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My new article in Flip Media’s official blog

admin — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 19:02:52 +0000

I’ve published one more article in Flip Media‘s (Flip Media is the largest interactive agency in the Middle East) official blog. The earlier article was about optimizing websites for mobiles and this time, it’s about building optimized websites for tablet viewing. Please click on the link to read it in detail.

Taking websites to the tablet

Mobile website building

Mobile website building

admin — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 05:31:39 +0000

Sorry for not posting for a long time!

After building some mobile sites, wrote an article on mobile site building and it is published on Flip Media‘s official blog (Flip Media is the largest interactive agency in the Middle East and it is the company where I am working at).

The article tries to discuss a lot about mobile website building. You can read the article on Flip Media’s offcical blog. Please click the link below.

The right way to build a mobile site

My new article in Flip Media’s official blog

Iphone disappointments

admin — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:31:55 +0000

Seven biggest disappointments regarding Apple’s new iPhone 3G:

Cost

Doesn’t support Adobe’s Flash

No replaceable batteries

No video recording

No cut-and-paste

No multimedia messaging service

No voice dialling

Read full story in IBN Live

Tweaking Firefox

admin — Wed, 14 May 2008 12:10:26 +0000

Here are some very useful articles on how to tweak firefox preferences to fine-tune performance. This greatly helps for a faster Firefox.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Category:Tweaking_preferences
http://www.tweakfactor.com/articles/tweaks/firefoxtweak/4.html

Technorati Tags: firefox tweaks, browser tweak

Interesting Advertisement

admin — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 08:02:00 +0000

Hi, try this link. A good one. This time Cadbury made a very intersting ad.

I ve created a blogger

Opera – Now the world’s best browser is Free!

admin — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 20:17:00 +0000

With the new version 8.5 Opera becomes completely free. It is considered as the best browser in terms of features and performance. Only FireFox can match it with performace. It has lots of features builtin. A great download manager, email client, RSS feeder, Multi tab Browsing, Password manager, Zoom function, built in search option etc. Now it also supports voice browsing. Yes, you need to download a 10 MB update. The main installation package without java is only around 3.5 MB. So any dial up user can download it within half an hour. And it is very light on system resources also. So you can open 20 or thirty web pages simultaniously. A thing that is never possible with Internet Explorer using a low end system. The page rendering is very fast when compared to IE.

What should you do?

It is a must have browser if you ‘re using Internet Explorer. Even firefox users can try it out because it is simply the best browser in terms of features. If you ‘re already using an ad supported previous version of opera, then u are recommended to install it since it is having only a small download size. But don’t expect a lot more features. Enable voice browsing by downloading the voice packages if you want to surprise your friends.

Well, no software is perfect and opera is not an exception. One area where it should improve is the web page save feature. It saves every supported files in the root folder. It is very incovenient considering that IE saves supported files in a sub directory. It would be nice if Opera can do this in their next versions.

Two thumbs up for Opera!

My Rating: Must try software

Links: http://www.opera.com

Desktop Enhancement Tools

admin — Sat, 17 Sep 2005 20:19:00 +0000

There are lots of desktop enhancement tools available on the net. Some of them are free and some of them are not. Some so called desktop enhancement tools do no enhancements other than skinning your applications. Some of them changes wallpapers regurlary, shows calendars, clocks and other useful informations in the desktop. One example is Webshots. It is a very popular tool.
Do you need them? If performance is the only thing you want from your system then the answer is NO. But if you like some eye candy on your desktop then go for it.

My recommendations
I have used Style XP, Window Blinds and Talisman. Comparing them is ofcourse difficult. Style XP is the simplest one and some argue that it is also the faster. Well! I am also one of them. Using Style XP you can change desktop themes, icons, boot screens, cursors, explorer tool bars etc etc. And you can find a lot of them from websites.

Window Blinds is a skinning engine from Stardock. This company offers lots of desktop enchancement tools. WIndow FX, Icon changer etc are one of them. The latest offering is Desktop X. Desktop X do more than skinning. It is your desktop changer. You can place
objects instead of just links. An object can be a calculator, calendar etc. You can also download additional objects from their site.

Talisman is not just a skinning tool. It is more similar to Desktop X than Style XP or Window Blinds. It offers a complete replacement of the standard explorer shell. (A shell is the interface when you start Windows. It is Explorer by default.) It may not be recommended for basic users. I would have strongly recommended this for power users if it was free. You can only try 1 month. (Well! – you know what i mean. right? )

In my opinion, Style XP is the best if you only want some eye candy desktop themes. You can find a huge number of themes, icon packs, visual styles, boot screens etc. Desktop X is also a must try software. I recommend Talisman for advanced users who wants full control of their desktop.
Links
Style XP – www.tgtsoft.com (download size around 16 MB)Window Blinds – www.stardock.com (download size around 6 MB)Talisman – www.lighttek.com/talisman.htm (download size aroud 6 MB)

