ExpressionEngine Weblog > The Tricky Bits
Friday, February 23, 2007
Buy ExpressionEngine And Help Us Out At The Same Time
» Posted by Robert Crow on Feb 23, 2007 at 1:16 pm
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Click on the image above to buy ExpressionEngine from the secure site at pMachine.

We are a member of the pMachine Affiliate Network and will receive a small kickback for helping promote ExpressionEngine. Everyone wins, so why not?

» Categories • General
Friday, December 14, 2007
How To Edit EE Templates Using An External Text Editor
» Posted by Robert Crow on Dec 14, 2007 at 9:26 pm
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When editing your ExpressioinEngine templates it’s often useful to edit them using an external editor such as TextMate, jEdit, etc. Here’s how:

Both Safari (Mac OS X) and Firefox (Mac OS X and Windows) have extensions that allow you to right click (or ctrl-click) in a text box and edit your template using an external text editor. I find this approach useful as when I’m traveling I can make quick changes to a template from anywhere that I have access to a Web browser and in my office or at home I can use my text editor of choice, which in my case happens to be TextMate on Mac OS X (http://macromates.com/).

Mac OS X: Saft for Safari: http://haoli.dnsalias.com/Saft/index.html

Mac OS X or Windows: It’s All Text! for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4125

In order to use It’s All Text! with Firefox on Mac OS X using BBEdit as your external editor read this: http://indiamos.wordpress.com/2007/02/24/itsalltext/

In order to use It’s All Text! with Firefox on Mac OS X using TextMate as your external editor (and you really should be):

- launch TextMate
- in the menu bar select Help/Terminal Useage…
- click Create Link
- launch Firefox
- right click or ctrl-click in a text box and select It’s All Text!/Preferences…
- in the “Editor” field type (or cut and paste) /usr/bin/mate

Now It’s All Text! will work with Firefox on Mac OS X.

» Categories • Entries - Creating/Editing • CSS • Mac Users • Tools • » Editors • » » Text • » » CSS
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Looking For A Great Text Editor? Try TextMate
» Posted by Robert Crow on Feb 6, 2007 at 1:52 pm
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If you’re a Mac user and looking for a great text editor to use for developing your ExpressionEngine-based Weblog we suggest you try Textmate from Macromates.

Before we discovered TextMate we were using jEdit as our text editor of choice. In a comparison with jEdit, the only important feature that is missing in TextMate (in fact it’s there, but not obvious) is code bracket matching being displayed in the gutter. That is our favorite feature in jEdit. There is an equivalent feature in TextMate, but you have to use the menu or a key combination to invoke it every time you want brackets matched, whereas it’s always just there in jEdit. Well, only one small gripe - not bad at all.

For TextMate users developing a site using ExpressionEngine you should try out the TextMate ExpressionEngine bundle developed by Chris Ruzin. It’s very well done and Chris keeps it up to date.

Note: TextMate only runs on Mac OS X. jEdit is a Java application and therefore runs on Mac OS X, Windows (if you have Java installed) and Linux.

» Categories • Tools • » Editors • » » Text
Friday, June 10, 2005
MySQL Administrator
» Posted by Robert Crow on Jun 10, 2005 at 12:12 pm
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"MySQL Administrator is a powerful visual administration console that enables you to easily administer your MySQL environment and gain significantly better visibility into how your databases are operating. MySQL Administrator now integrates database management and maintenance into a single, seamless environment, with a clear and intuitive graphical user interface."

This is an open source utility provided by MySQL AB. Check it out at: MySQL Administrator

MySQL Administrator is available for Microsoft Windows, Linux and Mac OS X 10.3 (panther), and is compatible with MySQL version 4.0 or later.

Documentation for MySQL Administrator can be found here.

» Categories • SQL • » SQL Utilities/Maintenance
MySQL Query Browser
» Posted by Robert Crow on Jun 10, 2005 at 12:08 pm
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"MySQL Query Browser is the easiest visual tool for creating, executing, and optimizing SQL queries for your MySQL Database Server. The MySQL Query Browser gives you a complete set of drag-and-drop tools to visually build, analyze and manage your queries."

This is an open source utility provided by MySQL AB. Check it out at: MySQL Query Browser

MySQL Query Browser is available for Microsoft Windows, Linux and Mac OS X 10.3 (panther), and is compatible with MySQL version 4.0 or later.

Documentation for MySQL Query Browser can be found here.

» Categories • SQL • » SQL Utilities/Maintenance
Saturday, January 8, 2005
FCKeditor - How To Install It
» Posted by Robert Crow on Jan 8, 2005 at 6:08 pm
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This is how to install FCKeditor, which is a WYSIWYG HTML editor that can be used in the ExpressionEngine Control Panel to make it much easier for both technical and non-technical users alike to create and edit ExpressionEngine entries.

These instructions have been tested by us using ExpressionEngine Version 1.2.1 Build ID: 20050117 and FCKeditor 2.0 RC2.

Step 1:

Download FCKeditor 2.0 RC2

Decompress the downloaded file (double-click it).

Rename the folder FCKeditor to fckeditor (i.e. change the first 3 letters (FCK) to lowercase, i.e. fck).

Step 2:

Upload the fckeditor folder to the root of your public html folder on the Web server where you have ExpressionEngine installed. To keep the installation instructions simple, don't change the name of the fckeditor folder. You can change the folder name and move it somewhere else on your server, but I'll skip over that for now.

Step 3:

Add this function to /system(if you renamed it, whatever you renamed it to)/cp/cp.publish.php just below the setFieldName function:

// Dynamically set the textarea name on a DblClick

function setFieldName2(which)
{
if (which != selField)
{
selField = which;

clear_state();

tagarray = new Array();
usedarray = new Array();

var oFCKeditor = new FCKeditor( selField ) ;
oFCKeditor.ReplaceTextarea() ;

}
}

Edit line 702 (line number after adding function above) to look like this:

$DSP->input_textarea('field_id_'.$row['field_id'], $field_data, $rows, 'textarea', '99%', "ondblclick='setFieldName2(this.name)'", "onclick='setFieldName(this.name)'", $convert_ascii);

Step 4:

Add this line in /system(if you renamed it, whatever you renamed it to)/cp/cp.display.php after line 182:

"<script type='text/javascript' src='/fckeditor/fckeditor.js'></script> ";

Change the line above the one you just added to look like this:

"<meta http-equiv= 'pragma' content='no-cache' /> ".

The original code looks like this:

"<meta http-equiv= 'pragma' content='no-cache' /> ";

All we're doing here is replacing the semi-colon at the end of the line with a period so that the following line (the one you just added) gets executed.


THAT'S IT! FCKeditor shoud fire up when you double-click in the summary, body or extended text boxes while creating/editing an entry in the Control Panel.

Mac OS X compatibility: FCKeditor doesn't work with Safari on Mac OS X, but it does work with FireFox 1.0.

Windows XP compatibility: FCKeditor doesn't work with IE 6.0, but it does work with Firefox 1.0.

I hope you have an easier time getting FCKeditor working than I did. In other words, where was I when I really needed me?

» Categories • Entries - Creating/Editing
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
CSS Hyperlink States - Order Is Important
» Posted by Robert Crow on Aug 11, 2004 at 12:01 pm
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When working with hyperlink states in your CSS, it helps to know that order is important.

If your hypertext links are not performing as expected and you think your CSS code looks right, order might be the problem. If your hover or active states don’t appear to be working as intended, be sure that your link states in your CSS appear in the following order:

  • a:link {}
  • a:visited {}
  • a:hover {}
  • a:active {}

Really - order matters.

» Categories • CSS
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