Maria’s Guides

Information from Software Update.

This update to GarageBand addresses issues with video handling, podcast exporting, and importing QuickTime markers. It also addresses a number of other minor issues.

Learn more on Apple’s Web Site.

Another Article for Advisor Basics is published.

My article, “Streamlining Data-Entry with Value Lists,” for Advisor Basics of FileMaker Pro has been released.

For those of you who are wondering why I write about FileMaker Pro, here are the reasons:

• I’ve written three books about FileMaker Pro (although none of them are currently in print).
• I’ve been using FileMaker since 1990 (before it was Pro).
• I think FileMaker Pro is the best database applications out there for mortal users.

I find the right bookmark synchronizer for FireFox.

One of the features I immediately missed when I switched from Safari to Firefox was bookmark synchronization. I use two different Macintoshes on a daily basis — my desktop Mac at the office and my little PowerBook — and it really bugged me that they didn’t have the same bookmarks.

But I quickly learned that Firefox supports extensions and add-ons. And I tracked down a plugin called Bookmark Synchronizer SE. I installed it on both Macs and soon had synchronization working on Firefox.

But BMSync SE had upload and download progress boxes that appeared each time it uploaded bookmarks to my server or downloaded bookmarks from my server. If I set it on Automatic upload/download, this dumb box appeared every time I closed all Firefox windows, quit Firefox, or opened a Firefox window. It was annoying. When I put it in manual mode, I had to remember to upload and download the bookmarks. This is more effort than I wanted to make.

Yesterday, after making some extensive changes to my bookmarks, I went looking for another solution. And I found it: Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer. This works like BMSync in that you must install it on each computer you want to synchronize. When you restart Firefox, a Foxmarks installation wizard appears. It guides you through the steps to set up an account on the foxcloud.com Web site where your bookmarks will be stored. Turn on automatic synchronization and you’re done.

What I like about Foxmarks is how effort-free it is. And although I’ve set up a foxcloud.com account, I could also set up Foxmarks to work with my own server to help enhance privacy. (Not that foxcloud.com doesn’t have security; I’m sure it does.)

I uninstalled BMSync this morning. And I’m really glad I don’t have to look at those silly download windows anymore.

My gravatar image finally appears on Gravatar-enabled sites — including this one.

If you’ve been following the gravatar topic, you know that I recently enabled this site’s comments for gravatars and then waited for mine to be approved.

This morning, I got an e-mail message saying that my gravatar had been rated and approved. Sure enough, when I checked the comments to my Trackback Troubleshooting post, my image was there.

Dr. Dave’s image also appeared this morning. It had been appearing as a black box, but today there’s a face. He may call himself the “Unknown Genius,” but his gravatar makes him look a bit like an evil genius.

I’ll be writing a how-to piece shortly — maybe even this morning — I woke up too darn early to do anything else — that explains how to create and register a gravatar. I’m hoping that the folks who don’t already have one and who participate by leaving comments in this and other blogs will take a few moments to get one. It’s kind of cool to see all the images on blogs with gravatars enabled.

A plugin goes bad and causes weird side effects.

I was checking e-mail and moderating comments on this blog early this morning. (I’m a morning person.)

I’d just entered a comment on my blog when I got a weird error message that I didn’t really pay attention to. When I moved on to another page, there were 8 lines of gibberish above the header. On every page I viewed. Before Firefox said, “To hell with this,” and crashed. Several times.

I had a problem.

Netscape could view the page — but with the gibberish.

wickenburg-az.com, which lives on the same server and uses the same software, worked fine. (Whew!) That narrowed it down a bit.

I restarted the computer. The problem didn’t go away.

I accessed the server from home and restarted Apache. The problem didn’t go away.

Dang.

I went to the office at 7:30 AM and restarted the server computer. The problem didn’t go away.

I analyzed the source code of the bad pages — which would appear on Firefox at the office. (That could be because my office computer has a faster, more modern processor and a heck of a lot more RAM.) It pointed to php files used by WordPress to display pages and do its magic. All the files looked right.

I looked at the contents of the database with CocoaMySQL. It looked okay. But then again, I didn’t look at all the contents. And I really didn’t know what to look at.

I thought it might be the gravatars plug in, which I’d been fiddling with tha morning. I disabled it. And I got a weird error message that might have been the same one I’d gotten earlier that morning. This time I paid attention. It mentioned duplicate headers and a couple of files by name. Hmm.

