Technovice.net - Web

Vista Compatibility Test Tool

nospam@example.com (jumanjisama) — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 18:11:54 -0600

The current buzz right now, other than the introduction of iPhone, is the upcoming release of the really really long awaited Windows Vista. There are a lot of folks out there who are really eager to get their hands on Vista, because it is cool, it is pretty handsome and it offers a lot of new features. But, with all of the bells and whistles, Vista demands for a new generation PC specification to run it - not everyone can be Vista's master, only the chosen one and the ones that choose to upgrade their current PC specification (which also basically means to buy a new PC) can have Vista up and running. You may view using this link: Vista Basic Requirement to see the basic specification your system must have in order for you, according to Microsoft:

...be able to run the core features of Windows Vista with the basic user experience

What the hell is basic user experience? Anyway, in this article, i am going to share with you guys a tool that i found that will help you examine if your PC is fit for Vista. To use this tool right away, please go to this link: Test For Vista. Upon arriving at the page, you should see a user agreement thing, just agree to it. After that, the website will try to download the necessary tool to your PC and then the tool will automatically start scanning your system, you may have to be a bit patient, waiting for the tool to download and start scanning. In case it took an unbelievably long time to give you the result, maybe you need to refresh the page, and start again. Anyway, just for the sake of sharing, my PC didn't 'passed' the test, i didn't have enough hard disk space. I have a 250Gb hard disk, but it is currently full with rubbish - need to clear a few stuffs from the hard disk in order to give Vista some room, if i am planning to upgrade that is :) . Below is just a small snapshot of the result that i have obtained (hell i am not going to show you the full view.... i am a very shy guy) p/s: thanks to my friend, eches, to share about this tool in his blog

Make Web Snapshots with SiteSnat.ch

nospam@example.com (jumanjisama) — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 20:51:34 -0600

I encountered this website only by chance, was looking for something else actually. The site, which is called SiteSnat.ch (which is also it's URL), offers a free service to produce a snapshot of the site that you desire. Just feed the site with the website's URL of your wish, and SiteSnat.ch will make a snapshot of it,resize it and lastly, add an overlay to it. The results are amazingly high quality. I just wish that it had more than juts one choice of snapshot size. The current size is definitely cute, but it has very little detail. I am not complaining, just saying that it would be better if there are more options - options are always good. Here are a couple of the snapshots sample of my blog :) : cute right? make your own free web snapshots using this service, just click on this link to go to the site: SiteSnat.ch; and start snapshotting (i hope that sound right).

Meebo - A Web Instant Messenger

nospam@example.com (jumanjisama) — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 19:25:16 -0600

If you are reading this article and feeling like some kind of déjà vu, then you probably should, cause i have wrote about this before. But it was among some of the articles that i lost due to the server (which belongs to the hosting) was going down to the grave. Anyway, back to reality, Meebo is an excellent Web Instant Messenger. And as the name implies, it acts just like a desktop running IM application. With some cool features embedded to it (for a web instant messenger), it can surely be really handy whenever you are using someone else's PC that doesn't have the Instant Messenger that you need. For example, you frequently use Yahoo Messenger(YM) to chat, but your buddy has only ICQ installed in his PC or Mac, but you still can use Meebo to chat with YM friends. Cool heh? Yeah i know that there are other web instant messenger out there already. But Meebo has a few features that makes it distinct from it's other counterpart. Encrypted Password For starters, Meebo encrypts your password before it is passed out. By doing this, no one, not even the personals at Meebo can know your password. Plus, it is encrypted with 1024-bit RSA keys. Why is this significant? Simply put, it is almost impossible to crack it :) Not many web messengers out there that gives you this security feature. Honestly, this is the first time i encountered one. For me, security comes first. Cool User Interface with AJAX What the hell is AJAX you ask? it is another web programming language, but with it, developers are able to make web applications and web user interfaces that function and look amazingly similar with the applications running on desktops. If you don't understand, i am trying to say that the user interface is really cool and nice to use :) A snap shot of the user interface: As you can see, it is really similar to the Instant Messenger running on desktops. You can minimize the chat window, you can add buddies, you can move the buddy pane around, you can do almost everything that you could do with a normal IM, but in the web. I don't know bout you, but for me this is totally cool. Supports For now, Meebo supports IMs such as Msn Messenger, Yahoo Messeger, Jabber/Google Talk and AIM/ICQ. Not much but all the big players are here. Frankly, i have never met anyone that uses other then the four (six) IMs above, but then again, i have not really met much people :P So mates, what do you think? i think it is a worthy website to be added to your bookmark or your favorite list. Click here to go to the site: Go Meebo

