Monday, February 21, 2011

2 changes I want in firefox 4



Last time i wrote about2 lesser known firefox add-ons. This time i will talk about 2 changes i want to see in the version 4.
I know that Firefox beta 12 is about to be released but these are very minor changes and can be done easily.

 The first and foremost is:"Making the Donot Track feature enabled by default"
Everyone is talking about firefox 4 having a donot track option for the sites but we don't know that the feature is by default disabled!
I would like to ask the firefox team that why have you kept the feature of this stature disabled by default. We all know how much we care about the default settings.Mozilla shouldn't think everyone will try and play with such technical aspects of browser.

  The second one is:"Keep Google as default search engine"

After using chrome for a month or so, i was used to writing everything in the omnibox(address bar) and when i typed in a search query, BOOM! bing search result! I was shocked and at first thought that it was because of some add-on but eventually came to know that Mozilla had changed the default search engine to Bing! Why Mozilla why?? Google is so reliable and loved!

I request Mozilla people to make these changes. Google is much better than Bing and unless don't track pages isn't made default, it will be unused and will fail to get the required acknowledgement.
Hope this page reaches to atleast one person who can do something


Saturday, February 19, 2011

2 lessser known firefox features



I assume that you all know what firefox is(u have to be highly ignorant for contrary!).
We all know that firefox and browsers in general are feature rich.Most of the useful ones are by default activated but I don't know why some aren't! I am writing about 2 of them in this post.

The first one is 'Search  as you type'
 For finding some text in browsers, we need to first press Ctrl+F and then type the text.
  Firefox has an inbuilt but by default deactivated feature to search without having to type Ctrl+F. Useful isn't it?
  You can activate it from:
 Tools → Options → Advanced → General → Search for text when I start typing
Here is the link for the Mozilla page on it


The other one is 'smooth Scrolling'
This feature might not produce a quite significant difference to the usefulness of firefox but gives an aesthetic feeling while using it.
As it's name suggests it will smooth the scrolling process to make it feel better. Though not productive it is worth a try and hence should be made a default setting
To turn it on try these steps:
Tools → Options → Advanced → General → 'Use Smooth Scrolling'
Hope you will like using the features.Will join you with more features soon.



Monday, January 31, 2011

A simple Google Search Gadget


  For designing a new-homepage for myself(yeah I do that a lot!), I wanted a google search gadget.So, as usual I decided to make one for myself.Just a simple tweak to one of the online tutorial javascripts and I had a javascript that could be used for google search!
Here's the script that I came up with.

<script type="text/javascript">
function search()
{
var searchkey = getElementById('mytext');
if(myTextField.value != "")
window.location="http://www.google.com/search?q="+myTextField.value;
else
alert("Would you please enter some text?");
}
</script>

To complete the gadget, You need a text-box and a button.Also you need to use 'mytext' as the text-box's id and 'search()' as the onclick event for the button.
So the remaining code is:

<input type='text' id='mytext' /><br>
<input type='button' value='search' onclick='search()' />


This simple script doesn't pass all the parameters that Google does,but I am not Google, am I? This thing does the job so whats the problem? You can make the same thing for Bing by just replacing google.com with bing.com . Also you can make it site specific by using this line:

window.location="http://www.google.com/search?q="+myTextField.value+"site:www.example.com";


Enjoy scripting!

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Innovative Idea: URL shortener



   Its been a long time since i posted about an innovative idea.But in my defense something is better than nothing! Lame isn't it? Anyways, getting started on the topic, this time it is the idea of URL shorteners.
  Many of us would have at some point on the web, encountered a shortened URL. It would be like bit.ly/something or goo.gl/something. Twitter users find this idea as a boon considering the fact that we can tweet only 140 characters at a time.Well for others it is a tool to reduce the address of the website to a calm to eyes length. For eg the address of www.dude-says.blogspot.com can be shortened to goo.gl/hl5VI


  How depressing do the websites with looong addresses look!Imagine being forced to remember one of them. Some god-sent developer came up with a solution of URL shortening. It started with TinyURLin 2002. Though the idea became widely used with launch of twitter, it came to rage when was started being used by other famous websites in 2009.
   Some common URL shortening services are TinyURL , bit.ly and goo.gl. The URL shorteners donot show the entire web address but redirect us to the actual website. Though novel this idea has been used for sending worms also. Read this article
  Well, the article may petrify you but don't worry, just go to shortened URLs given on standard web-sites or if you are still worried you can use tweet-deck or a service like google safe browsing.Well like all great technologies, URL shortener is quite useful but should be used wisely and the surfers should beware of the malicious use of the service and hence should take proper care while using them.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Battleship for Windows Mobile

    Addiction may cause you to do several things.It makes the some steal from or hurt someone. Well, in my case it made me write more than thousand lines of code. My addiction is to the game of Battleship.
  In case you are wondering what it is, well in this game you are supposed to search for the enemy's fleet of battleships before he finds yours.You have to keep hitting till you completely destroy the fleet. Its quite a fun to play the game.
  When I formatted the hard-drive of my computer I foolishly forgot to backup the game.Hence I had no choice but to search for it. But I got a PC version of the game.So, being overcome by the addiction I just thought of making my own version for the Windows phone(coz it's the easiest to code!).
 So after an evening of coding the basic version of the game was ready. Then all that was left was some improvisation in interface but that could wait. First I had my game-lust to be satisfied. Well as it turns out even after 7 days I still haven't improved the interface but I am able to play the game so no complains!
  Anyways now I am planning to make a multiplayer version of the game and will need some time to make that happen but I am on it. In case anyone wants to try it out just mail me.

Friday, November 19, 2010

Think before you type!

We,all know the importance of functions in C. And any good-programmer will be using well coded functions in his program, may be including them in a loop as well.But, while using the function in a nested if else we must be careful and should keep in mind the output of the function and what exactly do we want.I am saying this because my program returned insane values due to a careless use of functions.

The problem causing bit of code is here:
if(strt < insert(strt,end,value)
 {
     //some stuff;
  }
else if(strt == insert(strt,end,value)
{
   //some stuff;
}

what happened here was that, for the 1st if statement the function insert was called. Now suppose the value is false and the other if statement is to be implemented, then it will again call the insert function which is not how it should happen because for the  new function, it will find a new value instead of the old value. So, it is better to store the value of the function and compare the stored value.
Lets hope that we don't make this mistake again. : )

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Boosting your browsing speed in Mozilla

you may be happy with the time it takes for a webpage to load in Mozilla but getting a better browsing speed is always a welcome change isn't it? Here is a simple way to boost your speed.
->Open a new tab and in the address-bar type: about:config
->Now in the box of filer type browser.cache
->Now turn the value ofbrowser.cache.disk.enable to false. It can be done by just double clicking it.
->Similarly set browser.cache.memory.enable to true.
->Now right click on an empty space select new->integer and give it name : browser.cache.memory.capacity and in the give it value100000 or 100Mb.

Mind you this will store the cache in main memmory and may take upto 100Mb of your RAM.So just take care of not giving some superficial value as capacity.Also, the process will increase the speed of cached pages only.Anyways, any betterment is welcome isn't it?