If you work with Subversion on a Mac (and you should), and especially if you’ve got Growl installed, you might be interested in SVN Notifier, the first Apple Dashboard widget to come from the Arc90 lab.

Updated 4/21/2008: Patched a security hole, and other minor enhancements. Details on the blog.

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I’ve been really getting into JSON as a transfer protocol lately. Having been recently muddled in XML, the simplicity of JSON is a welcome respite.

Despite its simplicity, I’ve still seen quite a bit of poorly formed JSON around. And I had a bit of trouble finding a simple JSON Validator / Reformatter service on the web anywhere. So I decided to create my own.

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Ever want to put a whole bunch of Select drop downs that can have multiple selections into a tight area, only to have to struggle with layout issues?  Or have to put a layered div over over a Select and realize that Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 and lower will still display the Select?  Or have you just wanted a nice a clean way to select multiple options that don’t require Shift or Control clicking?

• What is this?
• How do I use it?
• Examples
• Supported Browsers
• Licensing
• Discuss jQuery MultiSelect

What is this?

jQuery MultiSelect leverages the power of jQuery, providing a clean way to display a drop down and allow multiple options to be selected with just the mouse and without taking up more room that you need.

With just a single line of code, jQuery MultiSelect styles up any select with a new and simple drop down. Your page will look clean and improved and your markup barely changes. It’s a win-win-win.

How Do I Use It?

To use jQuery MultiSelect on your site or blog, just follow these simple steps:

Download The Code

Link To The Javascript

Choosing which selects to stylize

French
English
Spanish
Japanese

$(function()
{
$('#lang').multiSelect(
{
select_all_min: 3,
no_selection: "Please select a few items!",
selected_text: " clicked"
});
});

Examples

You can see jQuery MultiSelect in action by clicking here.

Supported Browsers

Currently, the jQuery MultiSelect script has been tested and confirmed on the following browsers:

• Internet Explorer 6.0+
• Mozilla Firefox 2.0+
• Apple Safari 2.0+
• Opera Version 9.0

Licensing

This arc90 tool is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license.

Discuss jQuery MultiSelect

You can send feedback on jQuery MultiSelect at the arc90 blog.

If you’ve been beating your head against the wall trying to get Cairngorm and Modules to work together, stop now. We’ve already knocked ourselves senseless, not that we had much sense to begin with, and, flux capacitor like, come up with a solution.

• What is this?
• How do I use it?
• Examples
• Supported Browsers
• Licensing
• Discuss Modular

What is this?

There’s been a lot of talk about using Cairngorm with Flex’s built in Module framework, and the general consensus is that it’s just not worth the effort. Here at Arc90, we use Cairngorm extensively, and until recently, had not leveraged modules. Then we found ourselves faced with the dilemma of making Cairngorm and Modules play nice. It turns out that the solution was fairly simple, as well as lightweight: we call it Modular.

Modular makes use of some great ideas that have been floating around the Flex community for awhile:

• The ChainEvent package developed by Bjorn Schultheiss for sequencing commands.
• The CairngormEventDispatcherFactory concept by vic on flex.

The parent application utilizes the existing Cairngorm framework, while our modules leverage Cairngorm, supplemented by Modular.

How Do I Use It?

To use Modular in your Flex projects, just follow these simple steps:

Download The Code

Add the code to your Flex project

Build your application by extending the classes contained in the com.arc90.modular package.

import com.arc90.modular.AbstractModuleEvent;
public class CairngormModuleEvent extends AbstractModuleEvent
{
...
}

import com.arc90.modular.ModuleFrontController;
public class ModuleController extends ModuleFrontController
{
public function ModuleController()
{
addCommand("doSomethingAwesome", ModuleCommand);
}
}

import com.arc90.modular.ModuleSequenceCommand;
public class ModuleCommand extends ModuleSequenceCommand
{
...
}

Dispatch events

var event:CairngormModuleEvent = new CairngormModuleEvent("doSomethingAwesome");
event.dispatch();

CairngormEventDispatcherFactory.getDispatcher(this).dispatchEvent(new CairngormModuleEvent("doSomethingAwesome"));

Licensing

This arc90 tool is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license.

Discuss Modular

You can offer feedback on Modular at the arc90 blog.

