Posted by Morinn on September 3rd, 2009
Blogger users, especially those who had voted on Google’s product ideas page are perhaps a little bit disappointed. The reason for this: the proposed feature gaining the most suffrage from Blogger users, an improved commenting system which allows threading and supports Gravatar icons, has not yet been included by the Blogger team as at the last blogger upgrade in August.
However, on it’s 10th birthday celebration post, the Blogger team promised that the next several weeks will be a lot of fun! So we might be in for some surprises on the part of Blogger.
Moreover, Blogger has sure been implementing some added features on a drip basis in the past days. For instance on the 28th of August it has included the “Share” button on its Navbar.
Readers can now easily share blog posts by Email, on Google Reader or on Twitter and Facebook.
Blogger has furthermore previously introduced a label cloud widget which allows users to choose which labels are going to be displayed on their blog.
Blogger has also updated its text editor. You can enable the new one by going from Dashboard – Settings – Basic.
All these new features sure promise other great stuff coming up. Perhaps the improved commenting system could come as the cherry on the cake later on.
Posted by Morinn on August 26th, 2009
You guys know all the hype about opensource products. Opensource is great, yes. It saved my life a couple of times. Yet, sometimes, when it comes to web browsers, even the fabulous ones such as Mozilla’s Firefox or Google’s chrome or even Opera start getting on your nerves, at least they get on mine. The thing is, I’m on a perpetual lookout for a lightweight browser that, unlike Links, does not forego the visual and graphic aspect of the above web browsers… I think I have found it and that’s Arora web browser.
If you have a look at Arora’s Google Code page, you’ll get a fill of the essentials of Arora.
Arora works on Linux, embedded Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, Windows and any other platforms supported by the Qt toolkit.
Arora uses the QtWebKit port of the fully standards-compliant WebKit layout engine. It features fast rendering, powerful JavaScript engine and supports Netscape plugins.
Apart from the must-have features such as bookmarks, history and tabbed browsing Arora boasts:
- very fast startup
- integration with desktop environments
- smart location bar
- session management
- privacy mode
- flexible search engine management
- ClickToFlash plugin
- download manager
- WebInspector, a set of tools for web developers
- 30 translations
Also, having a small and simple code base, Arora is perfect for those who love tweaking browsers for kicks.
A screenshot of Arora Web Browser
On the overall, Arora just suits about everyone and renders almost all websites pretty well plus it’s not difficult to adapt to for new users.
To get Arora, go to Arora’s Google Code page.
Posted by Jevin on July 3rd, 2009
Lightweight browser? What I am thinking of? Why would anyone want a lightweight browser? Well believe it or not, a lot of people would want a lightweight browser.
The reasons vary from having a slow computer to actually wanting something simple that starts up really quick. For my case, it was an incompatibility issue between Firefox and Skype (I should precise that I’m on Ubuntu 9.04, 64-bit). Whenever I start Firefox, the probability of having a successful Skype call goes from 1 to 0. So, everytime I need to Skype, I have to restart my laptop.
Then came Links. I assure you, I knew about Links (Links on Wikipedia) well before. So I decided that Links, being a lightweight browser, would allow me to have Skype calls while browsing. I was not wrong. This lightweight browser works wonders. It does not support Flash, iframes and pretty much anything a Facebook aficionado would find cool, but it does the job for me.
Facebook page on Links, lightweight browser
I presume people who can’t live without beautiful websites would have a hard time with this lightweight browser. Facebook, for instance, simply does not work. Floating CSS elements do not float. Pages are just a long, large column of text. This is pretty much how search engines see your site. And it also brings you back to a time when pages were just text, links and occasional images.
If you want to get a hold of this lightweight browser, head over to the Links Sourceforge page.
Posted by Jevin on June 23rd, 2009
The typical scenario: It’s early morning and I get to the office, light up my PC, log on to Windows Vista and there there. The Avast icon has a little red no-entry icon on it.
This case happens more often than it should. Thanks to this (annoying) frequency, I managed to fix the problem. If you’re lucky, you’ll only have to restart the Avast Antivirus service by following the steps below.
