Dominik’s Journey ;-)

I started fooling around with Apple iWeb, which is a nice WYSIWYG web page creator tool. Unfortunately, some features are NOT available unless you get Apple’s paid service .Mac. But there is help. Slideshow

Apple’s own AJAX / Javascript slideshow is replaced by a boring HTML-only slideshow when exporting to folder and uploading to your own webpage via FTP or WebDAV. Much ebetter: replace Apples HTML slideshow with a javascript slideshow from www.couloir.org. MacOSXHints.com has links on how to implement it.

Automatic export to FTP / WebDAV

I tried WebDAV, which is supported by Apple since the 1.1 release. But it seems to be unstable. I had to manually delete the whole content of my WebDAV folder before I could upload changes. Did not like it. The other option is export to folder, and then upload manually via a FTP program to your website of choice. Too much manual work, did not like it either.

My solution: using rsync command in the terminal to upload only the changed files (determined by checksum), and leave the new javascript slideshow data untouched. This is what needs to be done

• In iWeb go to menu "File - Publish to a Folder…", select a folder, like in your home directory ("~/"), ~/Sites/iWeb/Data/
• The run the following command in the terminal (type all in one line!):

rsync -rca --delete -c --progress --stats --exclude "Name_of_Site/SlideShow_assets/" ~/Sites/iWeb/Data/ user@yourdomain.com:/iweb

("Name_of_Site" is the name that you give your site in iWeb. It’s the name next to the big red dot. You also need the FTP login information for your website.) Now, to make things even easier, I defined a terminal-shell alias in the terminal so I only have to type "iweb", and the terminal does the rest.

Type "pico .tcshrc"

Type "alias iweb ‘rsync -rca –delete -c –progress –stats –exclude "Name_of_Site/SlideShow_assets/" ~/Sites/iWeb/Data/ user@yourdomain.com:/iweb’" (all in one line)

Type "control-x" (to exit pico text editor) Type "y" (to save changes)

If you are NOT using the TSCH shell, you’d need to enter the alias in your shell’s alias file. So, in the future, all you have to do is

• iWeb: Export to folder
• Terminal: type iweb (enter) and then enter your FTP password

I learned about a plugin that creates a nice eye-candy effects for pictures. It’s called Wetfloor. Here some examples of what it does:

The effect is based on the javascript reflections.js. :-)

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Good mixed deals, not only electronics: http://www.passwird.com/

Another good site: http://www.spoofee.com/

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In case you still have money left: http://www.bensbargains.net/