"Smart" phone & portable device features of 2012

Pogie awards celebrate the best ideas of the year: ingenious features that somehow made it past the lawyers, through the penny-pinching committees and into real-world tech gadgets — even if the products overall are turkeys. Here's a paraphrased summary of the winning ideas:

• Power Nap is a feature of OS X Mountain Lion that works on recent MacBook models. It lets the laptop keep backing itself up, downloading e-mail and syncing its online data (calendars, calendar notes, reminders, photos) & allows the network activity to chug away even when the lid is closed.
• In Windows Phone 8, Kid’s Corner is a sanitized version of the operating system that contains only apps, music and videos that you’ve handpicked in advance. With this feature web browsing, e-mail, phone calls  and in-app purchases can be made off limits for kids and it can be activated with a quick left swipe from the Lock screen
• The Ciago iAlert and Cobra Tag are Bluetooth keychain fobs that communicate with your iPhone or Android phone. Once you’re 30 feet away from the phone, the keychain starts beeping, as though to say, “You’re leaving your $200 phone behind, you idiot!” These electronic leashes works the other way, too; the phone beeps if you leave your keys behind.
• Bluetooth 4.0, built into the latest iPhone and Android phones, is also called Bluetooth LE (low energy) for a reason. For the most part, it uses power only when it has data to exchange. 
• Recent models of models like Atrix, Droid Razr have a feature that automatically turns your phone to Vibrate during the hours of any meeting on your calendar. If you have a Moto headset or car dock, your phone auto-detects when you’re driving. At that point, the phone sets the ringer to Loud, turns on GPS, announces incoming callers’ names by voice, and auto-responds to incoming text messages with an “I’m driving — call you later” response when it is in Driving Mode.
• In the Do Not Disturb mode in iOS6, your phone doesn’t ring, vibrate or light up. It’s just like Airplane Mode, except that you can designate certain people whose calls and texts are allowed to ring through. A special checkbox, Repeated Calls, handles urgent situations. If anyone tries to call more than once within three minutes, they’re obviously desperate to reach you. Do Not Disturb will permit those calls to ring.

Also see: There is an app for that?

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5 reasons to try Vocabulary.com

• Vocabulary.com does a great job of "gamify-ing" the process of building your vocabulary through its adaptive learning system
• It is among the PC Magazine's Top 100 Websites & the Time magazine's top 50 websites of 2012 
• The site's main attraction, the quiz, has some 100,000+ questions and the answers are educative. The site reportedly contains over 100 million sentence examples.
• The site is ad free
• Their dictionary is blazing fast. In an unscientific comparison, it seemed to beat another contender, thefreedictionary.com with the print layout, for the title of world's fastest, smartest dictionary. 

While there is no mention on the current version of the website about who created it and when, going by the records on Archive.org it appears to have started in 1998 by the husband-wife team of Jan and Carey Cook. The gamification of the site seems to have been done around the April 2011 period.

I learnt about the site from the English.SE Q & A website and I'm hooked. I have a few nits to pick though.

The way the scoreboard sticks to the quiz section, it seems there is something hidden below the quiz box. A small left margin for the scoreboard would make it a less distracting for me. 

A keyboard shortcut to move to the next question would be nice.

Also see:

Wordament - Tips, Tricks & Trivia

WordWeb - the desktop English teacher

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Google is "in the business of knowledge" - Sundar Pichai

From his interview in the Economic Times -

"We, as Google, are not in the search business. We are in the business of knowledge." - Google's Senior Vice President for Chrome and Apps & IIT-ian, Sundar Pichai  (40)

A few facts -

• About 20% of the queries we get everyday are new.
• Our user base for Gmail has grown to 50 million users in India. 
• Chromebook will be available in at least two countries in the Asia Pacific region, excluding India, by March 2013. 

It appears that Sundar Pichai likes taking potshots at Microsoft. Samples -

• "Windows 8 breaks the backward compatibility of its own end-toend ecosystem."
• "...we are constantly changing the Gmail code. It is like refuelling a plane in mid air. It happens on a day-to-day basis. If you compare it with Windows, one gets to see only four versions of Windows in five years."
• 'IE 10 makes available cloud experience but they (Microsoft) expect you to use Windows."

Sundar Pichai during a keynote address

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I passed the 70-480 exam!

Taking advantage of the free Exam Voucher for the Microsoft exam 70-480: Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3, I  passed the 70-480 exam yesterday.

I used the following resources for preparing:

• W3Schools - I've been referring to this awesome tutorial site since a decade and preparing for this exam gave me a chance to dig deeper into the HTML5 & CSS3 sections
• Microsoft Virtual Academy course Developing in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3 Jump Start 
• Hello! HTML5 & CSS3 by Rob Crowther
• MSDN Internet Explorer API reference

This exam whetted my appetite for learning HTML5 & the bold new possibilities that it opens up.

