Erwin Waterlander, WCD Wherever Change Directory

Erwin Waterlander's WCD - Wherever Change Directory

This is much more impressive than appears on first look. It's a cross-platform text mode program that does what Norton Change Directory did, but with far more control on what's indexed and how. It also allows wild card searches -- which is very, very cool. Combine this with some personal conventions for naming directories and there are great productivity gains. It's too powerful and complex for most WinXP users (it's really more for the UNIX/Linux user), but it's a Source Forge project that could be integrated into many Norton Commander like clones -- or into a Mac OS X AppleScript application! (There's an OX port.)

Erwin's web page doesn't mention how to integrate Windows Explorer with WCD. I was playing with all kinds of trickery, but he gave me the very simple and elegant solution. It's easy to understand what's happending in the Win9x version, but to change the current directory in WinXP one must use a batch file intermediary. Read the Win9x version first to understand the WinXP version. Once the current directory has been changed the command "explorer ." opens the current directory. There are more options for the explorer command I'll probably add, but this is a good starting point. Here's Erwin's advice:

I used this script to run explorer after wcd (on windows NT/2000/XP):

@echo off
wcdwin32.exe %*
echo explorer.exe . >> %HOME%\wcdgo.bat
%HOME%\wcdgo.bat

If you use the dos32bit version on windows 95/98/ME this script will work:

@echo off
wcd.exe %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6
explorer.exe .

Erwin Waterlander
Eindhoven, The Netherlands
www: http://www.xs4all.nl/~waterlan/

Faughnan-Lagace Herald: The New Version with an inline frame embedded style controlled blogroll.

Faughnan-Lagace Herald: Local and International News

Ok, I got the iframe and the css stuff working. It doesn't look too bad in Firefox, Safari, IE 5.2/Mac and IE 6/PC. I'm impressed. I ended up putting the styles I got from the blogroll page into a separate page. Then I included that page in the iframe. So I was able to get around the style/iframe problem.

When I'd included the blogroll in the iframe I'd had to use blogline's alternative inclusion method (php); that method returns a fully formed page. Since I've introduced this level of indirection I now use the javascript method.

I will tweak the text background, borders, and sizes. In general I like things that are lighter and more easily readable. It's good enough to start with though. There's only one glitch, the second cell of each list is empty. I suspect that's a bloglines glitch since it happens with every browser.

Inline frames and style sheets

Using inline frames (iframe elements) to embed documents into HTML documents

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Continuing my adventures with the blogroll, I got the iframe working and I got the style code working, but the style in the host document doesn't affect the content of the iframe. So, how can one apply a style across the iframe boundary?

Alas, it's not simple -- as this document makes clear:

The embedded document is displayed according to what's applicable to it, not what's applicable to the embedding document ... a style element in a document applies only to the document where it appears, not to any embedded document. .... If there are style sheet rules which should be applied both to the embedding document and to the embedded document, it is best to write them into an external style sheet and use a link element to refer to it in both documents... the dimensions of the inline frame can be affected by a style sheet for the embedding document. Similarly, the border around an inline frame is a matter of the embedding document.

Uh-Oh. I've got a bad feeling about this. I don't control the code of the blogroll, so I can't use either of these approaches!

It does look that if one uses an inline frame to hold a blogroll, one has no control over how the blogroll contents display. I think I might have do some indirection. I might try this:

1. Create a document I control that holds the blogroll and has a style sheet.
2. Include THAT document in the iFrame.

More later ...

Controlling blogroll appearance for bloglines in my news page (DIV and blogrollmain)

Blogrolling - Customizing look and feel with CSS

Bloglines, the web-based tool I use to manage my RSS/Atom subscriptions, supports inclusion of a subscription list as a "blogroll". I've added my bloglines subscription to my longstanding family news page, by embedding a "hidden" page of mine in an iFrame on the news page.

I don't quite like the text layout. There was mention of some DIV tags that one could use to control layout, so I googled on "blogrollmain". This page tells me what I need to know, I should be able to make them look good on FireFox, IE, and Safari. (Any browser that doesn't support iFrames will just show a text message, so it's pretty backwards compatible.)

Update 11/19/05: I've revised this post a bit with some links. The method I invented has worked very well for over a year. To see how it works, view the HTML of these two pages:

• "hidden" page - blogroll.html
• family news page: an iFrame here references the "hidden" page.
  

MCE 60GB iBook Hard Drive Upgrade Service

MCE 60GB iBook Hard Drive Upgrade Service: MCE Technologies Online Store

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A reputable service for various iBook hw upgrades.

IFRAME and embedding a blogroll

Remote Scripting with IFRAME

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I wanted to embed my blogroll from bloglines.com into an IFRAME on my news page. I couldn't quite get it to work in the time I had to waste. This looked like the most interesting reference though. I think I'd have to create an empty iFrame. then modify the standard bloglines blogroll inclusion code so it wrote to the empty iFrame.

Pogue on Verizon: his favorite carrier

Pogue's Pages

Now, T-Mobile, in my experience, isn't noticeably worse than Cingular, AT&T or Sprint; the phenomenon I'm describing is a testimony to the superiority of Verizon's national range. In four years of writing cellphone reviews for the Times, I've often found myself carrying phones from several different companies-and where there's a difference in reception, Verizon nearly always wins. (Consumer Reports's much more scientific testing arrived at the same results.) Which made me realize three things.

First, I can't believe the gall of AT&T Wireless's new newspaper ads. They show a full-strength, all-bars signal indicator along with claims that suggest that AT&T has the best cellular coverage in this country. In my experience, that's pure wishful thinking.

Second, tech reviewers seem to ignore the fact that the carrier you choose may actually be more important to your happiness than the phone you choose. Coverage, pricing and customer service will probably mean a lot more than this bell or that whistle. Every phone review ought to include this warning in bold red type: "NOTE: You're not just buying a phone; you're buying a carrier."

Finally, it's too bad you can't get the best phones with the best coverage. I love the signal coverage of Verizon Wireless, but man, are its phones boring.

...So I asked a Verizon spokesperson: What does Verizon have against high tech?

She emphatically disagreed with my "good coverage, boring phones" premise. She said that Verizon simply tests its phones much more thoroughly than the other carriers, who may actually be trying to compensate for their smaller networks by offering trendier phones. And she pointed out that Verizon will finally offer its first Bluetooth phone-with a 1.2-megapixel camera and video capture, no less-on August 11 (called the Motorola 710).

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Incidentally, Pogue's site is a great resource.