unethical blogger

I often get these contact form submissions on joeaudette.com and on mojoportal.com where people are pitching to get my site to the top of google, no big deal, I delete them, but yesterday was the first time I got one by phone.

Yesterday at about 2PM I got a phone call on my cell phone from 951-813-2184 that went like this:

1. me: hello?
2. caller: is this the tree service?
3. me: i think you have the wrong number
4. caller: are you Source Tree Solutions?
5. me: that is my company but it is a software company not a tree service
6. caller: oh, well you're listed in the yellow pages under tree service
7. me: that's news to me, I didn't know I had a listing in the yellow pages
8. caller: well are you interested in getting your site to the top of google?
9. me: oh my God, you gotta be kidding me
10. caller: well what do you do for advertising
11. me: Dude! you don't know the first thing about me, my business or my web site, I don't need your SEO spam phone calls, please never call this number again, click

I chuckled for about 15 minutes after that, but hope it is not the start of a trend of spammy phone calls.

Joe Audette  ...

Recently I've begun using the jQueryUI tabs in mojoPortal as an alternative to YUI tabs. I still like the YUI tabs but there is only 1 skin available currently for YUI tabs, whereas there are a 18 themes for the jQuery UI tabs, so its likely that at least one of them will look good with a particular mojoPortal skin. This has got me thinking about switching to use the jQuery tabs in many or most places where we use YUI tabs. I still need to test a few things like making sure I can use FCKeditor inside the tabs like I can with the YUI tabs. One thing I like about the YUI tabs is that they automatically adjust to right to left layout if they are contained within and element with direction:rtl in the css.

I was worried at first whether the jQuery Tabs would support right to left layout because when I googled for it I could not find any explnations how to make the tabs layout from right to left. I found a number of people asking about it on mailing lists and forums but no-one offering any answers. So I used Firebug to study the css classes assigned to the elements and figured out the things that need to be overridden to make it layout from right to left. I thought I should post it since clearly there are people looking for hep with this. Its actually very straightforward, you include the normal css for the jquery ui theme, and you add another css file below it in the page (it must be lower in the page in order to override the style settings above it in the jquery ui css). There is only a little css needed because we want to override the minimum possible style settings, this is what is needed:

.ui-tabs { direction: rtl; }
.ui-tabs .ui-tabs-nav li.ui-tabs-selected,
.ui-tabs .ui-tabs-nav li.ui-state-default {float: right; }
.ui-tabs .ui-tabs-nav li a { float: right; }

I tested it with all 18 jQuery UI themes and it worked great. I hope this is helpful to others.

 

Joe Audette  ...

These are all the cell phones I've ever had.

I remember when I first got that Samsung clamshell phone on the left, gosh, how long ago was that 1997, 98 99? Somewhere in there I'm sure. I remember being so excited about that phone when I first got it. As a kid I had always fantasized about those communicators they used on Star Trek and when I got this phone it was like the realisation of a childhood dream. I got rid of my land line pretty soon after that and haven't had one since.

I was pretty excited when PocketPC phones first came out. Being a Web Developer, the idea of always having access to the internet wherever my phone worked seemd like a dream. I think I got that phone around 2002 or 2003 and at the time I gave my old phone to my younger brother Frank who lived in North Carolina (I was living in TN at the time). It really wasn't a compelling internet experience, and though I kept it until long after my service contract expired, I got really tired of carrying around that big phone. I mean if you put it in your pocket people were like "hey is that the internet in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?". It was really a phone that needed a belt clip like Batman, but I really wasn't into that belt clip thing.

So then I got the Razr, must have been around 2004 or 2005, again I gave my old PocketPC phone to my younger brother Frank. I was much happier with the Razr, it was slick, it was small, and it was a joy to stop carrying that old boat anchor PocketPC.