Start > Computer (right click) > Manage > Services and Applications > Services > avast! Antivirus (right click) > Restart
But if that does not fix anything, you’ll have to do 2 things:
1. Repair your Avast Antivirus installation. Steps below.
Control Panel > Uninstall or Change a Program > Avast Installation > Repair
2. Restart your Avast Antivirus service by following the steps above.
That’s about it. This should do the trick for minor Avast problems.
Posted by Jevin on June 6th, 2009
Tetris turns 25 today June 6, 2009. It was created by Alexey Pajitnov in the year 1984 and released on the 6th of June. Throughout these 25 years, Tetris has been moulded in countless versions, on countless platforms and has been played by countless people all over the world.
The name Tetris actually comes from Greek word “tetra” (as in four) and “tennis” (as in sport). For those, like me, who did not understand the tetra part, it actually represents the number of segments in a Tetromino. As for the tennis part, that’s Alexey Pajitnov’s favorite sport.
Tetraminos in Tetris are made up of four segments
For all the time I played Tetris, I never realized that there were four segments per Tetraminos. Don’t look at me, I was never a big fan of Tetris. I used to hate this game, but I have to say. The simplicity of this game is amazing…
Tetris still stands the test of time. Kudos Alexey Pajitnov.
Posted by Jevin on May 10th, 2009
Opening large files on Windows is not the most trivial task. As a matter of fact, it is not a very common task. But the need to open large files is there. The next paragraphs will elaborate on the different kinds of large files. If you just want a quick solution for opening large files, scroll to the bottom of the post.
The most common large files are actually data feeds. Data feeds are XML files containing large amounts of data. By large, we are talking of files over 200 Mb. Now, there are some data feeds that are well structured, with a smaller feed for you to preview the XML format. But there are also badly formatted feeds.
As a developer, I have worked with a lot of different types of feeds:
- Feeds containing weather data, for building weather widgets.
- Feeds containing product catalogs, for selling affiliate contents.
- Feeds containing e-mail contacts, for importing e-mail contacts.
If I had to choose the bad feed among the ones listed above, I would choose the product catalog. These feeds are often wrongly formatted. And sadly, these feeds are the main source of income of many a site. Things get so bad, that you often need to open the files and study them. Worse, most websites have more than a few product catalogs. In fact, at work, I am currently studying all of our product catalogs and documenting my findings. This is being done to have a better engine to parse these feeds, so that more relevant products can be shown and, ultimately, sold.
This implies that during one normal day of work, I have to open four or five large files. Below are some tips I tend to follow:
- Don’t close large files after viewing. You will be dealing with a lot of information. This makes it easy to forget what area needs studying. You wouldn’t want to close a file only to realize that you need it opened again. And besides large files only take time to open, after that its all fine.
- Have a documentation. The time it takes to open large files is immense, so I would advise you to note down whatever findings you have made. The cost of reopening a large file is smaller than the initial cost, but it’s still big.
- Use Notepad++. Notepad++ is lighter than Visual Studio and has syntax highlighting. This makes it great for opening large files for XML structure study. Furthermore, it has a plugin to format XML files (a lot of data feeds are in one line, go figure why). The plugin, called TextFx, comes pre-installed on new versions, it only needs to be configured.
- Use the good old command line. One thing about me, I love command line. On Linux, I use only this. Be it for installing software, manipulating files or compiling stuff. So on Windows to open large files just do Start > Run, type “cmd” and hit Enter. From there navigate to where your file is located and do “type <name of file> | more“. This will show a screenful of the file content. And this is done instantenously, with absolutely no lag. You can also copy and paste from there.
- Go the database way. If you need to study large files AND do tests on them, then your best bet would be to load the data in a database table. This will take some time initially, but in the long run, you will be able to manipulate the data without any constrainsts.
Okay so now you have some tips on how to manage large files. Its a bummer to work with large files, but if you have some patience, you should be fine.
Posted by Jevin on May 4th, 2009
If you’re working on ASP.NET, you have realized that regular expression validation can come in handy more than one time. Also, regular expressions are very easy to implement (provided you have a good knowledge about it).
