Ok, so I’ve been looking at http://www.ndesign-studio.com/blog/mac/css-dock-menu and trying to get the dock to be fixed to the bottom of the screen. Generally when making this a fixed dock, the scaling mouseovers disappear. Many people asked on the comments about this, but I didn’t see a solution so this is what I did. I  have not thoroughly tested it, I know that it works in ff3.5, safari 4, IE7, &  IE8.

So, here is how it’s done in your CSS file set #dock to fixed.

#dock {
width: 100%;
bottom: 10px;
position: fixed;
left: 0px;
}

This will lock it to the bottom of your screen. After setting your css, go to http://interface.eyecon.ro/download and download the source files (or click here.)

There are 2 files in this collection that are used on this menu fisheye.js, and iutil.js. The only one we need to edit is fisheye.js.

Look for the following  line

var posx = pointer.x – el.fisheyeCfg.pos.x;

and add the following lines of code afterwards

var windowHeight = window.innerHeight ? window.innerHeight : document.documentElement.clientHeight ? document.documentElement.clientHeight : document.body.clientHeight;

if(pointer.y > windowHeight)
{
pointer.y = windowHeight;
}

now for a little explanation. When you scroll down, pointer.y increases because it represents the location of the cursor (vertically) in relation to the page. All I did, was look at the height of the window and limited the value of pointer.y to that value.

Note: The window Height code came from http://snipplr.com/view/2638/height-of-window/

Wow in the world of web design/development, this sums it up!

If I had to make a wild guess, I would say PHP has more frameworks than any other language out there. It seems like a new framework pops up every day. Personally I use CodeIgniter. I feel that it is the simplest of the existing frameworks to jump right into. If I need to bring someone else in on a project, and they are unfamiliar with CodeIgniter, I can direct them to the documentation to get them up to speed.

There are a few things with CodeIgniter that bug me though. One of them is a lack of SSL functionality built in, another is not being able to use $_GET when I want to, and  a big one for me is error pages. I would like CodeIgniter to have error controller that can use views from the view folder. I modified my version of CodeIgniter to support SSL, and I just live without $_GET (I would only want to use this to be lazy anyway).

Recently, as an experiment, I decided to write a CodeIgniter-esque framework of my own. I do not plan on using it. I just felt like doing it and I learned a little in the process. It was a good experiment. The system still lacks refining and I’ve got some extra code thrown in that I was either playing with or planning to grow out (or throw out) some. The model class could use a lot of work and is pretty useless in it’s current state. I also wrote an installer for it that creates the config.php file (after I wrote the installer I thought, what sort of PHP developer would need an installer to configure a config.php file). But, it was fun. If you want to dig through the code feel free. I wouldn’t recommend  use this as a platform to develop a site on. Since a day might come when owning this code may prove useful, I’m releasing it with an MIT license. Oh by the way… Please don’t bother critiquing this as I did not spend an enormous amount of time on it, nor have I looked for bugs, security holes etc. It was just for fun. OH! the 1 benefit to this “framework”… it’s small!

Download (.zip) 15.2kb
Download (tar.gz) 5.8kb

Ok, if you’re a developer like me, it’s not often you find a product that what you want how you want it. I’ve been on a quest to find a great open source shopping cart developed in PHP. I have tried the following open source carts.

OS Commerce
Zen Cart
Magento
Prestashop
Open Cart
PHPMass

Ultimately… I am completely disappointed.  I would not want to use any of the carts listed above for a client website. Either the admin side is weak and doesn’t offer much of anything (open cart), or it offers too much (Magento) and in many cases (except magenta and possible Prestashop) the interface is incredibly ugly. Is it too much to ask for a simple shopping cart that is designed well, that offers a decent selection of payment gateways, a few nice features like coupons and end it there? If anyone knows of such a cart, let me know! OS Commerce or Zen Cart is the closest thing to what I want, but I find them to have the some of the worst interfaces of the list. Prestashop was decent, but it seems to be going in a direction opposite of what I want, sort of like a Magento wannabe. The only cart that I’ve used and liked (at least somewhat) is a commercial cart called digishop. But in my opinion, one of digishop’s greatest flaws is not being open source. They have a little statement on their site that says it’s open source once you pay for it, meaning that the code is not encrypted, but that is far from what I consider to be “open source”. I think the benefit of open source technology is the community. The community that can help develop, patch, extend, answer questions for people new to the system etc. Digishop also lacks developer documentation. So anyone wanting to dive right in, needs to figure it out on their own.

