Posted by h3rald
Fri, 28 Dec 2007 21:19:00 GMT
Note: This article can be considered a sequel for An IE Lover’s Guide to Firefox, which described Firefox through the eyes of an Internet Explorer fan. Similarly, this article describes Opera’s features from the point of view of a user – myself – who has been using Firefox for years and is now considering another browser switch.
I am a Firefox fan. I’ve been using Firefox since it was named “Firebird” and calling it “stable” was a big overstatement. Firefox dragged me out of Internet Explorer, and that was definitely one of its biggest achievements.
Because I’m addicted to trying out new tools, however, I always kept testing new browsers I discovered here and there. K-Meleon, Flock, Sleipnir… When Safari came out for Windows I immediately installed it and used it for about 2 hours, only to realize that it wasn’t – and it still isn’t – usable at all, mainly due to sporadic crashes.
Similarly, I’ve been trying out Opera periodically, as new releases came out, but again it didn’t seem to work for me. The biggest complaint I had was its inability to render heavily-ajaxified web sites properly. However, now it seems that the Opera Development Team made a big effort to improve the browser, and I was pleased to notice that Opera 9.5b (“Kestrel”) doesn’t seem to have this sort of problems at all.
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Posted in Articles | Tags browsers, Firefox, IE, Opera, review, software | 23 comments | no trackbacks
Posted by h3rald
Thu, 20 Dec 2007 14:41:00 GMT
Yesterday I got a rather annoying early Christmas present: when visiting my site, I noticed that the raw source code of my dispatch.fcgi file (yes, I’m on shared hosting with FastCGI, for now) was displayed “as it is” instead of being interpreted.
After the initial moment of anger and stress (I immediately realized it was BlueHost’s fault, not mine), I opened two tickets and went to bed, hoping to see everything solved in the morning.
Unluckily it wasn’t the case, so I posted on BlueHost forum trying to be as polite as possible complaining because the issue wasn’t being dealt with. It turns out that for such issues you’re supposed to use the “Live Chat” feature instead of the tickets, so that’s what I did.
After a quick chat with “Christian”, it turns out that BlueHost decided to perform a server upgrade “silently” upgrading to Apache2, PHP5, MySQL4.1, etc. etc.
Cool, pity that nobody told me that!
I was expecting some sort of PHP upgrade (not that I care like that), which was supposed to happen according to the last BlueHost newsletter:
“To alleviate any issues in the future with certain scripts that only run on one
version of PHP we have developed the ability to run PHP4 and PHP5 on the same server
simultaneously. This will be rolled out to all users in the next couple of weeks. Some
servers already have this ability while most will see it in the next two weeks.”
But… hang on? Does it say anything about migrating to Apache2? I don’t think so! What’s worse, is that quite a few things changed with Apache2, in particular the way FastCGI handlers are declared:
# Apache 1.3:
AddHandler fastcgi-script .fcgi
# Apache 2:
AddHandler fcgid-script .fcgi
See? Different. This is due to the fact that mod_fcgid is used instead of mod_fastcgi on Apache 2.
The fix was easy, of course, and now my site is up and running again (and actually running faster)… but, I wonder, why the hell wasn’t I informed? Is it acceptable? It sounds like I might end up on a VPS sooner than expected, unless BlueHost doesn’t roll out some new exciting feature soon, as I think it might…
Posted in Blog | Tags Rails, website | 6 comments | no trackbacks
Posted by h3rald
Sun, 16 Dec 2007 15:07:00 GMT
This new beta release of RedBook introduces quite a few changes when it comes to configuration and setup. Here’s some highlights…
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Posted in Blog | Tags OpenSource, productivity, redbook, ruby | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by h3rald
Sat, 15 Dec 2007 10:42:00 GMT
If you ever considered about developing an deploying a Rails application in the last year or so, you must have heard of Mongrel before. If you didn’t, I’d recommend you learn more about it because up to now it proved to be one of the few essential ingredients for deploying scalable Rails applications.
Mongrel is a creation of Zed Shaw who started writing a replacement for FastCGI to use with Rails, and ended up creating a brand new, HTTP web server who turned out to be one of the best things the Rails community ever saw happening.
It was created to be simple to use and configure, nevertheless it does require some skill to set it up and tune it. Documentation is there, along with plenty of blog posts, but there’s also an interesting book from Addison Wesley Professional which is definetely worth a read.
“Mongrel: Serving, Deploying, and Extending Your Ruby Applications” – that’s the title of the book. A Digital Shortcut, 100-odd pages long, in landscape format to make it easier to read on a computer, straight to the point with no added sugar for just 15$ (PDF only). I must say Addison Wesley got it right: the book’s format is, as a matter of fact, optimized for web developers, especially those who can’t afford to read a 500-pages book covering everything about a subject just to find that one thing they don’t know about.
This shortcut can be seen, essentially, as an expanded cheatsheet which will teach you the basics about Mongrel and also give you plenty of advice on how to learn more about it.
Let’s have a closer look at it.
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Posted in Articles | Tags books, Rails, review, ruby | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by h3rald
Fri, 14 Dec 2007 19:24:00 GMT
When it comes to software, I definitely like to try out new things. My collegues takes the piss out of me because every week day I come up with “some new tool they have to start using” and so on.
As a matter of fact, I like reviewing software as well. I enjoy writing and analyzing new things, evaluating all the new possibilities they may offer, and I also tend to have a rather critical eye for what doesn’t feel right. I’ll use a tool for months but still try out new ones which claim to do the same thing — but better — as they come out.
Unfortunately — or fortunately, depends how you look at it — when it comes to software, there are very few silver bullets, and things keep changing: that’s the way it is and the way it will be.
I must try to write up a page (and ideally update it regularly, that’s the hard part) listing all the tools I use, at some point… but at any rate, if you coded some new app you think kicks ass or you found a hidden jewel in the labyrinth of freeware, just let me know: I’ll definitely try it out, and if it’s worth a post I’ll blog about it.
The same applies to books, actually, as I like reading, especially those which are related to Ruby or programming, nowadays.
The cost of such reviews and articles? Depends! Certainly I wouldn’t mind donations or some compensation of some form, especially from publishers or software companies. It may be money, books, software or even nothing: it really depends on what I have to review.
Please be aware that I am not doing this full time, and I already have a job and a fiancée to look after, but I’ll do my best to publish as much as I can on my site or even elsewhere elsewhere [Note: on e-zines, magazines & similar, not on your brother’s friend’s mother-in-law’s crappy blog!].
For any inquiries, contact me (h3rald [—at—] h3rald.com).
Posted in Blog | Tags books, personal, review, tools, website | 1 comment | no trackbacks
