the rest of the worldAlso, Settings is where I store the configuration files and other program data files for my installed software (more on this in tip #34, below). Each folder will present its own particular set of requirements for further sub-organization.  For example, you may decide to organize your music collection into sub-folders based on the artist’s name, while your digital photos might get organized based on the date they were taken.  It can be different for every sub-folder! Another strategy would be based on “currentness”.  Files you have yet to open and look at live in one folder.  Ones that have been looked at but not yet filed live in another place.  Current, active projects live in yet another place.  All other files (your “archive”, if you like) would live in a fourth folder. (And of course, within that last folder you’d need to create a further sub-system based on one of the previous bullet points). Put some thought into this – changing it when it proves incomplete can be a big hassle!  Before you go to the trouble of implementing any system you come up with, examine a wide cross-section of the files you own and see if they will all be able to find a nice logical place to sit within your system. Tip #2.  When You Decide on Your System, Stick to It! There’s nothing more pointless than going to all the trouble of creating a system and filing all your files, and then whenever you create, receive or download a new file, you simply dump it onto your Desktop.  You need to be disciplined – forever!  Every new file you get, spend those extra few seconds to file it where it belongs!  Otherwise, in just a month or two, you’ll be worse off than before – half your files will be organized and half will be disorganized – and you won’t know which is which! Tip #3.  Choose the Root Folder of Your Structure Carefully Every data file (document, photo, music file, etc) that you create, own or is important to you, no matter where it came from, should be found within one single folder, and that one single folder should be located at the root of your C: drive (as a sub-folder of C:\).  In other words, do not base your folder structure in standard folders like “My Documents”.  If you do, then you’re leaving it up to the operating system engineers to decide what folder structure is best for you.  And every operating system has a different system!  In Windows 7 your files are found in C:\Users\YourName, whilst on Windows XP it was C:\Documents and Settings\YourName\My Documents.  In UNIX systems it’s often /home/YourName. These standard default folders tend to fill up with junk files and folders that are not at all important to you.  “My Documents” is the worst offender.  Every second piece of software you install, it seems, likes to create its own folder in the “My Documents” folder.  These folders usually don’t fit within your organizational structure, so don’t use them!  In fact, don’t even use the “My Documents” folder at all.  Allow it to fill up with junk, and then simply ignore it.  It sounds heretical, but: Don’t ever visit your “My Documents” folder!  Remove your icons/links to “My Documents” and replace them with links to the folders you created and you care about! Create your own file system from scratch!  Probably the best place to put it would be on your D: drive – if you have one.  This way, all your files live on one drive, while all the operating system and software component files live on the C: drive – simply and elegantly separated.  The benefits of that are profound.  Not only are there obvious organizational benefits (see tip #10, below), but when it comes to migrate your data to a new computer, you can (sometimes) simply unplug your D: drive and plug it in as the D: drive of your new computer (this implies that the D: drive is actually a separate physical disk, and not a partition on the same disk as C:).  You also get a slight speed improvement (again, only if your C: and D: drives are on separate physical disks). Warning:  From tip #12, below, you will see that it’s actually a good idea to have exactly the same file system structure – including the drive it’s filed on – on all of the computers you own.  So if you decide to use the D: drive as the storage system for your own files, make sure you are able to use the D: drive on all the computers you own.  If you can’t ensure that, then you can still use a clever geeky trick to store your files on the D: drive, but still access them all via the C: drive (see tip #17, below). If you only have one hard disk (C:), then create a dedicated folder that will contain all your files – something like C:\Files.  The name of the folder is not important, but make it a single, brief word. There are several reasons for this: When creating a backup regime, it’s easy to decide what files should be backed up – they’re all in the one folder! If you ever decide to trade in your computer for a new one, you know exactly which files to migrate You will always know where to begin a search for any file If you synchronize files with other computers, it makes your synchronization routines very simple.   It also causes all your shortcuts to continue to work on the other machines (more about this in tip #24, below). Once you’ve decided where your files should go, then put all your files in there – Everything!  Completely disregard the standard, default folders that are created for you by the operating system (“My Music”, “My Pictures”, etc).  In fact, you can actually relocate many of those folders into your own structure (more about that below, in tip #6). The more completely you get all your data files (documents, photos, music, etc) and all your configuration settings into that one folder, then the easier it will be to perform all of the above tasks. Once this has been done, and all your files live in one folder, all the other folders in C:\ can be thought of as “operating system” folders, and therefore of little day-to-day interest for us. Here’s a screenshot of a nicely organized C: drive, where all user files are located within the \Files folder:   Tip #4.  Use Sub-Folders This would be our simplest and most obvious tip.  It almost goes without saying.  Any organizational system you decide upon (see tip #1) will require that you create sub-folders for your files.  Get used to creating folders on a regular basis. Tip #5.  Don’t be Shy About Depth Create as many levels of sub-folders as you need.  Don’t be scared to do so.  Every time you notice an opportunity to group a set of related files into a sub-folder, do so.  Examples might include:  All the MP3s from one music CD, all the photos from one holiday, or all the documents from one client. It’s perfectly okay to put files into a folder called C:\Files\Me\From Others\Services\WestCo Bank\Statements\2009.  That’s only seven levels deep.  Ten levels is not uncommon.  Of course, it’s possible to take this too far.  If you notice yourself creating a sub-folder to hold only one file, then you’ve probably become a little over-zealous.  On the other hand, if you simply create a structure with only two levels (for example C:\Files\Work) then you really haven’t achieved any level of organization at all (unless you own only six files!).  Your “Work” folder will have become a dumping ground, just like your Desktop was, with most likely hundreds of files in it. Tip #6.  Move the Standard User Folders into Your Own Folder Structure Most operating systems, including Windows, create a set of standard folders for each of its users.  These folders then become the default location for files such as documents, music files, digital photos and downloaded Internet files.  In Windows 7, the full list is shown below: Some of these folders you may never use nor care about (for example, the Favorites folder, if you’re not using Internet Explorer as your browser).  Those ones you can leave where they are.  But you may be using some of the other folders to store files that are important to you.  