2011 September | nSathees

Sep 12

Send free SMS from your Gmail account.

YES that is very possible and I have tried it out. Just login to your Gmail account and click on send SMS. Add the number and save it. Noe you could send SMS for free and receive reply there as well.

Sep 12

Web Developers Browser

While I was trouble shooting some of the problems asked in the forums I came to ask why these people can’t find the answer for them self. Compared to what they have archived the question looks tiny from my perspective.

I just wanted to find out what is wrong there and spend good couple of hours on that. Well not exactly couple of hours, but a whole night. the answer was simple. They are not using the right tools. why not? perhaps no one thought them.

At this point I am obliged to say what are the right tools. If they do search for it then they might land here. Well if they are lucky.

Every Browser has a set of developers tools. For internet Explorer you have to download and install is separately. Do a Google search to find out how! The Google Chrome comes with the developers tool. Just right click on the page where you got the problem and select “Inspect Element”. The rest is obvious. In FireFox you have to add the developers tool via Tools -> add-ons. Search for “FireBug” and select to install. Same as Google Chrome, right click on the page where you have problem and select “Inspect Element”. The rest obvious. Just familiarize your-self with the information you get there including DOM explorer.

Since I have used Google Chrome and Firefox during my development I can say the FireFox is the best for developers. OK I admit that the Google Chrome is the best for Browsers as it is the fastest. Many times I was able to find the mistake with FireFox which I couldn’t with Chrome.

IMPORTANT: Since Internet Explorer hold a good portion of the market share don’t ignore to test your site on IE too.

The market shares in August 2011 is FireFox 40.6%, Google Chrome 30.3%, IE 22.4%, Safari 3.8% and the Opera 2.3%

Another thing is, if you are developing a website or a LAMP solution the PHP is a must as the static website time is behind us.

To build dynamic websites you got to use a server side scripting language. Are you thinking of ASP, you can just hit your back button and read some other write-ups. I am not a M$ guy. I have given up them for a good reason. If you use them for offline, I can understand that. (You can’t teach a new trick to an old dog!) But stop them spoiling the online world. If you are shooting through the roof because I said “old dog”, first I did not mean word by word. Second why don’t you give the Ubuntu a try. You will love it! I’ll compare Ubuntu (Linux) and Windows in another write-up.

So, go with PHP or Python. I’ll go with PHP.

First of all don’t edit your code directly on the Live server. It’s so easy to setup a development server just on your desktop computer. No you don’t need the top notch PC for that! Just what you have is more than enough.

Get XAMPP – it’s free and got all you need in a package. Download is and execute it. If you wish to install in a different drive than your Windows directory, then select it during the installation.

Once done Start the XAMPP control center and start the Apache web server. Now put your files under c:\xampp\htdocs\ (Select your installation. If you have installed in D:, then d:\xampp\htdocs. Just browse to see where your files are . . .)

Now you can edit them there and check them in your Firefox under http://localhost/

So that is how you work in web development environment. But how do you figure it out why the heading is a bit off or the footer is not align in the middle?

Hey, don’t ask me about Internet Explorer’s developers tool. I know they have one and I have looked into that a long time back. But I don’t agree with Microsoft as they deviate from W3C. (The global body that governs the WWW standard)

The Google chrome is fast eating up Internet Explorer’s pie and I wish either they go out of the market or follow the rules. Hey I don’t want to write extra lines of codes because Mr. Gates is stubborn and not playing the game according to the rules. Hope you are with me!