Mahbubur Rahman - jQuery, PHP, JavaScript, Codeigniter, CSS » Tools

Sorting table columns in mysql by adminer

Mahbub — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 05:16:13 +0000

Sorting columns in a mysql table has always been a nasty way to deal with. It can be done some sql commands of course but this is not what we do more often. Even the most popular DB admin package – phpmyadmin doesn’t provide such utility to sort or re-arrange fields in mysql. It occurred to me a lot of times that i had to bring some filed to a different position for convenience after i first created it. But i had to run some queries which i never liked, to do this task.

So ADMINER (formerly phpminadmin) comes up with a nifty utility in their one file standalone package.

If you haven’t heard of Adminer yet (you must have missed a great tool), download from http://www.adminer.org/en/

And run it from your web server from any location. After entering credentials and selecting database, just select a table from the left which appears like this.

Now you get some options like – Alter table | Default values | Select table | New item

Select Alter Table and you get a screen like this

Alright, you pretty know what to do with those up and down arrows now. Don’t forget to save the changes

PhpMinAdmin – nearest alternative to phpMyAdmin

Mahbub — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 10:25:28 +0000

I can’t possibly tell how many times i’ve been seriously irritated navigating to phpmyadmin option of my hosting or hostings of the projects i have worked with. Most of the cases you’ll have to click many times. And in Plesk ? It simply sucks when it comes to use phpMyAdmin from there. I’ve always used phpminiadmin as a quick alternative solution because it needs no configuration and no install. But it’s very basic and needs too much typing to get things done. Today I found phpminadmin. It’s just the name without the i in php phpminiadmin. It simply rocks!! It has nearly every option that you’d normally expect from a db admin tool. And to me, it’s a substitute to phpmyadmin for ongoing operations.

It has select, search, edit, index , create — almost everything u need. The best part is that it needs no install and it’s a single file weighing about 167KB.

But of course, i’m not saying it’s a fully alternative to phpmyadmin. No way. They have been developing this mighty tool for over nine years. But phpminadmin surely is a very very good altenative of that for quick solutions. Check it out here.

http://phpminadmin.sourceforge.net/

Why didn’t I find it earlier ? :-(

UPDATE : THE PROJECT HAS BEEN RENAMED TO “adminer” AND IS AVAILABLE at http://www.adminer.org/en/

What if there were no firebug ?

Mahbub — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 11:39:11 +0000

Sometimes this comes to my mind that what if there were no firebug ? What would it mean to debug the DOM and Javascript, AJAX – everything ? The answer comes like a dark age. Seriously, we got so much used to Firebug that i can’t even think of making apps that involves DOM manipulation, AJAX. If you’re reading this blog, i’m sure you know what’s firebug and what it does. Wait let me just list’em down what would life mean without firebug.

I’d probably give up developing JS intensive pages
Would have stopped to enjoy playing with DOM and CSS
I’d be a guy with less AJAX knowledge than what i’m now
My hundreds of Man Hours would have been wasted trying to run after stupid errors.
I would scold and curse Microsoft for IE every other day
May be some other browser would have been my default browser
Or may be i’d be truly dependent on DOM inspector and web developer toolbar of FF although they are not as good as firebug.

What else? Let me know what’s in your list.

And if you haven’t used firebug yet, to my language, you have committed a SIN. Let’s not bear the sin anymore GETFIREBUG

Make yourself comfortable with Circle Dock

Mahbub — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 09:37:15 +0000

How many times have you been irritated finding your most frequently used tools in quick launch, programs menu ? I guess lot of times. Clicking the mouse 3-4 times or more to execute your favorite programs is just awful. There are lot of programs coming to rescue to minimize clicks like using dockbars. But I’m more of a keyboard user and less mouse clickers. After using so many dock programs , my most favorite pick is the circle dock. You can add as many programs and folders as you want and they come like this

Looks awsome, right? It just pops up when pressing it by a key. I’ve used the key F1. I don’t recall when did i last pressed F1 for help. So it was kind of useless. Pressing F1 or clicking on any of the programs closes it. Very easy and handy, stays on your systray and consumes 1-5MB depending on the resources you put.

How to get it ?

It’s open source and free. It can be downloaded from http://sourceforge.net/projects/circledock/. Download, install, play and have fun with the configuration options. All the options are self explanatory.

Why not use black background in your code editor ?

Mahbub — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 05:18:53 +0000

I just realized that I spend more time with Notepad++ than my wife . Well, it’s nothing new for a full time programmer. So why not make my code editor comfortable for me. I have to stare the editor more than 9-10hrs a day. So a huge pressure on eyes. For a long term perspective, i must take care of the eye. The screen distance, the radiation, frequecny- everything must be taken seriously.

My favorite code editor is notepad++. It’s lightweight, sleek and has very good options to code PHP, JS, HTML. The default installation comes with a white background as most others do. But let me show how my code window looks.

I feel more comfortable reading these colored texts on a black and it helps me work more. And actually the radiation from a black screen is obviously less from a white screen. So in the long run, it’s helpful for our eyes.

How to do it in Windows ?

Download Notepad++ if you don’t have it from http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm

On that page find a section called "Style files" and you’ll see two styles there which are

Ruby Blue (Screenshot) : by tomsolo
Vibrant Ink (Screenshot) : by Tyler Ritchie

Download any of them and save the zip file somewhere (possibly on your desktop).
Now unzipping that archive will let you find a file called stylers.xml. Copy this file (CTRL+C).
Now type %appdata% in your run panel in start menu. Your application data directory will show up.
And now find the folder called notepad++ and paste that xml file which you have just copied.
Restart notepad++ and there you go!!

For further customization in colors and fonts you can always change it from "settings->Styler Configurator" and select your language from there (I changed only php and javascript).

Safari 4, impressing !!

Mahbub — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 04:53:09 +0000

I downloaded the safari 4 for windows(haven’t found enough reasons to swicth to MAC) last week. It looks pretty optimized the way they have designed. It’s no doubt that MAC people are creative. They put signatures wherever they go. The recent release of Safari proves it once again. It gives you the best possible area within the browser. So many toolbars in browser sometimes are very irritating. Sometime you wan to have more space in browser so that you have to use the scroller less. Safari 4 tried to make the best use of it. They have shifted the tab bar to the title bar and i found this very creative. As a web developer and designer, we have to test in all browsers. Although IE makes our life hell when we see that more than 50% are still IE users and making a page compatible in IE6,7 is more than 50% of entire design work. Anyways, Let’s not fall over IE now. I’m talking Safari now. We know that Safari and Google Chrome uses the same rendering engine. And Safari’s top right menu looks pretty the same as google chrome. But there’s certain improvements in Safari’s rendering engine. Like you can set the border radius of fieldset element in Safari but Chrome can’t render it as rounded. I haven’t tested other things but it seems there are more. I hope google updates chrome with the latest webkit. The startpage was inspired by opera but in an improved manner. Here’s how it looks.

Looks cool, huh?

Now talking about the speed of browsing!! When installing, i didn’t install the bonjour package with it and to me it’s the fastest browser right now in my PC. It responds faster than Chrome, which used to be the fastest until i installed Safari. I’m pretty impressed by it. Let’s discover it more. Thanks to Apple.