Scrybe - An Online Organizer

nospam@example.com (jumanjisama) — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 08:18:00 -0500

While surfing the net aimlessly (i am lying :)), i found this video about an awesome application called Scrybe. It is actually a web application, but really, i mean really looks like a desktop application. Scrybe is an online organizer, you could use it to organize your daily chores and appointments, may sound a bit boring, but it has some cool features such as ThoughtPad and Papersync. View the video to learn more about it

I am not sure whether it is for free or not, but the developers of Scrybe are going to release the beta version sometime in October 2006 (which is this month, duh) and they are offering invites to people who wanna give Scrybe a try. Register your email to get the invitation at Scrybe homepage : Get Invite. Personally, i haven't get the invitation yet, hopefully i would get it soon :). p/s: i read about Scrybe while browsing trough Ajaxian.

Check Your Web Design For Browser Compatibility

nospam@example.com (jumanjisama) — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 21:27:04 -0500

If you have a web, one of the most important thing to do, is to have a good web design. Your web design is your first impression to your visitors, if your web design is pretty and clean, then you may have a higher chance to lure the visitors to read your entries. Having a pretty web design in one thing, but having a clean web design, clean from problems with different web browser (especially the major ones,IE and Firefox) is another thing. In this article, i wanna touch about web design compatibility with different web browsers - by sharing with you a problem i had with my design and how did i solve it. Personally, i think this is the part of web design that most webmasters take for granted. Tyme, from 9rules, has even posted an entry emphasizing the importance of this browser compatibility thingy. A few weeks back, one of my visitors contacted me, informing me about a problem with my blog's layout, some of my images are out of position. This was both a surprise and an embarrassing news. I can't believe that my site has been running for weeks with a flawed layout, and hundreds of people saw it. Determined to fix the flaw, i took some steps to debug my blog's layout.. The first step i took is to find the flaw. I usually test my design in Firefox 1.5,Opera 9.0 and IE 7, since i didn't notice any flaw in this three type and version of browsers, i went seeking for help using a cool 'Browser Compatibility Check Tool'. Browser Compatibility Check It is actually a website providing a service to make screenshots of your web when viewed using different types and versions of browsers. All you need to do is go to the website using this link : Check For Browser Compatibility , then type you website's URL and press the 'Start' button. After that, you will be given the option to choose which type of browsers that you would want your website to be screenshot with. There are also some other customization that you may wanna try such as different Screen Resolutions and Javascript versions. Just a tip from a guy who uses this service frequently: if you wanna check screenshots of your web in many web browsers, please set the waiting time longer, the longer you set it, the higher the chance to get screenshots in all browsers that you chose. When you are done, just press the button 'Submit Job' and wait !!. (you probably wanna bookmark the site after you have submitted the job, so you can comeback later to view the screenshots) So, back to the story, after i have viewed all of the screenshots, i found that i had problems with IE 6 and IE 5.5 (who doesn't??). Now that i know what and where the problem lies, i start to meditate, recalling all of my scattered knowledge of html, then started to try fixing the damn layout mess. I began with full confidence that i could fix this thing with my level 1 out of 100 html skill, but after a few hours of debugging and cursing and punching the table - i was still at the same place i started - no progress made at all !!(other than finally realizing that i am really bad at html). Getting Help Not wanting to give up, i approached my mentors and asked for some advice, you may do the same at : The HTML Forum . I posted about my problem on one the threads there, together with all the details such as the nature of the problem (in my case, the images are out of position), screenshots of the flawed layout (you just need to give the link of the screenshot) and type and version of the browser that i am having problem with. It is very important to include these details, as it can make the job of the Gurus easier to find a solution to the problem. Another tip from me: don't be afraid to post your problem in the forum, the guys there are a bunch of nice people - they really wanna help, will not judge you and really put an effort to find the solution. Finally, with the help of a few guys from The HTML Forum, i managed to fix the layout problem which not only results a better looking blog but also gives me the really needed satisfaction of debugging and also my sanity back !! . The End I really hope that this article will be beneficial for you guys out there who are experiencing bugs in your web designs :-) and also to people who wanna check their web designs compatibility. Making sure your web design is compatible with all major web browsers is very important, as it shows that you are concerned about users that are using different type of browsers, other than the one you favor. If you only optimize your web design for only, lets say Firefox, than you will loose a lot of IE audience. Though undoubtedly IE is a pain in the ass, but you shouldn't let the users to suffer from it's incompetence (i am referring to IE 6 and below). So, if you haven't check your design for browser compatibility, that i really suggest you do it soon :)

