Monthly Archives: August 2007

Web Tools: Color Wizard

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An online tool helps a non-designer pick a color scheme for a new blog.

I am not color blind. I know I’m not. I see colors and I know when certain colors look good together. But I can’t, for the life of me, come up with a color scheme on my own.

Color, of course, is a major part of any Web site’s look and feel. So when I found a blog post months ago that listed a few online color tools, I bookmarked them for later use. On Saturday, one of them came in very handy as I decided on a color scheme for my blog’s new look.

The Color WizardThe Color Wizard is a Flash application by Donald Johansson. This excellent online tool helps you find colors that work well together.

From the Color Wizard page:

The color wizard lets you submit your own base color, and it automatically returns matching colors for the one you selected.

It returns a set of hue, saturation and tint/shade variations of your color, as well as suggests color schemets to you, based on your color’s complementary color, split complementary colors, analogous colors and other variations. The color wizard also has a randomize function that lets you generate color schemes you might not have thought of on your own.

It’s the randomizer that helped me. I just kept clicking the Randomize button until I found a few schemes I liked. When I had about eight of them, I went back and reviewed each one, eliminating the ones I liked less until I had one I liked a lot. I then picked the blue color from the theme and generated another scheme from that, so I could get the colors I planned to use for my links.

What was also handy for me was the print feature. Although it’s not obvious on the application, if you right-click the Flash app, a Print option appears in the shortcut menu. I used that to print my two color schemes on my color printer. So not only can I visualize what the colors look like — or at least approximately what they look like; I don’t have a great color printer — but I have a document that clearly lists all the hex codes for all the colors.

I’m so pleased with the results that I clicked the Donate link at the bottom of the Color Wizard and used my PayPal account to send the developer some lunch money. (As usual, I urge everyone who uses great free software like this to thank the developer with a donation or at least a visit to his advertiser’s sites.)

Looking for a color scheme? The Color Wizard is a great place to start.

Fixing Post By E-Mail In WordPress 2.2

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And some other information you might find useful.

I finally upgraded my personal blog to the latest version of WordPress, which is version 2.2.2 (as I write this). In addition to breaking a handful of my plugins — not a big deal, since I was able to replace just about all of them with newer, better versions — it also broke WordPress’s post by e-mail feature, which we discuss on pages 64-66 of our WordPress book.

The Post by E-Mail Feature and How It Broke

If you’re not familiar with this feature, you might want to be. It’s pretty cool. It enables you to send an e-mail message to a special account you set up for WordPress to check. When WordPress finds a message there, it automatically posts the content of the message to your blog, using a predefined category that you choose. The message subject becomes the post title.

In WordPress 2.2, WordPress simply stopped seeing and importing the body of the message. As a result, you’d wind up with properly titled but otherwise empty post.

The Fix

Some research on WordPress.org uncovered a post which explained the problem and offered patch code for the class-pop3.php file. This file, which resides in the wp-includes folder of a WordPress server installation, is responsible for processing posts by e-mail.

I manually replaced the bad code with the new code in my file and tested the results. It worked fine.

Rather than fiddling around with code like I did, you can simply download the revised file here. UnZip it and use it to replace your current class-pop3.php file. (If you’re smart, you’ll save a copy of your current file — perhaps by renaming it right in the folder in which it resides — before replacing it.)

This file definitely works on my WordPress 2.2.2 setup. It might not work with earlier or later versions of WordPress or on your setup if it has been heavily modified, so try it at your own risk.

A Neat Trick

While I was researching the problem, I picked up a neat trick in the WordPress Codex.

If you use post by e-mail, you probably know that your e-mail messages won’t be posted unless WordPress checks for mail. As we wrote in our book (on page 66), there are at least two ways to do this: manually by opening a specific Web browser page or automatically using a plugin.

