Mozila - FireFox All in SideBar

All-in-one Sidebar (more info) is a sidebar control, inspired by Opera's. It lets you quickly switch between sidebars, view dialog windows such as downloads, extensions, and more in the sidebar, or view source or websites in the sidebar. It includes a slide-out button and a toolbar, all of which can be extensively customized..

Make FireFox look like Opera

This theme gives Firefox a lovely Opera makeover. It was ported by kagematuri, from an original design by Flott Altsaa.

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Firefox - Mozila - Web document debugging tricks

Web Document Debugging Tricks

Firefox has a potpourri of small tricks you can use to debug your web page.

This hack describes some small features and tricks that can ease the page creation process. It's all bits and pieces here. For more systematic techniques, try web page validation, the DOM Inspector , or the JavaScript Debugger just for starters.

Portable Debugging Tricks

These old saws have been supported by most web browsers for a long time. Here they are again, for completeness. First, some common tripping points:

• JavaScript variables are declared differently in PHP, Perl, and JSP. Use var in JavaScript, nothing in PHP, my in Perl, and int or another type in JSP. Don't punctuate JavaScript variable names unless they deserve a leading underscore.

• It's document.forms, not window.forms.

Use alert( )

From any JavaScript scriptexcept for proxy, ReadConfig, AutoConfig, and preference filesthe mighty alert() spits out a string of text in a small window, just as MessageBox does under Win32 for Visual Basic and related languages. It also suspends all script processing. alert() is a property of the window DOM 0 object in both HTML and XUL scripts. Here's that trivial tool at work:

var result = 5;
alert("Result times 100: " + (result *100)); 
// or use window.alert(  )

Probe page contents with javascript: URLsThe javascript: URL scheme allows a line of code to run interactively. That can also be done in the JavaScript Console (in Firefox), but there the currently displayed page is not in context. For a contextual example, try loading the page:
http://www.altavista.com.

Then, type this in the Location bar:

javascript:document.forms[0].elements[0].tagName

This should be the response (an HTML <input> tag):INPUT

To report on a web page's content without destroying the display of the page, do this:

javascript:alert(document.forms[0].elements[0].tagName)

To perform more complex calculations, just ensure that the last statement executed returns void. This example sets the web page script variable total:

javascript: var len = document.forms.length;
 window.total = len; void;

Firefox - Mozila Turn off absolutely all caching

Disable Browser Caching

To turn off the memory and disk browser caches completely, set these preferences:

browser.cache.memory.enable /*
set to false, default = true */
browser.cache.disk.enable   
/* set to false, default = true */

Turning these preferences off guarantees that Firefox will make an HTTP request for every URL it is asked to display.

Firefox does not use HTTP HEAD requests, at least not for the retrieval of web pages; it uses GET requests. Every URL can therefore be made to return a full copy of the resource (the web page) in question. Embedded images and other URLs are, of course, retrieved in separate GET requests. It is possible that web pages or Firefox extensions might issue their own HEAD requests, though.

GET requests never add any HTTP If-Modified-Since headers if local caching is turned off. Such headers are only sent when local caching is enabled (the default) and if a currently cached copy of the requested page was originally delivered with a Last-Modified header.

The golden rule of standard Firefox URL loading is this:

Everything is always refreshed from the Web if local caching is disabled or if the Reload (bypass cache) command is run.

Reload (bypass cache) is run with Shift-F5 (Shift and click Reload on the Macintosh). Just left-clicking the Reload button is not enough, because Reload obeys HTTP caching protocols (see the next section). Clicking Reload is enough if local caching is turned off.

Even less reliable is pressing Enter or Return in the Location bar. In that case, if local caching is still on, Firefox might not issue an HTTP request of any kind. Change this preference to 1 (one) to fix that:

browser.cache.check_doc_frequency 
/* 1 = everytime. default = 3 = as needed */

There is, however, an exception to the golden rule. The exception applies to uses of datasources, an advanced XUL programming topic:

The content of datasources persists until they are destroyed or until Firefox shuts down.

Datasources are an internal feature commonly exploited in XUL applications. Datasources are also used deep inside bookmarks and elsewhere.

Switching Firefox into Offline mode also affects page caching. If Firefox is in offline mode, it will attempt to use cached copies of web pages, even if the network connection is still available and it is only Firefox that is offline, not the network.

Firefox - Configuration Mania Extension

The Configuration Mania extension allows you to tweak several of the preferences that are not available via the standard Preferences screen. Given the incredible flexibility of
Firefox, this tool really comes in handy when you need to change the low-level settings to improve performance, usability, or navigation, or for development purposes. Each section has
several options, which are categorized by the following:
* Browser
* HTTP Network
* Chrome Uninstaller
* Mouse Wheel
* Keyboard Navigation
* Master Password
* Debug

This extension is a good way to get around having to find preference names and values to tweak your browser and can be used to get your feet wet with hacking Firefox preferences and
tweaking hidden settings.

Configuration Mania

Firefox About:config

about:config is one of the many hidden gems that you will find in Firefox.
What about:config does is give you a visual interface where you can find the name of a preference and see or change its current value. You can also add new or hidden preferences via this interface.To open the about:config page,all you have to do is type about:config in the location bar (this is where you
would normally type a web address) and press Enter

Performancing with Firefox

Performancing for Firefox is a full featured blog editor that sits right in your Firefox browser and lets you post to your blog easily. You can drag and drop formatted text from the page you happen to be browsing, and take notes as well as post to your blog.