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Reddit - Vital Stats & Interesting Facts

Vital stats & interesting facts about Reddit paraphrased from this article on Forbes:

• Reddit was started in 2005 by two fresh University of Virginia graduates, Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman (22), after they couldn’t finance a previous brainstorm: An online food-ordering site.
• Ohanian created a zany aura, doodling up a goofy red-eyed alien named Snoo that became Reddit’s logo.
• Reddit’s visitor traffic was so feeble at first that the founders spent hours posting content under a variety of fake names.
• Despite a clunky user interface that has barely been updated since 2005, Reddit attracts 3.4 billion page views a month, putting it among the 70 most visited sites in the US.
• Reddit spends just $7 million a year to support a 22-person payroll and 75 servers rented from Amazon’s cloud.
• Most of the content on offensive subreddits is posted pseudonymously and lives on the outer edges of what’s tolerable under the First Amendment.
• Exact terms haven’t ever been disclosed, but insiders say Reddit was bought by Advance Publications' Condé Nast magazine division for $5 million or less in 2006. 
• Since Condé Nast stepped in, Reddit’s user base has grown about 80-fold.
• Reddit’s Ask Me Anything (AMA) crowdsourced interview series is now an important stop on the publicity tour for movie actors, directors and authors. 
• Reddit jargon:
• ELI5  - Explain like I'm Five
• IRL   - In Real Life
• NSFW  - Not Safe For work
• TIL   - Today I Learned
• TL;DR - Too Long; Didn't Read
• Karma - A tally of how many people like your posts or comments
• Rage Comics - Awkwardly drawn, four-panel comics in which characters get angry about their relatives, their computers or anything. 

Related:

• Vent Your Anger Drawing Your Own Rage Comics
• Steve Huffman has something to teach you

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What's common to Lucene & Hadoop

Lucene & Hadoop are both created by Doug Cutting and they are open-source.

Lucene is a text search engine API. It can be used by applications which requires full text indexing and searching capability. Lucene.Net is a port of Java Lucene written in C# and targeted at .NET Framework users.

Hadoop is a framework that enables the distributed processing of large data sets across clusters of commodity hardware.

Hadoop is a clone of Google’s MapReduce number-crunching platform.

Hadoop consists of a file system (HDFS) and a number-crunching platform (Hadoop MapReduce). The file system lets you spread data across a cluster of machines, and the MapReduce processes this data by sending little pieces of code to each individual server.

In 1998, Google was the 19th search engine to enter the market. Google’s implementation of MapReduce on GFS and [Google's distributed database] BigTable vaulted them to leadership within two years. 

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Overview of SharePoint 2013

Notes from the Pluralsight course SharePoint 2013 Developer Ramp-Up - Part 1:

• Significant changes in SharePoint 2013:
• New development model - SharePoint Apps - ideal for Office 365, App Marketplace
• Minimal Download Strategy (MDS) UX
• Web Apps support claim based authentication by default
• Architectural changes:
• Workflow
• Search
• Web content management
• Deprecated capabilities
• SharePoint Designer's Design view
• Meeting & Document Worksapces
• BI: Chart Web Part, Status Indicators & Status Lists
• An app can contain a solution. A solution can contain one or more features
• A *.app file is a .zip file containing a package of files. Contains a manifest file.
• Server-side code is completely inaccessible inside an App
• Sharepoint 2013 deployment options:
• On-premises (behind firewall)
• Hosted aka Office 365/Sharepoint Online
• Hybrid - mix of On-premises & Hosted
• SharePoint 2013 won’t work on a client OS; needs Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1(x64 only) or Windows Server 2012(x64 only)
• You have to explicitly load SharePoint Windows PowerShell snap-in from console or script
• Sandboxed solutions retained for backward-compatibility; will work on on-premise and hosted modes
• SharePoint-hosted apps will work on on-premise and hosted modes
• Provider-hosted apps will work on on-premise and hosted modes
• Farm solutions will only work in an on-premises deployment
• Autohosted apps will only work in a hosted deployment
• SharePoint Client-side Object Model, introduced in SharePoint 2010, has significantly expanded coverage
• JavaScript, unlike other languages, can be used for all deployment types - farm solution, sandbox solution, App (SP-hosted), App (Provider/auto-hosted)
• What you are building dicates the type of local development environment you need
• SharePoint-hosted apps can be built with Office 365 Napa app. 
• Napa is a slimmed down web-ified version of VS
• It supports client-side code only and provides a markup view for ASPX pages. Code-behind is not allowed
• All Office 365 developer sites have an unlimited license to the "Napa" app. It is available in the online SharePoint Store for free
• Napa can open the app in a local instance of Visual Studio 2012 to take it to the next level.
• Solutions, Provider-hosted/auto-hosted apps can be built with Visual Studio 2012 + Office + SharePoint tools

Also see: Free Pluralsight videos

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4 practical ways to protect your privacy online

A recent Wall Street Journal article reveals that companies today are increasingly tying people's real-life identities to their online browsing habits.

WSJ also provides these startling privacy insights among others -

• Americans' license plates are now being tracked not only by the government, but also by repo men who hope to profit from the information.
• The government follows the movements of thousands of Americans a year by secretly monitoring their cellphone records . 
• One of the fastest growing online businesses is that of spying on Americans as they browse the Web.

Here are some ways drawn from online resources, to protect your privacy online  -

1. Log Out of Social Networks When Browsing and Clear Cookies

All those little “Like” buttons and other social-networking technologies across the Web can inform the parent company of your browsing habits whenever you encounter them. This is true even if you don’t actually click the button.