But there is another way to automate the process and it’s pretty easy for WordPress novices who aren’t afraid to roll up their sleeves and modify a template file. Simply include the following code in your theme’s footer.php file:

<iframe src="http://<em>yourblogdomain</em>/<em>wordpressinstalldir</em>/wp-mail.php" name="mailiframe" width="0" height="0" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title=""></iframe>

This forces WordPress to check for mail every time someone loads any page on your site.

The drawback to this is that if your site is very busy, your server will be checking pretty often for e-mail messages. But it seems to me that you could include the same code on another template page that’s used less often, perhaps category.php (if present) or archive.php or page.php.

Hopefully, you’ll find this information useful. As usual, comments are welcome. Use the Comments link or form below to share your thoughts with me and other visitors.

Changing the Order of Menu Icons in Mac OS X

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Put them in any order you like.

Here’s a quick tip from my Tiger book that I didn’t remember until I stumbled on it today. More proof that writing a book about something doesn’t mean you remember everything in it.

ImageYou can change the order of the icon menus on the far right end of the menu bar. Just hold down the Command key and drag the icon to the left or right. The other icons will shift to make room for it. The screenshot here shows me moving the battery icon on my MacBook Pro to the left.

The only menu icon you can’t move using this technique is the Spotlight menu.

Choosing Your Mac OS Startup Disk on the Fly

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For folks who have two operating systems installed on their computer.

My “test mule” these days is a MacBook Pro. (I use the term “test mule” to identify the computer I use to run software on when I’m writing books and articles.) In preparation for writing a book about Leopard while I still had to work with Tiger for articles and blog posts, I partitioned the hard disk and installed both operating systems, one on each partition.

Startup DiskThere are two ways (at least) of choosing a startup disk. The most obvious is with the Startup Disk preferences pane, which is shown here. It should display all system folders the computer can boot from, including any inserted CDs or DVDs. You choose a folder and click Restart. Easy.

The trouble with this method is that your computer needs to be running to open the Startup Disk preferences pane. What happens if your computer is shut off and you decide you want to start with the other operating system — the one that wasn’t selected when you shut down?

The answer is the Option key.

Start the computer and hold down the Option key. Before the operating system loads, your computer will display icons for each disk the computer can start from. Release the Option key and click the disk you want to start from to select it. Then click the arrow beneath it. The startup process continues from that disk.

One important thing to keep in mind here is that the change in startup disks is for that session only. If you always want to start from that operating system from that point forward — or at least for the next start — you should use the Startup Disk preferences pane to make that selection.

Ten Dashboard Widgets I Can’t Live Without

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What’s on my Mac.I have thoroughly embraced the Dashboard widget feature Apple introduced in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. And while I don’t have time to keep up with the dozens of new widgets that are released each week, I have managed to pick up a few favorites.Among them are a bunch I use daily. They’re the ones that are set up and ready to go so that when I press the F12 key, they’re onscreen, providing me with the information I want or waiting for me to type in a request.Here’s my list of widgets I can’t live without. Some of them might surprise you.

First, the Basics

I regularly use three of the widgets that come with Mac OS X.Weather WidgetWeather provides basic weather information. I usually display two locations: Wickenburg, which is where I live, and Williams, which is near where our vacation property is. One look at the screenshots here should give you an idea of why I’m thinking of Williams when I live in Wickenburg. (Yeah, but it’s a dry heat.)
Calculator WidgetCalculator is a handy tool for anyone who needs to perform quick calculations. Here’s how I might use it on a typical day. I’m working on my Mac, hopefully doing something that’ll earn me a bit of money. The phone rings and I answer. It’s someone interested in a helicopter charter from Phoenix to Laughlin, NV by way of Sedona. (Not exactly on the way.) How much would that cost? I press F12 and start punching numbers into the calculator, based on my rough idea of time and my hourly rate. The number I come up with shocks my caller. After a pause, he says, “I’ll have to think about it. I’ll get back to you.” We hang up and I know I’ll never hear from him again. But at least I had a quick answer for him.
Dictionary WidgetThe third Apple-provided widget that’s always open on my Dashboard is Dictionary. And no, I don’t use it for spelling. I work with words and like to make sure I’m using the right one. So, as I write, I may come up with a word I’m not quite sure about. I’ll press F12 and paste the word into Dictionary. Its definitions and synonyms help me get things right. It’s also a handy tool as I read other blogs and sites and find words I’m not familiar with. F12 gets me the answer within seconds.