Last month I got an iPhone. Its way beyond any phone I ever imagined seeing in my lifetime. Its got a compelling web surfing experience, and yet it fits nicely in your pocket without raising eyebrows. I know a lot of people like a physical keyboard and those folks tend to like Blackberries. I suppose if I was answering a lot of email with my phone I might wish for a real keyboard too. Honestly I haven't yet answered an email with my iPhone. For me its more about knowing whether I have important mail at any time than actually responding to it from my phone. It can usually wait until I'm near a computer again. After all, I'm near a computer about 95% of the time. For me its just another convenient way to service my internet addiction. I work long days and then finally collapse and watch movies at the end of the day when I can no longer keep going. I used to find myself getting up from the couch a lot just to check if any new mail had come in, or see how many people are on mojoPortal.com. Now I don't have to get up off the couch. In some ways I like the Facebook experience better on the iPhone than on a computer. I love having a lot of my music collection in my phone, love the GPS. Its a really great device.

So I thought again whether I should offer my old Razr to my younger brother Frank. The funny thing is, now that I'm living in North Carolina, I find out he never activated or used any of the phones I ever gave him, thats how I'm now able to take a picture of them all together. He hasn't committed to a new phone contract for like eight years now. He's still using this old monstrosity:

We're talking dinosaur phone. Not only that but he relies on this thing for all his communication and he lost the battery charger years ago, so he can only charge it now in his car and he's been doing this for years. I'd say he's way over due for a new phone.

Joe Audette  ...

I walk by this sign almost every day when I go for my exercise walks at the park, its always struck me as funny. Today I took this picture with my iPhone.

Joe Audette  ...

The document switcher is a quick way to switch focus between open documents and pads using the keyboard. It's activated by the Ctrl-tab or Ctrl-shift-tab combinations, and remains open as long as Control remains held down. While it's open, you can change the selection — up arrow or shift-tab moves the selection up, down arrow or tab moves the selection down, and the left and right arrows move the selection between the pads and documents lists. When you have selected the item you want, release Control, and it will be selected.

The documents list is sorted by which have been most recently used, and when the dialog is opened, the first document it selects is the item after the current active document, i.e. the document that was focussed before it, since it's assumed that you don't want to switch to the current document. However, this also make it very easy to switch between a few documents with minimal keystrokes.

We are so happy to announce that Unity 3.2 is now live and available to download! Here is a rundown of the major new features and improvements: Image Effects: New Depth of Field with fantastic bokeh, improved bloom and several other image effect tweaks and fixes. New Water: All new Water prefab in standard assets that includes waves, [...]

With gtk+ closing in on their 3.0 release, many folks have been inquiring about Gtk# 3 lately. We've had a number of offers to help as well. I've been tied up with another project at the ol' day job, but I've been dedicating a fair amount of evening and weekend time toward 3.0 bindings since the holidays. It also looks like I'm going to be getting some more cycles to push the effort forward in the near future.
Over the past couple evenings, I've pushed a series of commits to github.com which update master to a 2.99.x API level. Several of the samples are still not being built because of 3.0 API breakage. Most of the samples which currently build also run cleanly, but there are some crashes there to address as well.
I've temporarily created a cairo-sharp.dll from the copy of Mono.Cairo we have been carrying in the tree, with a few updates to expose some of the new 1.10 API. This will likely get merged back into the mcs/class tree, but it's a convenient place for us to move fast with fleshing out the new bits.
The generated APIs are completely unaudited at this point. The improvements in the external Gio and Builder bindings since they spun off remain unmerged. There is plenty of work to go around if people would like to jump in and help. We are going to need migration docs, new API docs, the list goes on...
Since people are likely wondering, the module still starts from a C parse. I have experimented with starting from GIR format but feel at this point, given the current tooling state, that it will be quicker to get to 3.0 using the existing GAPI parser for gtk-sharp. Since this is getting long already, I'll expand on the reasons in another blog, plus talk about the approach I think we can take to begin incorporating GIR as a starting point in new bindings.

The default mode of the code completion list is to complete the symbol that's being typed. Whenever the completion engine can determine that you are typing an existing symbol (such as a type name, variable name or member name), it automatically triggers the completion list and populates it with all the values that are valid at that point. As you type while the list is open, the list's selection updates to match what best fits what you're typing, and you can manually change the selection using the up/down arrow keys. When you press space, enter, tab, or any punctuation, the completion list "commits" the selection into the document, so you don't have to type the rest of the word manually. This is incredibly useful when you get used to it.