Easy WYSIWYG Editing Trackback, Technorati and Del.icio.us support

Performancing for Firefox was developed by Performancing.com, the worlds largest organization of professional bloggers.

The file itself was written by Jed Brown, and coordinated by Nick Wilson, both of Performancing LLC.

Performancing with Firefox

Firefox Web Page to PodCast

adding files to your player would be to have your browser detect the sound files on any web page and to automatically generate a single Podcast file, which contains links to all those MP3s your browser found. Then you'd only need to import the one file into your Podcast reader and you're good to go.

This hack does just that by integrating various technologies including the Firefox browser, Greasemonkey, tabs, Javascript, MP3, XML, XPath, RSS, DOM, regular expressions, CSS, a local web server and your favorite Podcast media player (e.g. iTunes).

Already know how to use Greasemonkey? Want to hack the hack?

1. Turn on Greasemonkey (you must be using the Firefox browser of course)
2. Load & activate the Greasemonkey script webpagetopodcast.user.js
3. Visit any web page with sound file links.
4. If MP3s are found, the script will display a small yellow box in the upper right corner, which indicates how many MP3 files were found and a link.
5. Click on the link to open a new browser tab which contains your Podcast RSS XML file.
6. Save that file to your local web server (e.g. the ~/Sites directory on Mac OS X)
7. Import the file into your Podcast reader, drag items to your MP3 player, and you're ready to go.

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Marketers Trace Paths Users Leave on Internet - New York Times

If you use Yahoo’s Web search engine to learn about hybrid cars, the site will quietly note that you fit into a group of users it calls “Consciously Cruising.”
If you click on ads for moving van companies, you will join the “Home Hopping” group. Shop for wedding cakes and reception halls and you might be tagged as a future bride or groom.
Earlier this year, Yahoo introduced a computer system that uses complex models to analyze records of what each of its 500 million users do on its site: what they search for, what pages they read, what ads they click on. It then tries to show them advertisements that speak directly to their interests and the events in their lives.
Yahoo and the many other companies building similar systems say the systems are benign because they typically do not collect personal information like names and addresses.
“We are much more conservative than we need to be” in using information about site visitors, said Usama Fayyad, chief data officer at Yahoo.
Still, just how personal even “anonymous” information can be was shown vividly last week as a list of three months of search queries from 657,000 AOL customers began circulating online. Collectively, a person’s Web searches, it turns out, can create an eerily intimate portrait — one that some privacy advocates say should never be assembled and stored in the first place.
Still, Web companies continue refining their techniques. Advertising on search engines is already a $14-billion-a-year business because the ads can be so closely tied to what people are looking for. Yahoo’s system is meant to use search queries and other actions to select ads people see while checking their e-mail and reading other pages.
AOL is working on a similar system to display ads for products related to a person’s Web search history. MSN from Microsoft just introduced technology to do the same. Other companies use systems that bring together information about users from across many sites. Internet companies call this behavioral targeting, and it is based on the insight that knowing what people do online can be more valuable to a marketer than knowing how old they are or what they do for a living.
“Search behavior is the closest thing we have to a window onto people’s intent,” said Jeff Marshall, a senior vice president of Starcom IP, an advertising agency. “When people are gathering information to make a choice, that means they are often going to spend money.”
Many Internet users have no idea that records of their actions are being collected and used. They might find out about these practices only if they read the fine print of Web site privacy policies.
But AOL’s release of search data has already led some privacy advocates and legislators to call for new limits on how Web sites and advertisers keep and use information about online behavior.
AOL has apologized for the release, saying that its research unit had not been authorized to publish the records. It removed the data from its site, but copies are still available online.
Not all of the behavioral marketing involves search engines. Technology from companies like DoubleClick and AOL’s Advertising.com unit allows marketing messages to follow people around the Web.
Starwood Hotels, for example, alerts members of its frequent-guest program to new promotions by placing ads that will be shown only to people who have previously visited its Web site. These ads can find customers in unlikely places, like the vast social networking site MySpace.
While most MySpace users are more likely to spend money on soda and sneakers, some of the site’s 100 million members do stay in Starwood’s Westin or Sheraton hotels and will see the ads.
Cingular Wireless uses a similar approach to advertise to people who have started shopping for a phone.
“You are no longer targeting people you think will be interested in your product,” said Les Kruger, a senior marketing manager at Cingular. “We know based on your behavior that you are in the market, and we can target you as you bounce around the Internet.”
Most of these marketing systems use cookies, unique numbers that a Web site can place on a computer to spot return visitors. Cookies are also used by companies like Advertising.com that place ads and track visitors across many sites.
Shopping sites like Amazon.com use cookies to greet returning customers by name. But many of the targeting systems try to avoid recording personally identifiable information, like a person’s name and address.

Marketers Trace Paths Users Leave on Internet - New York Times

Google Data Apis (Beta) developers guide

Using the Blogger Data API

The Blogger data API allows client applications to view and update Blogger content in the form of Google data API ("GData") feeds. Your client application can use GData to create new blog posts, edit or delete existing posts, and query for posts that match particular criteria.

