Acmeous Web Designing and Technology Tips

How to Enable Change Password for RoundCube Users on BlueHost

2012-02-19T07:53:00.000+05:30

RoundCube is simply one of the best open source webmail application available today. Though this application has been created long back and the updates are little bit slow, RoundCube powers several webmail for several companies, including my own DesLabs. My favorite reason to choose RoundCube is that I can easily customize the user interface of the application to show my company logo and I can give several capabilities to my users without the RoundCube name.

Something that we might not like is the lack of an administration panel at the backend where we could have easily manage the features and settings for our webmail. One of such problems I faced when I wanted my webmail users should be able to change their passwords. I am using BlueHost as my web host and create and manage unlimited email accounts under several domains. By default RoundCube don't give the flexibility to allow users change their own passwords.

So here is how to allow RoundCube users to change their own passwords.

Enable Change Password Plugin for RoundCube

First thing that you will need to have is to enable plugin support for RoundCube. Plugins are not used until you add the directory name of the respective plugin to RoundCube config file.

Go to your RoundCube installation directory. Open the directory named config. You will find a file main.inc.php.
Open that file to edit and find $rcmail_config['plugins']. It should be somewhere near line no. 322. This is the variable which keeps track of enabled plugins for RoundCube.

Edit that whole line to look like this -

$rcmail_config['plugins'] = array('password');

This means that RoundCube will now use the plugin under the plugins/password directory. Now your users should be able to see a Password tab under their Settings. But this password plugin needs to be configured properly as per your web hosting provider and your users otherwise it will not work.

Configure RoundCube Password Change Plugin

Browse to plugins/password directory.
You should find a file named config.inc.php.dist. Rename it to config.inc.php.
RoundCube Password Change Plugin can be configured to use following options to change user's password:

cPanel
DirectAdmin Control Panel
LDAP
Database
Cyrus/SASL
Poppassd/Courierpassd
XIMSS/Communigate
Virtualmin
PAM
hMailServer
Chpasswd
XMail

You need to choose whichever way you want your users to change their password. This needs to be set in a variable within the config.nic.php file. Here we will go with the cPanel option which is best suit for BlueHost users.

The default cPanel driver of RoundCube doesn't work. So download the proper cPanel driver for RoundCube password change plugin here. Thanks to awesome work done by RoundCube fan Nick1472 in RoundCube forums.

Now configure your cPanel Driver.

Open config.nic.php file to edit.
Find the variable $rcmail_config['password_driver'] somewhere near line no. 7 and set it like this:

$rcmail_config['password_driver'] = 'cpanel';

Then go on setting the proper options for your cPanel driver. Find cPanel Driver options near line no. 231 and set the following configurations as per your web hosting account.

$rcmail_config['password_cpanel_host'] // the primary domain of your hosting account
$rcmail_config['password_cpanel_username'] // your hosting account's cPanel username
$rcmail_config['password_cpanel_password'] // cPanel password
$rcmail_config['password_cpanel_port'] // default is 2096 for SSL connections and 2095 for non-SSL connections
$rcmail_config['password_cpanel_ssl'] = true;
$rcmail_config['password_cpanel_theme'] = 'bluehost';

That's it! Now login to your email account on RoundCube webmail and go to Settings from the top right.

There you should find a Password tab at the last.

You and your users now can easily change their passwords directly from here.

How to enable multiple Plugins for RoundCube

If you wish to use other plugins as well while you are using the password plugin, then you can do that by just entering the directories of those plugin in the RoundCube config file.

Open main.inc.php file to edit, within the config directory.
Search for the variable $rcmail_config['plugins'] near line no. 322.
Add the directory names of the plugins you want enable for your RoundCube installation -

$rcmail_config['plugins'] = array('password', 'plugin2_directory', 'plugin3_directory');

This is how you can easily enable multiple plugins for your RoundCube open source webmail application. Yes we know this is not easy and user friendly, but as I mentioned earlier that the development of RoundCube has been slowed down.

Feel free to share your experiences while using RoundCube and if any other tricks you used to get this password changing option easily available for your webmail users.

How to Color Alternate Rows in a Table with JavaScript and CSS

2011-10-13T03:21:00.000+05:30

Tables should be used only when you are actually representing tabular data. Yes, we know that. But by default tables are not so much usable unless we put some addons and make tables usable. One of the best ways to make tabular data usable is to color alternate row backgrounds with different colors so that users don’t get lost while looking into long set of data. This not only helps users to remain on a specific track but also helps them interpret data precisely without generating much visual noise.

You can checkout the Demo of Alternate Table Row Coloring here.

Here is a very simple JavaScript script which can transform any existing tables on a page into tables with alternate row color backgrounds. This scripts check for specific class for a table on a page and puts different classes for different <tr>.
You can simply copy the following code and paste into the <head> section of your page.

function tableAlternateRow() {
  if(document.getElementsByTagName){
      var table = document.getElementById("contentsTable");
      var rows = table.getElementsByTagName("tr");
      for(i = 1; i < rows.length; i++){
          if(i % 2 == 0){
              rows[i].className = "even";
          }else{
              rows[i].className = "odd";
          }
      }
  }
}

If you just go through the function you can simply understand that this function just adds “odd” and “even” classes to every alternate <tr> of a table whose id is “contentsTable”.

Note: One thing worth noticing here is that I have started the for loop from 1 instead of 0. The reason behind this is ideally your first <tr> should be the <thead> part which should contain table headings i.e. <th>. So if you don’t have <th> in your first <tr> and you have data right from there, then you can start the for loop from 0.