Sometimes the completion engine cannot provide a complete list of valid values, for example when you are defining a lambda at the point that you pass it to a method. In such cases, when you need to type a value that's not in the list, it would be very irritating for the list to commit its best match and overwrite what you're typing. Instead, the completion list goes into suggestion mode.

In suggestion mode, the selection highlight in the list is a rectangle around the selection, not a solid block. When the list is in suggestion mode, it will only commit on tab or enter, so you won't commit accidentally while typing a word. If you use arrow keys to change the selection, the list will go back into completion mode and the highlight will become solid.

Some users like to write code out of order, for example using symbols that don't yet exist, and then defining them symbols later, or writing code that does not parse correctly and fixing it up. Completion mode really makes that style of coding hard to do. The answer is a command that toggles the list into suggestion mode. You can access it via the Edit->Toggle Completion Suggestion Mode menu item, or the Alt-Shift-Space key binding. Once the list is toggled into suggestion mode, it will stay that was until you toggle it back. This it useful because you can switch back and forth as it suits you.

Sometimes it's useful to be able to focus only on your code without the distractions of the pads and the rest of your desktop. MonoDevelop has two ways to make this easier.

The Maximized View can be toggled by double-clicking on the document tab, or using the context menu on the document tab and selecting Switch maximize/normal view. When in maximize view, all open pads are auto-hidden at the sides of the MonoDevelop windows, and all toolbars are hidden (everything in the toolbars is also accessible from the menus).

The Fullscreen View can be activated using the View->Fullscreen menu command. This makes the MonoDevelop window take up the entire screen, hiding the taskbar and the window border.

Both view modes can be used together to maximize the document area as much as possible.

The Mono Developer Room
The second edition of the Mono Developer room was once again a great success. Good talks, nice atmosphere and some interesting discussions. Slides will be online soon, unfortunately no video recordings this year.

The trollcat experiment
A couple of months ago while sending out the call-for-papers for the 2011 Mono room, I added this question to the submission form:

The majority ticked "Yes".

Looking back at my statistics from last weekend, over 90% of the speakers did in fact include some imagery of opinionated animals or cartoon figures, often comically yet clearly strengthening the discourse. I would like to present this observation as a data point in the ongoing research on the finer points of trollcats in contemporary society which is being carried out by Miguel for some time now.

In this post we will be continuing a series of articles about the Application Icon.  This time we will be dealing with the Application Badge.  For those getting started you might want to have a look at the following Apple document Dock Tile Concepts. What we have learned: Creating and adding an icon to your [...]

I have just released a new version of my PicasaWeb Uploader tool. This is a maintenance release to fix issues with large video uploads and to port to the new GData API.

Mercredi, j’aurai l’opportunité de présenter Mono et son écosystème pendant les TechDays Microsoft.

Ce sera l’occasion de faire le point sur les dernières nouveautés de Mono, et de montrer comment réutiliser ses compétences .net et partager son code C# pour cibler des plateformes en vogue, comme l’iPhone et l’iPad avec MonoTouch, Android avec MonoDroid et Mac OS X avec MonoMac.

Si vous ne pouvez pas assister à la session, je serai aussi disponible sur le stand alt.net pour discuter de tous ces sujets. Venez nombreux !

I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.3.6.2, available now on our download page.

This is a minor release with just a few bug fixes, the primary purpose of this release is to fix a problem in our Shared Files feature and in our alternate File Manager when running under Medium Trust hosting. In the previous release of version 2.3.6.1 we had changed to strong name signed assemblies for NeatUpload and for the NeatUpload Greybox Progress bar. This strong signed version of NeatUpload allows it to be installed in the GAC (Global Assembly Cache) on the server so it can work in Medium Trust, but there was a bug in the previous release because the NeatUpload.GreyboxProgressBar.dll was not compiled with the AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers attribute so it caused an error under Medium Trust. This release addresses that problem, it just required adding the needed attribute and re-compiling the NeatUpload.GreyboxProgressBar.dll. Since most shared hosting uses Medium Trust we felt it important to get a fix out for this quickly.

