Why do we need CSS Hacks - for beginners

Most people, or rather web developers must have found out the limitations to the existing structure of the CSS". Separating content from the looks", that was the major aim of the existence of the CSS. However, the Cascading Style Sheet, has its own limitations.

Due to the various technologies and the front-end display structure of the various browsers, that some browsers supports some CSS functions while others doesn't; or just interprets some functions differently.

As such, look at the screenshots carefully. The displayed page is the same webpage viewed with

 different browsers, ie. Internet Explorer 7, Firefox and Google Chrome. The page is a simple static page generated with plain HTML using tables and cells, Javascript a

nd CSS. The page looks extremely perfect in Internet Explorer while in Firefox and Chrome, the alignment is different and as you can see, the cell-padding and cell-spacing seems weird. The image on the page seems to float above the navigation menu on the right.

This is the main reason why we need CSS hacks. With the use of well streamed CSS functions, you can let your page displayed in different manner according to the type of browser the user is browsing with. Changing a few things on the linked Style Sheet saves you from the repeated 

work of changing every file manually.. which can quite be a mess for a large website. There will be more posts following on CSS and how to hack it, making it a more powerful design tool for a webmaster. Keep checking back.

Adding "Read More" expandable link at Blogger

It's almost every bloggers' wish to have a "Read More" link displaying only a certaing part of his posts on the main page making the homepage more spacious and maintained. Here's a quick hack on blogger account to add a "Read More" link and display the rest of the story:

1. Log in to your blogger account select Layout of the blog which you want to modify
2. Navigate through Template --> Edit HTML
3. Take backup of your template by clicking Download Full Template. This backup will help you if you want to revert to old template
4. Search for in your template HTML and paste the following piece of code in between and

<!-- Style to implement "Read more on this Article" link in all the posts (Start) -->
<style>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
span.fullpost {display:inline;}
<b:else/>
span.fullpost {display:none;}
</b:if>
</style>
<!-- Style to implement "Read more on this Article" link in all the posts (End) -->

5. After pasting the code, your template should look like as shown in the following image

6. Save your template and click on select Expand Widget Templates
7. Search for in the template HTML and paste the following piece of code after

<!-- Code to show "Read more on this article..." Link (Begin) -->
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != "item"'>
<span>
<a expr:href='data:post.url' style='color:#0000FF; text-align:right; font-weight:bold; text-decoration:none' >Read more on this article...</a>
</span>
</b:if>
<!-- Code to show "Read more on this article..." Link (End) -->

8. After pasting the code, your template should look like as shown in the following image

9. That's all. Your template is modified to show expandable posts.
10. Now in every post, the content which you want to show only in post's page should be included between This will be shown only in post's page.
11. Post a test article using the following HTML to see your blog working as expected

KanglaPark: The RoadMap to its birth

I've decided to start a category "Roadmap" on my KanglaPark blog. KanglaPark.com, is still early in its development phase and the blogs under this category will tell you about the phases of its development, the works i've done, the difficulties - whether in scripting, integrating or designing templates, logos or anything KanglaPark.

For the first thing, i've some hard tasks finding out 

bugs from the joomunity component for Joomla. I like the looks and feel of joomunity to a much farther extend as compared to Community Builder, which have limited customizing ability. 

The very first thing i struggled was a good host. I've considered hosting it at novahost.org and since the cPanel doesnt have a Fantastico installer, everythng was manual - from setting up the MySQL databases, setting folder permissions and blah blah. The configuration.php file was unwriteable and it created quite a mess showing a lot of script errors. However, i got a little help from WHS and now everythings fine.

Joomunity social networking package was my main option. Since the package is also in its early development phase, it still has got a lot of bugs, limited plugins, extensions and features. I spent a whole lot of time rectifying and editing the php codes to the needs of KanglaPark front end.

As for the present, i've one more upgradation to do and after that, the site will be launched officially. Hope u'll hang by me for now. :)

For the poeple of Manipur, Kanglapark.com - soon to be open!!

