Lyris Listmanager is a nice mailing list management system. However, there are a few features that are missing out of the frontend that make it hard to get by your day-to-day office job. Fortunately, most of it is written with TCL routines which are not encoded, which makes for easy updates to this code.

Of course this is not supported by Lyris and if you have problems with it after making your changes, don’t expect them to support it. Make backup of your files - in Linux this is /usr/local/lm

For this example, I’m going to add the Full Name field to survey results. By default, it shows the email address but not the name of the responding user.

Step 1:

Backup!

cp -R /usr/local/lm /usr/local/lm.bak

Step 2:

Open the file which holds the routine for the “Survey Details” page. This is in /htdocs/reports/surveys/.tml

vi /usr/local/lm/htdocs/reports/surveys/.tml

Step 3:

Modify the code to add in FullName:

In the routine surveyreports::page_all_answers

Change
set sql "SELECT lyrSurveyResponse.WebDocID, lyrSurveyResponseAnswers.ResponseID as ResponseID, lyrSurveyQuestions.UserQuestionNumber, lyrSurveyResponse.ResponseTime, lyrSurveyResponse.MemberID, lyrSurveyResponse.RespondingIP, lyrSurveyResponse.MailingID, lyrSurveyQuestions.QuestionText, lyrSurveyAnswers.AnswerText, lyrSurveyResponseAnswers.FreeFormAnswer, [dbinfo::members_name].[dbinfo::members_emailaddr]

set sql "SELECT lyrSurveyResponse.WebDocID, lyrSurveyResponseAnswers.ResponseID as ResponseID, lyrSurveyQuestions.UserQuestionNumber, lyrSurveyResponse.ResponseTime, lyrSurveyResponse.MemberID, lyrSurveyResponse.RespondingIP, lyrSurveyResponse.MailingID, lyrSurveyQuestions.QuestionText, lyrSurveyAnswers.AnswerText, lyrSurveyResponseAnswers.FreeFormAnswer, [dbinfo::members_name].[dbinfo::members_emailaddr] as EmailAddr, members_.fullname_ as FullName


Change

array set heading_labels "AnswerText {Answer} ResponseTime {Date} QuestionText {Question} EmailAddr {Email Address}"

array set heading_labels "AnswerText {Answer} ResponseTime {Date} QuestionText {Question} FullName {Full Name} EmailAddr {Email Address}"

Change

array set column_width "ResponseTime 15 QuestionText 25 AnswerText 25 EmailAddr 25 Action_ 10"

array set column_width "ResponseTime 15 QuestionText 25 AnswerText 10 FullName 15 EmailAddr 25 Action_ 10"

Change

set sortable {QuestionText AnswerText ResponseTime EmailAddr RespondingIP}

set sortable {QuestionText AnswerText ResponseTime FullName EmailAddr RespondingIP}

Save this file and that is it! You will now have full names in your survey responses.

This happened on a few of my accounts - specifically the IMAP accounts on my Windows Mobile 6 device. Apparently this was a problem back with Windows Mobile 2003 but it seems to have resurfaced in Windows Mobile 6.

Even though all messages in an account are read; the “1 unread message” message still shows up on your Today screen. This happens when the internal unread message count becomes de-synced with the real message count. Instead of polling the server for unread messages, Windows Mobile keeps an internal database/registry key with this number. This problem also manifests itself in having “-1″ unread messages or another off-count.

Luckily, it is pretty easy to fix. Download this program from freewareppc. Transfer and run the .exe from your device. It analyzes your accounts and fixes the internal database “unread” count.

The Opera team has announced that Opera 9.5 Alpha is now available.

I haven’t been an Opera user in the past. However, I’ve used their Mobile (Opera Mobile and Opera Mini) and their Wii browser and have been impressed. I’ve been missing out!

Opera 9.5 is nice - if you haven’t tried Opera lately I would give it a shot. I’ve heard other users rave about previous versions, but I always thought to myself: “It’s just another browser”.

9.5 has a ton of features but here are the highlights in my opinion:

• Fast Page Rendering Engine
• History Search
• Bittorrent Client Integrated
• Synchronize With My Opera
  - Synchronize Bookmarks, Speed Dial, and other Preferences
• Improved Skin - Apple Human Interface Guideline support
• Mail Client Built In

There is a slew of other changes in this release. I’ve found several pages which did not render properly or at all in this version - I know they are working on such things and there is a “report this page” button within the menu which helps you test their alpha stage release.

This Opera Browser definately gives me a “next gen” feeling and anyone who considers themselves an early adopter should give it a try!

Meebo, which I have recently been turned on to, yesterday released an iPhone client which is basically a web interface to their chat website (which integrates AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, gtalk, and more). It looks great, take a peek:

That is great that they are developing this and I applaud them for their efforts of releasing updates on mobile devices.

Now, maybe I have iPhone envy, but wouldn’t it make sense to release this for Windows Mobile since the market share that Windows Mobile has is MUCH greater than iPhone? According to Gartner, Windows Mobile shipped a little over 3 million devices in the 1st quarter of 2007 alone (and that number does not even include “Smartphone” devices). iPhone, according to their own estimates [MacNewsWorld], will sell a million units by Sept 30th.

I asked Meebo about their plans for Windows Mobile. Here is the response I received from Sue:

As far as a Windows Mobile version of meebo, it’s
something that we’ve thought about and are interested in, but at the
moment we don’t have development time and resources to add support for
every device we’d like to.

