Safari 3.1 update adds Web Inspector

The Safari 3.1 update adds a nice new feature called Web Inspector. The web inspector has some features developers may have seen before in the firefox extensions firebug and yslow.

To enable the develop menu go to Safari->Preferences->Advanced and check the box that says "Show Develop menu in menu bar"

Then from the Safari menu you can chose Develop->Show Web Inspector.

Apple TV and Philips LCD TV sound issues

I purchased the 160GB Apple TV a few weeks ago. From day one I had issues with the sound with my configuration. I have the Apple TV connected to a Philips 42" LCD TV with HDMI cable. I then have the coaxial digital audio out from my TV to a Pioneer receiver. With the setup I can always get sound from my TV speakers, but not all sounds are output to my stereo.

The audio path is:
AppleTV -> Philips LCD TV (HDMI) -> Pioneer Receiver (Digital Coax)

Here are some observations:

• The startup audio on Apple TV plays fine through stereo, this sound is about 15-20 seconds long, after that the only sound that can be heard from the stereo is the sound of the button chirps using the remote.
  
• If I toggle between HDMI inputs on the TV ending on the one Apple TV is hooked to, the sound will play through the stereo for 4-5 seconds then cuts out, but I can still hear it through the tv. After it cuts out I can only hear the remote chirp sounds
  
• After playing around with it a bit, I ended up finding one audio clip that will play normally
  

Some searching lead me to this thread where people had similar issues: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6601200

A call to Apple support eventually led me to a product specialist who said they don't support a setup where the sound passes through a middle device.

I ended up hooking the audio output directly from the Apple TV into my stereo, which sounds fine but a little inconvenient in that I have to use 2 remotes to switch from Directv to Apple TV, maybe its time for a Harmony One.

Anyway, the issue seems to be something to do with the Apple TV 2.0 upgrade and how the Philips LCD TV processes audio. If you have had similar issues, please comment.

WinDirStat

WinDirStat <http://windirstat.info/> is handy tool. It is very similar to TreeSize. Both tools provide reports of disk usage on a given volume. However, WinDirStat has a better graphical interface, appears to be complete its reporting task in less time, and has entertaining animations when performing its work (you'll have to try it to see - think Pac-Man).

Below is a screen shot of a completed scan of a volume. You can click on the various graphical chunks which will update the other two window panes accordingly. It is fun, free and useful to track storage usage of volume.




I discovered WinDirStat while reading the following NetApp blog about Vista's large installation base, <http://blogs.netapp.com/incorrigible_techno/2007/12/28-gb.html>.

March 13, 2008 additions:

1. Thanks to Jim (see comments) for pointing out the Mac OS X equivlant - Disk Inventory X http://www.derlien.com/
2. There is KDirStat for "Linux, BSD, and lots of other Unix-type systems (Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, ...)" http://kdirstat.sourceforge.net/
3. KDirStat was the original, WinDirStat is a "clone", and then came Disk Inventory X (sources are from the previous two links).
   

List of do nots for PHP programming

As there are discussions posted on this blog about PHP programming (maybe not at the moment ;-) the following is relevant and applicable to programming techniques including and beyond PHP. This is list as noted by the author is "completely subjective & Eclipse oriented".

"40 signs you really are a lousy PHP programmer"
http://reinholdweber.com/?p=19

There were terms in the list that I did not know. Examples included REST (Representational State Transfer) and DRY (Don't repeat yourself).

iPhone fullscreen web apps

Along with the iPhone sdk, apple has also added some updates for web developers, including the ability to create iPhone web apps in dashcode and ability to run web apps in full screen mode. To get full screen mode working all you need to do is add the html

<meta name="'apple-touch-fullscreen'" content="YES">

to the head of your web page. This sounds great but does not appear to be working yet. I tested this in both the iPhone simulator "Aspen" and directly on the iPhone itself. I also would have thought this to be an option on the dashcode page attributes, but it isn't, atleast for now. Also, the css animation effects don't appear to be working on the iPhone but those do work in the simulator. This most likely won't be available until the release of the iPhone 2.0 software.