Top 10 Gizmos of the Past 50 Years

1. Walkman TPS-L2 (1979)
2. iPod (2001)
3. ReplayTV RTV (2001)
4. TiVo HDR110 (1999)
5. Palmpilot 1000 (1996)
6. Sony CDP-101 CD player (1982)
7. Motorola StarTAC phone (1996)
8. Atari Computer System (1977)
9. Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera (1972)
10. M-Systems Disk-OnKey (2000)

The ratings are based on usefulness, design, innovation, coolness, and influence on subsequent gizmos. [Source: PC World]

Christmas Babies

Happy birthday to Hoang-Anh, Heather, and Natalie.

Happy Holiday

Have a Good One, Everyone!

Javascript window.innerWidth vs. document.body.offsetWidth

var winW = parseInt("630"), winH = parseInt("460");
if (parseInt(navigator.appVersion)>3) {
if (navigator.appName=="Netscape") {
winW = window.innerWidth;
winH = window.innerHeight;
}
if (navigator.appName.indexOf("Microsoft")!=-1) {
winW = document.body.offsetWidth;
winH = document.body.offsetHeight;
}
}

The above code returns the width and height of the browser window regardless if it’s Netscape or IE. If the browser is Netscape, we use innerWidth and innerHeight properties of the window object to return the width and height respectively of the browser window. If the browser is IE we use the offsetWidth and offsetHeight properties of the body object of the document object to return the width and height respectively of the browser window.

Javascript document.onmouseover

document.onmouseover=GetCoordinates;
function GetCoordinates(e){
if (navigator.appName=="Netscape") {
xVal = parseInt(e.pageX);
yVal = parseInt(e.pageY);
}
if (navigator.appName.indexOf("Microsoft")!=-1) {
xVal=parseInt(event.x);
yVal=parseInt(event.y);
}
}

This line of code document.onmouseover=GetCoordinates; causes the onmouseover to be fired and calls function GetCoordinates, which is used to keep track of every single mouse movement. Also, the appName property of the javascript navigator object is used to identify the user’s browser. If the browser is Netscape, e.pageX and e.pageY return the (X,Y) coordinates of the mouse pointer. Otherwise, event.x and event.y are used to return the (X,Y) coordinates of the mouse pointer in IE.

Javascript document.onclick

document.onclick=WindowClickEventExplorer;
function WindowClickEventExplorer(e){
if (navigator.appName=="Netscape") {
popIt=0;
}
if (navigator.appName.indexOf("Microsoft")!=-1) {
var WinEvent = window.event.srcElement.tagName;
if (WinEvent =='INPUT' || WinEvent =='IMG' || WinEvent =='A' || WinEvent =='B' || WinEvent =='SELECT') popIt=0;
}
}

The above code captures all the click events within the document inside the current browser and calls function WindowClickEventExplorer at the mouse click. Inside function WindowClickEventExplorer, appName property of javascript navigator object is used to identify the user’s browser, which in this case is either Netscape or IE. If the browser is IE, we can use the following line of code window.event.srcElement.tageName to identify the tag name of the source that generates the click event.

Now I Can Relax

Just finished my last final tonight. Now I can finally relax.

Did Someone Say School’s Out?

My second and last final for this semester is less than 24 hours away. Wish me luck.

Alexa Web Search Platform Beta

The Alexa Web Search Platform provides public access to the vast web crawl collected by Alexa Internet. Users can search and process billions of documents — even create their own search engines — using Alexa’s search and publication tools. Alexa provides compute and storage resources that allow users to quickly process and store large amounts of web data. Users can view the results of their processes interactively, transfer the results to their home machine, or publish them as a new web service. Read more. [Source: Alexa.com]

What can you do with the Alexa Web Search Platform Beta?

• Three online web snapshots of up to 100 terabytes each
• Powerful tools to sift through the content to create your own data set
• Upload, compile and run your own programs on a processing cluster across the data set
• Store your output on a storage cluster
• Integrate your data into a search index
• Access your new search via Amazon Web Services

Firefox and Thunderbird

My favorite browser and email programs at the moment are Mozilla Firefox (v. 1.5) and Thunderbird (v. 1.0.7). Both of them are free and very compact in size, so you won’t have any problem downloading them at all. Now I can use my Gmail email account with Thunderbird. Pretty cool!One of the coolest extensions for Firefox is the Web Developer Toolbar. It adds a menu and a toolbar to the browser with various web developer tools. It is designed for Firefox, Flock and Mozilla, and will run on any platform that these browsers support including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. If you are a web developer like myself, you should definitely get it.