This isn't really news for anybody that loosely keep track of Mac news, but for redundancy's sake, I'll post my blurb. MacHeist is having their annual "killer" bundle sale.

I'll do reviews of each piece of software as I get to it. I think I have 12-14 new apps so it could take a while...

In any case, I'm having a good time with Times. It's an nice, easy way to read all the RSS feeds I've been accumulating. I think it's going to become even more useful as RSS and social networking are growing hand-in-hand.

I've been using Apple's Mail for my feeds which, while convenient because I'm always in Mail, has a pretty bare bones UI so overall it's probably not a win. I have a feeling that Times is going to actually make the process a little more efficient.

The only thing that irked me out-of-the-box is that I couldn't find an intuitive way to sort my feeds within the same "column". It kept defaulting to some bogus order that wasn't apparent. Maybe it's based on the order of the feeds as they are imported/added? Not sure, but whatever is up, I didn't figure it out in 30 seconds (and yes, I at least checked the Help menu), so I'll probably pester their support or forum when I get a chance.

Dave "dellus" Dellovo is working for himself. One of the best designers I've worked with: http://hcodestx.com/hcs_showcase.htm

Here's a MAMP specific hack for finding what MySQL queries are killing your application.

First, backup /Applications/MAMP/bin/startMysql.sh

Next, pop open /Applications/MAMP/bin/startMysql.sh in your favorite text editor
You should see something like this:

You want to add in this string to that command:
--log-slow-queries=/Applications/MAMP/logs/slow_query_log

So the file contents should look like:

Save out the file, restart MAMP, start hitting pages and monitor the file, /Applications/MAMP/logs/slow_query_log

This should be fine for MAMP 1.4.1. YMMV may vary, depending on your MySQL version. The concept is the same, but the syntax can change in later versions.

You might want to implement this tweak to your Virtuemart files in order to avoid Google complaining about your product pages containing identical meta descriptions.

I am not a Virtuemart expert and I might end up finding a config that gets around this. However, when I first set up my store I noticed that the product pages all contained a default meta description. The category pages grabbed the category descriptions just fine but the product pages needed help.

Open up /components/com_virtuemart/themes/default/templates/product_details/flypage.tpl.php in vi/emacs/TextEdit/whatever. All you need are the following 2 lines:

I would place these near the top of the file, possibly just after

JomSocial looks very solid and impressive on the demo site.

My company bought a copy for implementation. Unfortunately, we have some large projects to complete before I can start tinkering with JomSocial. I'm looking forward to customizing it for our site.

I think Community Builder is going to have a tough time competing unless they really work on their UI and design. I have yet to see a CB site that's as smooth as the JomSocial demo. I know CB has a lot of fans and has been around for a while, but I don't think it holds up design-wise to what's expected from current Social Networking sites.

In any case, JomSocial looks to be a great addition to Joomla's commerical component library.

Modal windows using Mootools are pretty useful. It's great to include AJAX effects and functionality easily within Joomla.

I was recently tasked with creating a popover form, but the catch was that it had to load automatically. A quick post to the Joomla forums didn't yield an immediate response (...not that the forums aren't great but I needed some advice very quickly. As I write, there's probably someone typing in better code than I have here...). AJAX isn't a strong point right now. I kind of wish I had a couple weeks (or months) to just tinker with AJAX so it's more familiar.

Anyway, I got some initial wisdom from the pages of Art of Joomla for how to include the usual modal windows using Mootools within Joomla. This was a start.

The difference though was how to get this stuff to load without a click event. Also, I needed a window that opened a real page.

1. You still need to include this at the top of your template:
   <?php JHTML::_( 'behavior.modal' ); ?>
2. Next, you still need to create a link that represents what URL you want, plus the rel attribute that gives the specs for the iframe.
   <a class="modal" rel="{handler: 'iframe', size: {x: 570, y: 500}}" id="modalWindowLink" href="http://www.kirbymixedmedia.com"></a>
   For this project we didn't want a visible link. I just didn't put in any text in between the link tags. I'm guessing you could set the css visibility if you think that's cleaner. I also gave the link a specific ID.
3. Finally, this is the code block that gets it done.

   Just after the link, I put in this script block:

         <script>
   
         window.addEvent('domready', function() {
         
   	window.addEvent('load', function(){
   
   	  //alert('clicked!');
   
   	  SqueezeBox.fromElement($('modalWindowLink'));
   
   	});
   
         });
   
         </script>
   
   

   (commented line is just for debugging.)

Load your page, cross your fingers and watch the modal window pop up.

Clean up this code, tweak, improve - have fun!