1. Open a new flash file and import image to the center of the stage in layer 1.
2. Create layer 2 above layer 1.
3. Convert layer2 to mask layer.
4. Draw a circle on mask layer 2.
5. Add 10 frames to both the layers and convert it into motion tween.
6. Increase the size of circle after twinning at 10th frame.
7. Lock both the layers and play the animation (timeline) and to see masking with animation.
Originally posted 2011-11-02 13:36:03.
As we all know, Coreldraw is a graphic design software used specially for printing media as well as other designing purposes. From this point of view using different effects for both text and images is very interesting yet important part of Coreldraw.
We can give “emboss effect” to text in Coreldraw same as done in Photoshop. The effect given in Coreldraw is more sharper and attractive compared to Photoshop. The major difference between emboss effect used in Coreldraw and Photoshop is that the depth of Photoshop emboss effect after printing is not that attractive as compared to Coreldraw emboss effect. Also the text by giving photoshop emboss effect is a ‘Raster image’ so it is not very sharp, while the text using Coreldraw emboss effect is much sharper.
Let’s discuss the steps to be followed to give emboss effect to text in Coreldraw :
Step 1 : Let’s type any word, say “TEAM GROWTH” using ‘Text Tool’. Use any bold font like ‘Arial black’ and font size more than 24pt. Fill the text color to ‘Orange’ using CMYK color palette. It will look like:
Step 2 : Now go to ‘Effects’ tab in menu bar and select ‘Bevel’option. A small window will open on right side of the screen showing the properties of the ‘Bevel’ option. It includes the properties likeStyle of the effect, Bevel offset, Shadow Color, Light controls etc.
Step 3 : Select the text i.e.”TEAM GROWTH” and go to the property window of Bevel.
Select ‘Soft edge’ option for Style property. Select Bevel offset to ‘To Center’. Keep Shadow Color ‘White’. Now for proper emboss effect ‘Light control’ function plays an important role. The effect of emboss depends upon the light controls. Light controls include :
1. Intensity - the brightness effect to the embossed text.
2. Direction - the direction of the emboss effect from 0 degree to 360 degree.
3. Altitude - the light direction given to the emobossed text.
Now to give the desired emboss effect while keeping the intensity at100%, Direction at 50 degree and Altitude to value 40. Now the text will look like:
Step 4 : Click on the tab ‘Arrange’ from main menu and again click on sub menu ‘Break bevel apart’. This will impart emboss effect from the original text.
Go to ‘Bitmaps’ tab from main menu, select convert to Bitmap option. Bitmap the embossed effect into CMYK 300dpi image.
Step 5 : Select the “TEAM GROWTH” emboss effect image. Now go to ‘Effects’ tab in main menu. Select ‘Powerclip’ option and sub option – ‘place inside the container’. Select the target as the original text and place the embossed image into original text.
“This will sharpen the text making it look more attractive!”
Originally posted 2011-08-31 15:10:14.
Data Storage Challenges:
Meeting storage challenges requires in depth understanding of the need for more storage, finding out application performance issues and keeping a check on cost and technology. Thus managing traditional storage is a difficult task as they have performance and scalability issues, higher operational costs and complex management. Some of these challenges are:-
A. Massive Data Demand:
An industry survey estimates the digital world to increase by 35 zettabytes by 2020. Well one terabyte is equal to 1024 gigabytes, one petabyte is equal to 1024 terabytes, one exabyte is equal to 1024 petabytes, and one zettabyte is equal to 1024 exabytes (or in shorter terms 1 trillion gigabytes).
B. Performance Barrier:
Thus this rapid growth has caused a parallel increase in the size of databases. Thus their queries require faster response time from the underlying conventional storage. Whether it a social networking site, an enterprise database, a modern web application or a portal, all require faster disk access to read and write data. These are the applications whose performance not only depends on faster CPU cycles but also I/O latency and throughput.
Intel’s co-founder predicted in 1965 to double the processing power every two years is practically happening, thus there is also an immediate need for predictions and more importantly for their practical implementations for storage. With this not happening, these devices are divided into smaller units to cope up with the response time required by heavy applications.
C. Exorbitant costs and power consumption:
With daily increase in the storage demands, IT organizations and data centers are looking for larger storage with affordable cost. Unfortunately, good performance storage come with a huge price tag, maintenance costs and other licensing overheads. Also the other factors that add to costs like cooling equipment, space requirements and man power. According to a report storage consumes approx. 40 percent of any given data-center power.