Fixed Bugs

• Fix error under Medium Trust in Shared Files and in the Alternate File Manager
• Fix bug in SQL CE data layer when creating new sites
• Fix bug where file manager did not overwrite existing files
• Fix redirect bug in Search Input that could happen on blog detail pages
• Fix bug in blog when using google maps (this bug was introduced in version 2.3.6.1 when we added an option to use Bing maps in the blog)

Other Stuff

• Upgrade from CKeditor 3.5 to 3.5.1
• Updated Italian resources from Diego Mora
• Updated Persian resources from Asad Samarian
• Updated Portuguese (Brazil) resources from Fabio Mastaler
• Updated French resources from Yves Jadin
• Updated German resources from Jan Aengenvoort
• Updated Spanish resources from German Barbosa
• New partial Arabic translation from Sameer Alomari

 

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Joe Audette  ...

One of my favourite features that we added to MonoDevelop 2.4 is the "import Type" command. It is accessed using the keybinding Ctrl-Alt-Space, and shows a list of all types in all namespaces in all referenced assemblies:

You can use our completion list filtering to find the type you're looking for, then, when you commit the selection from the list, MonoDevelop automatically adds the "using" statement to the file. For example, using StringBuilder is as easy as StrB even if you don't yet have using System.Text; at the top of the file.

MonoDevelop makes it really easy to search the code completion list. As you type, it breaks down the string you enter into word fragments on camelCase boundaries, then matches these fragments against the beginnings of the words in the completion list. The list is filtered to show only the items that match, and the matched parts are helpfully highlighted in blue:

This makes it much faster to select items from the list, since you can uniquely select items in the list without typing them out in full or using the arrow keys. For example, "StBu" will match "StringBuilder". It's also very useful for searching for items in the list if you're not sure what you need. For example "Str" will match both "StringComparison" and "ToString" and anything else with "Str" in its name.

If you use completion matching to filter the list then refine your selection with the arrow keys, when you commit an item from the list (using space, enter, tab, etc.), MonoDevelop will remember your choice. The next time you type the same string, it will automatically select the item you chose the previous time. However, if you type the exact name of something in the completion list, it will always match that item.

Hylke Bons warned us of a limitation in our MonoMac packager so we are issuing a new MonoMac refresh that fixes various bugs:

• Supports using Mono.Posix.dll in packaged bundles.
• Supports using System.Drawing in packaged bundles.
• Fixes various BCL P/Invokes problems (we forgot to ship the config file :-)
• No longer requires Mono 2.8.1, works with any mono 2.8+

Follow the standard instructions to update your MonoMac add-in.

Hylke then got his native Mac client for SparkleShare (a DropBox-like system, but backed up by Git or any Git hosting sit) working as a bundle on OSX.

I guess it is! As always, FOSDEM is great fun, and once again we had a Mono room with lots of great talks! Especially enjoyed Mark Probst and Jo Shields talks, now I know what happens when the deb folks get a hold on our packages, and why we never get our finalizers called in order in Moonlight!

As for my talk, the important bits were that I didn't go over the time, nobody snored, and I made sure there were plenty of lolcats! Get the slides here.

Right now I'm watching a very cool talk about the Go language while my laptop is charging plugged in to a very interesting combination of a triple connected to an adapter (stupid third pin on belgium plugs) connected to a power extension. Nothing has exploded yet.

With the growing popularity of tablet PCs and also Mac computers I get more and more frequently e-mails asking when a version for Mac, Android or iPhone will be released. With all the effort that the Mono team has put recently on mobile platforms is certainly possible to port gbrainy into these platforms. If somebody is interested in doing so, I will be more than happy to assist them. Meanwhile, I'm going to invest the little free time that I have in the GTK and web versions.

During last summer I did work on proof of concept of creating a web client for gbrainy. Since then could not pay much attention to it due the lack of time, but in the past weeks I had some time and decide to complete a first version.

Today I'm happy to announce gbrainy.com, a web site where you can play with the gbrainy web version.

 

The road ahead
The current version is far from providing the level of user experience that I would like, but it is as starting point and my intention is to keep working on it. If you have any ideas, please feel free to share them in the gbrainy public group. During the next days I will publish a roadmap for the next versions of gbrainy.

I'm very excited to be able to expand the gbrainy user's community to the web and I'm looking forward to develop synergies between the GTK and web version, specially on the area of on-line gaming.

