Software & stuff

Disable the "Reading Untagged Document" dialog in Adobe Reader 10.0 (and maybe other versions)

I'm repeating Said Eloudrhiri's blog post about this issue. Hopefully it'll improve search results for his page. The fix works, but I didn't find his post right away. 

I had an issue where Adobe Reader's accessibility dialog opened every time I opened a PDF in Adobe Reader (standalone or browser plugin). It grew to be annoying, a bit like a young child asking you the same question over and over. I found no setting to disable that dialog. 

The fix is unfortunate:

Locate the installation folder for Adobe Reader

1. Cut the Accessibility.api & ReadOutLoud.api files from the plug_ins directory 
2. Make a new folder to store those plugins in ('just in case'), and ensure that folder is not inside the plug_ins directory
3. Paste the Accessibility.api & ReadOutLoud.api files into that new directory
4. Close all instances of Adobe Reader (inlcuding web browser tabs displaying PDFs)

Now you're set. Open a PDF and you will no longer be prompted.

Mac man pages in pdf

Nice command sequence. Pipe man pages to the Preview application so you can view them in PDF. 

Replace the "ls" below with whichever command you want to display.

man -t ls | open -f -a /Applications/Preview.app

 

Mac 'Finder': Show system files

Problem: 

You can use Terminal.app to navigate to /etc/ but you can't navigate to it in Finder.app. 

Solution: 

1. Force Terminal.app to show system files

Open Terminal.app and type: 

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

2. Kill all instances of Finder so it reloads using your new settings

Then type:

killall Finder

3. Reopen Finder.app

Then navigate to your hard drive. You'll see grey-ish folders that were previously hidden, such as bin, cores, etc, home, sbin, tmp, usr, var.

Discussion: 

I'm accustomed to Ubuntu's bash (one of the shell programs Terminal.app can use). I was surprised when I couldn't navigate to those system directories. I was also surprised that I couldn't easily launch Mac's TextEdit.app from the command line, passing it a file from a system directory. 

My original solution was to use vim, a command-line editor. However, I was configuring PHP's php.ini for a new install of Apache/PHP/MySQL and vim's not that easy to use to look for a particular MySql setting. I found the 'AppleShowAllFiles' setting on another page I was using for system setup reference.

Enjoy! 

Visual C# Express in Windows 7

Installing Visual C# Express on Windows 7 was a pain. I'm blogging this so you can save yourself some pain. You should read this if you tried to install it and got a message that told you to go to "http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=143397". 

Installation of Visual C# Express 2010 failed on my first attempt running vcs_web.exe. I read many forums and found no complete answers, just little hints, so I played around. I'll tell you the solution first & I'll tell you how I got to it later. 

Solution: 

1. Make Internet Explorer your default browser until installation is done (I was using Chrome and that's part of the 'problem')
2. Install the .NET Framework 4 (and reboot afterward)
3. Download the web page at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=143397, look for the section telling you which registry entries to remove using regedit (remove entries for vcs_web.exe even though it tells you to look for 'setup.exe')
4. Download and install the "Web Platform Installer 2.0", install everything from the second tab, including Visual Web Developer 2.0
5. After successfully installing using the Web Platform Installer 2.0, double-check your registry entries for vcs_web.exe, then run it again (ensure it is not in compatibility mode, it should work)

How did I come up with that? The rest of this post recants the steps I went through to figure that out.

I downloaded & ran vcs_web.exe. It failed with the alert mentioned above. I deleted the downloader & began reading forum posts. 

I installed the .NET Framework 4.0 & rebooted. I downloaded vcs_web.exe again & tried to install again. Same warning. This time I downloaded the html page mentioned in the warning. I read the file & found stuff about regedit. 

I removed the appropriate settings for vcs_web.exe in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers & Compatibility\Assistant\Persisted. I also set the executable properties to force it to run in compatibility mode. The installer again failed so I thought there might be dependency issues. 

I ran "Web Platform Installer 2.0" and specified I wanted "Visual Web Developer 2010 Express". I was watching Hulu using Chrome while doing this. 

Hulu freaked out in Chrome while I was doing this, which made me think the downloader/installer was probably written to work with IE (no surprise). The installer appeared to fail & just disappeared. I closed & restarted Chrome to see if that made a difference. The installer magically launched.  

