MySQL databases can keep existing data in the wrong encoding unless tables are converted, not just reset to utf8 defaults. ALTER TABLE ... CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET updates stored text.

Count the number of files in a folder from the shell with ls -l | wc -l, a quick way to get a directory listing total.

home_run is an implementation of ruby’s Date/DateTime classes in C, with much better performance (20-200x) than the version in the standard library, while being almost completely compatible.

Currently not possible as the linked .htc file contains JavaScript which is not explicitly called.

The developers are working on a pure JavaScript solution which will have some downsides but work across different domains.

raspell installation can fail while building the native extension because the Aspell development libraries are missing. Installing libaspell-dev resolves the build error.

Aspell reports missing word lists when a language dictionary is not installed. Installing the matching package, such as aspell-de, resolves the error.

Retrieve TinyMCE content as HTML for storage, preview, or submission with tinyMCE.activeEditor.getContent().

For example, to send a form and populate a preview div with the response.

$('content_form').request({
  parameters: { 'preview': "1" }, // overrides parameters
  onComplete: function(transport){ 
    $('previewContent').update(transport.responseText); 
  }
});

Automatically placing the cursor in a form field improves first interaction and removes an extra click. HTML5 autofocus works in modern browsers; jQuery can provide a fallback.

When a Cucumber feature leaves your page through an external Link, Webrat has problems like "Could not find field: "E-mail" (Webrat::NotFoundError)" using your page afterwards. It will also have trouble following redirects.

Fix it with this step:

Given /^I am back on my page$/ do
  webrat_session.header("Host", "www.example.com")
end

Setting up MySQL master-slave replication is error-prone, especially with initial data dumps, binary log positions, and SSH tunnels for remote connectivity.

MySQL defaults can corrupt UTF-8 exports and force manual charset settings for each new database. Setting server and client defaults to utf8mb4 prevents incorrect mysqldump output.

Migrating a Subversion repository to Git can preserve full history and branches, but tool quirks may affect the result. A trunk-only import is possible with git svn clone.

Subversion branch workflows avoid commit and merge conflicts when isolating long-running work and later bringing changes back to trunk.

Target layouts for common notebook, desktop, netbook and iPad screen sizes to reduce clipping and horizontal scrolling.

Dir.glob(File.join RAILS_ROOT, 'app', 'models', '*.rb').collect{ |path| path[/.+\/(.+).rb/,1] }.collect(&:camelize).collect(&:constantize)

Custom Cucumber step definitions for checking fields, HTML content, regex matches, and table data in Webrat-based tests.

Adding a new image variant to many Paperclip attachments can trigger costly full reprocessing; patching Paperclip::Attachment skips styles that already exist.

has_attached_file(
  :avatar,
  :styles => { :large => "300x300", :small => "100x100" },
  :convert_options => { all => "-colorspace RGB" }
)

script/runner -e development 'Article.all.each { |a| a.image.reprocess! if a.image.exists? }; "done"'

RCov defaults fail to aggregate RSpec and Cucumber coverage cleanly; a custom rake rcov:all task produces a Rails report for app/**/*.rb only.

cucumber_spinner adds a progress bar for Cucumber features and shows failing scenarios immediately, with optional browser opening for failed pages.