Now obviously you will have to call this function as soon as the page is loaded fully. So just add this after the above code.

if (window.addEventListener) {
  window.addEventListener("load", tableAlternateRow, false);
} else if (window.attachEvent) {
  window.attachEvent("onload", tableAlternateRow);
} else {
  window.onload = tableAlternateRow;
}

So now if you see your page with Firebug, you will notice that you have a table with every alternate <tr> having the classes “odd” and “even”.

So now when you have the classes you can control their display anyway you want through CSS. So here is a sample CSS style which you can put in the header part within <style></style> tags or in your separate CSS file.

<style>
table tr.even {
background: #fff;
}
table tr.odd {
background: #eeeeee;
}
</style>

I prefer to keep one row background white while adding very gentle color to the other. The reason behind this is to avoid visual noise. Cause to me “less is more”. Your main information in your page is the data in the tables and not their display. Alternate row coloring or highlighting is just to help users to keep in track.

View the Demo here.

How To Password Protect a Website Page With .htaccess on Apache WebServers

2011-09-09T00:28:00.002+05:30

As you might know, a website or webpage can be easily password protected from unauthorized access through several methods, easiest being the login screen where users need to enter their valid login credentials before they can access any page in a website. But in this case users can still easily access resources like images, scripts or other non-executable files from your site. If you want to password protect some particular webpage or directories or some specific urls within your site then the strongest protection to your webpage is the server side authorization by .htaccess.

Create a .htpasswd file in your Apache WebServer

For this you first need to create a file called .htpasswd where you will be storing all your authorized usernames and respective passwords.

Format – username:password_encrypted_for_htpasswd_file

Example –

admin:53PWde6fcsrdo

This denotes the username is admin and password is 123admin (53PWde6fcsrdo is encrypted form of 123admin).

Easily Generate .htpasswd Encrypted Passwords

Here is an excellent password generation tool from Dynamic Drive to generate .htpasswd excrypted username and passwords.

Now you need to save the .htpasswd file in some directory other than your document root i.e. public_html. This is because your .htpasswd file should not be browsable with any url, otherwise everyone will be able to get your usernames and passwords.

Let’s put it here - /home/mysite/pwds/.htpasswd.

Password Protect a Web Directory and Sub Directories with .htaccess

Now go to the web directory which you want to password protect. Create a .htaccess file if it not already there.

And add the following script –

AuthName "Restricted Area"
AuthType Basic
AuthUserFile /home/mysite/pwds/.htpasswd
Require valid-user

AuthName – Title of the pop-up message box which will appear for validating username and password.
AuthType – Basic mean this is a HTTP authentication.
AuthUserFile – path to the .htpasswd file. Remember this path is the full server path and not a url related to your site.
Require valid-user – This means all the users mentioned in your respective .htpasswd file are allowed to access that directory.
If you want specific user to be able to access the directory then you mention –
Require user admin – which means only the user admin will be able to access the web directory.

Now this .htaccess provides password protection to the whole directory and all sub directories it is within.

Password Protect an Individual WebPage or Particular URLs with .htaccess

If you wish to restrict your users to some specific webpages or urls the use this script in the .htaccess file.

AuthName "Restricted Area"
AuthType Basic
AuthUserFile /home/mysite/pwds/.htpasswd
<Files "resources.html">
Require valid-user
</Files>
<Files "important.html">
Require valid-user
</Files>

In this way you can control user access for each single file on your server with the help of .htaccess and .htpasswd. Now password protect your website and web pages securely with this simple tutorial script and be safe.

How to Create Data Validation Drop Down Lists in Google Docs Spreadsheet Cells Online

2011-08-13T04:31:00.000+05:30

So many of us are now using online Google Documents Spreadsheets as an alternative to Microsoft Office Excel or many other popular desktop based software. Yes we get several advantages when we go online. Real time data synchronization and powerful spreadsheet sharing options has really made Google Docs Spreadsheets a success. Whether you stuck onto http://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ or http://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/, it is the same.

Now while creating Google Docs Spreadsheets we always want to have a drop down list of data validation menu from which we can choose some predefined data to fill in a particular column of cells. To have those Google Docs Drop Down lists in your Spreadsheets you just need to add Data Validation to that particular columns.

Steps to Add Google Docs Drop Down Data Validation Lists in Spreadsheets

Let us take a sample Google Docs Spreadsheet like this.

First Create the Options for your Google Docs Spreadsheet Drop Down List

Say we are setting up Google Docs data validation drop down list for the Projects column in your sample spreadsheet. So we need to enter the options somewhere in that Google Docs Spreadsheet. So at the top right corner of the spreadsheet we need to enter all the options like this.

Now go to the column header of the column where you want to add the in-cell drop down list of data validation. Click on the column header and you will find a drop down icon at the right end of it. Click on that and a list of options will appear.

Now select the option "Validate Data". This pop-up screen will appear. Cell Range should by default show the column you are validating, here it is "Sheet1!C:C".

Now select the appropriate criteria. For our case it is "Items from a List".

Create Google Docs Data Validation Drop Down Lists from Existing Data

By Default "Create list from range" is selected. Now click on the "Select Data Range" button beside the "cell range" input. You have to select the cells at the top right corner of the spreadsheet where we have entered our drop down items.

Google Docs Spreadsheet will automatically fill the cell numbers.

Click Save and you are done!

In this method you can easily add in-cell Google Docs Drop Down lists in your online Spreadsheets and start adding up data much faster and consistently.

