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Saturday 23 March 2013

How to easily generate CSS3 for your website


All the fresher web developers these days should focus on new techniques for styling and creation of web pages. CSS3 is very good and provides so many design features from earlier CSS, but the thing is that how new comers learn about these styles. They know, there is CSS3 but they do not know as how to use it. Here I am explaining a very simple way to generate and apply CSS3 code for their websites. One should not make a habit of this, but it is very good for learning as well as for quick design development. 

There is a website, www.css3generator.com that provides a feature to generate CSS3 code, that code could be understood and can be copied and applied to your website very easily. Let us take an example step by step:-

1. Go to  www.css3generator.com


2. From the drop down chose the type of CSS style you want to give. In this example we will use text shadow.

3. Give the parameters as you want and you can see the changes in the preview area. In this example we have given 4px horizontal length for the shadow, 3 px vertical length for the shadow, blur radius is 2px and shadow color is e6092e. You do not have to specify the shadow color, when you click on the text box of shadow color, color picker will appear and you can easily pick the color and its code will be displayed in the box. You can easily see the text shadow in the preview area.

 4. In the box next to the browser icons is the code of the CSS3.

5. Click on the notepad icon on this portion of the webpage. The CSS3 code will be copied to your clipboard. 
6. Now go to your web page code in which you want to apply this CSS. You can make a class or ID for this. 
If you want to make a class they you have to write code as

.class_name{
text-shadow: 4px 3px 2px #e6092e; filter: dropshadow(color=#e6092e, offx=4, offy=3);
}

and if you want to use it against an ID then you have to write code as

#id_name{
text-shadow: 4px 3px 2px #e6092e; filter: dropshadow(color=#e6092e, offx=4, offy=3);
}

class_name and id_name could vary according to your naming methodology. 

7. Then give the reference of this CSS in your text element. For suppose you have a text element as:

<h2>Hello, This is CSS3 Generator</h2>

Hello, This is CSS3 Generator

and it will be displayed as above. If you want to give that styling that we have generated then you can give

<h2 class="class_name">Hello, This is CSS3 Generator</h2> 
if you are implementing as a class
or
<h2 id="id_name">Hello, This is CSS3 Generator</h2> 
if you are implementing as a ID.


When you implement this you will get the result as below:

Hello, This is CSS3 Generator

Tuesday 3 July 2012

Make your Website Device Friendly using RWD (Responsive Web Design)

After reading the title for this post you must be thinking of what is RWD i.e. Responsive Web Design. It is not a technology but just a thought given by Ethan Marcotte, in his book “A Book A Part”.  The idea is that our website should response to the device on which it is to be shown by adapting the resolution, layout and design of that particular device so that our website fits on that particular device.

Now the coming era is of smart phones and hand held devices like tablets, iPad etc. and the main question to keep in mind is that are our web designs ready to be viewed on different types of screen resolutions? The usability of web browsers has changed from desktop based browser to mobile based browser and so does the change in expectation of the users. Now they want to use the websites in the same manner as they are using on their desktops and laptops. It is easy for them to expect but it is not as easy for the designer or the developer to develop. But after the invent of RWD it became easier for the designer to code the things for the unknown device. In the next few posts I am going to explain the complete fundamental of Responsive web design in a simpler manner.

Saturday 30 June 2012

ENTERPRISE 2.0 – SOCIALIZING YOUR BUSINESS

Enterprise 2.0 helps the organizations by involving the employees, customers, suppliers to share, collaborate and organize information for the benefit of the organization using web 2.0 technologies. Harvard Business School professor describes Enterprise 2.0 as “the use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers”. Some people think that it is bringing something of the kind Facebook into the internal atmosphere of the organization but it is much more than sharing comments and photographs. Social business platforms are now providing features like link to emails, IM tools, keywords and hashtags to find people, discussion forums, corporate blogging and many other features so as to dig out the employee’s brain.

