Icons and Flags; Famfamfam

Proudly introducing famfamfam.com where you can find sweet smooth colorful tiny icons that you can use for free for your web 2.0 applications. There are flags too, all of them are distributed with no cost, but donations are welcome. Famfamfam icons are used by many good web 2.0 applications including pownce.

Submit your codes to be refactored by experts

I have compiled a list of refactoring tools for PHP, Java and .NET that you can use to automate your refactoring actions to improve quality of your codes. But now, you don't even need to use these tool. There are guys who are waiting to refactor your codes ;). RefactorMyCode is very interesting place that you should visit if you are developer. The idea of the site is that you can submit your codes and other members are reviewing your codes and making comments, refactoring your code and making it better. Exactly what you need if your code is not performing well or you plan to increase your algorithm quality. Just have a visit; Refactor :my => 'code'

Issue tracking systems for Agile development

I have been using Microsoft Project Server for my softwares projects, but i have never felt comfortable with it even once. I think it is not for software development, but is general purpose project management tool. Software projects are not projects like building an apartment, or making a road, or some others. Especially, agile development is much different than regular projects. We build something in first phase, and then adding new features and changing current modules to make better product, but not final one, and goes on in this way. I gave up my .NET job a month ago and now i plan to migrate back to PHP development with Zend Framework and Ajax technology which can absolutely be called as "Agile development environment". So i needed an issue tracking, or project management software that i can use for my projects to track its progress, roadmap, bugs, etc ... Found out Trac, which uses a minimalistic approach to web-based software project management, has integration with Subversion, has built-in Wiki system and detailed reporting tools. Trac is mostly used for agile web development projects, exactly the thing i was looking for ;) There are alternatives to Trac as well. During my research, i have compiled dozen of open source bug tracking softwares, most of which are minimalistic and simple to use, and for agile web based software projects. Here they are;

• Trac is a web-based software project management and bug/issue tracking system. It provides an interface to Subversion and an integrated wiki.
• Roundup is a simple-to-use and -install issue-tracking system with command-line, web and e-mail interfaces
• Mantis is a free popular web-based bugtracking system, written in the PHP scripting language and works with MySQL, MS SQL, and PostgreSQL databases and a webserver. Known to be good one written in PHP.
  
• Flyspray is an simple, web-based bug tracking system written in PHP for assisting with software development.
• Whups is Horde's bug tracking/ticketing system, designed to be extremely flexible in letting users define kinds of tickets, different lifecycles (sets of states) and priorities for each kind of ticket, and mixing types of tickets into sets of queues.
• EZ-Ticket is a PHP/SQL web based Ticket system, built with SIMPLICITY in mind. Unlike other ticket systems, this ticket system has the same functionality that other ticket systems have, without all the complexity, making it's use efficient and effective.
• Eventum is a user-friendly and flexible issue tracking system that can be used by a support department to track incoming technical support requests, or by a software development team to quickly organize tasks and bugs.
• BugTracker.NET is a free, open-source, web-based bug or customer support issue tracker written using ASP.NET, C#, and Microsoft SQL Server
• phpBugTracker is a web-based bug tracker with functionality similar to other issue tracking systems, such as Bugzilla. Design focuses on separating the presentation, application, and database layers.
• Zwiki Tracker is a simple issue tracking system which can be enabled in any zwiki. Issues can be created via web form, by mail-in, or by renaming an ordinary wiki page.
• BUGS - the Bug Genie is an open source enterprise level issue tracking system, built on open source technology. "BUGS" enhances your development process, by offering an advanced tool to manage bug reports, feature requests and user feedback for your products.
• JTrac is an open source and highly customizable issue-tracking web-application written in Java.

RubyOnRails vs Everyone

RoR guys, Jason and Gregg from Rails Envy, have made series of videos comparing Ruby on Rails with other frameworks and languages; PHP, .NET, DJ Ango :) , Java etc... I find these videos very funny. These videos acts as advertisements series for Rails and Mac. So why shouldn't I use Rails? Cos i don't have Mac ;)

• Ruby on Rails vs PHP
  
• Ruby on Rails vs PHP
  
• Ruby on Rails vs PHP
• Ruby on Rails vs PHP
  
• Ruby on Rails vs Java
• Ruby on Rails vs .NET
  
• Ruby on Rails vs Django

Two more videos are going to release soon, so stay tuned.

Zend Framework reviews, articles, tutorials, blogs and resources

Lately, you must be hearing about Zend Framework very much. Maybe you looked at quickly and gave it a try. I did and loved it. I absolutely plan to develop my next project using ZF. It is already got mature enough since now the stable version available for download is 1.0.1 which starts with the real number ONE ;) ZF has plenty of developers and contributors so it is very active projects among other php frameworks. Roadmap also looks nice. So what are you waiting for? Start digging into the following ZF reviews, tutorials, blogs, forums and sites.

