07.18.08

Introducing Omnibug

Posted in dev at 1216416768 by simpsora

Omnibug is a tool for web developers.  I wrote it because debugging an Omniture implementation is… painful.

The idea is that web metrics (or webanalytics, if you’re so inclined) systems generally make an HTTP request (usually an image) in order to pass along tracking information.  The URLs contain lots of parameters, conveniently URL-encoded so you can’t read them easily.

Omnibug is an extension to Firebug (without a doubt the best Firefox add-on available, driving a revolution in web UI development).  It adds a new panel with the decoded output of each such HTTP request, making it a breeze to see exactly what values were sent.

Though it was designed with Omniture in mind, it will work with other systems (also tested with Moniforce).  The patterns it looks for are fully configurable, so in theory it should work with any similar system.

An additional feature is the ability to log matching requests to the local filesystem.  While this feature was intended to support automated testing of metrics implementations, it may have other uses.

See the Omnibug page for downloads and full documentation.

04.23.08

Breaking teh sudoers file on OS X

Posted in dev at 1208975687 by simpsora

Not having anything better to do, I horked my sudoers file while modifying an entry, thereby preventing myself from sudoing at all (and subsequently fixing it). Weak.

Turns out there’s a pretty easy fix for this using the Finder, so long as your account has administrator privileges:

Steps:

  1. In the Finder, go to /etc (or do <cmd>-<shift>-g and enter /etc, if you don’t see it in the Finder)
  2. Get Info on sudoers
  3. In the Info window’s Sharing & Permissions section, add an entry for your local user with read and write access
  4. With a text editor, edit /etc/sudoers and fix the problem.
  5. Fix the permissions on /etc/sudoers back to 0440.
  6. Enjoy your newly-regained sudo power!

Of course, this can be used to overcome other permissions problems too.

If only visudo had a validator, along with a syntax checker…

01.24.08

SEO headings bookmarklet

Posted in dev at 1201215320 by simpsora

I wrote this simple bookmarklet to highlight each heading (h1, h2 … h6) on the page with a 3px border, and add a tooltip with the tag name in it.

Drag the Headings bookmarklet to your bookmarks bar, or bookmark it, or even click it to try it on this page.

05.21.07

Load flags

Posted in dev at 1179786640 by simpsora

Mozilla’s load flags defined (useful in tamper data):

http://www.xulplanet.com/references/xpcomref/ifaces/nsIRequest.html