This article was first written for IOELive.com

Yet another Text browsing experience.
Q: How Was It?
A: Mindblowing !

Let me proceed with the screenshots.

The first thing I want to remind here is that this is the second review I have been doing related to text based browsers. The first was one for Lynx – Commandline browser

However, the Lynx definitely disappionted some of its users, due to many limitations it had. Now, I am pretty much sure, this review will answer some questions that are prevailing in your mind regarding text based web browsing.

The name I want to mention here is “ELinks – the Text Based WWW Browser”.

Let me mention first the great features in this browser other than the previous such browser mentioned.

1. This review is made based on the 0.11.1 version of the browser, released 3rd May 2007
2. Address Bar (g)
3. Menu Bar (ESC)
4. Add Bookmarks (a)
5. Bookmarks Manager (s)
6. Download Manager (d)
7. Browsing History Record (h)
8. Searching (/)
9. Mark the Hyperlinks (.)
10. Horizontal Page Scrolling ([,])
11. Column layouts (Default)
12. Mouse Supports (Right Click, Left click, etc…)
13. Plain/HTML view (Right Click to toggle)
14. UNICODE Support reserved, read this post in Elinks
15. and a lot more…

And the most important is the TABBED Browsing.’>’ to move to next tab, ‘<’ for previous tab and ‘t’ to open new tab, AMAZING)

Besides, the sites I could not visit in Lynx are viewed with best results in ELinks. Better give a try.
And to mention you all , this post is also made from Elinks Browser.

However, let me pick out some limitations,

1. Cut/Copy/Paste does not work
2. Right Click does not work at the form fields

And last but not the least, all images are toggled to links (Press ‘*’) It opens an external viewer to show the image, and presents every image as a link. This wasn’t in the Lynx.

To Install ELinks :
Linux:sudo aptitude install elinks
i do not know if it has a version for windows and other platforms.

Disclaimer
This article is an original article and does not cite any references. The findings and all presented here are based upon the author’s experience.

ACP Masquerade
Deployed For Computing

This article was first published at www.ioelive.com 

Hey all again,
This time I thought I should do something different , not only creating themes, or writing about browsers. Let me be something more critic.

This time I chose the CIT (Center for Information Technology). First let me be a bit clear for those who do not know what CIT is.CIT is the internet library of IOE,Pulchowk Campus. Its all that.

So,I thought to run a benchmark test for the internet speed connection in CIT.

Here are the results.

Bandwidth Speed Test
• Personal test results => Speed 56.9 kilobits per second
• Communications=> 56.9 kilobits per second
• Storage=> 7 kilobytes per second
• 1MB file download=> 2.5 minutes
• Subjective rating Slow

Info

• Date & time=> Monday, May 28, 8:46PM NPT
• Test type=> IDT4 Free
• Connection type=> Ethernet
• Region=> Asia
• Data size=> 1024KB
• IP address=> 202.70.91.104

So what do you think about all these. Let me not say anything. Because there may be someone who pay Rs 20.00 NPR per hour in a internet cyber and do not even get a bandwidth of 11Kilobits per second.

What is pathetic?

• The country Nepal which claims to have the cheapest internet in South Asia,
• or, the college
• or the ISPs …

At last,I guessed the connection was Ethernet type so I used it as the test connection. If it is not true,please let me try again for something different.

ACP Masquerade

This article was first published at www.ioelive.com

Hey all,

Association of Development Financing Institution in Asia and the Pacific (ADFIAP), is one of the international organization in Asia and Pacific with 65 members in 33 countries.

Recently it had awarded the official website of Nepal Development Bank the best website award on its 30th AGM held in Honoi, Vietnam on May 10, 2007.

So, I must view the website as this strike on my mind. When I opened the site and tried to view it and its contents, I preferred to benchmark the site in the following perspectives.

• The site design- Look and Feel perspectives
• The site development platform- Technical Perspectives
• Site Map- Internet Banking perspectives

So what do I perceive from all these benchmarking perspectives?

I concluded,
• what makes this site receive such a precious award?
• or What is the prestige of the award ?
• and What are the criteria that makes a website actually win the award?

