J-dee.com

TinyMCE – A Common Sense Configuration

TinyMCE is an open source WYSIWYG editor that is pretty popular, and used in many applications including being the editor installed into Wordpress. It’s small and gets the job done. The only downside is that it’s a pig to configure and the documentation is of a chocolate fireguard caliber. So here, if anyone wants it, is a TinyMCE configuration block I knocked together that contains all the stuff you need to act as a web based content entry text area. In fact, it’s an exact clone of the Wordpress editor.

    <script type=”text/javascript”>
        tinyMCE.init({
            mode: “textareas”,
            theme: “advanced”,
            theme_advanced_toolbar_location: “top”,
            theme_advanced_toolbar_align: “left”,
            theme_advanced_buttons2 : “”,
            theme_advanced_buttons3: “”,
            plugins : “inlinepopups”,
            dialog_type : “modal”,
            theme_advanced_buttons1_add: “bullist,numlist,blockquote,image,link,unlink,code  “,
            theme_advanced_disable: “formatselect, fontselect, fontsizeselect, styleselect, justifyfull  ”

        });
</script>

JQuery Pager Plugin

I’ve just knocked together a JavaScript pager for use in an application I’m working on and thought it may be of use to other people. I’ve therefore converted it to a jQuery plugin and released it under joint MIT and GPL licenses and it is entirely free for you to use or mess about with.

You can see a demonstration of it in action at http://jonpauldavies.github.com/JQuery/Pager/PagerDemo.html and visit my GitHub repository at http://github.com/jonpauldavies/jquery-pager-plugin/tree/master to download it.

Usage is very simple indeed. You just give it the number of pages to view, the current page, and a callback method to fire when the pager gets clicked.

Amazon.Com Addiction Continues Unabated….

I pay a quick visit to Amazon to get Kitty a few books and before you know it I’ve dropped an extra 70 quid on 3 JavaScript / JQuery books….

I have not had time to review them fully, but JQuery in Action is a thorough trawl through the functionality and use cases of this continually impressive library. I’ve got a pretty firm grasp of JQuery but my entire knowledge is built from blog posts so felt I needed something a bit more solid and this seems to fit the bill.

The JQuery Reference is very thin for a technical book and has yet to prove it’s worth now that we have decent JQuery intellisense in Visual Studio. I’ll have to wait and see how it pans out.

Lastly, Pro JavaScript Techniques is an overview of the ‘modern’ uses of the language, and how it has adopted several OOP paradigms as true client side development has matured in recent years.
If you are thinking of putting any of these on your Christmas list, I’d order them JQuery in Action, Pro JavaScript Techniques and The JQuery Reference – in order of usefulness.

Twollo – Long Tail Twitter Search

Twollo.com is the new Twitter application knocked together in super quick time by my mate Paul Kinlan, and even though it’s written with Google App Engine ( blech! ) it’s a cracking little solution.

A simple twist on the Twitter search, it auto follows people that match your search terms and is remarkably good at finding cool people. It works best with targeted search terms, searching for ‘Internet’ is asking for trouble! I searched for JQuery and it instantly found me 40 fellow JQuery fans all happy to chat and offer advice.

It’s way better than Mr Tweet, as that only serves up super high profile tweeters like Scoble et al. Twollo really digs out long-tail users that are better matched to your interests. A great service that is only going to improve and offers functionality that Twitter itself is sadly missing.