flickr rss url

When adding the FLICKR widget to WORDPRESS, it asked me FLICKR RSS URL. I thought i can get it directly from my flickr profile page.

Huh, things are never so straight enough. I had to look around for that. The place where you can find it out is:

1) Click on the “YOUR PHOTO STREAM” link at the bottom.

2) Click the RSS image at the bottom  (Orange colored square icon) beside the text Subscribe to chintu_victor’s photostream”.

3) It will redirect you to a page. The url of this new page is the RSS url.

Go ahead, and rock your BLOGS with your FLickr creativity. Add my reference somewhere if possible

forgot password

In continuation to my last post regarding “Good practices for username” design, this post explains/questions the wierd design of wordpress “forgot-password” design.

THe process to obtain a new password, if u’ve forgotten one in WORDPRESS is as follows:

1) Click the FORGOT_PASSWORD link.

2) Enter USER_NAME or EMAIL_ADDRESS.

3) You will be sent a mail from WORDPRESS> Clicking on the link in the mail will again send you a mail, which has the new password, which is determined by the WORDPRESS automatically.

4) You have to login with that new password and then change to the one that you desire.

Usually, other websites will send you a link, clicking on it will take you to the PASSWORD_EDIT page.

But he flow WORDPRESS follows makes the user login with the automated password once and then change to his custom password, rather than letting him do it directly.

WHY IS WORDPRESS INSISTING ON THE USER TO LOGIN WITH THE AUTOMATED PASSWORD AND THEN CHANGE TO CUSTOM is the question.

All i see in this is to double check that the authorized user is accessing it. As far as i see this, its a bit round-about flow for the simple and the flow that users are already used to. This doesnot make much of a difference. But i feel, features like REGISTER and FORGOT_PASSWORD are better left in their usual flow.

Am open for comments and discussions.

twitter bug

1) Updating my twitter, i have seen that the number_of_updates count on the right changes when a new update is added, but it does not change when one of the update is removed.

2) I dont realize why is twitter UNDO (especially for update delete) is not supported. I do appreciate the simplicity (let super-natural featires go to hell), but i would like to see the BASIC UNDO option available. Beaing a developer myself, looking at the stuff that TWITTER offers, it might not be that tough to implement it.

Waiting for anybody to explain how could TWITTER miss them. Am i missing some basic logic.

Contact lists project.

Well late yesterday night, i actually wanted to post an article to my graduation mates. Unfortunately, im off-connection with them for almost an year. So i dont have all their contacts. So i planned to create a google-doc, send to to few of them with whom i have contacts, and ask them to forward it and let each one update it.

But then i looked around and found no proper web-application, that would allow you to create contact lists and share it.So, then i thought, im gonna create one such application.

The uses being:

1) Manage contact lists external to any email client.

2) Share them with friends.(THey can read/update).

3) Use them while emailing or any other such application.

The deatures being:

1) Create/edit/update conntacts lists.

2) Collaborate it with friends.

3) Import from clients like yahoo/facebook/gmail.

4) Export as CSV (simple/yahoo/gmail/…)

5) Export it to E-mail clients like Yahoo/Gmail.

6) Have an API, so that existing widgets like Sharethis and Addthis can communicate with this app.

So, any suggestions or any others interested to participate with me in this project are welcome.

job suggestion

Well, hi guys. I finally got some kinda relief w.r.t job.

Now i got 2 new job offers.

1) Pune – TRUE_SPARROW – WEB_DEVELOPER 33K/month(3.9lakh) – (Ruby on Rails + Open Social).

2) Mysore – KAVERI_TECH – WEB_DEVELOPER 30K/month(3.6lakh) – (Ruby on Rails).

My evaluation mainly is on the following criteria:

1) Do not worry about savings, i have a long life for that.

2) Think about technology offering.

3) Get back to the web-based project that i started and left it hanging for ever.

4) Do not worry much about leisure and pleasures.

Basing on the above criteria, i thought, i shall join MYSORE, as its a client based web-development company, and it will have slightly less work pressure than PUNE which is a product based one and it will be trashing and smashing work from day-1. Joining in a less pressure job will give me time to get back to my old web-based project that i started/prepared docs, but never coded it. Also, i can do some free-lancing stuff, if my  project   does not fetch me anything.

