Decidedly

Software Design Studio

Author: David Hilowitz

  • LINK: JSGB v.0.02: a JavaScript Nintendo GameBoy Emulator and Debugger

    Check it out: JSGB v.0.02: a JavaScript Nintendo GameBoy Emulator and Debugger

    This is the coolest thing ever.

  • Really useful tip. Those Growl notifications in Skype can be so irritating.

    Selectively disable Growl notifications – Skype Community

  • TIP: How to get “anonymous” class functions to show up in Safari’s JavaScript Profiler

    I’ve been developing a JavaScript module for some graphing work I’m doing. I’ve been using Safari’s built in profiler to figure out which functions are wasting the most CPU. It’s a great tool:

    The Safari 4 JavaScript Profiler before I correctly declared my class's member functions

    For the longest time, I was running up against this one problem: some of my member functions were being listed simply as “(anonymous function)” in the Profiler function list (see highlighted row above). Not cool. (Luckily for me, the Profiler also lists the .js file and the line number, so it wasn’t that hard to figure things out, but certainly annoying nonetheless.)

    Anyway, I’ve finally found a solution. You see, I was declaring my class functions as follows:

    Grafsz.prototype.ClearCanvas = function() 
{
    ...
}

    …notice how I’m not giving my function a name? I’m basically assigning an anonymous function to a member variable of the class. All I had to do was change it to

    Grafsz.prototype.ClearCanvas = function ClearCanvas()
{
 ...
}

    That’s it. Check it out:

    Safari 4 JavaScript Profiler after I had correctly declared my functions

  • GO PROGRAMMING TIP: Where to put the ‘go.pbfilespec’ and ‘go.xclangspec’ files.

    So I was trying to get XCode syntax highlighting support for Google’s new Go language. I had located the two XCode files in the Go SRC package (these were in $GOROOT/misc/xcode), but for the longest time I couldn’t figure out where to put them. I finally stumbled on the answer (thanks to Talamathi for putting me on the right track): The files go in /Developer/Library/PrivateFrameworks/XcodeEdit.framework/Versions/A/Resources/

    In short, if you want syntax highlighting support for the Go language in XCode, the following should get you there:
    cp $GOROOT/misc/xcode/* /Developer/Library/PrivateFrameworks/XcodeEdit.framework/Versions/A/Resources/

  • CODE: A ‘Go’ Linked List Implementation

    So I’ve been experimenting with Google’s Go programming language. So far I’m liking it quite a bit. Here’s a rudimentary implementation of a Stack I made using a Linked List. As you can see, I’ve defined two interfaces — one for the Linked List functionality and one for the Stack functionality — but I haven’t implemented either fully. There’s also a main() function thrown in to demonstrate the functionality. Right now the Linked List only stores integers, but this could be changed very easily.

    Click here to download:

    LinkedListStack.go (1 KB)

  • TIP: FiddlerHook: Easier Support for Fiddler in Firefox

    You may all already know about this, but on reinstalling Fiddler I was pleasantly surprised to discover this: official support for Fiddler in Firefox. Not bad, right? It comes in the form of an extension called “FiddlerHook.”

    Read more here: http://www.fiddler2.com/fiddler2/addons/fiddlerhook/

    David

    PS. Up until now I had been using something called “SwitchProxy” to do almost the same thing, but this is definitely better.

    Posted via email

  • TIP: The Google Reader “Next >>” Button

    Do you use Google Reader?

    Well, I can’t start my day without it.  Every morning as my first order of business I log in and read a couple local news stories while I’m drinking my coffee. After that I check out what’s going on with the art blogs I follow, then the gadget blogs, etc. Invariably, I’ll see at least five things that are simply too arresting to pass up. For those I’ll spawn new tabs and windows and I’ll keep them open for browsing later in the day. This ritual has become such a part of my life that Google Reader has now eclipsed StumbleUpon, which was previously my number one way of finding out about new stuff on the internet.

    This being the state of things, it was with great pleasure that I happened across the “Google Reader :: Next >>” bookmarklet. This little button at the top of my browser solves two problems I never realized I had. First off, it allows me to view my RSS feeds in the context in which they were originally intended to be seen, i.e. on the blogs from whence they originated. Second off, because I have such a wide breadth of different blogs, I have a nasty habit of going through my RSS feeds and picking and choosing content based on the titles and first few words of each posts.  This leads me to ignore things that would be interesting to me in favor things that I think will interest me . Often the two are not the same. (For example, I don’t think of myself as someone who is particularly interested in features having to do with Google Reader although, yet here I am writing to you about one right now.) Clicking the “Next” button forces me to see content that I would otherwise have filtered out and in so doing it allows us to once again experience the joys of random, StumbleUpon-style browsing.

    So that’s it. Easy to install (just drag the link from your Google Reader Settings page to your browser’s Favorites bar), a pleasure to use, without further ado I give you the Google Reader “Next >>” Button.

  • TIP: “Google Analyticator” Plug-In for WordPress

    We frequently use Google Analytics to track the readership of the blogs we design and create. Fed up of having to configure Google Analytics tracking code over and over again for each new theme we create (and we’ve done this for a lot of themes over the years), we finally decided to search for aWordPress plug-in to do it for us.

    In comes “Google Analyticator.”

    Not only does it add the Google tracking code to the bottom of your posts, but it also has a ton of other features like outbound link tracking, download tracking, turning itself off for Admin users, etc. A lot of these features are things we actually developed custom solutions for back in the day so it will definitely be interesting to see how they stack up.

    Check it out: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-analyticator/

  • TIP: How to find the full URL of a file within your Application’s Bundle

    iPhone Icon 79 x 130This is an iPhone Programming tip. Say you want to find  the full URL of a file within your Application’s Bundle (mainBundle), here’s how you would do it. Example: This would return the full URL of a file named “Sound2.caf”:

    CFURLRef fileURL;
    NSString *path;
    path = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"Sound2" ofType:@"caf"];
    fileURL = (CFURLRef)[NSURL fileURLWithPath:path];

  • TIP: Need a JavaScript console for Internet Explorer?

    CompanionJS is just that.  Check it out: http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/CompanionJS/ConsoleAPI