I believe this has led me to a place though where I may develop my own cart. I am a big fan of the Code Igniter framework, and would love to see a simple shopping cart that has some basic functionality in it (user accounts, coupons, easily extendable, and a few decent payment gateway options) and, a decent non-ugly interface. If anyone out there knows of a project started like this already, I’d love to hear about it. All my searches for a code igniter cart have let me down.

Ok, so this isn’t going to be a point by point thing, just sort of an overview of my experience and thoughts about this new laptop. My boss and I were talking about getting one of the new mac book pros, but since they are about twice as much as a Linux laptop from System76 I told him to save his money and go with them. I have a mac desktop that I do all my design work with, so running Photoshop or Illustrator on the laptop is not necessary. Its primary use would be programming.

So lets start at the beginning. Ordering was a pain, apparently they had someone commit a case or cases of credit card fraud that required them to take additional precautions. This required my boss to add my address as an alternate to his credit card thus setting the order back by about 3 or 4 days. Once the order was placed, the laptop was supposed to take 6 days to build which ultimately stretched out to about 2 weeks due to some problems in their new ISO (Which I can forgive due to the new release of Intrepid Ibis, I completely understand that they might have problems with brand new software).  Once the laptop shipped, it was delivered quickly.

The first thing I noticed when opening the box is that they do not manufacture or build these laptops themselves. Which is another thing I can forgive, though I do it begrudgingly (because it takes 6 days to “manufacture” the machine). The laptops are made in China which I guess is understandable after having worked in a related field before. I removed the packaging and found an instruction manual that had screenshots from Windows XP in it and found that to be humorous since it was a Linux laptop. I was immediately disappointed with their presentation. Being a web designer first and a developer second, I tend to look at how things are designed and presented. the laptop could have been a little cooler looking, but the disappointment comes with such simple things as their logo on the back of the monitor and the “Ubuntu” key. Their logo appears to be cut (poorly) from something like silver contact paper and stuck to the back of the monitor. The “Ubuntu” key, which I was really excited about (yeah I know that a stupid thing to be excited about but I figured macs have the apple key and PCs generally have the windows key and I wanted my frickin’ Ubuntu key!) This turned out to be a sticker of a pixelated black and white Ubuntu logo cut out and stuck on the key SUPER LAME. If I ran a computer company, I would want all my machines to be visually pleasing from the outside as well as the operating system. There is a reason Apple does so well and its not all because of how cool OSX is. A lot of it boils down to how the hardware looks and the incredible job they do at branding. (imagine if Macs looked like Lenovo machines, they wouldn’t be half as popular as they are.)

My disappointment ends there and I suppose this is the most important part. Upon firing the machine up I found it to be incredibly responsive. With the Intel Core 2 duo processor and 4 gig’s or ram, there is nothing I can do (currently) to bog down this machine. What you get on the machine in terms of the OS is a basic install of Ubuntu with some system76 drivers added and support for a biometric fingerprint reader (which seems to crash on my every time I try to use it… but why would I need a fingerprint reader?). The machine works right out of the box with support for all the hardware and no need to tweak anything. I did have to do a little tweaking to get Skype working with audio in/out but it was minimal and forgivable since Skype isn’t included by default nor recommended by Canonical due to it’s licensing. Overall, this machine is a hotrod I’m very pleased with it’s functionality and responsiveness. Had they taken the time and perhaps invested the money to make the outside match the inside, I would say they have a real chance to compete in more mainstream computer sales, after all why can Apple sell a *nix based system to a mainstream audience. Their success has absolutely nothing to do with interface, the right company can make Linux do and look like anything they want. They have total control. What it all comes down to is presentation and branding. To Canonical, I would say, PLEASE start manufacturing machines yourself that show your dedication to making the best product out there or at least solicite some new manufacturers that can (Although I would buy a Canonical Laptop in a heartbeat if they existed). If you are relying on companies like System76 to market your OS to end users, it’s a dead end road. Now I realize there are crappy lookig windows machines out there and you can’t judge all PC’s by them, but there are really great ones too, just look at the sony vaio’s, look at Falcon Northwest. Also, I realize that I could have gotten a Dell with Ubuntu but there are 3 reasons I did not.

1. They did not have a system that offered the hardware that I wanted.
2. They were still selling machines with Hardy rather than Intrepid (and this might not change until Jaunty)
3. My boss is not particularly fond of Dell.

