Thursday, May 05, 2005

You can Fiddle with firefox, too. 9:29:56 AM      comment []  trackback []

Amped::On::IO::All Here's a code snippet that uses CPAN module IO::All to return a pdf of a dynamic HTML page to the browser. IO::All demonstrates the potential for API simplication w/operator overloading when applied to something mundane like file access: my $fname = ('?'); # create temp file handle my $htmldoc = io("| $htmldoc -t pdf14 -f $fname --datadir $htmldoc_dir --footer t/D -") or $logger->fatal( "Couldn't open htmldoc: $! $?" ); $html > $htmldoc; # pass string to pipe $htmldoc->close(); my $pdf = io($fname); my $binary = $pdf->binary->scalar; # slurp up output pdf file $pdf->unlink(); #delete temp file $pdf->close(); return $binary; IO::All author Ingy has done some really good work smoothing over the rough corners of perl. If that's something that interests you, I suggest looking over two of his other modules: Spiffy and YAML. The ajax-enthusiasts are discovering the YAML-subset JSON ... so maybe it will get some of the popularity it deserves. 9:24:51 AM      comment []  trackback []

Why Tables for Layout is Stupid This presentation may be a couple of years old, but some of the smartest programmers I know (myself included!) never quite got around to taking a look at CSS for layout. I'm not much of a 'front-end' guy, but sometimes it has to be done. Justification + some helpful hints on doing it right (i.e. w/css). (via Tucows Developer Hangout) 9:21:40 AM      comment []  trackback []