Make Your Own Offline Webserver - A Newbie Guide

nospam@example.com (jumanjisama) — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 15:58:21 -0500

If you wanna test or install dynamic web offline (i.e in your PC) , you need a working web server such as Apache. Other than that, for normal opensource and free web softwares, they require PHP and Database such as MySQL to run. So there are 3 things already that you need. Finally, just to make your life easier, it is suggested that you also install PhpMyAdmin, a webbrowser php application that makes maintaining MySQL database a much simpler task. Sounds a bit complicated i presume for a tech novice, but believe me it is not. Before, i did everything manually. I downloaded each one of the four mentioned above and installed them one by one, and as a newbie, things don't alwaiz go the way that i wanted to. But now, there are these awesome set of software that will do all the nasty job for you. All you need to do, is download, install and start. The softwares that i wanna introduce to you guys are WAMP and XAMPP. Both of the names are acronyms: Windows - the target Operating System (OS) Apache - the Web server MySQL - Database Management System Php - the server side scripting language X for cross platform - has versions for 4 type of OSes, namely Windows, Mac,Linux, and Solaris. Apache - the Web server MySQL - Database Management System Php - the server side scripting languange PhpMyAdmin - a webbrowser database manager As the first step, you need to go the the download page of either XAMPP or WAMP to download the software: Get XAMPP or Get WAMP . If you are using Windows, you are probably curious which one of the two is better. Well, in my personal point of view, both of them are great for making a personal offline web server. But if you wanna the whole bundle, including a few stuffs that you may wanna use in the future such as a FTP client, than you may wanna consider XAMPP full package. But again, i just wanna stress it out, for this article, it makes no different which one of the two you choose. After you have downloaded the software (warning from God of Tech, you don't want to install both XAMPP and WAMP together, you need to choose only one) , install it. For XAMPP, there are two version you can choose from, either Lite or Full installation, personally i would suggest getting the full version, though some tools in it may not be useful for an offline webserver, but it will be undoubtly useful when you wanna use to update your dynamic web, online. If you encounter any problems, or you need assistance to install and use WAMP or XAMPP, get the detail documentation here : WAMP Help or XAMPP Help. When you are done installing the software, you may start testing or installing web softwares of your choice. It is highly recommended that you test any changes or ideas that you have for your web offline, it is better if you who are the one that found errors in your web rather than your visitor.

Intro To Dynamic Web Software

nospam@example.com (jumanjisama) — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 17:09:48 -0500

Some of you may want to have your own website or blog (like me :-)) , but you don't know anything or very little about web development. Well, let me tell you a secret, i am not good at all in designing or coding a web (but you may know that already). My knowledge in this area (or in any area in the matter of fact) is very very shallow. But thanks to a few groups of web developers and programmers out there, for developing web softwares,you and i don't need to be an expert in computers to have our own website. All you need is some patience to read instructions, courage to ask questions and and probably a friend who is good in computers (just trying to make a lame joke). The web softwares come in a few categories such as: weblog - aimed for people who wants to blog, optimized for blogging. cms - for people who want a website for their organisation or group. forum - a web for people to discuss variety of topics, if it is yours, you can decide the topics and there are other more types of web software, you can have a look of yourself at : OpenSourceCMS . This website lists all major web softwares out there which are opensource and free to use. They even have demos for each softwares for you to test. Actually, the web itself is build using a web software called Mambo. And if you are wondering what web software i am using : Serendipity What you need to know about this web softwares is that, they produce dynamic website, based on php and requires database to run. But it is not required for you to have knowledge about PHP or databases to use the web softwares. Normally, the sequence of installing the websoftwares is like below: 1. Download the web software 2. Unpack it (Using 7-zip or similar) 3. Upload it to your parent folder in your server (either offline or online) 4. Create a database (a really simple task) 5. Type in www.yourdomain.com/index.php (depends on where the index.php is placed) 6. Just follow the instruction given. But just as a friendly warning, it ain't as simple as i list it, you may encounter some problems and you may need to ask a few questions or help before your web software is successfully installed. I just don't wanna give any false hope that there actually exists something like 'Simple' in life. All things said, i personally don't think installing a web software will be a hard task, even for totally beginners :-)