Did you notice, many sites these days don't show the log-out option  distinctly. It takes an extra step to locate it.

2. Use Disposable Email Addresses

If you want to sign up for newsletters or for accounts that require an email address, but you don’t want that address to be used to track you, you should consider disposable addresses.

Gmail lets you add a plus sign and a word or phrase to your existing email address. For example, name+site@gmail.com will get forwarded to name@gmail.com, allowing you to use many different “name+” combinations when you sign up for services online. It’s true that it would be easy for a program to identify you by discarding anything after the plus sign, but it’s currently unlikely that most services would expend the effort.

 3. Use a Fake Name

Finally, remember that in many cases, there is no rule that says you need to use your real or full name online. We’re not advocating fraud: People you’re buying something from might need to have your actual information, for example. But think about what you enter into forms online, and if you don’t need to use real personally identifiable information, don’t do it.

It's funny, the lengths we have to go through to protect our privacy. A recent Wired magazine article on passwords recommends giving bogus answers to security questions - not something hackers can get through social-engineering.

4. Activate the "Do Not Track" browser preference

"Do Not Track" is a preference that users can set in web browsers to inform websites that they do not want to be tracked, which may help protect them against forms of tracking on the web.

Enabling ‘Do Not Track’ means that a request will be included with your browsing traffic. Any effect depends on whether a website responds to the request, and how the request is interpreted. For example, some websites may respond to this request by showing you ads that aren't based on other websites you've visited. Many websites will still collect and use your browsing data - for example to improve security, to provide content, services, ads and recommendations on their websites, and to generate reporting statistics.

Also see: Don't let Chrome & Firefox remember your passwords on a shared computer

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India's Luxury Trains

A list of India's luxury trains:

• Palace on Wheels 
• Royal Rajasthan on Wheels 
• The Golden Chariot 
• Maharajas' Express 
• Deccan Odyssey India
• The Indian Maharaja

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Azure in Pictures - VMs, Cloud Services, Web Sites

From Bill Staples TechEd 2012 presentation on Windows Azure Web Sites -

VMs, Cloud Services, Web Sites in perspective

Related: Windows Azure Websites, Web Roles, and VMs: When to use which?

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Azure in Pictures - Blobs, Tables, Queues

In about 21 minutes, Jai Haridas runs through the basics of Windows Azure Storage in the Channel 9 video Windows Azure Storage Introduction of the Meet Windows Azure series (June, 2012). This video is a shorter form of his more detailed TechEd Europe 2012 session, Windows Azure Storage: How it Works, Best Practices and Future Directions

Some pictures from his slides (link to PPT) -

Related:

• Introducing Table SAS (Shared Access Signature), Queue SAS and update to Blob SAS
• Introducing Signed Access Signature
• Creating a Shared Access Signature

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Azure in Pictures - overview of Windows Azure Features, Services and Common Uses

Download the Windows Azure Poster in PDF format (1.1MB)

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Infographic - Microsoft Technologies

Click to view enlarged image

Some interesting facts & trivia from this infographic on the Microsoft Careers Facebook page -

• Bing Translator for Mobile - lets you translate any printed language 
• MS Office is now reported to be used by over 1 billion people worldwide 
• Windows 8 Phone capabilities include multi-core processor support, Micro SD support, NFC wireless sharing and easier development of applications 
• Kinect is a groundbreaking NUI platform 
• VaporMg, the molded magnesium casing, allows Surface to weigh a thin 1.5 pounds. 
• XBox 360 hosts a triple core Xenon CPU, capable of processing up to 6 threads simultaneously 
• Windows RT is Windows for ARM devices 
• The new fast startup mode (in Windows 8) is a hybrid of traditional cold boot and resuming from hibernate, resulting in Windows 8 boot times up to 70% faster with virtually zero power consumption when in standby. 

Also see: The History of Microsoft

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8 tips to make your passwords harder to crack

Paraphrased suggestions from a Wired magazine article to make your passwords harder to crack -

1. Don't reuse passwords. If you do, a hacker who gets just one of your accounts will own them all.
2. If you must a dictionary word as your password, then string several together into a pass phrase.
3. Avoid standard number substitutions. Think “P455w0rd” is a good password? N0p3! Cracking tools now have those built in.
4. Use the longest possible password.
5. Enable two-factor authentication when offered. 
6. Give bogus answers to security questions - not something hackers can get through social-engineering
7. Scrub your online presence so that your personal information isn't easily available.
8. Use a unique, secure email address for password recoveries.

Also see: Don't let Chrome & Firefox remember your passwords on a shared computer

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The Pain of Passwords

"Through 20 years of effort, we've successfully trained everyone to use passwords that are hard for humans to remember, but easy for computers to guess."  - XKCD

While some websites have a password strength checker to gently suggest that a chosen password may not be good enough others don't give you the liberty of choosing your own password pattern while framing one.

Some websites enforce rules that THEY think will be right for their users.

They don't care if devising good passphrases or using the shift-to-the-right method work better for you. As a result of this, users will have to break their pattern of framing & the chances of forgetting a password are higher.


To me, a reasonable password policy is one that allows alphanumeric and special characters and is of five characters or more.

