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Problem: Double Accents (“^^”) in Windows 7

Something you should know: If you are using Windows 7 and get double accents when typing, you might have a serious problem, because it seems like this is a side effect of any activated keyloggers. While it’s nice that these cannot be active entirely unnoticed, it is annoying if you use a program that you want to log your keyboard actions.

In my case, the text expander FastFox was acting as a desired keylogger to supply shortcuts while I typed.

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4 Tools To Make Magento Development Easier

I compiled a list of the most important Magento specific development tools in my toolbox. Additions are most welcome!

Greetings to the Magento Stammtisch Aachen guys, this is for you 😉

Magneto (sic!) Debug

http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/magneto-debug-8676.html

A free extension that integrates a developer toolbar in the Magento Layout where you find various information about the current page:

  • Request route
  • Loaded modules
  • Configuration summary
  • SQL profiler
  • Used layout handles
  • Rendered blocks/templates
  • Instantiated block classes (rendered or not)
  • One-click cache clearing

CommerceBug

http://store.pulsestorm.net/products/commerce-bug

Another integrated developer toolbar for $49.95 that offers mostly the same features but with two important additions:

  • Complete merged layout XML with all handles
  • Ability to log the information for all requests

EcomDev PHPUnit

http://www.ecomdev.org/shop/code-testing/php-unit-test-suite.html

PHPUnit extension for unit tests and integration tests. Includes database fixtures, configuration tests and more. See PDF documentation for details.

MageTool

https://github.com/alistairstead/MageTool

Command line tool for shop management and extension development. Some features:

  • Automatically create extensions and class files
  • Manage configuration
  • Manage cache, compiler and indexer
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CSS: 3D Ribbon Generator

Inspired by this article on pvmgarage.com I recently created a generator for 3D CSS ribbons and made it available on css3d.net. It creates CSS and HTML code for a cross-browser compatible ribbon effect (not limited to CSS 3!) based on parameters for sizes and colors. The red headers you see in this screenshot are also generated like that:

Have fun with it and feel free to comment if you have any suggestions.

If you are interested in how it works, visit the aforementioned link or read about the CSS Triangle trick at css-tricks.com.