Contents

CSS Table Gallery

The CSS Table Gallery is a showcase of how CSS and data tables can work together to create usable and pretty results. Every once in a while there are emails on discussion lists asking for nicely designed tables and they are prone to go off-topic and ending in a holy war why tables are bad and why you shouldn't use them.

CSS Table Galleryry

CSS ToolSheed

The CSS Toolshed will be a simulated CMS driven web site, with four different templates and different content in the main content section of the page on every reload.

This will show enterprise level CMS vendors that CSS can be used on a professional level (not only for smaller sites and blogs) and it gives CSS designers the chance to show that their skills go beyond designing an HTML document that was especially marked up to be style-able.

CSS ToolSheed

FireFox VRE Toolbar

By Andrei Mikrukov

Simplifies everyday e-commerce tasks of finding a profitable topic, researching keywords, setting up your website (domain name, hosting, design), finding content, driving traffic to your website and more...
Gives one- or two-click access to over 100 tools for researching niche ideas, brainstorming keywords and related phrases, searching for best available domain names, choosing a hosting plan with all the features needed to host a niche content website for affordable price.
Helps to find keyword related content for a website, such as articles, images, news, reviews, affiliate products, RSS feeds and podcasts.
Provides quick bookmarks to website promotion services, such as article directories, theme web directories, press release submission services, link building services, related blogs and forums.
*Please note: The VRE Toolbar DOES NOT spy on your browsing habits. It does not track webpages you visit. It does not change your browser behaviour, browser homepage or search results. Please see our privacy policy here: http://www.vretoolbar.com/privacy.php

VRE Tool Bar

Firefox Make CSS Work across all modern browsers

Here are the CSS styling features that are not well supported across browsers. This list is fairly rough, because CSS property support is a minefield of special cases:

• Complex table styles, especially tabular values for display

• Fancy border-style values, such as groove

• Applying and then removing display : none

• Expecting font-family values to display identically across browsers

• Expecting list-style-type icons to display identically across browsers

• outline styles

• padding styles (see the "Box model" section later in this hack)

• Properties in CSS2 that aren't in CSS2.1

• Complex style rule selectors that depend on two or more identifiers

• Mozilla-specific style selectors, properties, and values prefixed with -moz.

In addition to these specific properties worth avoiding, there are three issues that affect stylesheets, layout, scripting, or a combination of all three

Google opens Writely

Google nearly sneaked this one in us. Late Thursday, Google quietly made Writely, the online word processor the company acquired in March, available to the online populace again. As 4PM EDT Friday, there's still no mention of at the Press Center.

The news must have gotten lost in all of the excitement in Mountain View over attending the Star Trek convention in Vegas, which they were sure to issue a press release about yesterday - and blog about it.

Captain's log: got so excited about Marissa Mayer in Spock ears, forgot to tell everybody about Writely.

Writely is one of those new Google-owned services that gets everybody tossing around phrases like "Microsoft-killer" and makes them rue the plight of the little guys, who'd been working on similar server-based applications.

Still in beta, the "Web word processor" requires visitors to sign up for an account before trying it out. The application allows users to share documents online, team edit from anywhere there's an Internet connection, and store documents online.

Whether Microsoft likes it or not, users can upload Word documents, and OpenOffice documents in .doc, .odt, .rtf, or pdf, .sxw, and HTML, complete with tables, images, and fonts. And, as Anders Bylund puts it, it's all "AJAXified," showing third-party edits in nearly real-time and listing who's messing with your magnum opus at the bottom of the screen.

For bloggers, Writely includes support for blogging formats like Blogger, MovableType, and MetaWeblog, and allows publishers to publish via RSS feeds through Bloglines.

All that, but, Bylund complains:

"The editor can do spell checks but no grammar checking, and you can only check spelling in English as far as I can tell. There's no word count feature-something I need to use very often. And most significantly, at least to me, you can't set up document templates. That's a deal-breaker for me."

Writely

Blogger - Windows live Writer

windows live writer is software based interface.
Windows Live Writer is a desktop application that makes it easier to compose compelling blog posts using Windows Live Spaces or your current blog service. 

Blogging has turned the web into a two-way communications medium. Our goal in creating Writer is to help make blogging more powerful, intuitive, and fun for everyone.

Writer has lots of features which we hope make for a better blogging experience.

Download

Windows live Writer

Blogger - blogBuddy

blogBuddy ,is the Windows (95/NT/ME/2000/XP) equivalent of BlogApp, providing a basic text editor with bold, italic, underline, and hyperlink buttons , web service-based spell checking (meaning you don't need to install a big dictionary), support for multiple weblogs (but not multiple accounts), and the ability to edit previous posts and main and archive templates.

http://blogbuddy.sourceforge.net

Yahoo! Answers Now Has an API

I wrote about this news yesterday at the SEW Blog. But why is it important for SEOs to know about this specific API? Well, Yahoo! is doing a ton of marketing for Yahoo! Answers. That product has grown very quickly. The content is very rich. The content is formed in a question and answer format. The content is perfect for those long tail queries.