I have been collecting & seeking from friends, examples of whimsical password policies that they encounter online.

Here is a list of websites that have unusual policies  -

* Doesn't matter if you took care that your password is at least 6 characters long including 1 number and 1 letter, Skype still decides if your password is complex enough.

* Airtel - Three consecutive characters or numerics(!) should not be same.

* Naukri.com - Special Characters Other Than (Hyphen Underscore Dot @) Are Not Allowed

* Prometric -

• must be between 8 and 20 characters.
• must contain at least one alphabetic character.
• must contain at least one numeric character.
• can not be your e-mail address.
• can not have any spaces.
• is case-sensitive.

...to be continued

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jQuery Visual Navigation Menu plugin to highlight title when menu's target scrolls into view

The visualNav jQuery plugin simplifies the process of building a navigation menu in which you can highlight a title in the menu when the menu's target represented as a named anchor scrolls into view.

The source code, documentation and demo are available on GitHub.

Also see: My favorite jQuery plugins

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"97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know" in Wiki format

The O'Reilly book "97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know" is available for free in Wiki format. The wiki contains original, unedited contributions. Some essays are also un-formatted.

The feedback on Amazon for this book is not generous. So you can read the original drafts to check if the material suits your tastes.

Also see: 100 Interview Questions & Answers For Software Developers

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GeoBuzz - our first Windows 8 Store app is now available

My wife and I built a simple Windows 8 Store geo-location based app called GeoBuzz. It is a free app that lets you discover the world around you. It uses your location coordinates to fetch geo-tagged articles from Wikipedia about or related to the places around you.

This app makes use of -

• HTML & JavaScript
• GeoNames API
• MediaWiki API
• World Weather Online API
• jQuery

It is based on an idea by Chris Heilmann. My wife wrote most of the code while I threw in suggestions and smart-alecky comments. Building the actual functionality took about 30% of the total time. Making it certification-ready took the remaining time.

Please try it out and if you like it, rate it within Windows 8 and on Apptivate.ms.

Jeff Brand's tutorial series on building a Windows 8 Store app (TwitterScan app) with HTML and JavaScript was extremely useful for us to get started. We also learnt new things from Channel 9 videos and MSDN documentation. When we needed help, we turned to the Stack Overflow forum and Apptivate.ms developer chat sessions when Microsoft evangelists Jerry Nixon, Doris Chen & Jeff Brand were available. The good folks at the Bangalore Microsoft App Labs helped test our app on actual devices and offered useful feedback.

Also see:

• HOW TO access MSDN documentation offline/locally with Visual Studio 2012
• India-centric Windows 8 Store Apps
• Windows 8 Store App - Case Studies

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A geography game made from a mashup of Picassa & Google Maps

Where in the World? is a simple game that is a mashup of Picassa & Google Maps. This geography game lets you view public photos stored by users around the world on Picassa and guess where they were taken.

There is no information on how exactly points are scored. The closer your guess is about where a geo-tagged photo is shot, the more points you win. I noticed that if your guess about the location is close to 150 kilometers, you get 600 points while there are no points if your guess is more than 5000 kilometers away.

Each round has 5 different photos and you can play unlimited rounds. There is hardly any element of competition. The overall score is not logged.

The game could have been better designed and also adapted as a mobile app.

GeoGuessr is a similar geography game. Wonder which came first?

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Windows 8 Store App - Case Studies

Before you set out to write your own Windows 8 Store App, it helps to know how others have done it. Here's a list of case studies I have come across -

• Development of the Wikipedia app, source on Github
• Channel 9  video: Media app case studies 
• Channel 9  video: Shopping app case studies
• Channel 9  video: Gaming reimagined: Gaming case studies 
• Shufflr social video discovery app
• MSDN Windows 8 Store apps - Case studies

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India-centric Windows 8 Store Apps

Some notable India-centric Windows 8 Store Apps  -

• The Economic Times 
• Hindustan Times 
• Times of India 
• NDTV
• NDTV Play 
• Aaj Tak  
• Rediff Realtime News 
• India Today 
• Make My Trip 
• Gaana  
• BookMyShow 
• Flyte MP3 
• Burrp
• Zomato 
• Thomas Cook, India 

work in progress...

Also see:

• HOW TO quickly find if a site/service is available as a Windows 8 app
• Free print version of Indian Newspapers

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HTML5 Performance Tips & Tricks

Jatinder Mann's presentation at the Build 2012 conference "50 performance tricks to make your HTML5 apps and sites faster" has some interesting facts & 50 tips on improving performance -


* 3 dimensions to improve web performance -
- Network
- CPU
- GPU

* AJAX performance does not wholly depend on JavaScript performance

* Where does the CPU time go?

1. Networking
2. HTML
3. CSS
4. Collections
5. JavaScript
6. Marshalling
7. DOM
8. Formatting
9. Block building
10. Layout
11. Rendering

Most of the 50 tips are well covered in Souders' book High Performance Web Sites and the YSlow documentation. Listed here are some among the 50 that apply to HTML 5 & modern web development -

* Avoid 3xx Redirection - 63% of top 1000 websites worldwide contain a 3xx level redirect. A redirection can cause a delay of upto 250 ms or 10% of the typical page load time.

