Raj Kaimal

RSS Feeds in IE 7 / Mozilla - All in one place?

This post is based on the what I have seen/heard about the RSS integration in Windows Vista.

The RSS integration in IE 7 or Mozilla is great but those subscriptions, from what I understand, are stored on the local machine. Since I am on different computers at different times of the day, it would be great to access my RSS feeds, IE favorites from any computer – similar to the roaming profiles in Windows 2003 which is obviously limited to computers in the same domain.

That is why I like Outlook Web Access. I am able to access my email, calendar and contacts from anywhere through a simple web interface. (Outlook with RPC over HTTP also works but you need outlook installed on the client machine.)

I recently installed a really cool news aggregator outlook add-in called RSS Popper. It creates a folder in Outlook and creates entries in subfolders from all my RSS subscriptions. Since this folder is accessible through OWA, I can read my RSS subscriptions from anywhere and not worry about missing anything. It has really changed the way I read RSS feeds. I can also save these RSS entries. I just drag and drop into my RSS Saved folder through OWA.

My IE Favorites have also been copied to a folder in outlook, which exposes it through OWA.

It would be nice if Windows Vista/MS Exchange had this type of “Global Personal Information Access” integrated and available through a central location with the least amount of work for the end user.

BTW, my USB drive holds amongst others my IE favorites and a copy of my contacts encrypted.

How do you manage your personal data?

AJAX API Reference

Since this is going to be the year of AJAX, these three links will come in handy

• Microsoft IXMLHTTPRequest Reference
• Mozilla nsIXMLHttpRequest
• Apple AJAX Tutorial 

Don't go overboard with AJAX though ;-)

Implementing a selection box for Google Maps

This method only works with the first version of Google Maps. It does not work with the latest API. I have not had the time to update the code but I am sure if you search Google you will find an implementation using the latest API.

I really like Google Maps but one thing that has been bothering me for a while was the inability to select an area on the map to zoom into.

With the help of the Google Maps API which allows you embed the maps on your own page, I decided to tackle the problem of implementing the selection box.

Well, after around 7 hours of work/hacks/coffee this evening, I had it working on IE and Firefox.  I hope that Google implements this feature soon.

v2 demo and source code here To zoom into an area, press the shift + 'z' key and move your mouse. 
v1 demo and source code here To zoom into an area, press the 'z' key and move your mouse. 

TODO: Re-Initialize on resize; Take into account scroll attributes if map is being scrolled. I'll let Google take care of that when they implement this ;-)

The API could have exposed more functions and the documentation should bee improved. Hopefully they will in the next release. Since the current API only allows you to render an area given the lat, lon of the center and a zoom level, the challenge was converting the pixels of my bounding box to lat/lon coordinates, finding the center and then determining the appropriate zoom level. I think the API in the future should alow a developer to call a method that renders the map given the lat/lon or pixels of your bounding box.

It is almost 4 am..I need some slee

Protecting content with DHTML

Jason blogs about Pixelpass which allows you to read blogs by paying for it. The protection is done using DHTML which is a bad idea.

I love it when something like this comes my way. Entering the following in the address bar gives me access to the content - so much for security.

javascript:void(document.getElementById("_ppImageLayer").style.visibility = "hidden")

This company should consider using some other mechanism to protect content. I shall let them know about this.

Update: I wrote to them but never got a reply.

Request to PDC presenters

• Time your slides - I have seen presentations where the presenter takes a lot of time in the first half and then rushes through the second half because of time constraints. The most important stuff is generally in the second half of the presentation.
• Consider using the VS.NET snippet feature instead of typing code (based on the context).
• Consider telling the audience to ask their questions at the end of the presentation.
• View your presentation on a big screen. You could come to the room the day before and view the presentation - this way you can adjust screen resolution, slide font size, visual studio font size etc.  Quickly run through the demos if any. Have your buddy at the back of the room make sure that he read clearly. Try to avoid adjustments of this kind during the presentation - makes you look unprofessional!
• If a member from the audience asks a question, please repeat the question for us to hear! If you want a one on one conversation, take it offline.
• (To the PDC organizers) Please include the QA session in the PDC DVD - don't cut it out. The same applies to the TechEd DVD.

PS: I personally think that MS Comic Sans makes presentations look ugly.

Gadgets

Gadgets are exciting but accessories come by and spoil the fun.