Anthony McLin

So a while back, I identified that Drupal can run incredibly slow on MediaTemple's Grid Service. It's otherwise a great hosting plan that I've been very happy with. SSH access, easy to configure with additional domains, scales well. Of course I forgot about this as I did my Drupal conversion, but it looks like there's a fix.

Shortly after creating my JQuery LockScroll plugin, I was given a site design to implement that happened to require that functionality. Talk about fortuitous circumstance! However, an extra wrinkle existed in the site design. Not only did an element need to switch states between fixed and scrollable, but at another point while scrolling down the page, it needed to change contents as well. This could easily be achieved by using the LockScroll plugin twice on the element with different offsets... but I needed some way of distinguishing the 3 different possible states caused by doing this. The best way of doing this was by toggling classes, which the plugin now does. Read on for details of what's new.

So, you've upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion, and you're ready to jump back into development. Watch out! MacPorts and XCode need to be updated! Apple doesn't include XCode in the system updates, so you have to do it manually. If you installed XCode on Snow Leopard, you're probably running XCode 3 (unless of course you bought XCode 4). The latest that ships for Lion is 4.1 and is free. Here's how to upgrade your development environment:

In this screencast, I show you how to install and run the ARE Practice Exam software on your Mac in under 20 minutes. No extra software to buy. No old copies of Windows to dig up. No need to run Windows at all.

The ARE practice software only works on 32 bit versions of Windows Vista or earlier. NCARB has not updated the software in years, and seems to show no interest on helping people practice on modern computers. But you don't have a PC, or your PC is too new to run the old versions of Windows. What to do?

Run it on your Mac!

There's a few ways of running the software on your Mac

1. Bootcamp - Lets you reboot your computer between your Windows and Mac desktops. Requires a legitimate copy of Windows XP or Vista which are no longer available for sale.
2. Parallels - Lets you run a Windows and Mac desktop simultatenously. $70 and requires a legitimate copy of Windows XP or Vista which are no longer available for sale.
3. A completely free solution using Wine. This screencast shows you how.

In this screencast I show you how to install XCode, X11 and WineBottler, and then how to package up the ARE Practice exam software so it will run on your Mac.

What you need:

• An Intel Mac (sorry G5 users, you're out of luck)
• XCode and X11 - Available on your Mac System Install DVD
• Winebottler
• ARE Vignette Practice Software

Follow the screencast and soon you too can practice for your exams!

Note for Lion and Snow Lion Users - X11 is already installed on your computer, and you can download XCode through the Mac App Store