With the coolness of Adobe’s AIR technology permeating the web (and your desktop). We thought we’d help bring it to the masses. Our own Avi Flax (not Flex) got his grubby little hands on the AIR SDK and wired it to a Java web app that let’s you turn any URL into a desktop application in about ten lousy seconds. Just visit Airifier.com and go to it. Note, it does require the Adobe AIR install to be on your Mac or PC.

Continue reading»

Ever want to put a whole bunch of Select drop downs that can have multiple selections into a tight area, only to have to struggle with layout issues?  Or have to put a layered div over over a Select and realize that Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 and lower will still display the Select?  Or have you just wanted a nice a clean way to select multiple options that don’t require Shift or Control clicking?

Continue reading»

Speed up your apps and have a convenient application-level scope with AppCache by Chris Dary, the seventh tool from the arc90 lab.

• What is this?
• How do I use it?
• Why is this better than using Memcache directly?
• Examples
• Download the Code
• Prerequisites
• Licensing
• Discuss AppCache

What is this?

AppCache is an implementation of an Application scope in PHP. If you’ve ever worked with Coldfusion (or ASP), you’ll know that Application-level variables are visible to an entire group of files. They’re one level above a session scope, and one level below server level variables.

As you can probably guess, this is hugely useful for all sorts of things – things like caching data, common variables, etc.

To do this, AppCache expands upon a fantastic caching system called memcached. Memcached’s intent is to speed up web applications by alleviating database load – it was originally created to enhance the speed of LiveJournal.com.

As a caveat, if you have not used an Application scope or a caching mechanism before: This data is not persistent – it’s stored in RAM, not on disk, and will be lost if the daemon is restarted or the cache expires, and therefore you should only use it for run-time stuff, which can be recreated or retrieved every time the app starts.

Why is this better than using Memcache directly?

Examples

Here are a few examples of what AppCache looks like in action:

A Simple Example

<?php
require 'Application.php';
// Initialize our application
$app = new Application('Sample Application Name');
// Check if our sample value is set
if( !isset( $app->sampleValue ) )
{
// If it is not set, initialize it, with the date, so that we can
// see that it is persistent amongst requests.
$app->sampleValue = "This sample value was set on " . date('r');
}
// Print our sample value
print_r($app->sampleValue);
// To remove sampleValue from our app, we would use:
// unset($app->sampleValue);
// To flush all values from the app, we would use:
// $app->clear();
// To access $app within functions and other classes, use either
// $GLOBALS['app'] or global $app;, then $app.
?>

A More Complex Example

<?php
require 'Application.php';
// Here, we pass our Application constructor an array of values for configuration.
$app = new Application(
array(
'key'				=>	'A complex Application example',
'memcached_servers'	=>	array('127.0.0.1:11211','anotherHost.com:22122'),
'memcached_prefix'	=>	'appvar_'
)
);
// Set up a cached_page variable that will expire.
if( !isset( $app->cached_page ) )
{
$page_content = array();
$page_content['header']	= '<html><head>' .
'<title>Page cached on ' . date('r') . '</title>' .
'</head><body>' .
'<h1>This is a cached header</h1>';
$page_content['body']	= '<p>This is some cached body content ' .
'with a random number: ' . rand() . '</p>';
$page_content['footer']	= '<h5>This is a cached footer</h5>' .
'</body></html>';
// This content will expire and be regenerated every 15 seconds
$app->setWithExpire('cached_page', $page_content, 15);
}
echo $app->cached_page['header'];
echo '<h4>The date is ' . date('r') . '. This is not cached.</h4>';
echo $app->cached_page['body'];
echo $app->cached_page['footer'];
// To see a list of all keys in our app,
// and their expiration dates (if they have one), use:
// print_r($app->getKeys());
// To remove cached_page from our app, we would use:
// unset($app->cached_page);
// To flush all values from the app, we would use:
// $app->clear();
?>

Download The Code

To use AppCache on your site, download it from one of the following sources:

Source File with Examples

Raw Source File

Prerequisites

To run AppCache, you need the following:

• PHP 5. AppCache has been tested with PHP 5.2.0, but it will likely work with other versions of PHP 5 as well.
• An instance of memcached running somewhere. You can download it at http://www.danga.com/memcached.
• The PHP library for memcache – installed easily with PECL. In many cases it’s as simple as running pecl install memcache. More information is available at http://us2.php.net/memcache.

Licensing

This arc90 tool is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.

Discuss AppCache

You can send feedback on AppCache at the arc90 blog.