TurtleBlog

Google Search – improved!

Edd Turtle — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 21:36:29 +0000

Here’s a quirky re-design of the Google homepage, it has the original first impression and colour scheme but is a lot more modern and sophisticated. It only works with google.com, this took me a while to get to as it kept redirecting me back to google.co.uk just to warn you. Here are some screenshots:

To get this simply paste the code below into the address bar while at google.com.

Code:

javascript:void(document.cookie="PREF=ID=20b6e4c2f44943bb:U=4bf292d46faad806:TM=1249677602

:LM=1257919388:S=odm0Ys-53ZueXfZG;path=/; domain=.google.com");

A Big Thank you

Edd Turtle — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:29:18 +0000

I’ve been wanting to write this post for a while but have been mulling over it all the same. I just wanted to say a big thank you to everyone who uses ubuntu, has contributed to ubuntu in some way and to the top code developers behind it’s success. I work in a computer shop on weekends and on this weekend we had no end of problems with a previously stable windows machine because a virus got into it and evaded all scans. With had endless computers with actually decent spec but were running seriously shockingly rubbish. And then I came home from work and turned on my computer at home and it booted super speedy and just worked.

So I thank you as ubuntu users for my peace of mind.

Character Entities – You might not know

Edd Turtle — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:54:01 +0000

Here are some html character entities which you may not know already, and may even become useful. If you’ve used on of these on your site, like on or what ever leave a comment below.

℃

Degrees Celcius Celsius

℃

☀

Sun

☀

☃

Snowman

☃

☄

Comet

☄

☎

Telephone

☎

☑

Tick box

☑

☒

Cross box

☒

☠

Danger

☠

☣

Biohazard

☣

☭

Hammer and Sickle

☭

☮

CND, Peace

☭

☺

Smiley Face

☭

✌

Victory

✌

☂

Umbrella

☂

Data Source: http://www.bigbaer.com/reference/character_entity_reference.htm

Picture Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ezioman/2319362523/

Crop Image with CSS

Edd Turtle — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:49:32 +0000

A simple question, have you ever wanted to crop an image using CSS? Well here’s the answer, clip: rect(). It’s quite easy to do with jQuery and PHP but this is a great and easy option for all those little gallery thumbnails.

Demo:

HTML:

CSS:

.example {

    position: absolute;

    clip: rect(30px 350px 270px 50px);

}

Note that the coordinates for cropping all start from (0,0) and that the syntax is rect(topline rightline bottomline leftline).

Ubuntu Wallpapers to Celebrate 9.10

Edd Turtle — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:09:30 +0000

Here are a few wallpapers I made to celebrate the release of Karmic Koala tomorrow. Feel free to take them, change them or distribute them as you wish.

Blue Mystery

1280×800 · 1440×900 · 2560×1024

Spook

1280×800 · 1440×900 · 2560×1024

Fly

1280×800 · 1440×900 · 2560×1024

Green Goo Glow

1280×800 · 1440×900 · 2560×1024

Google not supporting it’s own products?

Edd Turtle — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:50:40 +0000

I was surfing the net today when I came across this on Google Maps, does Google not support Chrome with Maps? I was using the ‘basic html’ version because our internet was slow, if you want to see this go to:

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=d&t=h&output=html&mid=1254836062

http://local.google.co.uk/support/bin/answer.py?answer=16532&topic=1499

Open Source PHP Login System

Edd Turtle — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:25:35 +0000

I’ve been using this PHP login system for a while now, it’s called Quadodo and it’s completely free and open source under the GPL license. One of the many benefits I find with it is that it’s 100% customisable while still being secure.

It has many features, like the forgotten password page and the registration page. If you’re running a very small site but would like a login system for certain content, I would strongly recommend Quadodo.

Login

Registration

Config

Quadodo Site

Download

It’s available for download here: http://www.quadodo.net/downloads.php

5+ Steps to Speed up your Website

Edd Turtle — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 19:38:29 +0000

Here are some innocent tips and tricks to get your website to load faster behind the scenes. Most of them are either simply good practice or tools to help you out along the way. If you have any more ways to speed up your site leave a comment at the bottom of the page.

1. Valid Code

Valid code means that browser doesn’t have to make, create and merge your code to make it work. A page with the correct DOCTYPE and structure will render quicker within the browser, it also helps with browser compatibility.

XHTML and HTML Validator – http://validator.w3.org/

CSS Validator – http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

2. Reduce the HTTP Requests

As well as the time it takes to download a file off the server it also takes time to request the file, so the less actual requests you make the faster it will be. A brilliant example of this is CSS sprites which combine multiple images into one and use the CSS background property to only show the portion of the image you require.

