PriteshGupta.com » Web 2.0

Make CSS Cross Browser Compatible in Seconds

Pritesh Gupta — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 18:39:24 +0000

Nettuts+ has launched a new amazing website Prefixr using which you can make your CSS3 Cross-Browser Compatible in Seconds, now you can write the whole stylesheet keeping in mind just one engine/web browser(like webkit or moz) and let this website make it compatible with all other engines/web browsers by adding their respective tags. Prefixr will filter through the applicable CSS3 properties and dynamically update them.

The website is up at http://prefixr.com/. It also given an option to compress the CSS and provides API if you want to execute it directly from your text editor.

Please remember this website is still in Alpha stages and has some bugs like no support for properties like “border-top-left-radius“.

Get Shareaholic

6 Websites for Animated AJAX Loading GIF Images

Pritesh Gupta — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 06:14:00 +0000

Lately I was making a template which had a working AJAX Contact Form, at first I struggled a little for the loading image, but then I realized there are couple of websites where we can actually get(and generate) amazing loading GIF images easily according to our specifications, most of these sites also provide a wide range of images to chose from. Thus I am sharing some of those websites, hope this is helpful.

Preloaders.net

Ajaxload.info

Chimply

Web Script Lab

Load Info

AJAX Activity indicators

Get Shareaholic

Design Kindle: Awesome Website for Free Web Design Files

Pritesh Gupta — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 02:04:35 +0000

Design Kindle is a community driven web design resources website which offers premium quality web design files like graphics, vectors, icons, textures, etc for absolutely free with no required membership. Isn’t this awesome? Thats not all, all the stuff here is royalty free and we are free to use them in our personal and commercial projects, without the necessity of linking back to them.You can visit the website at http://www.designkindle.com/. I personally liked their free graphics collections a lot, they are totally amazing and very useful in creating websites.

If you know any other website like this, feel free to share.

Get Shareaholic

Best Websites for Stock Free Photos

Pritesh Gupta — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 06:54:44 +0000

We quite often need to use images for our websites or blogs and for getting legit images we always end up buying them, and spend a lot of $. But there are many websites on Internet which offer free Royalty Free Photos. I sharing some of the best websites which offer Free Stock Photos. Please drop by if you know any other too.

stock.xchng

Getty Images

FreeDigitalPhotos.net

morgueFile

Corbis Images

everystockphoto

Public Domain Pictures

Stockvault.net

Jupiterimages

freerangestock.com

Stock Images on deviantART

Flickr

Dreamstime’s Free Stock Images and Photos

Fotolia’s Free Stock Images and Photos

iStockphoto’s Free Stock Images and Photos

Creative Commons Search

Get Shareaholic

Typography Resources

Pritesh Gupta — Sun, 29 May 2011 08:46:01 +0000

You must have already seen many websites with fancy fonts and advanced CSS text effects. Web Fonts and Web Typography has totally evolved in last 2 years. Using Web Typography now you don’t need to have images for “cool” text effects and it has replaced heavy designs. Now you just need to code a little for a beautiful text line rather than creating its image on Photoshop. And with Web Fonts libraries, using typographies by designers and developers has been made even easier. In this article I will share few good Web Fonts Directory and links to Typography resources.

Finding Web Fonts

With Web Font libraries it has become very easier for designers and developers to find opensource fonts and use them in their websites. There are many good websites to find Web Fonts, I am including “Free” in parenthesis for sites which provide opensource fonts. Some of them are:

Google Web Fonts (Free)

Adobe Web Fonts

Open Font Library (Free)

Typekit

WebINK

Font Squirrel (Free)

Fonts Live

Fontdeck

Fonts.com Web Fonts

Fontspring

exljbris Font Foundry (Free)

Webtype

CSS3 Text Effects

There are already many tutorials written for various kinds of advanced CSSTtext Effects, you can visit here to see a list of 22 Advanced CSS Text Effects. Please be careful that these text effects might not be compatible with all web browsers. Though all web browsers support typographies very efficiently, and the WOFF is supported by all the major web browsers lately(Firefox 3.6 and later, Google Chrome 6.0 and later, Opera 11.10 and later and Internet Explorer 9).

Further Reading: There is a great article on Steven Snell’s Blog for Web Typography resources, dont forget to read it here.

Get Shareaholic

Benefits of Using Own Domain Email on Google Apps Gmail

Pritesh Gupta — Mon, 16 May 2011 15:31:59 +0000

Your Email ID is a valuable marketing tool for you, and Email ID of your own domain tells that you have an online presence, where people can find you, etc. Its also a tool to promote your company, as you are promoting your domain by that. Your Email ID will promote your domain rather than Gmail or Yahoo. You can even see here why to go for own domain Email ID. You can have own domain Email ID using your hosting company’s web mail or buy Email space at some hosting company. But according to me, Google Apps Gmail is provides the best own domain email solutions, and above all, its free(Standard package). Below are few of the many reasons why you should use Google Apps Gmail for your Email purposes.