If you use the API properly, you too can pull that content, repurpose it around your niches. You can:

(1) Build more content for you niche
(2) Provide more information for your users
(3) Help your users more
(4) Rank for more keywords
(5) Give users more of a reason to stay on your site
(6) Give site owners more of a reason to link to you

APIs have given many SEOs the edge to ranking well for their desired keyword terms. If used properly and with some creativity, you can do wonders with APIs, specifically this one.

The API is available at http://developer.yahoo.com/answers/

Good luck!

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google - AdSense Finds Way To Search From Within

Google updated their AdSense for Search offering, which allows searchers to search from a publisher's website and display revenue-generating ads alongside search result.

By replacing the existing search code on a site, publishers can provide search results within their own pages, rather than directing visitors off site.

"This way," writes Google's Nikhil Achwa, "you have the freedom to offer users web search while still maintaining the look and feel of your site. For example, you can keep elements like the header, footer, and site navigation panel the same for the search results page you create."

Two sets of code are provided, one for the search box and one for the search results. By providing two sets of code, publishers can control where searches are conducted and where search results appear.

Instructions for implementing the new code can be found at:
AdSense Help Center.

Google Channel Your Way To AdSense Profits

Placing AdSense blocks on your site is just the first step to using them effectively; get the best information about their performance by using channels.

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
-- William Gibson, Neuromancer


Publishers using AdSense should make sure their channels are tuned in so they can see how effectively the changes they make affect the performance of AdSense on their sites, the folks at Google AdSense advise.

AdSense users can choose between setting up URL channels and custom channels for their ad units. Arlene Lee of the AdSense Optimization Team explained the difference between the two in the blog post.

URL channels track ad performance on single pages all the way up through domains. They are easy to set up and do not require the publisher to change the AdSense code at all.

The channel reports show how optimization of different channels has impacted AdSense performance. Lee cited as an example someone tracking a blog about cars and a blog about boats, each set up as a separate channel, as how URL channels can work.

Custom channels come into play when a publisher's page has multiple ad units in place. Lee explained:

To implement them, you'll need to generate new channel-specific ad code. Let's say you have a page with two ad units - one on the left side and one on the right. You can create a custom channel for each one, giving them distinct names such as Left_Ad' and Right_Ad'. After you've regenerated the ad code for each ad unit and pasted it back into your HTML source, you can view reports for each ad unit separately.

Optimizing may be intimidating to some publishers, but it is essential to wringing the most performance out of AdSense. Even the most basic tweak publishers use, that of matching the color scheme of the ad unit to the page, can help;

Google shows you how.

Usos del PHP

Los principales usos del PHP son los siguientes:

Programación de páginas web dinámicas, habitualmente en combinación con el motor de base datos MySQL, aunque cuenta con soporte nativo para otros motores, incluyendo el estándar ODBC, lo que amplía en gran medida sus posibilidades de conexión.
Programación en consola, al estilo de Perl o Shell scripting.
Creación de aplicaciones gráficas independientes del navegador, por medio de la combinación de PHP y GTK (GIMP Tool Kit), lo que permite desarrollar aplicaciones de escritorio en los sistemas operativos en los que está soportado.

Para leer y aprender mas acerca de PHP visite: Memorias de un Aprendiz

Welcome to the Yahoo! User Interface Blog � Yahoo! User Interface Blog

Let us be the first to welcome you to the brand new Yahoo! User Interface Blog. We’re excited to be here, and thrilled to have you with us.
This blog is the companion blog for two libraries we’re proudly releasing today.

The new Yahoo! Design Pattern Library offers our thinking on common interface design issues for traditional and rich Internet applications. The new Yahoo! User Interface Library is a collection of industrial-grade JavaScript utilities and widgets that enable you to efficiently get the most out of today’s powerful browsers. In both cases, these are the exact same things that power Yahoo! today.

The two libraries each stand alone, but also complement the extensive Web Services offered by Yahoo! properties via the Yahoo! Developer Network (and others around the Web). With today’s release, we’re starting to tell a complete cover-to-cover story. A web service is one thing (and a pretty cool thing at that), but we believe it’s even more potent when combined with proven interfaces and enhanced with JavaScript and Ajax goodness.

The tagline on the Yahoo! Developer Network is “You bring the skills. We bring the ingredients.” That’s never been more true than today. If you’ve already sunk your teeth into some tasty Web Services, maybe interaction design guidelines confirmed by hundreds of millions of users and extensive lab testing will be helpful. If you already live and breathe design, perhaps our powerful a la carte JavaScript libraries can add the special sauce to your dish. Some of the best food in the world is a blend of multiple cuisines; we can’t wait to see what you cook up with all these new ingredients.
We hope our humble libraries get you a step closer to your goal, whether that’s a funky Web 2.0 mashup, a small tool to make your life better, or the Next Big Thing.

The next two posts examine each library in more detail, but let me point out two things now. First, we’re happy to report that both libraries are totally free and wide open. The Yahoo! User Interface Library is released under the friendly BSD open-source license. The Yahoo! Design Pattern Library is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-By license.
Second, and most importantly, we’re looking forward to the conversation. The developers and designers of the libraries will be posting on this blog and reading the comments, and contributing on the respective mailing lists (ydn-javascript ydn-patterns). It’s an exhilarating time to be creating things online, and we’re eager to go forward with you.