Even if you’re not using them, Windows will still often treat them as the default storage location for many types of files.  When you go to save a standard file type, it can become annoying to be automatically prompted to save it in a folder that’s not part of your own file structure. But there’s a simple solution:  Move the folders you care about into your own folder structure!  If you do, then the next time you go to save a file of the corresponding type, Windows will prompt you to save it in the new, moved location. Moving the folders is easy.  Simply drag-and-drop them to the new location.  Here’s a screenshot of the default My Music folder being moved to my custom personal folder (Mark): Tip #7.  Name Files and Folders Intelligently This is another one that almost goes without saying, but we’ll say it anyway:  Do not allow files to be created that have meaningless names like Document1.doc, or folders called New Folder (2).  Take that extra 20 seconds and come up with a meaningful name for the file/folder – one that accurately divulges its contents without repeating the entire contents in the name. Tip #8.  Watch Out for Long Filenames Another way to tell if you have not yet created enough depth to your folder hierarchy is that your files often require really long names.  If you need to call a file Johnson Sales Figures March 2009.xls (which might happen to live in the same folder as Abercrombie Budget Report 2008.xls), then you might want to create some sub-folders so that the first file could be simply called March.xls, and living in the Clients\Johnson\Sales Figures\2009 folder. A well-placed file needs only a brief filename! Tip #9.  Use Shortcuts!  Everywhere! This is probably the single most useful and important tip we can offer.  A shortcut allows a file to be in two places at once. Why would you want that?  Well, the file and folder structure of every popular operating system on the market today is hierarchical.  This means that all objects (files and folders) always live within exactly one parent folder.  It’s a bit like a tree.  A tree has branches (folders) and leaves (files).  Each leaf, and each branch, is supported by exactly one parent branch, all the way back to the root of the tree (which, incidentally, is exactly why C:\ is called the “root folder” of the C: drive). That hard disks are structured this way may seem obvious and even necessary, but it’s only one way of organizing data.  There are others:  Relational databases, for example, organize structured data entirely differently.  The main limitation of hierarchical filing structures is that a file can only ever be in one branch of the tree – in only one folder – at a time.  Why is this a problem?  Well, there are two main reasons why this limitation is a problem for computer users: The “correct” place for a file, according to our organizational rationale, is very often a very inconvenient place for that file to be located.  Just because it’s correctly filed doesn’t mean it’s easy to get to.  Your file may be “correctly” buried six levels deep in your sub-folder structure, but you may need regular and speedy access to this file every day.  You could always move it to a more convenient location, but that would mean that you would need to re-file back to its “correct” location it every time you’d finished working on it.  Most unsatisfactory. A file may simply “belong” in two or more different locations within your file structure.  For example, say you’re an accountant and you have just completed the 2009 tax return for John Smith.  It might make sense to you to call this file 2009 Tax Return.doc and file it under Clients\John Smith.  But it may also be important to you to have the 2009 tax returns from all your clients together in the one place.  So you might also want to call the file John Smith.doc and file it under Tax Returns\2009.  The problem is, in a purely hierarchical filing system, you can’t put it in both places.  Grrrrr! Fortunately, Windows (and most other operating systems) offers a way for you to do exactly that:  It’s called a “shortcut” (also known as an “alias” on Macs and a “symbolic link” on UNIX systems).  Shortcuts allow a file to exist in one place, and an icon that represents the file to be created and put anywhere else you please.  In fact, you can create a dozen such icons and scatter them all over your hard disk.  Double-clicking on one of these icons/shortcuts opens up the original file, just as if you had double-clicked on the original file itself. Consider the following two icons: The one on the left is the actual Word document, while the one on the right is a shortcut that represents the Word document.  Double-clicking on either icon will open the same file.  There are two main visual differences between the icons: The shortcut will have a small arrow in the lower-left-hand corner (on Windows, anyway) The shortcut is allowed to have a name that does not include the file extension (the “.docx” part, in this case) You can delete the shortcut at any time without losing any actual data.  The original is still intact.  All you lose is the ability to get to that data from wherever the shortcut was. So why are shortcuts so great?  Because they allow us to easily overcome the main limitation of hierarchical file systems, and put a file in two (or more) places at the same time.  You will always have files that don’t play nice with your organizational rationale, and can’t be filed in only one place.  They demand to exist in two places.  Shortcuts allow this!  Furthermore, they allow you to collect your most often-opened files and folders together in one spot for convenient access.  The cool part is that the original files stay where they are, safe forever in their perfectly organized location. So your collection of most often-opened files can – and should – become a collection of shortcuts! If you’re still not convinced of the utility of shortcuts, consider the following well-known areas of a typical Windows computer: The Start Menu (and all the programs that live within it) The Quick Launch bar (or the Superbar in Windows 7) The “Favorite folders” area in the top-left corner of the Windows Explorer window (in Windows Vista or Windows 7) Your Internet Explorer Favorites or Firefox Bookmarks Each item in each of these areas is a shortcut!  Each of those areas exist for one purpose only:  For convenience – to provide you with a collection of the files and folders you access most often. It should be easy to see by now that shortcuts are designed for one single purpose:  To make accessing your files more convenient.  Each time you double-click on a shortcut, you are saved the hassle of locating the file (or folder, or program, or drive, or control panel icon) that it represents. Shortcuts allow us to invent a golden rule of file and folder organization: “Only ever have one copy of a file – never have two copies of the same file.  Use a shortcut instead” (this rule doesn’t apply to copies created for backup purposes, of course!) There are also lesser rules, like “don’t move a file into your work area – create a shortcut there instead”, and “any time you find yourself frustrated with how long it takes to locate a file, create a shortcut to it and place that shortcut in a convenient location.” So how to we create these massively useful shortcuts?  There are two main ways: “Copy” the original file or folder (click on it and type Ctrl-C, or right-click on it and select Copy):  Then right-click in an empty area of the destination folder (the place where you want the shortcut to go) and select Paste shortcut: Right-drag (drag with the right mouse button) the file from the source folder to the destination folder.  When you let go of the mouse button at the destination folder, a menu pops up: Select Create shortcuts here. Note that when shortcuts are created, they are often named something like Shortcut to Budget Detail.doc (windows XP) or Budget Detail – Shortcut.doc (Windows 7).   