MAC TIP #17: How to move program toolbars to the top of a second monitor

OK, so if you use a laptop and plugin a second monitor as your main monitor, what you really want is the program toolbars (or menu bar) at the top of the larger montior, not on the laptop monitor.

So how do you do that?

Simple... just go into "System Preferences" and select "Displays".

OR, if you have "Show displays in menu bar" already turned on, you can access this option from the top tool bar and go to "Display Preferences". (Highly recommended).

 Once in "Displays" menu, now select the "Arrangement" tab.

This is where you set whether your monitor is on the left or right of laptop and if it's higher or lower. But you can also move the menu bar. Simply drag the white menu bar to the larger second monitor. (cursor added)

The monitor screens will then refresh and then you will note all program tool bars now on your larger monitor! Browser, Photoshop etc.

Happy days.  :-)

Linking to a Calendar Event on your website

A lot of companies still use email clients like Outlook and many want to promote events on their website so people can easily add the event to their calendar.  But how can you do this from Outlook so that it's compatible for other mail clients as well?

Well, there is the good old iCalendar - .ics files...

Thanks to the peeps at Microsoft, check out this tutorial (Outlook 2010)

Happy "Calendaring"!

Positional Images for website dev - Placehold.it

This is a great little website / service... when coding a site and you want to use positional graphic and show the pixel dimensions, check out Placehold.it

You can use the source in URL or download image and use...

EG: < img src="http://placehold.it/350x150" >

> http://placehold.it/

Form buttons, where should they go?

I am writing this post, because again today while "topping up" our account with Instra, I accidentially "reset" the form instead of submitting it - after entering credit card info and top up amount. Why? Because the reset button was on the right and I instinctively clicked it.

Humans are creatures of habit and we expect things to be in certain places for common activities like using an online form.  IMHO, a confirmation or submit button should be the right aligned button of two in a form. Don't mess with this, it works well, leave it alone please.

Why they felt the need for a reset button on such a small form is another matter.

Now, I wonder who else is experimenting with this?

Want to hide file extensions like .php on your website?

One of (yes, there are a few ways to do this) is to use a mod rewrite.  If you host on Linux, this should work for you.  No index on site, so you can't browse files in folders and MultiViews helps with any calls in code that need extension etc.

This should be your .htaccess file in the root:
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Options -Indexes
Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
# Turn mod_rewrite on
RewriteEngine On
# To internally redirect /dir/foo to /dir/foo.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteRule ^ %{REQUEST_URI}.php [L]
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

This will make: http://www.mywebsite.com/mypage.php  appear as: http://www.mywebsite.com/mypage

Enjoy!

Date codes in PHP

OK... so you are coding a dynamic date field in PHP, well these codes will come in handy when working out how to show say 01 Jan '13... or Mon 01 January 2013 for example.

d = "01" to "31"
j = "1" to "31" (no leading zero)
l = "Monday" through "Sunday"
D = "Mon" through "Sun"
F = "January" through "December"
M = "Jan" through "Dec"
Y = "2013"
y = "13"

To view the full date functions, click here.


Enjoy!

Word Press Types plugin "Missing argument" error fix

If you have used the Types plugin in your Word Press site, you may come across this error:

"Warning: Missing argument 2 for types_render_field(), called in xxx.php on line xx and defined in..."

This is because the types_render_field now needs a second parameter which should be an array.
The parameters for field types:http://wp-types.com/documentation/functions/

The simple fix is:


Change this: "...types_render_field("xxx");"

To this: "...types_render_field("xxx", array('raw' => 'true'));"

Where "xxx" is your field name.

Happy coding!