A Guide to Reducing HTTP Requests – http://www.dailyblogtips.com/speed-up-your-site-reduce-the-http-requests/

CSS Sprites Tutorial – http://css-tricks.com/css-sprites/

CSS Sprite Generator – http://spritegen.website-performance.org/

3. Compress Images, CSS and JS Even Further

Images, Javascript and CSS can all be compacted into smaller files without loosing any functionality. The Yahoo! site Smush.it compresses images even further than the Photoshop “Save for web” option.

To compress CSS there are easy to use websites such as Clean CSS and CSS Drive Compressor. These site will remove unneed spaces, semicolons and returns from your CSS files usually decreasing the file size by around 13%.

The site Javascript Compressor is the simplest way to cut the size of those large javascript files.

4. Use JS Libraries and link to Google’s CDN

Using javascript frameworks like jQuery, MooTools and Prototype means that you need less odd bits of javascript here and there, a javascript framework can usually do the same job while compacting it into an easy line or two.

Once you have a framework and you want to use it on your website it is an idea to use the version hosted by Google on their servers over at Google Code. This can save your load time because if it’s all hosted at the same place it might not need to be downloaded at all because it might have been cached.

5. Javascript at bottom

This is a really simple, yet effective tip. A few years ago I would always start a page with the standard DOCTYPE, HTML, title, meta, css, javascript then body but now it’s realised that it’s better to add them to the bottom of the page as they are not usually needed until last of all. A prime example is the Google Analytics tracking code which they recommend sits at the bottom of the page.

6. Firefox Addons

Using Firefox addons like Firebug and the Web Developer Toolbar can seriously help you when optimising your code. Firebug enables you to check how long it takes for a specific file to be requested and load plus much more while the Web Developer toolbar allows you to disable images, CSS and javascript to see how your website looks and works without them and once again much more.

As pointed out by ’sampada’ in the comments IE Add-ons such as IE developer Toolbar can also be very useful and help with cross-browser testing.

So there we have it, some nifty ‘lil tricks to get your website in front of the people who matter faster. Any comments? If so leave them below.

Google Chrome on Ubuntu

Edd Turtle — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 17:17:45 +0000

I downloaded version 4.0 of Google Chrome for Ubuntu a few days ago and found it brilliant. It’s available in 32bit and 64bit and best of all everything I tried worked, Flash, Chrome themes, downloads, fonts, extensions… The list is endless. It doesn’t use wine either which means that it looks a whole lot better.

Now I suppose it should be mentioned that this version of Chrome is “unstable” and maybe full of bugs, but I personally didn’t notice any problems so I’m continuing to use it.

Available for download here (32bit): http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/eula_dev.html?dl=unstable_i386_deb

Available for download here (64bit): http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/eula_dev.html?dl=unstable_amd64_deb

Extra Pictures:

Useless Linux “Tips”

Edd Turtle — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:38:42 +0000

Here is a good list of six gnome-terminal commands which you really wont need and you probably won’t ever use them unless out of curiosity (like I did). But sure tell me if you do use them and why in the comments at the bottom of the page.

1. Watching Star-Wars

No, no, no don’t get me wrong there’s nothing wrong with watching Star-Wars but when you can watch a text based version of Episode VI IV New Hope from the terminal it gets a little ridiculous (but it is quite clever).

telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

2. A Terminal Fire

This is the least warming thing I can think of, if you’re seriously looking at getting warm then you might as well hug your processor for all it’s worth.

sudo apt-get install libaa-bin
aafire

3. E-mail

This is where I completely drop myself in it, I wrote an article a little while ago which implied that this was useful. I now see the error of my ways, it is quite simply sending an e-mail through the Terminal. To see my article and how to do it go to: http://www.turtleblog.co.uk/2009/04/send-e-mail-from-terminal-using-gmail/

4. Disable X Restart

Why would anyone want to disable the actually useful Ctrl+Alt+Backspace key combination to restart X in Gnome? If you do want to this visit: http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-to-disable-ctrlaltbackspace-from-restarting-x-in-gnome.html

5. Twitter

Okay so tell me this, who would regularly update their twitter status via their Terminal? Well with this code you know can! But you wouldn’t want to.

curl -u user:password -d status=”Your status message” http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml

6. Yes

Here’s a big one, in the terminal type ‘yes’ and it will continuously repeat the letter y until you press Ctrl+C. Does anyone know its purpose? If so please a comment below.

yes