HOW TO debug Javascript in Safari 3.1 on Windows

If you are targeting your web application for Safari users and also want to make sure your JavaScript code is cross-browser, how can you check for any JavaScript errors on that browser?

It can be done by activating the Develop menu (which is disabled by default) and picking the Show Error Console option (similar to Tools menu > Error Console option in Firefox).


To enable the Develop menu in the Menu bar, select Edit > Preferences and check the "Develop menu in menu bar" option in the Advanced tab.


As Safari for Windows and the iPhone’s mobile Safari use the WebKit engine, this browser debugging technique could be of use to developers testing ASP.NET applications for the iPhone on Safari for Windows.

Web Inspector is the Safari equivalent of Firebug FireFox Add-On & IE Developer Toolbar

The Show Network Timeline option shows the transfer time for each component of a downloaded web page.

Related links:
HOW TO make web pages "cross browser"
HOW TO easily verify your website design in different browsers/OSs

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Sound Search Results

The new YouTube feature (currently implemented on a small scale) of searching for videos based on content within it adds a new dimension to searching on the Web by finding even more meaningful information. Although it is not something pioneered or perfected by Google, it brings speech recognition to the limelight.

A few other interesting applications of speech recognition for public consumption that I have come across are -

Blinkx - a video search engine has 26 million hours of video.

Airtel, a popular mobile service provider in India, has a feature called 'SongCatcher' that lets you hold your mobile against any television, music system or radio playing your favorite song for 20 seconds & sets that as a "caller tune".

The Music Recognition Technology that enables this quick and easy access to music is based on an algorithm that is capable of identifying patterns in music by matching voice frequencies. The ‘DNA’ of the requested song is matched with the 25,000 songs available on Hello Tunes! and is accurate to the point of distinguishing between the music and the chatting of a DJ or a reporter.

The Microsoft Research Speech Group has developed speech recognition features like Speech Indexing and Query-By-Humming and Music Steering-

Enabling computers to be smart about speech and audio is a primary focus of the Speech Group. A core innovation that has come out of this is a search engine that can index the words spoken in recorded conversations whether they are from meetings, conference calls, voice mails, presentations, online lectures, or even video. Microsoft OneNote 2007, a part of Microsoft Office, is the first Microsoft product to include our speech-indexing technology to allow users to search for keywords spoken in recorded meetings and phone calls.

We have teamed up with Windows Live Mobile China to build a prototype service - call the service, hum a tune, get your favorite ringtones. "Music steering" means interactive music playlist generation through music content analysis, music recommendation, and music filtering. With a personal music collection of thousands of songs in our portable devices such as iPhone, Zune, and smart phones, selecting songs has become a challenge. Music steering provides a “smart shuffle” function: Pick a starting (seed) song, and the system will automatically build a playlist of similar songs. It can be refined by voting up/down and setting a “mood filter.” At the foundation is technology to analyze music content and automatically detect musical attributes (tags) from each song like genre, instruments, tonality, and tempo/rhythm.

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SQL Server 2005 - which edition to choose?

SQL Server 2005 has basically 6 editions -

• Enterprise Edition
• Standard Edition
• Workgroup Edition
• Developer Edition
• Compact Edition
• Express Edition

SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition and Evaluation Edition have the same feature set as the Enterprise Edition; the only difference between these editions is the licensing policies.

Did you know the Compact Edition is the smallest among all the editions & it is free like the Express Edition?

Developers can take informed decisions on the optimal edition to choose for a specific requirement by understanding the features and limitations of each.

Microsoft E-Learning is running a free Clinic - "Understanding the Differences Between Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Standard and Enterprise Editions" that exhaustively covers features in the Enterprise Edition.

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HOW TO make web pages "cross browser"

Hell is other browsers
(Hell is other people - Jean-Paul Sartre)

An oft repeated question on the online message-boards is how to make web pages render & behave the same in IE, Firefox and other popular browsers. This does not have an easy answer. The incompatibilities are due to the browser wars & the host of non-standard HTML & scripting features that the different browsers have introduced.

In my opinion, developers can build cross browser web pages by being aware of the standards that popular browsers commonly follow & sticking to them.

I have found these resources useful while building cross browser web pages -
HTML 4.01 / XHTML 1.0 Reference
CSS 2.0 Reference
QuirksMode.org Browser Compatibility Tables
JavaScript and Browser Objects Quick Reference
Migrate apps from Internet Explorer to Mozilla

Related links:
HOW TO easily verify your website design in different browsers/OSs

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HOW TO merge PDFs for free

To preserve web pages for offline use, it is best saved in PDF format for better readability and printing. And then again it is better to organize related PDFs into a single PDF rather than have all of them floating around.

I tried PDFSAM (0.7 stable release 1) recently and found it to be pretty decent although not slick. PDFSAM (PDF Split and Merge) is a free, open source utility to split and merge pdf files.

There is an option of downloading the whole source & building it or getting the application as a Win32 Installer (~4MB) or Zipped file. It requires JRE (~15.2MB) to run.

Silkodyssey PDF Merge (1.11MB) is yet another free tool to merge PDFs. It has been tested to be spyware free by ZDNet Asia. This tool however takes PDF files one at a time unlike PDFSAM which can accept multiple files in a folder all at once.

In both the tools the order of the files to be merged can be changed.

Related links:
HOW TO programmatically generate PDF files on the fly
HOW TO mimic Google Search/GMail's “View as HTML” feature to browse PDFs/Word docs online
HOW TO convert authenticated / protected pages to PDF

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A Brief History of the Web

Scores of smart folks have worked to make the Internet ubiquitous and the Web almost a necessary part of our daily lives.

To commemorate the 50th year anniversary of ARPA & 15th year of the first popular browser Mosaic, Vanity Fair has an interesting article on the history of the Web based on over 100 hours of interviews with several luminaries. (Thanks Scott Berkun)

Cerf & Kahn, inventors of TCP/IP (picture courtesy of Vanity Fair)

My tryst with the Internet started in 1997 when a friend helped me get a Rocketmail account. Browsing at cyber cafes' across India then on mostly dial-up connections was more than 60 times expensive that what it is today. Like for many others, the Internet has been a important part of my life and what an incredible decade it has been!

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