Category Archives: Tips and Tricks

Guidelines for URI Design on CSS-Tricks

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My guest post was just published on CSS-Tricks!  Here’s a preview:

Over the past several years, I have taken an interest in usability and web design. One of the areas that seems to be often overlooked when it comes to design of a site is the design of the URIs on that site. Modern CMS systems allow for varying degrees of URI customization, but the defaults are often not as usable as they could be, and URIs are often placed last in the design process. Clean URIs are one component of a clean website, and it is an important one. The majority of end-user access to the Internet involves a URI, and whether or not the user actually enters the URI, they are working with one nonetheless. First, I would like to talk about the guiding principles behind URI design, then talk about the practical implementation of the principles.

Read more on CSS-Tricks.

How to Set Windows 7 Taskbar Icons to Switch Windows

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By default, clicking on a taskbar icon for a program with multiple windows shows the new Aero Peak thing (or what ever it’s called).  I, however, wanted the old behavior where it would bring up the last active window (and cycle through the windows on subsequent clicks).  If you want the same behavior, here’s how I did it:

  1. Type press WIN-r to open the run box
  2. Type regedit
  3. Locate the following registry location: 
    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
  4. Right-click and add a new 32-bit DWORD called “LastActiveClick”
  5. Give it a value of 1
  6. Reboot

 

iPhone USB Tethering on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid

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To setup USB tethering on Ubuntu 10.04, simply follow the instructions below.

Quick terminal instructions:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pmcenery/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gvfs ipheth-utils
view raw tether_iphone_lucid.sh This Gist brought to you by GitHub.

Longer version:

  1. Open a terminal window
  2. Add the pmcenery PPA
  3. Update the software sources
  4. Install the necessary packages (gvfs ipheth-utils)
  5. Turn on tethering on your iPhone
  6. Plug it into your computer
  7. All done!

Let me know if you run into any difficulties.