How To Restore Your Recycle Bin on Vista

November 11, 2009 — David

So I accidentally deleted the Recycle Bin on my Desktop by selecting all items and deleting. Well I thought a simple undo delete would fix the issue but unfortunately it restored everything except for the Recycle Bin. I performed a quick Google Search and found the quickest fix possible. Figured this could be useful to others so here you  go..

By: Ramesh Srinivasan / WinHelpOnline.Com

Restore Recycle Bin icon to the Desktop

  • Click Start, type Control desk.cpl,,@Web and press Enter
  • In the Desktop Icon Settings dialog, enable the Recycle Bin checkbox
  • Click OK

Another way to access the Desktop Icon Settings dialog is to right-click on the Desktop, click Personalize, and in the left pane, click Change desktop icons.

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Magento eCommerce Open Source Application Installation

November 3, 2009 — David

Magento is basically a Business CMS/Shopping cart application designed to take online businesses to the next level. While on Template Monster I browsed for great eCommerce templates and found the Magento templates to have the look and functionality that I expect for a business. They have a free edition which is limited to basic functionality and then there’s the Enterprise edition which is designed for a mature successful company. The project took a total of 30minutes for me to install including the download from the site. The download was slow for some reason but the rest of the setup was a breeze. Here’s the installation instructions from the site, however before you get started with the install make sure you verify the version of MySQL installed by your host is 4.1.20 or newer.   MySQL

Magento Installation Guide

Posted on Thursday, August 30, 2007
Category: Installation & Setup

Installation

  1. Please refer to Magento’s system requirementsto ensure you have the appropriate platform and environment set up. If you attempted to install Magento and the installation wizard suggested to use the PHP-CGI workaround, please click here.
  2. Downloadthe .zip or .tar.gz file from the Magento website and decompress it.
  3. Upload the Magento web files to your web server via FTP (if you have SSH access and are comfortable with the command line, check out this wiki post)
  4. Create a MySQL database and user/password for Magento This step varies by hosting provider and is out of the scope of this document. Consult your provider’s support/documentation for instructions on how to do this.
  5. Ensure that the file magento/var/.htaccess, the directories magento/app/etc, magento/var, and all the directories under magento/media are writable by the web server. To do so, navigate to the directory with your FTP client. Then locate the function “Change Permissions” or “Change Mode” in your FTP client and select it. Once you find the function, you must set the permissions so the web server can write to this file. There are two typical ways of representing file permissions in Linux:
    1. As a number (eg, 755)
    2. As a series of permissions categorized into user, group, and other

    6. If your FTP client uses the first representation, set the permissions on each directory to be 777, or 0777. If your FTP client uses the second representation, set the permissions as shown in the image below. http://www.magentocommerce.com/wiki/magento_filesystem_permissions

    image

  6. Use your web browser to surf to the Magento installation wizard. If you’ve uploaded the Magento files to http://www.example.com/magento/, then the wizard will be located here: http://www.example.com/magento/install/.
  7. Once in the wizard, you can configure various system-level settings that are required for Magento to function. Most options will be intelligently guessed for you, but you’re free to override any settings that don’t look right. At the very least, change the database parameters in the first box “Database connection” to match those of the database you set up in Step 3.
  8. Success! You’ve completed a basic Magento install. You can now visit the administration backend and begin configuring your new online store.

Once I completed the Installation the first thing I wanted to do was load a few images of the test store and see if it worked. Unfortunately you must crawl before you walk. Which means you must go through the Backend options of the site and modify the settings to meet your business.  But for starters it’s best to visit the Knowledge Base page to find answers for most of your questions. If you find the software appealing enough you can pay for the User Guide. It’s inexpensive for a refined application such as Magento. Later I will follow up with my Complete Site Setup but for now here’s a peek at the installation with a sample product.

