Du Vien Trang is a Freelance Web Designer / Developer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. This is his portfolio, blog and digital playground.

AppCleaner is a small application which allows you to completely and properly uninstall unwanted apps.
It isn't, in fact, sufficient to just delete an application. Installing an application distributes many files throughout your System using space of your Hard Drive unnecessarily.

AppCleaner can find all these small files and safely delete them.

Free download: Appcleaner

Yes, i got excited and just had to blog about this. Thanks to Naveenpl for recommending Search404 module. What's that? i hear you cry. It's a module to replace your error 404 pages (pages that does not exist on your site when someone tries to search for it by typing in a URL that does not exist). So search404 steps into play and tries to match what they are trying to search for.

Try this example: http://www.duvien.com/page/not/found  read more »

You can download patterns from ColourLovers and create your own background paper and more. There are many very beautiful patterns there and this video shows you how to use them in Photoshop.

Odds are, if you design Web sites with a database backend, you've worked with MySQL. You can manage this database from the command line, but it's not very user-friendly. Using the graphical tool phpMyAdmin helps, but not all Web hosting providers offer it or allow you to install it on the server. Fortunately, you can install it on your own box and manage several MySQL databases remotely at the same time, without having to install anything anywhere else.

Linux.com

One of the most significant new features added in alpha 5 is support for Wubi, a new installation mechanism that makes it easier for Ubuntu and Windows to coexist on the same computer. Wubi provides a complete Ubuntu installer that can be run in Windows from the Ubuntu Live CD. It installs Ubuntu into a folder on the Windows file system and sets up a boot menu so that users can choose between Windows and Ubuntu when the computer starts.

arstechnica

One great thing i like about Drupal is that it keeps pushing the boundaries. I was searching for a module that will allow me to create a customised search feature on a Drupal powered site and came across Faceted Search module.

I don't remember how but later i come across this 'Semantic Search - Faceted search & Web 3.0 for Drupal' and it's this that i want to talk about.

If you have seen this presentation by Dries during the Drupalcon Boston 2008, you'll know it talks about RDF and the semantic web (Web 3.0):

Looks like the future is nearer than we expect. Semantic search is created by Jonathan Hendler. The original development was made possible by LINC and CivicActions. It uses an RDF store as a search index. It allows you to dynamically creates default search interfaces, for many searches per site, configurable via admin interfaces. Here is a demo, very impressive.

At this point, it is only in alpha stage but well worth keeping your eyes on this for what to come.

Of course, this is not for the fainted-hearted users as it requires quite a lot of dependencies on other existing technologies to be installed that don't really exist on a standard shared hosting package. But if you are the kind of user that enjoy getting your hands dirty and already run a test server, give it shot.

You will find a wealth of information on Semantic Search website and on the Drupal Project page.

To be honest, i still don't quite understand everything about it but if it become much easier to share data, data portability and better mashup then i'm all for it.

Drupal has a lot of functions in the admin panel and at times can get quite tiresome having to click thru page after page to get to the features you want, unless you know the shortcut by typing in the URL.

Super Nav to the rescue...  read more »

Vote for Drupal, the best Open Source CMS -

[Drupal.org]  read more »

Here is an updated version of 1pixelout audio player 1.5.1 for Joomla! 1.5.x only

Big thanks to Art Delano for rewriting part of the code to add autoplay option (per file), better SEF URL handling and option to add your own default path.

Fixes by Art Delano

• Revised the PHP file so that plugin parameters are only requested once per page. This should speed things up for pages with many audio files.
• Added an autostart option in the audio tag, eg {audio autostart}foo.mp3{/audio}. If a page has more than one audio tag with the autostart option, only the first instance will autostart.
• Removed the autostart parameter from the plugin manager page

I've now also fixed the error notice 'undefined properties... ' in PHP4

I highly recommend to upgrade to this new version. Older version will be removed after a couple of months from this date.

What is 1pixelout player? it is a flash audio player that allows you to post up mp3 files onto your site and automatically embeds an audio player to allow site visitors to stream the music. Originally a Wordpress plugin which has now been ported over by me to work with Joomla!.

This is a demo of 1pixelout player.

The track being used is by Eluvium - Prelude for Time Feelers.

Download:

See attachment below. Released date: Mar 2008

If you are running Joomla! 1.0.x then use 1pixelout player 1.2.3b

Works with web browser:

• Firefox 1/2
• IE 6/7
• Safari
• Opera

Requirements:

• Joomla! 1.5.x only
• Flash plugin
• PHP 4/5 (but only tested with PHP5)

Installation:

• Install it as a plugin
• Go to plugin manager and activate 'Content 1pixeloutplayer'

Upgrade

Uninstall the plugin using Joomla install/uninstall manager, and install this newer version.

