Entries tagged "productivity"
Prevent Browser Windows in Chrome from Closing When Multiple Tabs Are Open: An Alternate Approach
It's common for me to have several browser tabs open at the same time while developing a website. And since I use Google Chrome, I've been looking for a solution to prevent all those tabs from being accidentally closed. There used to be a plugin that worked perfectly, but the plugin is incompatible with the newer versions of Chrome. So my only option, besides switching browsers, was to be extra careful when closing a tab…or so I thought. [Continue reading]
Open Offline PDFs in Adobe Acrobat Instead of Reader
Since upgrading Adobe Reader, PDFs stored on my computer have been opening in Reader instead of Adobe Acrobat. This isn't a problem when I just want to view a PDF, but there are cases where I need to modify a PDF. If I need to add a document title, for example, the PDF has to be opened with Acrobat. So I've been going through some extra steps to open PDFs in Acrobat for editing. However, there is an easier way. [Continue reading]
Experiment with CSS without Uploading Any Files
There are occasions where I upload the same CSS file dozens of times just to adjust padding around an image or to get a font size just right. Well, much of this work could be avoided by leveraging tools built into browsers like Google Chrome. We spent a little time in the last post talking about using the Developer Tools panel to remove content that gets in the way. This week we'll delve deeper and see how the Styles tab can help. [Continue reading]
Check Your Error 404 Database for Broken Links with cURL
Some websites that I maintain have a database for tracking which pages have moved. The problem is that some of the links that indicate where a page has moved to break. So I end up with a 404 error saying a page has moved. When the visitor goes to the new page, they are greeted with another 404 error saying the page has moved. So let's look into writing a script to look through the database for broken links. [Continue reading]
Uncover Your Browser’s Secret Back Button Functionality
While developing PHP applications, I occasionally find myself pressing the browser's back button over and over during the testing phase. Using keyboard shortcuts can speed up the process, but it turns out that there's another, possibly faster, way. [Continue reading]
Check for Broken Links with PHP Part 3: Targeted Search
Over the past few weeks we discussed a broken-link checker which leverages PHP's cURL library and DOMDocument. As the code stands, the script checks every link within a given page. That's great if we want to check every link, but what if we want to target a specific section of a page? Let's take a look at how this can be accomplished. [Continue reading]
Check for Broken Links with PHP Part 2: Capture Redirected Links
The link checker discussed previously was designed to report obviously broken links. There is, however, another type of broken link that isn't reported. When a web page is renamed or moved, a redirect may be created so visitors of the old page are automatically sent to the new location. To detect these types of broken links, we'll need to make a few minor modifications. [Continue reading]
Check for Broken Links with PHP Part 1
One aspect of managing a website that I want to streamline is the process of checking for broken links. Clicking on all of those links manually can be tedious. Especially if you have a page dedicated to posting external links. Now I know there are link-checking services available, but I've been looking for an excuse to experiment with cURL which is available through PHP. For those interested, I wanted to share what I have so far. [Continue reading]
Incorporate Recent RSS Entries into MailChimp as a Bulleted List
MailChimp's RSS-to-email feature provides a special tag for automatically linking to the recent articles of a blog. However, the tag doesn't add bullets before each article title, making it difficult to distinguish which article is which. I've tried a number of things to add the bullets, some suggested by MailChimp support, with no luck. It turns out that there is a way—just not using the standard tag. [Continue reading]
Quickly Enter Today’s Date in phpMyAdmin
With the date-field types, phpMyAdmin provides a pop-up calendar for quickly selecting a time frame. However, I commonly create new entries by editing an old row and choosing the "Insert as new row" option. Using older entries causes the calendar to show dates based on the original entry. Since phpMyAdmin doesn't have an option for jumping to today's date, I end up clicking through the calendar options or typing the date manually. Well there's another, sometimes faster, way. [Continue reading]
