As both my test ground for an upcoming SaaS based product for which I’m heavily considering Yii and as part of my initiative to migrate my existing websites to Web 2.0, I’ve started applying Yii in my existing Matrimonial site for Worldwide Tamilans, Tamil Kalyanam.com.

I’ve currently taken the old site down to implement the full site in Yii and the current version in live is the design I’ve done from scratch and it’s fully based on Yii. The way things are progressing, I’m guessing I’ll be in full blow by end of November and the site will be fully ready for public.

The site is Unicode based multi-lingual site that can be viewed in Tamil / English at any part of the site without having to revisit the URL. So far the site is currently having only Language Changes, Contact Us, Terms and Conditions, and Privacy Policy page implemented.

I’ve also translated all of the Yii Framework Core Messages into Tamil for this website. Anyone interested can download the full copy here.

Please visit the site and let me know your comments/suggestions.

So, I’ve been on the lookout for a good Framework in PHP that I can rely on for whenever I need to build a website rapidly. I’ve so far tried the following frameworks:

• CakePHP
• CodeIgniter
• Zend

To find more, please visit: PHP Frameworks.

When I was browsing PHP Frameworks site months ago, I came across a framework named Yii that promised that it was the fastest PHP framework. I’ve got intrigued and checked out its features and quite surprised to find that it has excellent features while being high performing and less resource hungry. The following are some of it’s key features:

• Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern: Yii adopts this proven technique in Web programming which can better separate logic from presentation.
• Database Access Objects (DAO) and Active Record: Yii allows developers to model database data in terms of objects and save their effort of writing long and repetitive SQL statements.
• Integration with jQuery: as one of the most popular JavaScript framework, jQuery enables writing highly efficient and versatile JavaScript interfaces.
• Form input and validation: Yii makes collecting form input extremely easy and safe. Yii comes with a set of validators which can be used to ensure validity of input data, and it also has helper methods and widgets to indicate errors when validation fails.
• Web 2.0 widgets: powered by jQuery, Yii comes with a set of Web 2.0 widgets, such as auto-complete input field, treeview, and so on.
• Authentication and authorization: Yii has built-in authentication support. It also supports authorization via hierarchical role-based access control (RBAC).
• Theming: it enables change of the outlook of an Yii application instantly.
• Web services: Yii supports automatic generation of complex WSDL service specifications and management of Web service request handling.
• Internationalization (I18N) and localization (L10N): Yii supports message translation, date and time formatting, number formatting, and interface localization.
• Layered caching scheme: Yii supports data caching, page caching, fragment caching and dynamic content. The storage medium of caching can be changed easily without touching the application code.
• Error handling and logging: errors are handled and presented more nicely, and log messages can be categorized, filtered and routed to different destinations.
• Security: Yii is equipped with many security measures to help secure Web applications to prevent cyber attacks. These measures include cross-site scripting (XSS) prevention, cross-site request forgery (CSRF) prevention, cookie tampering prevention, etc.
• Compliance to XHTML: Code generated by Yii components and command line tools complies to the XHTML standard.
• Automatic code generation: Yii provides the tools that can automatically generate the code that you need, such as a skeleton application, CRUD applications, etc.
• Purely object-oriented: Yii framework sticks to strict OOP paradigm. It does not define any global function or variable. And the class hierarchy that it defines allows maximum reusability and customization.
• Friendly with third-party code: Yii is carefully designed to work well with third-party code. For example, you can use code from PEAR or Zend Framework in your Yii application.
• Detailed documentation: every single method or property is clearly documented. A comprehensive tutorial is also provided together with other minor tutorials.
• Extension library: Yii provides an extension library consisting of user-contributed components. This makes the above feature list never ending.

Go ahead and check it out now…

Though SQL Server Management Studio / Express has an option in the GUI itself do this (if you want, scroll below to see that option), it will not always work in the way it is expected to work. So, here is a simple set of SQL Commands that does the trick and truncates the log file to a unbelievable size saving some essential space. To do that, just open a New Query window and then type the following code:

USE <DatabaseName>
GO
DBCC SHRINKFILE(<TransactionLogName>, 1)
BACKUP LOG <DatabaseName> WITH TRUNCATE_ONLY
DBCC SHRINKFILE(<TransactionLogName>, 1)
GO

The first statement makes the database to perform the operations and the second and fourth commands just shows you the actual size of log being used by the database. The third statement is actually a backup statement but here it just truncates only the log file. So, if you’re afraid of loosing anything, please take a full database backup manually before executing the above commands.