What Is Unified Storage?
Thus day by day companies look for innovative and efficient storage solutions, one such innovative solution is “Unified Storage”. Unified storage is basically a combination of Network Attached Storage (NAS) and Storage Area Network (SAN), also known as network unified storage (NUS). This type of storage system makes it possible to run and handle files and applications from a single device. Its primary benefit is that it reduces hardware costs because it uses a combination of NAS and array of RAID disks in a single device. It supports fibre channel SAN, iSCSI.
Moreover management is quite simple as there is a single point of control instead of distributed or multiple points. This makes deploying of critical applications on a unified storage most convenient option for almost all organizations. For the relief of organizations the initial cost and maintenance of unified storage is the same as that of the conventional storage. Also the stability provided from these storage is more than any other storage. However, for consistent high performance and control dedicated servers are better.
In the next post we will discuss about Oracle Unified Storage and its benefits.
Originally posted 2011-10-04 12:56:46.
What is Windows Service?
Windows Service applications run for a long time and are mostly used in server environments therefore they are usually called long-running applications. Capability to create windows service is one of the powerful features of .net.
Windows Service applications do not have any user interface or they do not produce any visual output. Services can run in the background while a user is performing or executing any other task in the foreground. If any user messages are generated, they are written to the Windows Event Log.
When the computer is booted, all windows services start automatically. They do not require any user to be logged in, for executing the services. Some services may load before a user logs in to the system, so these services can’t depend on a user to be logged in to run. Most Windows Services needs to be in running state all the time. So the services can run under any user including any system. There can be various Windows Services that start at boot-up time and system maintains the list of these services.
Windows Services are controlled by the Service Control Manager that helps to start, stop or pause the windows service, as needed.
Windows services were previously known as NT Services as they were introduced as a part of Windows NT operating system. They are not available on Windows 9x and Windows Millennium Edition (Me). For using windows service, any of the operating systems in the NT generation, such as, Windows NT, Windows 2000 Professional, or Windows 2000 Server can be used. So, when Windows 2000 got introduced, the name of the NT Services was changed to Windows Services.
Examples of windows services include task scheduling, running message queues, file indexing, plug and play device detection etc.
In the source code, Windows Service extends the System.ServiceProcess.Service class. All Windows Services that are built in .NET need to extend this class. Visual studio includes the following methods by default, which are overridden by the service when it is created.
How to create Windows Service?
Originally posted 2011-10-17 11:41:02.
RRD Tool is a Round Robin database tool developed by Tobias Oetiker, a system manager at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
RRD tool is mostly used to store and process the data collected via SNMP. It can be used on any operating system. The data is mostly in bytes (or bits) transferred from and to a network or a computer. It can also be used to display solar radiation, power consumption, number of visitors at an exhibition, noise levels near an airport, etc. Only a sensor is needed to measure the data and feed the numbers into the rrd tool.
RRD Tool database is mainly used for monitoring purposes. Defining any tables with columns and other parameters is not required as they are simple in structure. In RRD database, data is stored in a round robin fashion (i.e. in a circular buffer). It is implemented like a FIFO queue, that is when new data gets entered into database, the old data is removed from it. As this database is like round robin, it will always contain the fixed amount of information throughout its lifetime.
RRD Tool database works as a back end tool as well as front end tool. At back end, RRD Tool can be used as a database to store data and at front end it can be used for plotting graphs. The main advantage of RRD Tool is that the size of the database always remains constant. Whereas in linear databases, the size of the database increases as new data is always appended at the bottom of the table.
Linear databases are updated when values are supplied to it, but the RRD Tool database needs data at specific time intervals. So while using this database, it is better to use the scripts that run at regular intervals, so that RRD Tool will receive the new data at regular intervals for updating the database. If it does not receive the new data during any interval, it will store an unknown value for that interval. After all the values are updated in database, you can fetch the values and generate graphs using them. The rrd commands are executed from command prompt to fetch and update values from database and to generate graphs.
RRDtool can be used directly from languages like Perl, python, PHP etc. Cacti, SmokePing, MRTG, Zenoss, collectd, Nmon are the popular graphing programs, whose database is based on RRDtool.
Installing RRD Tool :
Installing RRD Tool is very easy and simple.
Create a folder named RRDTool on any of the drives, download the latest version of rrdtool and extract the zip file into the newly created RRDTool folder.
