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abu

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  1. abu

    Need a new mouse

    tbh, I think sticking with the defaults as much as possible is a better way to focus on what you're at your workstation for - working... =) I tried a pletora of stuff during the years but mostly it was for a little fixation of mine and as a sort of hobby... now I very much limit myself on that but some adjustment is just necessary, OS X user interface is quite well thought and refined but the default setup suffers from Apple iconic obsession for simplicity, the so called "flatland" approach. The downside is that Apple tends to alter quite a lot of things in major revisions, so when I upgrade I've to spend time to figure out what of my configurations can be reapplied without breaking some important default. I've a sort of an envy for that, I've never been quite a shell type - I can't even properly touch type after so many years... Being more keyboard centric, do you like stuff like quicksilver/launchbar or just don't care? yep I also had this sensation of a rather constant degrade of performance over time on Leopard, but I shrudded it off as the typical computer user performance hypochondria. But at times it felt cospicuous, like being back at Windows 98 =D Whatever, after a couple of years it started to have random manifest beachballing behaviour even under very light loads, and after a while it started to have serious issues, like systemUIserver eating up all the cpu and hanging. It was the first time since years that I had to clean-reinstall an os without any catastrophic cause - must be said anyway that the laptop hd smart state had reached "pre-fail", maybe that has something to do with it :°) Now I'm on 10.6 and things are way better so far. Browsers anyway are still a PITA, all of them are way snappier on Windows. Firefox is especially bad, there have to be something with their codebase, as it's quite slow on Windows too, but the others aren't that better. Buh. For sure, they all keep eating ginormous amounts of ram despite the claims of substantial improvements at every release.
  2. abu

    Need a new mouse

    Just to digress a bit... At work I've gone back and forth thru Mac OS 8-9, Win2000, Jaguar, WinXP, Leopard-Snow Leopard, and some Win7… to put it short, I think the document interface approach MS took with Win 95 (both MDI and SDI) is inferior to Apple classical free windows and top menubar, to me it's more ankward and limited in many respects. Anyway in MS implementation it's always been very easy to cycle thru all open window (with alt+tab), to retrieve any windows (thanks to the taskbar, which was ugly and didn't scale much but worked well), and to "isolate" applications with floating palettes, thanks to the MDI and the prominence given to a standardized and predictable "maximized" mode. On Macs those things have always been somewhat troublesome, with ever changing and variously underdone or obscure features. For example, on classic Mac OS there simply wasn't a command to cycle thru windows (with alt+tab merely switching applications like on OS X). OS X introduced a couple (for cycling windows of the foreground app), but one is only available in some random Apple apps, and the other is a rather obscure shortcut (ctrl+f4, or even fn+ctrl+f4) that's only advertised in the keyboard shortcuts section of the System Preferences. Many people discover that and remap it to something more handy, other never know, and for users coming from Windows that can be maddening. Hiding and retrieving single windows, and not entire apps, was another weakness. Classic OS had just that weird "roll window up in the title bar" feature; OS X minimize-to-dock has been a pain right until Snow Leopard somewhat fixed it (minimize to dock icon and show on the bottom in exposé) taking a hint from Windows 7. It's no coincidence that one of the most boasted new features Apple introduced was Exposé, because before Tiger getting a sense of open windows was quite a mess. The MDI approach is plainly absent, unless some application implements that by itself, like Adobe ones. That was by design, but sometimes it's useful and it wouldn't be hard to recreate that under Mac OS approach. Pre-OS X there was a Finder preferences to hide desktop when the Finder was in background - icons were hidden and the empty desktop didn't registered clicks. OS X ditched that, and so there're a dozen or so utilities that reimplement that in some manner. Fullscreen hasn't been standardized until Lion, but that wouldn't have been such a problem if they didn't botch such a seemingly simple thing like the green "+" button, which is just unpredictably thorn between maximising and resizing to fit. Setting a shortcut or something to always maximise windows is handy, I do it with Better Touch Tool. Speaking of which, it's a godsend of an utility. I mentioned I use mostly the trackpad (mouse only for design and audio app), that was forced since I wander a lot on foreign cramped desks, but now I just prefer it - the ability to tweak default gestures and add any kind of weird combo makes it way more powerful than any mouse to me. Think I'm gonna get that magic trackpad thingy for external keyboard and desktop. Things like remapping four-finger lateral swipe to switching spaces, having a pop-up list of all windows with a three-finger tap, or ctrl+alt+ two finger drag to resize windows... it may sound a mess and probably is, but to me it makes things very speedy and natural, and helps a lot since most of the times I've only the cramped macbook's 15" screen at my disposal, which means lot of continous window switching and rearranging. For example, in tabbed apps like browsers or text editors, I've got three-finger horizontal swipes remapped from "back" and "forward" to switching tab. I also have three-fingers vertical swipes mapped to cycle windows shortcuts. So when I browse I just flick three fingers around to move thru tabs and windows, like a matrix, and that's really a snap. Btw, one feature of Windows 7 I really like is windows snapping, and Better Touch Tool clone that too. All in all, this is to say that in my experience OS X may feel ankward with its defaults but it can be well extended and partially customized with little third party apps that just work (while on Windows adding on the GUI features is quite a nasty mess of bloated utilities). For me it took a little time but now I just feel way more speedy and organized than on Windows - and that isn't just about the GUI, there's a lot of little gems like clipboard managers, GTD stuff... oh well sry for the digression =D
  3. abu

