Monthly Archives: November 2014

Downloads

Protoaculous 1.9.0-1.7.2.0 Minified

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What
This is an update to a post from 2011: Protoaculous 1.9.0 Minified. In the older post, I published Protoaculous 1.9.0 which was based on Scriptaculous 1.9.0 and PrototypeJS 1.7.0.

Updates

  1. A newer version of PrototypeJS is out: 1.7.2. So I’ve updated Protoaculous to use the newer version.
  2. Switched away from YUI Compressor to Google Closure Compiler since it produces more compressed files.
  3. I was previously using Scriptaculous version number as Protoaculous’ version number. This type of versioning is flawed because it doesn’t work when only PrototypeJS gets updated. So I’m now using Scriptaculous_version-Prototype_version.
  4. I’ve published the script I use to create new versions of Protoaculous on Github: Protoaculous Bundler.

Direct links

  • https://raw.githubusercontent.com/inderpreet99/protoaculous-bundler/master/dist/protoaculous.1.9.0-1.7.2.0.js
  • https://raw.githubusercontent.com/inderpreet99/protoaculous-bundler/master/dist/protoaculous.1.9.0-1.7.2.0.min.js

Warnings
I have not tested how well the combination of the two scripts perform. Please use caution and testing before using it in a production environment. Although previous versions have performed well.

Issues
While generating protoaculous using Google Closure Compiler, I noticed the following issues, which should probably be fixed by the PrototypeJS team:

Generate protoaculous.1.9.0-1.7.2.0.js and protoaculous.1.9.0-1.7.2.0.min.js in dist...
dist\protoaculous.1.9.0-1.7.2.0.js:4619: WARNING - Suspicious code. The result of the 'getprop' operator is not being used.
  arr[ preferredDoc.childNodes.length ].nodeType;
  ^
dist\protoaculous.1.9.0-1.7.2.0.js:5602: WARNING - Suspicious code. This code lacks side-effects. Is there a bug?
  if ( elem.parentNode ) {
  ^
dist\protoaculous.1.9.0-1.7.2.0.js:5603: WARNING - Suspicious code. The result of the 'getprop' operator is not being used.
  elem.parentNode.selectedIndex;
  ^
0 error(s), 3 warning(s)

Size information

Size of Prototype.js + Scriptaculous = 314K
Size of Protoaculous.js Minified = 166K

Suggestions

I would suggest:

  1. Turning on gzip functionality (mod_deflate on Apache) for all html and js/css/etc assets in your webserver to get filesizes even lower. This would ensure your users get the files even faster.
  2. Adding very long expiration dates (like years) through your webserver on js/css/etc assets. This would ensure your users do not have to download the files again and again. Since the files are versioned, there should not be a problem in cache busting on newer updates.

Helpful Tips

EXT4 repair on Mac OSX

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My NAS WD drive recently became corrupt. It had trouble saving large files and running them. My router constantly complained about not being able to properly run Samba/swap on it.

Not having a Linux OS handy, I had a tall task to repair an EXT4 filesystem on Mac OSX 10.10.

I first tried the open source solutions: fuse-ext2, osxfuse, and ext2fuse (read-only). While these tools work great in allowing access to ext4. They do not include any disk repair tools. e2fsprogs from Homebrew also does not include the fsck utilities.

I also tried using the commercial ExtFS by Paragon. It integrates directly with Disk Utility and is able to verify/check the disk for errors. While it reported the errors properly, it had trouble repairing the filesystem and reported my ext4 partition as ext3. It failed to repair reporting: “Error: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.” Also, ExtFS was very buggy as in it consistently froze the System Preferences and Finder (while ejecting and mounting).

Finally, I installed VirtualBox with an Ubuntu VM and added the USB drive from settings. I had to umount the drive from inside Ubuntu and running fsck -y was a breeze. Now ExtFS by Paragon also reports that the Disk is good.