Posted on May 30th, 2008%
I was looking around for a good HTML combo box (a drop-down list with a type-in text box), and found a good looking one over at Particletree (see Update Your Select Element to a Combo Box). There were a few quirks I found with it.
The text box used absolute positioning. As a result, if the location of the select element changed (perhaps due to another item on the page being shown or hidden), the text box would be in the wrong place.
The code was free-standing and applied event handlers directly, instead of using an event manager like one offered in Prototype‘s Event class.
To clean things up, I modified the code to work with the Prototype JavaScript library, converting element selectors and event management. I also added a hack to handle positioning issues by calling a routine that repositions the text box every 0.05 seconds. Though far from efficient, it didn’t cause any flickering or processor utilization. If JavaScript . . .
→ Read More: Select/input combo box using Prototype
Posted on May 29th, 2008%
I just received the following in an e-mail from NewEgg:
As a result of recent changes in the State of New York Tax Law requiring certain out-of-state retailers to collect and remit sales taxes to the State of New York, we regrettably inform you that Newegg.com must begin collecting applicable state and local sales tax for all orders shipped to New York addresses on or after June 1, 2008.
There’s a good reason why businesses don’t charge sales tax to purchasers who are out-of-state, and the reason can be found on Wikipedia‘s Sales taxes in the United States page (bold text added):
Note: Taxes change, are added or eliminated frequently, so this article is prone to being out of date. If so, please change the page accordingly and cite a source if possible. There are private entities that distribute updates weekly regarding the rules in 11,000 different tax jurisdictions in the U.S.
New York State itself has 81 different sales tax jurisdictions . . .
→ Read More: Is it time for a national sales tax?
Posted on May 20th, 2008%
I’ve been running a rather expensive Windows Vista computer lately, thanks to Boot Camp. However, two problems continue to plague me:
The latest Boot Camp update from Apple will not install successfully.
Sound is distorted when playing games, typically those using multiple sound channels (i.e. pretty much all games).
Fortunately, I finally found the fix for #2. It wasn’t Vista SP1, and it wasn’t figuring out a way to install the latest Boot Camp drivers (still can’t figure that one out).
The solution: Download and install the latest Realtek HD drivers. Thanks to a post on mac-forums.com which pointed me to the Realtek High Definition Audio drivers page.
One odd quirk: It took two installations of the Realtek drivers before it worked. After the first installation (which removed the old drivers) and a restart, there was no sound at all in Windows. A re-installation of the same Realtek drivers (and another restart), and it’s all working fine…
Just in time for Age of Conan, which . . .
→ Read More: Solving distorted sound issues in Boot Camp
Posted on May 19th, 2008%
It seems I always have usability issues with Verizon‘s web sites. After checking to see if, after two weeks, they figured out why an old cell phone number of mine was still showing up on my online profile (they didn’t, it’s still there), I decided to see if FiOS TV was in my area.
They have a nifty Check Availability page where you enter your phone number (if an existing Verizon customer) or address to find out if you can get this service. Being a Verizon customer, I enter my phone number, click the “Can I get it” button, and wait…
While you wait, you do get a little graphic that is somewhat more useful than a spinning Ajax cursor.
So, is FiOS TV available to me? Well, I don’t know. The response you get says nothing about FiOS TV — instead, it tells you about your FiOS internet service.
But wait, that isn’t what I asked! . . .
→ Read More: Is Verizon FiOS TV in your area? Don’t try checking online.
Posted on May 16th, 2008%
In thinking about all the free and open source tools I use, one seems to run underneath the radar: 7-Zip.
7-Zip will compress, expand, encode, and decode more formats than you can shake a stick at. It integrates seamlessly with Windows Explorer, so you just right-click and choose the option you want, as shown below.
[That little fuzzy thing in the background is my dog, Thea. How I miss her!]
The fact that 7-Zip does so much and is free makes me wonder why anyone would pay $30 for a copy of WinZip. Instead, donate that money to Igor Pavlov, author of 7-Zip.
I decided to do just that. Heading over to the donate page for 7-Zip tells you that the “base donation amount is $50 or €40, but if you would like to donate more, just change the Quantity field”. Apparently, you can donate more than $50, but you can not donate less than $50 — . . .
→ Read More: Free file archiving and (de)compression with 7-Zip [with expensive minimum donations]
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