ChitChat for Facebook - Facebook Chat For Your BlackBerry Mobile

2011-07-29T22:59:00.000+05:30

I know you may have heard of ChitChat.org.uk which has been renowned for providing excellent free Facebook chat service for Windows users. You might have also used their free Facebook chat messenger for Windows. Now they have launched their updated service for BlackBerry users who can now chat on Facebook directly on their mobile phones. Though their Facebook chat BlackBerry application is a paid one but it’s worth every single penny of it. At just $1.99 ChitChat for BlackBerry comes with lots of useful and amazing features.

Update: Chit Chat for BlackBerry i.e. Facebook messenger for BlackBerry is now available for free.

Features of ChitChat for Facebook

Personalized background and message bubbles for your Facebook chat with your chosen font color and size

23 most popular Facebook emotions

ChitChat Messenger Keyboard shortcuts – just exactly what BlackBerry users love.

Alt + T focuses your cursor on Facebook chat typing input screen
Find friends easily in long buddy lists by just starting typing their names

Customizable sound, vibration, and flash light alert for new Facebook chat messages.

Easy quick view of your buddy list, current conversations as well as messages

Keep an eye on BlackBerry battery condition and your local time right on ChitChat for Facebook

Find out more about Chat on Facebook with your BlackBerry. What more do you need in a Facebook chat messenger for your BlackBerry?

User Testimonials for ChitChat for Facebook on BlackBerry

So what people are saying about ChitChat for Facebook? Here is one of several satisfied customers speaking about this sporty BlackBerry app.

“I'm really pleased with my purchase of Chit Chat. This Facebook messenger application enables me to keep in touch with my Facebook friends on the move and whilst I'm at work. I particularly like that I can customize the look at feel of chat conversations to suit me.” – James Davis.

Is ChitChat for Facebook Safe?

Completely. According to Webutation the site and its application is clean from malware, virus, child safety, and has excellent Web Of Trust (WoT).

Download ChitChat Facebook Messenger for BlackBerry

You can directly purchase this amazing Facebook messenger on your BlackBerry device from Mobihand. Please check "Update" at the end to download this Chit Chat Facebook Blackberry Messenger for free.

Price of ChitChat for Facebook for BlackBerry

It comes only for $1.99.

Update

Chit Chat for BlackBerry i.e. Facebook messenger for BlackBerry is now available for free. Download free Facebook messenger for Blackberry here.

How to Create a Link To Smoothly Scroll To The Top of a Page by jQuery

2011-07-17T19:19:00.001+05:30

"Go to top" is a very popular link that we use to put into web pages when pages tend to be long and users always need to go back to the top of the page to avail the options. Users can obviously go back by scrolling up and up and up. But we can also provide them with an option at the bottom of a page, clicking which will automatically take the user to the top of that page.

The most natural and effective way to do it is to place a "quick link" or "inpage link" which should be linked to the ID of the topmost element on the page.

Example of go to top link on a webpage:

<html>
<body>
<div id="header">header content here...</div>
<div id="content">page content here...</div>
<div id="footer"><a href="#header" id="goToTop">go to top</a></div>
</body>
</html>

Now when anyone clicks on the "go to top" link the browser points him/her to the top of the page i.e. where the element div with ID "header" is located in the page.

But the problem is that the browser scrolls up the page in an instant making the user a bit surprising. So we can remove that element of unwanted surprise by let the browser scroll smoothly to the top of the page. For that we are going to need some JavaScript goodies and we will be doing that here using the jQuery framework. If you know nothing about then also its fine cause you will just need to include a JavaScript file and a very small JavaScript code in the <head> of your page.

Scroll a Page Smoothly to the top with jQuery

Include the latest jQuery framework from here - http://code.jquery.com/jquery.min.js, by adding the following line in the <head> section of your page.

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery.min.js"></script>

After this, just add the next piece of code below it, within the <head> section of your page.

$(function() {
$('#goToTop').click(function() {
$('body,html').animate({scrollTop:0},800);
});
});

What this small piece of code does is that it listens to the element with ID "goToTop", and when it is clicked it smoothly scrolls the page to the top. The 2 parameters of the "animate" jQuery function are the action to perform and the speed with which it will perform, respectively.

So now you can put this to any of your pages and get them smoothly scrolled to any position any time users click on some particular elements on your page. but never forget to have the quick link to the top element's ID cause if JavaScript doesn't work or if some user disables JavaScript for security issues then also your go to top link will work without JavaScript.

Mobile Phone Optimized Blogger Templates - Make Your Blogger Blog For Mobile Devices

2011-06-30T12:27:00.000+05:30

Blogger or Blogspot has introduced several useful Mobile templates which can dynamically change your existing blog into mobile phone optimized site. This is something, I am sure, a big slice of Blogger users were waiting for long. Now they can be relieved to have a very easy way to transform their blogs into mobile compatible websites by just choosing an option to enable it.

How to Turn on Mobile Templates for Blogger Blogs?

You can now easily turn on mobile templates and test your Blogger blogs for mobile compatibility by just changing your Settings.

Settings > Email & Mobile > Show mobile template

As you can see, you can also preview your Blogger blog in mobile devices by just clicking the "Mobile Preview" button. This opens up a new pop-up window which is sized as of an iPhone and your blog is loaded within it with the Mobile Version of your Blogger Blog. So you can get an idea how your Blog will look like in some of the high end phones and Smartphones with relatively bigger screens.

How to choose custom mobile compatible themes for Blogger blogs?