If you don’t like those extra words, you can easily rename the shortcuts after they’re created, or you can configure Windows to never insert the extra words in the first place (see our article on how to do this). And of course, you can create shortcuts to folders too, not just to files! Bottom line: Whenever you have a file that you’d like to access from somewhere else (whether it’s convenience you’re after, or because the file simply belongs in two places), create a shortcut to the original file in the new location. Tip #10.  Separate Application Files from Data Files Any digital organization guru will drum this rule into you.  Application files are the components of the software you’ve installed (e.g. Microsoft Word, Adobe Photoshop or Internet Explorer).  Data files are the files that you’ve created for yourself using that software (e.g. Word Documents, digital photos, emails or playlists). Software gets installed, uninstalled and upgraded all the time.  Hopefully you always have the original installation media (or downloaded set-up file) kept somewhere safe, and can thus reinstall your software at any time.  This means that the software component files are of little importance.  Whereas the files you have created with that software is, by definition, important.  It’s a good rule to always separate unimportant files from important files. So when your software prompts you to save a file you’ve just created, take a moment and check out where it’s suggesting that you save the file.  If it’s suggesting that you save the file into the same folder as the software itself, then definitely don’t follow that suggestion.  File it in your own folder!  In fact, see if you can find the program’s configuration option that determines where files are saved by default (if it has one), and change it. Tip #11.  Organize Files Based on Purpose, Not on File Type If you have, for example a folder called Work\Clients\Johnson, and within that folder you have two sub-folders, Word Documents and Spreadsheets (in other words, you’re separating “.doc” files from “.xls” files), then chances are that you’re not optimally organized.  It makes little sense to organize your files based on the program that created them.  Instead, create your sub-folders based on the purpose of the file.  For example, it would make more sense to create sub-folders called Correspondence and Financials.  It may well be that all the files in a given sub-folder are of the same file-type, but this should be more of a coincidence and less of a design feature of your organization system. Tip #12.  Maintain the Same Folder Structure on All Your Computers In other words, whatever organizational system you create, apply it to every computer that you can.  There are several benefits to this: There’s less to remember.  No matter where you are, you always know where to look for your files If you copy or synchronize files from one computer to another, then setting up the synchronization job becomes very simple Shortcuts can be copied or moved from one computer to another with ease (assuming the original files are also copied/moved).  There’s no need to find the target of the shortcut all over again on the second computer Ditto for linked files (e.g Word documents that link to data in a separate Excel file), playlists, and any files that reference the exact file locations of other files. This applies even to the drive that your files are stored on.  If your files are stored on C: on one computer, make sure they’re stored on C: on all your computers.  Otherwise all your shortcuts, playlists and linked files will stop working! Tip #13.  Create an “Inbox” Folder Create yourself a folder where you store all files that you’re currently working on, or that you haven’t gotten around to filing yet.  You can think of this folder as your “to-do” list.  You can call it “Inbox” (making it the same metaphor as your email system), or “Work”, or “To-Do”, or “Scratch”, or whatever name makes sense to you.  It doesn’t matter what you call it – just make sure you have one! Once you have finished working on a file, you then move it from the “Inbox” to its correct location within your organizational structure. You may want to use your Desktop as this “Inbox” folder.  Rightly or wrongly, most people do.  It’s not a bad place to put such files, but be careful:  If you do decide that your Desktop represents your “to-do” list, then make sure that no other files find their way there.  In other words, make sure that your “Inbox”, wherever it is, Desktop or otherwise, is kept free of junk – stray files that don’t belong there. So where should you put this folder, which, almost by definition, lives outside the structure of the rest of your filing system?  Well, first and foremost, it has to be somewhere handy.  This will be one of your most-visited folders, so convenience is key.  Putting it on the Desktop is a great option – especially if you don’t have any other folders on your Desktop:  the folder then becomes supremely easy to find in Windows Explorer: You would then create shortcuts to this folder in convenient spots all over your computer (“Favorite Links”, “Quick Launch”, etc). Tip #14.  Ensure You have Only One “Inbox” Folder Once you’ve created your “Inbox” folder, don’t use any other folder location as your “to-do list”.  Throw every incoming or created file into the Inbox folder as you create/receive it.  This keeps the rest of your computer pristine and free of randomly created or downloaded junk.  The last thing you want to be doing is checking multiple folders to see all your current tasks and projects.  Gather them all together into one folder. Here are some tips to help ensure you only have one Inbox: Set the default “save” location of all your programs to this folder. Set the default “download” location for your browser to this folder. If this folder is not your desktop (recommended) then also see if you can make a point of not putting “to-do” files on your desktop.  This keeps your desktop uncluttered and Zen-like: (the Inbox folder is in the bottom-right corner) Tip #15.  Be Vigilant about Clearing Your “Inbox” Folder This is one of the keys to staying organized.  If you let your “Inbox” overflow (i.e. allow there to be more than, say, 30 files or folders in there), then you’re probably going to start feeling like you’re overwhelmed:  You’re not keeping up with your to-do list.  Once your Inbox gets beyond a certain point (around 30 files, studies have shown), then you’ll simply start to avoid it.  You may continue to put files in there, but you’ll be scared to look at it, fearing the “out of control” feeling that all overworked, chaotic or just plain disorganized people regularly feel. So, here’s what you can do: Visit your Inbox/to-do folder regularly (at least five times per day). Scan the folder regularly for files that you have completed working on and are ready for filing.  File them immediately. Make it a source of pride to keep the number of files in this folder as small as possible.  If you value peace of mind, then make the emptiness of this folder one of your highest (computer) priorities If you know that a particular file has been in the folder for more than, say, six weeks, then admit that you’re not actually going to get around to processing it, and move it to its final resting place. Tip #16.  File Everything Immediately, and Use Shortcuts for Your Active Projects As soon as you create, receive or download a new file, store it away in its “correct” folder immediately.  Then, whenever you need to work on it (possibly straight away), create a shortcut to it in your “Inbox” (“to-do”) folder or your desktop.  That way, all your files are always in their “correct” locations, yet you still have immediate, convenient access to your current, active files.  When you finish working on a file, simply delete the shortcut. Ideally, your “Inbox” folder – and your Desktop – should contain no actual files or folders.  