HOW TO delete an email address from GMail auto-complete list without deleting Contact

Supposedly friendly features like spell-check & auto-completion can be a bane sometimes. Imagine if your boss & best friend share the same name & you excitedly send a very private message to the boss instead of the friend because GMail cleverly fills the email address while you type a few characters of the name. If such a scenario rings a bell, here is one option to prevent GMail from supplying names you don't want to see in the email auto-complete list that appears while composing a mail.

The easy way is to delete the contact. But if you want to prevent an email address from showing up in GMail auto-complete list when you try names in the To:, CC: or BCC: fields, then you can consider moving the email address from the Email field in the form for that Contact to the Notes field.
click on image to enlarge

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HOW TO compare HTML5 features supported by versions 8, 9 & 10 of IE

This page on the Browserscope website lets you choose versions of the same or different browsers & see how they stack up in supporting HTML5 features. Click on the "Compare UAs" link on that page, select User Agents you want to compare & then hit the Compare button.

I chose versions 8, 9 & 10 of Internet Explorer to see what's new with respect to HTML5 in IE9 & IE 10
click to enlarge image

You can copy the table data to Excel & transpose the columns to rows to view the tabular data vertically as a list (in Excel2010, click on Paste dropdown in Ribbon & select Transpose).

So here is the list of HTML5 supported features in IE9 as detected by Browserscope by utilizing Modernizer 2.0.4 -
  1. audio:m4a 
  2. audio:mp3 
  3. backgroundsize 
  4. borderradius 
  5. boxshadow 
  6. canvas 
  7. canvastext 
  8. csstransforms 
  9. draganddrop 
  10. fontface 
  11. generatedcontent 
  12. geolocation 
  13. hashchange 
  14. hsla 
  15. inlinesvg 
  16. localstorage 
  17. multiplebgs 
  18. opacity 
  19. postmessage 
  20. rgba 
  21. sessionstorage 
  22. smil 
  23. svg 
  24. svgclippaths 
  25. video:h264 
 IE10 additionally supports the following HTML5 features -
  1. applicationcache 
  2. cssanimations 
  3. csscolumns 
  4. cssgradients 
  5. csstransforms3d 
  6. csstransitions 
  7. history 
  8. indexeddb 
  9. input:autofocus 
  10. input:list 
  11. input:max 
  12. input:min 
  13. input:multiple 
  14. input:pattern 
  15. input:placeholder 
  16. input:required 
  17. input:step 
  18. inputtypes:email 
  19. inputtypes:number 
  20. inputtypes:range 
  21. inputtypes:search 
  22. inputtypes:tel 
  23. inputtypes:url 
  24. textshadow 
  25. websockets 
  26. webworkers 
Also see:
Comparison of layout engines (HTML5)
HTML5 compatibility across major mobile and tablet browsers

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Scott Allen's 10 favorite C# rules for developing software

Scott Allen's 10 favorite C# rules for developing software


From Scott Allen's C# Fundamentals Part 2 course on Pluralsight -

Rule #10: Avoid Regions - as they are typically used to hide ugly code or classes that've exploded in size or responsibility. Think if you should break the regions into seperate classes
Rule #9: Use exceptions for errors..instead of status code or booleans...but not for control flow
Rule #8: Avoid boolean parameters
Rule #7: Avoid too many parameters - beyond 4, consider grouping
Rule #6: Warnings are errors - Go to a Project's Properties and in the Build tab of the dialog box that opens up, change "Treat warnings as errors" to All from the default None
Rule #5: Encapsulate complex expressions - Instant recognition is good
Rule #4: Try to avoid multiple exits - have just one
Rule #3: Try to avoid comments - A meaningful method name is more effective than comments. Triple slash comments in VS are ok as they help in documentation of an API. Other developers can see your comments through Intellisense when they reference your assembly.
Rule #2: Keep methods short - general rule of thumb: 1 to 10 lines
Rule #1: Keep classes small

+ The foundation for most C# coding standards is Microsoft's "Design Guidelines for Developing Class Libraries"
+ ReSharper VS Plugin & StyleCop can help you enforce naming conventions
+ Names contain meaning & adding meaning to code is what readability is all about - use meanigful names
+ Embedding type in the name of a variable is not a good idea especially for primitive types. Name should indicate what an variable or object can do & what it represents.
+ How to improve readability of your code - read other people's code to figure what is good & what is bad. Be introspective.
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Looking for internship or job? Check Microsoft's Students to Business program

Looking for internship or job? Check Microsoft's Students to Business program

Microsoft's Students to Business website connects graduating students with  Microsoft, Microsoft Partners and its customers. This program is open to graduating students in India. The enrollment process is simple and does not require any fees.

Microsoft's DreamSpark program gives students Microsoft professional tools at no charge.

For students passionate about software development, there are also other avenues where they can publish their original projects or contribute to ongoing open-source projects and get noticed. Here is a list of popular project hosting sites -

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Trivia: Smiley & "Frowny" Emoticons

Trivia: Smiley & "Frowny" Emoticons

In its Events That Shaped The Wired World section, Wired magazine credits Scott Fahlman with first using the Smiley :-) & "Frowny" :-( emoticons in electronic messages.

On Sept. 19th, 1982, he had proposed on the computer-science department bulletin board at Carnegie Mellon University that the smiley be used as a joke marker & "frowny" to mark things that are NOT jokes.

Scott came up with the idea after reading “lengthy diatribes” from people on the message board who failed to get the joke or the sarcasm in a particular post.


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HOW TO block images/image ads originating from a specific domain in Firefox 4 & above

Firefox 3.x used to have an option to block pesky images that were not part of the context of page that you were viewing - like image ads. You just had to right click on the image, & select "Block images from {domain serving the image}" to never see any images from that domain again. That context menu option is missing from Firefox 4  & above.

It turns out that it is still there but there are some additional steps to reach it. Right click on the image on the page you are viewing in Firefox & from the context menu, you have to select View Image Info & click on the checkbox "Block images from {site name}".
Thanks RalphB


Also see:
HOW TO block IFRAME based ads
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