OpenXML node type help

I’ve been investigating some possible development opportunities dealing with OpenXML. Obviously for what it has to do there is quite a lot baked in and finding out what a particular node or attribute does though can be a bit time consuming. Schema Central offers a search though. Fast and concise. Not noticing the context I was in I saw <w:b />. A quick search yielded the text below prompting me to look at surrounding nodes. Yep, makes sense. Nice.

OOXML w:b — Complete documentation and samples

w:b Bold

Skim’s reader bar has shortcuts to move it!

I use Skim for reading PDFs whenever I don’t need to do major collaboration with others with Acrobat. I really like it and recommend it whenever someone even remotely mentions issues with reading PDFs on OS X. One neat thing Skim has is a reading bar. It helps to focus when going through code related books, etc. I never knew how to make the most of it until today. I was thinking “it sure would be nice if you could move that reading bar with the keyboard.” I’ve thought that many times. Today I checked the suggested features and sure enough, it’s been requested and fulfilled. But it’s hidden!

SourceForge.net: Tips and Tricks – skim-app

Skim also has a few unlisted shortcuts to make life easier. Some only work in specific tool modes or when a note is selected. These shortcuts only work when the main PDF view has the focus.

space, ⇧space, page down, page up		scroll page down/up
home, end		first/last page
→, ←, ↓, ↑		scroll
⌥⌘→, ⌥⌘←, ⌥⌘↓, ⌥⌘↑		change tool mode
→, ←, ↓, ↑, ⇧→, ⇧←, ⇧↓, ⇧↑		move selected note
return		edit selected note
⌥⌃→, ⌥⌃←, ⌥⌃↓, ⌥⌃↑, ⇧⌃→, ⇧⌃←, ⇧⌃↓, ⇧⌃↑		resize selected note
⌥→, ⌥←, ⌥↓, ⌥↑		move reading bar
⇧⌥↓, ⇧⌥↑		resize reading bar
⌥tab, ⌥⇧tab		rotate through notes and links
⌥escape		deselect active note
t, n, c, b, h, u, s, l, f		change note tool mode (only in note tool mode)

Django dev with one file and Flask which inspired it

I dig Django. I’ve even been using Hyde to develop static sites especially when working on PSD > XHTML conversions. It lets me keep things DRY. You want that same block on 20 pages? Cool, no prob. Oh now you want to change it on those 20 pages with a little tweak to each? OK still cool, no prob. Anyway, I’ve seen some nice bits of code to get a dev environment up and running quickly and this post on minimal Django is cool. But I also really like what I see in Flask which inspired the search.

Minimal Django – Olifante’s Lair

Flask is a new microframework for web development. Created by Armin Ronacher, it grew from an April Fools’ prank into an elegant, usable tool in a very short time, mostly thanks to its clever leveraging of Armin’s two other babies, the Werkzeug webserver and the Jinja2 templating language.

I work daily with Django and love it, but after reading about Flask I got a small case of microframework envy. Why can’t Django development scale down as well as it scales up, and let a beginner have fun with single-file web development without becoming swamped in the full complexity of modern web development? It turns out Django can easily scale down.

Will have to elaborate in a bit… 🙂

Great short list of Safari extensions

15 Awesome and Useful Safari Extensions

As die-hard extension addicts since the first Safari 5 release, we’ve scoured the web to find 15 of our favorites. Click through the gallery for our picks.

JSON and xpath-like filtering

I have been doing some recent work for a client with a large amount of JSON and webservices. Of course CharlesProxy is always helpful for this. I use it to be able analyze data flows, etc. In this case I wanted to be able to filter through the JSON to get at specific elements. Doing this for a while I thought it’d be neat to filter it the way we use XPath with XML. JSON Editor is a cool AIR app which allows you to view JSON and XML but also translate from one to the other. So I thought I’d just use that to convert the JSON to XML and then use XPath on it. Then I thought… “has anyone done anything like xpath for json?” Turns out they have.

jsonpath – Project Hosting on Google Code

JSONPath is a lightweight component that allows to find and extract relevant portions out of JSON structures on the client as well as on the server.

You can read more about it.

There are Wiki pages about usage and examples in Javascript and PHP.

Extensive test examples are available for JSONPath.

A PHP helper class JsonStore allows read, write and delete operations on JSON structures.

This isn’t the only json-xpath implementation of course. This also looks promising.

JPath – bluelinecity.com

JPath is a simple lightweight Javascript Class which provides an XPath-like querying ability to JSON objects.

Very cool.

F*CSS is more than just CSS for Flash

I had seen the author’s original writeup on Camouflage and that was already very cool. This goes beyond that and again just beyond CSS properties. The idea that any public property can be set via an external file and it’s not XML, that’s much cleaner. But even the idea of just changing positions, sizes, etc., in such a clean and fast way and with inheritance as well? Merging?! Very nice.

F*CSS |  About

F*CSS is a custom CSS parser for Flash based on the PropteryManagement System in Flash Camouflage. The main class called StyleSheet (found inside of the com.flashartofwar.fcss.stylesheets package), goes well beyond the native StyleSheet class by supporting style inheritance, pseudo selectors, and merging styles on the fly. The goal of the StyleSheet is to make styles something you can apply to any of your classes instead of just TextFields. CSS is a great way to define your class’s properties in an external file and F*CSS helps convert these css styles into property/value pairs you can apply to any Object.

TyZ » Blog Archive » Cache and preload Gaia pages

I am looking at using Gaia for an upcoming project but not being able to use the cache might be a bit of an issue. I do wonder why it’s not caching at all if the browser is set to cache though. I’ll have to try it out and see what is being requested.

I use Gaia a lot. I think it’s a great and powerful framework to create page-based Flash sites. But there is a problem: Gaia creates a SWF for every page. And every time you visit a page, the SWF is loaded again. Even if you already visited that page. Also it is not possible to preload pages you are not visiting.To make page caching and page preloading possible, I have created the ‘CacheLoader‘ and ‘CacheURLLoader‘ classes.

TyZ » Blog Archive » Cache and preload Gaia pages

Hmm… gonna have to get used to Flock, too. Looks like I can’t add categories…! Must use tags.

Blogged with the Flock Browser