Ryan Chapin's Website

I recently was re-installing WinXP on my folks computer and instead of blowing away their existing disk used an extra one that I had lying around.

When I went to run the WinXP set up disk I chose to boot from the CD and then got the "Setup is inspecting your computer’s configuration" message.  And then just a black screen.  The CD drive spun down and then nothing.

Turns out that since I was trying to use a disk that was formatted as ext3 that the Setup program couldn’t continue.

I solved the problem by dropping the disk in an external enclosure and reformatted it as ntfs.  Once I did that it worked like a charm

When you create an input button that has a long string set as it’s value attribute IE 6 and IE 7 render additional, spurious whitespace or padding to the left and the right of the text in the button.  This is solved by adding the following conditional CSS style for the input button in question (assuming we have an input button with the class "submit_button"):

input.submit_button
        {
        padding: 0;
        margin: 0;
        width: auto;
        max-width: auto;
        overflow: visible
        }

FontLab has recently announced a product that allows you to use any photofont, OpenType, or TrueType font on your website.  And it even works in IE 6.0!

I was looking around for some free emoticons for use in forums, blogs, and e-mails and found this site.

I’m working on a project that requires the use of some javascript for a simple survey.  The rub is that the pages all need to be accessible.  I’ve not yet done any work with any AJAX and accessibility but found a few links to articles to get me started.

AJAX and Screenreaders: When Can it Work?
Accessibility of AJAX Applications
AJAX and Accessibility

First off, I didn’t want to simply forward port 22 on my firewall to my local machine as I didn’t want to completely expose it to the net.  I have a number of hardened Internet servers that are completely exposed (for ssh connections, that is) and sufficiently locked down that I felt comfortable configuring my network to only allow ssh connections from a specific server.  What I did there was specify firewall rules to only allow connections on port 22 from a specific machine and then forward those connections to my machine behind the firewall.  I’ll leave the details of that as an exercise for the reader (or a future article).

Once that was set up, I could now set up an SSH tunnel on the trusted Internet server to my machine behind my firewall.  To do that, login to your server and enter the following command:

ssh -N -L234.234.234.234:8888:121.121.121.121:22 username@234.234.234.234

Where:

• 234.234.234.234 ip address of the local machine
• 8888 is the port on the local machine that is accepting the ssh connection that you are tunneling
• 121.121.121.121 is the ip address of the firewall (destination ip for the other end of the tunnel)
• username@234.234.234.234 is a valid user name on the local box that is accepting and forwarding the connection

Run the command, you will now be forwarding ssh connections on port 8888 on your Internet server to your local machines firewall.  I added that command to a shell script that I could run.  When I was through with it, just CTRL-C and it kills the tunnel.

Now the Subversion part on the Windows client:

I had initially set up Subversion to use password-less ssh keys but decided that I wanted to use the interactive password instead.  I had installed TortoiseSVN, so that included Tortoiseplink.  In this case, I simply added a tunnels entry into the conf as such:

customssh = Tortoiseplink -P 8888

With that entered, my tunnel set up, I could now connect with the following:

svn+customssh:/username@234.234.234.234/path/to/repository local_dir_for_files

This’ll enable you to access your repository from anywhere with your password.

I’ve got a Subversion repository on my machine at my office, and it became clear that it would be really nice if I could access it from anywhere on the net.  It was also clear that it needed to be with an interactive password, and not using ssh keys as I did not want leave ssh keys on untrusted machines.

Click on Read More for the full explanation of how I put it together. First off, I didn’t want to simply forward port 22 on my firewall to my local machine as I didn’t want to completely expose it to the net.  I have a number of hardened Internet servers that are completely exposed (for ssh connections, that is) and sufficiently locked down that I felt comfortable configuring my network to only allow ssh connections from a specific server.  What I did there was specify firewall rules to only allow connections on port 22 from a specific machine and then forward those connections to my machine behind the firewall.  I’ll leave the details of that as an exercise for the reader (or a future article).

Once that was set up, I could now set up an SSH tunnel on the trusted Internet server to my machine behind my firewall.  To do that, login to your server and enter the following command:

ssh -N -L234.234.234.234:8888:121.121.121.121:22 username@234.234.234.234

Where:

• 234.234.234.234 ip address of the local machine
• 8888 is the port on the local machine that is accepting the ssh connection that you are tunneling
• 121.121.121.121 is the ip address of the firewall (destination ip for the other end of the tunnel)
• username@234.234.234.234 is a valid user name on the local box that is accepting and forwarding the connection

Run the command, you will now be forwarding ssh connections on port 8888 on your Internet server to your local machines firewall.  I added that command to a shell script that I could run.  When I was through with it, just CTRL-C and it kills the tunnel.

