Techno WeBlog

Recently I faced a weird issue with the PHP header location function. I had a line of code in my file like,

Code: header(’location:mypage.php’);

In firefox/geeko browsers it is working fine. but in IE when it tries to redirect the page it is showing a “page not found error”. I am pretty sure that the page is exist in my server and I checked the spelling and case also. everything is fine. following is the header call i am using. I searched in google and asked few of my friends. Also I
found lots of post related to this in forums and all. But didn’t see a good solution anywhere. Finally, from the Php header manual page itself, I got the solution.

The reason behind this mysterious behaviour is, HTTP/1.1 requires an absolute URI as argument to Location: including the scheme, hostname and absolute path, but some clients accept relative URIs. You can usually use $_SERVER[’HTTP_HOST’], $_SERVER[’PHP_SELF’] and dirname() to make an absolute URI from a relative one yourself:

<?php
$host = $_SERVER[’HTTP_HOST’];
$uri = rtrim(dirname($_SERVER[’PHP_SELF’]), ‘/\\’);
$extra = ‘mypage.php’;
header(”Location: http://$host$uri/$extra”);
exit;
?>

Also, It would be good if you use a capital L and put a space before the url like

header(”Location: http://$host$uri/$extra”);

This solves my issue. I never used absolute path with header location in any of my projects. This is the first time I am getting this error. But, going forward, i am thinking that it would be good if i use absolute paths in my location urls. I don’t know any other impact for this or not.

Filed under: PHP | No Comments »

Tabbing
Users who do not or cannot use pointing devices can ‘tab’ through links, and as such, links should be in a logical tabbing order. The “tabindex” attribute allows you to define this order although if the HTML is linear, as it should be, a logical tabbing order should automatically fall into place.

Accesskeys
Accesskeys allow easier navigation by assigning a keyboard shortcut to a link (which will usually gain focus when the user presses ‘Alt’ or ‘Ctrl’ + the accesskey). For users who do not use pointing devices, this is a much quicker and easier way to navigate than tabbing through links.

Link titles
It is a good idea to add the title attribute, which will pop up a description of where the link will take the user, so improving navigation.
If the link is used to execute Javascript, it is also beneficial for explaining what should (but won’t) happen for users that do not have Javascript functionality.

<a href=”#” onclick=”openpopup()” onkeypress=”openpopup()” title=”Open a Javascript pop-up window”>CodLib</a>

Popups
Talking of Javascript popups, if you will insist on using them, or more likely someone is telling you to use them, you can make things much more accessible by using onkeypress as well as onclick. Also, if you include a normal page in the value of the href attribute of the link and return false from a function that launches the popup, if the user does not have Javascript, a normal page will load anyway. For example:

<script type=”text/javascript”>
function openpopup() {
window.open(”http://www.codlib.com”, “”, “toolbar=no,height=100,width=200″);
return false;
}
</script>
…
<a href=”http://www.codlib.com” onclick=”return openpopup()” onkeypress=”return openpopup()”>CodLib</a>

Adjacent links
Adjacent links should be separated by more than spaces, so that they can be discerned by screen readers.
This can be done by placing characters in-between links (such as a pipe - ‘link | link’) or surrounding it by characters (such as square brackets - ‘[link] [link]’). It is also a good idea to put navigation links within lists. These can then be styled with CSS to be displayed however you choose, even side-by-side (using display: in-line).

Filed under: Css, HTML, Web, Tips & Tricks | 1 Comment »

Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money.

source : unknown, Collected From Internet

June 5th is the world environmental day. It’s an opportunity to do something nice for your country, your health and your planet. Take a new resolution on coming June 5th to save the trees. Together with the employees of my company, I decided to use a stainless steel cup for drinking the coffee. Currently we uses over 5000 disposable paper cups in one day. This amounts to about 1,15,000 cups a month. Not only does this amount to a tremendous amount of wastage, but more importantly, the paper that goes into making these cups comes from trees that are being cut down month on month to meet our daily requirements.

What about you?

.

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The creative team at Common Craft is created another great video explaining Social Media in simple English using the example of Ice Creams.

According to wikipedia, Social media is an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and “building” of shared meaning, as people share their stories, and understandings.

Filed under: Web, Social Media | No Comments »

Out of all the Internet buzzwords and jargon that have made the transition to the public consciousness, “Web 2.0″ might be the best known. Even though a lot of people have heard about it, not many have any idea what Web 2.0 means. Some people claim that the term itself is nothing more than a marketing strategy designed to convince venture capitalists to invest millions of dollars into Web sites. It’s true that when Dale Dougherty of O’Reilly Media came up with the term, there was no clear definition. There wasn’t even any agreement about if there was a Web 1.0.

In brief, the characteristics of Web 2.0 include:

* The ability for visitors to make changes to Web pages: Amazon allows visitors to post product reviews. Using an online form, a visitor can add information to Amazon’s pages that future visitors will be able to read.
* Using Web pages to link people to other users: Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace are popular in part because they make it easy for users to find each other and keep in touch.

* Fast and efficient ways to share content: YouTube is the perfect example. A YouTube member can create a video and upload it to the site for others to watch in less than an hour.

* New ways to get information: Today, Internet surfers can subscribe to a Web page’s Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds and receive notifications of that Web page’s updates as long as they maintain an Internet connection.

* Expanding access to the Internet beyond the computer: Many people access the Internet through devices like cell phones or video game consoles; before long, some experts expect that consumers will access the Internet through television sets and other devices.

Think of Web 1.0 as a library. You can use it as a source of information, but you can’t contribute to or change the information in any way. Web 2.0 is more like a big group of friends and acquaintances. You can still use it to receive information, but you also contribute to the conversation and make it a richer experience.

The two other Internet buzzwords and jargon that have made the transition to the public consciousness are widgets and mashups.

What is Widgets?

Widgets are small applications that people can insert into Web pages by copying and embedding lines of code into a Web page’s code. They can be games, news feeds, video players or just about anything else.

According to wikipedia, A web widget is a portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any separate HTML-based web page by an end user without requiring additional compilation. They are derived from the idea of code reuse. Other terms used to describe web widgets include: gadget, badge, module, capsule, snippet, mini and flake. Web widgets often but not always use DHTML, JavaScript, or Adobe Flash.

Applications can be integrated within a third party website by the placement of a small snippet of code. The code brings in ‘live’ content – advertisements, links, images – from a third party site without the web site owner having to update. End users can utilize Web Widgets to enhance a number of web-based hosts, or drop targets. Categories of drop targets include social networks, blogs, wikis and personal homepages. Although end users primarily use Web Widgets to enhance their personal web experiences, or the web experiences of visitors to their personal sites, corporations can potentially use Web Widgets to improve their web sites using syndicated content and functionality from third party providers.

The use of web widgets has been increasingly proposed as a marketing channel that could replace the less effective targeted banner ads and take advantage of the viral distribution in social networks.

What is Mashups?
Mashup originally referred to the practice in pop music (notably hip-hop) of producing a new song by mixing two or more existing pieces.

In web technology, A mashup is the combination of two or more applications into a single application. For example, a developer might combine a program that lets users review restaurants with Google Maps. The new mashup application could show not only restaurant reviews, but also map them out so that the user could see the restaurants’ locations.

The architecture of Mashup web applications is always composed of three parts:

- The content provider: it is the source of the data. Data is made available using an API and different Web-protocols such as RSS, REST, and Web Service

- The Mashup site: is the web application which provides the new service using different data sources that are not owned by it.

- The client web browser: is the user interface of the Mashup. In a web-application, the content can be mashed by the client web browsers using client side web language for example JavaScript.

Filed under: Web | No Comments »