They should simply contain shortcuts. Tip #17.  Use Directory Symbolic Links (or Junctions) to Maintain One Unified Folder Structure Using this tip, we can get around a potential hiccup that we can run into when creating our organizational structure – the issue of having more than one drive on our computer (C:, D:, etc).  We might have files we need to store on the D: drive for space reasons, and yet want to base our organized folder structure on the C: drive (or vice-versa). Your chosen organizational structure may dictate that all your files must be accessed from the C: drive (for example, the root folder of all your files may be something like C:\Files).  And yet you may still have a D: drive and wish to take advantage of the hundreds of spare Gigabytes that it offers.  Did you know that it’s actually possible to store your files on the D: drive and yet access them as if they were on the C: drive?  And no, we’re not talking about shortcuts here (although the concept is very similar). By using the shell command mklink, you can essentially take a folder that lives on one drive and create an alias for it on a different drive (you can do lots more than that with mklink – for a full rundown on this programs capabilities, see our dedicated article).  These aliases are called directory symbolic links (and used to be known as junctions).  You can think of them as “virtual” folders.  They function exactly like regular folders, except they’re physically located somewhere else. For example, you may decide that your entire D: drive contains your complete organizational file structure, but that you need to reference all those files as if they were on the C: drive, under C:\Files.  If that was the case you could create C:\Files as a directory symbolic link – a link to D:, as follows: mklink /d c:\files d:\ Or it may be that the only files you wish to store on the D: drive are your movie collection.  You could locate all your movie files in the root of your D: drive, and then link it to C:\Files\Media\Movies, as follows: mklink /d c:\files\media\movies d:\ (Needless to say, you must run these commands from a command prompt – click the Start button, type cmd and press Enter) Tip #18. Customize Your Folder Icons This is not strictly speaking an organizational tip, but having unique icons for each folder does allow you to more quickly visually identify which folder is which, and thus saves you time when you’re finding files.  An example is below (from my folder that contains all files downloaded from the Internet): To learn how to change your folder icons, please refer to our dedicated article on the subject. Tip #19.  Tidy Your Start Menu The Windows Start Menu is usually one of the messiest parts of any Windows computer.  Every program you install seems to adopt a completely different approach to placing icons in this menu.  Some simply put a single program icon.  Others create a folder based on the name of the software.  And others create a folder based on the name of the software manufacturer.  It’s chaos, and can make it hard to find the software you want to run. Thankfully we can avoid this chaos with useful operating system features like Quick Launch, the Superbar or pinned start menu items. Even so, it would make a lot of sense to get into the guts of the Start Menu itself and give it a good once-over.  All you really need to decide is how you’re going to organize your applications.  A structure based on the purpose of the application is an obvious candidate.  Below is an example of one such structure: In this structure, Utilities means software whose job it is to keep the computer itself running smoothly (configuration tools, backup software, Zip programs, etc).  Applications refers to any productivity software that doesn’t fit under the headings Multimedia, Graphics, Internet, etc. In case you’re not aware, every icon in your Start Menu is a shortcut and can be manipulated like any other shortcut (copied, moved, deleted, etc). With the Windows Start Menu (all version of Windows), Microsoft has decided that there be two parallel folder structures to store your Start Menu shortcuts.  One for you (the logged-in user of the computer) and one for all users of the computer.  Having two parallel structures can often be redundant:  If you are the only user of the computer, then having two parallel structures is totally redundant.  Even if you have several users that regularly log into the computer, most of your installed software will need to be made available to all users, and should thus be moved out of the “just you” version of the Start Menu and into the “all users” area. To take control of your Start Menu, so you can start organizing it, you’ll need to know how to access the actual folders and shortcut files that make up the Start Menu (both versions of it).  To find these folders and files, click the Start button and then right-click on the All Programs text (Windows XP users should right-click on the Start button itself): The Open option refers to the “just you” version of the Start Menu, while the Open All Users option refers to the “all users” version.  Click on the one you want to organize. A Windows Explorer window then opens with your chosen version of the Start Menu selected.  From there it’s easy.  Double-click on the Programs folder and you’ll see all your folders and shortcuts.  Now you can delete/rename/move until it’s just the way you want it. Note:  When you’re reorganizing your Start Menu, you may want to have two Explorer windows open at the same time – one showing the “just you” version and one showing the “all users” version.  You can drag-and-drop between the windows. Tip #20.  Keep Your Start Menu Tidy Once you have a perfectly organized Start Menu, try to be a little vigilant about keeping it that way.  Every time you install a new piece of software, the icons that get created will almost certainly violate your organizational structure. So to keep your Start Menu pristine and organized, make sure you do the following whenever you install a new piece of software: Check whether the software was installed into the “just you” area of the Start Menu, or the “all users” area, and then move it to the correct area. Remove all the unnecessary icons (like the “Read me” icon, the “Help” icon (you can always open the help from within the software itself when it’s running), the “Uninstall” icon, the link(s)to the manufacturer’s website, etc) Rename the main icon(s) of the software to something brief that makes sense to you.  For example, you might like to rename Microsoft Office Word 2010 to simply Word Move the icon(s) into the correct folder based on your Start Menu organizational structure And don’t forget:  when you uninstall a piece of software, the software’s uninstall routine is no longer going to be able to remove the software’s icon from the Start Menu (because you moved and/or renamed it), so you’ll need to remove that icon manually. Tip #21.  Tidy C:\ The root of your C: drive (C:\) is a common dumping ground for files and folders – both by the users of your computer and by the software that you install on your computer.  It can become a mess. There’s almost no software these days that requires itself to be installed in C:\.  99% of the time it can and should be installed into C:\Program Files.  And as for your own files, well, it’s clear that they can (and almost always should) be stored somewhere else. In an ideal world, your C:\ folder should look like this (on Windows 7): Note that there are some system files and folders in C:\ that are usually and deliberately “hidden” (such as the Windows virtual memory file pagefile.sys, the boot loader file bootmgr, and the System Volume Information folder).  Hiding these files and folders is a good idea, as they need to stay where they are and are almost never needed to be opened or even seen by you, the user.  