Sample Product

Magento3

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My Developer Toolkit

June 14, 2009 — David

Here’s a list of tools, tips, and sites that I find very valuable when it comes to developing and learning. A large amount of this list came from my Web Programming  professor Les Lusk. Hopefully this list will become useful to someone other than myself if not it will still serve as a good reference when setting up development images for friends to use. As I continue to grow I am sure this list will do the same.

Browsers

Opera – The forgotten of the top three browsers. Now available for free! This is the number one browser for cell phone users!

Firefox – Firefox is the best all around browser for Web development. It is also the fastest growing and second-most popular.

Safari – You already have this if you are a Mac user, but now Window’s users can also download for free!

FireFox -Add-ons

All of these utilities work from within the FireFox browser:

  • ColorZilla – A collection of tools, including a Color Picker similar to the one found in Photoshop
  • Edit Cookies – add, edit and delete session and saved cookies
  • FireBug – Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any Web page – a must have.
  • FireShot – a Firefox extension that creates screenshots of Web pages.
  • HTML Validator – Adds HTML and XHTML validation to your browser
  • IE View – adds “View this page in IE” to your FireFox Menus
  • JS View - allows you to view the source code of external files.(Javascripts/CSS)
  • Opera View – adds “View this page in Opera” to your FireFox Menus
  • Safari View – adds “View this page in Safari” to your FireFox Menus
  • Link Checker – Checks for valid links on any given page
  • MeasureIt – a ruler to measure height/width for any page element
  • Web Developer – assorted Web Developer tools for your browser – a must have.

XHTML authoring

HTML-Kit – Free full functioned editor with XHTML conversion utility/split screen viewing and the ability to load external plug-in utilities.

Jedit – A cross platform programmer’s text editor written in Java that is customizable with plugins (requires Java to be installed on your machine). Make sure to download the “stable version” not the “latest version” for best results.

HTML Validator Lite – The free lightweight version of the HTML Validator software.

TopStyle Lite – Free CSS editor

FTP

FileZilla – FileZilla is a fast and reliable FTP client with a “Windows Explorer” type of interface, lots of useful features, the ability to resume downloads and the SSH/SFTP.

FireFTP – a plug-in for FireFox which gives you instant access to FTP from within your browser.

Online Resources

Net Mechanic – Check HTML coding/load time (up to 20 pages with registration)

Net Tuts+ – Web Developer and Design Tutorials (Great Resource to have)

pForm - Quick and easy form creation. (This will save you a lot of time)

SitePoint - Fresh Thinking for Web Developers and Designers (Books and Useful Articles)

TAW (Web Accessibility Test) – A tool for the analysis of Web sites, based on the W3C – Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG 1.0).

WDVL – The Open Source Reference Library – JavaScript, Perl, HTML, PHP, Perl, Python Ruby, Rails, Soap and more!

Web Pages That Suck – Learn good web design by looking at bad web design

Server-side Downloads

Windows/Mac Users – install MySQL/PHP at once:

  • XAMPP – XAMPP is an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. XAMPP is really very easy to install and to use – just download, extract and start.
  • AMPstart – You can use this with XAMPP to allow your environment to run on a USB key!

Windows Users – install the entire package at once:

  • WampServer – WampServer is a Windows Web development environment. It allows you to create Web applications with Apache, PHP and the MySQL database. It also comes with PHPMyAdmin and SQLiteManager to easily manage your databases. WampServer installs automatically (installer), and its usage is very intuitive. You will be able to tune your server without even touching the setting files.

or install all of the services separately:

  • Apache HTTP server – The number one Web server in the world. (open source)
  • MySQL – MySQL database server.
  • PHP – PHP programming language.
  • PHPmyAdmin – Web Interface for MySQL. Eliminates the need to do command line administration.

Utilities

Zone Alarm – Personal firewall software. If you don’t have a firewall on your machine – you should!