Webplayer For You

nospam@example.com (jumanjisama) — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 09:12:54 -0500

From the creators of Winamp and Yahoo!Music Engine, build from Mozilla open source technology, a really cool web/audio player, i present you, SongBird !!!

Well, it is still on it's test flight, but i really do see a great potential for this piece of software. Apart from being open source and 'free', it has some cool features that i think make it distinctly unique from any other, more established, jukebox/audio player. For example, like the person has said in the video, you can browse the web with it, searching for mp3 from mp3 blogs, and play it right from the web, nice !!. I have tested it myself, and i have to admit, it is pretty impressive. In case you are wondering whether it uses much of your memory, it doesn't. At least i didn't notice any outrageous memory usage from the test run i did, only around 30MB, thats all. Why wait, go download and test it for yourself, but just as a reminder, this ain't the final version. They are still testing it and looking for bugs and probably wanna do some tweakings. But i don't think that is any reason for you not to try it out, so go get it: Get Songbird Just a requirement: Windows - Windows 2000, Windows 2003, Windows XP Minimum Hardware: - 733 MHz Pentium III CPU (Recommended: 1.5 GHz Pentium IV or comparable) - At least 128 MB of physical RAM (Recommended: 256 MB for Windows XP) - At least 40 MB of available space on your hard drive - 16 bit sound card (Recommended: 32 bit Sound Card) - Speakers or headphones Linux Please note that Linux distributors may provide packages for your distribution which have different requirements. Linux kernel - 2.2.14 or later with the following libraries or packages: - glibc 2.3.2 or later - XFree86-3.3.6 or later - gtk+2.0 or later - fontconfig (also known as xft) - libstdc++5 Songbird has been tested on Fedora Core 5 and Ubuntu Dapper 6.06. Minimum Hardware: - 233 MHz Intel Pentium II or AMD K6-III+ CPU (Recommended: 500 MHz or greater) - At least 64 MB of physical RAM (Recommended: 128 MB or greater) - At least 52 MB of available space on your hard drive - 16 bit sound card (Recommended: 32 bit sound card) - Speakers or headphones Mac - Mac OS X 10.4 or later Minimum Hardware: - Macintosh computer with an Intel x86 or a PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor - At least 256 MB of physical RAM - At least 61 MB of available space on your hard drive Performance requirements will scale to the size of the user's library.

Top 5 Reasons Why Serendipity Is Better

nospam@example.com (jumanjisama) — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 02:44:00 -0500