* Persist App resources locally in Package

* Cache dynamic resources in App Cache (new in HTML5)

* Cache data requests - jQuery.ajax() has a cache property that can be set to true

* Always load pages in the latest standards mode in IE

* Use HTTP Header to specify legacy IE modes

* Avoid Using @import for Hierarchical Styles

* Avoid Embedded and Inline Styles to prevent the frequent context switches between HTML & CSS parsers

* Only Include Necessary Styles

* Remove Duplicate Code - 52% of the pages on the web have duplicate code

* Asynchronously Download Script using the async attribute

* Standardize on a Single Framework

* Replace Images with CSS3 Gradients

* Replace Images with CSS3 Border Radius for rounded corners (border-radius:18px;)

* Use DataURI’s for Small Single View Images - (are they cacheable?)

* When you're using HTML5 provide a user preview image or else the browser has to download the video, figure out what the first frame and then display it

* Minimize Media Plugin Usage - HTML5 video is no less faster than Flash, Silverlight or Quicktime plugins

* Stick to Integer Math - where possible convert floating point numbers to integer using Math.floor, Math.ceil

* Initialize JavaScript on Demand instead of loading external JS libraries on page load

var userTileScriptsLoaded = false;
function CustomizeUserTile()
{
if (userTileScriptsLoaded == false)
{
var head = document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0];
script = document.createElement('script');
script.type = 'text/javascript';
script.src = 'upload.js';
head.appendChild(script);
}
}

* Use Selectors API for Collection Access
document.querySelectorAll(".required");

* Standardize file capitalization convention - wonder how this improves performance?

Related:
Web Performance Analysis & Optimization tools

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Free exam voucher for "Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3" (70-480) test

Microsoft is offering a voucher code (of $80 value, available through 3/31/2013 while supplies last) to take the Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3 exam (70-480)  for free.

The code is in the fourth para of this link

When you pass Exam 70-480: Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3, you complete the requirements for the following certification(s):

• Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3 Specialist

Exam 70-480: Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3: counts as credit toward the following certification(s):

• MCSD: Web Applications
• MCSD: Windows Store Apps using HTML5

David Pallman, who has passed the exam has this piece of advice -
This is not an easy exam, you need a very good understanding of all three areas. If you haven't been actively doing project work in all 3 for at least a year, an individual probably wouldn't pass.

MS Press is also offering a free 800+ paged ebook Programming Windows 8 Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript by Kraig Brockschmidt. It is one of the recommended resources to prepare for the exam.

For even more preparation material, check the Microsoft Virtual Academy course Developing in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3 Jump Start that includes small assessments and these resources suggested by folks who have passed the exam.

Also see: 

• I passed the 70-480 exam!
• Free 42 episode video series on HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript for Absolute Beginners 

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15 well-known developers tell what they love about programming

In this Channel9 video, 15 well-known developers tell what they love about programming. My favorite among them -

"The geekiest thing about me is I actually write code on the weekends for fun but don't tell anybody"

Did you know, Matt Mullenweg created WordPress when he was eighteen and John Resig was 22 when he started jQuery in 2006.

Also see:

More Quotes

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HOW TO access MSDN documentation offline/locally with Visual Studio 2012

Till a few years ago, MSDN subscribers could opt to receive the MSDN documentation on a CD\DVD. Though this facility been discontinued, the MSDN documentation is now available for offline use even for the free Visual Studio Express edition users. Local availability of the documentation is most helpful if have a low bandwidth Internet connection and you need faster access.

To access MSDN documentation locally in any edition of Studio 2012, go to the Help menu option, select "Set Help Preference" and then choose "Launch in Help Viewer".

From the Microsoft Help Viewer dialog box that opens up, you can select which MSDN topics you wish to download.

Once installed, you can fire up the F1 shortcut key to view the documentation.

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Manage HTML5/JS metadata using custom data attributes

HTML5 introduces custom data attributes for tags - these are attributes that starts with "data-". These will be treated as a storage area for private data.

If you rely on element class names or rel attributes to store arbitrary snippets of metadata and still look for "hooks", these data attributes will come as a relief.


Prefixing the custom attributes with data- ensures that they will be completely ignored by the user agent. As far as the browser and indeed the website’s end user are concerned, this data does not exist.

Every HTML element may have any number of custom data attributes specified, with any value.

Data attributes can be used in the following scenarios -

• To store the initial height or opacity of an element which might be required in later JavaScript animation calculations
• To store parameters for a Flash movie that’s loaded via JavaScript
• To store custom web analytics tagging data 
• To store data about the health, ammo, or lives of an element in a JavaScript game
• To power accessible JavaScript <video> subtitles

A data attribute like this  data-page-num="42" can be accessed using the jQuery data() method -

console.log($('section').data('pageNum');

jQuery lets you grab values of CSS settings for a class/ID/element -
$('.main').css("z-index");

So though it may be wild & unsuitable to do, you can store metadata in CSS too (as a hack in HTML5 unsupported browsers) & extract those values with jQuery.

Also see:
HOW TO link directly to a certain part of a web page that you don't own

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My favorite articles on building responsive/adaptive web pages

As the Tablet wars get fiercer and accessing the Web moves beyond desktop browsers, web developer face the challenge of making web pages they create work on all kinds of devices. Thanks to CSS3, there can just be a single web page that can be made to work on a variety of screen resolutions.