Presently Blogger has not yet introduced the option to choose custom themes for mobile version of your blog. Also no option to edit html or widgets for the mobile compatible site. Maybe that is residing in Google Labs which yet has to show off in sometime.

For Blogger users it is definitely a very practical step to take their existing blog a way ahead on platform independence. Mobile marketing has taken up much leads in today's market which is definitely going to help Bloggers. Previously many Bloggers were taking third party services to transform their blogs to mobile friendly blogs. But now they can do it directly from their Blogger settings anytime.

So carry on Blogger publishers with the new powerful tool of marketing as well as socializing - the mobile.

Gmail Launches People Widget - Another Enhancement of Gmail or Just an Useless Addon?

2011-06-29T22:00:00.001+05:30

Ya as you may have already guessed I am an extensive user of Gmail and none of the enhancements in it goes unnoticed by me. So this time its a new widget from Google which caught my eye. Actually, it was presented in such a way that it should caught the eye, something usual with Google product updates.

People Widget - shows up your contacts, who are mentioned in the current email you have opened, in the right top corner of the mail chain or as Google would say conversation list. I can understand Google realized it very strongly that emails conversations are all about the people you are communicating with. So they are showing additional information about that contact of yours.

So what additional information Gmail People Widget is going to show?

Those additional information includes the following -

Information like email address, occupation etc. about that person from your saved Contact Manager.
Your recent conversations with that person
Latest buzz the person may have posted
Shared Google documents
Shared events from Google Calendar
Option to chat, email, call, and change chat preferences with that person

Is it necessary to divert me and clutter my real state?

Of course not. Not even when you can get all those information easily from your chat box. But another school of thought will definitely say - "Hey man, you don't have any useful information in that space so don't we have that there?". Ok agreed. But wouldn't it been better if we had some different interaction there? Maybe the option to change the details of that particular contact right there. If he/she is offline, then I might like to know until when he/she was online so that I can have the idea how much time he/she was on Gmail waiting for my reply.

Whatever use can users make out of it, I am totally confused with the Email option there. If I am already reading his/her email with the Reply/Reply to All options, will I ever create a new email from that people widget?

How to Create Easy Collapsible and Expandable Lists in JavaScript

2011-03-22T03:31:00.003+05:30

Here is a very quick and easy way to make your lists collapsible and expandable on clicks by using JavaScript. Now when presenting a long lists of item you can set them to remain collapsed on page load, but after that users can click and expand any of those list headings to see the full list of items. Unlike accordion, here users can easily open up all the lists one by one. Checkout the Demo of Collapsible and Expandable Lists which is created here.
First, just include a JavaScript file in your <header> section of the page -

<script src="http://www.acmeous.com/tutorials/demo/acmeousCollapsibleLists/acmeousCollapsibleLists.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

Then just below it, within the <header> section of your page, add the following code -

<script type="text/javascript">
</script>

Here "listCategories" represents the id of the parent <ul>. If your parent <ul> has got some other id then make sure to replace that in here. The parameter value 1 here means that the lists will be presented in expanded condition when the page loads. You can set it to 0 if you want your lists to be collapsed on page load. Default is the expanded view.
Now within the <body> section your HTML should look like this -

<ul id="listCategories">
   <li>List by category
   <ul>
   <li><a href="#">Personal lists</a></li>
   <li><a href="#">Dated lists</a></li>
   <li><a href="#">Amount lists</a></li>
   </ul>
   </li>
   <li>List by creation time
   <ul>
   <li><a href="#">1 month ago</a></li>
   <li><a href="#">2 months ago</a></li>
   <li><a href="#">3 months ago</a></li>
   </ul>
   </li>
   <li>List by category
   <ul>
   <li><a href="#">Local lists</a></li>
   <li><a href="#">National lists</a></li>
   <li><a href="#">International lists</a></li>
   </ul>
   </li>
</ul>

That's it. You are done. Now check how the lists work. You can Try the Demo of Collapsible and Expandable Lists here.

It's Time To Act - Join Hands With Japan and Help Millions of Human Being

2011-03-20T02:51:00.002+05:30

March 11 2011, 2:46pm JST, Japan: A massive earthquake of magnitude 9.0 hits the northeastern coast of Japan triggering extremely devastative tsunami waves which appeared in Japan just few minutes after the earthquake. This was the largest earthquake to hit Japan in a hundred years.

Warnings, precautions, and evacuations across the Pacific Ocean.

Effect till now: 7,508 people died, 11,700 people are injured or missing, and millions of people are affected by lack of electricity, water and transportation. Northeast Japan devastated. 6 nuclear reactors crippled.

If this is enough for you to react and start acting like a human being, then stretch your supporting arms of brotherhood to Japan who now needs international support to rebuild.

Support millions of people in Japan by donating whatever you can via The American National Red Cross.

You can also donate through Google Crisis Response

Differences Between Strict and Transitional DOCTYPEs

2011-03-18T05:07:00.000+05:30

Attributes which are deprecated in Strict DOCTYPEs:

align (allowed on elements related to tables only, like - col, colgroup, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, and tr)

target

language

background

link

hspace

noshade

nowrap

bgcolor

text

vspace

vlink

alink

height (allowed on img and object)

border (allowed on table)

width (allowed on img, object, table, col, and colgroup)

name (allowed in HTML 4.01 Strict, not allowed on form and img in XHTML 1.0 Strict)

Elements which are deprecated in Strict DOCTYPEs:

font

center

iframe

strike

Notable Contextual Differences:

Image and text contents now need to be contained within some block level elements like div or p

text in blockquote elements also must be contained in some block level element like div or p

input elements must not be direct descendants of a form element

Since Strict DOCTYPE drops some useful attributes, some web designers and programmers may prefer to use XHTML 1.0 Transitional over XHTML 1.0 Strict. Many designers still prefer to use target="_blank" at a high rate for their web pages where they don't want users to leave the current page. But it has been based on user studies that W3C has reached to the decision that target="_blank" is not a good practice when it comes to user experience. It should always be the users decision whether to open a new browser window or not, since they have choices when they are not forced to open a one. Second concerns has been raised for the start attribute of lists (specially ordered lists).

