myTech Eye

GSOC 2011 and Eclipse ECF Salvo

2011-04-28T18:12:00.009+05:30

I got selected for the Google Summer of code this year. We have 27 students from University of Moratuwa. 23 out of those 27 are from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. I submitted three proposals for three mentoring organizations (The Eclipse Foundation, Universal Subtitles and Creative Commons). I am very happy that all three proposals got accepted by the respective organizations. I gave my preference to the Eclipse Foundation. “ECF Salvo, UI Integration in the workbench” is the title of the project.

ECF: Salvo, the Eclipse NNTP/Newsreader Project
UI Integration in the workbench

The Salvo Project
The Salvo project can be used to communicate through newsgroups. It provides an underlying decoupled API to access news servers and provide offline storage of newsgroup articles.

Salvo can be used for accessing newsgroups and posting and reading articles. Several enhancements, not found in traditional newsreader programs have been implemented in Salvo such as subject highlighting for easy recognition of thread participation and offline reading.

UI Integration in the workbench
Currently Salvo is available as a RCP application. The main goal of this project is to provide the salvo functionality within the eclipse workbench.
Following are the key features in UI integration to eclipse workbench.

1. Let the user ask a question right from the workbench
Users can ask questions from experts directly from the eclipse workbench rather than going outside (to a web browser) the eclipse IDE. This is a value added feature for the Eclipse IDE.

2. Provide a pop up and a status bar notification when a reply is received.
This feature will allows the eclipse user to more focus on their work with the eclipse IDE reducing the overhead of going outside the IDE and check for replies.

3. Provide a view which displays digests of all the articles that are of the interest of user.
This view contains,
All the recent articles
Replies to threads that the user participates in

4. Provide a perspective for Salvo in eclipse workbench.
Whenever user wants to browse through articles he/she can simply switch to that perspective. And users can switch back to their working environment by simply changing the perspective.

5. Enable a way for people to create an eclipse user id within the workbench.
This feature makes it very easy for the eclipse user to get a userid and a password for accessing the newsgroups and bugzilla.

6. Provide a way for other projects to hook their newsgroups into Salvo.
This will allows other projects to hook their newsgroup into the Salvo by using the exposed extension point. The extension point would make it possible for other projects to connect the projects namespace to the projects newsgroup.
When a view or an editor of a particular project is active and if the user selects the “Ask a question” option from the workbench, salvo automatically figures out the newsgroup to post the question.

More information of this project is available at http://wiki.eclipse.org/Newsreader/Salvo_UI_Integration_in_the_workbench

Make your favorite add-on compatible with Firefox 4

2011-04-17T01:08:00.007+05:30

Last month Mozilla released the version 4 of their Firefox web browser. Even though it has many exciting features, one of the key issues that the users has to face in upgrading to this new version is most of their favorite add-ons are not compatible with the new version. Some users hesitate to use this new version simply because of this reason. So I decided to write this post to address the people who are having that issue.

Follow the following steps to make your add-on compatible with FF4.

1. Download the extension file (.xpi file)

2. Open the downloaded .xpi file using an archiving tool.

3. In the archive locate the install.rdf file and open it using a text editor.
4. Locate the maxVersion tag. In the example image it is shown in red color.

5. Change the maxVersion to 4.0.* or to a higher version.

6. Save the file and update the archive.

7. Now we are ready to go.
Drag and drop the modified .xpi file to Firefox window and install it.

qsFOX and quickProxy now available for Firefox 4

2011-03-31T07:00:00.005+05:30

Due to exams, projects, etc. I couldn’t find time to develop these extensions. So currently qsFOX is not available in the Mozilla addon site. I got many e-mails from qsFOX users requesting to make it available again.

I made both qsFOX and quickProxy compatible with Firefox 4.
I have hosted it in the qsFOX home page. So you can download it from there.

http://downloads.mozdev.org/qsfox/qsfox.xpi

After hosting the extension in the home page I did a google search on "qsFOX". First hit is to the qsFOX home page. So qsFOX users can now download qsFOX by googling for "qsFOX".
And I can see that qsFOX has listed on the brothersoft as well.

I will make it available in the Mozilla addon site as soon as possible.

Colombo Ride 3D

2010-05-03T22:34:00.006+05:30

The next version of the famous Sri Lankan Mobile game Colombo Ride will be released soon.
This new version is called Colombo Ride 3D.
The following video is a trailer of Colombo Ride 3D.

