Michael Doyle | Blog

Flash – Cheat Sheet

Flash can be a little slow to navigate around, luckily alot of common functions have keyboard shortcuts. I made this Flash Cheat Sheet for all common shortcuts to shorten development time.

I didn't write the cheat sheet. I formatted this page, so you can print it out in a nice readable pdf version (there's also a .png version).

Flash Cheat Sheet - PDF (1.6MB)

Flash Cheat Sheet - PNG (320Kb)

If there's any mistakes, or anything that I've left out, let me know and I'll fix it.

Web Testing – Fixing Layout Problems in IE

Here's a great resource on some simple steps to take when fixing bugs in IE6.

http://www.virtuosimedia.com/tutorials/ultimate-ie6-cheatsheet-how-to-fix-25-internet-explorer-6-bugs

One extremely handy tool mentioned in the article is IETester. It's a program that renders websites in IE 5.5 to IE8.

CSS – The Four Bubbles Model

Woorkup has an interesting css coding methodology, it's a top down model which has 4 stages.

• The first stage resets HTML elementes
• The second stage defines the main css elements (#header, #container, etc.)
• The third stage defines custom classes (.right_align, .border, etc.)
• The fourth stage deals with redundant coding; removal and optimising

I definitely give my thumbs up to this method. The article goes into greater detail and is located:

http://woorkup.com/2009/10/09/a-methodic-approach-to-css-coding-four-bubbles-model/

PHP – How to Debug In PHP

Carsonified has a good blog entry about how to debug in PHP. It outlines the 4 php error types, using var_dump() and recommends some tools to help with debugging.

http://carsonified.com/blog/dev/how-to-debug-in-php/

Server Side Scripting – A Comprehensive guide to .htaccess

I came across a great resource on the various uses of .htaccess, details on how to:

• Create custom error documents
• Blocking users/sites by referrer
• Redirects
• Preventing hotlinking
• Preventing directory listing

These and more can be found at:
http://www.javascriptkit.com/howto/htaccess.shtml

Windows – See what programs are accessing the Internet

Discovered a handy windows command that displays all active internet connections. This can be really handy for spyware/adware/malware/virus checking. It works on Vista and XP. Here's what to do:

1. Click Start - Run
2. Type "cmd"
3. In the command prompt type "netstat -b"

A list of results like the following should appear that look like this:

The table lists the following:

• Proto: The protocol being used by the process
• Local Address: The local address of the process
• Foreign Address: The remote address of the process
• State: Which state of connection the process is in
• PID: The process identifier (Each process is given an ID, this can be siaplyed in Task Manager by customizing the columns of the processes tab, click here to see a tutorial)
• The name of the process: This is the name of the process which is trying to access the network, it is placed in square brackets, i.e.  "[application_name.exe]"

If the name of the process doesn't look familiar check a site like ProcessLibrary, this will list what each process does.

A more indepth article covering netstat is located here:

http://commandwindows.com/netstat.htm

Video – Online Aspect Ratio/Pixel Dimensions Calculator

Been working more with video recently, doing some stop motion animation for a local artists' video. Found this handy calculator for reference:

http://www.digitalrebellion.com/aspect_calc.htm