Sam-I-Am's Builder Blog

Work type stuff - handy urls and notes on the trials and tribulations of a web builder.

Thursday, October 25, 2001

Dynamic Tree Created from an XML Data File
Some new files uploaded to the TestSuite, including this one, which stiches together a few things I've been thinking of for a while.
1) it uses a little cgi I wrote to take a url, fetch the file and return it as a javscript string variable assignment - for use in a <script src..> context, or with a bookmarklet as a way to generate javascript strings for output or manipulation. Its a way to get external data to a script in a useable format. (feel free to use)
2) it uses a little javascript xml parser I found to parse this string
3) using the xml structure it builds a navigation "tree", so updating the leftnav is a matter of editing an xml file.

Monday, October 22, 2001

CMDs
Inspired.. I created a little perl script to output documentation for all the (documented) cmd.exe shell commands. The script is posted too: cmds.pl

Friday, October 19, 2001

Glish.com
This is to remind me to come back and look through some of this stuff (css/web experiments and stuff)

cmd
CMD and command.com - a run down of features, switches and tricks.

CMD Tools for 32-bit Windows
Some very handy ones - like a utility to place the contents of a given file onto the clipboard, and other goodies to run from the command line and batch files and the like.

Wednesday, October 17, 2001

JSRS Javascript Remote Scripting
Requesting and capturing a server response from within a page (without a refresh) with client-side js. This is very cool -- if it works cross platform/browser.

Wednesday, October 10, 2001

glish.com : css hacks
and Box Model Hack for more on practical css with the current crop of browsers.

Friday, October 05, 2001

Steal This Page
In-situ page editor, dhtml stylee. I knew someone somewhere must have attempted something like this, dissatisfied with the MS DHTML Editing Control and WYSIWYG editors in general. Finally I started writing one myself and in the process turned this up with a search for "dhtml bookmarklet text selection". This is very cool, and provides a great starting point for what I really want to see - a sensible, configurable wysiwyg editor/environment for basic page updates and changes.

Tuesday, October 02, 2001

A List Apart: SIZE MATTERS: Making CSS Keywords Work
interesting, I'll give this a whirl. He side-steps the whole NN4 thing by doing all the relative sizing in an @import-ed style sheet, but that may be the most reasonable strategy.