So there you have it. Overall the system works great but looks poor, sort of like a junky looking car that runs great. If you are one of those people who are not concerned with how the hardware looks (such as a person who may have bought one of the super ugly Thinkpads from Lenovo) then this machine may be perfect for you, BUT if you are a person who wants their computer to look good and run good, buy a mac. I myself have come to terms with the junky appearance and absolutely love the functionality, I would buy another system76 machine if I were in the market for another Linux computer, though once again, I would scour the internet for another manufacturer in hopes that they would do a little better job at presentation.

I’ve been plagued by the problems with Flash transparency since I switched to Ubuntu several months ago, and I was afraid it wouldn’t get fixed. Well guess what, with the Flash 10 for linux plugin, it’s finally been fixed!

check it out
http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html

I, along with many other Linux users, have wanted Adobe to produce their software for Linux. Supposedly, Photoshop is the number 1 requested product by Linux users. I’m over wondering why they haven’t done it or when they will do it (I’ve pretty much resigned myself to the fact that they will get to it when they get to it if they ever get to it).

But now a new (and even more far fetched) thought crosses my mind. What if Adobe embraced Linux as their flagship platform? What if Adobe made their own Linux distribution? One of the arguments for why Adobe has not produced their suite for Linux is because of the headache of creating and maintaining a product that works flawlessly with all the varying distributions. If Adobe were to create their own Linux distro, they could tweak the operating system and the products to really work perfectly together. This would also allow them to only worry about full compatibility with one Linux distribution. The fact that Linux has such great memory management makes it an ideal base for running software that traditionally eats a lot of memory. They could take advantage of server grade machines utilizing 4+ processors and way more memory than windows or OSX (I realize that OSX is based on UNIX, but we have to remember that we’re tied to Apple hardware). A step like that in the design world (especially when working on huge projects and running multiple programs) would be incredible.

I’m not saying that Adobe should stop building software for the Mac and PC, I’m just saying it would be very interesting for them to capitalize on having their own design centered OS. Now, I realize this will most likely never happen. It would be outright challenging Apple to make a better design suite and with products like Final Cut, we know they have the ability and the resources to do it. Microsoft is already testing the waters for that niche of the software world with Microsoft Expression in which I currently have little interest, though it is a big step up from their standard, MS Paint.

I know that this subject has been hacked up by people all over the internet, but now it’s my turn. I’ve been using Ubuntu on my laptop for a few months now and I think it’s great. The operating system starts up and shuts down quickly. It hasn’t crashed or suffered any periods of slowness and I love the idea of being able to search for software and install it AND have the operating system maintain it. After my Ubuntu experience, I had to ask myself, “What’s holding desktop Linux back?”. The answer is commercial software support. Now I know the argument is to use open source programs such as Open Office, Gimp, Evolution, etc. as a replacement for commercial software and though that may work for people who are willing to learn a new software package or are unafraid to venture into the unknown, it does not work for the average computer user. Take my mom for instance. She recently bought a new laptop that came with Windows Vista and wanted to get Microsoft Office for it (until I told her the price). As an alternative I installed Open Office, a product that I find to be a phenomenal replacement for Microsoft Office. She did not agree with my rave reviews. Even though the interface between Microsoft Office and Open Office are similar and they are for the most part compatible, the minor differences were enough to confuse her (such as the default document format being OTD, a format not recognized by current versions of MS Office). Gimp is another such program that is commonly referred to as a replacement for the commercial Adobe product Photoshop. Though there are many arguments that favor Gimp over Photoshop, from a professional graphic designers position, Gimp is severely lacking. Gimp cannot work in 16 bit images, CMYK, utilize Pantone colors, lacks simple features such as the ability to resize text in a vector format, and does not have the “blending options” featured in Photoshop (some may say these effects can still be created, but I guarantee that they cannot be turned on or off, or experimented with the same ease as Photoshop). Even with the advances being made with WINE and the support from Google and Code Weavers, the Linux desktop does not offer consumers the ability to drive down to Walmart, buy whatever software package they are comfortable with, install it, and go. Overall the Linux desktop is good for 2 groups of people. The first group is people who have no need for a computer other than basic use (internet, email, etc.   Check out gOS). Linux is good for this group because it’s very stable, it’s unlikely that they will get any viruses and the operating system will generally maintain itself. The second group consist of people who like to control their operating system rather than being controlled by it (the majority of desktop Linux users fall into this category). In my opinion this is where desktop Linux will remain until mainstream software development companies start to write software for it. I sincerely hope that the day comes when desktop Linux does become mainstream, but I don’t just can’t see it happening any time soon.