Category Archives: Software

Two Handy Sublime Text 2 Plugins

After using EditPlus for the better part of a decade, I made the switch to the totally awesome Sublime Text 2 text editor a few weeks back. One of the great things about Sublime is it’s support for plugins.

Two such plugins I’d like to recommend are SublimeBrackets and SublimeTagmatcher. Both improve how the highlighting of opening and closing items are handled.

By default, Sublime just underlines paired brackets. When you have a ton of code, this can be really hard to see. SublimeBrackets changes this to something more apparent:

Much better, right? I personally use the solid background green style.

SublimeTagmatcher does something similar but for HTML tags. When you have your cursor inside of an HTML tag, it will highlight both the current tag and it’s opening or closing counterpart. This is helpful for making sure you have the correct number of opening and closing tags.

Restoring “http://” To Your Firefox Address Bar

Lifehacker has a great article on how to stop Firefox from greying out everything but the domain name in your address bar. While I personally don’t mind it and infact think it’s a great anti-phishing feature for the average user, one thing I don’t like is the removal of the protocol, i.e. http://, from the beginning of the address bar. I know they’re trying to conserve space, but screen real estate is not something that I am lacking.

So here’s how to once again show the protocol in your Firefox address bar:

  1. Type about:config into your address bar to access a list of Firefox configuration options that are not exposed through a normal settings panel.
  2. Paste browser.urlbar.trimURLs into the search box to find the parameter we’re going to change.
  3. Right-click the row and select “Toggle” to change the value from true to false.
  4. Close the tab and go back to a normal tab, such as this blog post. You should now see the protocol in your address bar once again.

What Online Backup Service Do You Recommend?

About a month ago, I asked on Twitter for suggestions for online backup services as I’m tired of manually backing up and I never do it often enough. I was suggested Mozy, but I was also suggested a lot of alternatives. However I was leaving on a business trip basically the next day, so I never got around to reading the Tweets and they eventually slipped off my @mentions list.

So now I’m asking how I should have done it in the first place — on my blog. What online service do you use to backup your data? And before anyone suggests it, Dropbox is out of the running as it’s too expensive for actual backup (it’s great for sync though!).

Thanks!

Why Can’t Apple Make A Decent Windows Program?

Comon Apple, I get that Windows is a competing platform and you’d rather spend your time working on your own stuff, but if you’re going to force me to use iTunes with my iPhone, at least make iTunes not suck. I’ve ranted about iTunes before and while iTunes 10 seems more stable and less laggy so far, it’s still far from perfect.

I mean they can’t even manage to get the little things right. For example, their new logo has horrible transparency:

A simple thing to fix (look at all of the other icons there doing it just fine), but no, Apple had to not bother.

Looking For Firefox Addon: Make Bookmarks Buttons

I only have a few items in my bookmarks toolbar and I’m looking for an addon that will allow me to place those bookmarks (in icon-only form) in my normal toolbar. I already have an addon that makes the bookmarks button toggle the bookmarks toolbar (better than nothing) and I know I can customize my menu to get the bookmarks in my normal toolbar, but then they show up with labels, a big “Bookmarks” button, and the last bookmark hidden by an expand arrow. Does anyone know of such an addon?

Opera Is Faster Than A Potato Too!

Like Chrome, Opera wants you to know they’re faster than a potato too:

I’m sticking to Firefox though. I can’t live without all my addons and Firefox 4 will be pretty awesome.

YOURLS + Twitter for iPhone (UPDATE: TweetDeck Too!)

UPDATE: These instructions now apply to TweetDeck as well! You can find the field at Settings -> Services and pick “Other” for the shortening service.

Do you run YOURLS? Do you use Twitter for iPhone (aka Tweetie)? If so, this post will be of interest to you.

Twitter for iPhone supports using a custom shortening service. Thankfully the YOURLS API will output a format that Twitter for iPhone will accept.

So how do you go about setting it up you ask? Start by going to your YOURLS admin area and clicking the “Tools” link at the top. About half way down the page will be your signature (it’s like a password). It will be a 10 character string. Hang onto this, you’ll need it soon.

Now open up Twitter for iPhone and go to the “Accounts & Settings” screen. You can get there by pressing the three dots in the bottom right and then scrolling to the very bottom of the screen that comes up and pressing the “Accounts & Settings” button. There will then be a “Settings” button in the bottom left. There in the Settings, select “Services” and then “URL Shortening”. Lastly pick the “Custom…” option.

Now to enter the URL to your YOURLS API script. I found it easiest to craft this URL on my computer and then e-mail myself the URL which I could then copy/paste on my iPod Touch. It was a lot easier than typing it all out on the little keyboard.

This is the URL you will need to use:

http://yourdomain.com/yourls-api.php?action=shorturl&format=simple&signature=YOURSIGNATURE&url=%@

Replace “YOURSIGNATURE” with your signature that you located earlier in this post and leave the rest alone (the “%@” is the placeholder that Twitter for iPhone will look for). If you e-mail yourself the URL, make sure that you still have “%@” at the end of the URL and not “%25@” or something.

Now when writing a tweet, press the character count button and the keyboard will disappear. There in the bottom right will be a button to shorten all URLs in your tweet. They’ll be shortened using your custom domain!

Cool, huh? :)