Free domain hosting account

It's been some time that i've been searching for a free webhost to host some of my sites. This time i need a larger web space and a greater bandwith capacity since i'm planning for a community social networking site (i'll let you know when i launch the site) and i need the sendmail function to be active there.

I've googled a lot of web hosting service providers and  i found out that there's nothing as a free thing. Well i've hosted some of my blogs at www.000webhost.com, www.freehostia.com and blah blahs. (000webhost doesnt accept the last 2 or 3 requests i've made to open a hosting account. I dunno what's the problem but in there forum, i read that they don't allow hosting service to some countries..maybe thatswy. However, a year ago they were accepting signup from India and i'm, right now, hosting one of my blog at 000webhost and and I like there service , but recently they didn't give any response to my account opening request.

I think that's really bad of them coz if they don't provide their service to any group of people, at least they could inform them...coz watever it be, they have still time to send me refferal mails..huh!! And freehostia,  their service is great but i need a larger webspace, not just 250mb and sendmail to be active)

The webhost, when searching, have some or the other disadvantages... like if it's offering large space, sendmail is off, or it has forced banners or textlinks... or if everything is what i want, it is hosted through LayeredPanel, while cPanel is what I want as it gives more control over your account..or a subdomain given by the service provider is attached forever. What i want is to host my own domain and if a sub-domain is attached to it, it's not good for SEO and besides it degrades the quality of the site.

The next option i tried is - a host for post service; this means you've to post a certain number of posts in the service providers' main forum to pay for your hosting expenses. These option seems to be a really good option as they provide the right thing i want, like large web space (it depends on the number of posts you can make per month); cPanel hosting, sendmail function activation and large bandwidth and so on.

So i'm right now checking out the host for post service at www.novahost.org and www.blazincash.net. And if you know any great free webhost provider, kindly let me know. 

Dark Angel's Phunky Virus Writing Guide

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DISCLAIMER: The author hereby disclaims himself. Virus coding guide, Courtesy: Phalcon

       This guide is purely for educational purpose ony.

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Virii are  wondrous creations written for the sole purpose of spreading and destroying the  systems of unsuspecting fools. This eliminates the systems of simpletons  who can't  tell that there is a problem when a 100 byte file suddenly blossoms  into a  1,000 byte  file. Duh... These low-lifes do not deserve to  exist, so  it is  the coders' sacred duty to wipe their hard drives off the face of the Earth. It is a simple matter of speeding along survival of the fittest!!

Virus writing  is not  as hard  as you  might first imagine. To write an effective virus, however, you *must* know assembly language. Short, compact code are hallmarks of assembly language and these are desirable characteristics of  virii. However, it is *not* necessary to write in pure assembly. C may also be used, as  it allows almost total control of the system while generating relatively compact code (if you stay away from the library functions). However, you still must access  the interrupts, so assembly knowledge  is still  required. However, it is still best to stick with pure assembly,  since most operations  are more  easily coded in assembly. If you do not know assembly, I would recommend picking up a copy of The Microsoft Macro Assembler Bible (Nabajyoti Barkakati, ISBN #: 0-672-22659-6).   It is an easy-to-follow book covering assembly in great detail. Also get yourself a copy of Undocumented DOS (Schulman, et al, ISBN #0-201-57064-5), as it is very helpful.

The question of which compiler to use arises often. I suggest using Borland Turbo  Assembler and/or Borland C++. I do not have a copy of Zortech C (it was too large to download), but I would suspect that it is also a good choice. Stay away from Microsoft compilers, as they are not as flexible nor as efficient as those of other vendors.

A few more items round out the list of tools helpful in constructing virii. The latest version of Norton Utilities is one of the most powerful programs available, and is immeasurably helpful.   MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A COPY! You can find  it on  any decent board. It can be used during every step of the process, from the writing  to the testing. A good debugger helps. Memory management utilities such as MAPMEM, PMAP, and MARK/RELEASE, are invaluable, especially when coding TSR virii. Sourcer,  the  commenting disassembler, is  useful when  you wish to examine the code of other virii (this is a good place to get ideas/techniques for your virus).