Introduction & Reviews

• A first look at the Zend Framework
  
• Will the Zend Framework save PHP?
• A review of the Zend Framework, (includes 3 parts)
  
• So What Is ‘Zend Framework’, Anyhow...?
• Quick Zend Framework review
• Zend Framework: First Impressions
• Zend Framework: PHP + MVC + More!
• Zend Releases Version 1.0 of Framework App
• PHP Framework - The Zend Framework
• Zend Framework Preview Release Available
• Zend Framework Introduction
• Zend Framework: Getting Started Screencasts
  

Tutorials

• Step-by-step first look tutorial by Chris Shiflett, and ZF contributor
  
• Understanding the Zend Framework, IBM series of tutorials(1-9)
  
• Zend Framework: Creating a CRUD Application
  
• Automatic testing of MVC applications created with Zend Framework
• Syndicate content with Zend Framework Zend_Feed classes
• Beginning with Zend Framework
  
• Getting Started with the Zend Framework (1.0)
• Getting Started with Zend_Auth (0.9+)
  
• Getting to know Zend_View
• Integrating Smarty with the Zend Framework
• RESTful Web Services with Zend Framework
  
• Using Smarty as template engine
  
• Zend_Search (Java Lucene)
  
• Zend Framework Online Demo
  
• Getting Started with Zend_Search_Lucene
• Zend Framework Bootstrap.php - Introduction
• 
  

Sites

• Zend Framework Official Site
  
• Zend Framework: Documentation
• ZendWork - Coding Samples, Tutorials, Code Snippets, Articles,How-To`s
  

Blogs

• Akra’s DevNotes
• Maugrim The Reaper's Blog
  
• Big Room Blog
• Zend Framework Daily
  
• Nick’s Notepad
• L-P Huberdeau Blog
• Graphics by Greg Blog
• 
  
• Alex@Net
• Phly, boy, phly
  

Forums

• Zend Framework Forum - English

Resources

• Zend Framework Tutorial (more than 219 tutorials and articles)
• Zend Framework Mailing List Archive
  

Update on 06/02/2008

• Zend_Form, CAPTCHA, Password Confirmation, Date selector field, Zend_Translate

Website screenshot capture with ASP.NET and PHP

Capturing the thumbnail of a website is pretty useful when you are creating a web application like web 2.0 directory, site review, website preview, etc... So how do you implement it in your language? I did it in my asp.net application which was was very easy. And i searched for the way in PHP. Although, PHP doesn't support natively, there are tricks that you can use to capture screenshots of websites. Here is the code snippets;

ASP.NET

Never forget that ASP.NET and Windows Forms applications are all about .NET Framework. So theoretically we can do all the things in an ASP.NET application like we do in Windows Forms. The idea behind our solution will be to initialize a hidden WebBrowser component and load our web site inside it to be able to get screenshot.

Original article can be found on Codeproject.

Imports System
Imports System.Drawing
Imports System.Drawing.Imaging
Imports System.Windows.Forms
Imports System.Diagnostics

Namespace GetSiteThumbnail

   Public Class GetImage
       Private S_Height As Integer
       Private S_Width As Integer
       Private F_Height As Integer
       Private F_Width As Integer
       Private MyURL As String

       Property ScreenHeight() As Integer
           Get
               Return S_Height
           End Get
           Set(ByVal value As Integer)
               S_Height = value
           End Set
       End Property

       Property ScreenWidth() As Integer
           Get
               Return S_Width
           End Get
           Set(ByVal value As Integer)
               S_Width = value
           End Set
       End Property

       Property ImageHeight() As Integer
           Get
               Return F_Height
           End Get
           Set(ByVal value As Integer)
               F_Height = value
           End Set
       End Property

       Property ImageWidth() As Integer
           Get
               Return F_Width
           End Get
           Set(ByVal value As Integer)
               F_Width = value
           End Set
       End Property

       Property WebSite() As String
           Get
               Return MyURL
           End Get
           Set(ByVal value As String)
               MyURL = value
           End Set
       End Property

       Sub New(ByVal WebSite As String, ByVal ScreenWidth As Integer, &_
        ByVal ScreenHeight As Integer, ByVal ImageWidth As Integer,&_
        ByVal ImageHeight As Integer)
           Me.WebSite = WebSite
           Me.ScreenWidth = ScreenWidth
           Me.ScreenHeight = ScreenHeight
           Me.ImageHeight = ImageHeight
           Me.ImageWidth = ImageWidth
       End Sub

