Views Breadcrumbs using Arguments

Submitted by Daniel Hanold on Fri, 06/12/2009 - 02:41

For most of my clients, I need to create Breadcrumbs. Seemingly easily, breadbrumbs is an area that is a bit more involved than most features in Drupal. There's a great module out there called custom_breadcrumbs. The module works great for the display of breadcrumbs on all node pages, but doesn't (yet) work with views.

After doing some research about a solution for view pages, here's my favorite pick: Views Arguments.

For a simple overview page (that uses views), add a "Global: Null" Argument. Within that argument, select "Provide default argument" and select "PHP Code". In here, you can use the drupal_set_breadcrumb function. That function accepts an array of link titles and paths. Here's an example:

$breadcrumb[] = l('Home', null);
$breadcrumb[] .= l('Is The Box Butler For Me?', 'use-cases');
drupal_set_breadcrumb($breadcrumb);

To make this work, it's important to select "Display All Values" for "Action to take if argument does not validate", otherwise the view gets messed up.

To be on the safe side, I've attached a screenshot of the arguments code for this (live) example: http://theboxbutler.com/use-cases.

Swabians & The Amazon Kindle 2

Submitted by Daniel Hanold on Mon, 02/16/2009 - 18:39

The pre-release of the Amazon Kindle 2 got me excited! The Kindle (2) is, basically, a replacement for books printed on paper. Personally, I love the idea of reading books on a digital device, but after looking at my computer screen for 10 hours per day, my eyes hurt. The advantage of electronic paper devices like the Kindle 2 is that unlike a conventional display, which uses a backlight to illuminate the scree, electronic paper mimics the properties of ordinary paper. This means they reflect the light just like an ordinary paper and can even hold text indefinitely without needing electricity (of course, you will need power to see the next page). A neat feature: you can download books (and newspaper content) over the air.

Anyways: So I found this image on Crunchgear, which has a leaked image of the Kindle 2 (which is supposed to launch in late February) and was starting to the the text display: it has the headline "The Swabian" and basically talks about a not-so-smart Swabian guy who has a speech impediment. Really? Amazon, you really couldn't find another text example for this picture?

Of course, I'm Swabian myself. And a proud one too. My favorite advertising campaign of the past couple of years was a campaign by and about Baden-Württemberg entitled: "We can do everything, except speak proper German". And Amazon, just for the record, that includes helping Newton with the theory of universal gravitation, inventing the first modern carl and the diesel engine, founding Universal Studios and, of course, doing wicked-awesome movies like "Independence Day".

I think I'll get the Kindle after all.

Kindle 2

We're all conntected - By a 3inch wire at the bottom of the ocean

Submitted by Daniel Hanold on Wed, 02/04/2009 - 23:49

I always thought that most of the bits and bytes flying around the world would be transmitted through satellites, but I'm sadly mistaken.

The vast majority of the worlds communication is carried by cables in the ocean. The first cable was the TAT-1, which connected North America with Europe in 1958 with a capacity of 640000 bytes per second. Until today, that bandwidth grew to an amazing 7.1 terabytes per second. One terabyte is 1 099 511 627 776 bytes. So..a lot!

Interestingly enough, there are incidents where ships or landslides under the ocean cut one of the cables. In 2006, a landslide disabled Internet access in Taiwan for weeks. Now THAT would be a big problem for me.

Year of the Ox

Submitted by Daniel Hanold on Tue, 01/27/2009 - 18:30
2009 is the Year of the Ox, and I was a little surprised (but actually, more disappointed) that Google, usually celebrating a lot of birthdays with special logos, only displayed this cute image on the Google Malaysia page. In case you missed it, Happy Chinese New Year.

More than 1 billion people online worldwide

Submitted by Daniel Hanold on Mon, 01/26/2009 - 20:49
Comscore just released a report announcing that the global population online surpassed 1 billion people, with China as the country with the highest online adoption (in absolute numbers). Of course, I'm a little proud that Germany is number four (after China, the US and Japan). Go Internet!

Inaugural Words in a visual tag cloud: 1789 to the Present

Submitted by Daniel Hanold on Sat, 01/24/2009 - 16:19

Speeches

The NY Times has an amazing interactive feature showing the most used words of an all inauguration speeches from Obama's back to George Washington's first speech.

The Re-Invention of Polaroid Film

Submitted by Daniel Hanold on Wed, 01/21/2009 - 19:30

The Impossible Project

This is to charming to be true: A group of Polaroid lovers bought the last Polaroid production factory after it got closed (in the Netherlands). Their goal is to re-start the production of Analog Integral Film  for vintage Polaroid cameras.

Even if you're not a fan of Polaroid: their website looks fantastic and has a bunch of pictures from the factory in Enschede that look like relicts from the old DDR.

The Impossible Project: The Re-Invention of Instant Film

History of the Internet

Submitted by Daniel Hanold on Sat, 01/17/2009 - 15:53

History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.

"History of the Internet" is an animated documentary explaining the inventions from time-sharing to filesharing, from Arpanet to Internet.
The history is told using the PICOL icons on www.picol.org , which are available for download soon. On http://blog.picol.org you can get news about this project.

You can see the credits for this movie on
http://www.lonja.de/motion/mo_history_internet.html

Other works done by me can be seen on
http://www.lonja.de or http://www.lonja.de/diploma

Google's New Browser Icon: From Bad To Worse

Submitted by Daniel Hanold on Sat, 01/10/2009 - 23:18

Quick post as I coulnd't believe that Google changed their browser icon again. As I just returned from Barcelona, I am instantly reminded of the Miro museum when I see Google's new icon:

Google Browser Icon

Sorry Google, but this seems to be the one thing you're not getting right.

Internet Explorer share drops below 70%

Submitted by Daniel Hanold on Wed, 01/07/2009 - 03:37

Finally, less and less people are using Internet Explorer. According to a report from Net Applications, only 69.77% of Internet users use Internet Explorer, while Firefox crosses the 20% mark. (http://www.netapplications.com/newsarticle.aspx?nid=45).

Browser Market Share December 2008

As a software developer who's dealing with cross-browser CSS issues, this makes me happy. With three Internet Explorer version (IE6, IE7 and IE8) that are being used concurrently, it is just a pain to create separate rules: All three versions have their own unique way of interpreting style sheets. Go Firefox!