Now that  you have  your tools,  you are  ready to  create a  work  of  art designed to smash the systems of cretins.  There are three types of virii:

1) Tiny virii (under 500 bytes) which are designed to be  undetectable due to their small size.   TINY  is  one  such  virus.    They  are generally very simple because their code length is so limited.

2) Large  virii  (over 1,500 bytes)   which   are   designed   to   be undetectable because they cover their tracks very  well  (all  that code DOES have a use!).  The best example  of  this  is  the  Whale virus, which is perhaps the best 'Stealth' virus in existence.

3) Other virii which are not designed to be hidden at all (the writers don't give  a  shit). The  common  virus  is  like  this.    All overwriting virii are in this category.

You must  decide which  kind of  virus you wish to write. I will mostly be discussing  the  second type  (Stealth  virii). However,  many  of  the techniques discribed  may be easily applied to the first type (tiny virii). However, tiny virii generally do not have many of the "features" of larger virii, such  as  directory  traversal. The  third  type  is  more  of  a replicating trojan-type, and will warrant a brief (very, very  brief!) discussion later.

A virus may be divided into three parts: the replicator, the concealer, and the bomb. The replicator part controls the spread of the virus to other files, the concealer keeps the virus from being detected, and the bomb only executes when  the activation  conditions of the virus (more on that later) are satisfied.

well well well.... enough talks today... check out for details on the replicator, the concealer and the bomb on the following posts.

e-pao the online platform to Manipur

http://www.e-pao.net is a great website on the small state of Manipur situated in the  north-eastern part of India. The website acts as a portal for all thoses Manipuris staying outside the country as well as quite a large number of internet users from the state who are spreaded across the country.

The website features the current news, happenings and updates in the small state apart from national and international news. If you want to know more about Manipur, e-pao.net is a good start. Through the e-frenz section, you can make friends with lots of users from the state and the chat room is, despite of the usual numbers of persons from the state who are active users of the internet, active throughtout the whole day and  you'll meet someone to talk too... and one more thing to mention, unlike yahoo messenger or others, u won't meet any bots that imitates human and chat with you!!

Screenshot of the e-pao chat room

Shillong tour update

Here are a few shots from our first day at Shillong. We enjoyed the entire stay there except that we missed some good spots because of the foggy weather. I'll be uploading more pics in my later posts.

Wards Lake: IS, pTAM, Romen, Rahul & his fren

The Golf Link: Rishi, Romen, Rahul's fren, IS & Rahul

@ Golf Link: We saw this girl... guess how she looks!!(I took this pic)

The Cathedral: It's at Laitumkrah, a walking distance from the hotel we were in. It has it's own history... heard that there was an old church here but something happened and it was destroyed and this new church was rebuilt on the same spot.

i'm initiative from Microsoft

Students' Union of NERIST dot org

As the Information and Publicity Secy for the Students' Union of NERIST (SUN), I was assigned to launch a website for the union.

I tried registering the website at the yahoo small business section, the main reason being "cheap". Later, since I don't have a credit card and the payment was made through my paypal account, the order was cancelled and I'd to look for some other options. I tried for domainsarefree.com and they accept payments through credit cards only, and so i'd to opt out that option again. Finally, as usual, where all my other domains are registered, I went for Namecheap and use the october coupon code "INDIANSUMMER" and get a discount of 88 cents. Well before that i tried Godaddy.com but they ask for some $14+ and I obviously had to go for other cheaper ones.

SUN is now online as studentsunionofnerist.org. The website will be officially launched in a few days as I'm working on it right now.

For my Shillong trip, i'll post a few pics in my next post. Lots of stuffs to do.. aint it??

I'm still alive

Dis post is to remind u dat m on my journey @Shillong..m updating my blog using my cellfon coz i dint've tym to get online. I'l b back in 2 days n i promise i'v g lot of interesting things dat i'd lyk to share wth u.

Enjoyin here a lot.

