Firefox Proxy Auto-Configuration

Consider the following purely hypothetical scenario: You do a lot of your work inside a web browser. Stuff on your workplace network (like the bug tracking system, the company Wiki and the source control system) you have to access directly. Stuff outside you have to access via a proxy (because the direct access is filtered in a haphazard way that blocks websites of your vendors and customers, as well as resources you need to do your job).

You can go manually change the network settings in your browser every time you go back and forth. You can set up two different browsers (one proxied and another not). You can use a browser add-on that lets you manually toggle proxy settings with one click.

Better still if you didn’t have to do any of that stuff and your browser would just automatically do the Right Thing. With Firefox, you can achieve this result reasonably easily using a “Proxy Auto-Configuration File” (or PAC file, for short). Read on for details.

boxLayout: A Simple jQuery Layout Plugin

I’m not a web designer by any stretch of the imagination, but sometimes I have to pretend to be one. In a (forthcoming) project, I was looking for a way to divide up the available space within a window amongst various div elements, in a (buzzword bingo!) “responsive design” way. I got frustrated with the complexity of various layout tools I tried, and rolled my own.

It’s ridiculously simple and (being written by someone with very little JavaScript and jQuery experience) may be buggy, but it’s just the thing for the task I was trying to accomplish. It’s yours for free after the break if you have a use for it.

Karotz: Movies Application

The Karotz (née Nabaztag) is an Internet-connected embedded system in the form of a stylized mechanical rabbit. I received one of these as a gift, and it’s actually kind of cool. It lacks any kind of display (other than a single multi-color LED), but does have such amenities as a camera, microphone, RFID reader, motorized ears, robust text-to-speech and a Javascript API.

My first application for the Karotz is called Movies. It scrapes the Google movie listings, and reads you upcoming titles and showtimes for the theater of your choice. Full source download and additional discussion after the break.