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Friday, 5 April 2013

Creating Animations using CSS3

This is the era of Internet and Technologies where every day you could find a new development. CSS3 is a mind blowing development in the field of web designing. This is not only a technology but a platform from where any designer, weather fresher or experienced could touch the sky. Its so simple and results are so impressing that you could even forget flash. The design era in the web designing sector was firstly captured by flash and it remain there for a decade, but now JQUERY, HTML5 and CSS3 have changed the scenarios. They are so light in size that they could easily load in the web browser and the results are awesome. Here, I am discussing a small example as how to easily create animations using CSS3.
#anim
{
width:100px;
height:100px;
background:red;
position:relative;
animation-name:myfirst;
animation-duration:5s;
animation-timing-function:linear;
animation-delay:2s;
animation-iteration-count:infinite;
animation-direction:alternate;
animation-play-state:running;
}
I have created an id with the name anim. The basic CSS you can understand if you are a web designer or a fresher even in the IT sector. I will describe the CSS3 properties. animation-name is the name that is given to the animation. You will come to know, further in the tutorial how it will work. animation-duration specifies the seconds for which your animation will play. animation-timing-function tells the behavior of the animation, it could be liner, ease, ease-in, ease-out. animation-delay specifies the time in seconds between consecutive iterations of the animation. animation-iteration-count specifies the no of times animation will play. IF you want it to play all the time then specify it infinite. animation-direction tells the direction in which animation should play. It can be normal or alternate. animation-play-state specifies the state of the animation when the page gets loaded. This is the description of the CSS3 for the id anim. Moving on further, I want to explain the @keyframes CSS at rules. These are certain set of rules that can be used to develop the animations.
@keyframes myfirst
{
0%   {background:red; left:0px; top:0px;}
25%  {background:yellow; left:200px; top:0px;}
50%  {background:blue; left:200px; top:200px;}
75%  {background:green; left:0px; top:200px;}
100% {background:red; left:0px; top:0px;}
}
Here @keyframes is the syntax and myfirst is the name of the animation that we have specified in the CSS property. Coming to the description of the rules. The @keyframes rule set provides you the facility to give different animations at different time intervals of the animation. In this example I have divided the animation into four sections. At 0% i.e. when the animation starts the css given will be applied till 25% of the animation is complete and the css given at 25% will be applicable till 50% and so on. When you apply this in your code you will find something like below.












Tuesday, 2 April 2013

Beware of Phishing

Phishing is the art of fetching the personal and secret information like user name, password, bank details, credit card details, cell numbers etc. Since many persons hesitate to reveal the personal information on the websites because of identity theft, the phishers have found an advantage out of that. They deliver the mail to you which seems like it is sent personally and is so convincing that it attracts and forces the user to give the personal information. Instead, persons should understand that giving the information on trusted sites is purely secure rather than giving the information by mail to any one.

Certain ways how phishers attack, what mistakes are commonly observed and how you can protect yourself are as follows:-

  • Fake and spoofed emails and messages on cell phones: The main way by which phishers attach is emails and messages. Whenever you receive an email or message with a threat or congratulations like 
    • Send the form immediately or your bank account will be terminated
    • Congratulations you have won $1000, please fill your details and send as soon as possible
    • You have been selected in MNC, register yourself for the interview
    • Your credit card is at the last stage of renewal. Renew immediately
          All these types of messages are fake and they are intended to get your personal information. So when ever you receive such a mail. Do not panic or get excited, rather stay calm and recheck the things.
  • Copy of Popular Websites: This is also very common technique to get the information via fake means. The designers make the copy of certain popular websites and misusing the faith developed by those websites to fetch the information. They just make small changes in the URL of the website like they change www.facebook.com to www.faecbook.com but the design on the page and the website is the same. Even many persons make clone of the bank's website. So when ever you fill your personal data on any website do check the URL twice.

Portable Electronic Gadgets - A need or social symbol?

These days most of the persons do not judge you by what you wear, how you talk, how you behave, in-spite of that they judge you by what electronic gadget(s) you carry along with you like smart phones, tablets, smart watches etc. This scenario is not applicable only to the youth but to every age group. In any party, the status of persons is with smart phones or tablets. If you have something to show like this then you have a status else you do not.

This is not the fault of the people rather it is the impact of the developing technology. The technology has developed to such an extend that every person is in the net of that technology. Every one needs to have access to the technology in order to get updated. In one or another sense, we can say that portable electronic devices are much of a need these days. These electronic devices provide a means of ease in every sphere of life, like instant mail access, instant media sharing via messengers like whats app, any time any where business conferences using apps like Skype, any time any where television using apps like nexGenTv, weather access via AccuWeather, you can create and give presentations any time any where, get up-to date on social front etc. etc., it is endless. 

There are so many advantages of the smart phones and tablets but still for many persons it is just a status symbol. There is no doubt that what a high end phone can provide you features, a basic smart phone cannot provide, but still they could provide all basic needs that a smart phone needs to deliver. We should not use them as a status symbol rather than they are for making our life simpler and faster on technological front.

Sunday, 31 March 2013

What type of images should Designers/Developers use on web pages

Web developers/designers have different types of image formats that they can use on the web, but many times they got confused as which type of images to be used. In general there are three types of images that are best suited for the web pages:-
  1. JPEG
  2. GIF
  3. PNG
All three of them have their own characteristics and they are as follows:

1. JPEG: 
  • It supports 17 million colors 
  • It uses lossy compression technique
  • Size should be reduced without much impact on the quality of picture
2. GIF
  • Supports 256 colors only
  • Uses loss less compression technique
  • Supports animation
  • Low quality
3. PNG
  • Easily load over the web
  • Provides transparency
  • Provides 8-bit and 24-bit channel which could reduce the size
  • Uses loss less compression technique
  • Good quality

It depends upon the developer/designer as to decide which of the type to use. This article will help them to decide when and where to use which type of images. Based on the below table, it becomes easier for the developer to decide when to use which type of images.

Type JPEG GIF PNG
Logo
Photographic
Descriptive
Textual
Transparency
Animation
Colorful
Sharpness
Compression