Then open the command prompt and type in the following command:
cd C:\RRDTool\
After this, you are ready to use rrd tool.
Generating graphs using RRD Tool :
create : This command is used to create rrd files that initially stores the unknown data.
Syntax :- rrdtool create filename.rrd -s 60 DS:input:GAUGE:600:U:U DS:output:GAUGE:600:U:U RRA:AVERAGE:0.5:1:10080
update : This command provides new data to the rrd.
Syntax :- rrdtool update filename.rrd N:value1:value2
graph : This command is used to present the data from rrd to user in the form of graphs.
Syntax :- rrdtool graph filename.png –imgformat PNG –font DEFAULT:7: –lazy –height=117 –width=201 –alt-autoscale-max –lower-limit=0 –slope-mode –vertical-label=Amps DEF:IN=54_oooo_voltage.rrd:input:AVERAGE: DEF:OUT=54_oooo_voltage.rrd:output:AVERAGE: AREA:IN#00CF00:Input LINE1:OUT#0000FF:Output –end now –start end-10m –title title
Originally posted 2011-08-16 12:17:40.
What is Google AdSense ?
Google AdSense is an ad serving application which is owned and run by Google Inc. Owners of a website can enroll this program and enable text, image and video ads on their web pages. These advertisements are administered by Google and they help in generating money on either a per-click or per-impression basis.
What are the different types of AdSense ?
* AdSense for Content
This is the way for displaying the advertisements on the web pages of the websites. The content for teh advertisement is based on the content of the website most of the times.
* AdSense for Feeds
Images is inserted into a feed. When the image is displayed by a RSS reader or web browser, Google writes the advertisement into the image. The content is chosen based on the content of the feed surrounding the image. When the user clicks the image, he or she is redirected to the advertiser’s website.
* AdSense for search
AdSense for search allows website owners to place Google search boxes on their websites. When a user searches the Internet or the website with the search box then the publisher is paid if the advertisements on the page are clicked.
* AdSense for mobile content
AdSense for mobile content works on the same principle as that of AdSense for content. The difference is that it is mainly used to generate earnings from mobile websites using targeted Google advertisements. But in case of mobile websites, instead of traditional JavaScript code, languages such as PHP, ASP and others are used.
* AdSense for domains
AdSense for domains allows adverisers to place their ads on the domains which are yet to be developed. This helps the owners of the domain names to cash in the not developed websites domains which are useless unless developed.
* AdSense for video
AdSense for video allows publishers with video content to generate revenue using ad placements from Google’s extensive advertising network including popular YouTube videos.
How to get the AdSense code ?
1) Sign up at Google AdSense account from https://www.google.com/adsense
2) Start with AdSense Setup. Choose the type of product which you want as per your requirements.
For example : AdSense for content which is used to place ads on your website or AdSense for search to add a search box to a website.
3) Follow the step by step process to choose the format, size and colors. Also, a facillity to add additional options such as channels and alternate ads also can be applied to the site.
4) Hence, the code will be generated in the ad code window as per the selections.
5) Finally copy the generated code and insert in the page and save.
Originally posted 2012-02-01 14:41:12.
Till date we have seen number of websites which use PayPal.com for accepting payments online. Mostly e-Commerce websites are the ones that have PayPal gateway integration. If our website has a provision for making an online payment with credit card then adding a PayPal payment option widens our customer base because people who don’t want to use a credit card can still make purchases. PayPal is one of the most popular payment gateway services available today. It has over a million active users and has a well defined API called PayPal IPN. Using PayPal’s free shopping cart will help customers purchase multiple items with a single payment. It also provides us to view a consolidated list of all items before purchasing. Shopping cart is a low-cost way for us to accept credit card and bank account payments.
Why PayPal ?
Quick Setup
Secure Transactions
International Currencies
Follow the steps below to add PayPal shopping cart and view cart:
1) First of all we will have to sign up for a PayPal account by accessing the link below:
https://www.paypal.com/mrb/pal=6TUEY37GLM48U
Either select the premier account or Business account as per your need.
2) Log in to Premier or Business PayPal account.
- Click on the Sell tab.
- Click on the Shopping Cart link.
- Specify the name, price, and other details of the item to sell.
- Add more optional information such as shipping, sales tax, and option fields (for size, color, etc.).
3) Click “create” button to generate customized HTML code to add HTML Code for “Add to Cart” and “View Cart” buttons.You can create your own shopping cart payment buttons by altering the HTML code directly.
