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Ubuntu: Easy steps to install and use Notepad++ and IE on Ubuntu

I like using Notepad++, but it is a windows program and is not available for Linux. There are some jQuery Mobile apps that I need to test on IE. I need a Windows platform. But my primary laptop has Ubuntu. The solution is to use Wine and boy does it taste good! First install wine # sudo apt-get install wine Download the latest notepad++ installer from http://notepad-plus-plus.org/ and launch it using wine. # sudo wine <download folder>/npp.xxx.Installer.exe This will launch the Npp installer and you can complete the fairly simple installation. Thats it, you are done ! Now you can just launch Npp and its a touchdown ! # cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Notepad++ # ./notepad++.exe There is a version of IE available too  # cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Internet Explorer # ./iexplore.exe This IE scores pretty decent on www.html5test.com . Now how about try installing other Windows apps on Ubuntu and having more fun...

Fixing Date, Time and Zone on RHEL 6 command line

Had to fix all time related issues on a remote RHEL 6 server which runs without any windowing system. Plain ol' command line. Documenting steps here for future reference: Check to see if your date and timezone settings are accurate: # date # cat /etc/sysconfig/clock The server I accessed had wrong settings for both the commands. Here are the steps I used to correct: Find out your timezone from the folder /usr/share/zoneinfo # ls /usr/share/zoneinfo Mine was pointing to America/EDT instead of  Asia/Calcutta Update and save the /etc/sysconfig/clock file to # sudo vi /etc/sysconfig/clock ZONE="Asia/Calcutta" UTC=true ARC=false Remove the /etc/localtime # sudo rm /etc/localtime Create a new soft link to your time zone # cd /etc # sudo ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Calcutta /etc/localtime # ls -al localtime Now it should show the link to your time zone Set your hardware clock to UTC # sudo hwclock --systohc --utc # hwclock --show Update your t

CouchDB on RHEL6 (Red Hat Enterprise Linux)

Had to install a Couch DB instance on a fresh Red Hat Enterprise 6 Linux Box and it required some time before I got the whole thing up. Better have it documented here for future reference: 1. Get the Prerequisites First you will have to add the RPM Forge YUM Repository if not already available. Add the new repo: sudo vi /etc/yum.repos.d/rpmforge.repo # Name: RPMforge RPM Repository for Red Hat Enterprise 6 - dag # URL: http://rpmforge.net/ # (Put "x86_64" instead of "i386" if appropriate.) [rpmforge] name = Red Hat Enterprise $releasever - RPMforge.net - dag baseurl = ftp://ftp.pbone.net/mirror/atrpms.net/el6-i386/atrpms/stable enabled = 1 protect = 0 gpgcheck = 0 Save the file and get the prerequisites: sudo yum clean all sudo yum groupinstall 'Development Tools' 'Development Libraries' 'GNOME Software Development' sudo yum install \   cvs zip gcc-c++ glib2-devel gtk2-devel fontconfig-devel libnotify-devel \   libIDL

2 new Page Transitions in jQuery Mobile v1.1

In my earlier post I had written a simple demo to show the various transitions that are available with jQuery Mobile. The official documentation v1.0.1 for page transitions is available here . But with jQuery Mobile v1.1, the official documentation has been updated and is much better compared to the older version. You will also see the page looks much simpler and showcases how the transitions would look for pages and also dialogs. Just click on the buttons and you can see the live demo. Excellent work on updating the documentation. Also very exciting to see that two new transitions have been added, the Turn and the Flow . So now we have a total of 8 transitions that are available by default. Pretty cool. Of course the brave can extend the framework and try to create their own custom transitions using CSS3 and JS.

TV apps using jQuery Mobile

The idiot box finally graduates to an internet box! Internet on TV is catching on quite fast. I've been reading reports that predict a billion(s) dollar market that will open up for TV apps. Ah the hype .. these things are always in billions. But anyways, considering the number of people who have a TV and the number who watch it (almost everyone?), I guess this could be quite realistic. Many advantages I guess, lesser strain on the eyes, no burnt laps and no lost fertility with laptops on top of laps. I'm online 100% of the time. Definitely I stand to gain. My 6 year old kid too. I'd rather have him play Angry birds and all those HD games on TV compared to him holding my super heated mobile and straining his eyes watching the small screen. So now that I've made my point beyond all doubt, it is agreed that TV apps is the next big thing! So where do I start? I do not have an Internet TV yet! Not to despair, one could install the recently launched Opera TV Emulator

It pays to blog

" See one, Make one, Teach one! " - [video:  Charles McCathieNevile (Opera) , see @00:19:00] Working on a pet project, I stumbled upon jQuery Mobile a few months ago and have been hooked on to it since then. There were quite a few things that I learnt and few more things that I discovered. I started to blog a few posts on the topic and boy does it pay to blog! One morning I log on to my blog and find that the traffic had jumped by a few hundred page views within a single night. I used to have just a handful of daily visits earlier. Initial thought was that some bot had tried to wreck havoc on my blog. Eventually I found the true reason. My post on prefetching pages using jQuery Mobile , had been  retweeted by @jquerymobile . Traffic hasn't looked down since. Even today the number of pageviews on a daily basis, is tenfold more than the earlier days. Its been two months now. Within a week of this, I got an email by a leading international publisher asking if I were i

jQuery Mobile and Duplicated Page IDs

In the previous post , I touched upon how browsers safely handle duplicate IDs in a html file. Things seem to work fine for the three main uses of element IDs, i.e. linking to fragments, styling and referencing the element in javascript. The first element with matching ID is picked up and styling is done for all matches. Now let us extend this test to the jQuery Mobile framework. You can launch the below multi-page code here.   Launch   <!DOCTYPE html> <html>   <head>     <title>jQuery Mobile Duplicate IDs</title>     <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">     <link rel="stylesheet" href="http://code.jquery.com/mobile/1.0.1/jquery.mobile-1.0.1.min.css" />      <script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.6.4.min.js"></script>     <script src="http://code.jquery.com/mobile/1.0.1/jquery.mobile-1.0.1.min.js"></script>