Now the Subversion part on the Windows client:

I had initially set up Subversion to use password-less ssh keys but decided that I wanted to use the interactive password instead.  I had installed TortoiseSVN, so that included Tortoiseplink.  In this case, I simply added a tunnels entry into the conf as such:

customssh = Tortoiseplink -P 8888

With that entered, my tunnel set up, I could now connect with the following:

svn+customssh:/username@234.234.234.234/path/to/repository local_dir_for_files

This’ll enable you to access your repository from anywhere with your password.

There are times when you might want to change your default browser; especially if you are a developer and want to make sure that something works as it should with both IE and Firefox.

To change your default browser:

• Go to: Start/Control Panels/Add or Remove Programs
• Click on "Set Program Access and Defaults", the last button in the left-hand nav
• Click on the "Custom" set of options
• You will see an expanded list of items, Web Browser, E-mail Program, etc.
• Under the "Choose a default Web browser", select the radio button next to browser you would like to set as default.
• Click "OK"

If you have ever tried to do a simple getURL() command in Flash from an .exe projector you’ll notice that it fails when Firefox is your default browser.

Following is the solution to the problem in both AS 2.0 and AS 3.0

Here’s the code for the fix in AS 2.0:

// code on a keyframe on the main timeline

var swfUrl:String = _root._url;
var lastSlashIndex:Number = swfUrl.lastIndexOf("/");
var pipeIndex:Number = swfUrl.indexOf("|");
var baseUrl:String;
if (pipeIndex >= 0)
{
    baseUrl = swfUrl.substring(0, pipeIndex);
    baseUrl += ":";
}
else
{
    baseUrl = "";
}
baseUrl += swfUrl.substring(pipeIndex + 1, lastSlashIndex + 1);

myButton.onRelease = function()
{
    var targetUrl:String = baseUrl + "test.html";
    getURL(targetUrl, "_blank");
};

Here’s the code for the fix in AS 3.0:

// code on a keyframe on the main timeline

import flash.events.MouseEvent;
import flash.net.*;

output_txt.text = this.loaderInfo.url;

var swfUrl:String = this.root.loaderInfo.url;
var lastSlashIndex:Number = swfUrl.lastIndexOf("/");
var pipeIndex:Number = swfUrl.indexOf("|");
var baseUrl:String;
if (pipeIndex >= 0)
{
    baseUrl = swfUrl.substring(0, pipeIndex);
    baseUrl += ":";
}
else
{
    baseUrl = "";
}
baseUrl += swfUrl.substring(pipeIndex + 1, lastSlashIndex + 1);

function gotoTestHtml(event:MouseEvent):void
{
    var targetUrl:URLRequest = new URLRequest(baseUrl + "test.html");
    navigateToURL(targetUrl, "_blank");
}

myButton.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, gotoTestHtml);

Here is a link to the original article where I found this with the full explanation and fix.

Here’s a quick how to on running Firefox 2 and 3 at the same time under Windows

1. Right click the shortcut of the Firefox 2, click "Properties". Add "-profilemanager" at the end of the shortcut path. Click OK. Then run this shortcut to launch Firefox Profile Manager.
2. Create a new profile, name it "firefox3". And uncheck the "Don’t ask at startup"
3. Go to Properties of the Firefox 2 shortcut again, remove the "-profilemanager" and add "-p default" at the end of the path. This forces Firefox 2 to open the original profile.
4. Install Firefox 3. Choose "Custom" when you are asked.
5. Change the installation folder to "Mozilla Firefox 3"
6. Same in Start Menu Folder name.
7. When is complete, uncheck the "Launch Firefox now". You still have something to do before you can run it.
8. Go to the Properties of the Firefox 3 shortcut. Append "-no-remote -p firefox3" to the Target. The "-no-remote" will let Firefox run a separate instance. The "-p firefox3" will force your Firefox 3 to run the newly clean profile.
9. Run the Firefox 3, and you will be prompted that your Firefox is not the default browser. DON’T click Yes. Firefox 3 is not stable and you won’t like to use it as your default browser. Simple uncheck the "Always perform this check when starting Firefox" and click No.
10. Now you can run Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 at the same time.