If you’re not up for executing commands and you’re more of a GUI person, you can use the following steps to truncate the log file (though it may not work certain times)

1. Start SQL Server Management Studio / Express
2. Connect to your Database Server
3. Expand the Databases in the left side list
4. Right click on your Database name and choose Tasks -> Shrink -> Files from the popup menu
5. Choose File type as Log
6. Choose any of the following three options as per your need:
   1. Release unused space – Frees any unused space in the Log file (mostly this will not save any disk space)
   2. Reorganize pages before releasing unused space and choose a minimum size as you please in the Shrink file to option.
   3. Empty file by migrating the data to other files in the same filegroup
7. Click on OK
8. After execution completion, open your Database files location (you can find that from the Properties of your Database) and see whether the Log file (with extension LDF) is reduced.

If above steps doesn’t seem to work, please try the commands I’ve specified above as they’re guaranteed to work.

Let me know your if you face any problems in the comments…

Microsoft created a website called Office2010themovie.com based on Blockbuster Movie designs.

They mentioned that the Technical Preview will be available to general public until July 2010. However, the Office 2010 Technical Preview applications will start automatically shutting down after 2 hours of use starting from March 2010.

Though the official version of Technical Preview is not expected until July 2009, Torrent sites has already released the version and is quite popular because of the increasing number of downloads.

The major change in the new Office 2010 is that it is available in both 32 bit and 64 bit flavors (something that should’ve happened long before). The next major thing I noticed is that the design has gone under a major rework based on Office 2007 theme. They also introduced new themes for Office Suites (however, only default theme is available in Technical Preview). The screen shots so far leaked are amazing and I tried the 64 bit version of Office 2010 in my Vista PC and was awesome by its beauty. Major rework has gone on many applications in terms of functionality. The ribbon from Office 2007 is now available in all the applications (Office 2007 does not show ribbon in some applications like Outlook to make them feel compatible with Office 2003). Instead of the round button that showed Start Menu in Office 2007, it is now a rectangle button which shows a different screen for all menu operations and allows you to go back to work area. All office suites are following their official color schemes throughout the Menus. The performance is slow but acceptable due to its beauty. Unusual introduction is Minimize, Close and Cancel links in Splash screens.

My longing for this has been answered mightily by a Japanese freelancer who developed a small program named GDI++ that works on top of a Open Source product named FreeType (an advanced font rendering program across OSes). This small program works beautifully and adjusts the font rendering to Mac OS X like smooth and clarity all over the Windows. It is so beautiful how it can turn a boring looking windows to smooth and clear display. See the comparison shots below:

Without GDI++

With GDI++

Here are some instructions on how to get this working on your computer:

1. Download GDI++.
2. Extract this ZIP file in any directory, for example: C:\gdi
3. Double-click the file: gditray.exe
4. Now, your task bar you can note a “G”, like the image:
   
5. Double-click it, it should start glowing green:
   
6. Enjoy this beautiful font-smoothing.
7. You can adjust the font-smoothing level by right clicking this icon and choosing Use Preferences and selecting any of the three Japanese letters shown there.

Try it out…

Major Computer Security companies are already waging a war against the new entrant to their enmity named Conficker. It is a malicious program that is right now spreading all over the world through internet connected PCs by using hacked websites as spreaders. The program was found as a small footprint around February and slowly the author(s) seems to be updating the software with versions that strengthens the Worm. So far from what security experts can get from the various versions spread, it seems that the Worm is pre-programmed to listen to an unknown ‘Controller’ on April 1st. Given the nature of the worm’s capabilities so far showcased in disabling famous Anti-Virus softwares and Windows’ security updates, security experts fear that the worst can only be expected of it. It will most likely be a harmful worm than a mere April Fool’s joke. With the power it has already grown up, it is evident the the author(s) were extremely good in latest security technology and are increasing improving the program by releasing updates at a rate that is surprising for any single techie. It could be used to collect important data from all the infected computers or get all the infected computers to work as one forming the largest botnet ever. This botnet can be used very effectively to spam Internet and its beloved users at rates unthinkable. So, far major corporations failing to find a cure to this Worm is only saying so much about it’s power and the technological supremacy of its creator(s). Microsoft has already announced an award of $250,000 to anyone who can help find the authors of this Worm.

Read more about this worm in The New York Times.

As an Individual who has spent very good time on some of the best Open Source products, I always believed that having an alternative to the proprietary solutions that tend to be just the money machines is always refreshing. Many people think that Open Source means free software (in terms of cost). Open Source doesn’t meant to be free of cost. This is highly important because, many organizations, when offered a choice of Open Source, immediately backed up saying there’s as quality as the money goes (which means, the higher the price, the perfect the software – again a phenomenon). Individuals also believed that you can’t expect quality from a person who’s doing coding for free. That’s is true if we don’t consider the passion that some people really show in the work they do no matter whether it’s for a cost or not. There are also some Open Source software which are not free of cost. Again, as I stated, a software’s quality can’t be decided by its price or proprietary.

