Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Page Saving Plugin for Firefox - Scrapbook

One thing I seriously miss in Firefox is to save a html page in its entirety as single file.

I tried spiders and downloaders. However nothing came close to the convenience of CHTML ( Compiled HTML ) made available by IE.

However my faith in humanity was restored when I encountered this great addon for Firefox - Scrapbook. Scrapbook Firefox addon page

A quick look at its features -
Major features are:

  • Save Web page
  • Save snippet of Web page
  • Save Web site [ robot / spider ! ]
  • Organize the collection in the same way as Bookmarks
  • Full text search and quick filtering search of the collection
  • Editing of the collected Web page
  • Text/HTML edit feature resembling Opera's Notes

A little more technically scrapbook adds the "spider" feature to firefox allowing to save the pages in categories / folders with tags et al! Now if this isn't awesome I don't know what is. And since its a part of firefox it utilizes its cache to the hilt. No special / additional downloading ( except when you ask it to "follow" links on the page to a certain level. )

Now this goes waaaay beyond the capabilities of chtml. Infact its just perfect if you are a google scout like me and likes to keep notes of things all around. I love it. Give it a try and you'll never save a page like you did again !!

P.S : I have started building my scrapbook ... Now only looking to share it >)

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Code posting in Blogger

If you've tried posting code in blogger, you have faced the same frustration as I have. Basically blogger munges the </br> tag so very nicely that you are left wondering what is happening. If that wasn't enough it does not offer a simple css style class to format a particular code. The situation doesn't improve if you try to use text area. The size of the text area need calculation. Not good. You have two options at this point :
  1. Use SyntaxHighlighter. The downside to this - some random language would need a separate style sheet.
  2. Define a body pre.code { style in the blogger template and use the <pre class="code"> in the actual source
I have defined the option 2 and the result looks as below :
 some random piece of code I want to paste. And any language !
To get the above effect you need to define two things :
  1. Variable

    <Variable name="codefont" description="Blog Code posting Font"
                 type="font"
                 default="normal normal 110% , Monospace"
     value="normal normal 110% , Monospace">

  2. The actual style definition

    body pre.code {
      margin:1em 0.8em 1em 0.8em ;
      padding:1em 1em 1em 1em;
      line-height:1.6em;
      font:$codefont;
      border:2px dotted  green;
    }
    

The downside ? You still have to use the proper html equivalents for < > . :(

This can be alleviated by doing a replace in any text editor for the < and > symbols and paste the converted html to the "Edit Html" box of blogger. You could even use txt2html if you use Linux ( Am using Ubuntu ).

Hope this helps.

Friday, July 4, 2008

Better fonts in Ubuntu with freetype auto-hinter

Alrighty ! If you felt fonts in Ubuntu looked fuzzy and not-cool, you are probably right. Because it can be changed and in all probabilities you'll like the change. I am talking of auto-hinting which is compiled into freetype ( font rendering libraries ) but not enabled by default in Ubuntu 8.04 So without any delay , here's how to enable auto-hinting in Ubuntu 8.04 - add the following lines to your .fonts.conf file in your home directory i.e /home/chet/.fonts.conf
<match target="pattern">

  <edit name="autohint" mode="assign">

   
<bool>true</bool>

  </edit>

</match>
Please note that this text should go before the </fontconfig> tag. So your sample .fonts.conf might look like below :
<fontconfig>



 <match target="font"></match>

  <edit mode="assign"
name="rgba"></edit>

   <const>none</const>



 <match target="font"></match>

  <edit mode="assign"
name="hinting"></edit>

   <bool>true</bool>



 <match target="font"></match>

  <edit mode="assign"
name="hintstyle"></edit>

 
<const>hintmedium</const>



 <match target="font"></match>

  <edit mode="assign"
name="antialias"></edit>

   <bool>true</bool>



 <match target="pattern"></match>

    <edit name="autohint"
mode="assign"></edit>

      
<bool>true</bool>



</fontconfig>
Thats it ! Log-out and log-in to experience the goodness of auto-hinter !

Installing fonts in Ubuntu, made simple, really

So tried installing fonts in linux and found nothing or obscure documents involving sudo access ? Well if you are using Ubuntu 8.04 then the situation is easily solved. you need to copy the fonts you find on web ( .ttf files ) in the /home/.fonts/ directory. Thats it. As simple ! Now when you re-login you should find the font in the the font list of your favorite application.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Waree - True type font for linux

If you haven't checked out the Waree Book font in Ubuntu 8.04 yet , then you should. Check out the image below - This shot was taken at 86 dpi on a Thinkpad T61 lcd display. Agreed they look very very similar to deja vu but believe me there's a world of difference between the two. Especially in the numbers. Waree has lean numbers. Check the shot below comparing the Waree with Deja Vu Sans :
With Waree font at 86 dpi
With Deja Vu Sans at 86 dpi
Check out how Deja vu looks fatter as compared to Waree. Some how I like the fonts esp. the numbers to be lean. :)

AddThis !