Entrepreneur Geek » Technology

Flex Regular Expression Online Testing / Learning Tool

Nirav — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 12:08:03 +0000

When it comes to Regular Expressions, I start feeling giddy. Even after using them a lot on many projects, I never remember the qualifiers and syntax. It’s always RTFM for me when I need to use some regular expressions in my code.

And that happened again today. I looked around the manual and searched online for a “quick fix” on the regular expression I needed. And I found a very interesting online Regular Expression trial / demo / learn by exploring tool. It’s made in Flex (and I needed RegExp for Flex) and helped me develop the RegExp I needed in a couple of minutes. (ok, I am still slow, but I found it!)

Thank you Remus Stratulat for creating this useful tool! BTW, he also has a similar tool for JavaScript Regular Expressions.

Click on the image below or here and jump to online regular expression checking tool.

Online Regular Expression Checking Tool for Flex and JavaScript

Finding number of lines in files recursively

Nirav — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 04:37:51 +0000

I wanted to find the number of lines from a set of files – spread out in nested directories. The shell command “wc” is best for finding number of words / lines in files but it does not have an argument for recursive searching.

Here’s a quick shell command sequence that will find you the line count from all files in a directory – recursively.

find /topleveldirectory/ -type f -exec wc -l {} \; | awk '{total += $1} END{print total}'

Replace “/topleveldirectory/” with your directory of choice. Leave it as “.” to find from current directory and below.

Found on Unix.com

Recursively unlock files on Mac OS X

Coding Clean and Semantic Templates

Nirav — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 05:26:44 +0000

If you are the guy who uses

tag for everything, this post is for you. It focuses on how you can write clean HTML code by using semantic markups and minimize the use of

tag. Have you ever edited someone’s templates, don’t those messy tags drive you crazy? Not only writing clean templates can benefit yourself, but your team as well. It will save you time when you have to debug and edit (particularly the large projects).

This post is a collection of some simple yet effective techniques. Read all tips over on Web Designer Wall.

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AIR 2, Microsoft future UI and iCheckbox

Nirav — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:00:39 +0000

Adobe AIR 2.0 Beta out – list of new features

Adobe released a beta of the next version of AIR – AIR 2. Christian Cantrell posted an exhaustive list of everything that’s new in AIR 2.0. The list is impressive, and includes some things we’ve been thinking about – audio recording, calling native apps, multi touch and many more. The number of AIR applications on my computer is rising, and looking at this list, I can tell the number is just going higher.

Are you an AIR developer? What do you like the most in that feature list?

Microsoft too can build good UI – here’s a “sixth sensy” demo

So everyone who’s worth their salt is working on gestures and eye tracking and other – more natural – ways of interacting with a computer. Two interesting videos here that demonstrate pen, audio, gesture and eye tracking input. Good show Microsoft, I say.

Craig Mundie demonstrates future UI – part 1 and part 2.

Did you fall in love with the slider toggle button on iPhone? Now you can use if in Flex

Srinivas Annam has built an iPhone style switch component for Flex – iCheckbox. Looks nice and is worth a try. I am sure users find it easier to use than a checkbox.

Smart Usability: Remember password, not username

Nirav — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:44:59 +0000

Remember Passwords, Not Usernames

“Remember Me” options typically remember both username and passwords. Some sites remember your username and ask you to enter the password every time you login.

I saw that Plesk control panel remembers your password and asks you to enter the username.

That’s a really smart trick. It’s much easier for me to remember my username than my password. Someone who gets access to the computer will have to know my username to get in. It’s a good enough protection I think!

Anyone else on this? What do you think? Should we remember passwords or usernames?

Test your site across multiple browsers with Adobe BrowserLabs

Nirav — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 07:24:26 +0000

Compare multiple browsers side by side - Adobe BrowserLabs

Web designers and developers are always challenged by the diversity of browsers (each with its own quirks). It’s generally a time consuming and error prone process. Requires someone with a skilled eye to spot the problems.

Now, Adobe has simplified that process with BrowserLabs. You can see multiple browsers side by side, and can even overlay them to quickly spot differences. It’s free now and worth a try. Check it out.

Fixing bad XML, any recommendations?

Nirav — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 11:42:12 +0000

I am using Text_Diff classes of PHP to generate differences between two XML documents. The output is not always valid XML – tag nesting is not always correct. This happens because my source files are XML and have their own tags. When Text_Diff inserts its own and tags around the changed text, it messes up the tag hierarchy at times.

I am looking for a clean, fast and safe way to fix such invalid XML. Do you have any recommendations?

I have looked at Tidy, it’s PHP library and htmLawed. I liked htmLawed since it’s pure PHP implementation, but don’t know how fast it is compared to Tidy. Moreover, I need an XML cleaner, not necessarily XHTML cleaner. So even if I use these libraries, I will have to strip out the HTML parts from the output.

Do you have any suggestions / recommendations?

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Live Scribe – Amazing Writing Technology – Never Miss A Word

Nirav — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 11:08:38 +0000

I have trained my eyes to skip all ads on a web page. But today, I saw something I had to click!

Live Scribe is a pen, an audio recorder and much beyond that. It records everything you write, scribble and draw. Along with audio. You can then play it back from anywhere. You can even search what you wrote and share your recordings / notes with others. It’s amazing!

Live Scribe Pulse Smart Pen

This is a great tool for students, journalists and anyone who would like to record everything from a meeting. Even great for brainstorming sessions!

The 2GB pen is $199, 1GB is $149. A refill costs $5.95.

Would make a nice gift, isn’t it?

What say?

Next ring the telephone!

Nirav — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 08:10:16 +0000

We have seen breakthrough innovations in communication media and technologies. From letters to emails and IM. From books to blogs and Twitter posts.

I believe transformation is coming in the way we use our telephone. Convergence of devices, portable numbers, voice mail transcription, SMS integration – it’s all coming.

Keep your ears open for: Google Voice, Ribbit and Gizmo.

Buddying entrepreneurs / techies – there are lot of opportunities in this space. Leap forward and grab some!

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Notification Components in Flex

Nirav — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 17:18:36 +0000

If you are building a Flex application, you may need a way to show messages to the user. The usual way to do this is via Alerts. Alerts can be quite distracting and generally avoidable. Another alternative is to have a status message area (like a status bar) and show messages there.

Growl

But an even more interesting idea would be to show notification windows / popups. If you have seen Growl on the Mac, you know what I am talking about. Heck, even Facebook and most instant messengers show notifications now.

So how would you implement this using Flex?

Short answer, don’t implement them yourself. There are two very good and free components available that you can use.

Flex Notification is easy to implement and works very well.

FlexGrowl looks and works excellent but needs Degrafa.

Flex Notification Component

Flex Growl

I used Flex Notifications in an upcoming product, but am facing some issues with focus loss when the notification goes away. Don’t want to add the download overhead of degrafa to my app just for notifications yet!