Gmail Changes Refresh Link to Button - A Notable Use Case for Information Architects

2011-03-16T23:01:00.005+05:30

Now this time it is a relatively small change in Gmail that caught my eyes, but definitely it was not that small to remain un-noticed. Yes, the Refresh feature of Gmail. Frankly speaking I used this feature very less cause I was in a habit of clicking the Inbox link rather, and it was from the time when Refresh feature was not even available to Gmail.

Recently I was using that Refresh link a bit and suddenly I noticed that it's no more a link. It has went up the Information Architecture ladder of Gmail and has been promoted to a button. Which means Google treats the refresh function to be as important as Archive, Report Spam, Delete or Move To actions. Definitely this is not something whimsical but result of good user research. I have noticed many users to use that Refresh feature profusely cause they can't wait to make sure that they really don't have any more new mails in their Inbox, though they are well aware of the push mail feature of Gmail.

I welcome the promotion of Refresh feature in Gmail while it is looking something odd as a new behavior which is definitely going to be adjusted with the eyes very soon.

So being a designer what you are thinking about? This is a very useful use case to notice and follow where we go through several iterations within our designs to make sure we can estimate the user activities and can provide them with the proper information architecture they needs.

Difference Between XHTML and HTML4

2010-12-22T04:57:00.016+05:30

HTML is the Hyper Text Markup Language which is rendered by any web browser you use to visit any website or web application. Whatever programming language, whatever platform a website or web application uses, it drills down to HTML only for your browser. So HTML is the building block of the World Wide Web which has not seen much significant improvement during last 2 decades except the Extensible Hyper Text Markup Language - the XHTML.

Here are the very basic differences between HTML and XHTML -

1) All documents must be well formed and properly nested

<p>The food is <em>delicious</em></p> - Correct.
<p>The food is <em>delicious</p></em> - Wrong.

2) Elements and Attributes must be in lowercase

<li> will be used instead of <LI> and the two are much different - Correct.

3) XHTML Documents and every content section must have one container

<html>
<head></head>
<body></body>
</html>

<p>The food is delicious</p> <p>I am hungry</p> - Correct.
<p>The food is delicious</p> I am hungry - Wrong.

4) Attribute values must be quoted

<td rowspan="3"> - Correct
<td rowspan=3> - Wrong

5) Empty Elements must either have an end tag or the start tag must end with />

<hr></hr> or <br /> <hr /> - Correct
<br> <hr> - Wrong.

Though at the end of the day we have a new player in the game which is being called as HTML5 - a wonder in HTML technology, the movement World Wide Web should have seen much ago.

Gmail Enhances Usability and Simplifies User Experience - Another Great Product Gets Google's Trademark

2010-08-10T02:46:00.000+05:30

It was just another regular day of checking my mails on Gmail.
But aahh!!! So is it?
Great, so this time its Gmail. Its now Gmail which is showing the results of all the User Experience studies Google use to do on its products and also on others products. I was really surprised to see that pop-up within my Gmail window which also made me amazed of my web based email system being changed after a bit long time. At the first look it looked to me as the minimalist attitude Google has taken to this which is a kind of regular for Google. But second thought was obviously - Powerful, specially for Contacts.

When you are in your mails, the compose mail link has now been changed into a button, whereas when you are with your address book, the New Contact creation is a button - means buttons are for similar actions where as links are for other tasks; quite justified.

Mail Selection - yea a great step there. Select All, Unread, Read, None and Starred is now more powerful. I always had a kind of doubt on the links that Gmail used to have for these tasks, for whether users feel comfortable with those. But now its a good touch. Loved the change.

Sorting of contacts by last name is also seemed to be a good approach as the standard of Last name, First name is being popular among the population. Enhancing keyboard shortcuts, and Merge contacts adding up to this.

Now you can assign custom labels to phone numbers which gives you the freedom of personalization. Though I am still not much confident about the automatic saving feature, greatly appreciate the Undo feature for recent changes, which can be Google's justification to auto-saving. But still I find the "Save" button disabled and saying "Saved" whenever I make some change and go to click that button - a bit odd to human behavior though it saves a mouse click.

How to find embedded objects in a Microsoft Excel sheet or document

2010-06-14T01:26:00.004+05:30

You can easily embed other documents within a Microsoft Excel document. Microsoft Excel incorporated that document within it. But many times it happens that you may have embedded some document within Microsoft Excel but you are not able to find it again. Many times the embedded document is placed in such a position where you may not be able to select that.

In that case you can select all the embedded objects in that Microsoft Excel document with it’s inbuilt feature to find embedded objects.

Use the Go To option from the Edit menu or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + G to open the Go To dialog box.

Click on Special.

Select Objects in the Special dialog box.

Click Ok.

Now you will find that all the objects which are embedded in that Microsoft Excel document will be highlighted and will be selected. All the objects in that file are selected now, wherever they are. Now you can move them, edit them or delete them easily.

