Vivek live and kickin'

Following up on my previous post . Blogger changed the navbar on top from a div to an iframe. To make it translucent now use this code. <style> #navbar-iframe { opacity: 0; filter: alpha(opacity=50); } #navbar-iframe:hover { opacity: .65; filter: alpha(opacity=75); } </style > It will not remove the bar completely. It will only be visible on a mouseover event. It works in Firefox, Opera 9 and Safari. On IE it will show a translucent navbar. Add this code in the head tag of your blogger template . Technorati Tags: blogger , navbar

Finally the day to be nostalgic is here, as yet another year is added to my life. This year was exciting and there were many ups and downs in the last 12 months. Had planned to do a lot but guess it will take another year to complete those things. I am not sure where I am heading and what to look forward but am just trying to remain optimistic for this year. I hope to finally start a images + video blog this year. It sounds exciting, just random photos and video's I capture every day. They will be up on this blog. I also plan to have a new template for this blog. More images and videos to make the blog exciting, lets see how far can I go with it. Hopefully some images and photos tonight. Technorati Tags: birthday , blue , nostalgic

If you have Adobe Reader 7 or earlier make sure you turn off the option "Display PDF in browser". Follow these three simple steps to turn it off. Start Adobe Reader Goto Edit > Preferences  or press Ctrl + "K" Select Internet in Categories Make sure that the Display PDF in browser is unchecked. Make sure you follow these steps as soon as possible or someone could be going through your personal information online. I have developed a proof of concept that can use the flaws in Adobe Reader to get information by only visiting a webpage. But I don't think I will release it online as it makes little sense to release it. It could be used to gain way too much private information from your browser. Make sure you turn it off before you end up loosing a lot of personal information. Technorati Tags: adobe , pdf , reader , security

UPDATE: It has been fixed now, this hack will no longer work. The next time you use gmail make sure you logout or its quite possible that someone else is going through your contact list. Have a look at this example http://vivekjishtu.googlepages.com/contactlist.html If you see a page with all your contacts, so can the spammers. The contact list can be used by spammers to harvest all the email addresses in your list. Though I really like JSON but its just these few security issues that makes AJAX a better option atleast in terms of being secure. Technorati Tags: gmail , javascript , json , ajax

I really did not realise that its been two months since I last posted anything. A lot has happened in the past two months, actually quite a lot has happened and I guess I never seem to get the time to update this blog. But then again like I've said in the last two posts, I will try and post on a regular basis. I had developed a  SimpleXML library in JavaScript  but never got the time to post a link on this blog. Its hosted on  http://code.google.com . I made it like a month back but due to work I've not been able to release it. Its a very important piece of software that I have developed but since there is no documentation its really hard to release it. Anyhow if you've used SimpleXML in php its the exact same thing for JavaScript. You can view the code or download it using SVN. There are three simple functions. simplexml_import_dom(dom); simplexml_load_string(string); simplexml_load_file(filename, callback); simplexml_import_dom(dom) : takes a dom eleme...

Yesterday I was watching click on bbcworld  and saw this story about google the monster . Here is how Mr. Google looks according to the " The Google Book ". This book was published in 1913. Technorati Tags: google , monster

After wasting the complete day to figure out how to set the visual styles in a usercontrol hosted on internet explorer. I finally figured out how to set the style of the controls on the user controls to match the current theme. System.Windows.Forms.Application.EnableVisualStyles() <meta http-equiv="MSThemeCompatible" content="Yes" /> After finishing off with one task I am stuck on the next major hurdle and this one seems to be the tougher one. I see no real way to call JavaScript from the user control. I don't plan to use the COM methods to call JavaScript as that would make the usercontrol untrustworthy. Lets see if there is some way of calling JavaScript from the UserControl the managed way.

