Tuesday, 9th July 2002
XML-RPC debugging
Via techno weenie: A Python XML-RPC debugging proxy script. This solves the problem of XML-RPC errors from PHP being sent out with the XML-RPC response packet and breaking any XML parser trying to recieve the packet. Instead you can test your script by aiming at the proxy script which will dump any problems to the console for you.
Using SCP
I’m slowly migrating this blog to another server (and rewriting it to use mySQL instead of serialized objects at the same time). After about half an hour of trying to figure out the best way of transferring the whole blog/ directory from this server to the new one without using FTP I figured out a way of doing it with scp (thanks to this tutorial):
Webdocs.org
Webdocs.org is an online library of various freely available software documentation.
The site uses frames with a tree style navigation menu on the left and loads (externally hosted) documentation on the right. At the moment they only cover Python but more will be added soon—in the meantime the Python collection is quite impressive.
Mozilla oddity
Mozilla oddity—if you rename a bookmark to the the same name as it’s shortcut keyword the shortcut keyword will stop functioning. I couldn’t see it in Bugzilla so I’ve submitted it as bug 156418.
CherryPy
CherryPy is an interesting open source Python application server. Dynamic sites are constructed in a special templating language which is then compiled by CherryPy to create a stand alone executable Python script complete with a built in web server. This can then be deployed anywhere with a Python interpreter. CherryPy comes with an excellent tutorial and a small but useful set of HOWTOs.
PHP XML Classes
PHP XML Classes—A collection of classes and resources to process XML using PHP
. Includes PHP implementations of Xquery lite and RDQL along with parsers for RDF, RSS and RDDL.
Logoed
Logoed: logo inspiration for graphic designers
. A large collection of real word logos to help kickstart the creative process.
Accessible lists
Today’s tip from Mark informs us that “real” lists are good for accessibility. They are also fantastic for writing maintainable code. Thanks to CSS, a humble unordered list can be transformed with custom bullet points, funky backgrounds, rollover effects and borders—all hidden away in the stylesheet leaving just basic list markup in the HTML. Adding a new item is as easy as <li>item</li>. W3Schools have a good CSS list reference complete with examples, and this earlier post on my blog lists some resources for dealing with unpredictable list margins.
Rounded corners in CSS
Courtesy of css-discuss: Two examples of expanding boxes in CSS with images in the corners, ideal for that trendy rounded corner effect: One and Two. Mozilla has experimental support for rounded corners that may or may not end up in CSS3, but if it aint in the standards it aint coming in.