Top 5 Security Checks for your Website

2009-11-26T00:49:00.009+05:30

Today just building up a website doesn’t help until you know how you can manage it. So before your website is getting into limelight, just be sure that you know how to fight hackers and spammers.

Here are the top 5 security guidelines for you to make your environment more secure and not letting it in the evil hands.

1. SQL Injection

SQL Injection is a vulnerability in which the attacker intends to change the structure of backend SQL statements by injecting carefully crafted SQL commands/statements through poorly validated HTML Input fields/parameters (taking advantage of insecure code) to:

Steal Update & Delete information present in a database.

Cause Denial of Service attack on a web application by shutting the database.

Bypass authentication mechanism of a web application.

How to avoid SQL Injection:

Use parameterized queries/stored procedures/bind variables to access a database and avoid the use of Dynamic SQL queries.

Validate all the user supplied input to your web application for type, length, format and range before exposing the values to your backend (database) logic.

Enforce a strong centralized & customized error handling mechanism in your web application and do not display the database errors to the end users with sensitive information like table names, fields, database drivers, sql statements, etc.

2. Cross Site Scripting (XSS) and Cross Site Request Forgery (XSRF)

Cross Site Scripting (XSS) is a security exploit in which the attacker intends to execute malicious script\code (constructed using JavaScript, VBScript, ActiveX, Flash, HTML etc) on the victim’s browser by taking the advantage of poorly validated data input points\HTML parameters (taking advantage of insecure code) to:

Compromise or steal user’s sensitive information (SSN, Credit Card No.)\Session hijacking.

Cause Cookie theft (Account hijack)\Cookie poisoning.

Cause Denial of Service attack by executing malicious codes (viruses) on the end-user systems.

Cause defacement/modification of Web appearance.

How to avoid XSS and XSRF

Always Encode data that is received as input when you write it out as HTML. This technique will be effective on data that was not validated for some reason during input and contains malicious script/payload.

Validate all the user supplied inputs as before.

Try to use POST parameters instead of using GET parameters

Always check the HTTP Referrer header before serving a page.

Provide short time period for user sessions.

3. HTTP Response Splitting

HTTP Response Splitting is a kind of web application vulnerability, resulting from the failure of the application or its environment to properly sanitize user input values.

How to avoid HTTP Response Splitting

Validate all the user supplied input to the web application for type, length, format and range.

Parse all user inputs for HTML and Scripts.

Don’t provide execute permission to user uploads.

4. Canonicalization Attacks

A canonicalization attack occurs when someone enters a filename requesting a file they are not allowed to access or overwrites a file they are not authorized to overwrite.

Canonicalization attacks may result into:

Loss of confidentiality if files are deleted.

Loss of integrity if files are removed.

Denial of Service attack on the application/system if the file is deleted.

How to avoid Canonicalization Attacks

Ensure that the web server hosts on a secure file system like NTFS.

Set Access Control Lists on files and folders.

Do not keep sensitive files, source code or any such material on the web server machine.

Application developers will need to white list directories that application will be requiring to access.

Use regular expressions to control the file\folders that can be accessed.

Reduce UTF-8 encoding to its canonical form

5. Privilege Escalation - Cookie Manipulation

Web applications normally use browser cookies to save user information which eventually helps the web application to determine the privileges of the user and based upon this grants the user access to the functionalities present in the application.

An attacker can use this technique to

Manipulate cookie values to fraudulently authenticate them to a web site.
Escalate privileges to access functionalities which they are not authorized to access.

Compromise another user’s profile.

How to avoid Cookie Manipulation

Avoid storing sensitive information in cookies and use session variables to store this information on the server side.

Use one session token to reference properties stored in a server-side cache.

Another technique involves building intrusion detection hooks to evaluate the cookie for any infeasible or impossible combinations of values that would indicate tampering.

Encrypt the cookie to prevent tampering.

Use HTTPS (HTTP over SSL) which encrypts the information that are transmitted via the communication channel.

7 Tips To Protect Your MySpace Account Hacking

2009-04-26T16:08:00.009+05:30

Today social networking platform has been very interesting. Ya, both for users and hackers. Being Open Social environment, Social Networking sites had always been a preferred choice for novice hackers to try out some cool, or should I say ugly, hacking techniques. Being in a risk prone media, you are the one who is responsible for your security. So here are some useful guidelines to keep yourself safe across all these.

Always check the Address of the site (URL) where you are logging in: This is absolutely necessary whenever you are not opening MySpace by typing the URL as http://www.myspace.com/.... Specially when you are being redirected to a MySpace Login page, then you must be aware of the page where you are putting your username and password. This is one of the oldest hacking techniques that several people use to try upon novice Internet users. So whenever you are asked to log in to MySpace by any other page, always remember to check the url in the address bar of your browser to verify whether you are really logging in to MySpace only.

Avoid any suspicious link: If you are not much sure then don’t endanger yourself there. You never know how these links can easily do remote installation of keyloggers that will record your keystrokes and inform the hacker about it. Just because your clicked on a possibly harmless link.

Avoid much sensitive information in your Public Profile: If you are making up your profile private with lots of internal information, there are actually numerous ways to find a fault in the privacy measures of these social networking sites and then your information can be in the wrong hands. Better to share your information on more secured media.

Avoid External JavaScript to Run on your Browser: JavaScript is the best choice for Hackers. A single line JavaScript can do a hell lot of things which are not funny at all, including cookie stealing, session sharing and various techniques where Javascript can harm you even before you will ever know.

