Articles from November 2006



Java and the DST changes…

The United States has planned a change to its DST observance beginning in 2007. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 mandates that DST will start on the second Sunday in March and end on the first Sunday in November. In 2007, the start and stop dates will be March 11 and November 4, respectively. These [...]

Key insights into why Windows Sucks

OK, Windows isn’t all *that* bad. At least XP turned out OK. But now, if Vista is their future, this could be bad. Just read about the joke that went into making a 9 (yes, nine) step process just to shutdown Windows Vista.
From Moblog – The Windows Shutdown crapfest :
The most frustrating [...]

Borland… DevCo… CodeGear… A Rose by any other name..

So Borland’s developer tool division (formerlly referred to as DevCo) has become CodeGear – a wholly-owned subsidary of Borland. Apparently Borland couldn’t find a decent buyer so they decided to set the group up as their own shop. I think that’s probably the best of all possible outcomes.
The developer tools market is a [...]

*whew*

Welcome to the new blog. I think I’m pretty well moved in. If you have any comments or questions please feel free to send them to me!
http://www.codethought.com/contact.php

Working around the Swing setMinimumSize bug

Within Swing you’re supposed to be able to specify the minimum size for a frame with a simple call. For instance, assume that I made a frame that extends JFrame. Consider adding the following line to the constructor:
setMinimumSize(new Dimension(600,400));
This specifies that the frame should never shrink below 600 by 400 pixels in size. [...]

Modify Blogger Web Comments for Firefox 2.0

I love Google’s Blogger Web Comments Addon for Firefox. But with the release of Firefox 2.0, Google hasn’t made an update for the tool yet. Here’s a workaround.
- Download the XPI file for Google Web Comments at http://dl.google.com/firefox/google-webcomments.xpi
Open the google-webcomments.xpi file with WinZip or WinRAR (it’s just a ZIP file) and edit install.rdf [...]

Microsoft make MSDN Library free to download!

Great news has arrived for anyone who programs with Microsoft tools and a Microsoft language: the MSDN is now free to download.
MSDN Library
read more | digg story

HOW-TO: Working with ANT Projects in Eclipse

[Originally Posted 25-Dec-2005]
I ran across this tidbit from the Eclipse Developer Journal’s website. It took a bit of digging so I thought I’d share here for posterity and whomever might read. Apparently it is possible to move an Eclipse project out to ANT and vice-versa. Note that this only works in [...]

Swing Hacks: Creating Translucent/Transparent Windows

[Originally Posted 18-Nov-2005]
Here’s a pretty cool trick for Java GUI-app developers. From the O’Reilly Book “Swing Hacks”, Joshua Marinacci and Chris Adamson show how to make transparent windows…
http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/excerpt/swinghks_hack41/

Tip: Uninstalling Together EC when JDK 5 is installed..

[Originally Posted 30-Oct-2005]
I’m not using Borland Together Eclipse Edition version 7 right now so I decided to un-install it. Upon running the uninstall program for Together EC, I got this rather useless error from the uninstall program:
Windows error 3 occurred while loading the Java VM.
It turns out that the reason is because after installing [...]

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