Developing the Oxford Dictionaries Quick Search app

    Well here we are after what seems like an age of tweaking, the Oxford Dictionaries Quick Search app is finally available for installation. It can be found on the iTunes website here, and on Google Play here. The Windows Phone 8 version should with luck be out in a few days.
    As the developer of course I'm going to say it's a brilliant app, but that would verge on shameless astroturfing.

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Fixed jQuery Mobile footers on Windows Phone 8

    Here's a solution to something which baffled me for a while: making a jQuery Mobile footer that stayed at the bottom of the screen and didn't scroll away with the content in a PhoneGap app on Windows Phone 8.
    jQuery Mobile is usually pretty good at making fixed footers. The code below works fine on Android, using data-role and data-position attributes on the footer div.

 

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Posted in jQuery, mobile, WP8 | No comments

There will be no iPad killer

    This week brought the news that Nokia have launched their long-rumoured tablet running Windows RT. Despite their woes of the last few years when it came to understanding what their consumers wanted, when Nokia get their act together they are still capable of making some of the best hardware there is. It's by all accounts  a decent effort, and the word is if you want an RT tablet it's the one

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Moodle 2.4

Our group is developing a android application named as Student Infromation Viewer and we retrieve data mostly from the moodle. At the start of the project we used moodle 1.9 version and now as our lecturer in charge requested we changed it two moodle 2.4 which is the version currently using at our university.

The problems to overcome were

• We developed our own web service to retrieve data from moodle 1.9 but those services cannot be used because moodle 2.4 file stucture is totally different.
• The moodle 2.4 is developed in php 5.3 so it cannot be hosted at a free server. So we were unable to host our own moodle server for data retrieval

The solutions were to

• Host the moodle 2.4 server in a paid domain
• Re change the directory access paths in the web service.

Note- The moodle 2.4 has directory access in two levels. The hash code first 2 codes represent the root file, the second hash codes represent the secondary file level and the content will be stored with in this file.

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Introduction to JQuery Mobile

Introduction

jQuery Mobile is a user interface framework based on jQuery that works across all popular phones, tablet, e-reader, and desktop platforms. Built with accessibility and universal access in mind, we follow progressive enhancement and responsive web design (RWD) principles. HTML5 Markup-driven configuration makes it easy to learn, but a powerful API makes it easy to deeply customize the library.

Pages & Dialogs

A page in jQuery Mobile consists of an element with a data-role="page" attribute. Within the "page" container, any valid HTML markup can be used, but for typical pages in jQuery Mobile, the immediate children of a "page" are divs with data-roles of "header", "content", and "footer". The baseline requirement for a page is only the page wrapper to support the navigation system, the rest is optional.

A page can be styled as a dialog that makes the page look like it's a modal style overlay. To give a standard page the appearance of a modal dialog, add the data-rel="dialog" attribute to the link. Transitions can also be set on dialog links.

AJAX Navigation & Transitions

jQuery Mobile includes an AJAX navigation system to support a rich set of animated page transitions by automatically 'hijacking' standard links and form submissions and turning them into an AJAX request. The back button is fully supported and there are features to prefetch & cache, dynamically inject, and script pages for advanced use cases.

Whenever a link is clicked or a form is submitted, that event is automatically intercepted by the AJAX nav system and is used to issue an AJAX request based on the href or form action instead of reloading the page. While the framework waits for the AJAX response, a loader overlay is displayed.

When the requested page loads, jQuery Mobile parses the document for an element with the data-role="page"attribute and inserts that code into the DOM of the original page. Next, any widgets in the incoming page are enhanced to apply all the styles and behavior. The rest of the incoming page is discarded so any scripts, stylesheets or other information will not be included. The framework will also note the title of the incoming page to update the title when the new page is transitioned into view.

Now that the requested page is in the DOM and enhanced, it is animated into view with a transition. By default, the framework applies a fade transition. To set a custom transition effect, add the data-transition attribute to the link.

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How to Download an image in android

The following code shows how to download a image from a particular URL.

The download class is shown below

//Download Class

package com.sliit.siv;

import java.io.BufferedInputStream;
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.net.URL;
import java.net.URLConnection;

import org.apache.http.util.ByteArrayBuffer;

import android.os.Environment;
import android.util.Log;

public class DownloadClass {

private static final String TAG = "FileManager";
private final static String PATH = Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory().getPath();

private static String Path= "";
private static String Name= "";
private static String Directory= "";

public static void DownloadResources(String tempPath,String tempName, String tempDirectory)
{
Path=tempPath;
Name=tempName;
Directory=tempDirectory;

startDownloadingThread();
}

public static void startDownloadingThread()
{
Thread thread = new Thread()
{
@Override
public void run()
{
synchronized (this)
    {    

try
{
DownloadFromUrl(Path,Name,Directory);
}

catch (Exception e)
{
Log.d(TAG, "FK YY: " + e);
}
finally
{
   
}
    }
}
};