Hiding them prevents you from accidentally messing with them, and enhances your sense of order and well-being when you look at your C: drive folder. Tip #22.  Tidy Your Desktop The Desktop is probably the most abused part of a Windows computer (from an organization point of view).  It usually serves as a dumping ground for all incoming files, as well as holding icons to oft-used applications, plus some regularly opened files and folders.  It often ends up becoming an uncontrolled mess.  See if you can avoid this.  Here’s why… Application icons (Word, Internet Explorer, etc) are often found on the Desktop, but it’s unlikely that this is the optimum place for them.  The “Quick Launch” bar (or the Superbar in Windows 7) is always visible and so represents a perfect location to put your icons.  You’ll only be able to see the icons on your Desktop when all your programs are minimized.  It might be time to get your application icons off your desktop… You may have decided that the Inbox/To-do folder on your computer (see tip #13, above) should be your Desktop.  If so, then enough said.  Simply be vigilant about clearing it and preventing it from being polluted by junk files (see tip #15, above).  On the other hand, if your Desktop is not acting as your “Inbox” folder, then there’s no reason for it to have any data files or folders on it at all, except perhaps a couple of shortcuts to often-opened files and folders (either ongoing or current projects).  Everything else should be moved to your “Inbox” folder. In an ideal world, it might look like this: Tip #23.  Move Permanent Items on Your Desktop Away from the Top-Left Corner When files/folders are dragged onto your desktop in a Windows Explorer window, or when shortcuts are created on your Desktop from Internet Explorer, those icons are always placed in the top-left corner – or as close as they can get.  If you have other files, folders or shortcuts that you keep on the Desktop permanently, then it’s a good idea to separate these permanent icons from the transient ones, so that you can quickly identify which ones the transients are.  An easy way to do this is to move all your permanent icons to the right-hand side of your Desktop.  That should keep them separated from incoming items. Tip #24.  Synchronize If you have more than one computer, you’ll almost certainly want to share files between them.  If the computers are permanently attached to the same local network, then there’s no need to store multiple copies of any one file or folder – shortcuts will suffice.  However, if the computers are not always on the same network, then you will at some point need to copy files between them.  For files that need to permanently live on both computers, the ideal way to do this is to synchronize the files, as opposed to simply copying them. We only have room here to write a brief summary of synchronization, not a full article.  In short, there are several different types of synchronization: Where the contents of one folder are accessible anywhere, such as with Dropbox Where the contents of any number of folders are accessible anywhere, such as with Windows Live Mesh Where any files or folders from anywhere on your computer are synchronized with exactly one other computer, such as with the Windows “Briefcase”, Microsoft SyncToy, or (much more powerful, yet still free) SyncBack from 2BrightSparks.  This only works when both computers are on the same local network, at least temporarily. A great advantage of synchronization solutions is that once you’ve got it configured the way you want it, then the sync process happens automatically, every time.  Click a button (or schedule it to happen automatically) and all your files are automagically put where they’re supposed to be. If you maintain the same file and folder structure on both computers, then you can also sync files depend upon the correct location of other files, like shortcuts, playlists and office documents that link to other office documents, and the synchronized files still work on the other computer! Tip #25.  Hide Files You Never Need to See If you have your files well organized, you will often be able to tell if a file is out of place just by glancing at the contents of a folder (for example, it should be pretty obvious if you look in a folder that contains all the MP3s from one music CD and see a Word document in there).  This is a good thing – it allows you to determine if there are files out of place with a quick glance.  Yet sometimes there are files in a folder that seem out of place but actually need to be there, such as the “folder art” JPEGs in music folders, and various files in the root of the C: drive.  If such files never need to be opened by you, then a good idea is to simply hide them.  Then, the next time you glance at the folder, you won’t have to remember whether that file was supposed to be there or not, because you won’t see it at all! To hide a file, simply right-click on it and choose Properties: Then simply tick the Hidden tick-box:   Tip #26.  Keep Every Setup File These days most software is downloaded from the Internet.  Whenever you download a piece of software, keep it.  You’ll never know when you need to reinstall the software. Further, keep with it an Internet shortcut that links back to the website where you originally downloaded it, in case you ever need to check for updates. See tip #33 below for a full description of the excellence of organizing your setup files. Tip #27.  Try to Minimize the Number of Folders that Contain Both Files and Sub-folders Some of the folders in your organizational structure will contain only files.  Others will contain only sub-folders.  And you will also have some folders that contain both files and sub-folders.  You will notice slight improvements in how long it takes you to locate a file if you try to avoid this third type of folder.  It’s not always possible, of course – you’ll always have some of these folders, but see if you can avoid it. One way of doing this is to take all the leftover files that didn’t end up getting stored in a sub-folder and create a special “Miscellaneous” or “Other” folder for them. Tip #28.  Starting a Filename with an Underscore Brings it to the Top of a List Further to the previous tip, if you name that “Miscellaneous” or “Other” folder in such a way that its name begins with an underscore “_”, then it will appear at the top of the list of files/folders. The screenshot below is an example of this.  Each folder in the list contains a set of digital photos.  The folder at the top of the list, _Misc, contains random photos that didn’t deserve their own dedicated folder: Tip #29.  Clean Up those CD-ROMs and (shudder!) Floppy Disks Have you got a pile of CD-ROMs stacked on a shelf of your office?  Old photos, or files you archived off onto CD-ROM (or even worse, floppy disks!) because you didn’t have enough disk space at the time?  In the meantime have you upgraded your computer and now have 500 Gigabytes of space you don’t know what to do with?  If so, isn’t it time you tidied up that stack of disks and filed them into your gorgeous new folder structure? So what are you waiting for?  Bite the bullet, copy them all back onto your computer, file them in their appropriate folders, and then back the whole lot up onto a shiny new 1000Gig external hard drive! Useful Folders to Create This next section suggests some useful folders that you might want to create within your folder structure.  I’ve personally found them to be indispensable. The first three are all about convenience – handy folders to create and then put somewhere that you can always access instantly.  For each one, it’s not so important where the actual folder is located, but it’s very important where you put the shortcut(s) to the folder.  You might want to locate the shortcuts: On your Desktop In your “Quick Launch” area (or pinned to your Windows 7 Superbar) In your Windows Explorer “Favorite Links” area Tip #30.  