Xtremax - Web Design

09 Sep, 2009

Revival of the Blog

Posted by: Mr Otter In: php

Well, our blog had been down for some time after some meddling by me I guess. Did not have time to fix it till today… Just could not stand the site of the error message anymore….

Some other minor stuff that I kind of figured out today was this date time mismatch on my windows machine when I do some PHP date(d-M-y) stuff.  I realised that the php.ini actually sets your timezone.. and if it kind of mismatches what you have set in your computer… you will get the mismatch.

Wanted to find out about that quite some time ago.. but alas… it a world so busy…  its really getting hard to find the time to deeply understand things…

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20 Jul, 2009

Scribd

Posted by: Tabby Cat In: test category

How to publish pdf files online.

Xtremax Company Profile 2009

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01 Jul, 2009

Opera Unite

Posted by: Mr Otter In: technology

The idea is cool.. but the wordings of the video… well, I liked it so much as to type out everything…

We start our story with the invention of the modern day computer…

 

Over the years, computers grew in numbers and the next natural step in their evolution is to connect them together.. to share things.

 

And as these little networks grew into huge networks, some computers gain more power than the rest and call themselves servers.

 

Today millions of people are connected online at the mercy of middlemen who control the servers of the world.

 

Its okay.. but we want more…

 

We want our computers to be first class citizen on the web, allowing for collaboration, online gatherings and sharing of information that does not require servers belong to strangers.

 

If we can achieve that, a whole new whole of possibilities opens up on the web. 

 

At opera, we want to put you on the web.. so that you can interact directly with who you want.. how you want.

 

Welcome to Opera Unite.    The web you know… just re-invented.

 

Intro Video


Instructions

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05 Apr, 2009

Windows Explorer on Eclipse

Posted by: Mr Otter In: eclipse

If you are an avid programmer on Eclipse, there will be many times, when you will need to access a folder on eclipse via the traditional Windows Explorer.  I have been searching for a plugin like this for no avail for a long, long, long time….

Finally, it has arrived… and it works like magic.  Basically with this plugin, we can just highlight the folder and trigger the Windows Explorer screen by using a shortcut key -> Ctrl + Alt + E.  (Just in case you do not know.. the Microsoft Key + E is the traditional way of triggering a default Windows Explorer.. so I find this new arrangement very intuitive… )

Windows Explorer Plugin:  http://startexplorer.sourceforge.net/update

image

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Microsoft has launched Silverlight and as any other product it is gaining fame for itself. So, let’s review if it really has something new and advance to offer other than the old and most used flash. I have taken a course to compare both silverlight and flash side by side for each feature and functionality. I have tried to cover couple of features, if left any please feel free to point it out.

  • Silver light doesn’t support Linux, so can’t be use on other OS other than Windows and Mac. On the other hand flash had no such limitations
  • Silverlight usually run with file format WMV which makes it no good with vast majority of video streaming webs, like you tube itself. Flash facilitates more formats than WMV but to run these formats flash codex must be installed on the client machine.

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03 Apr, 2009

How Plugins are Created in Joomla

Posted by: Tweety In: Joomla

Plugins enable us to modify system functionality without the need to alter existing code. For example, plugins can be used to alter content before it is displayed, extend search functionality, or implement a custom authentication mechanism.

In first step you have to create a sand box means creat an xml manifest file which contain all information of your plugin.

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03 Apr, 2009

Usability Testing; what it is all about?

Posted by: Mr Otter In: Tech Talk| Web 2.0| Web Design

Since the web is becoming the most powerful marketing and research tool for products and projects respectively. The Web Design needs to be more interactive. However, the web is not always good, they are black shaded or complex region which are not very must convenient for the general user to go through. In all this a new term came, the usability testing. Usability means how better we can use something for the people. It is measure of tendency on how people are going to interact with the application keeping its purpose in mind. On general Usability testing measures the usability of a system.

Why Usability Testing?

On the web usability is the most important feature. If a website fails to compile with the usability, it will lose traffic and audience. If navigation is difficult user will leave, if the home page take too much time to load the user will get irritated. Similarly if user cannot find his information and is lost, he will not appreciate the site anyway. Users, never read sitemaps or even manuals to get the information they need. Especially where there is 20 million websites over the internet.

If you are planning to do business online, than you need to care about usability even more, because if user cannot find the product and an easy way to check out the probably is very high that he will leave the site and you can lose a potential customer. Losing each user or time he wastes on your website looking for the right information is all what is causing you extra resource and money that is of no use.  Usability is something that has to be carrying on with the project all along the development process. You cannot just start thinking about usability at the final stage, this can cost you heavy bucks and at times to do a major change in the whole project, to cover one aspect of usability.

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01 Apr, 2009

Component Review; MyBlog and its Modules

Posted by: Mr Otter In: Joomla

Since Blogging is very much into trend now, so I thought to review a Joomla Component, which can help with integrating a blog within your Joomla based Web site. This useful component is MyBlog. In this review, I will try to cover the basic functions and attributes along with 5 modules which can be used as a source to get some decent information to be a sophisticated summary for your blog activities. Like in earlier posts, I will follow the same patters with couple of screen shots to explain it better.

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Recently, I was dumbfounded when during a presentation, an IT Consultant asked me if Google Analytics (GA) will actually work in their environment which is protected by a barrage of firewalls.  Now wanting to give a wrong answer (even though I was pretty confident that it was yes…) I told her that I will check it out….

The answer is a resounding yes!

On second thought, it should be obvious.  GA works on the http protocol and generally very, very few intranets block the http port.  But even if the http port is blocked (for in-bound traffic such that the server cannot access the internet, but the internet can access the server…), it would not have mattered….

This is because the GA codes are executed by the clients and not the server.. and these clients must definitely have internet access to see a internet web page….  Just took a peek at the net traffic in Firebug and sure enough.. we see google sneakily simulate a blank image download to track the statistics…

Google Analytics

Isn’t this exactly what we do tot track email open rates?

 

Google Analytics

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29 Mar, 2009

Loading JQuery Dynamically

Posted by: Mr Otter In: jquery

I was always downloading the jquery javascript and playing with its functions until I realised that hey… it can be done dynamically by google.  Basically, it is a 2 step process:

Step 1:  get the jsapi javascript from google

<script src="http://www.google.com/jsapi"></script>

Step 2:  load the jquery library. this is necessary as google has a lot of other libraries…

google.load("jquery", "1");

For a complete source code sample… see below:

 

<script src="http://www.google.com/jsapi"></script>
<script>
  // Load jQuery
  google.load("jquery", "1");

  google.setOnLoadCallback(function() {     
      $("#test").wrap("<b></b>");     
    });
</script>

<div id=’test’>just testing</div>

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Xtremax Web Design Portfolio

    Opera Estate Primary SchoolNational Association of Travel Agents SingaporeFUMIYAMA CORPORATIONEngineering Education PortalBOON HI-TECH SUPERSTORESingapore Tourism Board

About Xtremax

This is all about a group of hard-core web developers who go about rambling about their daily efforts to make the internet world a better and more accessible place.