bodom_lx blog and things|

For job purposes I had to learn a lot of JavaScript, including AJAX related stuffs. Like every lazy (but intelligent) developer, I looked around for frameworks that could help me doing my work. I knew that prototype existed, but I never looked at it because of lack of interest. Well it's great, it's really great! Nowadays everybody should use frameworks, as their abstraction permits a rapid development without worrying about things like platform compatibility, in our case browsers. Prototype also has a very nice and clean syntax that overtakes functions not compatible with every browser.

In this post I'm going to report a very nice function I implemented for limiting Form input fields, like textarea and input of type text. You have to call it via onkeyup and onkeydown events. The function accepts 3 parameters: field, limit and counterDesired.
The first is the field object, you should use the keyword this for a value.
The second parameter is a limit value, the number of characters that the field should contain at maximum.
The third parameter is optional, false as default. It permits to add a visual counter after the field, like the one you see on YouTube, for example. You can either tell to the function to add the counter for you (put inside a <span> block) or to put it inside another block you've already defined. In the second case, the block must have an id of the form 'fieldID_counter'

This is the compact version, see below for some examples and the expanded, explained version:

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I've never been a big fan of rpm-based Gnu/Linux distributions, since I've always preferred the stability of Debian and Debian based distros, with their great dpkg system.
The problem with Debian on Macbooks is that I do not see both the stability and performance anymore, as I have to use Lenny/Sid. Etch is too old and I don't have the time (*sic*) to play with it to make it work well. Lenny should be next to be released but I don't feel the very famous stability AND lightness of Debian distributions on this release, like I was accustomed in the past years. Is this because I own a Macbook? Maybe, but a Macbook Santa Rosa is nothing more than an Intel-powered notebook with some strange input devices and a strange non-bios system

Regarding Ubuntu, I believe that this distribution has become naff and really slow. See this Slashdot discussion on this topic.

Yesterday I stumbled to Scientechie review of Fedora 10, which convinced me to try it out.
The software shipped with Fedora 10 is aligned with the one provided with the other distributions: Gnome 2.24.0, kernel 2.6.27.5, NetworkManager 0.7.0 (svn) and so on. Read the release notes for more information.

Fedora 10 really surprises me, as it is the first Gnu/Linux distribution in many, many years that makes me feel again the great stability and performance of the Penguin. Therefore I'm writing this review that is also a how-to, as it contains some fixes for Fedora 10 and Macbooks.

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I've finally found the time to make the necessary fixes and improvements to the theme of my blog.
I decided to not name it a final release just because I could not test it with Internet Explorer 6. I believe that the differences with this beta release and the final one will just be some test with that browser and a better code cleanup
Valid XHTML 1.0 Strict.
Yes, this is the theme you're actually seeing in the blog.
You can go and download it!

When I announced BD-incollo 6 days ago, I also mentioned that I would have launched the service today. I really did that, and I'm very proud to announce the first site that runs BD-incollo.
http://incollo.com! Very easy
Incollo.com is a collaborative debugging tool like Pastebin or other similar services, but it's slightly different from it. And it's different from other Pastebin clones even written using Rails or Django.
Here are the most exciting features:

• It's Fast. Very Fast
• Written thinking about usability
• A very clean interface, a minimalist design that gives space to the code (as it should always be)
• It's possible to search through pastes, like in a forum
• A Paste is not deleted after 30 days or something similar. A paste is deleted after it is no more interesting! It's deleted after 60 days of no visualizations
• The system is anonymous. It won't store your information! Paste whatever you want but please use your brain! A Paste may be reported to the administrator!
• You don't really have to play with options and there are no required field other than the Paste itself. You may paste a text and directly hit the submit button
• Quite every page is XHTML 1.0 compatible
• It works well and has nice urls, thanks to Django
• Compatible with every browser (tested with Internet Explorer 6,7,8, Mozilla Firefox 3, Apple Safari, Google Chrome)
• Resolution friendly! Liquid design that adapts to every monitor resolution (tests from 1024x768)
• Developer friendly! Every functionality of incollo.com can be used with max 2 mouse clicks and without a mouse scroll!
• Tested with lots of pastes, quite every source code should be perfectly viewed (this does not happen with every pastebin clones I've tried)
• Uses Pygments for code highlighting
• Languages supported: ActionScript, Assembly (various), Boo, Befunge, BrainFuck, C, C++, C#, Common Lisp, D, Delphi, Dylan, Erlang, Haskell (incl. Literate Haskell), Java, JavaScript, Lua, MiniD, MooCode, MuPad, OCaml, PHP, Perl, Python (incl. console sessions and tracebacks), Redcode, Ruby (incl. irb sessions), Scheme, Visual Basic.NET, Django/Jinja templates, ERB (Ruby templating), Genshi (the Trac template language), Myghty (the HTML::Mason based framework), Mako (the Myghty successor), Smarty templates (PHP templating), JSP (Java Server Pages), , Other markup, , Apache config files, Bash shell scripts, BBCode, CSS, Debian control files, Diff files, Gettext catalogs, Groff markup, HTML, INI-style config files, IRC logs (irssi style), Makefiles, MoinMoin/Trac Wiki markup, Redcode, ReST, SQL, also MySQL, Squid configuration, TeX, Vim Script, Windows batch files, XML

This is an example of Paste with Incollo.com:
http://incollo.com/7dca5011

You are really welcome to report any bugs or leave a feedback! Remember that this is my very first Django project, and I created it in about 6 days!

Of course, I'm already beginning to think about new features

As I promised more than 2 months ago, I've just released the sourcecode of the wordpress theme on my blog. BD-theme 0.8 is a set of experiments that will bring me to the final release, I cannot promise that it will work perfectly on every browser, but it will almost do the job. Meanwhile, I'm working since 7 days to the next release, 0.9, that should bring to the blog a final layout.
UPDATE 2008-08-22: The theme you're actually seeing in the blog is what will become BD-theme 0.9. I'm testing it.

Vi lamentate della lentezza di FireFox? Dell'ammontare di memoria che occupa?

Ecco qui una minima soluzione ai vostri problemi, Switfox. Si tratta di un build di FireFox otimizzato per vari processori, questo consente un avvio piú rapido e un leggero aumento della velocitá di apertura delle pagine, nonché una minima diminuzione della memoria occupata. Per il resto é uguale a FireFox, le estensioni sono compatibili.

Funziona? Questo post lo sto scrivendo dopo aver aperto la pagina con Swiftfox (ah, swift = rapido)
Download su Getswiftfox.com