Dreamweaver on the Mac: JavaScript problems

I encountered a problem with Dreamweaver today - when I started the program I was met with the following errors:

"...ColdFusion.htm has configuration information that is invalid"

"...DWScriptsExtData.js dwscripts is not defined"

After a moment of panic, I did some google searching and found that the problems can be due to a variety of things, as specified by the troubleshooting link (http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=tn_19105#site_cache). For me, I was able to solve the problem by doing the following things:

1) Reinstalling Dreamweaver
2) Delete the filecache.dat file in Mac HD/Users//Library/Application Support/Macromedia/Dreamweaver 8/
3) Delete the MacFileCache-BFE7CE2E.dat (example) in Mac HD/Users//Library/Application Support/Macromedia/Dreamweaver 8/Configuration/

Installing a Media Wiki on Mac OS X Server (Panther)

I decided it would be cool to set up a Media Wiki (ala Wikipedia) for a project I'm involved in at work and set about installing it on my OS X Server. I tried installing version 1.8.2 only to find that the PHP it needs to run is version 5. Seeing as Panther is distributed with PHP4, I went on a long crusade to try and install the new PHP5 module into my OS X Server so I could run the new Wiki version.

My advice? Use an older version of the Wiki!

I went through hell and high water trying to install PHP5. An installer has been made to install PHP5 into standard OS X pain free. The URL is:

http://www.entropy.ch/software/macosx/php/

HOWEVER, I found that it didn't install happily on my Panther Server. I tried a whole host of other methods as well, spent a good 3 hours on it and then started fuming with defeat. I went back to the Media Wiki page and found that there is actually a relatively recent version of the Media Wiki that can be install pain free on a Panther OS X Server:

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wikipedia/mediawiki-1.6.8.tar.gz?download

Media Wiki 1.6.8 will install happily provided you've got your Web Server & MySQL server running (and have created a database & user for the Wiki to install into).

Changing MIDI transmission channels in Garageband

While I have focused this blog on using the Mac in the world of work, I thought I'd write a quick post on a problem I experienced (and was able to resolve) with Garageband. I write music and had a little ditty that I had started demoing in Garageband. I wanted to put some drums to the piece and thought that it would be nice to write the drum track in MIDI and then output it to a sound module once the drum part was written. I have a Roland TD-3 VDrum set which has some great built-in drum sounds so I wanted to use them in my recording but still have the freedom to edit the MIDI in Garageband. I recorded my drum part and then tried to play it back through the sound module. Nothing happened :(

I checked my setup and the MIDI out of the Mac was plugged into the MIDI in of the TD-3. I did a quick try in Logic Express (a more powerful tool but one I don't understand as well as Garageband... plus I don't have the universal binary for it) and it worked! Why then was there a problem?

The problem was due to the MIDI transmission. the TD-3 will ONLY receive MIDI sent to channel 10 (the traditional MIDI channel for drums). However, from reading on the internet, I discovered that Garageband (by default) transmits on Channel 1. I sighed and moped that I wouldn't be able to get the setup I wanted and then found a cool little plug-in for Garageband called 'midiO' by Retroware (http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/23227) that allows you to set MIDI transmission channels for MIDI tracks in Garageband. It isn't perfect but it's definitely worth investigating if this is a problem that you are encountering.