Transparent overlay image to introduce web site features/elements

The transparent overlay image to introduce web site features/elements is an interesting UI Pattern to do more with less - a visual explanation is better than reams of notes.

Don't know if Gmail was the first popular website to use this idea but I now see a lot of other websites use this kind of an overlay to visually explain new UI elements or features that are added.

Gmail used this overlay idea earlier to show Gmail keyboard shortcuts with the "?" keyboard shortcut.

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HOW TO view historical data of Sensex & Nifty indices with Google Docs Spreadsheet

The GoogleFinance function can be used to fetch historical data for a specified time period.

Try these to get historical data of Sensex & Nifty indices for the first 9 days of September 2013:
=GoogleFinance("BSESN", "close", "09/01/2013" , "09/09/2013", "DAILY")
=GoogleFinance("NSEI", "close", "09/01/2013" , "09/09/2013", "DAILY")

You can even go back in time. The Sensex was at 4031.55 this day in 1997!

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JavaScript Pocket Reference by David Flanagan; O'Reilly

JavaScript Pocket Reference isn't really a dictionary styled reference that I imagined it to be. This book reads more like a O’Reilly book in the Nutshell series than a Reference. It should have been called JavaScript in a Nutshell for this is a distilled & condensed version of the author's immensely popular JavaScript: The Definitive Guide. It is however a well-written book that covers the important parts of JavaScript and the essentials of ECMAScript 5 in less than 300 pages.

This book is like a quick tour of the modern-day JavaScript landscape by an expert guide. The author fills the discourse with interesting facts:

Division by zero is not an error in JavaScript: it simply returns infinity or negative infinity.

...and explains relevant details concisely:

"use strict" does not involve any JavaScript keywords: it is simply a JavaScript string literal expression, and is ignored by ECMAScript 3 interpreters. When placed at the beginning of a script or of a function body, however, it has special meaning to an ECMAScript 5 interpreter.

This is a book that serious JavaScript developers should have handy so that they don't have to be distracted jumping off to look up things in online references.

This review is based on the ebook I received through the O'Reilly Blogger Review Program.

Related:

• JavaScript: The Good Parts - photo gag
• Free JavaScript & jQuery learning resources

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TWIL - Week #22

This Week I Learned:

• Bing and Google Search make extensive use of localStorage for stashing SCRIPT blocks that are used on subsequent page views. localStorage is a HTML5 API within modern browsers to allow web developers to store small amounts of data within the user's browser.
• To view list of Chrome URLs: chrome://chrome-urls/ & to see what's stored in your the Chrome cache: chrome://view-http-cache/
• PC Maintenance Tip - Use System Restore: You can create a System Restore Point to save current settings and revert to those settings if your computer begins having problems. This can happen after installing a new program or driver for hardware.
• URL shortening website Bit.ly’s URLs are case-sensitive. http://bit.ly/YFTTDo leads to different page while http://bit.ly/yfttdo takes you to another.
• Your age, gender and interests as determined by Google based on what websites you visit. See what Google knows about you  (Source: Labnol)
• Google has done away with the notorious brain teaser component of its interviews after statistics showed the ability to ace them had no correlation with success at the company. On average, Google takes about 45 days to hire. (Source: The Washington Post)
• The development of general anaesthesia has transformed surgery from a horrific ordeal into a gentle slumber. It is one of the commonest medical procedures in the world, yet we still don't know how the drugs work. Perhaps this isn't surprising: we still don't understand consciousness, so how can we comprehend its disappearance?
• According to one estimate, 65% of India’s 860m mobile subscribers prefer it to a quick call. The Philippines is considered the SMS capital of the world.
• India imported crude oil worth $170 bn and gold worth $60 bn last year 

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Book Review: Windows Azure SQL Reporting Succinctly by Stacia Misner

Windows Azure SQL Reporting Succinctly is a freely downloadable 100-paged (90 without the pleasantries) e-book (available in Amazon Kindle and PDF formats) from Syncfusion.

The ebook provides a great overview of Windows Azure SQL Reporting that will be helpful to developers and architects. It starts with a comparison of SQL Reporting and SSRS & takes the user through Report Development, Report Management, Report Parts, Security & Report Access.

I feel the major failing of the book is that it doesn't provide any examples to follow along with the theory that it explains. As such this book is better read after you've tried out a few things with Windows Azure SQL Reporting. This 13-minute video from a 21-part series on Channel 9 provides a quick introduction.Both the book and the video reference the AdventureWorks database that you can get from this CodePlex location.

The Windows Azure Management Portal keeps changing so I noticed a few of the points in the book aren't true anymore. For instance, the geo-replication option that persists data in multiple locations was available at no additional cost earlier but there is a charge now for geo-replicated storage.To access the Silverlight portal earlier, you had to click on your user name in the top right corner of the Windows Azure Management Portal and select Previous Portal but that's gone now. Considering these dynamic portal changes, future books on Azure that explain techniques and new features step by step may have to be produced as an online Wiki.

Related: Windows Azure - Learning Resources

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HOW TO make emails that land in Promotions go to the Primary tab in Gmail

An enterprising supermarket I go to is concerned that I may not be checking the promotional offers that they send to my Gmail account. They sent me steps on how to force Gmail to show emails they send always under the Primary category:

To disable the Tabbed Inbox feature click on the settings cog in the upper right-hand corner, go to "Configure Inbox," and uncheck everything except "Primary." This will remove the tabs and bring you back to the old, familiar, one-inboxed interface.

To see total count of unread messages (and not just the newest unread emails) click the More link in the left sidebar and you will see all your categories. The categories name will list the number of unread emails beside it.

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TWIL - Week #21

This Week I Learned:

• You can track Indian Stock Exchanges Sensex and Nifty indices using these formulas in Google Spreadsheet - =GoogleFinance("BSESN","price") and =GoogleFinance("NSEI","price") respectively. It is possible to have Google Docs send updates about changing values as a text message.
• Amazon Web Services & Microsoft Azure aren't the only places where you can host a Cloud-based .NET application. There are atleast 4 other .NET PaaS-like providers. 
• The learnings of one experienced developer:
• There is no "right way" in software development
• Reading a book cover-to-cover is not the best way to learn -  You don’t really learn a technology until you’ve solved real problems with it.
• Learning particular technologies in-depth is a waste of time
• Community is extremely important in your software development career
• Always have a side project
• HTML5 does not use a Document Type Definition (DTD). Instead, it uses the Document Object Model (DOM, the "tree" formed by a document's structure) as its basis rather than a particular set of syntax rules. It also differs from previous recommendations in that it includes instructions for how browsers should handle malformed and legacy markup - from HTML5 Pocket Reference
• Google Suggest was built by Kevin Gibbs in his 20% time. Though it was launched in 2004 as a Google Labs feature it was finally made default on Google.com as well as mobile, maps and browsers in 2008
• Capitalist Individualism means becoming brilliant at something that people need, so that they pay you lots of money to do it.
• All that is necessary for the triumph of evil, is that good men do nothing - Edmund Burkes, Irish political thinker 

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