Naveen's Journal » Open Source

AJAX Picture Gallery using jQuery

Naveen — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 08:26:58 +0000

I have been longing for a custom picture gallery for quite some time, to showcase my pictures, but did not want to go for a ready made solution like Coppermine or Gallery. Sure these are great products with endless features, but would not give me that MADE BY MYSELF feeling So I decided to tinker with Prototype and Script.aculo.us , to see if any good carousel is available which I can use as an image slider. I had previously used YUI Carousel by Bill Scott of Yahoo! but did not want to use it because it was way too heavy and hence slow to load initially. So I decided to take a look into jCarousel by Sorgalla which is based on the excellent jQuery Javascript framework. Both jQuery and jCarousel are very lightweight, feature packed, customisable, and contain almost all, if not all, the features of prototype and scriptaculous.

So after a little toying with the carousel and learning a few cool effects of jQuery , I made up http://gallery.naveeng.com . Right now it is very very basic and it’s development is still under progress. I will be adding a lot more features to it, which include:

Multiple Albums
Admin Panel
User Comments
Ratings
Last Added Pictures
Random Pictures
Tags

It may take a lot of time but one day all the above features (plus a lot more!) will be there for sure! The gallery has a lot of jQuery JS code, with the image details stored in XML format on the server. The server side scripting and image manipulation are done in Perl using the fantastic PerlMagick API of ImageMagick .

WebOSS ’07 – Web and Open Source Conference in Kolkata

Naveen — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:56:24 +0000

Finally, the day arrived this Saturday, October the 13th, when the first Web & Open Source Technology Conference took place in Kolkata. It was a great initiative to bring like-minded people on the same platform and share our views on all things Web, OSS and Technology. Since the venue host was WBUT , a large percentage of the audience were IT and Comp. Sci. students of the university who were eager to get a peek into the REAL things, and learn the tricks of the trade from the people in the Industry.

The auditorium was good enough with a capacity of around 150, well-airconditioned and the stage space more than enough. The LCD projector could have been more to the center of the stage, rather than just behind the dais, with speaker coming right in between the screen and audience. The only and a very big disappointment from the arrangements point of view was the absence of microphone!! Huh! A seminar without a microphone! Well, the equipments were there but the keys to them were with a gentleman who preferred skipping the college that day and was untraceable!

So after lot of failed efforts by the volunteers to get the microphone working – they even brought another one, but it didn’t work – the event got underway at 11:30 AM, 1 hour behind schedule. Hussain was the first one to start off on RIA – Rich Internet Applications. It was a great insight on the Web 2.0 client side technologies which are riding most of the snazzy websites today and threw light on AJAX, Flex, Flash , OpenLaszlo among others. His thoughts were well received by the audience with quite a few questions popping up on the subjects.

Next came Pradeep with a talk on what is AJAX and how to implement it in Web Apps. He showed some nifty piece of code on how to create xmlHTTPRequest and fetch data from the server in asynchronous mode. Also included were examples on how to use JSON instead of xmlHTTPRequest to implement AJAX. The content of his presentation is available at http://www.go4expert.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6829&referrerid=146 and can be downloaded from http://www.slideshare.net/s_pradeep/building-applications-using-ajax

Shabbir bhai resumed the proceedings after a well deserved lunch break with his expertise on optimising web pages, and gave a lengthy (detailed) talk on Speeding up your Web Pages. He covered topics such as Database Design, Query Optimization, Web Server & Programming tips and tweaks among others.Although his soft voice was finding it hard to make up for the lack of mic, he too put up a great show.

I was next on the block. With fears of rushing too fast and getting over with my stuff in 10-15 minutes, I started off on Web Development in Perl. Since most of the audience were students with little or no previous exposure to Web Development, Programming and Perl, added to the fact that previous sessions were a bit too technical for most of them, I had to make it as simplistic as possible. So I stressed most on the introduction part which dealt with explaining the Web Development cycle, internet in general and programming. Yet, technicalities about Perl needed to be covered as they were a part of my presentation and most importantly, were the focal point of the show! After around 30 minutes Hussu started prompting me that we were running out of time and I needed to pack up fast! So I hurried with the last part of the presentation by going through the points of difference between Perl and PHP.

The presentation can be downloaded from http://www.slideshare.net/naveeng/web-development-in-perl/

I’m Speaking at WebOSS ’07

Naveen — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 06:31:36 +0000

The first of its kind Web Technology Conference on Open Source Technologies, WEBOSS ’07 is being organised in Kolkata on Saturday 13th October, 2007. I was pleasantly surprised when Hussain (Hussu) , friend of Pradeep, called upon me to ask whether I would be interested in speaking at the event. The event focuses on Web 2.0 technologies and is a great attempt by Hussu’s Teks to create awareness about what standards and practices are dominating the industry today. Other speakers include Hussu himself – on RIA, Choosing the right Technology and Ruby on Rails , Pradeep on AJAX, Shabbir bhai on Speeding up Web Apps.

I will be sharing my thoughts mostly on Perl and CGI with some flavour of Web 2.0 as well. Its really exciting to be a part of such a great initiative and kudos to Hussain and his team for pulling it off!