Read more:

Yahoo! Design Patterns Library
Yahoo! User Interface Library

Thank You,Nate Koechley, Bill Scott, and Eric Miraglia

Welcome to the Yahoo! User Interface Blog � Yahoo! User Interface Blog

Owning A Website Is More Than Just Having It Built

Owning A Website Is More Than Just Having It Built By Joe Balestrino Expert Author Article Date: 2006-02-08 Things you need to know before building a website of any kind. Internet business is big whether your business is solely Internet based or not. It's also true whether you are a large corporation or a mom and pop business with a small site for local clients only.

The problem is that many people only do a limited amount of research when it comes to having a website built. Sure, people take the time to find an affordable web design firm or freelancer, after all...money is important. Sometimes, but not always, the lowest bid gets the job. Most business owner take a good look at their portfolio before committing, which makes perfect sense. I have seen people pay as little as $300 for a site.

Let me tell you, they got what they paid for. But aside from web development, what do you know about online business? More importantly, what do you know about running a website? You see, many people think all they need to do is to get a website up and running. There mentality is "If you built it, they will come" and that is rarely true. What people fail to understand is that they will likely need to do extensive research to make their site a success, unless the product or service they are offering is already wildly popular. Building a site is not a "one and done" proposition.

You're probably asking yourself "What do I need to know?" Keep in mind, web designers will not give you that information. Why? It is in their best interest not to. If they did, you'd probably rethink your entire strategy for building a website. Things to keep in mind:

Flash Design: This is popular among companies that like the visual aspect of web design. However, search engines can not read the content in a flash site unless it is designed with both Flash and HTML. Many companies come to me asking me to optimize their site after they spent a small fortune on Flash. I can't do it unless they are willing to allow me to make some changes. So, if you want to have a site that is easy to update (yourself) or want search engines to be able to index you, stay away from 100% flash. Framed Sites: These are not as popular as they once were. Thank goodness for that.

Framed sites are bad for a lot of reasons. Frames are basically 3 or 4 websites put together by frames to make one site. This makes it very hard to index the site properly. This will cause you to miss out on a lot of potential traffic. Search Engine Submissions: When you finally decide to launch your site, keep in mind that it can take several months to get listed on search engines after you submit to them, and yes, you DO need to submit to them at least once. Have a plan of action if your site will be dependant on the search engines for traffic.

Search Engines Optimization: If you plan to be found on search engines, you need to consider doing some search engine optimization.

SEO is about optimizing your site and its content so it can be found under certain keywords and phrases. This will cost less to do on a monthly basis than any other forms of advertising. Unfortunately, if your site is new it will take several months before your content is picked up by search engines. After that, any changes you make will been picked up within days. So, plan for other forms of advertising until you are picked up by the search engines. Then you can cut back on the paid stuff and concentrate on natural SEO. Traffic: How will you bring traffic to your new site? You will need to plan a monthly budget to keep new traffic coming in. Do you know what your options are? Where are your competitors advertising? Do you know about PPC, banner advertising, article writing, link exchanges or other forms of getting traffic? You should, if you want to succeed.

Remember, just like with any business, you need to promote your site. Unlike a storefront, people will not just pass by your Internet business on the way to work. It is much harder to promote a site and get traffic to it without a presence. If your site isn't created for people to find, the aforementioned points don't pertain to you. If your site will be relying on traffic, then keep them in mind and plan for it in your budget. Again, many people don't realize what they're getting into when they build a website. If you don't have the time to make a success of it, at least hire a professional who can do it for you.

Owning A Website Is More Than Just Having It Built

Google Launching A Beta Blogger

The new Blogger beta brings privacy, labeling, and more templates to its users. Most importantly, it seems to promote a method of bringing non-Google Account holders into the Google fold. As part of the Blogger beta's privacy features, a blogger can limit readership of a blog to a select group of people. Those readers can be invited via their email address to be members:

For each address entered, the Google Account associated with that address will be given access to view your blog. If an address is not associated with an account, that person will be sent an invitation email. In this email will be a link which will let them do one of three things:

* Sign in to an existing account.

* Create a new account.

* View your blog as a guest (no account required).

Invitees can view the blog as a guest via the email link for two weeks before it expires. Ultimately the process leads to making those visitors new Google Account holders.

Other features include the addition of labeling to blog posts. For some reason Google insists on calling it 'labeling' when everyone else calls it 'tagging.' There doesn't seem to be a cause for doing this other than a dislike of the term 'tagging.' At first, a few current Blogger accounts will be given the option to transition to the new system. Those who want to try out the new Blogger beta can do so by visiting the Blogger Beta page and signing in with a Google Account. Later, Google plans to allow users to merge existing and new Blogger accounts together to make the sign-in process easier

Google Launching A Beta Blogger

PHPMailer con GMail

En un hilo publicado en forosdelweb, en el que un usuario desea utilizar el servidor SMTP de GMail para enviar correos usando PHPMailer, hacen referencia a esta interesante entrada que sirve justamente para lo antes mencionado.
Hice algunos cambios en class.phpmailer.php (línea 537) para separar correctamente el host y el puerto cuando se tienen cosas como $mail->Host = 'ssl://smtp.gmail.com:465';, estos cambios se hicieron debido a que GMail usa SSL/TLS como protocolo de comunicación/autenticación.

