Polymorphism » Career & Lifestyle

First step in throwing your XHTML document into Quirks Mode

Chris Peters — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 15:24:38 +0000

A lot of websites pursue XHTML as their document type, which is really cool. But a lot of them end up not validating with one little mistake. Even worse, with this mistake, documents that are made to run in “standards mode” are immediately thrown into quirks mode by browsers because web developers don’t know how to do their jobs.

If you want to author XHTML documents, your DOCTYPE declaration must start on the first character of the first line of the source code. No leading spaces or line breaks.

My favorite is how ASP.NET breaks this by following their practices. Take the example from Wikipedia (which I’ve seen used elsewhere as well):

<%@ Page Language="C#" %>   
 
DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<script runat="server">

This causes developers to insert 2 line breaks before the DOCTYPE, which is unacceptable if you want to comply with standards.

Because my weapon of choice is CFML, here’s how I handle this situation using and tags in my layout files:

<cfsetting enablecfoutputonly="true">
 
<cfparam name="layout.title" type="string">
<cfparam name="otherParams" default="here">
 
<cfset variablesThatNeedSet = "here">
 
<cfoutput>
<head>
<title>#layout.title#title>
...
head>
 
cfoutput>
 
<cfsetting enablecfoutputonly="false">

Because ColdFusion suppresses output until the opening tag, the DOCTYPE will appear on the first character of the first line, right where it belongs. And browsers will treat the document as standards compliant, not in quirks mode.

Technorati Tags: asp.net, ccm, cfml, chris peters, clear crystal media, ColdFusion, html, polymorphism, quirks mode, railo, standards, standards compliance, web standards, xhtml

Follow me on Twitter

Chris Peters — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 22:46:52 +0000

I’ve always thought Twitter a glorious waste of time. But I recently found out that much of the CFML community hangs out there.

So here’s my new Twitter handle: @cf_chrispeters.

I must admit that joining Twitter with the goal of connecting with other CFers makes it a much more rewarding experience. I’ve learned a few things already just from links that others have been posting. If you use ColdFusion, Railo, or OpenBD, then you should give it a shot.

Technorati Tags: ccm, cfml, chris peters, clear crystal media, ColdFusion, openbd, polymorphism, railo, twitter

The magic of AirPort Express

Chris Peters — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 02:33:49 +0000

I’ve been mainly business since I’ve started this blog, so I figured that I could share some non-web-development-related stuff from time to time.

I’ll admit that I’ve somehow become an Apple fan boy over the years. One lesser-known thing about Apple’s products is how well their entertainment stuff integrates together. For a couple hundred bucks, you can turn your Mac or Windows PC into the cerebellum of music in your household.

For most purposes, here’s what you need to have a house-wide sound system:

At least one AirPort Express
Mac or Windows PC
iTunes as your music software
Stereo or powered speakers
iPhone or iPod Touch (optional)
App called Remote for iPhone/iPod Touch

The AirPort Express

The true lifeblood of this setup is the AirPort Express. When you plug one of these suckers in, you get these wireless features:

Music sharing via AirTunes
Wireless printing
Wireless router (if you don’t already have a router)
Extend the range of a current wireless network (if you already have a router)

Basically, it has outputs for you to plug in a speaker cable, USB printer cable, and CAT5 cable.

The limitation is that for each AirPort express, you need to have your stereo, printer, or LAN cable within physical proximity of it. So if your stereo is in your living room and your printer is in your office, you may need 2 AirPort Expresses. Get it?

How AirTunes works in iTunes

If you set up at least one AirPort Express, you get an additional drop-down menu in the lower right corner of iTunes.

As you can see from my example above, I have 3 AirPort Extremes: Bathroom, Living Room, and Office. Yes, I like listening to music while I’m in the shower in the morning. So sue me.

With those AirPort Expresses in place, I can select to play music from iTunes on small speakers in my bathroom, the Bose system in my living room, the shelf stereo in my office, or on my computer’s speakers. Or any combination of those locations.

Wireless printing

Like I said above, I could hook printers up at any of those locations as well. As it turns out, I can have my MacBook (it could be a PC too) anywhere in my apartment and print wirelessly to my printer in the office.

Remote control via iPhone or iPod Touch

When you have all of this set up, you can control it all remotely with an app for your iPhone or iPod Touch called Remote.

Remote is a cool app, and it gets even cooler when you have AirPort Express. As you can see on the left, you can go to a settings screen from your iPhone to tell iTunes where to send the music.

In this example, John can play his music on the computer, in the living room, on the patio, or any combination of those.

The app lets you choose songs, adjust the volume, rate songs, and more.

DJ functionality in Remote

Another fun thing to play with is Apple’s enhanced DJ functionality. When you have iTunes DJ playing (used to be called “Party Shuffle”), anyone with an iPhone can join your network, browse your music library, and vote for which songs to play next.

Whomever has their iPhone officially synced up with their computer is the DJ and ultimately controls what’s in-queue and what plays next. Or it can all be controlled from the computer as well.

This app made for an extremely nerdy time when I had some guys over to shoot some pool. But I must admit that my music library was a great conversation piece, and everyone with iPhones had a great time playing around with the app and interacting to choose the next song.

Nerd out yer soundz ‘n shit

Yes, this has taken me years to build up. I bought my first AirPort Express many years ago. But it’s been a cool way for me to feel all high tech and to get more out of my investment in Apple products. It really does work well and kicks major ass.

Questions? Ask the guru in the comments.

Technorati Tags: airport express, airtunes, apple, ccm, chris peters, clear crystal media, iphone, ipod, ipod touch, itunes, polymorphism

My blog 4 years later and a new definition

Chris Peters — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:33:13 +0000

I started this blog in 2005. That’s pretty ancient in blog years. Considering that most blogs probably only last about 3 months, this blog is about 1,600 years old in human years.

Honestly, I’ve taken a small hiatus from the programming side of web development for the past couple years. I’ve been ramping myself up as an Internet marketer. But now I’m back as a technologist too.

Accordingly, I’ve moved this blog over to my main domain and given it a name in line with the domain’s branding. I’ve named it Polymorphism. The word describes a technique in object oriented programming and a materials science concept relating to crystals. (Get it, ClearCrystalMedia.com? Huh? Huh?!) Plus it’s a pretty neat word that reflects the way things change and adapt so quickly these days.

I am ready to start working on a new CMS built on top of the ColdFusion on Wheels framework. OK, so I’ve really been “working on” the CMS for the past year, and I’ll admit that I haven’t really gotten that far. But now that the framework is pretty damn stable, I’m ready to start hitting that much harder. I really want to do something special with it.

I’d like to post to this blog regularly about what I’m doing and learning. And while working on such a large project, I’d love to have a scrapbook of sorts, chronicling challenges, successes, and people along the way.

Font Conference

Chris Peters — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 01:41:18 +0000

Hilarious video with personified fonts. I love Wing Dings: “Airplane, Pencil, Mailbox!”

Technorati Tags: design, font, fonts, funny, video