Strengthen your Password: Is your password is strong enough that you think you may forget it much often? No no, I am not asking you to forget your password. I am trying to know whether it is something that easily relates you. Do not use only numbers or only letters. Use both as a combination in random. A weak password is easily traceable and also don't prefer to have even personal information inside a password.

Avoid downloading files unless You are Sure: Do not download a file (especially. .exe, .rar .zip, .htm or .bat files) unless you surly know about the content inside. Still if you are downloading one, then make sure that you have good anti-virus and anti-spyware software to guard you against any kind of attack, if happens. Do not trust a suspicious downloadable file even if it comes from a friend. He may never know that he has sent it.

Beware of Spams: Social networks like MySpace rely on users to enrich the experience by posting content such as pictures and video (as well as links) and then sharing the content with their contacts. Spam-based social networkers will go to other people's comment threads, for instance, and chime in with links that, if clicked on, will install malware. So beware of that too.

So with these things taken care of, you can expect a better and secure web platform for your social networking.

Make your own website for free – just now!!!

2009-04-11T12:24:00.003+05:30

Web is going to be the platform o future computing and networking. So why are you standing behind? Make you own website and mark a position among millions of people around the world. Today a web presence has become the signature of elegance and intelligence. But if you are thinking that you are not able to afford those high server costs then you are getting frightened in vain. Now you can easily make your own website for free. Ya! it’s that easy and realistic as I said it. Today we have several good web hosting service providers who offer their basic plans for free and you can avail them reliably to start you own website.

If you are hesitating that you do not know the steps that you need to follow to have your own website for free, then you can easily use the automatic site setup wizards which the web hosts provide you. In this way it’s so easy that even you grandmother can setup a website for her. You don’t need to have any programming skills or any site management knowledge. You just need to know your preferences.

So what you are waiting for? Go and make your own website for free today and utilize it to have your own web presence, to have your own next generation identity, to have some extra income, to mark your presence, to keep yourself updated with advanced trends. I bet, once you start having your own website, you can’t have just one. You are going to have several websites with new ideas and will love the way they grow.

Facebook also Doesn’t Support Opera - Is Opera Abolished?

2009-03-22T16:34:00.003+05:30

Is Opera going to be abolished very soon? It was my first thought when I saw that I can’t login to Facebook on Opera. You can’t even type in your Email address in the login field of Facebook, while you are on Opera! I am sure that Facebook knows this and is fine with it. So is it an indication that like several others, Facebook also doesn’t care about Opera users.

When Yahoo! preferred to put Opera out of their supported browsers list, may be that was the mere beginning. A beginning of the end of Opera? Google also doesn’t support Opera for many of its applications. So is it a harsh truth that in the age of Web Applications, Opera is going to be abolished by all?

It is not an astonishing fact that a browser which has the lowest performance with JavaScript will not be a winner of the browsers war. And may be the end of Opera is heading soon. But still I think Opera has a considerable share for Mobile Apps. Opera mini may be much more successful in this matter. Opera for mobiles has reached million of mobiles and is running quite fair till now, though Google Chrome and Safari are also not much behind in this matter.

Whatever be the end result, it again shows the moral that whoever is not going to update and refined with respect to the variable needs of time, will be abandoned.

How to enable cURL support for PHP in Apache on Windows

2009-02-03T22:45:00.003+05:30

So you want to enable cURL in your Apache Server? It is really easy and simple. But first you should check whether you have cURL already enabled on your server. Here is a very simple way to check:

Create a phpsetup.php file and put this code within it:


<? phpinfo(); ?>

Now view that phpsetup.php page from your browser and you will get all the details of your PHP setup on your server. Search for the “cURl support”. If you can’t find it then cURL support is not enabled on your system. But if you can find it and it shows “enabled” then you already have cURL enabled on your system.

So now if cURL is not enabled on your system then you can easily enable cURL by the following method:

Locate the following files:

bin\apache\apache2.x.x\bin\php.ini
php\php.ini
php\phpX\php.ini

Search for ;extension=php_curl.dll

Remove the semicolon at the starting of the line. Removing the semicolon makes the line uncommented and enables it.

Generally in most cases, just editing the first php.ini file which is in bin\apache\apache2.x.x\bin\php.ini, enables cURL on your server. But if editing the first file doesn’t enable cURL then you will need to edit the other files too.

Now just restart your Apache server and your cURL has been enabled on your server.

Check your phpsetup.php page again and search for the “cURL support” to verify if curl has been properly enabled.

How to find unused CSS classes and selectors within a website

2009-01-28T23:54:00.004+05:30

Many times we think of using some class or id within a CSS but later on decide not to use them finally. But several times we forget to delete those classes from the CSS file. This may not be a problem for sites where the use of CSS is very less. But this may be accountable for much junk lines within your CSS which are unnecessary and unwanted.

Many times it happens that we use more than one CSS files for a site or application and copy many unused classes or ids. This way the amount of code loaded every time becomes a much considerable value. These unwanted CSS selectors should be deleted from the CSS files. To delete those unused CSS selectors you first need to identify them.

Sitepoint has released a very good tool for this purpose. Dust-Me Selectors is a very useful Firefox Extension which helps you to easily identify those unused CSS selectors. It also has some added advantages. It understands the different ways to include and import CSS files within webpages and also can check inline CSS styles. Importing stylesheets within the IE Conditional Comments is well parsed by this tool. It also understands well known CSS hacks. You can even check a whole site directly with this tool. Just install this Dust-Me Selectors Extension to your Firefox browser and remove the junk codes within your CSS, if any. Make more clean and useful CSS from now.