More Weather

Radar In Motion widgetDuring monsoon season here in Arizona, storms are always moving around the state. That’s why I keep Radar In Motion by Kamal Aboul-Hosn set up to show me the local radar. It’s customizable so you can set not only the location, but the type of radar image you want. You can also store multiple locations and click to switch between them. What’s interesting is that it’ll even provide weather warnings, like the Flash Flood warning I saw last month (which was followed, within an hour or so, by a flash flood through my property — fancy that!).

Reminders

I have a brain like a sieve. Although I’d like to think that the onset of middle age has nothing to do with it, I know better. I also believe that if you cram too much stuff into a brain, some of it has to leak out somewhere.So I use three Dashboard widgets to help me remember things.iCal Events widgetiCal Events by Ben Kazez is a widget that lists events from iCal. It’s a vast improvement over Apple’s [rather lame] Calendar widget. It’s customizable so you can specify how many days of events should show and which calendars should be displayed. Simple but elegant. And I like red.
DoBeDo widgetDoBeDo by Ron Morrison pulls items off my iCal To Do list. It’s customizable so I can set the sort order, how many days in advance should show, and other things. I can even add items to my Do To list without opening iCal. Best of all (for me) is that the window is resizable, so I can see all my to do items in a single window.
UpcomingBirthdays widgetUpcomingBirthdays by William Turnage is a simple one-trick pony that reminds me about birthdays of people in my Address Book data file. Not only does it remind me of upcoming birthdays (like Cliff’s in two days), but also of past birthdays. I can customize it to set the number of days in either direction for the listing.

For Fun (and Deep Thoughts)

I use widgets for less serious things, too. (Or perhaps you might think they’re more serious when you see my next choice.)Doonesbury widgetThe Doonesbury widget by Michael Gaiman displays the current day’s Doonesbury comic strip on my computer. This is a full-sized strip that fits in its own window. (It’s reduced here so it fits in the text column of my blog with text wrapping around it.) On Sundays, the window is huge — almost too big to fit on my 12″ PowerBook. I consider Doonesbury my reality check. When I hear something on the radio that makes me shake my head and wonder what the hell the world is coming too, chances are, I’ll read about it in Doonesbury within a week or so. That lets me know that I’m not the only one who thinks there’s something screwing going on.

For Keeping Track of my Hosting Fund

RevenuSense widgetI pay for Web site hosting with money I earn from Google AdSense. My hosting costs are low, which is a good thing because I don’t get much revenue. But the RevenuSense widget by Nobuhiko Wajima keeps track of it for me without having to visit the AdSense site. Press F12, wait for a refresh, and I can see yesterday’s earnings, today’s earnings, and month-to-date earnings, all in a little window.

For Managing Widgets

One thing I was never happy about was the two-step interface for opening Dashboard widgets. Sure you can keep the Widget Manager open all the time, but it takes up a lot of real estate.DashOpener widgetThen I found DashOpener by Lasar Liepens. This widget is a launch pad for all installed widgets. Although it’s
configurable, so you can set it to display multiple columns, I like it with its default settings. Clicking each of the letters “L,” “m,” and “i,” displays a list (shown here), manager feature, and configuration options. Click the name of the widget to collapse it; click it again to reload it for any newly installed widgets. Quick, easy, and smaller than the Widget Manager.

How About You?

What widget do you use every day? What does it do for you to make your life easier? Let us know. Use the Comments link or form. to share your favorite widget with us.

Mail Stop Working? Here’s a Fix.

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What to do if your ISP blocks Port 25.

A few months ago, I was suddenly unable to send e-mail from my computer. And I hadn’t changed a thing.