Reliability/Uptime

Our web servers keep experiencing downs and crashes, and it is a pain when you are on a shared server or low-memory VPS. Imagine you were using your hosting company’s web mail, and had to receive an important email that time when your website/server was down. It will simply bounce. By using Google Apps Gmail you overcome this, as when you use Google Apps all the associated data will be stored on Google Data centers which runs your Email services effortlessly and gives 99.9% uptime.

Collaboration

Domain users can share their calendar from any computer, see when people are available, send invitations, manage RSVPs, do real time editing on documents, spreadsheets & presentations. Also access Instant Messaging (IM)(Using Gtalk) from any computer.

Space

If you have a small dedicated or VPS Hosting, then you probably get small amount of hard drive space, and Email particularly takes a lot of space especially if you have many users. Going with Google Apps Email helps here again, as it provides at least 7 GB of storage on Email accounts and this also increases your server’s efficiency as the load is not on your server for the Email services.

Security

Your SMTP server might get flooded with Spam or SQL hacks might steal credentials of your users. You overcome these also because of Google Apps. You can even disable the email server that came with your hosting account, that is the IMAP/POP3 server and the SMTP. This saves memory too.

Conclusion

There are many more reasons for you to go with Google Apps Gmail, but if you need customized Email service for your company, like custom layout and branding on your users mailboxes then Google Apps Gmail might not be a great option as it isn’t really very flexible. If you need to use for personal purposes or branding doesnt matters, then Google Apps it is! Even if you have a huge organization you can still go with Google Apps as they have multiple editions to suit your needs, plus you get all the Google Apps benefits.

Get Shareaholic

Tackle Productivity lost due to Social Media using Chrome / Firefox Extension

Pritesh Gupta — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 20:47:35 +0000

You spend a lot of time on Internet without being productive at all, all thanks to those Social Media websites. Hours pass by doing not so productive work like updating your Facebook or Twitter, reading mails, watering plants on FarmVille, etc. You forget what you came to do.

Tackling it

If you are not happy with this, then you can take control of it by using an extension on your Web Browser. There are many time management desktop softwares available which you can easily get by searching on Internet. But here I am including the browser extensions, there are quite a few of these too, I am sharing two of them below, one is for Chrome and another is for Firefox.

Chrome: If you are on Google Chrome, there is this extension StayFocusd.
You can allot time for particular website on per day basis using this extension. Like, you allot one hour for Facebook, this means you can not spend more than an hour on Facebook in total in a day, and you chose how you spend it throughout the day.

Firefox: If you are a Firefox user, you can use LeechBlock. You can specify which sites to block, and when to block them. Like blocking facebook.com from 1pm to 3pm or so. You can specify up to six sets of sites to block, with different times and days for each set.

Get Shareaholic

Facebook Shortcuts

Pritesh Gupta — Fri, 21 May 2010 15:39:13 +0000

Lately I was surfing facebook.com and found that facebook has some default keyboard shortcuts which work cross browser. Thus, I am sharing few of the shortcuts which I found.

Alt+1: This key combination takes you to your Facebook home page, No matter where you are in facebook.com
Alt+2: This combination takes you to your profile, Again from anywhere in the facebook.com
Alt+3: This combination opens up the pending friend requests dialog.
Alt+4: By pressing this one you can see your Inbox(i.e. Messages).
Alt+5: You can see your Notifications by pressing this combo.
Alt+6: Pressing this takes you to the “My Account” where you can change your name and other details.
Alt+7: Pressing this takes you to the “Privacy Settings” where you can update/change your privacy settings.
Alt+8: This one takes you to the facebook fan page.
Alt+9: Takes you to the Terms and Conditions page(Statement of Rights and Responsibilities) which is bigger than a constitution of a country.
Alt+0: Takes you to the “Help Center” page. Where you can browse your applications and see facebook features.
E: takes you to events
F: takes you to friends
N: takes you to notifications
R: takes you to confirm requests

Also, Facebook added a new emoticon this must be in context to the number 42. Read its wiki for details and significance. You can get this in chat by typing :42:

UPDATE: Few more(Thanks to tudy).

Get Shareaholic

Posterous vs. Tumblr

Pritesh Gupta — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 16:24:15 +0000

Posterous and Tumblr are fit for content which is too small for a blog and too big for Twitter. I have started using these two services quite lately. These 2 sites support all kind of rich media, Have longer entries as well as short entries which get auto posted to Twitter. Tumblr provides a hub for storing/sharing text, photo, quote, link, chat, audio and video(via a bookmarklet right in your browser). Where as Posterous provides a place for blogging, lifestreaming, photo sharing, and video and audio posting. Tumblr and Posterous are less than a Blog, Thus they classify as Microblogs. (Though Posterous can be used as full fledged Blog too.)

