If you’re working with the mongrel_service gem then you should know that right now there’s a few kinks in the system.

Here’s a quick rundown of the setup for Rails on Windows from scratch:

Download the One Click Ruby Installer and run the setup program.

Open a command prompt and type these commands:

gem update --system
gem install rails
gem install mongrel
gem install win32-service -v '0.5.2'
gem install mongrel_service

The key to this is that the win32-service gem is currently broken, so switching to a previous version (0.5.2) works great for us. Credit for this goes to Luis Laverna, the creator of the mongrel_service gem. See the discussion.

I’ve been testing this release for about two months but had not released it yet. A friendly email from a user of this plugin alerted me to the fact that I should really push this release out, especially as it’s featured in Deploying Rails Applications

Reverse_proxy_fix is a plugin that prepends the base url of your choice to any of the URLs generated by Rails’ URL helpers. It’s primarily designed to allow you to hide your application behind a reverse proxy like ISAPI_Rewrite for IIS, though I’ve heard that people have used it elsewhere.

Say you have an app that you want to host on an IIS machine at http://www.myexample.com/fun/application

You’d install this plugin and configure it to use http://www.myexample.com/fun/application as your base URL. When you run your application in production mode, all of your URLS will be prepended with http://www.myexample.com/fun/application.

To install, you need to do the plugin install thingy:

ruby script/plugin install http://svn.napcsweb.com/public/reverse_proxy_fix

When the plugin installs, you then get to configure it with an interactive script.

########################################################
# reverse_proxy_fix plugin                             #
# Configureation                                       #
########################################################

Enter the base url you wish to use without the trailing slash (example: http://e
xternal.mycompany.com/myapp)

http://www.project.com/app1

Please select your Rails version from the list of supported versions:
 1 : Rails 1.1.6
 2 : Rails 1.2.X
 3 : Rails 2.0
3
The file C:/projects/rscrum/vendor/plugins/reverse_proxy_fix/lib/config.rb has b
een modified. The plugin will be activated when you run your application in prod
uction mode.
Plugin successfully installed and configured

I’m happy to announce the release of the ScafoldForm Generator plugin for Rails. This plugin takes the most useful piece of scaffolding, the form creation, and makes it available as a separate generator.

You can install it with

  sudo gem install scaffold_form_generator

Then just generate the forms for your models

ruby script/generate scaffold_form Project project
ruby script/generate scaffold_form User accounts

You can read more at http://scaffoldform.rubyforge.org/
.

There are a few neat tweaks I made to it to make the forms a bit more useful.

We’re gearing up to release one more version of Eclipse for Rails. It should be available this week. It will include support for some Rails 2.0 features such as the new scaffold generator, updated templates, and updated templates. Of course, there’ll also be an update to the Eclipse core.

The space for Windows-based IDEs is filling out nicely. The folks behind the NetBeans Ruby IDE really have something they can be proud of and I am considering ceasing further development of the standalone Eclipse For Rails package. What do you think?

The Rails Rumble (http://www.railsrumble.com/) is coming up. Flex your development muscles and create an application in 48 hours. Go it alone or get a team of four together to build something incredible. The contest takes place September 8th and 9th, 2007. Registration opens at 12:00 EDT on August 28th, 2007.

We’re giving away a 30GB Ipod choice of an 80GB iPod classic or an 8GB iPod Touch to the person who develops the best app all by themselves.

I’ve noticed that some other firms are starting to market this service, so we’re throwing our hat in the ring too. We’ve been doing this as part of our consulting for about a year now, helping a couple of teams learn how to write better code. This is the next logical step.

It never hurts to have a second set of eyes look over your code before you roll out that brand new application. I routinely have others look over my code before I release it because I know I’m going to miss something. Whether you hired out the project or did it yourself internally, you just might benefit from this service.

We’ll look for things like security vulnerabilities, code that’s not covered by tests, and help you identify trouble spots with your app long before your customers find them.

Contact us today to see how we can help.

RailsConf2007 was fun. I hoped for more advanced panels, as it really seemed to be geared towards beginners. There were some excellent talks though, and I did learn some exciting things.

For those of you who attended my presentation, thanks for the great support. Your questions and enthusiasm really made it worth the effort. I hope to be able to make the screencasts available soon, complete with annotations and a voiceover.

It was also great to meat Jeff Cohen and the Softies guys. That was probably my favorite part of the conference because they were the friendliest bunch of people who actually seemed interested in talking to and learning from others. We had a great conversation and I would love to work more with them.

If you’re looking to get started with Ruby on Rails and you’re a Windows user, this book will walk you through setting up some of the tools you’ll need, as well as show you how connect to Microsoft SQL Server and set up Capistrano. Of course, this is targeted at people who are new to Ruby on Rails and come from the Windows platform.

Curt Hibbs wrote the first chapter, where he showcases how to use RadRails and InstantRails to create a quick and easy setup.

The book covers

• InstantRails and RadRails
• Installation with the One Click Ruby Installer
• Installing RMagick
• Working with MySQL and SQL Server
• Setting up a simple Subversion repository on Windows
• Using SQLite and scaffold_resource to rapidly prototype a simple application
• Using Capistrano
  … and more.

So check it out, won’t you?