The past few months have simply gone by and I have not done much. I had to develop a few projects now that's more or less on hold. I guess I need a surge of energy to restart work. But then again its just a matter of time. Since the last time I posted time has more or less come to a standstill. I have a few more ideas in my mind and the old ideas are on hold. Lets see when any of my ideas see the light of day. In my previous entries I had written about dotbeta. I am still hopeful that it will be completed once I restart work on it. I had written an article Speed up your AJAX based webapps , and the good part is that most hotshot Web 2.0 webapps are using the caching techniques I had written about. Though its not called prontoCache as I was thinking about. But then again I saw quite a few copycat articles to the one I had written within a week I wrote that article. There are a couple of other things I have learned while thinking and designing dotbeta, and I guess I will write abo...

Whenever we as programmers design any application we tend to think like programmers and forget a few important things. I am not talking of very high end applications which go through a design phase for months. But I am talking about applications that are packaged in a few months time. Why I wanted to write about this was 'cause I could see a marked difference the way programmers and non-programmers perceive things. Lets me take this CAPTCHA as an example. Whenever I type it down I would make sure I would match the case of the alphabet. This is normal practice if you've programmed in Java/C++ or for that matter most languages which are case sensitive. Recently I had a friend over who was trying to type in a CAPTCHA, and since he is not a programmer he simply typed in without thinking whether it was upper or lower case, and it worked. That is when I realized that had I designed such a system, at least in the very first version the CAPTCHA would be case sensitive, without reali...

MSN and Yahoo! messenger had signed up a deal to allow messages across their networks. And finally it seems like its really possible to do it. I had read about it on digg around a week ago, but at that time it was possible to do it using Yahoo! Messenger for mac. But now it is working for the windows version of Yahoo! Messenger. Here is a screenshot of the messages across the two networks. As of now the speed seems to be a problem. It takes more than a minute to get a message across. But then again its just a beta and its like the first week, so these problems would exist in any case. I am waiting for the day when I can finally uninstall one of the IM's. I have always liked Yahoo! Messenger but Windows Live Messenger matches in most features now. So now its more of a personal choice rather than the number of features that each IM client provides. Technorati Tags: yahoo , msn , im

The past month has been like a roller coaster ride. Have been to many places met a few people but did not work much. Work wise I should have done a lot but have kept a lot of things on hold. Hopefully I am back again from my long slumber and I will try and keep this blog updated with more information as and when I do or find something new. Tried out the new google spreadsheet program; it seems like a good option for me as I hate installing any application which I would never use. But as I get some data from clients in XLS format it's a good place for me to view it and even edit it. Plus the good part is that you can share the spreadsheet with your friends or clients. I tried to open a few XLS files and it works really great. For most of my work this program seems more than enough. Also tried out google analytics and have installed it on this blog and http://viamatic.com/ and so far I have got really interesting results of what kind of people visit this blog. And the funny part i...

Khanag - (Himachal Pradesh) Originally uploaded by Vivek Jishtu . During this trip we went to Khanag. Its a nice secluded place with a temple on the top. Its a nice open space surrounded by a forest from all over. Its one of the few places where you can really relax. The other two places that are somewhat like this have to be Triund and Jaw Bhagh near Hatu peak. I hope to visit that place again someday. I had intially planned to go there 10 years back but could not go. Finally this time went there and it was really worth it.

Its been a very long time since I posted here. I have been out on a trip and after that busy with the projects. There is nothing new that I have explored in the last few days except for a feature/bug in IE that took a day to figure out. If you use an image instead of a submit button. input type="image" name="button1" value="test".. instead of input type="submit" name="button2" value="test".. You will not get the name/value pair on the server in case of IE. Since I mostly use firefox I missed it out completely. Once all the images were changed it was tested on IE and it did not work. After trying out for hours and searching high and low on the internet I finally figure out that incase of an image IE will not send the name/value pair. Instead it will send out button1.x and button1.y, which are the coordinates where the user clicked. So I had to change the complete code to check for button1_x and so on. It was a real pain gettin...

