Something I learned today about JSTL - you can use {cookie.cookieName.value}* to get the String value of a cookie. Cool stuff, I found it by looking in the JSTL In Action book I bought about a month ago. BTW, if you're going to buy the book, you can get if for $12 cheaper from Amazon.
Here's an example of how I used this new-found syntax in my project.
<c:if test="{cookie.style.value == 'widescreen'}">
body {
background-image: url(/images/bg-wide.gif);
}
</c:if>*
I also implemented the
stylesheet switcher from A List Apart today. Very cool stuff - although I did have to add an extra line in the setActiveStyleSheet function to create a cookie for title. The following code block is supposed to do this for me, but didn't seem to work on XP with the latest browsers.
window.onunload = function(e) {
var title = getActiveStyleSheet();
createCookie("style", title, 365);
}
Oh well, at least I got it to work and learned some more JSTL in the process!
* I tried using the real syntax with a preceeding $, but that didn't work too well, and Velocity puked with:
[VELOCITY ERROR: parsing weblog entry]
org.apache.velocity.exception.ParseErrorException:
Encountered ".cookieName.value}
Any ideas why? It brings up another question I've been meaning to ask - is it possible to use Velocity syntax that's similar to JSP to get parameters and such in my roller templates?
A new Apple Store is opening in Cherry Creek (Denver) this weekend! It's actually further away from us than the Aspen Grove store, but it's in a cool part of town. Cherry Creek is both an area of town and a mall - and the store will be in the mall. The good part, now we can go "shopping" and I can attend all their cool iPhoto and iMovie sessions while Julie and Abbie pal around. Other than the iApps sessions, the Apple stores don't do much for me - while it's cool to look at the new Apples, it gets old after 2 or 3 drool-sessions.
As I coded past the light of day tonight - I looked out my office window and the front yard and neighbors house was glowing orange. So I leapt out of my chair and scrambled for the back yard. What I saw there was breathtaking. This is one of the best parts about living in Denver, the sunsets are amazing - and we get them a lot! I don't know if it's the pollution or the altitude, but they sure are impressive.
If you live in Colorado, or you want to move here, I suggest you subscribe to the rmiug-jobs mailing list. I subscribed about a week ago, and I've seen 1-2 good developer-type jobs in my Inbox per day! That's excellent during these times. The best part, they seem to come from actual employers more often than recruiters.
I got a list of the XDoclet Team Member's Weblogs this morning from the xdoclet-devel mailing list.
So I visited them (first two I already knew about) and on Mathias's blog I found some interesting, and slightly disturbing stuff. There is a post from Tuesday, November 5th called Ara Again, that links to this article that Rickard wrote. Rickard's article points to this article about the movie Signs. Both of them discuss a theory of two races, which includes the presence of a "Matrix Control System" (MCS), not too different from the one found in the popular movie, which if true would provide us with a profoundly different take of what reality is and why it works the way it does.
Needless to say, I read them both, and it's a little heavy and disturbing for a Monday morning and a reader with a possible concussion (I've had a headache since yesterday morning).
If you use Chimera as your web browser on OSX (and there is every reason to) you might be interested in a little speed boost reported recently by MacOSXHints.
It's called HTTP/1.1 Pipelining and you can enable it by adding the following lines to the preferences file ( ~/Library -> Application Support -> Chimera -> Profiles -> default -> [random].slt -> prefs.js ):
user_pref("network.http.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.http.proxy.pipelining", true);
There should be a noticeable speed increase, especially news heavy sites such as Slashdot or Metafilter.
{ via xlab via pixelised }
Very cool - my fastest and favorite browser gets even faster! What more could you ask for on a Monday morning?
