Dropbox – Web Developer’s Best Friend
Recently, I happened to see an ad for Dropbox while I was browsing. I'd seen the logo before but I didn't really have any idea of what it was besides the obvious implication, so I decided to check it out.
Dropbox starts you off with a free 2GB, which is nice, but will give you more if you refer people (right now, it's 250MB per referral). At the moment, I'm up to 4GB and am trying to get up to the 10GB maximum for free accounts. Paid accounts allow you to get either 50GB ($9.99/month) or 100GB ($19.99/month).
In any case, as it turns out, Dropbox replicates the functionality of iDisk. If you aren't familiar with iDisk, the idea is that you have a hard drive on the web and can access it as a regular folder on your computer. Dropbox takes this a few steps further though.
Cross-platform Support
As I was surprised to find out, Dropbox works for Macs, PCs and they even have an iPhone app. As far as I know, they don't have an application for Windows mobile devices yet but they've got it on their to-do list. Incidentally, I already use it on all of my computers (work and home) and got my wife to start up an account for herself. So far, it has worked flawlessly across all of the devices it's been installed on.
Revisions
Everything you save to your Dropbox folder will have a 30-day history of revisions (change history), so you are able to revert back to older versions. They call it an 'undo history,' which makes sense. For developers, this is an indispensable feature.
Shared Folders
Not only does Dropbox support public folders (like iDisk does) so you can share your files with friends/family, it also gives you the option to have a shared folder. A shared folder will show up as a folder in the Dropboxes of all parties involved, just like all of their other folders. So if you're collaborating with other people on anything within reason, Dropbox makes for an excellent solution. It's as if you're both working on the same hard drive ... with a slight delay for sync.
Back-up Solution
Like iDisk, Dropbox is an excellent solution for back-ups. Currently, I use Mozy which is about $5/month per computer you back up but they offer unlimited space. I'm considering switching to the $9.99/month 50GB package just for the simple reason that I can back up any of my files and access them from anywhere (even my iPhone).
So far, I've been using the site as my 'local' folder on a few sites I develop and it works 99% flawlessly. Once in a great while, I'll try and save while it hasn't finished syncing yet and it will give me an "Unable to upload" error. But I just wait a second, upload again and everything works perfectly.
Needless to say, I highly recommend Dropbox as either a Web Development solution or a Back-up solution (or both). Click here to try Dropbox. Oh and by the way, if you use my link, we both get an extra 250GB.
CheckBoxer for Google Chrome
CheckBoxer is an extension I wrote for Google Chrome. Based on the CheckBoxMate plugin for Firefox by nrlz, it does ... well.. exactly the same thing: you draw a rectangle around the check boxes you want to toggle on or off. Magic.
Here it is in action:
As you can see, it has selected all of the check boxes within the selected area. No need to hold any other buttons as it only works when you've dragged over the starting checkbox.
Click here to check it out.
CheckBoxMate for Greasemonkey
Ever had to check off a bunch of checkboxes one by one? It's a grueling and tedious process, especially when you have to do more than .. say .. five. Never fear! That's why nrlz came up with CheckBoxMate.
What Is CheckBoxMate? This script allows you to check multiple checkboxes just by drawing a box around them.
It doesn't get any more elegant than that and it's one of those tools you don't use every day but when you need it, it's a godsend. The trouble is, it doesn't seem to work at all (without tweaking) with Firefox 3.6+. That's where Greasemonkey comes in.
In a desperate attempt at making my precious CheckBoxMate work with my updated Firefox script, I decided to look under the hood to see if I could figure out the solution to the issue. After an hour of poking and prodding, I was able to troubleshoot and fix the problem using the Add-on's javascript in Greasemonkey (pretty handy way to diagnose Add-on problems in general, actually).
Summary: CheckBoxMate stopped working, so I jammed it into Greasemonkey, fixed it and released it on userscripts.org.
I'm currently using CheckBoxMate for Greasemonkey with Firefox 3.6.3 on Mac OS X 10.6.3 with absolutely zero problems.
P.S. I've done all of this essentially without nrlz's permission at all, so if he tells me to take this down, I will.
*** UPDATE***
I've tested this on my Windows 7 box at work (Firefox 3.6.3) and it works perfectly. Please let me know if you have any issues.
ShareThis Sucks for Greasemonkey
After becoming repeatedly annoyed at how the ShareThis button would pop up and just stay there at any hint of a mouseover/hover, I wrote this short Greasemonkey script to banish ShareThis from my sight:
And here's a link directly to the file:
Enjoy!
-Scott
Reddit Tabbed Links
Put simply, I was just tired of shift+clicking the links on Reddit, so I made a Greasemonkey script that does it for all the main links and comment links:
Here's the direct link to the script:
Enjoy.
IETester: Test Internet Explorer 5.5, 6, 7 and 8 [Tools]
IE Tester
Today, my buddy Javier (owner of the Online Bill Manager) told me about IETester and I was shocked that A) I'd never heard of it before, and B) how simple it is to use.
If you've ever wanted to test one of your websites for cross-browser compatibility, you know how much of a pain in the ass it is to either use a web service to do it for you or to ask a friend who actually has a crappy older version of IE to check your website for you. In either case, the waiting is the worst part and slows development down to a crawl.
Now although some people have chosen to boycott Internet Explorer (I know I'd be happier if it were gone), I still understand that a large percentage (if not the majority) still use it. Therefore, as web developers, we must test for it and patch our CSS and Javascript accordingly.
IETester makes this an absolute snap.
Although it is buggy, if all you want to do is see how a site looks in Internet Explorer 5.5, you simply open an IE 5.5 tab and go. You can view web pages in Internet Explorer versions 5.5, 6, 7 and 8 all at once. All you have to do is tab between them. Pretty handy, huh?
After tabbing through a few of my websites, I've found a lot of glitches in previous versions of Internet Explorer that I would have otherwise never known about. Of course, my philosophy is that if you aren't at least on IE 7, then you need to get with it. IE 6 was nice and simple but it completely lacks standards support and even IE 7 falls short in the browser war.
In any case, for those of us that work in professional production environments where we are forced to design for versions as old as IE 6, this tool is amazing for just that purpose.
Oh yeah, and did I mention it's free?