Font Lister – Free font viewing and printing utility. You can view the fonts on your machine both installed or in a folder

Cliptrak – Multiple Clipboard Utility

CPUID – Is a freeware  app that gathers information on some of the main devices of your system. (Must Have)

WinDirStat - WinDirStat is a disk usage statistics viewer and cleanup tool for Microsoft Windows (all current variants). “Great Way to identify what’s eating up your disk space.”

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A Book Truly Worth Its Price.

May 16, 2009 — David

If ones goal is to be a developer of worth it’s best to understand one will never know everything about anything. While searching for an answer to an ASPNETCompiler issue with TFS building a project I stumbled upon a link to this book Inside the Microsoft® Build Engine by Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi , William Bartholomew . It immediately grabbed my attention because it’s one of a small group of books that actually cover Team Foundation Server with MSBuild. It also has relevant information as to the upcoming release of VSTS2010. Needless to say I ordered it immediately to add to the library and get a real understanding of MSBuild in and out to truly know the core of the Build Process. After receiving it at my office it helped resolved a few issues I had which saved me a few hours of research and is now serving as a great reference manual. I still have not completed the book as of yet but look forward to writing a complete review once I am done. So far saving me 2-3 hours of research makes this book worth its weight in gold. I also joined the Team System Live event for Running Interactive Build Agents for UI Testing and Debugging Organized by one of the Authors William Bartholomew. It was definitely interesting and things did not go as planned with TFS Building the project. However I will be attending future events to further my knowledge as needed in the Software industry.
Amazon Book Details

 

Product Description
The build process when code gets assembled to see how and how well it works is a critical step in software development. Developers had few options for customizing the build process before Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008, but the Microsoft Build Engine (MSBuild) enables developers to customize each step during a build. MSBuild is extensible and uses an XML file to describe each step, allowing the build master or developer to easily change and augment how projects are built. This book offers hands-on guidance for customizing MSBuild, and provides a cookbook of examples on Web deployment, automated releases, and other essential topics. It also covers Visual Studio Team Foundation Build, the build engine in Visual Studio Team System.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 368 pages
  • Publisher: Microsoft Press (January 7, 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0735626286
  • ISBN-13: 978-0735626287
  • Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.3 x 1.5 inches
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IE8 is Now Available!

March 24, 2009 — David
First Thoughts:
Even though IE8 has made improvements, after viewing the compatibility list it’s still not really ready for CSS 3. I believe we still are developing for IE6 and up so this may not be such a great benefit however I think it’s something to look into for future development.
 
Microsoft Site:
 
IE8 Add-ons:
 
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My Windows Home Server Build

March 18, 2009 — David

Well I finally finished moving to a new home and purchased the remaining items for my WHS. I decided to blog about the install just in case someone out there is interested in building one for themselves or purchasing one from HP. I ordered the 120 day trial from Microsoft to give it one last run before purchasing the software. You really can’t beat the opportunity to actually try out a retail product from Microsoft for 120 days for FREE! Enough with my continuous Microsoft praising and on with my WHS experience.

Reasons I build a new server with WHS:

  1. Store and Backup family pictures.
  2. Backup all pc’s in the home automatically while I sleep!
  3. Make it easy for the kids to access movies and pics.
  4. Create an easy way for family across the country to view pics online.
  5. Try out the cool add-ins out there on the web.
  6. Just because it’s fun!

 The gear list includes the following,

  1. Window Home Server OS (120 Day Trial from Microsoft!)
  2. Antec Sonata III 500 Black (Super Quiet 500w Power Supply included)
  3. Asus M3A78-Em AM2+ Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
  4. AMD 7750 Athlon x2 Black Edition 2.7 Ghz  
  5. Corsair Dual Channel TWINX 2048MB PC6400 DDR2 800MHz Memory (2 x 1024MB)
  6. Western Digital Caviar Black WD750GB 7200 Rpm 32mb Cache Sata Drive (x2)
  7. Western Digital 350GB Drive from old pc.

and I decided to use the onboard video since I will not be using this box for gaming.