---

php: # Original
if(strstr($hosts[$index], ":"))
list($host, $port) = explode(":", $hosts[$index]);
else
{
$host = $hosts[$index];
$port = $this->Port;
}

---

php: # Modificación
if (preg_match('#(([a-z]+://)?[^:]+):(\d+)#i', $hosts[$index], $match))
{
$host = $match[1];
$port = $match[3];
}
else
{
$host = $hosts[$index];
$port = $this->Port;
}

---

Página de prueba:
php: From = "foo@gmail.com";
$mail -> FromName = "Foo";
$mail -> AddAddress ("bar@domain.com");
$mail -> Subject = "Test";
$mail -> Body = "

From GMail!

";
$mail -> IsHTML (true);

$mail->IsSMTP();
$mail->Host = 'ssl://smtp.gmail.com';
$mail->Port = 465;
$mail->SMTPAuth = true;
$mail->Username = 'foo@gmail.com';
$mail->Password = '******';

if(!$mail->Send()) {
echo 'Error: ' . $mail->ErrorInfo;
}
else {
{ echo 'Mail enviado!'.
}

?>

Nota: Para hacerlo funcionar es necesario que la extensión OpenSSL esté habilitada.

PHPMailer con GMail

SourceForge Redesigns Its Search

Sourceforge.net announced several updates that have taken place to the open source project collaboration site, including an upgrade to its search capability.

A decade ago, the disclosure that Microsoft was preparing to enter a technology market would begin stirring fear in that marketplace. Existing vendors heard their beating hearts being slowly silenced by Microsoft.Google could be ready to take that mantle from Microsoft.

It appears The Fear has slipped into the corporate apparatus at SourceForge, as the company sent along a belated press release to our inbox about their recent site updates.Friday readers will recall that Google launched Project Hosting, a pared down version of SourceForge, essentially.

As we noted here: Google is taking care not to overtly stomp on SourceForge with Project Hosting, which will not have some features that are present at SourceForge and similar sites. That's a careful statement, in that Google doesn't say whether or not it finds those particular features desirable.
Read more : SourceForge Redesigns Its Search

Google Sitemaps Now Webmaster Central

They have renamed the website to Webmaster Central and launched some new tools to help their Sitemaps users get more out of the service. The Sitemaps service may be found as part of Google's Webmaster Central. Sitemaps helps webmasters see their sites as Google's crawlers see them, an invaluable way to find potential roadblocks keeping a site from being indexed optimally.Technical writer Vanessa Fox, one of many Googlers attending SES 2006 in San Jose this week, wrote about the name change and some new features for Sitemaps at the new Webmaster Central Blog.

Sitemaps has been renamed to 'Google webmaster tools,' accurate but a bit lengthy.The team has acknowledged requests from webmasters to see their sites indexed with or without the www prepended to the domain name. Through the tool, webmasters can request that Google index their sites and have URLs show up in the requested manner.Webmasters can download a CSV-formatted file containing the query stats for each subfolder. This shows the top queries that brought up the site on Google. They have also

Google Sitemaps Now Webmaster Central

Yahoo Unearths Site Explorer Updates

Webmaster fans of Yahoo's Site Explorer will enjoy the service's biggest update since December 2005, as Yahoo responds to feedback and requests. Yahoo followed up yesterday's Search Builder announcement with a massive update to Site Explorer.

The service has been organized around sites that webmasters want to track. A logged-in user submits a site to Site Explorer, and goes through the authentication process for the site. Once authenticated, Site Explorer users can see extra information about their web sites, and monitor feeds they have published.

Site Explorer will show more information Yahoo has collected, like the last crawl date and the subdomains the crawler has found. They have also made the feed submission smoother, and now permit webmasters to submit RSS, Atom, and URL lists.Importantly, Yahoo has the UpdateNotification Web Service available. It is part of the Site Explorer API suite in the Yahoo! Developer Network. The UpdateNotification service gives webmasters a quick way to notify Yahoo of site or feed updates. Yahoo makes a couple of other web services"

Yahoo Unearths Site Explorer Updates

Blogger Addons - Install BlogThis

In the beginning there was BlogThis, and it was good, and right-click BlogThis for Internet Explorer on Windows, and it was great. Then came Internet Explorer 6, seemingly designed to break as many little things as possible, in the most incomprehensible way possible. Right-click BlogThis was one of the broken things, producing a "permission denied" error anywhere except on blogger.com pages. Until Marcus figured out the problem, anybody using IE6 was out of luck.

For reasons beyond the ken of mortal man, the IE programmers decided that a script called from a context menu could no longer get the url of the page where it was called from external.menuArguments.document.location.href, it could only get it from external.menuArguments.location.href. Yeah. You probably didn't need to know that, but now you do. Marcus posted temporary instructions (which are looking more permanent all the time) for a fix that involves saving the script on your computer, and then editing the Windows registry to point the BlogThis menu item at your version of the script. That's fine for those of us who don't mind editing the registry, but because registry editing is a great way to turn your computer into a doorstop, there are a number of people who—quite reasonably—aren't willing to try it. If you are one of them, this page is for you.

Here you can download a Windows installation program that will take care of the file copying and registry editing for you, with the added bonus of offering uninstallation (through the Control Panel's Add or Remove Programs applet).