    Need a new mouse

    yep I've basically the same setup on mine (thumb rubber button -> show desktop, side edge buttons -> exposé and spaces). I couldn't get confortable with the Revolution's side wheel so I went for the MX even if it has just half the side triggers (3, so I have to leave out app exposé). The G700 looks perfect with those 4 d-pad-like side buttons, if they're easy to press. lol please no, that thing is way over the top, it reminds me of that hideous "open office" mouse =) Ryan which version of Photoshop do you have? In CS4 & 5 you can configure it to have a multiple document interface (big container with all documents and palettes confined inside), just like the Windows flavour. Anyway in general in any version you can just press "F" to get a fullscreen canvas which is basically the same thing, single-document oriented.
  4. abu

    Need a new mouse

    By now you should've got some mouse already, but I couldn't resist - I confess I've been a bit of a mice nerd in the past ^^ Nowadays I use mostly the trackpad since I really dig gestures with Better Touch Tool. I have a Logitech MX 1100 that's still perfect after a couple of years. I like a lot the third rubberized button for the thumb on the side, while I've never liked the Revolution's side wheel. It's out of production since long but you can find many still sealed on eBay for cheap. I see Logitech does the Performance MX now, which looks like an updated MX1100, with better buttons. The G700 you mention seems very good, it has a very similar shape to the MX 1100, doesn't have the rubber button, but the other extra buttons seem much improved, they are tiny and difficult to reach on the MX. Maybe there are a tad too many for comfort use, but they seem well sized and placed. Anyway, gaming mice is the way to go if you want a good one, they are ultraprecise with great buttons and wheels. Razer makes great ones, if you can get past the garish look. Imperator, Lachesis and DeathAdder (erm...) are prolly the best for work purpose. SteelSeries also are very good and look more sober, the best are the Ikari and the Kai which has buttons on both sides. But really you should get this =D
  5. issue #1: you can't get blown while driving
  6. np, issue confirmed by the app dev. weird one =)
  7. Adam, doh - that's it, tar files default to The Unarchiver.app on my system, and it turns out it's messing up decompression without throwing any error or warning (the directory is just not there, not hidden or something). With the system provided Archive Utility it's all right instead. Thinking about filing a bug report to the app devs, is anybody on OS X here able to reproduce the issue? I'm on 10.6.8, Unarchiver version is 2.7 [edit: same issue on a 10.6.3 machine with Unarchiver 2.6]
  8. K, maybe it's a dumb question, but what's up with the PW 2.0 tarball download here? https://github.com/ryancramerdesign/ProcessWire/tarball/master It doesn't have the /wire/templates-admin directory - while the zip has it.
  9. Thanks a lot Ryan I actually looked at that file but I didn't realize I could just add pairs to the array... :/ Indeed as you worried things get weird passing those values via processwire's UI... (Enter puts a paragraph break and a newline in wysiwyg, and two <br /> in the code; Shift + Enter puts a newline in wysiwyg and nothing in the code) Whereas if I change the config default values in InputfieldTinyMCE.js things go as expected (Enter or Shift + Enter produce a newline in wysiwyg and a <br /> in the code) For the actual issue I've at hand it doesn't matter anyway, as I didn't think at the easiest solution, replacing Ps with BRs when I output the headline field in the template - which is a shame since there was a php example just at the bottom of the tinymce documentation page I linked... I've this now in the template <h1> <?php if ($page->rootParent->headline) { $tinyp = $page->rootParent->headline; $tinyp = preg_replace('/<p[^>]*>/', '', $tinyp); $tinyp = str_replace('</p>', '<br />', $tinyp); echo $tinyp; } else { echo $page->rootParent->title; }; ?> </h1> which seems to fit my needs just well (no <p> inside <h1>, and no inconsistencies in tinyMCE wysiwyg) Thanks for the explanation anyway, it's very useful to know that many tinyMCE configs can be exposed so easily in processwire field config UI, makes me quite confident about any editor tweaking one could need for a project. Guess you're quite busy so you don't need to bother digging in the details of passing boolean values instead of strings, I'll pop up for info if the need arise.