Desktop Enhancement Tools

admin — Sat, 17 Sep 2005 20:16:00 +0000

My recommendations
I have used Style XP, Window Blinds and Talisman. Comparing them is ofcourse difficult.
Style XP is the simplest one and some argue that it is also the faster. Well! I am also one
of them. Using Style XP you can change desktop themes, icons, boot screens, cursors,
explorer tool bars etc etc. And you can find a lot of them from websites.
Window Blinds is a skinning engine from Stardock. This company offers lots of desktop
enchancement tools. WIndow FX, Icon changer etc are one of them. The latest offering is
Desktop X. Desktop X do more than skinning. It is your desktop changer. You can place
objects instead of just links. An object can be a calculator, calendar etc. You can also download additional objects from their site.
Talisman is not just a skinning tool. It is more similar to Desktop X than Style XP or Window Blinds. It offers a complete replacement of the standard explorer shell. (A shell is the interface when you start Windows. It is Explorer by default.) It may not be recommended for basic users. I would have strongly recommended this for power users if it was free. You can only try 1 month. (Well! – you know what i mean. right? )
In my opinion, Style XP is the best if you only want some eye candy desktop themes. You can find a huge number of themes, icon packs, visual styles, boot screens etc. Desktop X is also a must try software. I recommend Talisman for advanced users who wants full control of their desktop.
Links
Style XP – www.tgtsoft.com (download size around 16 MB)Window Blinds – www.stardock.com (download size around 6 MB)Talisman – www.lighttek.com/talisman.htm (download size aroud 6 MB)

The Browser War

admin — Fri, 05 Aug 2005 17:43:00 +0000

There are mainly three browsers for the Windows platform

Microsoft Internet Explorer
Mozilla Firefox
Opera

Though there are other browsers most of them use either the Internet Explorer engine or Mozilla. So we only need to talk about these three.

Internet Explorer

All of us are familiar with the Microsoft product. It is installed with Windows. But many hackers proved that Internet Explorer is buggy and therefore not very safe to use. Microsoft released Service Pack2 and claims that all bugs are fixed.

Advantages

Most of the web pages and web sites are optimized for Internet Explorer (IE).
Comes bundled with the Microsoft OS. User don’t need to go through another installation
Most of the users are familiar with the interface and therefore it is easy to use. (Well! There are also people who believes the other way)
Many plug-ins such as Flash, Cool 360, VRML etc are available
HTML page saving is efficient. (It creates a subdirectory for dependency files)

Disadvantages

Many security holes are found in Internet Explorer without Service Pack2
No Tabbed browsing. That is each page is opened in separate windows. (Some skinned browsers based on IE engine supports tabbed browsing. Eg: NeoPlanet)
When compared to other browsers, it is not very feature rich.
The page rendering is also slow when compared to the other two browsers
The system will be unstable if you open many browser windows.
It is crime to modify Internet Explorer in anyway because it is proprietary software – Not Open Source
Losing popularity

Future

It is a Microsoft product. So it will stay here
Internet Explorer 7 promises new features which also includes Tabbed Browsing and News Reader

Mozilla Firefox

This open source browser is gaining astonishing popularity. The web site claims more than 75 millions of downloads so far. This is really encouraging to the open source community. It is undoubtedly one of the fastest browsers. There are many plug-ins written for Firefox including tabbed browsing.

Advantages

Fast rendering of pages
Many plug-ins and add on features are available such as download managers, tabbed browsing, popup blockers etc.
More safe than IE
You are welcome to modify the software because it is from the Open Source Community

Disadvantages

Some plug-ins that are available for IE are not available for Firefox.
You need to install it manually (Installation is very easy and smooth)

Future

It is here to stay!
The future versions may have many more features bundled

Opera

They call it as the ‘fastest browser in the planet’. May be opposed by the Firefox fans. But it is surely the most feature rich browser. With a small download (Only 5 MB without Java Runtimes) it will change the way you browse.

Advantages

The most feature rich browser
Tabbed browsing. You can open as many child windows as you like. The system will be stable.
Fast rendering (may come 2nd to firefox)
Comes bundled with a download manager, news reader, email client, Password wanding etc
Supports voice browsing (With opera 8.0 and above and you also need to download another installation)
It is very easy to use once you become familiar with the interface
You can search in many search engines
You can control the display of images without going to the settings page
Built in popup control
You can save sessions.
The most popular browser for mobiles

Disadvantages

It is not completely free. The free version shows advertisements. (you can select the type of ads you want to receive)
HTML page saving is not very efficient. (Everything will be saved in the selected folder )
You need to install it manually.
Not Open source

Future

It is staying here for a long period and has a good reputation among users and will remain as one of the best browsers.
It will definitely add more revolutionary features as they have done previously

Final Verdict

Based on speed: Firefox > Opera > IE (i.e Firefox is best and Opera comes second in a very slight margin )

Based on Features: Opera > Firefox > IE (i.e Opera wins here without any doubt)

What you should do?

You must change to either Mozilla Firefox or Opera (The ad supported version is also better than IE).

Links:

“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”

This article is written by me and the views expressed are solely mine. You may send your feedback or queries to hafees.s@gmail.com

Enable Malayalam in your Windows XP with Service Pack2

admin — Sat, 30 Jul 2005 18:25:00 +0000

Though XP with service pack 2 supports Malayalam no one is interested, may be because they ‘re not aware of it.

Well! If you enable it, you can do the following.

Type filenames and folder names in Malayalam.
You can type in Malayalam without installing any third party software
You can build applications with Malayalam support ( eg: Menus in Malayalam etc)
You can use the onscreen keyboard to type in Malayalam.
You can chat in Malayalam

and more…

This article is written by me and the views expressed are solely mine. You may send your feedback or queries to hafees.s@gmail.com