       Function GetBitmap() As Bitmap
           Dim Shot As New WebPageBitmap(Me.WebSite, Me.ScreenWidth, &_
       Me.ScreenHeight)
           Shot.GetIt()
           Dim Pic As Bitmap = Shot.DrawBitmap(Me.ImageHeight, &_
       Me.ImageWidth)
           Return Pic
       End Function
   End Class

   Class WebPageBitmap
       Dim MyBrowser As WebBrowser
       Dim URL As String
       Dim Height As Integer
       Dim Width As Integer

       Sub New(ByVal url As String, ByVal width As Integer, &_
       ByVal height As Integer)
           Me.Height = height
           Me.Width = width
           Me.URL = url
           MyBrowser = New WebBrowser
           MyBrowser.ScrollBarsEnabled = False
           MyBrowser.Size = New Size(Me.Width, Me.Height)
       End Sub

       Sub GetIt()
           MyBrowser.Navigate(Me.URL)
           While MyBrowser.ReadyState <> WebBrowserReadyState.Complete
               Application.DoEvents()
           End While
       End Sub

       Function DrawBitmap(ByVal theight As Integer, &_
       ByVal twidth As Integer) As Bitmap
           Dim myBitmap As New Bitmap(Width, Height)
           Dim DrawRect As New Rectangle(0, 0, Width, Height)
           MyBrowser.DrawToBitmap(myBitmap, DrawRect)
           Dim imgOutput As System.Drawing.Image = myBitmap
           Dim oThumbNail As System.Drawing.Image = New Bitmap(twidth, &_
       theight, imgOutput.PixelFormat)
           Dim g As Graphics = Graphics.FromImage(oThumbNail)
           g.CompositingQuality = Drawing2D.CompositingQuality.HighSpeed
           g.SmoothingMode = Drawing2D.SmoothingMode.HighSpeed
           g.InterpolationMode = Drawing2D.InterpolationMode. &_
                       HighQualityBilinear
           Dim oRectangle As Rectangle
           oRectangle = New Rectangle(0, 0, twidth, theight)
           g.DrawImage(imgOutput, oRectangle)
           Try
               Return oThumbNail
           Catch ex As Exception
           Finally
               imgOutput.Dispose()
               imgOutput = Nothing
               MyBrowser.Dispose()
               MyBrowser = Nothing
           End Try
       End Function
   End Class

End Namespace

PHP

Original article can be found here on The Pimp. Alternatively you can use third party thumbnail generators API, but your app will be dependent which you will not want.


$im = imagegrabscreen();
imagepng($im, "myscreenshot.png");

$browser = new COM("InternetExplorer.Application");
$handle = $browser->HWND;
$browser->Visible = true;
$im = imagegrabwindow($handle);
$browser->Quit();
imagepng($im, "iesnap.png");
$im = imagegrabscreen();

$browser = new COM("InternetExplorer.Application");
$handle = $browser->HWND;
$browser->Visible = true;
$browser->Navigate("http://blog.thepimp.net");

/* Still working? */
while ($browser->Busy) {
com_message_pump(4000);
}
$im = imagegrabwindow($handle, 0);
$browser->Quit();
imagepng($im, "iesnap.png");

$browser = new COM("InternetExplorer.Application");
$handle = $browser->HWND;

$browser->Visible = true;
$browser->FullScreen = true;
$browser->Navigate("http://blog.thepimp.net");

/* Is it completely loaded? (be aware of frames!)*/
while ($browser->Busy) {
com_message_pump(4000);
}
$im = imagegrabwindow($handle, 0);
$browser->Quit();
imagepng($im, "iesnap.png");
?>

It should work with any kind of window as long as you give the correct handle (usually $obj->HWND).

• php_gd2.dll for 5.2.x thread safe build
• php gd image documentation
• IE manual
  

Hiding your files in image on Windows

On windows, you sometimes need to hide your files. There are softwares that allow you to do it, but they all needs big download and installation. Here is the simple and secure way how to hide your files in JPG, GIF, PNG image files.

1. Rar(archive) your files using Winrar.
2. Find any picture that you want your files hidden in it. Lets say that picture name is "pic.jpg"
3. Open windows command console. (Start->Run->cmd)
4. Run following command; copy /b pic.jpg + secrets.rar picwithsecrets.jpg

That is all. Now the archived file is hidden in the picwithsecrets.jpg file. Using the explorer, when you browse and open your file, you will see only image, but the size is bigger cos it contains secrets.rar inside. To get your secrets from image, you normally extract the image file with winrar.

Hope it helps ;)

How to be productive

It really works, believe me. Nothing to lose if you try.

1. Write down tasks

2. Break tasks down into the smallest unit possible

3. Prepare your most comfortable environment

4. Start with the easiest tasks first

5. Set small, medium, and long term goals

6. Only work on one task a time