Its been too long since I’m using this theme here on GotChance. So, I decided to do a redesign of the blog. As the first step, I created a new, simple logo, which is what you see above. Within a week, the new design will go live.
I am redesigning my blog. What does it mean for you reader ? I’ll share my experience with you after redesigning. I’ll share the new things that I learn.
And also, the current GotChance theme will be released for free… Yay…
Its been a little over a week since the latest version of Ubuntu, the “Intrepid Ibex” was released. As you’d have probably heard, Linux is a “Geek thing” (not really nowadays). So, i decided to try it out. I’ve previously tried out the previous release of Ubuntu, the “Hardy Heron“. So, installing was not strange for me.
I decided to install Ubuntu using the Wubi installer, on my laptop. Bad luck.. It didn’t work. My laptop only had 256 MB of memmory. So, instead i installed Xubuntu on it. There’s not much that i can say about it as i didn’t play with it much. What i really wanted was to try the original “Ubuntu”. So, my desktop was my only choice. Again, i resorted to Wubi to install because it was simple and safe. I’ll share my experience with you here.
Installing Ubuntu via Wubi is straight-forward, just like installing any other application in Windows. The Ubuntu desktop is something that i’m familiar with. Unlike Windows, it comes preloaded with a lot of Open Source applications. But, still there are other things that you should add after installing Ubuntu. In this post, I’ll tell what all i did after installing Ubuntu.
Nowadays, who doesn’t visit YouTube. What you need to play videos on YouTube is a Flash Player plugin for Firefox. To install Flash Player, simple visit a page that has a Flash video embedded using Firefox. Firefox will tell you “Additional Plugins Required”. Simply click that yellow bar and install Flash Player.
VLC Media Player is a must-have for everyone. It plays almost every format that is avaible out there. To install it, simple run this in the terminal :
sudo apt-get install vlc vlc-plugin-esd mozilla-plugin-vlc
Ubuntu doesn’t come with inbuilt MP3 and MPEG Support. You need to install it manually. You can do it by installing the ubuntu-restricted-extras package. But, that installs a huge 185MB. To simply get MP3 and MPEG support, run this in the terminal :
sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
I am done with this. After these, i did not need anything more in Ubuntu yet, except some FireFox addons. Maybe, i’ll need Java Runtime sometime in future. Lets see…
Have you tried Ubuntu ? If not, do it first, if you are a geek…
If you have it installed, what other applications do you you have installed ?
Do you notice the nifty email subscription box on the sidebar. If you are a feed reader, you might want to click-through to check out. In this simple tutorial, I’ll teach you how to create this simple form using javascript.
1) First, here is the basic HTML code for an input box and a subscribe button :
2) Then, we have to add the javascript bit to make the text field blank when a user clicks inside it. For this, we make use of the onClick parameter
The if statement is pretty much self explanatory. On clicking, if the value inside the text field is “Enter Email Address…”, we should change its value to blank.
if(this.value == 'Enter Email Address..')
{
this.value = '';
}
3) Now, that form is almost complete. We just need to add one more thing. When the user doesn’t enter any value and clicks outside the text field, we should bring back the “Enter Email Address…”. For this, we make use of the onBlur parameter.
This is also the same as the other statement. On blur (clicking somewhere outside), ifthe value of the text field is blank, we have to change it to “Enter Email Address…”
if(this.value == '')
{
this.value = 'Enter Email Address..';
}
Thats it. Now, you have a cool form for email subscriptions (of course, this can be used for any other form).
Starting from this week, every Sunday, I’ll be posting a weekly wrap up of the posts made in the week here on GotChance. So, here goes the list :
Also, if you have any questions on blogging, web design, programming etc., feel free to drop me a mail. I’ll reply you via mail and also sum up all the questions and post here every Sunday.
For a very long time, GotChance was running on WordPress 2.3.3. Though I knew, upgrading was something easy, due to some unknown fear I did not do it. Today, I overcome the fear and successfully upgraded to the latest WordPress 2.6.2 :)