The significant difference as I see it, whether it’s a paid software or free-of-cost software lies in whether the software is open to modifications or not. Many organizations argue that having an Open Source software doesn’t means anything since they couldn’t modify it because of the unavailability of the resources or the time to do so. That’s acceptable, but that can’t be a reason to ignore a software that gives the possibility of modification against a software that gives a possibility of just patches that may come in a year. I would say the main reason why Open Source got so famous is because of the company Microsoft. They realized it very late. But its simply the single most reason why so many people got frustrated with Proprietary software. The kind of frustrations that started with the Windows Operating System to all of Microsoft products that showed systemic errors which gave nothing as a reason to understand, support that always considers the Customer is the problem, updates that always breaks more things than the ones its supposed to fix. There are so many instances that can be told about this. But again, Microsoft is an example only (highly significant example). There are so many popular Proprietary software companies like Adobe, Corel etc that produces software which are used by millions of users worldwide yet giving them frustrations at some point of time. Any software that is written by human being can always contain bugs, that is an understandable universal fact. However, that doesn’t mean one shouldn’t be fixing it. That’s where Open Source gets handy providing a way to fix things by ourselves if we have the time and resources to do so. Or, at least allows us to look into the right place for answers when something goes wrong instead of closing itself sealed and ask us to contact the Administrator who was never there.

Another argument of corporates against Open Source is the availability of Customer Support. I actually get surprised when organizations through such a lame argument. Because, its prudently evident that you can get as much support as given by any Proprietary Software in any of the Open Source software if only you looked in the right place. Many Open Source products that are free-of-cost has a Support availability through community which is also free-of-cost or a paid contract for support just like the proprietary ones. Here, yet another advantage of Open Source software over proprietary software is that in most cases, for the proprietary software you’ll be ended up paying the license cost and support cost wherein Open source you’ll be paying for only the support. In the case of Proprietary software, community support is always very less because the community is again another set of frustrated users who either got lucky to find an way to fix the problem or paid the cost to know the solution. But, in Open Source, the community is the strongest support you can ever get as it consists of users who are passionate about figuring out the problem by themselves, hacking through the code and fix it by themselves instead of looking for outside support and people who actually wrote the original code of that software. In my experience, I’ve always seen that the best learning one can get is from the one they learned by hard ways.

Life-time of the Open Source software is another concern of Corporates. In this case, we have to be the judge of ourselves or get good judgement from the community. It is sadly true that most Open Source software tend to expire after some time. However, this is not the case with most popular open source products that learned a way to earn (through paid support or advertisements) and keep the community going. So, it will be a tough decision for the corporate to decide which parts of their IT infrastructure can be replaced by Open Source implementations that don’t just expire. There is also a high advantage if the corporate is willing to understand the code. If it spent enough time and resources to understand the code and structure of the open source implementation, they can always keep the software up to date despite of whether it got expired in the community or not. It also serves another purpose as if at any point of time they encounter a problem, they can simply fix it themselves.

Implementation and migration cost over proprietary implementations already in place is another huge concern of Corporates. I’ve to agree with this completely as it’s a very tough decision for Corporates who invested a lot in proprietary implementations that were running for quite some time. However, I would never suggest open source as a complete and overall drop in replacement. Implementation can be step by step and highly planned to avoid this. Also, once implemented, on the long run, it reduces much of the cost which is the running cost of proprietary implementations. Over a period of time, if we analyze, we may found that even the implementation cost is fully recovered by the reduced running costs.

Virus, Malwares and Trojans disguised as Open Source software is also a concern of individuals and corporates alike who are considering open source alternatives. I can’t guarantee here that every open source is secured. However, I can guarantee that most of the popular open source distributions tend to be more secure than the proprietary distributions. One should also consider the kind of place from where the software is being downloaded and run some anti virus tests before starting implementation. Downloading from official servers of the organization that developed the open source tends to be always more secure. Also, I’ve seen that open source implementations were quick to release updates if any vulnerabilities found in their software. Again, as I told previously, the corporates themselves can look into the code and decide if there were any malware code existing in the open source implementation. Particularly because of the Open Source nature, these kinds of malware codes tend to be less targeting the Open Source products against the highly targeted proprietary products. That is again another advantage of open sources considering in the case of proprietary softwares, you can’t find a way to cure the vulnerability until the developer themselves provides a patch.

Conclusively, in reality, there are more reasons to adopt Open Source than there are for adopting Proprietary Source if we know what we want and what we can do with what we require.

