Convert Adobe Flash FLA files into HTML
9 Mar 2011With Adobe Flash not being natively supported by Apple iOS, there have been some attempts from programmers to convert Flash files to HTML, such as SmokeScreen and Gordon; which will help developers easily port existing Flash content to iOS devices (iPad, iPhone). Not to be left behind on its own turf, Adobe has come up with its own conversion tool, “Wallaby”.
“Wallaby” is the codename for an experimental technology that converts Flash content (FLA files) into HTML 5. This allows you to reuse existing Flash content on devices that do not support Flash. Once converted to HTML, you can easily edit them using Adobe Dreamweaver or any other editing tools.
Choosing strong passwords and user motivation
Posted in: security | ( 1 ) Comment
3 Mar 2011
One of the main reasons for passwords being hacked is because of users choosing weak passwords. Motivation is one of the key driving forces when doing something, which also applies when choosing good passwords. Unless your account login has been hacked before, users have little motivation whatsoever for creating good passwords. (The average user overestimates the strength of his password and underestimates the ingenuity of the hacker). Of-course the user is not to blame. Creating a strong password is hard work; you need to balance the complexity of the password with memorability. Choose a strong password and the chances are high that you will tend to forget it if you do not use it on a regular basis.
Quick web forms in php
Posted in: php | ( 4 ) Comments
2 Mar 2011One of the most boring task for me during development is that of creating forms. I like to get the task done as quickly as possible and get on with the back-end code. There are many javascript and php libraries that enable you to do just that, but you always need to integrate the two together to get a workable form. MVC frameworks provide a nice way to quickly create a form with all the validations and errors nicely built in. But for non-framework applications we have to rely on libraries or create a form code from scratch.
Drawing Trees in Canvas
Posted in: javascript,libraries | ( 4 ) Comments
23 Jan 2011
Lately I’ve been experimenting with the new HTML5 Canvas element, and the best way to learn some new technology is to create something in it. For some time I’ve been dabbling in Processing and thought of porting some algorithms there in Canvas.
Rather than jumping into animation it was better to play around with static structures. I’ve a soft spot for visualizations so I decided to port some algorithms for creating recursive tree structures.
HTML 5 logo announced
Posted in: html | ( 1 ) Comment
19 Jan 2011
Now that people have slowly started implementing HTML 5 features in their sites they would like the world to know the same. W3C have released a set of logos you can stick on your site and announce the world of your HTML 5 accomplishments. Besides the primary logo it also include logos for other main features of HTML 5 – CSS, semantics, offline storage etc.
GoDaddy woes
Posted in: tech | ( 14 ) Comments
16 Jan 2011Due to the recent traffic spike on my site, Godaddy has pulled my site from the main server and pushed it to a temporary machine citing the following reason for the same.
It has come to our attention that your hosting account for codediesel.com is causing an overload of the shared resources on this server. This, in turn, affects the server performance for other customers. We have migrated your site to a new server to provide you time to resolve the issue.
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At the end of this time period, we will review your CPU usage. If it has been resolved, we will migrate you back to the original server. If it has not been resolved, you should then consider the need to upgrade to a Dedicated Server. Please note, if the CPU usage is further exceeded on this new server, we reserve the right to suspend the account to ensure the overall health of the server.
They are planning to restore the site to the original server in a month if the problem is resolved, but the last line freaks me out. I can understand their predicament; they have to ensure equal service to all sites on a shared hosting, but I cannot afford to get my site pulled down without any warning. So I’m planning to migrate it to a different server. I’ve narrowed down my choices to two hosting providers; mochahos and justhost.
What do you think is the best hosting provider to replace Godaddy. Currently I use a shared Linux hosting plan.
Introducing HTML5 Web Workers
Posted in: html,javascript | Comments Off
15 Jan 2011One of the interesting and useful additions to the HTML5 standards is the support for Web Workers. Web Workers will help you design more responsive web applications then otherwise possible in the past.
What are Web Workers
Web Workers are basically a API specification that lets you create background JavaScript threads to process CPU intensive tasks. Normally in browsers a single thread is created to handle all the JavaScript code. So whatever JavaScript code is run in the browser is executed in that single thread; whether you are doing some calculation or updating page elements. The downside of this is that some CPU intensive piece of JavaScript can render the page unresponsive or slow it to a crawl.
Web Workers alleviate this problem by letting you create multiple JavaScript threads that will run independent of each other, this will prevent one CPU intensive piece of JavaScript from interfering with the UI code.
Auto website wireframes
Posted in: design,javascript,visualization | Comments Off
9 Jan 2011Creating wireframes is one of the essential tasks of any web designer or information architect, and with a plethora of tools available it has become an easy task. Wireframes give you a birds eye view of the site before you actually commit to a design. It is also instructional to see the designs of other site, but then you have go to the drawing board and create one yourself. Wirify makes the job easier for you.
Wirify is a small bookmarklet that lets you quickly see the wire-frame of any website with a single click. For example below is a wireframe of the current site.
