Tim Dupree

I recently needed to create some HTML emails.  I knew that email clients were pretty restrictive when it comes to the html and css they allow, but I was a bit surprised at how bad the landscape really is. Pretty much throw out any best practice for coding html and pretend you are back in the 90′s.  Here are some general tips and tricks I learned this week about HTML emails. Inline your CSS. Forget about embedding your css styles at the top (or as separate resources).  Most email clients strip out the HTML and BODY tags so you have to embed…

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I ordered the Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH wireless router on Newegg last weekend.  It has some really nice specs and my old router was getting a bit wonky.  The new Buffalo router is replacing a Lynksys WRT54G2 v1 which seemed to have some incompatibility with the Intel wireless cards in 3 out of the 4 laptops that are usually in my home. For the past couple years I have only bought routers whose firmware can be changed to run DD-WRT (a Linux based open source firmware for routers).  The Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH is a great router for DD-WRT, but there are/were some problems surrounding…

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The Google Chrome web browser is extremely fast and has pretty much become my primary browser. It has some developer tools baked into the browser similar to the Firebug addon for Firefox.  I still tend to gravitate to using Firebug for heavy duty stuff, but the tools in Chrome are good enough that I find myself breaking out Firefox less and less for Firebug. If you are feeling geeky, or want access to some of the newest developer tools for Chrome/Webkit, you can run with the Dev Channel build. It is the most cutting edge build of Chrome, so you always…

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Need to remove the GRUB boot loader from an external usb drive connected to a Windows machine? This is how I did it. I had a hard drive that was set up to dual boot Linux and Windows XP. The windows XP install had ceased working for some reason so I decided to wipe the drive and do a clean install.  Since this was an old laptop of mine that my father-in-law was using, I figured I would also wipe the linux partition, that I had played with long ago, and get rid of the dual boot option. I removed…

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I have taken my digg AdBlocker script I originally made for greasemonkey and have made it available for Google Chrome users. Install the digg AdBlocker extension for Google Chrome here: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/gclmekogkkggoehdimnceffmboanpibn Check out the source here: http://tdupree.com/chrome/digg_adblocker/chrome_digg_adblocker_source.zip

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I finally got around to cleaning up my Google Chrome version of Hacker News OnePage. You can install it for your Chrome browser over at the Google Chrome Extensions gallery. Install Hacker News OnePage for Google Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/plldnnbdlbgbiknjebohmlggcbicghlj Check out the source code: http://tdupree.com/chrome/chrome_onepage/chrome_hn_onepage_source.zip

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EDIT: Check here for updates to the Google Chrome Hacker News OnePage extension. Google just recently released Chrome v3.0, and the developer builds in the dev channel now have extensions turned on by default (no need to append –enable-extensions to the exe target).  The extensions system for Chrome is getting nicer and nicer (just check out chrome://extensions in your Chrome browser).  I have a working version of Hacker News OnePage that I have tested with dev channel build 4.0.206.1.  I assume that it will also work fine with the new 3.0 stable release if you have extensions enabled. Install Hacker…

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This morning I had to implement an interactive map that allows one to locate local dealers of GPS equipment.  The site I needed to do this on is running an extremely old version of prototype.js (version 1.5, circa 2007) and moodom.js (the precursor to MooTools). I didn’t want to use these outdated libraries to create the little interactive app.  I would normally use MooTools, but I needed a library I could namespace so that I wouldn’t step on Prototype’s shoes.  I grabbed the latest build of jQuery, namespaced it using the jQuery.noConflict(); technique, wrote my code, and included it right before…

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