The House of AnimeJB

It took me a bit to scour the internet and find all the information I needed to get rid of annoying extra items in my Windows Vista context menus. Of ultimate annoyance were the “Send To” and “New” menus.

Many sites weren’t of any help at all, and some replies to this question on forums were met with, “Uninstall the program”, which is perhaps the stupidest answer of all.

So here’s the resources I finally used, so you don’t need to look anymore.

Removing “Send To” Entries:
Customize the Windows Vista Send To Menu - Simple, easy, and won’t break your computer.

Removing “New” Entries:
Clear Unwanted Entries from Explorer’s New Menu - For the more advanced only! You’ll have to edit your registry for this, but it’s relatively straightforward.

General Menu Customization
Fast Explorer - For the more advanced only! It was useful for getting rid of one of my general context menus that popped up on any file or folder I clicked for an archive program I used.

Here’s the problem with Linux.

Within the past two years or so, there have been GIANT LEAPS in usability on Linux platforms. The latest version of Ubuntu is an awesome testament to that fact. The last time I tried to configure a Linux machine - I think it was an installation of Suse - I managed to break it within a few hours after it was installed. I’ve also managed to kill Kubuntu before. I haven’t broken Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty) yet. This is a sign from the Gods.

So what’s the problem?

The problem is when a new user, like me, needs to get something done, obviously they turn to “experienced” Linux users, and the first thing those users say is, “open a terminal and type…”

This is very discouraging for those of us using the new installations and wondering why there isn’t a way to do it through the normal interface. The thing is - there ARE ways to do it through the normal interface now, but the people who have been using Linux forever only know how to do it through the terminal and find it easier that way - even though it isn’t easier for the rest of us who are graphics-oriented.

I’m not saying those of you who are using the terminal are wrong or bad people. And I know that a lot of people coming to you guys with questions have not “RTFM’ed”. But just be aware that help documents have improved, and that they and other system configurations no longer need to be accessed from the terminal.

And to new Linux users out there - pick up a modern installation and try to RTFM. And stop asking experienced users “how” to do things. It’s one thing to ask, “Is it possible to do this?” or, “What’s it called when you do this?” so you know how where to look in your manuals, but if you ask an experienced Linux user “how” to actually do it, you’re going to be in for a world of hurt. Just so you know.

There’s been a lot of debate going around about subbing groups encoding things with SoftSubs or in MKV format. I used to hate those things too, but now I find that they’re pretty awesome, especially for taking screenshots! So I did a little research and put together a little guide to get things looking pretty on Windows and Mac, displaying subtitles the way the group intended for them to look.

To see what I mean, check out these screenshots:

VS.

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It really sucked to have to download freeware .ico makers whenever I wanted to make an icon, only to delete them when I was finished. Today I finally found a plugin so that I can save as a .ico from Photoshop!

Telegraphics

It comes with a version for mac and windows. Spiffy! Just pop the plugin into the File Format folder as directed in the readme it comes with and you’re all set. It’s also neat that it’s open source, so you can see how they did it.

There were also a few other links worthy of note:

• Photoshop .icns plugin (for mac icons) - IconLab
• Linux extract and convert icons - icoutil

There are a lot of different tips, techniques, and cheats for installing multiple versions of Internet Explorer on a Windows XP machine. Most of them are a huge pain in the butt for the functionality, and even then, when you’re doing it without using a virtual machine, some things still are broken, like cookies and conditional comments.

Well there’s a new program out on the block - Multiple IE by TredoSoft.

The installer allows you to run other versions of IE (versions 3-6) next to your IE 7 installation. The cookies and conditional comments work right, too! There are still a few issues, but it’s clearly better than any other solution out there.

Essentially, you just upgrade your IE6 to IE7 normally so that everything works properly, and then run the Multiple IE installer.

This isn’t about rotating through alternate stylesheets or importing them, or even changing an inline style on an element through Javascript. Oh no. This is about creating an actually stylesheet element ON THE FLY.