Create an “Inbox” (“To-Do”) Folder This has already been mentioned in depth (see tip #13), but we wanted to reiterate its importance here.  This folder contains all the recently created, received or downloaded files that you have not yet had a chance to file away properly, and it also may contain files that you have yet to process.  In effect, it becomes a sort of “to-do list”.  It doesn’t have to be called “Inbox” – you can call it whatever you want. Tip #31.  Create a Folder where Your Current Projects are Collected Rather than going hunting for them all the time, or dumping them all on your desktop, create a special folder where you put links (or work folders) for each of the projects you’re currently working on. You can locate this folder in your “Inbox” folder, on your desktop, or anywhere at all – just so long as there’s a way of getting to it quickly, such as putting a link to it in Windows Explorer’s “Favorite Links” area: Tip #32.  Create a Folder for Files and Folders that You Regularly Open You will always have a few files that you open regularly, whether it be a spreadsheet of your current accounts, or a favorite playlist.  These are not necessarily “current projects”, rather they’re simply files that you always find yourself opening.  Typically such files would be located on your desktop (or even better, shortcuts to those files).  Why not collect all such shortcuts together and put them in their own special folder? As with the “Current Projects” folder (above), you would want to locate that folder somewhere convenient.  Below is an example of a folder called “Quick links”, with about seven files (shortcuts) in it, that is accessible through the Windows Quick Launch bar: See tip #37 below for a full explanation of the power of the Quick Launch bar. Tip #33.  Create a “Set-ups” Folder A typical computer has dozens of applications installed on it.  For each piece of software, there are often many different pieces of information you need to keep track of, including: The original installation setup file(s).  This can be anything from a simple 100Kb setup.exe file you downloaded from a website, all the way up to a 4Gig ISO file that you copied from a DVD-ROM that you purchased. The home page of the software manufacturer (in case you need to look up something on their support pages, their forum or their online help) The page containing the download link for your actual file (in case you need to re-download it, or download an upgraded version) The serial number Your proof-of-purchase documentation Any other template files, plug-ins, themes, etc that also need to get installed For each piece of software, it’s a great idea to gather all of these files together and put them in a single folder.  The folder can be the name of the software (plus possibly a very brief description of what it’s for – in case you can’t remember what the software does based in its name).  Then you would gather all of these folders together into one place, and call it something like “Software” or “Setups”. If you have enough of these folders (I have several hundred, being a geek, collected over 20 years), then you may want to further categorize them.  My own categorization structure is based on “platform” (operating system): The last seven folders each represents one platform/operating system, while _Operating Systems contains set-up files for installing the operating systems themselves.  _Hardware contains ROMs for hardware I own, such as routers. Within the Windows folder (above), you can see the beginnings of the vast library of software I’ve compiled over the years: An example of a typical application folder looks like this: Tip #34.  Have a “Settings” Folder We all know that our documents are important.  So are our photos and music files.  We save all of these files into folders, and then locate them afterwards and double-click on them to open them.  But there are many files that are important to us that can’t be saved into folders, and then searched for and double-clicked later on.  These files certainly contain important information that we need, but are often created internally by an application, and saved wherever that application feels is appropriate. A good example of this is the “PST” file that Outlook creates for us and uses to store all our emails, contacts, appointments and so forth.  Another example would be the collection of Bookmarks that Firefox stores on your behalf. And yet another example would be the customized settings and configuration files of our all our software.  Granted, most Windows programs store their configuration in the Registry, but there are still many programs that use configuration files to store their settings. Imagine if you lost all of the above files!  And yet, when people are backing up their computers, they typically only back up the files they know about – those that are stored in the “My Documents” folder, etc.  If they had a hard disk failure or their computer was lost or stolen, their backup files would not include some of the most vital files they owned.  Also, when migrating to a new computer, it’s vital to ensure that these files make the journey. It can be a very useful idea to create yourself a folder to store all your “settings” – files that are important to you but which you never actually search for by name and double-click on to open them.  Otherwise, next time you go to set up a new computer just the way you want it, you’ll need to spend hours recreating the configuration of your previous computer! So how to we get our important files into this folder?  Well, we have a few options: Some programs (such as Outlook and its PST files) allow you to place these files wherever you want.  If you delve into the program’s options, you will find a setting somewhere that controls the location of the important settings files (or “personal storage” – PST – when it comes to Outlook) Some programs do not allow you to change such locations in any easy way, but if you get into the Registry, you can sometimes find a registry key that refers to the location of the file(s).  Simply move the file into your Settings folder and adjust the registry key to refer to the new location. Some programs stubbornly refuse to allow their settings files to be placed anywhere other then where they stipulate.  When faced with programs like these, you have three choices:  (1) You can ignore those files, (2) You can copy the files into your Settings folder (let’s face it – settings don’t change very often), or (3) you can use synchronization software, such as the Windows Briefcase, to make synchronized copies of all your files in your Settings folder.  All you then have to do is to remember to run your sync software periodically (perhaps just before you run your backup software!). There are some other things you may decide to locate inside this new “Settings” folder: Exports of registry keys (from the many applications that store their configurations in the Registry).  This is useful for backup purposes or for migrating to a new computer Notes you’ve made about all the specific customizations you have made to a particular piece of software (so that you’ll know how to do it all again on your next computer) Shortcuts to webpages that detail how to tweak certain aspects of your operating system or applications so they are just the way you like them (such as how to remove the words “Shortcut to” from the beginning of newly created shortcuts).  In other words, you’d want to create shortcuts to half the pages on the How-To Geek website! Here’s an example of a “Settings” folder: Windows Features that Help with Organization This section details some of the features of Microsoft Windows that are a boon to anyone hoping to stay optimally organized. Tip #35.  