Requirements: Windows 95 or later, Internet Explorer 5 or later, the ability to click a link.
Instructions: Click the link for blogthissetup.exe, choose "Run" or "Open from current location" (unless you really want to save a copy of the installer for some reason), click the obvious buttons in the installer, and then be sure to close every single Internet Explorer window and start it up again, so that it will read your new registry items. That's it. If you feel like coming back here and testing out your new BlogThis by linking to this page in your blog, that would be sweet, but it's not a requirement.

Install BlogThis

Firefox Stylish: Mozilla Add-ons

Stylish allows easy management of user styles. User styles empower your browsing experience by letting you fix ugly sites, customize the look of your browser or mail client, or just have fun. With an online repository at userstyles.org, you don't even need to know how to write styles yourself; just a couple clicks and the chosen style is applied. Stylish is to CSS what Greasemonkey is to JavaScript, and unlike other methods of using user styles, most styles take effect immediately.User guide: http://userstyles.org/stylish/helpBug reports and feature requests:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=410237***
If you're creating your own styles, remember to include !important in every declaration like so:
* {color: blue !important;}

Stylish Mozilla Add-ons Add Features to Mozilla Software

Firefox - Get Feeds with Sage

Long before Live Bookmarks came out in Firefox 1.0, Sage, a sidebar extension, provided RSS and Atom feed aggregation in the Firefox sidebar. It's still a very useful extension.

Download: Get Feeds with Sage

Firefox - Web Developer extension

Web Developer extension,includes some EditCSS functionality:
The Web Developer extension adds a menu and a toolbar to the browser with various web developer tools. It is designed for Firefox, Flock, Mozilla and Seamonkey, and will run on any platform that these browsers support including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

Use the Web Developer Toolbar to Locate Style Rules
The Web Developer extension places a number of menus in a new toolbar. There are far too many features to go into all of them here, so we'll stick to those relevant to this hack. However, do make sure you look at all of them.

One of the most time-consuming aspects of debugging and tweaking CSS is working out which CSS statements are causing the problem. More than one CSS statement can affect the same HTML element, and elements inherit CSS properties from their ancestors. The Web Developer toolbar helps isolate the relationship between a style sheet and an HTML document.

Download the : Web Developer extension

Blogger - Menu

Blogger Menu

Log into your Blogger.com account, click on that icon under “Change Settings”, which relates to the blog you need to edit, and click on the Template.

In the template editing textbox, locate this code:

<$BlogMetaData$>

And put these code above that BlogMetaData code :

<style type="text/css">
.hovermenu tr{
font: bold 13px arial;
padding-left: 0;
margin-left: 70px;
height: 20px;
color:white;
}
.hovermenu tr td{
list-style: none;
display: inline;
}
.hovermenu tr td a{
padding: 2px 0.5em;
text-decoration: none;
float: left;
color:white;
font-weight:900;
background-color:#1088ab;
border: 2px solid black;
}
.hovermenu tr td a:hover{
background-color: #FFE271;
border-style: outset;
color:black;
}
<style>
Locate this code:

<!-- Begin #main-content -->
<div id="main-content">

And put these code right below this code :

<div align="center">
<table class="hovermenu" cellpadding=".5px" cellspacing=".5px">
<b>
<tr>
<td><a href="button1" title=""<Blogger></a></td>
<td><a href="button2" title=""<FAQ</a></td>
<td><a href="button3" title=""<Download</a></td>
<td><a href="button4" title=""<Contact</a></td>
</tr>
</table>
</b>
</div>

Javascript Form Elements

Why use boring default forms on your page when you can use these free javascripts to customize and add style, special effects, and cool features to your form elements, including:

• CSS Text Field Wizard


• CSS Form Button Wizard


• Grab (Highlight All) Form Field Text


• Dynamic Form Text Area Color Wizard


• Dynamic Scrollbar Color Wizard


• Easy Button Wizard

Read more: Free Javascript Form Elements

Using Atlas with PHP

The Atlas framework has two distinct elements - a client script framework, and a set of server extensions that integrate Atlas with ASP.NET. The client script framework is 100% Javascript, and works with any modern browser. But it is also completely server-agnostic, and works with any web server.
Of course, Atlas and ASP.NET together provide the best, most seamless end-to-end programming model that integrates the client and server. But if you're trying to use Atlas with a different server platform, you can go and write the server components that integrate in similar functionality.
So how do you go about using Atlas with another server? When you install the March CTP, you'll notice that the install creates a folder under the Program Files directory. Look in here, and you'll find the Atlas client scripts, in both debug and release versions. (The release versions have been compressed for size.) You can now just pick up these files and drop them into a ScriptLibrary subdirectory in your web project, and you're good to go!
Well, not quite. If you're just doing a client-side app, Atlas client script is all you need. But if you want to connect to the server, you'll want to write server-side code to talk to the Atlas client. Here are some examples of features built-into Atlas when you're using ASP.NET, but that you might want to write yourself when using another server:
Read More :Using Atlas with PHP

SEO Meta Tag For Blogger

I found many blogger (term for people that blog and hosted at Blogspot.com) ask questions about ways to put and specify some of important meta tags on their Blogspot page.

As you can see that Blogger only give <$BlogMetaData$> to their default blogspot page, which doesn’t give some important SEO meta tag that needed by search engine to crawl and index the website well. Let’s say, meta keywords and meta description tag. Also, Blogger (by default) doesn’t allow you to have <title> tags specific to each page of the site.

