February 28, 2008

Universal Browser Testing Methods

Filed under: Testing — Soleer @ 10:51 pm

One of the most important responsibilities of a professional web developer is making sure that your designs are accessible to all.

According to http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp, the latest browser utilization rates are as follows:

  1. Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.x (IE6) - 36.9%
  2. Fire Fox (FF) - 34.5%
  3. Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.x (IE7) - 20.1%
  4. Opera (O) - 1.9%
  5. Safari (S) - 1.5%
  6. Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.x (IE5) - 1.5%
  7. Mozilla (Moz) - 1.4%

I do all of my Design and testing from within a 64-bit Windows Vista Operating system. So to simplify the debug process I need to be able to test as many of these browsers as possible from within windows. This is my setup:
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February 19, 2008

Disabling Drupal Modules via your Database

Filed under: Drupal, MySQL — Soleer @ 6:41 pm

Due to the occasional small (or large) fluke, your entire Drupal website can become inaccessible because of a module.  This is how you solve the problem: disable the specific module by altering values in your Drupal database.

In our case, we’ll use phpMyAdmin, but you can use whatever utility you prefer for database manipulation.  So, here is what you do:

  1. Login to your Drupal Database
  2. Access the ’system’ table.  If you added a table prefix: <prefix>, the table will be listed as ‘<prefix>system’
  3. Browse the table entries, and find the entry for the target module
  4. Edit the table entry, and change the status from ‘1′ to ‘0′
  5. The module is now disabled!

Hopefully that did the trick, and you can now use your website.

February 4, 2008

Microsoft’s HealthVault Revolution

Filed under: Industry News — Soleer @ 6:25 pm

Microsoft recently announced the Beta release of its HealthVault platform. The platform is aimed at helping people better manage their health information. The information available from Microsoft is pretty cryptic, but basically it looks like the service is a massive database for storing and sharing health information.

Some are perturbed by the possible privacy issues, but I absolutely love the concept. I loathe inefficiencies, and the fact that every time I go to a dentist, doctor, etc. I need to fill out 5 pages of the same exact information I’ve filled out numerous times before, has never sat well with me. Streamlining patient forms is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to possible benefits of this new platform.
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