Summary,

MYSORE = less pressure + old_project/free lancing + close to friends – latest-open-social-technology.

PUNE = high pressure + latest-open-social-technology – close to friends – old_project/free lancing.

So, i need some inputs fro you guys. Ill open a poll here, please respond to it, while spit in your comments in the comments section of this blog.

Thanks a lot.

design idea: username and forgot-password.

Summary first, as i think this post got a slightly exhaustive, …..

A good user-name/forgot-password design has:

1) Email address as user-name.

2) Allow user-name/email address in the forgot-password section, if 1) is not implemented.

Now if you have time to read this slightly exhaustive stuff, thanks and go ahead….

Today i got some leisure time, so i planned to update few of my blogs, delicious and other fancy sites which i have registered with but forget about them very soon.  And to my surprise, i hardly remember a password and to add to it, i neither remember the user-names. Unfortunately i deleted the registration-success mails, which almost every website these days send. I found myself absolutely strangled. Then, like every user, i went to the FORGOT-PASSWORD section. This is where the story beings.

Some of the sites ask you either your user-name/email-address to be entered there. But some ask only user-name. The problem with the latter design is that,  what if i forget the user-name also. If the user is asked to register with a user-name for each site,  he may end up with 15-20 distinct user-names by the time he registers with say 50 sites, satya_123, satya_capy, satya_ruby….it gets much worse like satya_ruby_satya….man i hate this.  These are impossible to remember, unless he has nothing else to remember.

So, i followed some of the sites registration procedure, and i realized that, some of the sites take the email address itself as user-name. As almost every web-user has an email address, it would not cost extra bytes in the users memory to remember the user-name for this website. All he has to remember is his SINGLE_EMAIL_ADDRESS.  Don’t u think this is a good idea…..letting the users email address itself be his user-name.

If u already have your site up and running without this feature, then go with this little nice tweak to the forgot-password feature to …..allow the user to enter either the email address(entered while registration) or his user-name. As the password+user-name / link_to_reset is sent to his private email, we can ensure integrity.

This tweak in forgot-password is implemented in WORD-PRESS. There are a plenty others which implement this too. The advantage is that, if  i actually forgot both user-name and password for the account, but im sure that i registered with a particular email address of mine. So in the forgot section, i just put-up my email, and it send me a reset link. PERFECT.

Yes there are other options like social-id , but it involves some pprogramming and integration, api calls and stuff. IF you dont have time to do this high-level stuff, then what i advocated above should do it for you.

Online resume

Thanks Google docs. Finally, i created a much desired online resume of mine.

You can have a look at it @ http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddb5xmf3_9cw83hsgx

Do comment on it. I’d love to update it.

reducing web page load time

these days , owrking on my project…my webpages are getting very fat withthe inclusion of custom java script code for ajax and validation. To achieve user-experience, im loosing on web page load time. Its taking a while for the page to load. This certainly is making a sectoe the users frustrated and possibly quit d site. So i was wandering a way to come out of this. This is waht ive realized:

1) Place only the very important css and js in the HEAD part. i.e only that css and js thats required 4 d rendering/layout of the page shall be included in the HEAD part. The rest shall go just before the </BODY> tag. This ensures that, the extra script and css which may be useful while validation/ajax stuff be loaded after the contents of the page gets loaded. This ensures that the page gets visible first…making the user not wait 4 a long time…and then get the other css and js.

2) Minify the js. This step involves requires that, u eliminate the extra spaces, comments, tabs in ur js code….thus reducing its size….so that it will take less time 4 d browser to load. The tool i use for this is JSMIN.

3) Also ensure that the number of css and script files are less. The number the number of script/css, the more the number of http requests it takes to access them. So it takes more time to load. So the best way is that..u put all the related js code in possibly one js file and similarly all the rtelated css in one css file. U can go for more if u feel that….its necessary to maintain d hierarchy. Thus, it takes less number of requests to load them.