Usage

• Create a folder called mp3 in /images/stories/ or where ever you like. This folder will be used to store and play your mp3 from. Upload your mp3 files using FTP program. If you don't want to use FTP, you could install a text editor with an upload feature for media files.
• To link to mp3 file type this in your content item (Note, a forward slash at the beginning of the path is not required): {audio}images/stories/mp3/your_mp3_file{/audio}
• It is now possible to stream mp3 hosted from an external server. To do this, just use a full URL to where the mp3 is hosted: {audio}http://domain-name.com/mp3/file_name.mp3{/audio}
• You can also change the colour of your player, see plugins manager's page for 1pixelout player.
• WARNING: PLEASE DO NOT USE BOLD on the {audio} {/audio}
• More detail about usage - see the plugin page once it is installed.
• NEW: you can now define your own default path in the parameter settings. Note: if you do, you do not need to add the path in your content. For external files not on your own server, just type in the full URL in your contents, ie, {audio}http://domain_name.com/file_to_path/your_file.mp3

---------------------------------
QUICK UPDATE (today at 12:10am): Some users were alarmed at the error they got when they installed this plugin. The error was: XML Parsing Error at 1:1. Error 4: Empty document

Please don't worry about it, the plugin will still works. If you are concerned then re-download the plugin and re-install it as i have now fixed this. It was caused by Joomla XML installer that did not ignore hidden files (ie, .DS_Store that you'll find on Mac) and tries to parse it as an XML file. I do my development on Mac and each time you archive some files into a zip file it automatically includes every file in that folder. I do hope Joomla fixes this issue as it can be annoying to look out for all the time.
---------------------------------

Any issues or questions, post in comments.

The alternate-reality game genre has a new friend, and a new format, thanks to Penguin Books, the famous British publishing house.

On Tuesday, Penguin and startup Six to Start launched their new ARG, We Tell Stories, a new-style game that its creators say is a hybrid of traditional story-telling, Web 2.0-style mashups, interactive games and classic novels.

We Tell Stories is actually a seven-part adventure, said Jeremy Ettinghausen, the digital publisher for Penguin. It will begin with six weekly installments, each of which is based on a classic novel--and written by a different Penguin author--and which tasks participants with finding their way through the story using tools developed for the game.

News.com  read more »

This video tutorial discuss the upgrading process of your Drupal site. In order to fix security issues and take advantage of many new features, upgrading your Drupal site to Drupal 6 is recommended.

Thanks to DrupalMaster.

Good news! i've checked Virtuemart 1.0.15 with the modified files to allow loading mambots (plugins) into Virtuemart contents area and there hasn't been any changes to the files that have been modified for this purpose. So you can use the previous versions for VM 1.0.15.

To simplify it, i've packaged a new one for VM 1.0.15 which is essentially the same as the previous version.

So what does this do? it allows you to load modules or mambots into your VM content area which was not possible. So if you have tabs you want to display using another mambot or video, or music player to embed into VM content area, this modified files for VM should do the trick.

Download file, see attachment below.

Installation

Unzip the file and overwrite your older files. Please backup before you try.

You have all probably come across IT self-learning books like Sam teach yourself 'whatever' in 24 hours. While some of the books are helpful, most of them expect you to be an expert in the field even though it's aimed at beginners.  read more »

In the last year, a growing number of companies based on free and open source software (FOSS) have come out of stealth mode. One of the latest is Acquia, which provides services for organizations that use Drupal, the popular content management platform. "Until now," says Jeff Whatcott, Acquia's vice president of marketing, "there hasn't been a Red Hat or Ubuntu of the Drupal world." Acquia plans to fill that gap by selling subscription services that will improve what Whatcott calls the "few rough edges and gaps" in Drupal, at the same time that the company establishes itself in the eyes of community.

Linux.com

Drupal has a lot of forms to fill out and not all of them may be just the way you want or need them to be. Modifying forms is a topic that is often met with groans but once you understand the two methods to accomplish the task and the basic, underlying concepts, it really isn't that hard to do at all. You'll be a form-modifying, input-customizing wiz in no time. This article will briefly discuss what's going on and then mainly focus on showing working examples for both methods in Drupal 5 and 6. ...

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Using tab navigation for content is a great way to keep your site less cluttered and organised if you have a lot of contents.  read more »

Finally got the gallery up on this site. You may have guessed, it's Gallery 2 integrated with Drupal.  read more »

This episode demonstrates three contributed Drupal 5.x modules: jQuery interface, MessageFX, and jQuery update. jQuery update will upgrade Drupal 5.x core to the version of jQuery 1.1.2.

jQuery interface adds an API for simple integration of jQuery to other modules, and MessageFX takes advantage of that and will add some slick AJAX goodness to system messages.

Thanks to macosxdaddy for producing this video.

We are happy to announce the availability for download of Magento Preview version 0.8.17240. This is one of our biggest releases to date and includes many new features and ehnacements.

Magento's production feature set is mostly complete with a few minor adjustments expected later this month. A full list of Magento's features can be viewed here.

* Please note (important): PEAR packages and sample data are currently not available for this release. We will make them available in the next few days.

Magento  read more »

BuiltWith is a website analysis tool, providing technical analysis and SEO optimization information to further your website's marketing, sales and navigation effectiveness.  read more »

After one year of research, the biggest Latin America university moves to Joomla! 1.5.

229 courses in 40 different places, five thousand teachers and more than 56 thousand students make the USP – Universidade de São Paulo (São Paulo University) in Brazil is the number one in Latin America and one of the 100 most important in the world. Since 1997 in the Internet, the university conduct a research on the last year with the visitors of USP Portal (www.usp.br) about changes and new features on this gate with intent to support the desires and requests of national and international users. The result was a set of new websites with a new navigation system, news and events channels, maps, informations to foreigners in four different languages and a new design.

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Over the next coming weeks i'll be adding a tutorial sections for Drupal. There maybe Joomla 1.5 tutorials but since i've been spending a lot of time getting to grips with Drupal and having fun learning the inside out of a complex system, i figure it would be mostly Drupal stuff to document. Magento is another one that i'll like to add to the tutorials.  read more »