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Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Google before the Internet

It’s fun to imagine what Google would have been like before the Internet.

Google Queries in 1960:

google_circa_1960_src

Years later when color printing and mail system improved:

google

In the past people used to call their local library help desk to get answers to their questions but now It’s only a click away. Truly a well deserved improvement.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Make sure, It is secure

email1

Take a look at the above email, which I received a couple of days ago. It's from my bank's online account services stating that I may have made some changes to my account and they need to verify it. Also, the message header looks authenticated

image

So, now they want me to click on the link (provided in this email) and log on to the online account service and verify those changes. I clicked on the link :

http://www.gloriagales.com/chaseonline.chase.com/index.html

the site appeared and it's exactly the same. Except two things

i) The web address looks fishy to me as it is suppose to https://www.chase.com/Chase.html instead of the above.

ii) The web server is not secure, Are you wondering how I know it?. Closely compare both the web addresses and most of the times its exactly the same expect the little ‘s’ which comes right after the http part. Always make sure this ’s’ is present whenever you are sending your confidential information over the internet. This ‘s’ means the web server is secure and all information between you and the server is encrypted .

Most of all it is easy to remember instead of comparing the web address.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Some Precautions before coding JavaScript

Before you add JavaScript to your site you should make sure that it will be compatible with all your clients browsers. That’s hard as you are not aware who may access your site from any part of world using any browser version which may be or may not be compatible with JavaScript. Here are two tips which turns out to be really helpful for me.

1. Always use “<!-- -->” tags inside the Script tags. This will turn your scripting language code into comments if and only if client browser is not compatible with JavaScript code. This will eventually hide displaying the code on the client’s browser if scripting is disabled. Here is how to use it

<script language="JAVASCRIPT" type="text/javascript"> <!-- hide code from old browsers that doesn’t support JavaScript

JavaScript code statements

--> </script>

2. Use no scripts tags for worst case scenario. The contents of this tag will visible only if the scripting is disabled. Here it is how to use it :

<NOSCRIPT> Your browser understands JavaScript. However, the feature is turned off. Please turn it on to enjoy the full capability of this page. </NOSCRIPT>

Hope this will help next time you are coding JavaScript.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Flash Errors

A couple of days ago I was trying to install an application which requires the latest version of flash on the machine. I am pretty sure that I have the latest version installed as most of the internet applications require it now a day. To my surprise it errors out stating the application requires the latest version of flash in order to work properly. I went to Flash Official website and updated my machine. After updating I started installation again and got the same results. Then I tried to uninstall the current flash player and install a fresh copy from their site again but all in vain. Nothing helped me.

Follow these steps to solve it:

  1. Navigate to the folder "C:\WINDOWS\system32\Macromed\Flash\". In this folder you will see a file named "Flash9f.ocx" or "Flash9*.ocx" (Here * stands for any letters, numbers or sign that comes after 9)
  2. Make copy of the "Flash9f.ocx" or "Flash9*.ocx" file in the same folder as the original (copy the original, then paste the copied file into the same folder).
  3. Delete your previous copy of "Flash.ocx".
  4. Rename the newly made copy to "Flash.ocx".

That's all you are done. This is the most easy and quick solution to this problem. Actually whenever we update our copy of flash in the background it will be placed in folder (C:\WINDOWS\system32\Macromed\Flash) under the name "Flash9*.ocx" and the file with name "Flash.ocx" will still carries the same older version. So when we are installing newer application that requires latest version of flash it will look for "Flash.ocx" file, which still contains the older version, so this generates this error.

Hope this post will help you with your Flash problem.