Archive for August 2010

Web apps in less than 10 KB

There have been over 350+ submissions to the 10K Apart contest conducted by Microsoft & Event Apart that has a prize money of over $10K. The important rule was that participants should build a web app whose total file size including images, scripts & markup, shouldn’t...

ASP.NET

Large sites that run on ASP.NET

ASP.NET powers websites that have millions of page views per day -Tesco Dell Costco National Health Service, UK HSN.comMatch.comMySpace.com; detailsSites using ASP.NET MVC -StackOverflow.com; detailsMonster.comDimecasts.netMarketWatch work in progress..Also see: How LARGE websites manage...

VS.NET

What's new in Visual Studio 2010

Michael Otey's tour of Visual Studio 2010 in the September issue of SQL Server magazine informs about interesting new changes. Excerpts -...Windows Presentation Foundation–based IDE... after you convert a Visual Studio 2008 project to Visual Studio 2010, you’ll no longer be able to open the project...

India

What is the difference between ccTLD suffixes like "co.in" & just ".in"?

A friend asked me this question & this is my attempt at answering it.A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is an Internet top-level domain (like .com, .net, .org) generally used or reserved for a country, a sovereign state, or a dependent territory.Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is...

Google, SearchEngines, Tips, Trivia

Some lesser known Google tricks

Crowdsourced answers to questions on "Hidden features of product/service X" on the StackOverflow family of sites, make for interesting reading. I picked a few tips & trivia I didn't know earlier, from a similar thread on Google Search -1. The calculator feature in Google understands...

chart, Websites

Display global trends with Heat Map & Slider

I liked the way Google Insights for Search graphically shows country-wise trends for keywords you search on with a Heat Map & Slider. The slider below the heat map neatly provides the interactivity. The below images show the web search interest for the keyword "swine flu" in May-August 2010 &...

Browsers, Mobile

Comparison of Mobile Browsers

Peter-Paul Koch, better known as PPK, has helped web developers worldwide with his browser compatibility tables on QuirksMode.org. He has since been researching on mobile browsers. If you are interested in mobile web development, his articles can be of great utility.He has rated the following...

CSS, HOWTO, HTML, Javascript

My web pages work in browser X but fail in browser Y. What to do next?

It doesn't take long for rookie Web developers to realize that the browser world is as unfair as the world we live in as browsers do not all comply with standards to the same degree. As a result, they are aghast when they find that their painstakingly-built web pages fail in some browsers that they...

Bing, Search Engines

Bing + Wolfram|Alpha = Cool

Google may have been the first to do maths calculations, currency conversions & the like which are impressive but what Bing & Wolfram Alpha are doing is astounding! You get more precise answers quickly. Sample the results for these search queries -What is the population of India compared...

HOWTO

HOW TO add hashtags while auto-publishing posts to Twitter

Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. They're like tags on Flickr, only added inline to your post. You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag.So if you are interested in listening to what the twitterati...

Javascript, jQuery

Popular JavaScript apps dissected

A good way to be a better programmer is by studying & analyzing source code of others. Here is a work-in-progress compilation of popular JavaScript apps or libraries dissected by generous folks -Google SuggestGoogle Analytics script; also see Steve Souders analysis from a performance perspectiveGoogle...

HTML/CSS, Javascript

Google Font API offers free custom fonts

Did you know, Google's new Font API lets you display text on your web page with custom fonts served from their server farm? (Thanks Chris)There are currently 19 fonts, some with multiple variations, in the Google Font Directory. Their site informs that all fonts in the directory are available...

Learning Resources, Sharepoint, WCF, WF, WPF

Free Learning Resources on WPF, WCF, WF, XAML, Sharepoint 2010

The following material is available for free on Microsoft eLearning -1. Collection 6261: Developing Rich Experiences using Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 & Visual Studio 2008 consists of 3 2-hour premium clinics -Clinic 6262: Introducing Windows Workflow Foundation using .Net Framework 3.5 & Visual...

Microsoft

How they develop software at Microsoft

Some Microsoft bloggers ocassionally share their group's software development practices & they make for interesting reading -Ivo Manolov's (Test Manager of the Windows Presentation Foundation team) notes on the techniques used to manage development of the WPF 4 and Visual...

Search Engines

Wolfram Alpha can probably finish your homework

Does it take you more than a few minutes to precisely calculate your age exactly to the month & day?There are a number of online tools to find your precise age to the nearest day but Wolfram Alpha the “computational knowledge engine” not only calculates this when you just enter the date but also...

HOWTO, Mobile, Performance

HOW TO make your website mobile-friendly

Gartner research predicts that by 2013, mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide. Bruce Lawson offers 3 strategies in a Dev Opera article to "mobilise" a web site to work across all devices i.e. not just mobiles but also alternative browsing devices like games consoles...

WP7

Free Windows Phone 7 Learning Resources

Now that Windows Phone 7 has hit the technical preview milestone, there are even more resources for developers to learn from. Here's a compilation of free learning material on WP7 Development -Books -Programming Windows Phone 7 - Microsoft Press has announced that Charles Petzold’s...

Websites

Fun facts about domain names

The right-most label in a domain name is referred to as its "top-level domain" (TLD). For example, in the domain name www.example.com, the top-level domain is com While wiki surfing this Sunday, I came across some fun facts about domain names -Most TLDs with three or more characters are referred to...

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