While there are a bunch of ready-made templates and frameworks like Twitter Bootstrap to build responsive pages, understanding how they work is important if you've to customize it.

I feel there is a dearth of  beginner level, 101 articles that explain how to build responsive/adaptive web pages. If you're getting started, here are some articles that I found so far (this is a work in progress) which are simple and easily understandable -

• Responsive Design with CSS3 Media Queries
• CSS3 Media Queries
• The width:auto\9; IE (for versions 8 & below) hack to make images flexible
• Responsive Web Design - Ethan Marcotte
• Media Queries - MDN
• v5, the Responsive HTML5 Master Page for SharePoint Server 2010 - Kyle Schaeffer
• Responsive Resources - Brad Frost

A good way to study responsive design is to look at the source of websites that have implemented it, especially ones that are not too complex, like the Google - Good to Know site.

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Read this if you shop online with credit/debit cards

Brick & mortar companies face a tough competition from online shopping sites as they offer greater convenience & cheaper prices. But should you trust these websites with your credit or debit cards?

Here are some interesting question (& links to answers) from online technical forums to help you take better decisions -

• How are Cleartrip & PayTM able to store the credit/debit card details of the customers for future purchases in contrast to other websites like Flipkart/Snapdeal/Myntra etc. which require customers to enter card details for every transaction?
• Groupon SG is Storing Customers' Credit Card Information. Is Groupon safe?
• How does Amazon bill me without the CVC / CVV / CVV2?
• What's the impact of disclosing the front-face of a credit or debit card?

work in progress...

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Wordament - Tips, Tricks & Trivia

Wordament is an addictive free 4×4 grid MMOWPG or Massively Multiplayer Online Word Playing Game, available for users of Windows Phone 7+ & Windows 8.

Here are some tips drawn from others & my own (limited) experience to score better -

• Hunt for patterns, not words. Practice looking for common letter combinations and roots, which can help you quickly rack up points. A nugget like EAD, for example, can lead to BEAD, DEAD, HEAD, LEAD, MEAD, and READ.
• Pay attention to prefixes and suffixes. Wherever you find common prefixes (DE, DIS, RE, and UN) or common suffixes (AL, ED, ER, ES, ING, LY, S) juicy words usually aren’t far behind. The most common prefixes are RE and DE.
• Mind your Vs and Qs. Focus on high-scoring tiles such as Q, Qu, K, Z, V, which help you pile on the points even with short 3-letter words.
• Don’t forget the past. One common beginner’s mistake is forgetting to swipe in plural and tense variations of a word. In Wordament, JUMP, JUMPS, JUMPING, and JUMPED are all legal plays.
• Know your anagrams. If you see a word like EAT, remember to swipe in anagrams like ATE, TEA, ETA, and TAE (obscure but legal).
• Avoid guessing - Guessing is penalized with a one second delay in accepting new words. A guess is defined as attempting to enter multiple incorrect words in a row.
• Use the tile rotator to discover new patterns with the same letters

• Take advantage of Themed puzzles - Currently there are two kinds of themed puzzles: Digram puzzles (single tile containing two letters, like TH) and Hidden word puzzles (containing 6 – 10 words within a given category, like food or birds). For example, the Body theme may have the words LIVER, EYE and EYES - the plural is accepted if the body has two.
• Practice

Trivia:

Wordament creators, John Thornton & Jason Cahill.
Picture courtesy:  The Windows Blog

• Wordament is built by 2 Microsoft-ies, John Thornton and Jason Cahill 
• The game runs 24/7
• It is available in non-English languages.
• It uses the Google App Engine
• The game runs on a single global timer.
• It is possible to cheat using word solving software but beware - Wordament has a cheat prevention mechanism & cheaters can be banned.
• What dictionaries does Wordament use?  - "The Wordament lexicon is our own IP that combines indexing of electronic books, custom curation, and using actual play data in the game". In the Wordament blog comments, the creators also say "Our official arbiter of words is the Oxford English Dictionary."
• Bandwidth consumed - We believe we use 50k of your data for every game played. So playing 20 games (1 hour) equals 1MB.
• If you join a game that has already started, it will count toward your average if you play for more than 1:50 minutes. Consider partial games as “warm-ups”. Other games will count toward your totals, but not your averages. 
• The acceptable word list is heavily reviewed and that words where the primary and secondary meanings are vulgar are acceptable. If there is a primary or secondary definition that is racially hurtful or offensive, it is removed from the lexicon.
• Search FB & YouTube for videos on how the top-scorers do it.

work in progress..

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HOW TO extract Wikipedia content through its API using jQuery

Wikipedia's API or more appropriately MediaWiki API,  lets you programmatically fetch content & metadata related to thousands of its articles.

I built a small custom Wikipedia search application - Q-Wikipedia, to get just the first paragraph of a Wikipedia article using jQuery with help from online resources.

The REST-based Wikipedia API has many configurable options. It's easy to select the options you require using the Wikipedia API Sandbox

As I need only the first paragraph I set the value of the sections parameter to 0 (default is all)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=mobileview
&format=json&page="+ keyword + "
&redirect=no&sections=0&prop=text
&sectionprop=toclevel%7Clevel%7Cline%7Cnumber%7Cindex%7Cfromtitle%7Canchor
&callback=?