On the software side, the web client is just another consumer of gbrainy.Core services and already existing games. The true multiplatform spirit behind Mono, a decent separation of concerns and a service based architecture (build around the service locator pattern) help to accomplish this. I keep planing on making gbrainy more platform neutral and add the same time keep enhancing the user experience.

Key bindings are an important part of an IDE, as they make it possible to work efficiently using the keyboard. A key binding is a combination of keys that, when pressed simultaneously, activates an IDE command directly. This post explains the key binding system in MonoDevelop, how to find out what key bindings are available, and how to customize the bindings to suit your needs.

The Key Bindings Panel

To find what the key binding for a particular command is, you can look at the menu item for that command, or hover over the toolbar button. However, not all commands are exposed via menus and buttons. For a complete list, go to the Preferences dialog (MonoDevelop->Preferences on Mac, Tools->Options on Windows, Edit->Preferences on Linux), then the General->Key Bindings panel. This allows you to find existing key bindings, or modify the keybindings to your liking.

The panel has various parts:

Scheme selector

A key binding scheme is the entire set of key bindings in the IDE. There are various built-in schemes that can be chosen using the combo at the top of the panel. If you would like to contribute a new scheme, or have suggestions for improving one of the built-in schemes, please file a bug report. MonoDevelop currently does not support saving custom schemes, but you can find the scheme in MonoDevelop's preferences directory. On Mac it's ~/.config/MonoDevelop/KeyBindingsMac.xml, on Windows it's AppData\Roaming\MonoDevelop\KeyBindings.xml, and on Linux it's ~/.config/MonoDevelop/KeyBindings.xml.

Searchable list of bindings

The list of bindings can be searched to see what commands are available, and what key bindings they have. The search take into account the command's name, description and binding.

Conflict indicator

If multiple commands have the same keybinding, an indicator is shown with a drop-down list of the conflicting bindings. An indicator is also shown when the command is selected in the list.

Binding editor

The binding editor shows the currently selecting binding in the list. To edit the binding, simply place focus in the editor box and type the new keybinding. If you press multiple combinations in succession, it will show a "chord" of two bindings. Press Backspace to clear the binding. When you are happy with the new binding, press the Apply button.

Key Combinations and Chords

A key combination is a unique combination of a key and the keyboard modifiers that are active when the key is pressed - any combination of control, shift, alt/opt, super/windows/command. A key combination can be "bound" to a command, and this means that when the combination is pressed, then the command will be run. Keys without modifiers are valid "combinations" for binding too, which is useful for the function keys (F12 etc), arrow keys, the Page Up key, and so on. However it's a bad idea to bind keys that produce text/character input, since key bindings have top priority and therefore will prevent you from entering those characters.

It's not currently possible to bind more than one combination to each command, or more than one command to each unique combination. However, if you start to run out of key combinations, you can use chords. A keybinding chord is composed of two key combinations in succession. The first one, called a "mode" in emacs, can be shared by several chords, but this means it cannot be bound by itself, because that would conflict with the chords. For example, if I bound the command that shows the debugger locals pad to the "Ctrl-D Ctrl-L" chord, then I could not bind "Ctrl-D" by itself, but I could bind "Ctrl-L". I could create other keybindings using the same mode, such as "Ctrl-D Ctrl-S" for the debugger stack pad.

The Default Key Bindings

When we design the default key bindings for MonoDevelop, there are several important things we take into consideration.

• It's essential to use the core operating system keybindings where applicable - cut, copy, paste, and so on.
• It's good to have compatibility with other popular IDEs and text editors where possible.
• It's important to use the more accessible keybindings for the common commands that are more likely to be used from the keyboard.

Unfortunately, not all editors and operating systems have the same keybindings, and they sometimes conflict with each other, so it's difficult to find a good balance.

MonoDevelop's default keybindings for Windows and Linux are the same, since GNOME and Windows have the same core keybindings. Additional bindings are mostly taken from various Visual Studio schemes, the GEdit text editor, Resharper, and SharpDevelop. MonoDevelop's default Mac keybindings are completely different, and mostly based on Xcode, with some from TextMate.