Brain Storm

HTML5 Boilerplate – A rock-solid default for HTML5 awesome just turn a year old

Prashant Jadhav — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 18:08:13 +0000

HTML5 Boilerplate is the professional badass’s base HTML/CSS/JS template for a fast, robust and future-proof site. Boilerplate is not a framework, nor does it prescribe any philosophy of development, it’s just got some tricks to get your project off the ground quickly and right-footed.

H5BP was launched on August 10th, 2010 and just one year later, it reached ver 2.0

Why it is awesome?

Cross-browser compatible
HTML5 ready. Use the new tags with certainty.
Optimal caching and compression rules for grade-A performance
Best practice site configuration defaults
Mobile browser optimizations
Progressive enhancement graceful degradation
IE specific classes for maximum cross-browser control
Handy .no-js and .js classes to style based on capability

One can find more info on HTML5 Boilerplate at html5boilerplate.com

Mobile Web applications & HTML 5

Prashant Jadhav — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 21:03:40 +0000

Mobile Web applications are crucial part of Mobile Internet as the number of mobile internet users are increasing. With frequent updates like iPhone 4, Android based mobile and tablets, mobile Internet usages will be growing in n x speed. I am using n x as can’t even imaging its value at this moment.

This is the hardware part…. With new buzz like HTML 5, even the software part is also having tremendous growth. During my regular GOOGLING, I cam across a nice series of articles about creating mobile web applications with HTML 5.

Note

Don’t just go through the article or even the easy way out, download the “Article source code” available at the end of each article.

Instead go through each and every word of not only just article but also comments (wherever posted). As well as “Resources” mentioned at the end of the article.

Server Header Responses Explained

Prashant Jadhav — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 16:50:26 +0000

Whenever we visit a web page, our computer will request data from a server using the HTTP protocol. Right before the requested page is received and rendered in our browser, the web server that hosts the web page will return the HTTP header that has the status code. The status code provides information about the condition of the requested resource. If everything’s OK, a normal web page gets the status code as 200. Of course, we don’t tend to see 200 responses – it’s only when there’s a problem that we see some of the other server header responses, like a 404 Not Found.

Origin of HTTP Status Code
As a part of the HTTP 0.9 specification, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) established HTTP status codes in 1992. Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the web and the first web browser in 1990, defined the status codes.

Server Headers Responses Explained

200:OK – Standard response for successful requests
301:Moved Permanently – Resource permanently moved to a different URL
302:Found – Requested resource was found under a different URL but the client should continue to use the original URL
304:Not Modified – Resource not modified since the last request
404:Bad Request – Syntax of the request not understood by the server (server itself was found, but that the server was not able to retrieve the request page)
500:Internal Server Error – Request unsuccessful because of an unexpected condition encountered by the server
503:Service Unavailable – Request unsuccessful to the server being down or overloaded

For Infographic on the same, click here.

Remote controlled hyperlinks

Prashant Jadhav — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 16:19:29 +0000

Sounds very interesting… remote controlled hyperlinks… isn’t it? Let’s see a working example of the same first. Check the side bar of suzannahaworth.com.

All done via simple CSS. You can find details of this method here.

Free Birthday Messages

Prashant Jadhav — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 18:27:30 +0000

Are you tried of sending same “Many many happy returns of the day” type greeting messages to your near and dear ones on their birthday? Then you should try following site. It certainly solve your problem of composing / finding new birthday greeting message every time.

Free Birthday Messages is a collection of birthday greeting messages and as name suggest its free…. So next time you need to send a greeting message to any of your friends / family members, give it a short. It’s worth it.

UNetbootin

Prashant Jadhav — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 17:35:44 +0000

Ever think of having a portable OS with very useful tools to do various restoration activities if your system went down? Do you like to buid such portable rescue disk by yourself? Then you should try UNetbootin.

It allows you to create bootable Live USB drives for various linux distro. It runs on Windows, linux and Mac as well.

UNetbootin can also be used to load various system utilities, including:

A partition manager like Parted Magic
A system repair, backup and recovery tool like SystemRescueCD
A boot utility like Super Grub Disk
Antivirus tools like Dr.Web Antivirus, F-Secure Rescue CD, and Kaspersky Rescue Disk
Network analysis and penetration testing tool like Backtrack
Utility to recover Windows passwords – Ophcrack
Utility to reset Windows passwords and edit the registry – NTPasswd
Gujin, a graphical bootloader that can also be used to boot various operating systems and media
FreeDOS, which can run BIOS flash and other legacy DOS utilities

Those who want to create their own rescue disk should try it once.

For all foodies…..

Prashant Jadhav — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 18:11:32 +0000

Whether you like to eat out or have no options but to eat out… following web site is a light-house for all of you (including myself).

menucards.in is a collection of scan copies of menucards from various restaurants across India. A nice guide to find out what is available at different places, at what rate, other features of restaurant like AC, non-AC, provide home delivery, options for modes of payment, etc.

I have been using this site for quite some time. Really helpful to find new restaurants near-by my residence.

webGL Hardware Accleration in Firefox 4

Prashant Jadhav — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 18:40:51 +0000

While Firefox 4 handles CSS 3D and Canvas 2D pages like the FishIE demo without issue, on a lot of computers it fails to load webGL-enabled pages with its default install. So when you to go a page like the webGL Aquarium demo, either you get no Fish at all or an error message saying that you need to use a webGL-enabled browser. Fortunately, there’s an easy fix.

To make sure webGL always works in Firefox, type about:config in the address bar and hit enter. Type “webgl” into the Filter box and then double click on the webgl.force-enabled option to change its value from false to true.

Note

[] Make a backup of your prefs.js file before you start editing. Then, if something goes wrong, you can restore it by copying it over the corrupt file.

[] If you can’t restore via a backup prefs.js file, you can exit Firefox and issue the command firefox -safe-mode to bring up the Firefox Safe Mode screen. Then, just select Reset All User Preferences To Firefox Defaults. This will restore all user preferences to their default values.

How to Disable Location Aware Browsing in Firefox 4

Prashant Jadhav — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 18:38:39 +0000

Websites that use location-aware browsing will ask where you are in order to bring you more relevant information, or to save you time while searching. Let’s say you’re looking for a pizza restaurant in your area. A website will be able to ask you to share your location so that simply searching for “pizza” will bring you the answers you need… no further information or extra typing required.

Or, if you’re mapping out directions to get somewhere, the website will know where you’re starting from so all you have to do is tell it where you want to go.

By default, Firefox has location aware browsing enabled, allowing sites to request your geographical location and display content accordingly. If you do not want your physical location set to any site, you easily disable this functionality by following these steps.

1. Open Firefox.

2. Go to the address bar and input about:config.

3. Press Enter on your keyboard.

4. When the This might void your warrenty! message appears, simply click the I’ll be careful, I promise! button.

5. Locate and then double-click geo.enabled.

6. The value will change from true to false.

7. Restart your browser.

Note

[] Make a backup of your prefs.js file before you start editing. Then, if something goes wrong, you can restore it by copying it over the corrupt file.

Web Developer Resources

Prashant Jadhav — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 17:56:46 +0000

Being a web developer, I mostly prefer online resources as quick reference. I am sure most of us do the same.
For easy availability of any online resource, there are many options available, right from browser bookmarks to social bookmarks.

Following site is another addition in collabarating such online resources and storing them at one page itself. One can set this page as home page of their browser or instead of N number of browser bookmarks, just one bookmarks with all resources in it.

Check it out at devlisting.com