HP MiniNote 2133: First Impressions
Submitted by andrew on Mon, 03/02/2009 - 20:04
I started evaluating the HP MiniNote 2133 back in October; here are some notes I made when I first started using it. In summary: the HP MiniNote is an "acceptable" piece of hardware, but not something I'd recommend given the other solutions available.
- The latchless design is very nice.
- I'm getting used to the trackpad buttons. Having them on the side actually works very well when holding the laptop with one hand. I'm still not convinced though that they are as good as regular under-the-pad buttons.
Mobile Computing Arrives On Your Fingertips
Submitted by andrew on Tue, 02/24/2009 - 13:02
The iPod Touch is a 90% product; like the first generation iPods, it gets most things right, has a few places to grow, and within a revision or two will be a mature and stable platform for ubiquitous mobile computing.
Windows 7: 1 Week Later
Submitted by andrew on Mon, 01/19/2009 - 20:58
The HP MiniNote is now up to 3 operating systems: Ubuntu 8.10 (with XFCE, Gnome, and KDE 4.2 RC), Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PC's, and the Windows 7 public beta. Overall, Windows 7 has certainly been the biggest surprise.
I won't go in depth into all the features (or lack of them, really) that I've encountered. They're pretty widely covered on various sites, with a good writeup from Ars Technica. Windows 7 is an incremental upgrade to Vista; it's what Vista should have been at launch. I doubt it will be worth the paid upgrade from Vista, but I think it will finally be at the point where it's not worth recommending users to go out of their way to find machines with XP on them.
Related Links:
Deep inside the Windows 7 Public Beta: an in-depth tour
Related Links:
The Best New Windows 7 Keyboard Shortcuts Fixing the Enter Key on AHAH Forms
Submitted by andrew on Mon, 01/19/2009 - 20:29
Update: I've modified the suggested JavaScript code to not break #autocomplete enter presses.
The #ahah element introduced in Drupal 6 makes setting up dynamic JavaScript-driven forms much simpler than with Drupal 5. To see this in action, take a look at the Poll module. When adding more choices to a form, clicking the "Add another choice" button doesn't reload the page if JavaScript is enabled. However, there is one problem with such a form: by adding a submit button above other submit elements, it becomes the default action when pressing the enter key. Unfortunately, browsers don't have a method to specify the default submit action, and usually just use the first submit element on the form. To see this issue, try pressing the enter key inside the Title field on a Poll node. The page reloads, and the JS-disabled fallback is executed, instead of the Preview action as may be expected.
This might be behaving as intended with the Poll module, but I wanted to ensure that the enter key action was consistent with a similar feature I was adding to the Skeleton Outline module. Most JavaScript code online will recommend doing something similar to the following:
Related Links:
Introduction to AHAH in Drupal Deploy Drupal Modules and Themes with Eclipse External Tools
Submitted by andrew on Mon, 01/05/2009 - 17:27
Eclipse, with the newly released PDT 2.0, is a very capable Drupal IDE. With code completion, automatic documentation lookups, and integrated debugging, Eclipse is very good for anyone who spends time doing Drupal code.
One issue I've run into with Eclipse when working on contributed modules is that the modules themselves aren't located within a Drupal installation. I found myself resorting to external programs or the command line to copy my changes to my development site or to my local development copy. Using Eclipse's External Tools, it's possible to deploy changes with a single click, greatly reducing the time to test modified code.
Related Links:
PDT 2.0 Release Notes 