Here is where it gets tricky. There may be a great market penetration for Windows Mobile - but it is not easy to develop a web app for it because there is no standardized browser platform. Sure, you have Internet Explorer Mobile, but let’s face it - IEM is program is not very good at rendering web pages and would be a nightmare to develop for. Each version of Windows Mobile has differences in IEM that designers would have to be conscious of. The other browsers that Windows Mobile users have the option of using: Opera Mobile, Netfront, Minimo - do not have enough market penetration to make it development worthwhile. [on a sidenote, Opera Mobile is the best browser for Windows Mobile, give it a try if you haven't already.]

Hence, we have the major difference between Windows Mobile and iPhone OS. Windows Mobile, although an “open” system that allows developers to create their own programs, has the problem of having a high cost to develop because you need to have Windows Mobile programming experience.

On the other hand, the iPhone, with it’s “Closed” OS, has a standardized browser that works well and is easy to write web code for. Web publishers around the world are free to write code for it in their native programming languages because the browser is the component that renders the graphics and takes care of the network.

So how is this problem resolved? Nintendo seems to have fixed this very same issue by offering Opera for Wii via the Wii Shop channel. Wii users who install this browser have many options available out there for web interfaces that are designed specifically for the Opera browser on Wii - most notable of these is Orb, which has a beautiful interface for the Wii. Microsoft, ever the profitable company it is, wants users to use IE on Windows Mobile and therefore bundles IEM.

Microsoft needs to get with the program and make their browser easier to write for and more standards compliant. If that doesn’t happen, then we are definitely looking at an iPhone future for mobile devices.

If you use Windows Mobile, please contact Meebo and let them know that you’d like to see a Windows Mobile version of Meebo!

If you can access the internet fine using PIE (Pocket Internet Explorer) on your Windows Mobile device over Edge or 3G, but when you switch to Wifi Internet Explorer always times out (It says “Loading…”) - then you are probably dealing with the dreaded “hard coded proxy” problem. In this situation you have Wifi wireless enabled and Opera and other internet applications work fine - but PIE will not work.

The issue is that PIE is trying to connect to the internet via a proxy, however if you are using WiFi there is no need for this and the proxy server can not identify you since you are not on AT&T’s (Cingular’s) network.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings]

The default setting that forces the proxy to be used is:

"EnableAutoDetect"=dword:00000000

Change to:

"EnableAutoDetect"=dword:00000001

Do a soft reset on your device and PIE should now be able to access the internet again!

Windows Mobile 5 did not seem to have an easy way to have YouTube mobile videos (3gp files streaming over rtsp protocol) play to your phone.

However with Windows Mobile 6 Professional and HTC’s “StreamingPlayer” software - playing YouTube Mobile videos, at least through PIE (Pocket Internet Explorer) is easy.

If you don’t have HTC’s StreamingPlayer - check here. After installing the software, you may also need to modify your registry in order to allow rtsp streams to be opened by the player. Here is a link to the registry entries you need to make - again courtesy of XDA-Developer’s forum.

Save the above text to a .reg file, and import to your device (for example, using RegEdit for WM6)

Hopefully if all went well - when you visit http://m.youtube.com, and click play video, the HTC player will launch and play the video. After the video is done the player will automatically close and bring you back to the browser.

Note that for the above to work, you need to either have wifi access or an unlimited data plan for your wireless account - because streaming video WILL take up a lot of data!

Update 8/8/2007:

Screenshots!

Main Youtube Mobile Screen on WM6

Video Page on WM6

Video Playing

In Landscape mode - you can see the quality of the video is not that great even over WiFi

For another great article on getting this working, check here.

I’ve joined the Twitter world. My Twitter Profile.

I’ve created a small 16 x 16 mini Twitter icon. Feel free to steal it! I resized the icon from deanjrobinson.

Let me know if anyone knows of a Windows Mobile application for Twitter that includes a today screen plugin, that makes it easy to post to twitter.

Introducing systemBash’s first Windows Mobile theme: Black Grass.

This totally free theme features a grass background and a black menu bar. Text is white and accents are green. It in meant for pocket PC / Windows Mobile version 5 and above.

In case you are wondering what the clock/center menu uses, it is phoneAlarm and uses this theme.

Joomla! 1.0.12 appears to have a pathway bug. If you use a component other than com_frontpage for the “Home page” of Joomla - meaning the first link in mainmenu and the page that appears when you load the root of the Joomla! site - then when you click on an article you get a “Double pathway”, for example the pathway will state “Home > Home > Title of article”. The Home, or whatever you named this link, part will be duplicated. It isn’t a big problem but it does look unprofessional on your site!

I looked for ages for a fix to this problem, and eventually found it but the site I can not find the site I originally downloaded this fix from. It is courtesy of Reinhard Hiebl - www.hieblmedia.de (whos site is in German, one reason why I’m saving it here). I thought I would throw it online here for your download. The fix is in two parts of code in /includes/pathway.php.

At line 54 in includes/pathway.php:

// Fix for dublicate home if home have childs //
// by Reinhard Hiebl -- www.hieblmedia.de //////
// get first published item
$query = "SELECT id"
. "\n FROM #__menu"
. "\n WHERE published = 1"
. "\n AND parent = 0"
. "\n AND menutype = 'mainmenu'"
. "\n AND access <= " . (int) $my->gid
. "\n ORDER BY ordering"
. "\n LIMIT 1"
;
$database->setQuery( $query );
$first_mitem = $database->loadResult( 'id' );
////////////////////////////////////////////////

And at line 284 in includes/pathway.php immediately after “$item =& $mitems[$mid];”:

// Fix for dublicate home if home have childs //
// by Reinhard Hiebl -- www.hieblmedia.de //////
if ( $item->id == $first_mitem && !$item->parent ) {
break;
}
////////////////////////////////////////////////

I also have the file zipped up so you can just replace includes/pathway.php with this file. Note that this is for version 1.0.12 only, so it might not work with previous or newer versions.

pathway.zip