Being a webmaster, I was really shocked? You visit the site here and you will all know what I have told above…

Never forget to comment what you think about what I had told above or what you think yourself

ACP Masquerade

Hi all,
I have been playing with the GNOME Desktop Manager(GDM) themes for few days and finally created some themes for the login screen (gdmsetup). I even tried to submit it to the GNOME offical site,but it has been on pending since the last three days, I dont know why.

However, I have hosted it somewhere in the internet for a time being. It is available to download even now. I am just waiting for the GNOME geeks to approve it.

The screenshot looks like below…


About the Theme…
The theme is a celebrity and Feminist theme. It has been presented by Hilary Duff Encyclopedia and authored by ACP Masquerade…

Version 1.0
Theme name : HilaryDuff1.0

Platforms used
Inkscape SVG Illustrator
GIMP Shop 2.2
Bluefish Editor

Download available at Here

Installation instructions
a)Copy the tar.gz file to /usr/share/gdm/themes and uncompress there.
b) Run gdmsetup as a root user and select the theme as current theme.
c) Everything is ready… logoff and view the magic…

Lastly, I just want to say, this is not any kinds of advertisements …Lets be clear about that…
ACP Masquerade

This article was first published at www.ioelive.com

Hey,
IE (Internet Explorer) is one of the most famous browsers known to all. But why is it famous ? There may be many reasons . One of them may be that it is bundled with the version of Windows Operating Systems. However, there are many other browsers that have replaced the IE Experience and are really ahead in many features that the IE browsers do not provide.

Some of the most famous and favourites browsers are Mozilla Firefox, Netscape Navigator, Opera, and so on.

Today we are going to review one of the new generation browsers which is the MAXTHON Browser.

MAXTHON Browser is not a new browser for today because its first version was release on 11th of July 2002. Till today (18th May 2007) it has reported 87,389,848 downloads of the browser, which is around 17,477,969 average downloads per year. It was developed by Maxthon International Limited.

History and the Leap
Maxthon has been developed over the IE Engine. So some of its features resemble IE still now. It was first just the replacement to IE with some additional features and the most important among all was the Tabbed Browsing. However, till today 52 versions (1.5.9 is the latest till today) have been released including the major and minor bug fixes. Versions History here .

Features Today
Although Maxthon has been developed using the IE Engine, it makes really forget the IE Experience. Some of the major features as included in the latest version 1.5.9 build 80 [2007-02-11]. are as follows:

1. Tabbed Browsing Interface
2. Mouse Gestures
3. Super Drag&Drop
4. Privacy Protection
5. AD Hunter
6. RSS Reader
7. IE Extensions Support
8. External Utility Bar
9. Skinning
10. And Much More to Explore…

Among all these mentioned and un-mentioned features, some of the following are really impressive and likely to appreciate.
a) Tabbed Browsing
First of all, when you just install and start the browser, its sleek design and the cool and relaxing view attracts the first jealous impression.
a) Ad Hunter
Maxthon has a default Ad Blocker installed within. The ad blocker can even notify the places where ads should be with the iframes displayed at the locations.
c) IE Extension Support
Since it is developed ove IE, all the IE Extensions are supported and if you have installed IE and then installed Maxthon, the extensions to IE previously installed will all be intact even in Maxthon.
d) Enhanced Sidebar

e) Personalised Browser Accounts
This is one of the strong features in Maxthon. Maxthon supports the personalised Browsing Experiences by creating different users and personalising the browser for each user independently.

f) Zooming
The features are not all finished. You can zoom the whole website starting from 30% to 400%. Unlike just increasing the text size as in other browsers, it even zooms the images and all other contents in the particular website. The zooming remains intact and only for the specific website viewed.

g) Last But not the Lease
Last but not the least, Maxthon is free to download and use. It is claimed to be the whole new FREE Service.

Besides, one of the major feature and I really liked was that you do not have to leave any page while browsing. All the pages and history remain same whatever link you click even by mistakely. More on this, when I had opened 10 tabs and in the 2nd tab I clicked a link in the website, in many of the cases the link just opens in a new tab and the tab is just alongside the original 2nd tab.

Also, the drag and drop of tabs are worth friendlier then even in some other famous browsers.