Serendipity is a php webblog software, just like Wordpress and Typepad. Many may not have heard about Serendipity, or it's abbreviation, s9y, but that doesn't mean it ain't cool. This blog is a testimony of the 'coolnest' of s9y, because i am no php expert and my html know how ain't that good either, but i still manage to pull up this somehow cool blog (it's what i think, i don't care what you think :)). So read on to know the top 5 reasons why s9y is better than other blogging software. Reason 1 - Active Forum s9y has a very active community. You can ask a question in the forum and expect an answer within a day (go and look at their forum yourself). People at the forum will answer your question no matter how dumb you think your question maybe, no one will judge. Heck, i myself asked a few silly question there, but the way the people answered it made me feel my question ain't-so-dumb after all. When you encounter any problems using s9y, just ask at the forum, someone will come and help Reason 2 - Plentiful of Plugins If you are planning to use s9y to create your own blog, you can be assured that there are more than enough of plugins to enhance your site. You don't need any knowledge of programming or php at all, just browse, click and you are set to go. Up to now, there are over 120 plugins available for you to choose from. Reason 3 - Smarty Templating OK, this maybe a bit technical, but for those who knows what Smarty templating is will agree with me that it is easy to make templates using it, and gladly s9y uses Smarty templating. For those who don't know Smarty templating, and hell never heard about it,no worries. Just look at it this way, all you need are a bit of creativity, basic know-how about html, and a really developed Cut and Paste skill, and you can start to make your own templates in no time. With Smarty templating, what you require is a frame or design for a normal html website, and just chunk in the codes, really short and clean codes. Reason 4 - Centralized Plugins and Template Repository All in one, that's the keyword of the 21st century, and that is what s9y has to offer to you. All the plugins and templates available for s9y are listed and available for you at Spartacus, s9y's own Plugin and Template repository. With this in mind, you don't have to Google or visit different websites to find the plugins or template that you want. Just visit s9y's Spartacus and you can find it all there. Reason 5 - Really Easy To Use You want to type a post, just do it in the administration suite, a non html editor is included (or if you want a html editor, there is one build in and 3 other different flavors to choose from). Just type and save, it will be publish right away for the world to see. Don't have to download and upload the plugins to use them, just use Spartacus. With Spartacus (also a name of a plugin,included in the installation pack), you just need to click on the plugin that you like in your administrator suite, and it will be downloaded and installed direct into your plugin's directory. Save a lot of your precious time. Wanna upload images, an image and media manager is already build in, just click, browse and upload, it will even make thumbnails for you, again save a lot of time and effort. There are more reasons why s9y is better and really cool webblog for beginners to try, but this is my top 5. Hopefully this entry may help you or some of the people out there who are still searching the right webblog software for them. :) Test s9y for yourself and findout if it is the one : Get s9y p/s: If you have your own reasons to use s9y which is not included in this list, just post it in your blog and inform me about it, i will add it to the list and link it back to you, credits included :)

Making A Web 2.0 Banner

nospam@example.com (jumanjisama) — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 15:53:21 -0500

This is just a simple tutorial on making a banner like mine (without the illustration image). I am not a pro in Photoshop, so you may change the setting as you see fit,but i still want to give it shot ;) Ok, lets begin by opening your photoshop, open a new file with width 600 pixel and height 250 pixel, just to have some space to play around. Type a text, type in anything, i choose to type 'Technovice' with text setting font: trebuchet ms bold 60 pix color:4378e0 , just like below, Then make a new layer, just make sure the new layer is above the text layer. After that, select the new layer that you just created hold the CTRL key and select the text layer, remember that the new layer must be selected first. Your text should then look something like below: Next, select the bucket tool in your Tool Pane, choose the color white and reduce the opacity to 30% and fill the new layer with it. Your text should look a bit fairer that it was before, now press CTRL + D, to remove the lines surrounding your text, select the elliptical marquee tool in your tool pane and make a elliptical shape like below by left clicking and dragging the tool. Now press the 'Delete' button on your keyboard Your product should look something like the one below: If you are satisfied with that, you may continue by selecting both the text and the new layer, the right click, on the column choose 'Group Into New Smart Object' , both of the layers will the join into one, select that layer and right click again, choose 'Duplicate Layer' from the option column. Now, while the duplicate layer is selected, go to 'Edit' > 'Transform' > 'Flip Vertical' Move the duplicated image until it looks something like below, you can move it using the arrow keys on your keyboard or the 'Move Tool' in your tool pane. Next,make another layer and choose the 'Gradient Tool' ,while the new layer is selected. You need to make sure that you are using the Foreground to Transparent setting, if you are not, you may change it by clicking the gradient selection at your tool bar The Gradient Editor will appear, now choose the setting for 'Foreground to Transparent', and please make sure that the foreground color is exactly the same as the one you want to use, in my tutorial, i am using white, which is the default. Apply the gradient to to the text,by clicking and dragging it upwards, you may do it a few times till you are satisfied with the result, i did twice. After you are done, use the 'Crop Tool' in your tool pane and make a rectangular just like below, it can be in any size, you can set it in the crop tool bar when using the tool. Press 'Enter'. The final product should look almost or similar like below (quality of my example images are a bit low, so they may differ that the actual)