Posting

The posting in Posterous is quite easier, One just needs to drop a mail at post@posterous.com and it gets posted to his/her Posterous. Moreover, There’s also a WYSIWYG Web Interface which does fine. And Tumblr also has an Email posting option and SMS posting option. You can create also create an audio post in Tumblr by calling a toll-free number and leaving a voicemail message. Both these sites have bookmarklets to choose thus easing the usage of its users. There’s no clear winner here, But Posterous is slightly more feasible than Tumblr in posting due to its Email posting feature.

Integrations

Tumblr connects to your Facebook and Twitter and posts your Tumblog stuff there. Tumblr also has an auto-import feature, Which imports your RSS feeds and Diggs and shows on your Tumblr. Where as Posterous has a edge over integrations, It connects to your Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Youtube and few other sites. This means if you post a video to your posterous it gets posted to your posterous as well as your Youtube. Also, If you post a picture to your Posterous it gets posted to your Flickr and Facebook too. You can also import your Blogs to posterous and also export posterous. Moreover, If you have connected your many profiles on posterous but you just want it to post to facebook, You can do it by sending the email at facebook@posterous.com. Also, If you are in a mood of sending it to Twitter and Facebook, You can do it by sending the mail at facebook+twitter@posterous.com. Here, Posterous is the clear winner, Because of the number of accounts you can integrate with. But, The auto-import feature of Tumblr also can’t be underestimated.

Customization

One can do a lot with the looks of both. These sites already have a gallery to chose themes from. Moreover, One can also install or create his/her own theme(Using xHTML and CSS). Here, I think both the sites provide with equal customization.

Commenting

Tumblr doesn’t provides a Comments option on the posts by default. But, Its already there in Posterous. Though you can always install Disqus in you Tumblr, Thus enabling people to comment on your posts. It has been tested against Spam too as it is used in many popular blogs. Here again Posterous takes over Tumblr by providing comment system by default.

Conclusion

Both of these sites are decent on features, Though I felt posterous is slightly better as its upcoming. But at the end personal preference will win out.

Get Shareaholic

Perfect way to Subscribe to RSS

Pritesh Gupta — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 18:54:17 +0000

Trying to catch up a Blog(Or Blogs) which don’t provide with an Email Subscription option OR provide a Weekly dispatch only. Well, I encountered the same problem with Ars Technica and some other tech blogs, Ars Technica is an awesome Blog but it just provides with a Weekly email dispatch only and coming to its site everyday just to read it is a big pain. For everyone out there who encounter the same problem in various other Blogs, Here is the solution. There’s a Web Site which converts the RSS or Atom feed into Email and mails you regularly and works as efficiently as the Email Subscription thing. The site is http://www.feedmyinbox.com. I use it to follow many sites which don’t provide with Email Subscription option.

PS: Don’t subscribe too much, It will just help in increasing your Unread Emails count

// Get these from http://developers.facebook.com
$api_key = ‘xxx’;
$secret = ‘xxx’;

// Names and links
$app_name = “Application name”;
$app_url = “app-url”; // Assumes application is at http://apps.facebook.com/app-url/
$invite_href = “invite.php”; // Rename this as needed

require_once ‘facebook.php’;

$facebook = new Facebook($api_key, $secret);
$facebook->require_frame();
$user = $facebook->require_login();

if(isset($_POST["ids"])) {
echo “

Thank you for inviting “.sizeof($_POST["ids"]).” of your friends on ”.$app_name.”.

\n”;
echo “

Click here to return to “.$app_name.”.

”;
} else {
// Retrieve array of friends who’ve already authorized the app.
$fql = ‘SELECT uid FROM user WHERE uid IN (SELECT uid2 FROM friend WHERE uid1=’.$user.’) AND is_app_user = 1′;
$_friends = $facebook->api_client->fql_query($fql);

// Extract the user ID’s returned in the FQL request into a new array.
$friends = array();
if (is_array($_friends) && count($_friends)) {
foreach ($_friends as $friend) {
$friends[] = $friend['uid'];
}
}

// Convert the array of friends into a comma-delimeted string.
$friends = implode(‘,’, $friends);

// Prepare the invitation text that all invited users will receive.
$content =
“ has started using ”.$app_name.” and thought it’s so cool even you should try it out!\n”.
“get_add_url().”\” label=\”Put “.$app_name.” on your profile\”/>”;

action=””
method=”post”
type=””
content=””>

actiontext=”Here are your friends who don’t have yet. Invite whoever you want -it’s free!”
exclude_ids=”” />

}

Get Shareaholic