  10. Hi, I found this post while trying to figure out if it's feasible to use TinyMCE in Processwire as a fool-proof inline rich text formatter, to say so. For that, it seems I'd have to change TinyMCE configuration for the pertinent textarea field like this: force_br_newlines : true, force_p_newlines : false, forced_root_block : '' But Processwire don't expose those setting in its TinyMCE Advanced Configuration Options. I suppose I'd have to mess around with the $config stuff in the admin template, but I'm just a poor copipasta php guy so I don't even know where to start. =( Background on the issue: I'm on a project where I want to give the "client" (it's a spare time job for a friend, so there are no stringent requirements) the ability to optionally format headlines - ie. with bold text, italics, links, superscripts, subscripts and arbitrary line breaks. So I've put this in my template, just like in the default skyscrapers theme: <h1><?php echo $page->get("headline|title");?></h1> and I've set up the headline field as a text-area. Now, I know I can have most of the functionality I want just by applying textformatters to the textarea, but I wanted to try to make it the most complete (sup and sub in markdown?) and fool-proof - markdown syntax is simple as cake but my friend is the kind of person that will never ever learn and remember that, for how brilliant he is otherwise =) So I set up TinyMCE for the textarea and edited out all the unwanted buttons and elements (including of course <p>) in the processwire field TinyMCE options. It works, but now, due to the _newlines config, when I press enter in the TinyMCE wysiwyg textarea I get a double carriage return that outputs nothing in the html code, and I still need to press shift-enter to actually get a line break, which is the opposite of the fool-proofness I wanted to achieve.
  11. I think what's relevant UX-wise in the field / page creation interface is that it is a two-steps process - set the basic details and then optionally fill in the advanced settings / page contents - necessarily since what's presented in the second step depends upon the type / template chosen. IMHO this necessity contributes to make it hard to choose the "best" default behaviour, and at the same time it could be used positively to present an UI that enables multiple usage patterns without compromising leanness. IE, if the basic details for a new field could be submitted dinamically without reloading the page (dunno if it's easy or desiderable to implement), you could then change the "submit" button into a "submitted" text, and show, say, "advanced settings" and "back to list" buttons next to it. This could retaing the ability to immediately check the details entered while allowing both usage patterns without requiring users to set preferences (it would always cost two clicks instead of possibly one, but it would offer flexibility on the fly in exchange). Same thing for the page creation interface, and you could have some sort of "more..." dropdown for more exotic power user actions. Just my 2 cents.
  12. Sure I'd be glad to help. I just discovered processwire and think it's seriously cool, and since I'm no coder that's one of the few ways for me to give something back to the project.
  13. Yep articles are an issue in italian, you can rarely omit them and there are six forms for "the": il, lo [m, s]; la [f; s]; i, gli [m, p]; le [f, p]; and three for "a": un, uno [m]; una [f]. You pick the proper masculine form depending on the word that follows. Also, you can have elision with an apostrophe when the article ends with a vowel and the following word starts with a vowel (the user = l'utente). Moreover, they combine with prepositions: so while "of" is "di", "of the" can be "del, dello; della; dei, degli; delle". In general, this applies to Italian too: Single words substitutions are hard because of order and syntax variations depending on the context, and concordance issues. There's no neuter, only masculine and feminine, and articles, adjectives, and participles have to be adjusted for gender and singular/plural. "A new page has been created" -> "Una nuova pagina è stata creata" "A new user account has been created" -> "Un nuovo utente è stato creato" Being a romance language, verbs conjugations are also tricky, with suffixes that always change for person, tense and mood, following three different schemes with many adjustments and exceptions. I eat -> io mangio; I ate -> io mangiai; you ate -> tu mangiasti I see -> io vedo; I saw -> io vidi; you saw -> tu vedesti I sleep -> io dormo; I slept -> io dormii; you slept -> tu dormisti Oh, btw, hello to everybody in this forum =)
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