These are the very basic steps to reduce the page load time. There are still 8+ techniques. The one i refer is yahoo’s suggestions. There a plenty more…Just say “web page performace” in any search-engine…..yuo’ll be flodded wid lnik dying 2 help u.

Hope this pages helps u. Happy webpages.

gravatar – spicing my off_code time

Working like a bulley these days, my boss gave me 2 days off from coding, so that i can regroup and resume with full force. I was wandering all over the web these 2days……..1st day was kinda drowzy. The second day today………it got lighten up when i found GRAVATAR. 

The idea behind it is very simple. Its to assign a universal PIC/Image to a user(identified by email address) and display this pic in all the websites which implement GRAVATAR.

Supposing, i register my email with gravatar and upload a pic for it. Now, if a site implements GRAVATAR and if im also liked with that site( say registered), then my pic uploaded in gravatar can be available to that site.

Supposing i wrote some comments in that site, along with name + body of the comment, the site can also display my pic. 

So, which ever site implements GRAVATR, if i have my foot print in dat site(say registerd, commented….what ever), then that site display my pic from GRAVATAR along with my name

The cool things are :

1) The implementor site doesnot have to spend space on saving my image. Its GRAVATARS headache.

2) People can recognize my comments looking at my pic…So when GRAVATAR goes big…number of sites implement this…….then every where i’ll be recognized with this pic. So no matter even if i have a diff user_name, i dont have 2 worry…..people can recognize me.

3) From the developers point of views (us), its quite simple…asa….counting 123., trust me .

I wnna implement this in my product asap…infact right away…..though im off-coding……i can resist the temptation. Lemme break the rule. 

The way the implementor website can get the pic is 2 simple steps:

a) The image url shud start with “http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/”

b)  a) + The MD5 encoded string of the LOWED_CASED email address.

How to generate the MS5 string depends on the programming lang (server side) u follow:

Better follow this link : GRAVATAR URL GENERATION

By the way, i used ruby rails for this……u can use any of the php/.net/……the list never ends

Hope u got it working………….If any buzz’s do comment here….i’ld luv 2 respond !

dynamic loading javascript and css.

Offlate….im enjoying my run thru web-development….once i started using AJAX. When i started 2 feel the spirit of AJAX…..i realized that…its taking too long a time to load the AJAX page. The reason……when the page is loading…it also loads the required JAVASCRIPT FILES entirely.

My page has a lot of AJAX functionality……theres no guarantee that the user is gonna use all of those functionalities. So, in that case……loading of all the javascript is not justified.  Then the question rises……is there a way where the javascript is loaded on demand…i.e Only when an ajax functionality is called….load the javascript required . Else, forget it.

Then, I thought……..NO WAY….But asusual……i found it as POSSIBLE.

This is called dynamic loading of JAVASCRRIPT. This is no different from creating an ELEMENT in HTML dynamically.  To create a TEXT INPUT ( <INPUT TYPE=”TEXT” name=”txt” /> ) dynamically….the code is follows:

var textInput  = document.createElement(“INPUT”);

textInput.setAttribute(“type”,”TEXT”);

textInput.setAttribute(“name”,”txt”);

Now, to add this element to a DIV whose id is say…div_id, we say:

document.getElementById(‘div_id’).appendChild(textInput).

So, following the same…..

to add a script, the HTML tag we use is <SCRIPT TYPE=”TEXT/JAVSCRIPT” src=”script.js” />.

Now to add this dynamically:

var fileRef = document.createElement(’script’);
fileRef.setAttribute(“type”,”text/javascript”);
fileRef.setAttribute(“src”,”script.js”);
document.getElementsByTagName(“HEAD”)[0].appendChild(fileRef)

What we are doing here is that: create an element, assign its to type=”text/javascript” , src=the script we wanna load. And add it to the HEAD element of HTML.

Thats it. …As simple ad that…Go ahead and make ur AJAX pages light weighted…….As im making my HTML PAGES very……lightweighted.

Also, u can also load CSS dynamically.

Also, also, also……U van remove the javascript and css dynamically. I dont think i have to explain why would one have to remove them. Its quite straight forward.

Reference

Satya — EVENTZS