The problem wasn’t just my desktop computer. It was also my laptop and my husband’s laptop. The computers could receive e-mail. And they could access the Web. They just couldn’t send e-mail using Mail (on my Macs) or Outlook (on my husband’s PCs).

What did all of these computer have in common? They were all accessing the Internet through the same connection with the same ISP.

Information from Our ISP

A phone call cleared matters up. Our ISP had decided to block Port 25 on its server. It did this to prevent its customers from using their accounts to send massive amounts of spam. (Don’t ask me to explain how a port change can prevent this. I don’t know, mostly because I don’t need to know.) Since our e-mail client software used 25 to access the SMTP servers for our various e-mail accounts, we could no longer send mail.

Of course, if we were using the e-mail accounts provided with our Internet access on our ISP’s server, this would not have been a problem. That’s probably why they didn’t contact us to let us know we might have a problem. Either that or they simply don’t have our e-mail addresses — which is far more likely. So we learned about the ISP configuration change by it causing a problem.

Our ISP made three suggestions for a fix:

  • Use the e-mail account on the ISP’s server that came with our account. Obviously, this was not acceptable. I already have a half-dozen active e-mail accounts; what makes these people think I want to add another?
  • Use the Webmail access that might be part of our e-mail accounts on other servers. Again, this was asking for a lot. If you’ve ever been forced to use a Web-based e-mail client when you regularly use a mail application like Mail or Outlook, you know what I mean.
  • Change the port for the outgoing mail server in our mail applications. This was the answer we needed. And with a little experimentation, I found the right solution.

Making Changes in Mail

Here are the step-by step instructions if you’re using Mail on a Mac. If you’re not a Mail user, you should be able to translate these instructions for your own e-mail application — even if that app is on a Windows PC.

  1. Open Mail.
  2. Choose Mail > Preferences to open the Preferences dialog.
  3. Click the Accounts button at the top of the window to access account settings. Make sure the Account Information pane is displayed as shown here. (I told you I had a lot of e-mail addresses.)
    Editing an account
  4. Select the e-mail account you want to modify.
  5. SMTP settingsClick the Server Settings button near the bottom of the pane to display a dialog sheet of SMTP server settings (shown here).
  6. Change the Server Port value as follows:
    • For a POP server, enter 80.
    • For an IMAP server (including a .Mac account), enter 587.

    Do not change any other setting in the dialog!

  7. Click OK to save the setting and close the dialog sheet.
  8. Repeat steps 4 through 7 for each account you need to change. (It’ll likely be all of them.) When prompted to save changes in an account, be sure to click Save.
  9. When you are finished making changes, click the Close button in the Accounts (Preferences) window to dismiss it. Be sure to click Save if prompted to save changes for the last account you changed.

Although I’m not sure if it’s necessary, restarting Mail might be a good idea. Quit it and start it again. It should work from that point forward.

Of course, these instructions assume that there are no other changes to the system and the other settings were working and are correct. If you can’t get this to solve your problem, get on the phone with your ISP’s technical support team. (Please don’t ask me to troubleshoot your Internet connection issues!)

Oh, and please don’t attempt to hack into my server with the settings you see in the images here. I’ve modified them so they simply won’t work, even if you did manage to guess my password.

Bonus Tip

Ever have the same problem sending e-mail from your laptop when using someone else’s WiFi service, like in a hotel or cafe? It’s likely the same issue: a lockdown of port 25 on that ISP’s system. Following these steps can get around it.

Mac OS X Fonts: Some Good Reference Material

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More reading material for Mac OS X Tiger and Leopard Users.

I’ve been hard at work on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide these past few days and I see at least a month more of work ahead of me. The book’s a complete rewrite of the Tiger edition and I’m eager to get as much updated information in it as I can.