It has auto-completion of search terms, which was a breeze to implement using jQueryUI.

Super-script and a few other tags are removed from the Wikipedia content derived from the JSONP payload prior to injecting it into a DIV placeholder -

$('#wiki').html(json.mobileview.sections[0].text)
.find("dl,sup,.thumb,table.infobox,table.metadata,div.dablink").remove().end();

Try it out and let me know your feedback by posting a comment below.

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Windows 8 App Development Questions and Answers

This list of Q & A is compiled from multiple resources (see links at the bottom). I have edited, added links and paraphrased original content at some places to provide context & improve readability

1. If we make an application for WinRT, how much work will be required to get it to work whenever Windows phone 8 comes out? Will WP8 support WinRT at all?
Jeff Brand: First, I am not a WP8 expert. You will need to do some rework, most of it centered around UX since the screen sizes are so different. It is my understanding that WP8 has an implementation (subset?) of WinRT, but there are some differences, especially around device specifc things (like a dialer, for example)

2. Is the process for submitting an update as time-consuming as the initial release?
Jeff Brand: As of right now, it seems to be about the same since they run the same set of tests and compliance checks. Again, it should get better. WP7 was slow at first, and they turn stuff around now in less than 48 hours, often in 24

3. Does the privacy statement need to be hosted within the app or is a link sufficient?
Jeff Brand: Pretty sure the guidelines say the privacy statement has to be available via the app, not just the store description.

4. Is there any way for an app for registering as a (file) printer/device? Like OneNote (desktop version) it does.
No.  You can register an app as a file handler, however. That means files ending with .myapp can automatically launch your app and are passed to it. This might be part of what you are wanting to accomplish

5. If I own 2 apps, is there some way to copy a downloaded app from one PC to another?
There are two ways to install a Windows 8 app - either through the store or through side-loading. Side-loading has native support on Win RT, Win 8 Pro and Enterprise only. Windows 8 Core can be "enabled" by installing Visual Studio. As far as I know, apps from the store can not be copied and side-loaded to another PC. At least I hope not for IP sake.

You can install on 5 machines (without additional cost) after you purchase from the store. It's how the new Office will be.

6. With all of the new devices coming out that support Win 8, what is the best strategy for testing to ensure the application works well across various devices without having to purchase a ton of hardware?
Jerry Nixon: Two answers. The first is that building on WinRT gives a universal experience. Unlike, say, Android that has a fractured set of interface devices, Windows 8 is constant so you need only to test on one.

The second part of that question has to do with capabilities. It would be smart to test on a device that has the capabilities you expect to use. And on a device that does not. Since the device itself is abstracted you don't need to test all of them (again, unlike android). I would also like to test on an Intel and an ARM.

7. Is it important to upgrade from RTM to the GA version? Or can I wait until the RTM license is invalid?
RTM is the General Availability (GA) version.

8. Is there a max size limit on how huge an app can be?
Package size limit is 2 GB

9. Is there a suggested minimum Internet bandwidth metric that apps which use the Internet capability should have?
Doris Chen: I am not aware if there is a minumum requirement for this. The internet should at least be good enough for any kind of download.

10. Is there any list of UI/functionality differences between XAML and HTML?
Both Javascript and C# have direct access to the WinRT API via language projections. C#/XAML may have a slight edge.

WinRT components can only be written in C# or C++. Javascript can only consume these components.

You can call WinRT, COM, Win32 APIs from .NET CLR

Related reading:
Top 10 Reasons why I choose XAML over HTML5
15 More Reasons why I choose XAML over HTML5

11. If I pull content from a website's API and have no control over the content, what is the correct age rating to choose for my app? I was thinking 16+. I remember reading something about an app like this being called a storefront app (or something like that)
From MSDN: Windows 8 app certification requirements:    (Section 5.1)
We understand that in some cases, apps provide a gateway to retail content, user generated content, or web based content. We classify those apps as either Storefront apps, whose primary function is to aggregate and sell third party media or apps, or Streaming apps, whose primary function is to aggregate and stream web-based images, music, video or other media content.

In some cases, it may be acceptable for a Storefront or Streaming app to include some content that might otherwise be prohibited in a single purpose app.

12. Is there a common set of icons and such for us to use in our applications, similar to how there is for Win32? Some examples are things like the open folder type icon, trash, new, refresh etc
MSFT provides symbols in the Segoe UI font. Use the character map to see them.
There are also some app bar icon styles predefined
Related:
Metro Studio - Syncfusion
MetroStation by yankoa on deviantART
The Noun Project - icons
Zurb Foundation Icon Fonts
Freesound - collaborative database of Creative Commons Licensed sounds

13. Can I run a task every time a user logs on, or every 24 hrs
Yes, you can do that. Your app needs to wire up a background task that would listen for a System Event - like user logs in - and if needed, any required conditions, i.e., the machine must have internet connectivity, then your background tasks gets some CPU time.

