2008 January | Ruhani Rabin

Clear All Requests Option for FaceBook

Article Last Updated: 6^th Apr 2009
Posted by Ruhani Rabin in Technologies on January 31, 2008 | View Comments

facebook1

Facebook is a great social network but along with the good things some bad things also comes. Facebook is built on application framework and it’s possible to add new applications to extend your Facebook functionality. You can send a invite to join your friends to add a specific application that you’ve added and it will wait at the queue at your friends requests page. Sometimes it’s so annoying to see too many requests and all you can do to prevent that is to press ignore each one of them or go to the application and block it which is a painful process. Recently IgnoreAll.com came up with their javascript based browser bookmarklet that will click on all the ignore buttons on the requests page. So now Facebook introduces “Clear All” option if you have more than 25 requests on your request page.

Too many requests?
We’ve added a �clear-all� option for when you have lots of requests waiting on your Requests page.

Well I think they shouldn’t put the option for not only for more than 25 requests but for any requests.

Internet Explorer 8 – is it really following web standards?

Article Last Updated: 6^th Apr 2009
Posted by Ruhani Rabin in Technologies on January 26, 2008 | View Comments

ie8

Microsoft has announced at December 2007 that Internet Explorer 8 has passed a test for standards compliance. Well it’s really hard to believe and it brings more questions to the Web Developers face.

The Acid2 test
Microsoft’s still top-secret Internet Explorer 8 passed what is known as the Acid2 test. Acid2 is a test case designed by the Web Standards Project to discover, if possible, errors with rendering Web pages in browsers and Web authoring tools. Basically, it tests how a browser or tool works with features from various Web standards.

The following standards are involved in the Acid2 test page: HTML 4, CSS level 1, PNG, and data URLs. In addition, the Acid2 guided tour overview page defines these features that are included in the test:

(more…)

Site testing with Multiple Web Browser

Article Last Updated: 6^th Apr 2009
Posted by Ruhani Rabin in Resources on January 26, 2008 | View Comments

multi_browser_howto_test

There are many Web Browsers available on the market. Almost all of them are free and yet they have their own "Complications" in rendering a same site in different way. Any web developer's headache is to make sure that their website looks same on different kind of browsers.. Ah.. Given the wealth of browsers and versions along with operating systems, this is easier said than done.

If we take a moment and look back at the browser statistics for 2007 you will found out:

Internet Explorer is leading the usage (IE6 44%, IE7 35%)
Firefox (14%)
Safari (1%)
Opera (1%)

and other browsers with very small shares. So market leaders are namely 3 or 4 web browsers namely Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Opera.

Does that means if you test your web application with this 4 browsers will solve the issue?

Don't forget the amount of Windows Mobile and other PDA is coming up daily, Each of the PDA and smart phones, they have their unique browser rendering system along with different screen sizes..

Anyway, how you should test your site with multiple browsers? You will found out that the most problems comes from Internet Explorer rendering of sites. Internet Explorer tends not to follow the W3C web standards for browser rendering. Yes I know you can put few on your system but there is a huge rendering gap between Internet Explorer 6 and 7. So how you want to test using IE6 and IE7 in the same machine. Well you can't Install all of them together cause they are using same DLL names and libraries. Technology has the advantage to give solutions in this situations.

Here are the possible solutions:

Use Virtualization tools such as Virtual PC (Free) or VMWare workstation (Shareware) [This requires a healthy system]
Install different versions on Dual Boot or Multiple OS systems.
Read about how to use IE6 while IE7 is already installed [CFDan.com]
Get this nifty tool from Tredosoft.com which allows you to run. They made an Installer which allows you to install and use IE3 IE4.01 IE5 IE5.5 and IE6. Also they have another package of IE7 which runs standalone. So you can make your choices.
Read more about CSS issues in IE here, IEBlog at MSDN and also at WebmasterWorld.com (About CSS in IE6 vs IE7)

Are you looking for older browsers or a place where you can find all kind of browsers archive then don't forget to check out Older Browsers Archive at evolt.org. Another path that may be followed is using a third-party service to test a Web application via multiple browser platforms. You could choose an offshore company to test with various platforms or use a free service like Browsershots or a paid service like BrowserCam.

The boom in mobile device usage means this ever-expanding user community should not be ignored. Like personal computers, you can assemble a group of mobile devices to use for testing, or you can use third-party services and products to assist with mobile testing. A great resource is the DotMobi Virtual Developer Lab, which provides access to hundreds of mobile devices for testing.

While most developers think an application is ready once their work is done, you still need to conduct extensive testing to ensure the product delivered actually meets project expectations and behaves consistently within the target set of browsers. There are many ways to go when testing with multiple browsers as you may choose to set up multiple machines, use virtualization, or even go with a third-party service or organization

Sun and MySQL – What will be the future

Article Last Updated: 6^th Apr 2009
Posted by Ruhani Rabin in News on January 21, 2008 | View Comments

Found this information at MySQL blog.

After all the industry speculation about MySQL being a “hot 2008 IPO”, this probably takes most of us by surprise — users, community members, customers, partners, and employees. And for all of these stakeholders, it may take some time to digest what this means. Depending on one’s relationship to MySQL, the immediate reaction upon hearing the news may be a mixture of various feelings, including excitement, pride, disbelief and satisfaction, but also anxiety.

What will be the future of MySQL with Sun MicroSystems?

Whats your opinion about this?

Save your time with WinMerge

Article Last Updated: 6^th Apr 2009
Posted by Ruhani Rabin in Software on January 21, 2008 | View Comments

As a Developer you should come along into a situation that you need to compare or merge complex code fragments and Sadly most of us do it with notepad. Well have you seen WinMerge? Remember this century is not about how good you are in code but it's about how can solve your problems.. So let me introduce to you the WinMerge, this program designed for open source developers and by open source developers.. Upgrading from old code to new code can be a real painstaking feature.. So here is WinMerge to save you some times. Lets take a look into WinMerge:

File compare window is basically two files opened to editor into two horizontal panes. Editing allows user to easily do small changes or copy certain parts without need to open files to other editor or development environment. It's a blaze to copy fragments of code from identical files.

Now here is the highlight with left navigator for the entire file.. It can jump from one change to another changed line in a file..

Here are some features:

Visual differencing and merging of text files
Flexible editor with syntax highlighting, line numbers and word-wrap
Handles DOS, UNIX and MAC text file formats
Unicode support
Difference pane shows current difference in two vertical panes
Location pane shows map of files compared
Highlights differences inside lines in file compare
Regular Expression based file filters in directory compare allow excluding and including items
Moved lines detection in file compare
Creates patch files
Shell Integration (supports 64-bit Windows versions)
Rudimentary Visual SourceSafe and Rational ClearCase integration
Archive file support using 7-Zip
Plugin support
Localizable interface via resource DLL
Online manual and installed HTML Help manual

Grab it now from their downloads .. And get a smoother coding life.. It's Open Source Yeah!