With that in mind, I thought I’d share two excellent references I found about using Fonts in Mac OS X:

  • Mac OS X: Font File Formats is a Web page on the Apple site with basic information about font file formats supported by Tiger (and Leopard).
  • Advanced Typography with Mac OS X Tiger is a 37-page PDF file with extensive and advanced information about using fonts with Mac OS X, including some how-to information about Font Book, the Font Panel, the Character Palette, and the Typography panel.

As I find additional high-quality reference material about Mac OS X Tiger and Leopard features, I’ll post links to this site. Keep checking in. I still have 25 chapters to go!

Twit This

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A service that makes it easy to post links on Twitter.

I recently found Twit This, a Web site that enables you to post any URL to Twitter as a tweet.

Here’s How It Works

Twit ThisWhen you browse to a Web page you want to share with your Twitter followers, you invoke Twit This. (I’ll explain how to do that in a moment.) The first time you use this feature (or if you have not set up your browser to remember your password) you’ll be prompted for your Twitter User ID and Password to log in. You’ll see a form like the one here. Choose an option from the pop-up menu to indicate the text you want to appear before the link and, if desired, add some additional text in the box beside it. Then click the Twit This Page button. The link and your text will be sent to Twitter as a tweet. A confirmation page with a link to the tweet appears so you can view it.

It’s quick and easy. The only thing I don’t like is that it doesn’t return you to the original page when it’s done. (But I’m just picky that way.)

Invoking Twit This

There are a number of ways you can invoke Twit This for a URL.

  • Install and use the Twit This bookmarklet. On the Twit This home page, you’ll find a bookmarket that you can drag to your browser’s toolbar. You can then click the resulting button while viewing a page you want to Tweet about to access Twit This’s features.
  • Click a Twit This button or link in the post. Of course, that requires the blogger or Webmaster to include a link like this. (Keep reading.)

Adding a Twit This Link to Your Posts

The Twit This site’s Home page includes code you can insert in your Web pages to add a link that will invoke Twit This. The code, which uses JavaScript, is available with or without a clickable button. You can include the code anywhere you like on a page.

If you’re a WordPress user, you might want to try the Twit This plugin, which will place a link for each post. I downloaded this plugin but I admit that I didn’t install it. I’m very particular about how and where my links appear, so I decided on a do-it-yourself approach.

To manually add a Twit This link to a post, insert the following code anywhere within The Loop in your template file(s):

<a href="http://twitthis.com/twit?url=%3C?php%20the_permalink%28%29;%20?%3E">Twit This</a>

When you save the change, the link will appear for each post. You can see the Twit This links on this site at the bottom of each post. I got fancy and included a tiny Twitter icon so it would match the format of the other bookmarking/social networking sites I listed.

WordPress 2 (Visual QuickStart Guide)[Shameless Plug: If you don't know what The Loop is or how to edit your WordPress theme files, you need to get a copy of our book, WordPress 2: Visual QuickStart Guide. Chapter 6 will fill you in on what you need to know. You can learn more about this book and get more WordPress tips at the book's companion Web site, http://www.wpvqs.com/]

Try It!

Obviously, if you’re a Twitter user, the bookmarklet is a great way to share your Web finds with your Twitter followers. But if you’re a blogger or Web designer interested in getting more exposure for your posts or site, including a Twit This link can help spread the word. After all, not everyone will have the Twit This bookmarklet installed. But many Twitter users will be interested in trying out a Twit This link.

After all, that’s how I learned about Twit This myself.

300 Mac Tips

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Miraz makes a milestone.

Just a quick note to you Mac OS users out there…

Miraz Jordan, who co-authored WordPress 2: Visual QuickStart Guide with me last year, has just released the 300th issue of her Mac Tips newsletter. In case you’re wondering how long it takes to issue 300 Mac Tips, Miraz has been at it for six years.

Haven’t been checking in? Well, what are you waiting for? You can find the Mac Tips archive at http://mactips.info/tips/. That’s also where you can subscribe to the RSS feed and get Miraz’s Mac Tips delivered to your RSS reader’s in box automatically.

Congratulations, Miraz!