I took a deep breath and went online to WordPress support. I searched the Codex and support forums. I didn’t find an answer. So I posted a message in the support forum. I made the mistake of including the bad code, so when I saved it, the message got cut off at the bad code. Dumb. I used my back button to revise the message and post it. That created a second message with the same title. Really dumb.

But Samboll, another member, was right on it. He made two suggestions. The second one pointed to a Codex document that explained why the header error message might appear. I thought the header error message was a secondary problem — the first was the gibberish characters — so I didn’t have much hope in it solving the problem. But I had nothing else to go on, so I read the Codex piece and followed its instructions.

And that’s how I tracked down the bad file: srg_clean_archives.php, which is the plugin for the Archives feature I installed the other day. When I opened the file, it was filled with junk.

Now I don’t know how the file went bad, but there was no doubt in my mind that it was bad. It didn’t even show up in the list on the Plugins administration panel. I deleted it (it took two tries) and reloaded the site’s home page. Voila! Problem solved.

Of course, now my Archives page didn’t work right.

So I went back to Sporatic Nonsense’s Clean Archives 1.5 page and downloaded a fresh copy of the plugin. I installed it, activated it, and everything is back to normal.

Total time lost to this problem and troubleshooting (not counting the time to write about it): about 2 hours.

The moral of this story: pay attention to error messages.

Information from the Updater Read Me File

Changes in R4:

File operations

• You can now use QuickBooks on the same network server as the one your

  company file is located on. If another user has accessed the company file,

  you will see that the file is locked.

• An issue with unexpected QuickBooks behavior when backing up to

  QuickBooks for Windows has been resolved.

• An issue with unexpected QuickBooks behavior when opening a company

  file with the setting “Show Reminders List when QuickBooks starts” has been

  resolved.

• An issue with a memory leak when condensing a company file has been

  resolved.

Online banking

• Improvements have been made to the online banking feature, including: 1)

  pressing Return in the Downloaded Transactions window automatically

  performs the default action, like Add to Register, and 2) after adding a

  transaction to the register, the Downloaded Transactions window

  automatically selects the next transaction.

• An issue with unexpected QuickBooks behavior when the filename of an

  online banking file (.qbo) contains a ‘+’ (plus sign) has been resolved.

• Double-clicking on an online banking file (.qbo) now launches QuickBooks

  with the last company file that was opened.

Reports

• Account names are now properly displayed in Profit & Loss reports after

  upgrading from QuickBooks 2005 for Mac.

• An issue with unexpected QuickBooks behavior when creating a report that

  shows a company name with special characters has been resolved.

• Renaming a memorized report now works properly.
• The QuickReport option is now available for all accounts in the Chart of

  Accounts List.

• Invalid characters are no longer displayed in reports when the Company >

  Company Settings > Transactions > Use account numbers setting is used.

Lists

• Custom sorted lists now retain their custom sort order in pop-up menus.

  The Re-sort List option is now available for all lists.

Sales receipts and invoices

• Viewing all sales receipts using the Enter Sales Receipt window’s Prev button

  is now properly handled.

• An issue with unexpected QuickBooks behavior when deleting an invoice

  after round-tripping a file to QuickBooks for Windows with the audit trail

  turned on has been resolved.

Payments

• The Receive Payments window no longer constantly reverts back to today’s

  date.

• Applying a partial payment to multiple invoices is now properly handled.

PayCycle

• An issue with unexpected QuickBooks behavior when trying to save the Edit

  State Tax Information window from within PayCycle has been resolved.

• All vendor information is now imported from PayCycle contractor paychecks.
• An issue with duplicate employees in the Employee List when importing data

  from PayCycle has been resolved.

Other changes

• Accented characters in a company filename are now displayed in the

  Company Settings > Company Information window.

• QuickMath calculations are now properly handled when the setting

  “Automatically place decimal point” is enabled.

• Assigning subaccounts in transactions is now properly handled.
• An issue with unexpected QuickBooks behavior when attempting to add

  1099 status to a vendor has been resolved.

• QuickFill now selects the correct account when the setting “Use Account

  Number” is enabled.

• Changes to the Cost field on an inventory item are now properly retained.
• An issue with unexpected QuickBooks behavior when Contact Sync is turned

  on when previously synced First Name fields are empty has been resolved.

• The font used to display the Reconcile window has changed for easier

  viewing.