The reason for this is because for a bit I was just trying to create a long string with the style tags and rules inside it, and then just pop it in the innerHTML of the body. (Hey, I’m no Guru, I have a lot to learn!) Needless to say, this caused a few issues.

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At work some of my tasks have led me to fooling around with new interface ideas. I figured this is a good way to get up to scratch with AJAX and related ideas.

Now if you’re pulling in XML with AJAX you know that it can be a perfect pain to parse the file. You’ve got to make sure that the file is converted into a document element (and the methods for doing so are unfortunately not cross-browser), and even afterwards there’s no cross-browser method to finding the tags you want - at least not one that will give you clean code. Basically, your choices are:

• getElementsByTagName() - it works, but the function is long, and you’ll have more loops and nests than you can shake a stick at. Also, you’re limited to tags.
• Functions such as firstChild and childNodes - which again, leads to long code and lots of nesting. Plus, using these you don’t even know what the tags are you’re messing with, and heaven forbid you change the XML schema a bit, if you didn’t well-document your javascript it could take you a bit to find the lines you need to alter.
• XPath and XSLT transformations - which are sadly not cross-browser and in some cases don’t even exist in certain browsers.

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I had made this entry in our old blog, but since that’s lost and there’s a lot more Firefox Extensions out now, I figured it’d be good to make a new list of extensions that are useful for web development.

• Web Developer - A great toolbar that allows you to easily disable browser elements (css, cookies, javascript, cache, etc), outline elements on a page, edit css and html, and even view the generated source on the page - that is, what your JavaScripts print out.  Way nifty.
• Colorzilla - Lets you pick a color from anywhere on a website and copy it into your page.  Has a color pallet that lets you fine tune your colors, too.
• MeasureIt - Lets you draw a ruler on a webpage.  Pretty useful for estimating space.
• View Source Chart - The ultimate tool for viewing the generated source of a page.  Color codes and indents everything into nice crisp boxes.
• View Formatted Source - Like the View Source Chart but want to kick it up a notch?  Not only does this extension view the generated source (though not as neatly organized, I think) - you can also view images by highlighting them int he source code, and the same goes for the CSS of an element!  PLUS it has an inline element that allows you to select a section of the page and view it’s source. AWESOME.
• FireBug - A spiffy little console that attaches to the bottom of the browser.  Lets you traverse the DOM, view errors in JavaScript, XML, and CSS (and toggle them on and off!), shows you results of AJAX requests, and even gives you the option of writing messages directly to the console instead of alerting them through JavaScript.  Very, VERY awesome.
• Console² - If FireBug is a bit too much for you, you can always turn to Console².  As of Firefox 1.5 all your error messages for XML, CSS and JS are all shoved into the same JavaScript Console.  This extension renames it to an “Error Console” and allows you to toggle your error types on and off.
• CSSViewer - Switch it on and then hover over any element to get it’s style in a nicely organized floating box.  Very cute, but doesn’t seem to like frames very much.

There are a few more out there that I haven’t tried, but look pretty useful.  Please do try them and comment here with results!

• Regular Expressions Tester
• XPath Checker
• XPather 

I decided to split up Tips and Tricks into subcategories so that they would be easier for people to go through. Below is a list of the subcategories.

• Browsers (RSS) (2)
• CSS (RSS) (1)
• Flash (RSS) (1)
• Javascript (RSS) (3)
  • Regular Expressions (RSS) (1)
• Linux (RSS) (1)
• Photoshop (RSS) (1)
• Vista (RSS) (1)
• XML (RSS) (1)

I thought it might be nice to have a little archive of Javascript Regular Expressions for other people coming through.

This one is for pulling <script> tags out of a string. It should match any case, account for attributes in the opening tag, and match any code including line breaks in between the tags.

First up, a code to jut match an opening <script> tag, because any open <script> tag can screw up a page, so you might want to take care of just that:

/<[Ss]*?script(s[Ss]*?)?>/gi

Next, a tag to grab a <script> tag from beginning to end, so that you can protect all the text, or replace it, or what have you.

/<[Ss]*?script(s[Ss]*?)?>[Ss]*?<[Ss]*?/script(s[Ss]*?)?>/gi