thread.start();
}

public static File DownloadFromUrl(String fileURL, String fileName, String courseDirectoryAndType)   //this is the downloader method
{
File file = null;
try
{
URL url = new URL(fileURL); //you can write here any link

boolean mExternalStorageAvailable = false;
        boolean mExternalStorageWriteable = false;
        String state = Environment.getExternalStorageState();

        if (Environment.MEDIA_MOUNTED.equals(state))
        {
           // We can read and write the file
           mExternalStorageAvailable = mExternalStorageWriteable = true;
        }
        else if (Environment.MEDIA_MOUNTED_READ_ONLY.equals(state))
        {
           // We can only read the file
           mExternalStorageAvailable = true;
           mExternalStorageWriteable = false;
        }
        else
        {
           //It may be one of many other states

           mExternalStorageAvailable = mExternalStorageWriteable = false;
        }        
        if (mExternalStorageAvailable || mExternalStorageWriteable)
        {
File fileDirectory = new File(PATH + "/Moodle/" + courseDirectoryAndType); // create a File object for the parent directory

fileDirectory.mkdirs(); // if directory is not exist, create it.

file = new File(fileDirectory, fileName); // create a File object for the output file

URLConnection ucon = url.openConnection(); // Open a connection to that URL.

InputStream is = ucon.getInputStream(); // Define InputStreams to read from the URLConnection.
BufferedInputStream bis = new BufferedInputStream(is);

ByteArrayBuffer baf = new ByteArrayBuffer(50);  //Read bytes to the Buffer until there is nothing more to read(-1).
int current = 0;

while ((current = bis.read()) != -1)
{
baf.append((byte) current);
}

FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream(file); //convert byte to file(.doc,.ppt or .pdf)
fos.write(baf.toByteArray());
fos.close();
        }

} catch (IOException e)
{
Log.d(TAG, "Error: " + e);
}
finally
{

}

return file;
}

public boolean checkFileAvailability(String localPath)
{
boolean status=false;

     File sdcard = Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory(); //get the SDcard path
     File file = new File(sdcard,localPath); //set original file path
   
     if(file.exists())
     {
     status = true;     //if file exist set status 'true'
     }
       
     else
     {
     //status = false;
     }
   
     return status;
}


///oookkk------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


public static StringBuilder inputStreamToString(InputStream is)
{
//System.out.println("OK 1");
    String rLine = "";
    StringBuilder answer = new StringBuilder();
    BufferedReader rd = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(is));
   
    try {
     while ((rLine = rd.readLine()) != null) {
      answer.append(rLine);
       }
    }
   
    catch (IOException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
     }
    //System.out.println("OK 2");
    return answer;
}


//Noifications UI

}

The following is the XML file

//Download.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"

    android:layout_width="match_parent"

    android:layout_height="match_parent"

    android:orientation="vertical" >

    <LinearLayout

        android:id="@+id/linearLayout1"

        android:layout_width="match_parent"

        android:layout_height="wrap_content" >

        <Button

            android:layout_width="wrap_content"

            android:layout_height="wrap_content"

            android:onClick="downloadPicture"

            android:text="Click to start download" >

        </Button>

        <Button

            android:layout_width="wrap_content"

            android:layout_height="wrap_content"

            android:onClick="resetPicture"

            android:text="Reset Picture" >

        </Button>

    </LinearLayout>

    <ImageView

        android:id="@+id/imageView2"

        android:layout_width="match_parent"

        android:layout_height="match_parent"

        android:src="@drawable/ic_launcher" >

    </ImageView>

</LinearLayout> 

The following changes are needed to do to Manifest.xml

//Manifest.xml

    <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />

    <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE" /

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Letter to Tony Baldry MP on internet filtering

    David Cameron has picked up the torch of savior of the nation from internet porn. I think that this, like so many other pronouncements from politicians on the subject of the internet, is largely a piece of think-of-the-children soundbite politics based on little or no knowledge of the subject.
    Because I think there is a real risk of this escalating into an unacceptable level of

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Asymmetric clustering vs Symmetric clustering

­Asymmetric clustering: one server runs the application while other servers standby.

­Symmetric clustering: all N hosts are running the application. Centralized systems act as server systems to satisfy requests by client systems.

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A month with an Intel smartphone: Motorola RAZR i review

    It's been a month since I received my upgrade from Orange, a shiny new Motorola Razr i. I swore I'd never touch another Motorola after being caught out when they didn't upgrade my DEXT beyond Android 1.5 despite releasing version 2.1 for its American counterpart, but here I am suckered into owning another Moto.
    So why did I pick the Razr i over the competition? After all, there are a

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The most valuable piece of code I ever wrote

    Thinking about a planned interactive feature for the OxfordWords Blog recently I was reminded of a little piece of Javascript which is probably the most valuable piece of code I ever wrote. Valuable in terms of revenue generated for the customer that is rather than value to me, for it took a very short time to write.
    It was a mid afternoon in 2007 or 2008 when one of my customers at the

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