Use the “Favorite Links” Area to Access Oft-Used Folders Once you’ve created your great new filing system, work out which folders you access most regularly, or which serve as great starting points for locating the rest of the files in your folder structure, and then put links to those folders in your “Favorite Links” area of the left-hand side of the Windows Explorer window (simply called “Favorites” in Windows 7):   Some ideas for folders you might want to add there include: Your “Inbox” folder (or whatever you’ve called it) – most important! The base of your filing structure (e.g. C:\Files) A folder containing shortcuts to often-accessed folders on other computers around the network (shown above as Network Folders) A folder containing shortcuts to your current projects (unless that folder is in your “Inbox” folder) Getting folders into this area is very simple – just locate the folder you’re interested in and drag it there! Tip #36.  Customize the Places Bar in the File/Open and File/Save Boxes Consider the screenshot below: The highlighted icons (collectively known as the “Places Bar”) can be customized to refer to any folder location you want, allowing instant access to any part of your organizational structure. Note:  These File/Open and File/Save boxes have been superseded by new versions that use the Windows Vista/Windows 7 “Favorite Links”, but the older versions (shown above) are still used by a surprisingly large number of applications. The easiest way to customize these icons is to use the Group Policy Editor, but not everyone has access to this program.  If you do, open it up and navigate to: User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Explorer > Common Open File Dialog If you don’t have access to the Group Policy Editor, then you’ll need to get into the Registry.  Navigate to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft  \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Policies \ comdlg32 \ Placesbar It should then be easy to make the desired changes.  Log off and log on again to allow the changes to take effect. Tip #37.  Use the Quick Launch Bar as a Application and File Launcher That Quick Launch bar (to the right of the Start button) is a lot more useful than people give it credit for.  Most people simply have half a dozen icons in it, and use it to start just those programs.  But it can actually be used to instantly access just about anything in your filing system: For complete instructions on how to set this up, visit our dedicated article on this topic. Tip #38.  Put a Shortcut to Windows Explorer into Your Quick Launch Bar This is only necessary in Windows Vista and Windows XP.  The Microsoft boffins finally got wise and added it to the Windows 7 Superbar by default. Windows Explorer – the program used for managing your files and folders – is one of the most useful programs in Windows.  Anyone who considers themselves serious about being organized needs instant access to this program at any time.  A great place to create a shortcut to this program is in the Windows XP and Windows Vista “Quick Launch” bar: To get it there, locate it in your Start Menu (usually under “Accessories”) and then right-drag it down into your Quick Launch bar (and create a copy). Tip #39.  Customize the Starting Folder for Your Windows 7 Explorer Superbar Icon If you’re on Windows 7, your Superbar will include a Windows Explorer icon.  Clicking on the icon will launch Windows Explorer (of course), and will start you off in your “Libraries” folder.  Libraries may be fine as a starting point, but if you have created yourself an “Inbox” folder, then it would probably make more sense to start off in this folder every time you launch Windows Explorer. To change this default/starting folder location, then first right-click the Explorer icon in the Superbar, and then right-click Properties:Then, in Target field of the Windows Explorer Properties box that appears, type %windir%\explorer.exe followed by the path of the folder you wish to start in.  For example: %windir%\explorer.exe C:\Files If that folder happened to be on the Desktop (and called, say, “Inbox”), then you would use the following cleverness: %windir%\explorer.exe shell:desktop\Inbox Then click OK and test it out. Tip #40.  Ummmmm…. No, that’s it.  I can’t think of another one.  That’s all of the tips I can come up with.  I only created this one because 40 is such a nice round number… Case Study – An Organized PC To finish off the article, I have included a few screenshots of my (main) computer (running Vista).  The aim here is twofold: To give you a sense of what it looks like when the above, sometimes abstract, tips are applied to a real-life computer, and To offer some ideas about folders and structure that you may want to steal to use on your own PC. Let’s start with the C: drive itself.  Very minimal.  All my files are contained within C:\Files.  I’ll confine the rest of the case study to this folder: That folder contains the following: Mark: My personal files VC: My business (Virtual Creations, Australia) Others contains files created by friends and family Data contains files from the rest of the world (can be thought of as “public” files, usually downloaded from the Net) Settings is described above in tip #34 The Data folder contains the following sub-folders: Audio:  Radio plays, audio books, podcasts, etc Development:  Programmer and developer resources, sample source code, etc (see below) Humour:  Jokes, funnies (those emails that we all receive) Movies:  Downloaded and ripped movies (all legal, of course!), their scripts, DVD covers, etc. Music:  (see below) Setups:  Installation files for software (explained in full in tip #33) System:  (see below) TV:  Downloaded TV shows Writings:  Books, instruction manuals, etc (see below) The Music folder contains the following sub-folders: Album covers:  JPEG scans Guitar tabs:  Text files of guitar sheet music Lists:  e.g. “Top 1000 songs of all time” Lyrics:  Text files MIDI:  Electronic music files MP3 (representing 99% of the Music folder):  MP3s, either ripped from CDs or downloaded, sorted by artist/album name Music Video:  Video clips Sheet Music:  usually PDFs The Data\Writings folder contains the following sub-folders: (all pretty self-explanatory) The Data\Development folder contains the following sub-folders: Again, all pretty self-explanatory (if you’re a geek) The Data\System folder contains the following sub-folders: These are usually themes, plug-ins and other downloadable program-specific resources. The Mark folder contains the following sub-folders: From Others:  Usually letters that other people (friends, family, etc) have written to me For Others:  Letters and other things I have created for other people Green Book:  None of your business Playlists:  M3U files that I have compiled of my favorite songs (plus one M3U playlist file for every album I own) Writing:  Fiction, philosophy and other musings of mine Mark Docs:  Shortcut to C:\Users\Mark Settings:  Shortcut to C:\Files\Settings\Mark The Others folder contains the following sub-folders: The VC (Virtual Creations, my business – I develop websites) folder contains the following sub-folders: And again, all of those are pretty self-explanatory. Conclusion These tips have saved my sanity and helped keep me a productive geek, but what about you? What tips and tricks do you have to keep your files organized?  Please share them with us in the comments.  Come on, don’t be shy… Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Fix For When Windows Explorer in Vista Stops Showing File NamesWhy Did Windows Vista’s Music Folder Icon Turn Yellow?Print or Create a Text File List of the Contents in a Directory the Easy WayCustomize the Windows 7 or Vista Send To MenuAdd Copy To / Move To on Windows 7 or Vista Right-Click Menu TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Track Daily Goals With 42Goals Video Toolbox is a Superb Online Video Editor Fun with 47 charts and graphs Tomorrow is Mother’s Day Check the Average Speed of YouTube Videos You’ve Watched OutlookStatView Scans and Displays General Usage Statistics