I’m a Windows user. Anyone who reads this blog can pretty much figure that much out. I started this company in 1995, fixing computers and trying to put the “personal” in computer service.
Over the years, I’ve removed countless viruses, uninstalled lots of spyware, formatted hard drives, recovered files, and occasionally had to send a computer back to a customer as “unfixable” because
of some unknown hardware or software glitch. Windows is popular and well-known, and people who know it well can have some pretty good job security.

Shortly after I started this company, I shifted focus towards the Internet, developing web sites. I bucked the trend of my Mac-using
counterparts back then and did all of my design work on Windows. I even did video editing there. I embraced ASP, and when that got old, I started using PHP, but deployed on Windows.

When Ruby on Rails came along and I got involved in that community, I was determined more than ever to bring Rails to the Windows platform. I’m speaking about Rails on Windows at RailsConf 2007 this year, and I’ve just finished a book on
Rails for Windows users which will be published by O’Reilly.

But I started using a Mac for development this Spring and couldn’t be happier. Here’s why.

1. Ruby runs faster.

   Ruby runs at least ten times faster on a Mac, which means my unit tests, Rake tasks, and anything else I do with Ruby take no time to run. On Windows, I pay at least a 15 second penalty just to start a task or a test. That basically means I either sit and wait for things to happen, or I just start neglecting my tests to save time. Not a good place to be if you’re trying to write good code.

2. It’s Linux that runs Photoshop

   Many web-based languages like PHP, Python, and Ruby run extremely well on Linux. However, you can’t use industry-standard tools like Photoshop on Linux without a few glitches and a lot of work. I’ve done Photoshop on Wine and I am not impressed. On my Mac, I can use Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and anything else, because there are native supported ports of those programs for my system.

3. I can run Windows apps too!

   I need Office, and I need to run IIS so I can support ASP, .Net, and other Microsoft-based technologies. My Macbook Pro has Windows XP installed as a second boot option, but I also run Windows XP on Parallels, a virtual machine that lets me use my Windows apps side-by-side with my Mac programs. Parallels can run pretty much any other operating system, so I also have Windows Server 2003 installed for testing.

   When I go to conferences, I only have to bring one computer.

4. I can surf in peace

   No IE means no spyware. I typically use Firefox on Windows anyway, but the complete absense of IE on this machine makes me feel much safer.

5. More time working, less time tweaking

   I don’t have to stop working in order to make something do what I want. The Mac’s OS gets out of your way and lets you work. It’s a little difficult to transistion from a PC to a Mac at first, but some of the built-in features are great. The Dashboard gives me quick access to GMail, my WordPress blog, the weather, my Backpack account, and even a color-picker.

   When I got my Macbook, I was using it and actually being productive with it in only a few hours. I haven’t used a Mac since I was a kid.

6. Textmate

   Windows users have e, but I have TextMate, and I don’t need anything else. TextMate is more than just a text-editor; it’s an IDE. I can integrate with Subversion, I can run Rails generator commands, I can run unit tests, and I can have Prototype and Script.aculo.us methods auto-complete while I type. I can validate HTML, preview in a browser, and then upload it back to my repository.

7. I can use more advanced tools

   I do most of my deployment on shared hosts with Mongrel and mongrel_cluster. I can run these on my Mac without incident. I also use the excellent load-testing program httper, which does not run on Windows. There are countless other tools out there too.

   I also get to use QuickSilver, which means I can chain commands and navigate through my files and programs much faster.

8. Apple has awesome support

   I used my new Macbook Pro for gaming one night just to try it out. My games ran flawlessly when I boot into Windows XP via Bootcamp. While I was playing, one of my keys came dislodged. I called up Apple, and within 10 minutes I had them sending me a new keyboard. That’s cool. Try getting that from another company. I’ve worked with tech support offices for the last 13 years, and I rarely get service like that. Good luck getting that from some of the larger PC manufacturers unless you have an enterprise support contract.

9. I can zoom.

   OS X has a built-in zoom feature that I use to not only enlarge the screen when I need it, but also to inspect images for artifacts and imperfections.

So there you have it, a long-time Windows user who is using a Mac for software development. If you’re going to preach to others about “using the right tool for the job” then you owe it to yourself to see what a Mac can do for you.

If you have switched, I’d love to hear your story. If you’re thinking about getting one, let’s hear what’s holding you back from taking the plunge.

What do you do when you are confronted with the possibility that everything you know is wrong, or that you’re doing things not because they’re good, but because everyone else is doing it?

It seems that there are issues with using XHTML instead of HTML, and I think this is something that any web developer needs to investigate further.

From the article:

If you’re a web developer, you’ve probably heard about XHTML, the markup language developed in 1999 to implement HTML as an XML format. Most people who use and promote XHTML do so because they think it’s the newest and hottest thing, and they may have heard of some (usually false) benefits here and there. But there is a lot more to it than you may realize, and if you’re using it on your website, even if it validates, you are probably using it incorrectly.

This website uses XHTML 1.0 Transitional, apparently incorrectly.

All links open in a new window.

• Beware of XHTML

Other links:

• HTML or XHTML? Fact From Fiction
• Sending XHTML as text/html Considered Harmful
• Rebuttal to “Sending XHTML as text/html Considered Harmful
• Serving XHTML with the Right MIME Type