During installation, my chat program (Trillian) freaked out & it looked like all my contacts were simultaneously logging in and out. Yuck! I restarted the movie in Hulu and switched to it using Windows 7's app switcher. The installer also appeared. The installer seemed to stall, and this whole situation reaffirmed my suspicion that the installer was attached to the browser, so I switched my system default browser to IE to test the theory. I had to manually kill the installer (using the Task Manager) as it didn't seem to want to respond to the Cancel button. 

I ran the installer again & with IE as my default browser it began working swimmingly. It succeeded so I installed Visual C++ 2010 Express to see that it worked. I tried Visual C# again and it failed, so I removed the registry settings again and edited the Properties on the executable to take it out of compatibility mode.  

The installer then ran & succeeded. Woohoo! I then prepped a blog post... ;)

RobotLegs & SwiftSuspenders quick setup

I've been using RobotLegs with SwiftSuspenders on my current contract. Dependency Injection and in particular these two libraries are pretty awesome, so I wanted to experiment more without risking the client's code base. What better way than to integrate RobotLegs & SwiftSuspenders into my music player codebase? 

1. Set up a RobotLegs library project

The first step was to get the RobotLegs framework project. I used robotlegs-framework-v1.0.3. I downloaded the zip, unzipped it under my main workspace, then in FlashBuilder created a new Flex Library project and used the existing folder name as the name of my project (robotlegs-framework-v1.0.3 was also the name of the folder after unzipping). This set up a FlashBuilder project and properly included the directories & files from the zip (bin, docs, libs, src & two root-level text files: LICENSE & README). 

The Problems panel lit up with red. "I don't know about org.swiftsuspenders.Reflector"! Easy enough. 

2. Add your Dependency Injection Framework to the library project

I went to GitHub & downloaded the source for SwiftSuspenders. I unzipped it just as I had for RobotLegs. This time, though, I browsed into the folder to view the contents of the 'org' folder (under 'src'). I copied the contents of that folder into the 'src/org' folder in the existing RobotLegs Flex Library project. The warnings go away & you can now use the library project. 

3. Link to your library project

In FlashBuilder I right-clicked on my music player's project folder. Select "Properties" and choose "Flex Build Path" and under the "Library path" choose "Add Project". Select the project you just created.

4. Some notes

I also liked working with AS3 Signals, which I was exposed to on this contract. It works well with RobotLegs, so I followed the same steps I used for SwiftSuspenders to incorporate AS3 Signals into my library. This adds an 'osflash' directory under the 'src/org' directory. 

Make sure your build order is set up so that your library is built first. This should only matter once unless you modify the heck out of the library for some home-rolled goodness. 

Look for joelhooks-signals-extension-CommandSignal for a couple classes that integrate nicely with the frameworks. 

Migrating projects from FlexBuilder to FlashBuilder

I wanted to use FlashBuilder and FlexBuilder on the same system. I felt the documentation for this flow was a little light, so here's a summary of my findings & the issues I worked through.

First attempt: Use the same Workspace in both FlashBuilder and FlexBuilder

I wanted a smooth migration, so I tried to go slowly. I wanted to be able to switch between FlashBuilder and FlexBuilder while working on a shared project in a particular Workspace. The dev environment requires Subversion, Maven, and particular folder locations identified in uniquely named environment variables (I'm using Windows 7). It is not feasible to duplicate the dev environment since it would require lots of overhead management of files, update, etc.

FlashBuilder installed without disrupting FlexBuilder. I opened it and pointed it at the Workspace. FlashBuilder's Problems panel lit up with red. I worked through the issues, but some of them involved compiler settings. Changing those settings messed FlexBuilder up, and that's the tech we agreed on for this project. I reset the project files by using our Maven script and moved on. I wasn't going to be able to use FlashBuilder & FlexBuilder interchangeably in this Workspace. 

Second approach: New Workspace, import Preferences

I nuked FlashBuilder's Workspace history so I wouldn't accidentally bork up my production code projects again. I had some custom display settings for my FlexBuilder editors and I really wanted to use those in FlashBuilder. It's fairly time consuming to set all text editors to have black backgrounds with light-colored text that 'plays well' with line highlighting & custom colors on reserved words, etc.