Links
Maxthon Official Website
Maxthion Tabbed browser screenshot
Version History
Free Browser Download
Author’s

Disclaimer
The article above is totally based upon the experiences of the author and hence may not resemble the truth in some cases. So it is requested to post comment to the author here or post comments directly at ioelive.com .

By,
ACP Masquerade
Deployed for Computing…

This article was first published at www.ioelive.com

I had tried to create partitions in my USB Flash Drive. My drive was of 32MB as the manufactures rating. All was well when I started GParted to created the partions. What I did was,

* I first selected the device /dev/sdb1 from File->Devices.I was really excited to get the device
/dev/sdb there.

* I do not remember what was the size of my drive before I did all the works below. But I remember I used to store some around 29MB data or more previously. I only know that it was a 32MB USB Drive.

* I deleted the partition, tried to create partiotions,etc and there were errors due to the drive being a 32MB one, coz fat32 required minimum 32MB disk space for creating a partion. I accepted that.

* The major problem that I had is after I tried to resolve the errors. What I did was – I deleted all the partitions and created just one .To my surprise, I found only 23MB space remained, and I could not create a FAT32 Partion.

*** WHAT THE HELL OUT WAS GOING THERE, I COULD NOT UNDERSTAND *****

But I am sure that the size initially was 32MB because it was the minimum requirement for FAT32 partion. Could not believe what was going there. I mounted the 23MB anyway, and viewed the properties from the GUI browser. Again, the same thing repeated.

Then I did this again…

* I started the command-line partion manipulation program “parted” which is the command-line tool for GParted.
* I selected the device /dev/sdb1 as
(parted) select /dev/sdb
* I printed the disk information
(parted) print
To my surprise, the output was …
Disk geometry for /dev/sdb: 0kB – 32 MB

***** What is this again ? *****

* I created a partition as below …

(parted) mkpart /dev/sda1
Partition type? primary/extended? primary
File system type? [ext2]?
Start?
Start?
Start? 1
End? 32
* Again I printed the partiotions as …

(parted) print
Disk geometry for /dev/sdb: 0kB – 32MB
Disk label type: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 1kB 32MB 32MB primary fat16
* This was **** OK! ****
But again I could not create a FAT32 partion

(parted) mkfs
Partition number? 1
File system? [ext2]? fat32
Error: Partition too big/small for a fat32 file system.

(parted)
* Then at the GParted now …
Partition Filesystem Size Used Unused Flags
/dev/sdv1 /!\ []unknown 30.75 MiB - -

****** Lets try to create more partiontions then *****

(parted) print
Disk geometry for /dev/sdb: 0kB – 32MB
Disk label type: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags

(parted) mkpart
Partition type? primary/extended? primary
File system type? [ext2]?
Start? 1
End? 16

(parted) print
Disk geometry for /dev/sdb: 0kB – 32MB
Disk label type: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32kB 16MB 16MB primary

(parted) mkfs
Partition number? 1
File system? [ext2]? fat16
Error: Partition too big/small for a fat16 file system.

(parted) rm 1

(parted) mkpart 1
Partition type? primary/extended? primary
File system type? [ext2]? fat16
Start? 1
End? 17

(parted) print
Disk geometry for /dev/sdb: 0kB – 32MB
Disk label type: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32kB 16MB 16MB primary

(parted) mkpart
Partition type? primary/extended? extended
Start? 16
End?
End? 32

(parted) print
Disk geometry for /dev/sdb: 0kB – 32MB
Disk label type: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32kB 16MB 16MB primary
2 16MB 32MB 16MB extended

(parted) mkfs
Partition number? 1
File system? [ext2]? fat16
Error: Partition too big/small for a fat16 file system.

(parted) mkfs
Partition number? 1
File system? [ext2]?

(parted) mkfs
Partition number? 2
File system? [ext2]?

(parted) print
Disk geometry for /dev/sdb: 0kB – 32MB
Disk label type: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32kB 16MB 16MB primary ext2
2 16MB 32MB 16MB extended

(parted)

***** Lets Do someting more again ************

(parted) mkfs
Partition number? 2
File system? [ext2]? fat16
Error: Partition too big/small for a fat16 file system.