This will going to be a new experience for the Sri Lankan Mobile game lovers.
Colombo Ride 3D is developed by the Gamos Technology Solutions (GTS)

With the release of the Colombo Ride 3D, they are organizing a competition allowing Colombo Ride fans to win prizes.
More information can be found at http://www.games.lk/competition

Move Control box back to right side in Lucid Lynx

2010-05-02T08:48:00.011+05:30

When you install Lucid Lynx, a significant different we can see is the control box (min,max,close buttons) has moved to the left side of the title bar.

For me this is very annoying. I guess most of you feel the same.

If you want to relocate that into right hand side, you can select an old theme.

There is an another way you can do it by without changing the theme.

This is how we can do that.

Press ALT+F2 to get run application dialog box
Type gconf-editor and press Run to get Configuration Editor
In configuration editor goto apps -> metacity -> general
Find button_layout.
You will see the current value of the button layout is “close,minimize,maximize:”
Change that to “:minimize,maximize,close”
You will experience the change instantly

Mobile Partner Redialer

2009-12-21T00:53:00.008+05:30

It seems like every mobile broadband (HSPA) connection in Sri Lanka has a very poor Quality of Service.
Initially I used a Dialog HSPA connection.
Due to their poor service recently I switched to Mobitel which was considered as a far better connection compared to Dialog.
But now things have gone wrong again. Mobitel has become a very unreliable connection. Mobitel users cannot say in idle.
It seems like they are disconnecting the idle users in order to accept new users.
If we want to get connected again, we have to keep pressing redial button for 10-15 times. This has become a pain.

I really hate this redialing thing. So I decided to write a small script to automate this.
I’m using a Huawei E220 HSPA modem with the Mobile Partner Software.

I share this small script with you hoping someone will find it useful.

This small program will run in background and keep redial for you (initially you have to press the connect button manually).

You can just wait and watch until it get connected.

This will consume some considerable amount of CPU (due to an endless loop), so make sure that you pause the script when you are not using it.

Demo Video

Download from here

Note – If someone can create a similar thing for Ubuntu it will be greatly appreciated.

qProxy - quick Proxy

2009-12-16T07:21:00.006+05:30

This is a very simple extension for Mozilla Firefox which has the functionality of enable/disable proxy in a single click.
Actually I developed this extension for my personal usage. I use two connections to connect to the internet. One is the Mobitel HSPA connection (no proxy) and the other one is University Wireless network (proxy enabled).

Every time when I want to switch between networks I have to change the proxy settings.

Tools -> Options -> Select Advanced Section -> Select Network Tab -> Connection Settings -> Select No proxy or Manual Proxy

For me going through this series of steps each and every time to change the network is annoying.
So I decided to create a small extension to enable/disable proxy in a single click.

I didn’t put much effort to build this one. It cost me about 30min to come up with this solution.

For the first time you have to set the proxy settings at the Connection Settings window.

After installing qProxy an icon which indicates current proxy status will appear on the status bar. You can simply click on that icon to enable/disable proxy.

Download from here

qsFOX - My Level 3 Project

2009-12-14T19:52:00.017+05:30

Project Description

(skip this part if you have already gone through it at http://qsfox.mozdev.org/)

qsFOX is an extension for Mozilla Firefox which enables Sinhala Unicode Reading and writing capability for Firefox. Most of the machines at internet cafes and some labs do not have Sinhala Unicode installed.

In order to install Sinhala Unicode we have to go through series of steps which takes too much of time. And lack of privileges makes it even tough for the normal users.

So it is always good to have a quick way of enabling Unicode without administrative user privileges since time is a highly considerable factor for the users who browse internet in those places.

Even though it is possible to read Sinhala Unicode text using a small trick, not being able

to write in Sinhala has become a great problem for the users who work with Sinhala Unicode (ex. Sinhala bloggers).

From qsFOX I have given a solution for this by providing both reading and writing capabilities in Sinhala Unicode for Firefox.

qsFOX comes as an extension for Firefox. Here I have developed the standard Wijesekara Sinhala keyboard.

So I hope it will be a great tool for the Sinhala Bloggers and Blog readers who are having problems with working in Sinhala in those constraint environments.

And there is an option for those who like to use the Phonetic style (singlish) keyboard.

User will be provided a UI with useful information (ex. Keyboard Layout).

The Story

For level 3 course module Programming Project (3200) we were asked to develop a plug-in for an existing code base (like Firefox, Thunderbird, Open Office, etc).

Initially I thought to develop an extension to record statistics of downloads/uploads. I asked some of my friends (Bhanu, Pahan, Nuwan) for a project idea.