CMSWire, de Gier in an interview quoted the term “creating this type of corporate social business connectivity solutions will help in expanding corporate brains”.
 
 
CEMEX’s Social Business Platform: Shift
CEMEX, a $13.5 billion company, world’s largest building material supplier and the third largest cement producer has taken an initiative in 2009 to blend social networking concepts and the idea of Enterprise 2.0 and develop an internal social network for the employees which became fruitful in 2010 and its results were beyond the imagination. The Shift is being used by more than 95% of the company’s employees. The results were so paying off that they cannot imagine. More than 500 communities were made by the employees and where they come together and collaborate on certain specific task related to a particular subject of the task and the CEMEX has admitted that the working culture and productivity has increased after doing so.

Richard Foo, the Collaboration Director of Nike Inc., has admitted that in just 60 days he has experienced a drastic change in the live production by adopting the social business platform from CISCO based social business network that creates enterprise-wide discussion and information threads. Nike is also trying to make it a Mobile Enterprise Business Solution that is integrating the social business platform onto mobiles and many vendors in the market are trying to provide certain trying to provide certain functionality.

If the organizations truly wants to maximize their benefits then they have to adopt social business platforms and not just that they have to make them mobile friendly as much as possible because this is the era of smart phones and internet.

Thursday 28 June 2012

E-MONEY AND SECURITY


With the advancement in technology and the increasing internet culture has made online shopping an attractive option for many internet users. But the fear of being cheated and fraud is on their minds, are the online transactions safe, will the product delivered will be the same they have seen, and many other questions.

The answer to all these questions is yes. If the site is genuine and the payment gateway tied up with that site is genuine then definitely your transactions are safe. All the transactions are safe because of encryption i.e. your username, password, merchant details, payment to be provided, pin numbers etc. all are in the highly encrypted manner and no intruder can have access to that information.

MasterCard has started MasterCard Online Authentication Service (OAS) that meets the needs of all e-commerce participants by offering flexible and robust solutions for online payment authentication. MasterCard provides high level of authentication to the user. There are choices of different types of authentication at different levels of security like:

Static password: In this most basic approach the cardholder is typically allowed to create his/her own personal password on the hosted, issuer-branded web site, after answering several enrollment questions. Cardholders may also “Activate-during-shopping” at participating merchants.

Dynamic password Via SMS Text message: Cardholder portfolios with high levels of mobile phone penetration are also candidates for this solution which delivers a dynamic password to the purchasing cardholder on a just-in-time basis. The MasterCard service can generate the one-time-password and route the SMS text message to the cardholder on behalf of the issuer, or send the message to the bank to handle with their SMS carrier.

Chip Authentication program (CAP) & AA4C

HOW IT WORKS


 
1. A cardholder submits an order at a participating online merchant.

2. The merchant sends a request to the MasterCard directory server to determine if the cardholder participates in the SecureCode program. The MasterCard directory subsequently forwards this request to the Hosted Service Access Control Server (ACS) to determine cardholder status. The enrollment response is returned to the merchant.

3. If the cardholder is participating in SecureCode, the merchant sends a request to the Hosted Service ACS to perform the actual cardholder authentication. Upon receipt of this request, the ACS will populate an issuer-branded authentication page, which is displayed to the cardholder within the merchant window. This page prompts the cardholder to submit their private SecureCode, which is then validated by the ACS.

4. The Hosted Service ACS sends a digitally signed response which contains the Accountholder Authentication Value (AAV)—back to the merchant indicating a successful cardholder verification session.

5. The merchant sends an authorization request that includes an AAV to the acquirer.

6. The acquirer sends the authorization request through the MasterCard authorization network. This authorization request will contain distinctive information about the SecureCode status of the transaction. A fully authenticated transaction will contain an AAV in the Universal Cardholder Authentication Field (UCAFTM).

7. The authorization request is sent by the MasterCard authorization network to the issuer for processing.

8. The authorization response is returned to the merchant and the purchase process is complete.