Joomla! site syndication http://www.brettbrewer.com Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:15:33 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://www.brettbrewer.com/images/M_images/joomla_rss.png http://www.brettbrewer.com Joomla! site syndication http://www.brettbrewer.com/content/view/78/45/ If you just want to know how to load the DBG module with IONCUBE loader, skip to the bottom of this post. I hate encoded PHP files. I mean I REEEEEEAAAAALY hate them. Not only does it make it infinitely harder to modify an application that relies on obfuscated PHP files, but it also tends to make it impossible to debug the non-encoded parts of your site, so you end up having to do ridiculous things like diabling all your encoded scripts so you can run a debugger on your own files. What a tragedy for PHP programmers everywhere who have to deal with this BS! Every time I do a project that requires me to work around encoded PHP files, it literally adds hours upon hours to the development time...so much so that I could often have rewritten the encoded funtionality myself from scratch faster than I can code around it (I will actually probably start releasing my own free drop-in replacements for some very popular x-cart mods soon if I can't get the authors to release the source). My advice as a PHP developer is, steer clear of encoded files whenever possible. If you must use them, put pressure on the developers to release unencoded versions, possibly for an additional fee, or ask them to at least document all the internal functions so you know what the heck is happening inside scripts that your own scripts will need to coexist and sometimes interact with. Tips & Tricks - X-Cart Hacking Fri, 08 Aug 2008 15:54:30 +0100 http://www.brettbrewer.com/content/view/77/2/ I've been loving the new Firefox 3.0 release, but missing the hell out of Firebug for Javascript debugging. The seemingly offical firebug web site (http://getfirebug.com/) is a bit out of date. The 1.1 beta version download on their homepage doesn't work and they don't list the newest 1.2 beta release for Firefox 3.0. After a brief search I stumbled across the Firebug 1.2.0b3 release (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843) which is the current recommended version for use with Firefox 3. News - Web Technology Wed, 25 Jun 2008 13:17:16 +0100 http://www.brettbrewer.com/content/view/76/45/ Sometimes in X-Cart you may want to view something as a specific customer would view it. To temporarily access customer pages as a particular user you need only to be logged in as the admin and then pass the variable $HTTP_GET_VARS['operate_as_user'] to the customer page you are trying to view. So you would just add something like this to the querystring of your requested URL.... operate_as_user=username_to_operate_asor if you're trying to be all nice and XHTML compliant you'd use: amp;operate_as_user=username_to_operate_asNot an earthshattering bit of info, but useful to know nontheless. Tips & Tricks - X-Cart Hacking Wed, 28 May 2008 11:23:33 +0100 http://www.brettbrewer.com/content/view/75/45/ I just completed a simple X-Cart mod that will let you specify a different default FedEx package type for international addresses in X-Cart. Normally, when using the FedEx Direct integration method with X-Cart you can only specify a package type for FedEx Express and FedEx Ground service. I ran into a situation with a client who needed to specify FedEx ExpressPak as the package type only for international addresses, so I whipped up this simple mod which you might find helpful... Tips & Tricks - X-Cart Hacking Tue, 27 May 2008 23:01:50 +0100 http://www.brettbrewer.com/content/view/74/45/ I've been writing a new AJAX based POS system for a client and lamenting the horrible state of javascript array manipulation which has consumed the bulk of my time. It seems that there is a major problem with trying to iterate over arrays with arbitrary numerical indexes. The problem is, there's no good way to iterate over a javascript array to achieve a typical foreach type of loop such as what you would commonly do in PHP. One of the best uses for this is to gain access to the name or number of the index for the array element you are currently iterating over so you can use the array index in some kind of programming logic. To achieve this same functionality in Javascrtip, most people use (for...in) loops to enumerate the properties of an array. This works if you have created a sparse array that contains only numeric indexes, but the problem is that Javascript library creators (Scriptaculous, Prototype, and many others) modify the Array prototype at runtime and add all sorts of properties that get added to your array and end up being enumerated in your for...in loop. This tends to break the hell out of legacy javascript code that relies on for...in to loop over an array. Not cool. Javascript gurus will tell you this is normal behavior and that's what a for...in loop is for, but lazy programmers like me will tell you this sucks because it makes something that should be extremely simple, extremely difficult. Anyway, this article on DHTML Kitchen (http://dhtmlkitchen.com/?category=/JavaScript/ date=2007/10/21/ entry=Iteration-Enumeration-Primitives-and-Objects) explains it better than I do. If you're trying to iterate over a Javascript array like you do your PHP arrays, read the article to see why your life is such hell. Tips & Tricks - Javascript Tips & Tricks Thu, 24 Apr 2008 14:47:22 +0100