Pahan came up with this great idea (I believe it is great) of developing an extension which allows users to use Sinhala Unicode in a constraint environment (without administrative privileges) which was in his mind for a long period of time. He has already created a portable Firefox with Sinhala reading capability which has some draw backs. He explained me how his portable Firefox works.

My project proposal got approved and I started the development. Initially part of the project is full of documents. Level 3 project runs very much similar to a real world project. Software Engineering course module which is conducted by Dr. Shahani Weerawarana was very helpful to gain knowledge to do the initial part of the project.

Initially I had to put some effort to learn JavaScript and XUL (XML User Interface Language) since I am very new to those two technologies. Luckily there are lots of online resources available.

First I developed the Wijesekara Keyboard functionality. It was not that easy as I thought. ‍ෙ(”Kombuwa”) caused series of troubles to me :-).

Lack of familiarity with the Wijesekara keyboard layout became a problem. Once again I got the help from Pahan to test the Wijesekara keyboard. He chats with me in Sinhala by using the extension to identify bugs.

Finally I succeeded in creating the entire Wijesekara Keyboard layout including “Rakaransha” and “Bendi Akshara”.

Implementing Sinhala reading functionality was a challenge. I created my own XPCOM component in C++ to access windows API. I am not going to describe more on that.

But you can get some idea from the following Logical view.

GUI

I think I am always good at GUI designing. I got some good feedbacks for the GUI and for the logo. I tried to make it attractive and user friendly. You can decide whether I am successful or not.

Finally I ended up all the development phases successfully on time.

If you like to create Firefox extensions I can give you a small guidance according to my knowledge.

Mozilla Developer center (MDC) is a good online resource to learn extension development.

And if you have any problems during the project you can get the help from the Mozillazine forum members. I got a good support from them (most of the times they give code snippets)

Credits

Pahan Sarathchandra for project idea, supportive ideas and testing (I can definitely say that if he is not there I will not get this chance to contribute to Sinhala Blogosphere. He deserve a very big credit for his concept and for the support he gave me throughout the project.)

Creators of Unicode Real Time converter

Creators of Malithi Web Font

Authors of articles at http://siyabas.lk/

Still there may be some unidentified bugs in this extension. If you find a serious bug please let me know.

And please add your reviews here

A simple trick to protect OTHERS from your flash drive

2009-06-28T22:44:00.016+05:30

As you all know most of the viruses which spread through Flash drives use the autorun.inf file to auto execute it.

You can do a simple registry tweak or you can use software like autorun eater to block the execution of the instructions on this file. Here I’m not going to describe that. What I’m going to explain here is how to stop your flash drive becomes a carrier for viruses.

In here I`m using a feature of windows which is rarely noted by users

You can`t create a file and a folder which has the same name in the same location (directory).

Ex. You can`t create a file called isuru.txt while having a folder called isuru.txt in the same directory.

So what you have to do is create a read-only folder called autorun.inf in the root of your flash drive.

What if the virus is smart enough to delete the folder autorun.inf?

For that let’s do a small trick.

MS-DOS Device Driver Names Cannot be Used as File Names

You can use this feature to prevent the deletion of the autorun.inf folder

What you have to do is create folder called CON inside the autorun.inf folder using Linux or by executing the following commands in command prompt

(x is your drive flash drive)

cd autorun.inf

md .\CON\.

The Folder CON cannot be deleted from windows. Therefore you are not allowed to delete autorun.inf folder.

This will work for most of the viruses. But I can’t guarantee this will work for all the viruses.

I wrote a simple batch file to do all above tasks. You can copy this file to root of your flash drive and execute it. Get it from here.

A Trick to identify INVISIBLE contacts in Gmail chat

2009-05-02T15:13:00.004+05:30

Here is a simple way to check whether a contact is really offline in Gmail Chat. Actually this uses a bug of invisible feature.

First select the off the record option for the chat

Then type something and send it.
You will get a message (as shown on the picture below) if the contact is offline.

If the contact is invisible you won’t get the message.

OpenSolaris

2009-04-21T13:18:00.004+05:30

Today morning I received a Sun OpenSolaris CD.

I tested the live CD with VMware. Here are some screen shots. It looks pretty much similar to Fedora10 in appearance.

Get it from here

A stable HSPA connection from Dialog ????

2009-04-20T17:26:00.010+05:30

Today I got an unbelievable stable upload speed from Dialog HSPA connection.

See how stable it is.

I uploaded an 82MB file. 45.1KBps remained all the time.