(parted) mkfs
Partition number? 2
File system? [ext2]? ext2

(parted) print
Disk geometry for /dev/sdb: 0kB – 32MB
Disk label type: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32kB 16MB 16MB primary ext2
2 16MB 32MB 16MB extended

(parted) mkpart
Partition type? primary/logical? extended
Partition type? primary/logical? logical
File system type? [ext2]?
Start? 16MB
End? 32MB

(parted) print
Disk geometry for /dev/sdb: 0kB – 32MB
Disk label type: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32kB 16MB 16MB primary ext2
2 16MB 32MB 16MB extended
5 16MB 32MB 16MB logical

(parted) mkfs
Partition number? 54
Error: Partition doesn’t exist.

(parted) mkfs
Partition number? 5
File system? [ext2]? fat16
Error: Partition too big/small for a fat16 file system.

(parted) mkfs
Partition number? ext2
Error: Expecting a partition number.

(parted) mkfs
Partition number? 5
File system? [ext2]? ext2

(parted) rm 1
Error: Partition /dev/sdb1 is being used. You must unmount it before you modify it with Parted.

(parted) rm 1

(parted) rm 5
Error: Partition /dev/sdb5 is being used. You must unmount it before you modify it with Parted.

(parted) rm 5

(parted) print
Disk geometry for /dev/sdb: 0kB – 32MB
Disk label type: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
2 16MB 32MB 16MB extended

(parted) rm 2

(parted) print
Disk geometry for /dev/sdb: 0kB – 32MB
Disk label type: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags

(parted) mkpart
Partition type? primary/extended? primary
File system type? [ext2]? fat16
Start? 1MB
End? 18MB

(parted) print
Disk geometry for /dev/sdb: 0kB – 32MB
Disk label type: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 1kB 18MB 18MB primary

(parted) mkpart
Partition type? primary/extended? extended
Start? 18MB
End? 32MB

(parted) print
Disk geometry for /dev/sdb: 0kB – 32MB
Disk label type: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 1kB 18MB 18MB primary
2 18MB 32MB 14MB extended

(parted) mkfs
Partition number? 1
Error: Partition /dev/sdb1 is being used. You must unmount it before you modify it with Parted.

(parted) mkfs
Partition number? 1
File system? [ext2]? fat16

(parted) mkpart
mkpart mkpartfs

(parted) mkpart
Partition type? primary/logical? logical
File system type? [ext2]? ext2
Start? 18MB
End? 32MB

(parted) print
Disk geometry for /dev/sdb: 0kB – 32MB
Disk label type: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 1kB 18MB 18MB primary fat16
2 18MB 32MB 14MB extended
5 18MB 32MB 14MB logical

(parted) mkfs 5
File system? [ext2]? ext2

(parted) print
Disk geometry for /dev/sdb: 0kB – 32MB
Disk label type: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 1kB 18MB 18MB primary fat16
2 18MB 32MB 14MB extended
5 18MB 32MB 14MB logical ext2
(parted)

****** Following commands are available for (parted) ***
(parted) help
check NUMBER do a simple check on the file system
cp [FROM-DEVICE] FROM-NUMBER TO-NUMBER copy file system to another partition
help [COMMAND] prints general help, or help on COMMAND
mklabel LABEL-TYPE create a new disklabel (partition table)
mkfs NUMBER FS-TYPE make a FS-TYPE file system on partititon NUMBER
mkpart PART-TYPE [FS-TYPE] START END make a partition
mkpartfs PART-TYPE FS-TYPE START END make a partition with a file system
move NUMBER START END move partition NUMBER
name NUMBER NAME name partition NUMBER as NAME
print [NUMBER] display the partition table, or a partition
quit exit program
rescue START END rescue a lost partition near START and END
resize NUMBER START END resize partition NUMBER and its file system
rm NUMBER delete partition NUMBER
select DEVICE choose the device to edit
set NUMBER FLAG STATE change a flag on partition NUMBER
unit UNIT set the default unit to UNIT
(parted)

**** I AM PRETTY MUCH SURE THESE ALL WILL HELP IF YOU ARE NOVICE THAN ME
or ARE MORE CONCERNED TO DEBUG, CONTRIBUTE TO THE OPEN SOURCE *****

By, ACP Masquerade [ 2007-05-12 22:30 NPT (GMT+5:45) ]

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