Disclaimer - VIRII ALERT 1

Disclaimer:

What's here is for informational purposes only, and should never be used to cause damage or any harm to any system. The owner of this page is not responsible for any actions performed with the information received from these pages. This series of posts is made solely on intellectual purpose and this site is not responsible for any filthy acts anyone does using information provided here.

Within the next few posts, I'm launching a series of "VIRII ALERT" posts which deals with creating computer virii. I hope users find it interesting and informative. Going through the internet, I couldn't find much sites which teaches virii coding in simple manner. With "VIRII ALERT" i'll try to keep it simple.

One more condition is that.. i love comments, but i won't entertain Q's here. If you really want to learn virii coding, then use the information here, and work the rest out for yourselves.... good luck. 

Ipod touch

Well i've been thinking of getting myself a music player... talking of which, i was checking apple.co.in for some of the ipod models. Ipod nano and Ipod classic, in my opinion, has had its day on this planet. Ipod shuffle, on the other hand, is cool but the latest Ipod touch is the current talk of the town and I'd like to have one myself. From apple.co.in, i found out that an 8 gb Ipod touch cost around INR 12,800 plus taxes, such as the VAT. The price is huge so i've to think wisely before ever buying one. If you own one, lemme know if the pirce is right and btw, personally speaking, keeping aside the price factor, you should really have one too!!

Check out these cool pics ...

What's inside the box

The iphone look

apple ipod touch

To Shillong

As the autumn break approaches, me and a few of my frens are planning to make a visit to Shillong, this time solely on the purpose of a tourist. Last time i went there, I was with a fren and I visited only some of the major centers in the central City area...i like the place... slight chilly climate, cool scenic beauties.. the place looks gr8.

We leave our college tomorrow evening, reach Guwahati by early morning tomorrow and get ourself a Sumo from there. We should be reaching shillong by around 11:00am at the latest (as per the best of my knowledge). Our plan is for staying upto 3 or 4 days  there (which means, i prob'ly won't be updating my blog for these days... or maybe i'll update it during my stay there).

I've a fren there but since i couldn't get his contact number, we've to look out for the hotels ourselves. 4 of us are going and we are planning of reaching Cherrapunji, India's rainiest place... (i dunno if the term "rainiest" ever exist..lolzzz). I'll post some of the photos later and will be updating my blog with my experiences there. Whatever, of the two times i've been there before, i enjoyed being there, only speaking of a specific experience, i was invited to the get-together party for a group of presbyterians by my fren's Ex-Gf. I din't know there language and a lot of ppl were giving long, really boring speeches and i kinda get sleepy.. and i did. I felt asleep and my fren nudged me and woke me up (well he wanted to impress his gf!!!!). That was the only boring part, but after the speeches were over, we'd a nice buffet... and i ate everything on the menu.

The hanging bridge

Early morning today, we'd planned for a trip to the hanging bridge at the locality. The bridge is situated east of our college campus and we'd to walk across the unfinised iron bridge and the Post Graduate students' block (Block H).

We planned to start our journey at around 5:00am but as usual, as an engineering student, we were late and started at 6:00am (IS dragged me out of my bed!!). We'd never been there before, only that we'd seen the bridge from a distant.

In the foto: pTAM, Djen, IS, n Romen (Rishi took this foto)

The hanging bridge must've been built many years ago as the side steel fibres have already begun to snapped off. A lot of wood planks from the floor below were missing and we'd to take hold of the side steel threads to keep our balance. At first we saw only a few gaps but after reaching the middle part, we found a lot of planks missing. We took a few video shots while making the crossing and i guess you must laugh your heart out if you see us doin' that. The bridge was swaying a lot, the water below was flowing and it was enough to make you dizzy, to make you lose your balance. But as we were crossing one of the big gaps, a local school boy came and just walked up ahead of us as if there were no gaps at all. We just stood there amazed!!

I took this one with my cell phone and it's not that clear as the photo above.. and by the way, i'm thinking of uploading the videos at youtube. I'll post the links later.. do have a look.