Kunal

This was not a problem, just click continue and everything works fine. But why just MS site threw this ;-) ? Jokes apart, this is expected. New browser may take some time to be identified by some sites.

UPDATES: some of the functionalties are missing/not working.

Google Chrome - A Quick Look

Installation
Downloads very fast. Installs very quickly. Very easy.

Browser Startup
Very quick indeed. 10 times faster than ffx I'd say. Really lightning fast. Lets wait for some more features to add to it, like plugins etc.

Page Loading
I don't think browser can do much if your internet connection is screwed up. I didn't find any noticeable difference in terms of loading a page. For real benchmarking, test highly AJAXified sites on chrome. According to developers, V8 and WebKit would make rich internet applications work faster on chrome.

UI
Truly Awesome. Almost no UI. All you see is your webpage. Full marks for UI engineering. All not-so-used buttons/controls (which clutter up other browser's UI space) are safely hidden.
Window's title-bar's space is utilized for displaying tab. Even the browser's name is not shown anywhere on the screen. Looks like not a single pixel is wasted.

Tabs
Extremely Flexible Tabs, Pull out of one window, Push it in other window.
Secure. If one tab crashes, whole browser wont go down. (ffx3 on vista has become real pain in this regards)

Shortcuts
common shortcuts keys should work like they work for ffx/IE.
CTRL+TAB, CTRL+SHIFT+TAB, F5, CTRL+N, CTRL+T etc.
(They SHOULD work, for ease of new users)

Address+Search Bar
Address bar can act as search bar as well. (hmm...)

Application Shortcuts
drag and drop web applications shortcuts on desktop (..not a great deal, at least i think so)

Well well well....you can read about more features (downloads, security, incognito window etc) on chrome's site. Why am I wasting my time!!

Conclusion
Truly a new generation browser. Its worth giving a try. Very light weight and fast. Smart, streamlined and intuitive UI. But in the browser market, it has a long way to go.

Google Chrome

There was a time when browser used to be a separate application that was not a standard part of Operating System. People had options. Then came a big giant, and things would never be the same. Air would never be clean again. A cold war was set off. Do I need to tell more?

Internet Explorer, the blue E, had become synonymous to internet the same way Windows became synonymous to computer. [I have deliberately used internet in place of browser and computer in place of OS, so please, no hullabaloo regarding the same ;) ] . The little blue E was made an inseparable part of ubiquitous Windows. Though there was an Antitrust suit blah blah.. (which I don't want to discuss here).. it hardly made any difference.

Time kept passing by. The big M had now become a symbol of tyranny. The little E kept reigning the browsersphere. Given the backing of the big M, nobody could move E from its throne.

Meanwhile there was born a little g (then little), who had all good intents of organizing information. Little g would not intrude into business of others. It would just innovate (or take over small fishes in the pond).

At around same time a little m was born. By 2004 little m devised its flagship product named ffx (firefox, if you don't know). It was open source browser, all set to set all the records straight with M for whatever it had done to the poor chap NN (Netscape Navigator). And by far, it is climbing the ladder of success, successfully.

During all this, little g's growth had been exponential. Its journey from little g to bold face, font size 64, underlined, hyperlinked G was record breaking, jaws dropping.

G liked the good deeds of m. Shook hands. Together they looked like becoming a synomym of web 2.0. Glory of browser was coming back. People started realizing that Internet cannot only be explored by IE (and also computer cannot only be operated through a small service Window). G was ruling the web.

G should be having data of users like no other on the planet. G's offerings were increasing day-by day. G Offered win-win situation for businesses and end users by its Advertising services. G took control of everything, from search to email, blog to documents, code to health, finance to patents (and the endless list goes on). But somewhere in the back of its mind, G realized that all services it provides are still accessed through a medium (browser) on which it has little control.

Bang!!!! G lunched its own browser named chrome. They are giving good reasons as well. (Psst psst... has it got anything to with impending release of IE8)

As of now (2-Sep-2008), it (like all other Google products) is under Google's cool, all-new, exclusive forever-beta tag. Do they also think putting beta is trendy? because gmail, after 4 years, still has beta.

Anyways, I've always liked almost everything Google has offered. And am going to try this out as well and very soon gonna update you about it.

PS: Don't be deceived by the cynical language of this blog. I am a Google fan. I have respect to MS as well. They have done a lot good to the computing world. Please don't always disparage MS. It should really hurt the good folks working there.

PPS: Throughout this blog I have not mentioned the super brand with little i (and their broswer Safari). And also the browser with big O (Opera). This does not mean their contribution is insignificant. They were not here just because they would add a very little to the discussion. Now I have mentioned them, I feel better. Feel much safer from those iFanatics.

PPPS: You can find more on browser comparison (and almost anything that you can think of) on wikipedia

Delete data from tables

Ever needed to clear all the data from your database (usually while in development)?
You can use this script to clean the tables. It will work for oracle only, AFAIK.


-- script to clean the tables (ie the deleting the data only)
DECLARE 
cursor c1 is  select distinct table_name from user_tab_columns;

BEGIN
  for v1 in c1 loop
    dbms_output.put_line('cleaning '|| v1.table_name ||'...');
    execute immediate 'Delete from '|| v1.table_name ||'';
    dbms_output.put_line('done'); 
  end loop;
  dbms_output.put_line('completed');
END;

Disclaimer: I hold no responsibility for the havoc this script may create on your database ;) never use it on production databases.

Presentation on Log4j

I had presented this some time back at my workplace. May be you'll find it useful.

Log4j Logging Mechanism

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: log4jjava)

Interesting Identifiers in Java

Ever seen a declaration like


 _ _ = new _();

or call to a method like


System.out.println(_._());

Try this example, you'll see, these are valid java statements.
read on..


package test.identifiers;

/**
 * example that shows various legal identifiers
 * 
 * @author Kunal
 *
 */
public class LegalIdentifiers {

 int $1 = 1; // valid
 long _6 = 6L; // valid
 char t = '\t'; // of course valid, did u have any doubt ;)
 
 class t{
 } 
 t $;  // now here t is type & $ is object of type t

 class _{
  int _ = 0;
  int _(){ // method with name of constructor
   return _;
  }
 } 
 _ _ = new _(); // _ is an object of type _ (underscore)

 void display(){
  System.out.println(_._()); // interesting, isn't it?
 }
 // this is not a fill-in-the-blanks question
 // it actually compiles and runs :)

 // this means
 String String = "String";  // is valid
 // yes it is !!!
 // so you can have variable name same as class name
 
 public static void main(String[] args) {
  (new LegalIdentifiers()).display();
 }
}

Pages