I used FlexBuilder's 'export preferences' workflow & saved the preferences to My Documents. I then used FlashBuilder's 'import preferences' workflow & restarted when prompted. One of the preferences, apparently, includes Workspaces. I was promptly shunted back into the Workspace I just 'rescued' and borked it up once again. Fixed it the same way as before & moved on. 

Third approach: New Workspace, Flex 3 Compatibility

It was clear I couldn't work on my production code in both FlashBuilder and FlexBuilder. I still wanted to play with Spark and incorporate it into my music player project.  

I created a new Workspace for FlashBuilder, closed FlashBuilder & ensured the Workspace history only included that Workspace. I then restarted FlashBuilder and manually changed all my settings to the stuff I mentioned above. I quit & restarted to ensure I wouldn't lose those settings if Eclipse froze while I was mucking about. 

I opened my music player project & saw the familiar red warnings. Internet searches weren't very helpful, so I poked around. The first thing I did was go to my root mxml file and type "<Spark" and hit enter to force the namespace into the root of the project. I then right-clicked the project folder & chose 'Properties'. I had already set the SDK to 4.0 under the 'Flex Compiler' tab here. Under that selection area is a checkbox that says "Use Flex 3 compatibility mode". That's the key. The Problem panel degraded the errors to deprecation warnings and I was able to run my music player in debug mode. 

Vista side scrolling in Eclipse panes

If you're getting frustrated with Vista making the text in your Eclipse panes shift around, here's the fix: 

1. Close Eclipse
2. Find the executable for that program
3. Right click on it, choose "Properties"
4. In the "Compatibility" tab, check the box next to "Run this program in compatibility mode for:"
5. Select "Windows XP (Service Pack 2)" from the drop-down under the checkbox

Run Eclipse. Fixed.

FlexBuilder auto-sense not showing certain classes ([ExcludeClass])

I encountered a strange problem while trying to use the sample code at this awesome blog . I'm sharing the results with you because I didn't read the blog carefully and missed this the first (and second, and third...) times through.

Some classes in the Flex SDK have a metadata tag on them called [ExcludeClass] that prevents them from showing up in FlexBuilder's auto-sense mechanisms. The classes will seem to you like they don't exist.

I could not get FlexBuilder to access the following classes in mx.rpc.xml: Schema, SchemaManager, SchemaLoader, XMLEncoder, XMLDecoder and the following classes in mx.rpc.events: XMLLoadEvent, SchemaLoadEvent When I say "access", I mean that when I type out "mx.rpc.xml." I don't see those classes. Also, when I type "new Schema()" there's no auto-sense for it. If I "took it on faith" that the classes are there and just use them, the classes exist and are visible in the debugger. I only discovered that, of course, after messing with FlexBuilder settings for hours (in-between trying to find web sites mentioning this), and also uninstalling and reinstalling FlexBuilder itself. Yuck.

Fireworks won't show the Gradient control arm

  While working through "Adobe Fireworks CS4, Classroom In A Book", chapter 4, I found instructions that I couldn't complete. The instructions direct the reader to select a custom-drawn path that has a gradient fill applied to it. It states that you'll see a 'control arm' for the gradient, and gives you directions for manipulating it.
  I saw no control arm. Here's how you fix it:
View -> Edges (Ctrl-H)

  It made no sense to me, but there ya go.

Dreamweaver CS4 doesn't start up (Vista)

  I'm going to tell you how to fix Dreamweaver in 3 easy steps!
  Dreamweaver failed to start up for me today. The last time it loaded successfully was before I moved my website folders around (manually, outside the program).
  The quick summary of the problem and solution is this: Dreamweaver keeps a cache of the sites it knows you edit with Dreamweaver; if you move them and the program has a problem with that move, it chokes and won't start up. You need to go into the system registry and delete the sites from the registry entries.
  After performing these steps you will need to enter all your site info again. See the note below if you don't want to delete everything.

  Here are the full steps:
1. Press and hold the "Windows" button and then press "R"
2. When the "Run" box appears, type "regedit" and hit "enter" (Use the "Run as Administrator" option if it's there)
3. Navigate to "HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > Adobe > Common > 10 > Sites" and delete everything there
Open Dreamweaver

Note: If you don't want to delete everything, just rename "Sites" to "OldSites". This will allow you to use regedit to view your old settings, making it easier to enter your site data a second time.