Please let me your comments…

1. I would suggest having SSH to your domain to perform these tasks. However, if you don’t have Shell Access, use an FTP program like CuteFTP that will allow you to directly edit files in the FTP site.
2. Open your config file wikka.config.php and enter uploads in the config variable ‘upload_path‘. Save and close the file.
3. Make sure you do have an uploads directory in your WikkaWiki root folder and it is writable (enter mkdir uploads and then chmod 777 uploads to do this from SSH under your WikkaWiki root folder).
4. Go to uploads folder and see if it already has a .htaccess file. If it does not, create a new file in the same name. Type the following in this file:
   

   RewriteEngine off

5. Go to your WikkaWiki root folder and edit the .htaccess file in there. Add the following line at the top of this file.
   

   Options -Indexes -FollowSymLinks

6. Visit your WikkaWiki in browser. Create a new page named Images
7. In the body of this page, type the following:
   

   =====Image Files=====
{{files}}
----
[[CategoryUploads Uploadable File Types]]

8. Save the Page. When you visit this page, you’ll see the heading and a small table for list of files and a upload button underneath the table. You’ll have to click on the Uploadable File Types link for making a category so that you’ll easily access these pages. When you click on the link, it’ll go to edit page mode, type the following there:
   

   =====Uploadable File Types=====
This category lists all the uploadable file types and their respective pages to use for uploading the files.
{{Category}}
----
[[CategoryCategory See all Categories]]

9. That’s it, you can use the Images file to upload images. Create another file like PDFs or Docs and keep the same content as I’ve shown here for Images (just name their headings different as per the Page Name) but use it for uploading relevant files.
10. Now, open any of the page where you would like the images to be linked to, type the following there:
    

    {{image url="uploads/Images/your-image-file-name" text="some-text-here" alt="some-alternative-text-here"}}

11. Likewise, you can link files by typing the following there:
    

    [[http://your-domain-name/uploads/file-upload-page-name/file-name some-text-for-link-or-leave-empty]]

12. That’s all about it. Using this method will forbid anybody from outside to visit your uploads folder directly as well as allows you to link them or refer them directly in your pages. You can also share the entire URL with your friends which is accessible.

Let me know your comments…

1. Download the Zip file that contains all the files explained here.
2. Download and Install the Monaco font for Windows.
3. Extract the Zip file to Desktop or your convenient Location
4. Start your Eclipse based IDE
5. Choose Window -> Preferences
6. Choose General -> Appearance -> Colors and Fonts
7. Expand Basic and choose Text font under that. Click on Change button from right side, choose the Monaco font and choose size as 9pt
8. Choose General / Your IDE Name / Your Plugin page for the specific Language
9. Expand the Editors under the above said group and look for the CSS, HTML, JavaScript, PHP, PHPDoc and ScriptDoc options.
10. In the extracted files you’ll see .col files for all the above specified languages.
11. Under the language group, select Colors and choose Import from the right side. Choose the appropriate .col file from the extracted location.
12. Click Apply and Close Preferences by clicking on OK. Close all open files and reopen them to see it in cool Vibrant Ink theme.

So far I’ve created theme for CSS, HTML, JavaScript, PHP, PHPDoc and ScriptDoc only. If you have an Eclipse based IDE that you’re using for any other languages (like Ruby, Python etc), please request here so that I can send you over the color files for the same.

1. Microsoft Visual Studio – SharpDevelop, MonoDevelop
2. Web Development IDEs – Eclipse, Aptana
3. Microsoft .NET Framework – Mono
4. Microsoft SQL Server – MySQL, PostgreSQL, FireBird
5. Microsoft Project – OpenProj, Open Workbench
6. Microsoft Visio – Dia, StarUML
7. Microsoft Publisher – Scribus
8. Microsoft Office – OpenOffice
9. Microsoft Office Outlook/Outlook Express – Evolution / Mozilla Thunderbird
10. Microsoft Exchange Server – Zimbra, OpenXchange
11. Microsoft SharePoint – Alfresco, Deki Wiki, DotNetNuke, PHPNuke
12. Mercury LoadRunner – OpenSTA
13. Adobe Flash – OpenLaszlo
14. Adobe Acrobat – PDFCreator
15. Adobe Photoshop – Paint.NET, CinePaint, GIMP, GIMPShop
16. Adobe Illustrator – Inkspace
17. Adobe Premier/After Effects – Avidemux / Jahshaka
18. BusinessObjects Crystal Reports – JasperReports, DataVision, OpenRPT
19. Microsoft Dynamics – SugarCRM
20. Microsoft Money / Quicken – GNUCash, Grisbi
21. MindManager – FreeMind
22. WinZip – 7zip
23. Beyond Compare (File/Directory) Comparison – WinMerge
24. CodeSmith (Easy Code Generator) – MyGeneration
25. Icon Editor – IcoFX
26. FTP Client – FileZilla

There are much more than this list is available. But this is a start to remove on famous proprietary software from your arsenal.