Whenever a client connects to the server, the server will look through all existing users and check if there is one that has the same account. If no, it allows the client to continue normally. If yes, it will send a “alive” message to the other client and first let the new client continue as usual. At the same time, it will wait for an answer from the other client. If a message is received, the new client will get disconnected, as the user is already connected.

This approach works very well on my server. To make this system work for guests too, a unique key would be needed for each user, which should get saved as a flash cookie (browser wide). That will also prevent the user trying to join by opening the chat in different browsers.

After endless hours of testing, I found out that for ExternalInterface to work in IE, 2 conditions have to be met.

1. The Flash needs to visible. Loading a flash into a hidden div does not work.
2. It has to be loaded before the document onload event. All Flash files loaded after the onload event can’t register any functions with ExternalInterface.

There seems to be an issue with transparent PNGs (with alpha channel) in IE 7, too. I had some ugly black background in the pictures even though other PNGs worked just fine. The reason was that it the div was hidden first. I guess IE 7 has some serious issues with invisible divs.

For more information, check out the German version “Subwoofer für den Lupo“.

It finds all links automatically and if you want a specific link to be opened in a new window too, you’ll simply need to add rel="external" as an attribute of the link. Example:

<a href="http://www.junny.de/" rel="external">Junny's Blog</a>

People with Javascript disabled will have a normal link, whereas people with Javascript enabled will have a new window opened for them. You can download the script “Open In New Window” (oinw.js) here.

The script can be included just like any other Javascript:

<script type="text/javascript" src="oinw.js"></script>

The first issue is more PuTTY based. When you open a new connection, it will probably use your desktop encoding, which might not work correctly if your server uses UTF-8. It’s possible to change the encoding by right-clicking on the title bar, but then you would have to do it every time. The solutions is easy, open putty for itself, change the setting and overwrite the “Default Settings”. This will work for X11 forwarding, too. These settings will apply to all sessions. It you want to custom settings for one session, you will just need to give the session the same name in PuTTY and WinSCP.

The second issue is that I like PuTTY windows maximized. And maximizing it by hand every time is annoying, so I created a link to PuTTY in the PuTTY directory and changed the properties of the link to open PuTTY maximized. Next I changed the PuTTY Integration settings in WinSCP to %PROGRAMFILES%\PuTTY\putty.lnk. This opens all PuTTY windows maximized.

This saves me alot time, too bad they are not the default settings.

var inbox = document.getElementById( 'idOfInputBox');
inbox.blur();
inbox.disabled=false;
inbox.focus();

Afters hours of trying and fighting (especially with the IE box model bug), I found a way to realize this full height 2 column design with header and footer to work with Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer (5.5, 6.0 and 7.0). So now, I am proud to be able to put the “W3C Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional Logo” on my page.

After finishing the design, I started to work with Polygot. It’s not very intuitive, so it took me a day to figure it out how to get it completely working. Date Strings weren’t translated, and WordPress itself didn’t set the filter for “single_cat_title”, which broke the design with the long language string. So I needed to hack my way through. Now, all that is left is to translate everything. Because this is a long process, I’ll be doing it over time. So if you find something untranslated, please tell me. Thanks!

So what is so special about it? As I wrote before, storing and loading objects into a MySQL database can be a pain in the ass. Especially when you change your object to fit your new needs. Tables need to be changed, queries… Well, from now on, QObject is doing all this for me now! It takes care of all basic needs in MySQL. Creating Tables, setting keys, uniques, indexes, data types, it can even change the table when you add properties or change the data type on the run and of course loading and storing your php object into you database. No more worrying about MySQL anymore. Some very complex queries can’t be done through QObject, but if you are using those, you could also consider using a different language to code your CMS.

Let’s get a little more detailed. Here is a list of the features:

• Creating Tables (table names are the names of the object class), one table per object class
• Setting Uniques for all object properties that start with u_
• Setting Indexes for all object properties that start with i_
• Ignoring properties that start with _ (good for temporary properties which are not supposed to be stored)
• Unique ID for each object (O_ID)
• Loading an O_ID will automatically result in casting the 1object into the correct subclass.
• Support for TINYINT, SMALLINT, MEDIUMINT, INT, BIGINT, VARCHAR, TEXT, LONGTEXT data types for properties. Dynamic Table reconfiguration on data type mismatch (storing string in an int field will automatically make the field accept strings)
• Dynamic addition of properties. QObject detects differences between table properties and object properties and will change table to fit the object.
• HTML Object property editor. Making backends easier to code.

And now even more detailed, the list of methods:

• load(int O_ID)
  Lets you load the object with given O_ID. Return true when successful.
• numOf([string condition])
  Return the number of objects of the same class. If condition is specified, it will be included into the SQL query after there “WHERE” clause.
• loadWhere(mixed properties, mixed values[,[string custom] [,[string orderlimit] [,boolean returnresults]]])
  Loads the object with given properties=values. If there is only one property to be checked, it can be given as string, else, an array is expected. Custom field lets you specify special “WHERE” clauses like “property>value”. Orderlimit field lets you specify “ORDER BY” and “LIMIT” clause properties like “ORDER BY property ASC LIMIT 10,20″. Finally, returnresults specifies if the function should return an array of objects with matches. The function will set the object to the first match if there is more than one.
• loadAll()
  Returns all objects of the same class as an array.
• store()
  Stores object in database.
• remove()
  Deletes object in database.
• storeFromPostData()
  For use with the HTML Object Editor. Parses the form created by editObjectForm().
• editObjectForm()
  The HTML Object Editor. Returns HTML code for a form for editing the object. For Saving the object back from the form data, use storeFromPostData().

There are some more private functions, which I won’t specify any further. Here is a quick example of how to use QObject:

//foobar object using qobject
class foobar extends qobject {
var $foo = 0;
var $bar = “foobar”;
}

//connect to db
init(“localhost”,3306,”root”,”",”qcms”);

//let’s generate some foobars and store them to database
for($i=0;$i<100;$i++) {
$foobar = new foobar();
$foobar->foo = $i;
$foobar->bar.= $i;
$foobar->store();
}

//lets load and show them all
$foobars = $foobar->loadAll();
foreach($foobars as $foobar)
echo $foobar->foo.” -> “$foobar->bar;

Well, as you can see, I didn’t need to use any MySQL at all to perform all these database operations.

On my production system test, QObjects works quite well. I haven’t had any problems with it.

Anyway, here is it for you to use if you want give it a try:
Download QObject