I’ve collected and modify some code here that might help you accomplished your “SEO Blogger Mission” for your Blogger website.

Log into your Blogger.com account, click on that icon under “Change Settings”, which relates to the blog you need to edit, and click on the Template.

In the template editing textbox, locate this code:

<$BlogMetaData$>

And put these code above that BlogMetaData code :

To add the Meta Keywords :

<meta name="keywords" content="<ItemPage> <Blogger><$BlogItemTitle$></Blogger>,</ItemPage> <ArchivePage><Blogger><$BlogItemTitle$>, </Blogger></ArchivePage><$BlogTitle$>" />

To add the Meta Description :

<MainPage><meta name="description" content="<$BlogTitle$> of <$BlogDescription$>" /></MainPage>

<ArchivePage><meta name="description" content="<$BlogPageTitle$> Archive, <$BlogDescription$>" /></ArchivePage>

<ItemPage><meta name="description" content="<Blogger><$BlogItemTitle$></Blogger> - <$BlogTitle$>" /></ItemPage>

And if you like to add the dynamic Title for your Blogger website, put these code right below the <head> code :

<mainpage><title><$BlogTitle$></title></mainpage>

<ArchivePage><title><$BlogPageTitle$> Archive</title></ArchivePage>

<itempage><title><blogger><$BlogItemTitle$></blogger> - <$BlogTitle$></title></itempage>

Learning XHTML

with: William E. Weinman

In the fast-paced world of web development XHTML is becoming as important as HTML. Whether you are already familiar with HTML or just learning, whether you use an authoring system or write by hand, you need to know XHTML and how it works. Learning XHTML is designed to help you understand XHTML, why it is replacing HTML for many new applications, and how to make it work for you. More than just a tutorial, Learning XHTML covers the how and the why of XHTML documents, including document structure, block and inline level tags, floating images, controlling white space, phrase and font markup, and much more! From setting up a simple web page to adding Cascading Style Sheets and JavaScript rollovers, Learning XHTML gives you the skills you need to take control of your web pages.

Read online

Blogging_: categories categories categories in Blogger blogs

Many bloggers have noticed that categories are not supported in Blogger. If you've used them before, you'll know categories are a good thing to have. In fact, many other blogging sites and popular blogware such as WordPress actually allow bloggers to create/manage categories and classify all their posts under them. It is possible to have categories in your Blogger blog. A simple search (in Google or Blogger) shows that there are hacks to do it (see my previous post on which are the more popular techniques). However, these hacks are a little complicated for some, especially if you only need a basic category function. And most of these hacks rely on external sites to do the tagging, such as Technorati and del.icio.us.

More: You can have categories in your blog in 5 minutes flat!

How can I change the order of my Links ?

To use this functionality in your blog, it is enough to replace the code of predetermined file in "archive-list"

More : New Links order

Trackback Inside Blogger

Blogger has no native trackback capabilities. While trackback is a wonderful tool, it can sometimes just be too much of a pain for Blogger users. After all, you just went to the work of writing a wonderful post, who wants to bother making a hop over to Haloscan afterwards to send trackbacks to others? With the advent of the semi-automatic Backlinks we seem to be ever less inclined to make the extra hop.
Now, the extra hop can be a thing of the past. Install the Blogger Trackback Userscript and get trackback functionality directly from your Blogger dashboard! Every time you publish a post, the script harvests the title, permalink, and post excerpt (as well as blog title) and then displays a form on the 'post complete' page for trackbacks. Enter the trackback URLs one at a time and hit enter. The trackbacks will be completed AJAXially.
Much thanks to Johan's Blogger del.icio.us helper script which facilitated much of the code for this script.
More : Code Trackback Inside Blogger

New Blogg Header Graphic

I'm trying out a new look for my blog - nothing fancy, just changing the standard title text into a funky looking graphic. I got the idea from PC World's Steve Bass in a newsletter. One of his links was to a free fonts page that had a bunch of cool fonts, which would make excellent titles.
The only catch was that I wasn't sure if I could do this with Blogger. Turns out that I can. The steps to follow are:
Create a funky graphic for your header - probably best if it's horizontal, like the original title.
Upload the graphic somewhere - so you probably need to have some hosted space - I don't know if you can pull this off with Hello.
Edit your blogger template. You just want to change the Blog Header section. See below.

Read more :

http://gtdwannabe.blogspot.com/2005/08/new-header-graphic.html

Add search to any blog

Walter asked for the code to add a search box to his blog. I use a tiny PHP script for universal browser compatibility, but there's a Javascript method that will work on any server.Somewhere in your blog template, include this code to create the search box. This code is customized for Walter's blog; you just need to replace the two mentions of bikefridaywalter with the URL of your own blog

Read More :
http://www.cyclelicio.us/2005/11/add-search-to-any-blog.html

Creating dynamic categories in Blogger

I am going to show you a way to create categories for your posts in Blogger. The idea is based on the article How can I make show/hide links for my posts? in Blogger Help. The posts belonging to the selected category are displayed, and the rest are dinamically hidden. You can easily jump from one category to another. You can see an example of how it works on this blog or on my another blog: biominds.blogspot.com

More:Creating Categories in Blogger