You may ask why it is unbelievable.
Any Dialog HSPA user can answer to that question with our hard experiences with this connection :-)

An Easy way of adding background images for JFrames/JDialogs

2009-04-19T13:28:00.016+05:30

People who are working with Java JFrames using NetBeans IDE may have experienced that adding a background image for a Jframe is not a very easy thing (have to write some codes).
I found a cool and easy way of doing that.

Here’s what you can do

1.Choose null layout as the layout for the frame.
2.Add your all components and arrange them.
3.Add a Label and delete the label text.
4.Resize the label into full frame size
5.Get the properties window of the Label and select icon.
6.Select your background image for the icon property of the label

That’s all. Very simple.

If you want to add a component after setting the background, you can send the background (Label) behind the other components using option of the JFrame.

MiniGPS

2009-04-13T01:40:00.009+05:30

Do you travel long distances?

Have you got the habit of falling into sleep while travelling?

Do you have a Nokia Symbian handset in your pocket?

If the answer is YES for all,

Here is what you can do for wakeup at the destination.

Psiloc MiniGPS

MiniGPS is not something related to GPS. No need of a GPS enabled handset. MiniGPS is a symbian software which detects GSM network Cell IDs and uses those IDs to identify locations. You can define locations for those Cell IDs. You can execute following events when you enter or leave a location.

Send SMS
Run Alarm (I think this is the most important one)
Change Profile
Change Bluetooth State
Change Theme

So you can run an Alarm when you enter the destination.

Note that this depends on the mobile network. So if you changed your operator you have to re-define your locations.

Download for S60 v.3 from here

Sleep Well. Wake up at the correct place :-)

Virtual Floppy Drive

2009-04-12T18:13:00.000+05:30

This is a simple tool which creates a virtual floppy drive in windows. You may ask what the use of a virtual floppy drive is while floppy drives are getting out of the business these days. Actually this may not be useful to everyone. But for me this is a great tool. People who are interested in dealing with bootable CDs/DVDs are facing a problem in editing floppy images since the absence of floppy drives in modern machines (specially in laptops). So this is the solution. This small application contains almost everything we needed. It supports many image types including img and ima. And it is a freeware.

You can download it from here

Hope someone will find this useful :-)

Taking you to the past – Windows 3.1

2009-04-09T09:03:00.001+05:30

This is where I started. DOS & Windows 3.1 on a 486 33 MHz machine.

Windows 3.1 is very much different to the current windows versions. Not only to windows XP or vista, there are huge differences even between Windows 95 and windows 3.1.

Unlike other versions of windows, it runs on top of MS-DOS. You need to type `win` in command prompt to execute windows. Or you can add that command to autoexec.bat file to auto execute windows when computer starts.

I still have windows 3.1 installed in a virtual machine (just for fun :-) ). I think most of you haven’t seen this OS, so I decided to add some screen shots. You can see there is no close button (X) in windows (even though maximize and minimize buttons are there).

If you like to see how it looks like, you can download it and install it on a virtual machine.
http://isohunt.com/torrent_details/14258630/windows+3.1?tab=summary

How to switch on an ATX power supply without a motherboard?

2009-04-04T23:22:00.000+05:30

This is a much needed answer for the people who are dealing with computer hardware. It is always good to know how to turn on a power supply unit (PSU) without the help of a motherboard when it comes to troubleshooting.
It’s pretty simple. The following picture shows a 20pin ATX connector.

What you have to do is short circuit the 14th (Green) and 15th (Black) pins using a wire as follows.

In 24 pin connector you can short circuit the 16th (Green) and 17th (Black) pins to turn on.

Multimedia Builder - Creativity is the limit

2009-04-04T16:52:00.000+05:30

This is about an application which I use to build multimedia applications.

Multimedia builder is a great design tool which can be used to design multimedia applications run on windows environment.

You can use this tool to design mp3 players, video players, autorun applications for your Disks and many more.

If you are creative enough, you can even design a virus from it!!!!

It comes with a scripting language which is pretty much similar to modern programming languages. And you do not need to spend much time to lean its scripting language since there are wizards to build your scripts. A good help document and many sample applications make your life easier.

It comes with variety of tools to build your application with an attractive user interface. Support for Macromedia Flash makes it even better.

The most interesting thing is you can design applications in custom shapes with B/W Mask.

The following link contains a simple media player which was designed using this tool five years ago.

http://download93.mediafire.com/cc0htyumtbjg/4omzzgdltj4/SIHASARA.zip

I used MMB 4.9.0.1 to design this media player. Current version is 4.9.8.

For more info visit mediachance at http://mmb.mediachance.com/