UPDATE : I guess most people are not getting what this technique does in the first place. It sets the expiry of the JavaScript to years and not days. Once the JavaScript file is downloaded it is never downloaded again, ofcourse unless you force it by removing the file in the cache. If you visit the site often the JavaScript will not be removed from the cache. If you make any changes to the JavaScript you only need to change the version of the file and the new file will be downloaded. The older file is automatically removed from the cache when it is no longer requested. And just to add one more point this can be done on the WebServer itself without using this technique, but that has its own drawbacks. To further speed up the download you can gzip the JavaScript. If you have developed an AJAX based web application you would know how many JavaScript files are required per webpage. If you use the prototype or dojo toolkit library you would know how big those JavaScript files can t...

If you've ever used C/C++, you can include more code by simply using #include and that header file gets included. The same thing goes for PHP, if you divide your program into multiple files you can include the code using include/include_once or require/require_once . If you are looking for something similar in JavaScript, you won't find any way of including more code. This is when I came up with this code, though later on while searching on the net I could see samples using a similar approach. But in any case this might help you to include code in your JavaScript files. function include(fileUrl) { var script = document.createElement("script"); var head = document.getElementsByTagName('head').item(0); script.src = fileUrl; head.appendChild(script); } To include a file in your JS code you can use include("<url of js>") . If you look at the code, we are creating a new <script> tag in the <head> section of the document. ...

If you want you can use the template used on this blog on your own blog you are free to use it. Goto template and cut and paste this code in that section. You would need to change the links and the images. If you use this template just link back to this blog. There is a link in the footer, please let it remain there. Other than that you are free to modify whatever you want. Download the code for the template. I hope somebody uses it. If you do don't forget to leave a comment and a link back to your blog.

I guess I can get my webhosting cheap if I get people to signup for dreamhost . I really like them and after a very stupid webhost "GoDaddy", dreamhost comes as a real surprise. They offer WebDAV, Shell accounts, 1 TB bandwidth and nearly every other thing the other hosts provide. The best thing that they provide is a shell account. A shell account really gives you a lot of power to do things you can only imagine with the other hosts. They don't have the CPanel as the admin panel. They use their own setup. If you are a developer you will really like the features they provide. Dreamhost is not really for dummies but for a people who know the importance of shell/cvs/subversion while developing. I have not seen any webhost other than dreamhost which provides all three in the regular packages. If that gets you excited you can get a rebate of $90 on the $120/year hosting plan by using the promo code VIVEK . So you get the yearly package for $30 with all the features plus mo...

Again this is not a tech post, its something I was trying to figure out since I saw the advert on TV. And finally I guess I got my answer on CNBC, "I guess" 'cause I don't think the host was too sure but anyhow, Pepsi is not really launching a new channel all they are doing is to promote Pepsi while you drink TV. So nothing earth shattering there, but lets see how that advert turns out to be. The other advert on these days is the Marinda advert, "Mouth ka sahi use karo" or something like that. That advert is pathetic in every possible sense. It is one of the worst adverts I have seen on TV. It just shows the actor like he is an arrogant idiot too full of himself. I don't mean that the actor is arrogant but the advert just shows it that way. With all these adverts I cannot forget the new Coke advert with Ashwariya Rai, I really don't get that advert. Atleast that advert is not targeted towards me or people whome I know. It looks like a cheap advert d...

Lately I have been really busy with work. I guess a lot of things have piled up and it seems like they will never be completed. I just hope I can take out a little time soon. Its been a while since I blogged and also I have a few articles that I was going to post here, most of them are no where completion. I guess one of these days I will have to get up and stop being lazy and complete those articles. Its been like a month since I went to Slashdot and about a week since I last visited digg. Currently I feel disconnected :) from the world, without knowing whats the latest that is hapenning around the tech world. Lets hope I can soon find some time to atleast visit these sites.

This is just something I thought I had to write about. I really liked the advert of Red Bull energy drink, with the special reference to the Red Bull gives your wings. I had to try it out, so I shelled out Rs. 75 for one can while a normal can of soft drink costs Rs. 20+. I tried it out I did not get any wings but yeh! I did have to run to the toilet as i got an upset tummy. I kept waiting for the wings to appear but nothing happend no extra surge of energy. Its a nice way to promote your drink but I don't plan to drink it again even if was for Rs. 15 a can. It was not the best tasting drink I have had so far.