Thursday 24 December 2015

BlackBerry Link El Capitan USB connection unstable

Problem:

My BB10 BlackBerry device won't back up using BlackBerry Link in OS X El Capitan. The USB connection keeps dropping. USB is fine with all of my other devices.

Solution:

  • Make sure BlackBerry Link is installed, and your Mac has been restarted
  • Make sure your BlackBerry is plugged into your Mac via USB
  • Navigate to Apple Logo (top right) -> System Preferences -> Network
  • At the bottom of the list on the left, click the plus button + (this will add a network interface)
  • In the "Interface" drop down, note any BlackBerry interfaces that haven't already been added to the list (in the case of this machine, it was "BlackBerry (en4)")
  • Add the BlackBerry interface, and then hit "Apply"
  • Open BlackBerry Link, it might ask for your device password and then connect properly
  • If successful, operations such as backup will now work without dropping

Notes:

This was verified to work using OS X 10.11.2 (El Capitan), a BlackBerry Passport, and BlackBerry Link 1.2.2 (build 32). Your results may vary.

Some operations, such as syncing photos, might not work (i.e. iPhotos has now been replaced by Photos, and syncing photos requires iPhoto; other changes apply).

Additionally, the above steps worked on a machine with a fresh install of BlackBerry Link, and without BlackBerry Blend installed. If the above steps work or do not work with both software installed, please follow the links in the references section for more information.

References:

Monday 7 December 2015

Snap SVG to whole pixel using CSS

Problem:

In most modern browsers and IE newer than IE9, how do I snap an SVG drawing container to the nearest sub-pixel?

Solution

Use the following CSS, where 'your-svg-container' is replaced by the actual ID or style class of your drawing inside your website.

#your-svg-container {
    /* svg */
    transform: translate(0, 0);
}

Notes:

This SVG style rule appears to work in many modern browsers. It can be useful if a website contains a SVG drawing that has elements that align to whole pixels, such as a grid. If such a drawing lands on a fraction of a pixel, it can appear blurry, depending on the browser's rendering engine.

This blurry alignment can happen when non-pixel alignment techniques are used, such as aligning to units such as em, %, or pt, or using computed alignment such as centered alignment (i.e. your drawing will be blurry upon every odd or even page size).

References: