This was going to be a tutorial on getting these two things running to achieve everything I want, sadly I can’t work out how to get the last step working, which is to navigate the returned Ajax page to allow me to extract different information. As such this is more a guide on getting the two things installed and working – if you have any more luck than I do on getting navigating Ajax working then let me know!! XULRunner First things first, I downloaded the Windows version of XULRunner from (look in the runtimes directory!): http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/xulrunner/releases/ (Unpacking takes a while the 8.23MB download contained 302 items totalling 18.8MB!) Crowbar Not such a simple download for the uninitiated. It’s not… Continue reading »

This post is just a reference point for another post, a Subversion client is needed for downloading Crowbar, so I downloaded TortoiseSVN available here. A quick install with the default options and I was away. I created a new folder on my desktop called Crowbar, went into it and did a right click (TortoiseSVN is an explorer extension so there’s no program to run directly!). Alpha Dog release TortoiseSVN -> Export Then pasted in the trunk from the Crowbar instructions page.

I apologise now if I put off some of the more general readers with this post, but I’ve struck upon a bit a problem! I have some automated code that I wrote using PHP and Curl, that retrieves a mountain of information from a website, does some statistical analysis on it and then presents me with a nice little report (having inserted the data into a MySQL database). It’s wonderful – to do the process manually would take maybe 2-3 hours every day, as it is I wake up to a nice report sat in my inbox everyday with all the information in it. Now I have a problem, the website that I crawl to get this information is converting… Continue reading »

I was reading John’s blog today and spotted a link to Mozilla Labs. I’ve always liked some of the Google Labs projects and an avid fan of both Firefox and Thunderbird – so what better way to see some of the things that Mozilla have got on their minds. I’ve only read about one project before I’ve started typing, but already it strikes me a something remarkably simple but such a good idea! Prism notes that: Personal computing is currently in a state of transition. While traditionally users have interacted mostly with desktop applications, more and more of them are using web applications. But the latter often fit awkwardly into the document-centric interface of web browsers. And they are surrounded… Continue reading »

I design sites (not well most of the time!) and often pinch bits and bobs from the various CSS stylesheets I’ve created over the years, generally I normally end up coming up with something that looks at least half decent! However, all that cutting and pasting leaves my stylesheets in a mess – with tonnes of unused CSS styles! I spotted a reference to Dust-Me Selectors today on San Baldo, and using this fantastic Firefox Extension I have managed, in the space of minutes to reduce on stylesheet from an unmanageable 600 lines to a mere 200! It extracts all the selectors from all the stylesheets on the page you’re viewing, then analyzes that page to see which of those… Continue reading »

It appears the CakeBaker, may renew my interest in CakePHP having highlighted some projects that use CakePHP. Island Cruises looks fantastic! Dishola, looks very tempting! PokerInside, could be onto a winner! So, you obviously can do more than just make a notes application with CakePHP, now it’s just a case of what I do with it?!

I’ve long been interested in some rapid development PHP framework to speed up my development time, I’m well aware that starting to use one could slow me up in the interim, but once I was fully up to speed with any of the major frameworks I would probably find it very easy. So I dug my head into the cakePHP manual today, I’ll be honest I found the manual heavy going, but I’ve always felt like that about any programming language, it’s far easier to learn by example, SitePoint have a Tutorial that gives you a real first bite. I found the example really easy, but then it’s an example and you’re supposed to! Technorati has little on CakePHP, other… Continue reading »