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• MVC Portable Areas Enhancement &ndash; Embedded Resource Controller

  - by Steve Michelotti

  MvcContrib contains a feature called Portable Areas which I’ve recently blogged about. In short, portable areas provide a way to distribute MVC binary components as simple .NET assemblies where the aspx/ascx files are actually compiled into the assembly as embedded resources. This is an extremely cool feature but once you start building robust portable areas, you’ll also want to be able to access other external files like css and javascript.  After my recent post suggesting portable areas be expanded to include other embedded resources, Eric Hexter asked me if I’d like to contribute the code to MvcContrib (which of course I did!). Embedded resources are stored in a case-sensitive way in .NET assemblies and the existing embedded view engine inside MvcContrib already took this into account. Obviously, we’d want the same case sensitivity handling to be taken into account for any embedded resource so my job consisted of 1) adding the Embedded Resource Controller, and 2) a little refactor to extract the logic that deals with embedded resources so that the embedded view engine and the embedded resource controller could both leverage it and, therefore, keep the code DRY. The embedded resource controller targets these scenarios: External image files that are referenced in an <img> tag External files referenced like css or JavaScript files Image files referenced inside css files Embedded Resources Walkthrough This post will describe a walkthrough of using the embedded resource controller in your portable areas to include the scenarios outlined above. I will build a trivial “Quick Links” widget to illustrate the concepts. The portable area registration is the starting point for all portable areas. The MvcContrib.PortableAreas.EmbeddedResourceController is optional functionality – you must opt-in if you want to use it.  To do this, you simply “register” it by providing a route in your area registration that uses it like this: 1: context.MapRoute("ResourceRoute", "quicklinks/resource/{resourceName}", 2: new { controller = "EmbeddedResource", action = "Index" }, 3: new string[] { "MvcContrib.PortableAreas" }); First, notice that I can specify any route I want (e.g., “quicklinks/resources/…”).  Second, notice that I need to include the “MvcContrib.PortableAreas” namespace as the fourth parameter so that the framework is able to find the EmbeddedResourceController at runtime. The handling of embedded views and embedded resources have now been merged.  Therefore, the call to: 1: RegisterTheViewsInTheEmmeddedViewEngine(GetType()); has now been removed (breaking change).  It has been replaced with: 1: RegisterAreaEmbeddedResources(); Other than that, the portable area registration remains unchanged. The solution structure for the static files in my portable area looks like this: I’ve got a css file in a folder called “Content” as well as a couple of image files in a folder called “images”. To reference these in my aspx/ascx code, all of have to do is this: 1: <link href="<%= Url.Resource("Content.QuickLinks.css") %>" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> 2: <img src="<%= Url.Resource("images.globe.png") %>" /> This results in the following HTML mark up: 1: <link href="/quicklinks/resource/Content.QuickLinks.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> 2: <img src="/quicklinks/resource/images.globe.png" /> The Url.Resource() method is now included in MvcContrib as well. Make sure you import the “MvcContrib” namespace in your views. Next, I have to following html to render the quick links: 1: <ul class="links"> 2: <li><a href="http://www.google.com">Google</a></li> 3: <li><a href="http://www.bing.com">Bing</a></li> 4: <li><a href="http://www.yahoo.com">Yahoo</a></li> 5: </ul> Notice the <ul> tag has a class called “links”. This is defined inside my QuickLinks.css file and looks like this: 1: ul.links li 2: { 3: background: url(/quicklinks/resource/images.navigation.png) left 4px no-repeat; 4: padding-left: 20px; 5: margin-bottom: 4px; 6: } On line 3 we’re able to refer to the url for the background property. As a final note, although we already have complete control over the location of the embedded resources inside the assembly, what if we also want control over the physical URL routes as well. This point was raised by John Nelson in this post. This has been taken into account as well. For example, suppose you want your physical url to look like this: 1: <img src="/quicklinks/images/globe.png" /> instead of the same corresponding URL shown above (i.e., “/quicklinks/resources/images.globe.png”). You can do this easily by specifying another route for it which includes a “resourcePath” parameter that is pre-pended. Here is the complete code for the area registration with the custom route for the images shown on lines 9-11: 1: public class QuickLinksRegistration : PortableAreaRegistration 2: { 3: public override void RegisterArea(System.Web.Mvc.AreaRegistrationContext context, IApplicationBus bus) 4: { 5: context.MapRoute("ResourceRoute", "quicklinks/resource/{resourceName}", 6: new { controller = "EmbeddedResource", action = "Index" }, 7: new string[] { "MvcContrib.PortableAreas" }); 8:   9: context.MapRoute("ResourceImageRoute", "quicklinks/images/{resourceName}", 10: new { controller = "EmbeddedResource", action = "Index", resourcePath = "images" }, 11: new string[] { "MvcContrib.PortableAreas" }); 12:   13: context.MapRoute("quicklink", "quicklinks/{controller}/{action}", 14: new {controller = "links", action = "index"}); 15:   16: this.RegisterAreaEmbeddedResources(); 17: } 18:   19: public override string AreaName 20: { 21: get 22: { 23: return "QuickLinks"; 24: } 25: } 26: } The Quick Links portable area results in the following requests (including custom route formats): The complete code for this post is now included in the Portable Areas sample solution in the latest MvcContrib source code. You can get the latest code now.  Portable Areas open up exciting new possibilities for MVC development!

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• How to do early binding for event handler in JavaScript? (example with jQuery)

  - by Sven Larson

  JavaScript's late binding is great. But how do I early bind when I want to? I am using jQuery to add links with event handlers in a loop to a div. The variable 'aTag ' changes in the loop. When I click the links later, all links alert the same message, which is the last value of 'aTag'. How do I bind a different alert message to all links? All links should alert with the value that aTag had when the event handler was added, not when it was clicked. for (aTag in tagList) { if (tagList.hasOwnProperty(aTag)) { nextTag = $('<a href="#"></a>'); nextTag.text(aTag); nextTag.click(function() { alert(aTag); }); $('#mydiv').append(nextTag); $('#mydiv').append(' '); } }

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• How do I store an array of a particular type into my settings file?

  - by joebeazelman

  For some reason, I can't seem to store an array of my class into the settings. Here's the code: var newLink = new Link(); Properties.Settings.Default.Links = new ArrayList(); Properties.Settings.Default.Links.Add(newLink); Properties.Settings.Default.Save(); In my Settings.Designer.cs I specified the field to be an array list: [global::System.Configuration.UserScopedSettingAttribute()] [global::System.Diagnostics.DebuggerNonUserCodeAttribute()] public global::System.Collections.ArrayList Links { get { return ((global::System.Collections.ArrayList)(this["Links"])); } set { this["Links"] = value; } } For some reason, it won't save any of the data even though the Link class is serializable and I've tested it.

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• Dropdown Menus In Drupal?

  - by Wade D Ouellet

  Hi, I have my Drupal site here so far: selkirk.treethink.net Each Primary Link at the top has a bunch of other primary links under it (sub links) I need to display these sub links when you hover over the parent primary link in a dropdown menu. Everything is in the primary links but there are parents (what you see at the top of the demo) and sub links (what should be in the dropdown). I'm not sure if I set up these menus wrong though...Drupal is a little awkward for me. I did download this module but I am not sure how to get it going to automatically dropdown a primary link's submenu items when rolled over: http://drupal.org/project/jquery_dropdown Thanks, Wade

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• problem with the drop down menu with jquery

  - by amir

  Hi Basically I have some links which include some other links, I'm trying to show the parent links only and when one clicks on the parent link the child links should appear and when one clicks on the parent link again the child link should disappear, the code works for the first click and it opens the relevant child links but how do I make them disappear when I click on the parent link again, thanks for the help. jQuery.noConflict(); jQuery(document).ready(function(e) { jQuery('.nav-container ul.level0 li.level1 a').click(function(e) { e.preventDefault(); jQuery(this).css({'background':'#000000','color':'#ffffff'}); jQuery('.nav-container ul.level0 li.level2 a').css('display','block'); }); });

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