Puzzled with Web Hosting Providers – Choose the Best Web Host for You

2009-01-13T23:35:00.009+05:30

Are you planning to have your web presence or got pissed off your present Web Hosting provider and looking for a new Web Hosting Provider? So you would be looking here and there searching for different Web Hosting Providers and their reviews from different users. But as many sites you see and as many reviews you read, you are definitely going to be more confused and puzzled about them. Many times it’s really hard to come to any decision. Because the whole world is neither White nor Black, there are lots of shades of Gray.

Try Web Hosting Geeks.

So you may have seen many Web Hosting providers and many sites regarding them. You also may have gone through several reviews and testimonials about those providers. But now try something on the Web Hosting Geeks. Here you will find easily understandable information at a glance as well as in details. Every user here is experienced and knows what he/she talks about. So reviews here are much likely to be more accurate and helpful.

The best thing which I like about the Web Hosting Geeks is the overview on the homepage. It gives much useful information about the top web hosts we use to talk about. Then the most interesting reviews are the green hosting reviews which enlists the top Eco-Friendly Web Hosting Providers, which is a very good initiative to improve our environment. I think people must go for more Eco-Friendly service providers which has lots of benefits by itself.

So use this helpful service of Web Hosting Geeks and resourceful information of real life users to decide which Web Hosting Provider you are going for.

How to Validate Browser Specific CSS Hacks

2009-01-10T17:10:00.004+05:30

Almost everyone who is a XHTML/CSS Developer knows Browser Specific CSS Hacks. If you don't know then you can know what Browser Specific CSS Hacks are from here. While creating tableless websites on CSS the biggest issue we face is consistency of the pages over various browsers i.e. cross-browser compatibility. So to make the websites and pages cross-browser compatibile many times we use several Browser Specific CSS Codes or Hacks. Though it is advices to avoid those Hacks since they are not by the standards, many times we are unable to do that.

But the problem with browser specific CSS Hacks is Validation. As we also want our pages to be validated against the W3C stadards, we need to get those CSS validated. But while validating a CSS which has CSS Hacks, you will see that the "double slash (//)" and "underscore(_)" Hacks, which are Internet Explorer specific CSS Hacks, are not getting validated. You will have errors like: "Parse Error //" and "Property _ doesn't exist".

So here is an easy way to validate CSS with Internet Explorer specific CSS Hacks. Just simply use another hack instead of the "double slash (//)" and "underscore(_)" Hacks. Use the "* html" Hack for Internet Explorer.
For Example:

#header {
    margin-top: 10px;
}

* html #header {
    margin-top: 20px;
}

So here All browsers will take the first one and only Internet Explorer will take the second one. So all browsers will have margin-top 10px and only Internet Explorer will have margin-top 20x. So here is another Hack for you to use but this Hack is validated by the W3C CSS Validator.

Google Changes their Favicon Again

2009-01-10T12:41:00.004+05:30

Yes, Google now changed their Favicon again. Last year at the end of May they changed their initial minimalist Favicon with that simple G in caps within a border of different colors of the Google logo. Then they came up with a more minimal design of the favicon with small g in blue and nothing else, which they said to be compatible for iPhones.

But in reality people disliked this favicon much and said a lot about it. At some time Google was indecisive about this favicon and asked its users and well wisher to vote among over 300 favicons they experimented on. Maybe it was the realization that their experiment didn’t went well with age old users.

Now they have come up a new favicon which incorporates all the colors of the Google logo, which has a much better presence than the previous one. Google though has always preferred minimalist and clean interfaces this time their choice of favicon has broke most of their conventions. This favicon has been the most colorful part of Google ever. Though it may not fit well with Google standards of simplistic approach to User Interfaces, this favicon is definitely going to put Google distinctly ahead among several other bookmarks in users’ lists.

But still I think this is also not the definite match for Google’s favicon. The small g is not so much noticeable within the colorful background. May be the implementation is not the best of it. The favicon shows much space at the left but in browsers it doesn’t come like that. The small g in feeling to be much forcefully confined within the space and it may be a problem to understand for new users.

But still it is definitely better than the previous one. At least it looks much lively which the previous one was not at all. But still my favorite – The initial one.

Happy New Year to all the Visitors of Acmeous

2008-12-31T23:59:00.000+05:30

Very warm wishes to you all for the New Year. Wish this year brings more love and happiness to your life and opens up more ways for you towards more success. At the same time I wish you to continually be a part of this Blog as ever. Everybody use to make new resolutions for the coming year to do and maintain several goals and promises. But when I was thinking about what should be really beneficial resolution for my New Year, then I understood that what else can it be other than promising my users more valuable and useful resources on my this Blog.

First of all I will like to thank you everyone who has ever visited my Blog and has been a part of its development. It’s you my reader, who makes me successful and so its all for you. When I see at the past statistics of my Blog I always see lots of day to day contributions of my readers. So whatever is here is just for you and only you. I am here because you are there. So very special Thanks to you all - my readers.

This Blog was never born out of any Business idea or for monetization. When I started blogging I had two thoughts in my mind. One was to help people with the problems I used to face while Web Designing and Development. And another was to make a place for me in the Web. When I look back to the history of this Blog I see that I have came a very little way and have to go long. Still fighting to make the Web a more suitable and usable platform for everyone. My sole aim was to make a very useful platform for everyone but with a difference.

So this year you will be seeing much more useful tips and tricks for you to use and improve. More resources will be added on to my network which I have already planned for and will definitely be helping you more. Something which not only helps you but should really be improving your skills, personas and soul, is my gift for this New Year to all my readers.