The venue will be WBUT Main Campus (West Bengal University of Technology) in Salt Lake, Kolkata – Click Here for Google Maps Location. So a good proportion of technology students, who will be joining the industry very soon, will be a part of the audience.

It is a free for all event and participation/volunteering is highly appreciated. The details of the event can be found at http://weboss07.pbwiki.com/ . So register yourself for the event and be a part of tomorrow. Sponsorships Welcome

Ajax Yahoo! Mail for FireFox!

Naveen — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 11:49:00 +0000

Another Ajax Wonder we have for our disposal. For all Yahoo! Mail+Firefox users theres this cool plugin that saves you from entering the inbox for every message. All you need is to click on the ‘+‘ sign beside every mail, which is put by this plugin, and wow..! you have a drop-down preview of that mail right outside your inbox! However big that mail might be, and whatever it contains, it shows up everything. Just click on the sign again to close the preview and proceed with the next. Referred to me by Anant , i’m finding it quite handful. You can download it from HERE .

Screenshots -

PS-Will soon be putting up a list of great FF Extensions I use, in the sidebar. Keep Watching

YAGG!!

Naveen — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 10:37:00 +0000

As i was about to announce the advent of one of the most revolutionary Google tools ( Google Analytics) , those guys were up with another can’t-afford-not-to-mention-stuff — GOOGLE BASE ! Whew…. that speed of churning out blockbusters would ceratinly put to shame all the holly & bolly maestros together. Well… first things first… Google Base is all about creating an Open Space – the term being true to the core. Letting users have their stuffs hosted online with toppings such as searchability, integration with other google services, and top of it all — FREE, is for sure an early Christmas gift. Not being able to test it yet ( there seems to be some problem on the server side) , it remains to be seen how user friendly the whole affair is. They say that bulk addition of items can be done by uploading XML files, and for the masses, there’s the no-fuss handy web tool allowing to add items, describe them and edit as you wish to. So what are you waiting for. Be your own webmaster and share all you have got…

Official Announcement of YAGG

YAGG=YET ANOTHER GOOGLE GOODIE

World’s Most Advanced Search Engine!

Naveen — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 13:39:00 +0000

G O O G L E …. these are the 6 letters that flashed through your mind after reading the title of this post. HAHAHA. But it isn’t what i’m talking about. So claims Preview Seek , the newest kid on the search engine block, giving a full page description Here , about how it manages to make a claim that will pass on with most netizens as just another stab at Google and justifying scientifically that how it is better than google. Anyways, the frontpage of the site is catchy enough with minimum fuss and but for the colors, it resembles to that of google to a great extent. But the unique and quite useful features that Preview Seek has incorporated, definitely gives a reason to stand up and take notice of it. Specially the categorised search results and the real time search viewer link at the right most corner of the green bar ( It shows the search strings being submitted to the engine from all over the world in real time) are mentionworthy. The company seems to have collaborated with Wikipedia to provide information about the searched items (unless it does not want to get involved in some serious legal battles!) as the results are identical to those provided by the latter. All in all, a good package to start with, and if marketed aggresively, who knows we might have google to do some serious thinking after starting to get some competition …(Did you say “Microsoft and Yahoo are already there!”.. huh, i’m talking about competition, not copy-etition) . What say??

GetFireFox.com vs GetInternetExplorer.com!

Naveen — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 08:23:00 +0000

Don’t I love this …. the wars that seem to be going on for ages, and getting fierce by the day, between the self proclaimed saviours of the web & the computing fraternity ( You know i’m referring to the *nix community) and the guys who started it all ( Dear old MS that is), doesn’t seem to be in any mood for a break. Although its been for a long time that these two snap at each other at every possible opportunity and try to demean each other’s achievements, its not often that we, the users have something to really laugh about. Its been around for quite sometime now, but for ignorant souls, here it goes – Firefox was launched by all the anti MS guys and widely campaigned to be the annihilator of IE. So much so, that the official FF site is http://www.getfirefox.com . All affairs being open source and in the public interest, these guys also put up a customary Donate link at the bottom of the page. Now MS waiting for its turn fought back with its own version, http://www.getinternetexplorer.com, a replica of the former, though publicising IE instead of FF. The humour comes now with MS imitating 100% of FF’s site with all the layout and even the links. Just hover your mouse over that donate link and watch the link that it points to in the status bar below! Enjoy for yourself. A screenshot is below.

The Competition’s hotting up V 1.1

Naveen — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 08:30:00 +0000

W.R.T this post wonder how quick i’ll run into double digit version numbers if MS keeps on emulating Google! The latest on the block is MS’s own Virtual Earth — needless to say, a take on Google Earth. God knows what on earth is making MS lift ideas one after another from Google and shamelessly incorporate in their system, but its for sure that Bill and Co. makes hell of a copier, putting even XEROX to shame! What’s left only i guess is the rechristening of Google Labs into something like …. MSN Labs !

Originals — >> Google IG Google Earth
Copies — >> MSN Start MSN Virtual Earth

Keep watching for more