See go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=227329 for a whitepaper on background tasks

Win8 apps have the ability to run background tasks. Win8 has some "built in" background tasks for things like playing music or download/upload of a file over http

Miscellaneous:

Getting started resources -
Create a "Hello, world" app (Windows Store apps using JavaScript and HTML)
Writing code for Windows Store apps (JavaScript)
Apptivate Resources page 

Articles on developing an app that interacts with a DB:
HOWTO: SQLite with Windows 8 apps
Take your Win8 Metro App to the Next Level with a SQLite DB

SQLite is supported well in Wins 8 RTM.

Indexed DB is one of the ways to do local storage.

You can reserve app names for up to a year, so if you have ideas - get the names reserved now

The Ad SDK is completely live. The ads being displayed on the other hand are not live until GA on the 26th.

Q & A derived from:
Apptivate Chat #1 with Jerry Nixon and Doris Chen
Apptivate Chat #2 with Jerry Nixon and Doris Chen
Apptivate Chat #3 with Jeff Brand

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Geolocation spoofing with Windows 8 Simulator

While working on a geo-location application, you would want to see how your app works for different coordinates.

Windows 8 has a very helpful simulator that makes testing your geolocation based web application or Windows 8 Store app, easy.

The Windows 8 Simulator exe can be found at this path (assuming your system files are in the C Drive): C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Windows Simulator\11.0

The Simulator can also be invoked through Visual Studio 2012.

Update: I noticed that this tool is available after you install Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows 8 or VS  2012

Windows 8 Simulator

To change the default location's coordinates, select the Location icon in the Simulator & fill the latitude and longitude of the place you want to test your app for.

Happy geo-location spoofing!

Related: Using the Windows 8 Simulator & VS 2012 to Debug the IE10 Touch Events and Your Responsive Design

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Interesting stats on JavaScript libraries

PPK, a JS guru, published a public poll to know the popularity of JavaScript libraries. Among 3200+ votes cast, 91% said yes to the question "Do you use any JavaScript library in more than 50% of your projects"  and the same percentage of people who participated in the poll said they have used jQuery in the last year.

Popular JavaScript libraries can be accessed from Google's & Microsoft's CDNs. CloudFlare's CDN offers 158 JavaScript libraries that you can include in your code (for improved performance) instead of having a local copy. For JS enthusiasts, their library list with links to their respective home pages, is something worth exploring.

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HOW TO quickly find if a site/service is available as a Windows 8 app

Considering that there is currently no official Windows 8 app directory, how do you search for apps related to a keyword?

Let's say, you wanted to know about Twitter or FourSquare client apps. Type in the following queries into Google or Bing to see what related apps are already in the Microsoft Store & get more information about them -


site:apps.microsoft.com foursquare 

site:apps.microsoft.com twitter

The root site, apps.microsoft.com, currently throws a "403 - Forbidden: Access is denied" error message. A Windows 8 Store directory website will probably be available after the official Windows 8 launch on October 26th.

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A rant on WebPlatform.org

Yesterday W3C announced the creation of a new website WebPlatform.org as a "place to come for answers to your trickiest (and simplest) development and design questions about the Open Web Platform."

Microsoft, Opera, Google, Facebook, Mozilla, Nokia, Adobe and W3C will contribute content.

The Web Platform Docs (WPD) Getting Started page loftily announces that "Anyone can contribute to WPD. To get started, you'll first need to register and verify your email address....The community is friendly and welcoming to newcomers..."

When I tried to register this is the message I see -

Account creation from this IP address (199.27.75.20) has been blocked by Cmills.

The reason given by Cmills is Autoblocked because your IP address has been recently used by "Ella". The reason given for Ella's block is "Inserting nonsense/gibberish into pages: Seems to be a bot, or a troublemaker"

My Internet service provider is Airtel, one of India's and possibly the world's largest service providers and they give me a dynamic IP address. It is totally unfair & illogical that WPD should block me because someone else shares this dynamic IP address.

I was also surprised to see that a community initiative like this doesn't use an authentication mechanism like OpenId as popular community websites do.

I'm also upset with some self-appointed guardians of web standards for talking low of W3schools & suggesting that WPD will supplant it. W3schools which started in 1998, beats any other web developer reference  in staying power.

W3Schools is huge considering it has been written over a long period of time. The site doesn't appear to have a large team but it is truly remarkable how they have churned out a large body of work. The number of site pages indexed by Google is a rough measure of the size of a website. The search query site:w3schools.com reveals that W3Schools has about 45,700 pages. I don't know of any similar website that offers unbiased technical guidance on the same scale and in plain English.

Critics complain the site's information is not up-to-date.  While the complaint is valid, it may be harsh to expect the site owners to make immediate modifications as things change. The inaccuracies stem out of the fact that W3Schools attempts to present information in a simplified manner. At times, it may be too simplified to upset some pedantic folks.

W3Schools has the courage to admit that the content may not be correct. This is a reasonable warning for two reasons. They don't charge users anything and due to the evolving nature of the Web, information can change fast. They have a link in the footer that asks readers to report errors.

I have come across many reputable sites that don't bother updating their sites with the latest information so why just blame W3Schools, it's run by humans after all. I wish not just W3Schools but all technical literature on the web had a last modified date on every web page of value.

I hope WPD can emulate W3Schools' simplicity.

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