Help set a new Guiness World Record for the most application downloads in one day!
Meebo Firefox Edition November 6, 2007
I first ran into meebo (not to be confused with social networking site Beebo) when my 6th form blocked access to the msn messenger protocol on the school network. Since leaving 6th form this has not been an issue and I adopted pidgin for IM as it allows multiple sign in’s and works fairly well. However pidgin is blocked at university (although the standard msn messenger client is not) so I decided to return to Meebo, the web based IM client and WOW!
Meebo now allows you to sign into multiple accounts from different services (gTalk, ICQ etc) aswell as providing almost identical functionality to the official msn messenger client including the ability to send / recieve files, group chat and fully functional webcam and audio chat THROUGH THE BROWSER, courtesy of Adobe Flash. If this isn’s a sign of a shift from client to web based applications I don’t know what is! So well done to the guys at Meebo, especially on recently shipping a firefox extension for the service. I dunno about you guys but I always have a firefox window open, so integrating IM into it seamlessly seems a great idea, you will also get small winamp style “toasties” alerting you of friends activity which is nice to see while browsing but does’t intrude.
This is one example of where a web based application just works. It blends into the browser well and doesn’t hog any system resources at all! On the down side I have noticed a few minor issues with the service but overall very impressed!
What I’ve learnt today! October 31, 2007
They say you should learn something new everyday! Today I got lucky and learnt 3 interesting bits of information!!
CSS
1. The name CSS (Cascading Style heets) has always seemed a bit odd utill today I learnt the meaning of “Cascading” which explains the heirarchical way in which different kinds of styles are used and over-ridden ( inline styling, embedded, external, browser default etc). Cascading refers to how style informations is passed down through the document and how in some areas it is inherited and nothers not. For a full explanation i reccomend some googling or the book “Stylin’ with css”
2. Each browser has its own “off the shelf” stylesheet for rendering html where all the tags are defined! This can be easily viewed and edited (although not recommended), especially in firefox. Locate the file
[INSTALL DIR]\Mozilla Firefox\res\html.css
or view here (sorry its in pdf)
C++
3. C++ Pointers!!!!
These have remained a mystery to me for quite a while and not through lack of research, but sometimes it’s better to sit down and ask a human! I understood HOW to use pointers in C but not WHY on earth I would ever choose to use them. Today I took the opportunity to ask my programming tutor and she gave me the simplest but most useful answer i have ever found. I shall attempt to explain as simply as possible.
Ok basically when you have a function in any modern language such as c# or Java, the parameters you pass in are never duplicated. For exaple if i declare an integer in my main program then pass that integer into my function. The integer is held in memory only once, and referenced to inside the function accepting it as a parameter. However, in c++ this referencing does not take place and as the parameter is passed into the function, 2 copies are held in memory, the integer belonging to the main programm and the integer to be used within the function. This is often not a problem when using a simple 8 or 16 bit integer but imagine passing in a large database object to your function. In c# or Java we wouldnt be concerned about this and it would be considered normal, however do this in c++ and your whole database object gets duplicated in memory, = BAD!!! To get around this, pointors are used as references to large structs of data within memory and avoid duplication. In this situation you would pass a pointer to the database object into the function, rather that passing the object its’self therefore avoiding duplication. Figure out the rest yourself! As I mentioned, learning how to use pointers is easy, just thought I would explain their usage!!