Hardware Installation:

The installation was very simple of all the products and the case had plenty of room for the board since the board was Micro ATX. The best part is the complete system is really quite compared to my gaming pc. The only downsides are the fingerprints that are visible on the outside of the case from just barely touching the pc. *Make sure you plug-in the Network Cable so you have access to the server after installation*

Software Installation:

Well immediately I go through the bios and make sure that the default drive is the 350 gig and make the DVD drive the primary boot device.  Next I read over the install steps from http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows/installing-windows-home-server/ to make sure I don’t miss anything on the install of the OS(Operating System-NooB-) . I then begin the install process which appeared to take at least a good hour and a half!  Not sure if it was because I had a 9:45pm conference all in the middle of the installation or it really takes that long for the software to install. The process was exactly like the howtogeek.com tutorial explained and seeing the finally desktop is a relief.  

New PC  Tuneup!

  1. I tried to install the drivers from the disc that accompanied the motherboard…ERROR! The popup states that the OS is not supported. When setting up so the next best thing would be to Click on Start then Right mouse click and select Manage.  Select Device Manager under System Tools and look for all the exclamation points. Then Right Mouse click and select Update Drivers, and it will allow you to automatically search the drivers disc within the drive. The most important driver to install is the Network Adapter. Without this you will not be able to connect to the server from another pc, and you will not be able to have access to the web to install updates.
  2. Once the network driver was installed I was able to access the Server from the network and began to download updates from Microsoft.
  3. While the server was updating I installed the WHS Connector CD on my other PC to install the application that will allow me to access the server remotely.
  4. Now that I have completed all of the updates an hour or so later I am ready to configure my backups but first it’s time to research free security and upgraded firewall.

 To Be Continued…….

 

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Two Pc’s, Two Monitors, One Mouse, One Keyboard, One Input Director!

January 14, 2009 — David

I have always had a rough time swapping between keyboards for my laptop and desktop until now. Thanks to Input Director (http://www.inputdirector.com/)  I can use one keyboard and one mouse to control both. No extra Hardware needed! The mouse will scroll through all three of my monitors and I really love the cursor wraparound feature. Ok enough with the infomercial check it out for your self if you are interested! It’s FREE!

Input Director

Input Director is a Windows application that lets you control multiple Windows systems using the keyboard/mouse attached to one computer. It is designed for folks who have two (or more) computers set up at home and find themselves regularly sliding from one system to the other (and wearing out the carpet in the process!). With Input Director, you can share a single keyboard/mouse across a set of systems. You switch which system receives the input either by hotkey or by moving the cursor so that it transitions from one screen to the other (in a very similar fashion to a multi-monitor setup). The idea being that you can position the monitors from two or more systems in a row and use a shared keyboard/mouse to control all of them.

Input Director also supports a “shared” clipboard, in which you can copy data onto the clipboard on one system, transition across to another and paste.

Input Director requires Windows 2000 (Service Pack 4), Windows XP (Service Pack 2), Windows 2003 or Windows Vista. The systems must be networked.

 


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Continuous Integration 101

December 20, 2008 — David

What is Continuous Integration?

Continuous integration describes a set of software engineering practices that speed up the delivery of software by decreasing integration times. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_Integration)

Continuous integration advantages:

  • When unit tests fail, or a bug is discovered, developers might revert the codebase back to a bug-free state, without wasting time debugging.
  • Integration problems are detected and fixed continuously – no last minute hiatus before release dates;
  • Early warning of broken/incompatible code;
  • Early warning of conflicting changes;
  • Immediate unit testing of all changes;
  • Constant availability of a “current” build for testing, demo, or release purposes;
  • The immediate impact of checking in incomplete or broken code acts as an incentive to developers to learn to work more incrementally with shorter feedback cycles.

Microsofts Team Build.

Here’s a diargram from Microsoft of an overview of Team Build..

ms181710_vs_bigbldarchovrviewen-usvs_90

To Be Continued…

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