Moving an ITunes Library Between Macs

Hi all,
I'm leaving my current company for another company in November. I have two MacBook Pros, and until now I've used my personal MacBook as my main computer. I'm buying my work laptop before I leave, and I want to move my ITunes library over to this Mac without losing things like playlists and album artwork. Here;s how I did it.

1. I hooked up the two Macs with a firewire cable. On the old Mac, I held down the T key when I pressed the startup button. Firewire mode thus activated, and the old Mac showed up on my new Mac in the Finder.
2. I located the ITunes folder on my new Mac. It was in ~/Mucis/ITunes. I deleted the library that was there and then copied the ITunes library from the old computer into this folder. It took a while because I have lot of music.

Everything was intact: music, playlists, ratings, album artwork, everything.

One thing I will do before I sell my old Mac ide deactivate the old Mac from my ITunes account. You only get five computers, and I might need one of these in the future.

Cheers!

--James

Adding Binding Attributes in NetBeans IDE

Hi all,

One thing you'll notice when you use NetBeans 6.5 is that component tags no longer have a binding attribute which is bound using a value binding expression to a property of the backing page bean. How does this affect the normal user? Well, if you want to script the component in Java code, you'll have to manually add the binding attribute. It's easy enough to do, just right-click the component and choose Add Binding Attribute.

Now if you try any 6.0 tutorials using NetBeans 6.5, you might come to a point where the tutorial will no longer work. I've been going through these tutorials and adding notes wherever binding attributes is necessary. I'll be blogging more about this in the days to come, so stay tuned.

See you soon.

--James

Editing tomcat-users.xml in NetBeans 6.0

Hi all,

A few weeks back, I wrote a blog entry about how to access username and password information for the Apache Tomcat server. This information, however, was for NetBeans 5.5. In NetBeans 6.0, it's a very similar process. Here's how to do it in NetBeans 6.0:

1. Locate your userdir (Select Help > About from the main menu).


2. Write down the location of the userdir (or have it tattooed on your forearm next to the "I luv Netbeans" tattoo).


3. Go the userdir and find the apache-tomcat-6.0.x_base\conf folder.


4. Open the tomcat-users.xml file and write down the password that is listed for the "ide" user. (The "ide" user is generated by the IDE during installation.)

Important note: It is not recommended that you have the "ide" user password tattooed anywhere on your body. In a few years, and after several thousand development build installations (each with a unique password), you might run out of places. On the other hand, you might land a decent job in a circus.

See you soon!

--James

Email Address Completion in Outlook Express

Hi again,
I got an email today asking why address completion had disappeared from Outlook Express. Apparently, the person was writing an email, and when entering the address, the address wasn't completed after a few characters were typed. This is how you can set this up:

1. In the main toolbar of Outlook Express, choose Tools > Options.
   
   The Options dialog box opens.


2. Click the Send tab.


3. In the Send tab of the dialog box, check the box entitled "Automatically complete e-mail addresses while composing."


4. Click Apply then OK.


5. You might have to restart Outlook Express for the changes to take effect.

Hope this helps.

Cheers!

--James

CSS Tricks: Part III

Hi again,

I thought I'd add a few more CSS tricks.

Trick 1: Highlighting links on hover or when clicked

a:hover, a:active {
color: #FF0000;
background-color: #FFFF00;
}

Trick 2: Stacking headings (to get rid of unwanted space)

h1, h2 {margin-top: 3em;}
h1+h2 {margin-top: -3em;}

Trick 3: Using an image as a bullet

ul {
list-style-image: url(yourimage.gif);
}

More coming later!

--James

CSS Tricks: Part II

Hi,

Here are some more CSS tricks to add to your collection.

Trick 1: A background image behind text

Trick 2: Add color to a drop down menu

It should look like this:

Select a URLNetBeans.orgGoogleJames' PagesJames's Blog

Trick 3: Capitalize the first letter in each paragraph

Place this between the tags.

Then place this at the beginning of each new paragraph.

It should look like this:

Have fun!

--James

CSS Tricks: Part I

Hi all,

I thought I'd share a few CSS tricks with you. Just for fun. No questions asked.

Trick 1: Removing underlines

a:link a:visited a:hover a:active {
text-decoration: none;
}

Trick 2: Adding a dotted underline

a {
text-decoration: none;
border-bottom: 1px dotted #000000;
}

Trick 3: Removing indentation in lists

ul {
padding-left: 1em;
margin-left: 0px;
}

More to come soon.

--James