Some days back, I was faced with a small task. I had to make implement Javascript regular expression validation on a field. The requirement was simple; the field should have minimum three alphanumeric characters, including French characters. For you to have an idea, French characters include “accent aigu” and “accent grave” (you can read about French accents on wikipedia).
Okay so I had the requirement and I was all set. I created a RegularExpressionValidator element on my ASP.NET page and I added “[a-zA-Z0-9 ]” as ValidationExpression. The code looked like this:
<asp:TextBox ID="txtName" runat="server" />
<asp:RegularExpressionValidator ID="rexName" ControlToValidate="txtName"
ValidationExpression="[a-zA-Z0-9 ][a-zA-Z0-9 ][a-zA-Z0-9 ]+"
ErrorMessage="Please enter at least 3 alphanumeric characters." runat="server" />
This worked perfectly. It matched three alphanumeric characters or more. But the problem was it was not matching any of the French characters. After some Google searching and some code trial and errors, I came up with this “[a-zA-ZÀ-ÿ0-9 ]” as ValidationExpression. This worked like a charm. The new code was like this:
<asp:TextBox ID="txtName" runat="server" />
<asp:RegularExpressionValidator ID="rexName" ControlToValidate="txtName"
ValidationExpression="[a-zA-ZÀ-ÿ0-9 ][a-zA-ZÀ-ÿ0-9 ][a-zA-ZÀ-ÿ0-9 ]+"
ErrorMessage="Please enter at least 3 alphanumeric characters." runat="server" />
If you can’t see the logic, let me explain. The code now matches
- all characters from a to z (lowercase invariants)
- all characters from A to Z (uppercase invariants)
- all characters from À to ÿ (all accent characers including French accents in uppercase and lowercase)
- all digits from 0 to 9 (note that the requirement did not require the name to start with a non-digit)
- whitespaces (whitespace was not catered for in the requirement)
So there you go. You now have the regular expression validation for French characters. The beauty of regular expression validation is that it is hard to come up with, but it is very easy to implement.
Posted by Jevin on April 29th, 2009
Okay this is a quick one. If you’re having “‘System.Configuration.ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings’ is obsolete: ‘This method is obsolete, it has been replaced by System.Configuration!System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.AppSettings’” as error message when working with C#, then you have come to the right place for the fix. Here we go then.
To fix it, just add a reference to “System.Configuration.dll“. And change from “ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings” to “ConfigurationManager.AppSettings“. (C# code example below)
Now if you have no idea what this gibberish above means, here is an in detail explanation. Non-noobs, please read no more. Noobs, follow the steps.
- Right-click on your project, look for Add Reference and click on it
- Choose the .Net tab and search for System.Configuration on the list
- Click on OK
- Now that the reference is added, just replace ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings with ConfigurationManager.AppSettings in your code. (C# code example below)
So if your code was like:
Console.WriteLine(ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings.Get("anyKey"));
It should now be like:
Console.WriteLine(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings.Get("anyKey"));
Now that this is fixed, you can get back to work on your project. It is an easy fix as you can see, but it’s not intuitive. I had to find the fix on aspcode.net. Hope this helps some of you out.
Posted by Jevin on April 26th, 2009
If you have been working with Google map markers for a long time, you probably know that whatever map marker you place on the map is clickable by default. But what if I need a non-clickable marker? Easy, its in the Google Maps API. Yes it is, but the documentation is not very straight forward.
Taking a look at the GMarker section in the Google Maps API, we realise that the constructor takes two arguments. GLatLng and GMarkerOptions. What we need is the GMarkerOptions, which specifies the map marker options. Taking a look at the GMarkerOptions, we see that the class has no constructor. It only has a list of properties. Among, the clickable property.
But how do we use those properties? A little bit of googling around gave me answer. It was found on the Official Google Maps API Blog. The solution is pretty simple. Just take a look on the code below and you will see what I mean.
var markerOptions = {
clickable: false
};
var marker = new GMarker(new GLatLng(37.4419,-122.1419), markerOptions);
map.addOverlay(marker);
As you can see, the code is very simple, but the documentation is not precise enough. Hope this helps you out. Just a note, map marker options should be separated by a comma.
