Defining Chaos In Order

MySQL has a very powerfull command through “show full processlist;”, to see a list of currently running queries.

# mysql
# mysql > show full processlist;

PostgreSQL has a similar shell to MySQL, named psql. Here’s how it works. First, change to the postgres user.

# su postgres

Enter the PostgreSQL command shell.

# [postgres@srv]$ psql

And perform the query to see the current activity.

postgres=# select * from pg_stat_activity;

To quit the PostgreSQL shell, type “\q”.

This requires you have PostgreSQL configured to enable logging.  Edit your PostgreSQL config file (usually at /usr/local/pgsql/data/postgresql.conf), and add the following line.

stats_command_string = true

And reload your PostgreSQL.

pg_ctl reload

Matti Webdevelopment pg_stat_activity, postgres, postgresql, psql

Matti Webdevelopment control, marketing, psychology

It’s out! Enjoy the cool HTML5 features, and improved performance!

Matti Webdevelopment browser, firefox

I stumbled upon this marvelous creation, allowing you to run both Internet Explorer 6 (IE6), Internet Explorer 7 (IE7), Internet Explorer 8 (IE8), Mozilla Firefox 2 (FF2), Mozilla Firefox 3 (FF3), Google’s Chrome (1), Opera & Apple’s Safari on one computer. It requires you to visit a website, from where you can launch these applications. It’s brilliantly simple.

Check it out: http://www.xenocode.com/browsers/

It sure beats having to run a Virtual PC with several seperate images (XP + IE6, XP + IE7, XP + IE8). If you want to try out different operating systems (XP or Vista), you should still revert to virtualising your OS (try Virtual PC + premade OS images by Microsoft). Now to find a solution for running IE5.5 alongside it! ;-)

Matti Webdevelopment browsers, chrome, firefox, ie6, ie7, ie8

Here’s one of the features of Dreamweaver, to clean up the “HTML” (do mind the quotes!) that Microsoft’s Word generates when saving a document as a webpage file. 

Clean up Word HTML

And its purpose is clear; transform the why-do-they-even-call-it-HTML-code that Word generates, to a manageable and W3C compliant version. I suppose this results just sums it all up.

Clean up Word HTML Results

In case you’ve never done this before; take a random Word document, and save it as a .HTML file through the “save as” menu in Word. Then look at the HTML code behind that page. See if you can decypher any proper HTML tags …

Its results are often noticed when trying to copy/paste Word text to an online text editor. It’ll copy the underlying Word HTML characters as well, that often break the layout of pages.

Matti Webdevelopment convert, dreamweaver, word, xhtml

The Web 2.0 is wrongfully used all too often. Besides the obvious (the fact that “The Web” doesn’t exist, and a 2.0 version *can’t* exist either), it’s implying something it shouldn’t. The “Web” didn’t evolve, the developers did.

Hooray for (Web)developer 2.0. Read more…

Matti Webdevelopment development, web 2.0

To understand why the “WWW” prefix or subdomain is outdated, we should first look at the original definition of WWW.

World Wide Web: 
n. Abbr. WWW 
1) The complete set of documents residing on all Internet servers that use the HTTP protocol, accessible to users via a simple point-and-click system. 
2) n : a collection of internet sites that offer text and graphics and sound and animation resources through the hypertext transfer protocol.

The important part here is the HTTP Protocol. Whenever a link is made, such as http://<domain>, the software will know that a connection to a webserver is made, on port 80. That’s what the http-protocol stands for.

The definition above implies that the “World Wide Web” uses the http protocol to send its data. Why then, do we still need to add the “WWW” subdomain? It’s a waste of time to type it. Wouldn’t it be easier to just type in the domain name, without the “WWW”?

While most webservers will accept traffic on the domain-name, without the WWW prefix, they usually redirect to the WWW-part of the website. Typing http://<domain> will often land you on http://www.<domain>. This should be the other way around.

Using the following .htaccess rule, you can safely redirect all traffic from http://www.<domain> to the http://<domain> version of your website.

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
# Remove the WWW subdomain, and redirect to the domain itself
RewriteCond %{http_host} ^www\.domain\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com/$1 [R=301,NC]

For more information on what Redirect-Code to use ([R=301]) I kindly refer you to the following page: Using Proper Header Redirects In PHP. There you’ll find a good explanation on the difference in 301 and 302 redirects, and their effect on search engines.

Matti Webdevelopment domain, rant, Webdevelopment, webserver, www

According to a post on ArsTechnica.com, it seems Google is ready to release its new browser to the world, by setting it as a default browser on new computers.

Google, meanwhile, is exploring its distribution options and examining the various ways it might improve its market share. “We will probably do distribution deals,” Pinchai told The Times. “We could work with an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) and have them ship computers with Chrome preinstalled.”

By preinstalling the browser on new computers, you’ll reach a relativily small percentage of internet users out there. It might replace IE for some users, but those who are scared of changes (and that’s just about every PC user with little or no knowledge of IT) will return to Internet Explorer – their safehaven, the software they know and have used for several years. It’s proven to work – why would they switch to something else?

Those people that use FireFox (a 20% marketshare at the moment), have made the step from Internet Explorer to try the new browser. They are the ones that _do_ like change, so they switched. That 20% marketshare is probably the only share that’ll considder using Google’s Chrome. 

By further promoting it, the Chrome browser will only steal marketshare of the “alternative” browsers – FireFox, Safari, Opera, … – not the mainstream Internet Explorer users causing more diversity.

Since the launch of IE3 in 1996 to today, Microsoft has never had to compete for browser share against a company as large and powerful as itself. Once Chrome launches, that’s going to change; Google has the money and the expertise to match Microsoft dollar-for-dollar and feature-for-feature. If both companies stay on track, 2009 may be the year we finally test John Curran’s hypothesis, both in the UK and around the world.

I’m curious to see how that will go. If spending money only means getting the browser preinstalled, then the war will still be won by IE. If it means tearing down IE’s reputation through public ads, commercials and likes – to get to the “common” man, who’s afraid of change – it might tilt the other way around.

If I look at my immediate surroundings, those users that still used Internet Explorer a few months ago, are using it now. Those that had FireFox/Safari/Opera, made the switch to Chrome.

I was ones a FireFox user. I switched to Chrome.

Matti Webdevelopment browser, chrome, google, IE

Mozilla has released an alpha version of Fennec, the mobile version of the popular Firefox. It already looks promising, with more screenspace for the actual content, and less overhaul through massive menu-items, extra buttons, …

It’s nice to see titlebar disappear as you scroll down the site, to create more space to view your websites – as well as the new way of showing tabs & other browser options. Read more…

Matti Webdevelopment browser, fennec, firefox, fox

A common phrase in IT, usually uttered when someone tries to do something which you _know_ will end badly, because they’re trying to change something that doesn’t need changing in the first place.

The expression also causes us the necessary frustrations: people hold on to (very) old versions of software (Internet Explorer 5, Windows 98, …) because “it still works“. How are we to use new technologies and methods, when there are still a lot of end-users that don’t make the necessary upgrades to take advantage of this?

In the never-ending browser-wars, this is just about the most frustrating thing – gettings things to work in all versions of the software – even if it is over 8 years old and totally outdated (IE5). Why should we keep investing in learning new techniques, fancy new technologies and the likes when it won’t work on nearly 10% of all users?

*Le Sigh*

Matti Webdevelopment ie5, rant, standards, upgrade, webdev