Note: this issue disappeared for the author, after upgrading to Adobe Reader 8.1.

I was being driven around the bend trying to resolve a problem with Acrobat Reader 8 in that it kept crashing within 15 seconds of launching (scroll down to read more).

Eventually, in the Adobe forums, I found that others were having the same problem and it was due to the update plug-in. Most likely some sort of privileges problem, according to another poster in the forum.

The solution given by people in the forum was to choose to remove the Update plug-in by removing it from the application's package. However, I found that there was an extra pane in the Get Info dialog that allows you to add, remove, enable or disable plug-ins. I think it's a more sophisticated way to deal with it.

To recap on the issue I had in my presentation re: "How to turn your Mac into a database-driven web server"

http://www.siliconmeadow.net/mac-as-web-server

at the June meeting, I had got to the stage of installing mySQL and configuring it via the terminal, but I could get no PHP scripts to access the database do to a conflict with "old" password hashing and the "new-style" 4.1.x passwords that mySQL uses.  read more »

Prerequisites

In preparation for this presentation, I've done a fresh install of Mac OS X Tiger on an external drive and patched it up to the latest version. I've also installed a few programs that I use in web development and server configuration, including (but not limited to):

• BBEdit (also alternative text editors like SubEthaEdit and TextWrangler, the latter being free);
• Macromedia Studio MX 8 - for this exercise, only Dreamweaver MX 8 will be used;
• mySQL;
• phpMyAdmin.

Can it get easier than this?

The quickest way to enable the web server on your Mac is by going to System Preferences>Sharing, and then ticking the Personal Web Sharing tick box, as shown below:

Note that this will allow you to access your server via these urls:  read more »

On Tuesday 20 June, I'll be giving the presentation "Make your Mac a webserver" for the Midlands Macintosh User Group. With a brand new installation of Mac OS X 10.4.x (Tiger), I'll show how quickly you can set your Mac up to run dynamic, database driven sites by enabling PHP, Perl and installing mySQL. I'll then demonstrate how easily Open Source web applications can be set up with a minimum of effort. You don't have to be a programmer!

Time: Starting at 7.00pm and ending at 9.00pm  read more »