As illustrated below we need to create an “Add to Cart” button (in this case, to purchase a jewellery for $100)
<form name=”_xclick” target=”paypal” action=”https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr” method=”post”>
<input type=”hidden” name=”cmd” value=”_cart”>
<input type=”hidden” name=”business” value=”me@mybiz.com”>
<input type=”hidden” name=”item_name” value=”jewellery “>
<input type=”hidden” name=”amount” value=”100″>
<input type=”image” src=”http://www.paypal.com/images/sc-but-01.gif” border=”0″ name=”submit” alt=”Make payments with PayPal – it’s fast, free and secure!”>
<input type=”hidden” name=”add” value=”1″>
</form>
This code will create an image like this :
4) To add a View Cart button
<form name=”_xclick” target=”paypal” action=”https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr” method=”post”>
<input type=”hidden” name=”cmd” value=”_cart”>
<input type=”hidden” name=”business” value=”me@mybiz.com”>
<input type=”image” src=”https://www.paypal.com/images/view_cart.gif” border=”0″ name=”submit” alt=”Make payments with PayPal – it’s fast, free and secure!”>
<input type=”hidden” name=”display” value=”1″>
</form>
This code will create an image like this :
5) When a customer clicks the “Add to Cart” button, a new window will appear listing the contents of the buyer’s shopping cart, including the item just added. To make the purchase, the buyer clicks “Checkout” from this window.
Originally posted 2011-08-30 13:59:57.
System testing is one of most important phase in testing process.
- This phase starts after the completion of phases like Unit Testing and Integration testing.
- System testing is the testing performed on completely developed and integrated system.
- Once complete system has been built then it has to be tested against system specifications to verify whether it delivers the required features and quality standards.
- System testing verifies the entire product, after integrating all software and hardware components and validating/testing it according to project requirement specifications.
- System testing comprises of two types of testing: Functional testing and Non-Functional testing.
- Functional testing involves testing of business requirements and product features.
- Non functional testing involves testing features that are not directly related to business functionality but are essential.
- System testing of Desktop Application includes Functionality testing, Installation testing, Usability and GUI testing.
- System testing of Client Server Application(2 Tier) includes Functionality testing, Installation testing, Compatibility testing, Usability and GUI testing.
- For Web Based application(3 Tier) we need to address issues related to functionality, usability and GUI , browser compatibility, security, performance and load as well as stress on application.
- During system testing, the focus is not only on the business/ functional/ end-user requirements but also on software design and untold common expectations of the customer.
Originally posted 2011-12-27 15:20:45.
A TextView cannot be scrollable by default. It needs to be in a scroll view tag in the xml file in layout folder. Following code snippet will help you fix the issue:
Copy the following code snippet in your xml file in layout:
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android=”http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:orientation=”vertical” android:id=”@+id/relativeLayout1″ android:layout_width=”match_parent”>
<ScrollView android:visibility=”visible” android:layout_height=”335dip” android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:keepScreenOn=”true” android:scrollbarStyle=”insideInset” android:id=”@+id/scrollView1″ android:scrollbars=”vertical” >
<TextView android:text=”The wesite text will be displayed here” android:isScrollContainer=”true” android:layout_width=”fill_parent” android:id=”@+id/pagetext” android:scrollbars=”vertical” android:layout_gravity=”top” android:keepScreenOn=”true” android:layout_height=”match_parent”></TextView>
</ScrollView><TableRow android:layout_alignParentLeft=”true” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:id=”@+id/tableRow1″ android:layout_width=”match_parent” android:layout_alignParentBottom=”true”>
<EditText android:text=”EditText” android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:id=”@+id/editText1″ android:layout_width=”200dip”></EditText><Button android:text=”@string/read” android:id=”@+id/button1″ android:layout_height=”wrap_content” android:layout_width=”wrap_content” android:onClick=”myClickHandler”></Button>
</TableRow></RelativeLayout>
Originally posted 2011-10-27 12:48:55.
The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is the most widely used protocol for sending electronic mail.SMTP authentication is an extension to SMTP that proves your identity to a mail gateway.
Many shared hosting providers don’t allow to use the PHP mail() function for security reasons. Using SMTP Authentication instead of mail function adds layer of security to sendmail. You have to try this class for composing and sending e-mail messages that comes with a wrapper function named smtp_mail().
SMTP server configuration details:
Features of SMTP class:
Passing parameters to SMTP class:
Originally posted 2011-08-27 14:39:16.
