22 Mar 10 jQuery Plugin for Tabs (Tabber Plugin)
I developed a custom plug-in for jQuery that creates a tab widget which can contain practically anything it. It’s a small, lightweight plugin weighing in at 1.3kB uncompressed. You can download the Javascript here and the CSS here.
11 Mar 10 Starhub Tweeting & M1 Messing
It’s nice to have Starhub respond to a Twit when you post an issue related to its broadband connectivity. Although the problem is likely to have been resolved by the time I got the direct message (DM), it’s nice to know that they are listening.
Compare this experience with what I had with M1. Just a couple of days ago, I received my phone bill from M1 with over a hundred dollars charge to mostly my data charges. This is the second time I’ve got such an amount from M1 when previously my bills were around $30. You see, just two months ago, I activated a 1GB BlackBerry plan with M1.
The first month I got the bill, I figured, “Hey, it could be that the first month I choke up extraordinary charges becase I had more to transfer.” But when the second bill came, I guessed something was wrong. So I called the helpline. The first person I got through told me that I was using the wrong APN so that’s why the data charges were not counted as part of the BlackBerry data package. Fine, so I was then transferred to the technical helpdesk who then told me that third party applications cannot and will not count towards the BlackBerry data. I was flabbergasted! When I got the plan, no M1 personnel told me that third party applications on a bloody BlackBerry cannot use the BlackBerry data plan. Furthermore, information given by the customer service officer and the helpdesk person were completely different!
Right. So I switched from the BlackBerry plan to a normal data plan. I figured that since I don’t have much use for push mail and BlackBerry Maps (I use Google Maps), might as well change. To their credit, M1 did not charge me for the early termination of my BlackBerry plan which was meant to run for at least three months.
After the plan has been switched, my BlackBerry became bricked. Why? According to their helpdesk, it seems that the service books that were installed in the BlackBerry causes it not to be able to communicate with the normal APN to transfer data. Now, I know this is no fault of M1, but shouldn’t the customer support officer advise me on this? The only reason I can think of is that the person didn’t even know this. I only got to know this when I got through to their technical helpdesk.
The only recourse that I had, aside from throwing down another few hundred bucks for another smartphone, is to restore the BlackBerry to the factory settings. I was hoping this will clear the service books and let my phone use the normal data plan again.
Fortunately, it worked. For now. I’ll wait until the next bill comes and see what happens. This has been a bad experience for me with M1 and BlackBerry phones. I don’t think I’ll ever get another BlackBerry again. EVER.
11 Mar 10 CSS Best Practices
As mentioned before in earlier posts, I’m involved in a Web application development project. Recently I had to do some testing on the Web application (although it’s barely beta ready, but that’s a different story). During the testing process, I’ve got to see for myself the implications of not incorporating scalability designs early on into the code.
This post will take a simplistic approach to look at why load times can be improved by consolidating CSS files. At the same time, I will also take a look at naming CSS selectors as the approach to consolidating CSS. By taking a consistent approach to naming CSS selectors and organising the selectors in a structured manner in CSS files, we can minimise the number of CSS files.
Tags: css
01 Mar 10 How to Access the International Version of Google
The search engine that is. If you are observant, you’ll notice that whenever you go to www.google.com, you’ll be redirected to your local version (unless you’re in the US, I think). For example, in Singapore when you type google.com in the address bar, it turns into google.com.sg
What if you want to stay in the international page? Besides spoofing the the IP address (which is beyond most people’s realm of knowledge, and needlessly complicated), simply append “/ncr” at the end of the URL i.e. http://google.com/ncr
What does “ncr” stand for? No Country Redirect.
