Advantages and Disadvantages to Using MySQL Vs MS SQL

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Two of the most popular database systems used by web developers today are MySQL and Microsoft's MS SQL server. Both are similar in regards to being storage and retrieval systems. The two systems support primary keys, along with key indices which allow you to speed up queries and constrain input. Furthermore, both systems offer some form of support for XML.

Apart from price, which is the obvious difference, what distinguishes these two systems, and which one is right for you? We'll overview both products, point out the major differences and explain the advantages and disadvantages of using them for your business.

Open-source vs. Proprietary

When it comes to these two databases, the differences begin with the open-source nature of MySQL vs. the closed, proprietary structure of the SQL Server. MySQL is an extensible, open storage database engine, offering multiple variations such as Berkeley DB, InnoDB, Heap and MyISAM. On the other hand, with the Microsoft product, you are limited to a Sybase-derived engine through both the good and bad times.

When considering how MySQL integrates seamlessly with a number of programming languages ​​and other web-based technologies, it certainly has the advantage over MS SQL in the way of compatibility, as the SQL Server is known to work better with Microsoft products other.

Licensing

Contrary to popular belief, the MySQL system is not always free. On the other hand, it is always more affordable. In regard to both products, licensing fees are based on a two-tiered scheme. With MS SQL, the best way to obtain a developer's license is to buy a license for the Microsoft Developer or Microsoft Visual Studio suite. Both provide you with a free SQL Server license for development use. If you want to use the product in a commercial environment, you need to at least purchase the SQL Server Standard Edition – which could set you back over $ 1,000 for a few client connections.

Because MySQL is an open-source system under the GNU General Public License, developers can use it at no cost as long as the associated projects are also open-source. However, if you intend to sell your software as a proprietary product, you would need to purchase a commercial license, which costs about $ 400 for up to nine clients. Depending on the project and your funds, MySQL may have the advantage here.

Technical Differences

The open-source vs. proprietary battle alone is a leading cause why some users choose one system over the other. However, there are a few differences from a technical aspect as well.

For instance, MySQL does not offer full support for foreign keys, meaning it does not have all the relational features of MS SQL, which is considered a complete relational database. Some versions of MySQL also lack full support for stored procedures – the biggest disadvantage being the MyISAM system, which does not support transactions.

Performance

In the way of performance, MySQL is the clear leader, mainly due to the format of its default table, MyISAM. MyISAM databases leave a small footprint using little disk space, memory and CPU. While the system runs on the Windows platform without flaw, it tends to perform better on Linux and other UNIX-like systems. Because of its stability, many internet powerhouses such as Yahoo! use MySQL as their back-end database.

When it comes to performance, MS SQL's strength of being packed with more features than other systems is perhaps its biggest disadvantage. Although most of these features are designed for performance tuning, they tend to sacrifice other essential elements. The cost here is complexity and the hogging of resources in the way of storage and memory, which leads to poorer performance. If you lack the knowledge and sufficient hardware to support an SQL server, you would be better off with another database management system.

Security

These two database systems are pretty much deadlocked in regards to security. Both come with adequate security mechanisms by default, bearing you follow the directions and keep the software updated with security patches. Both operate over known IP ports which unfortunately attracts a wealth of intruders, a downside that can be attributed to both products. The good thing is that MySQL and MS SQL allow you to change ports just in case the default becomes too vulnerable.

Recovery

As far as recovery goes, the SQL Server has a definite advantage over MySQL, which tends to fall a little short with its MyISAM configuration. A UPS system is mandatory with MyISAM as it assumes uninterrupted operation. If a power outage should occur, it could result in the corruption and loss of critical data. With the SQL Server, data corruption is more unlikely. The data travels through various checkpoints while passing from your keyboard to the hard disk and through the monitor. Additionally, the SQL Server keeps track of the process, even if the system unexpectedly shuts down.

The Best Choice

As you can see, both systems have their advantages and disadvantages. From our perspective, any product that allows you to be efficient is a good database; anything other than that is not worthy of your time and frustration. When it comes to MySQL and MS SQL, the decision all boils down to the situation and most importantly, what you're looking to accomplish.

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Source by Adam Hobach

An Introduction to Text Messaging

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Why Text?

Text messaging is a quick way to stay in touch with people for personal or business purposes. With text messaging, you can chat with a partner by typing on the keyboard and reading what they write to you on the screen. Many text messaging products can work with cell phone text messaging (aka SMS or Short Messaging Service) so you can chat with people who are not in front of their computer. So, why not just pick up the phone and talk?

It's faster than e-mail and phone calls. And you do not have to pay anything to text. If you need to chat with someone briefly or ask a quick question, it's much less intrusive than calling someone. As with most developing technologies, several types of text messaging are available and each one is incompatible with the others. But do not let that keep you from trying it out. The main text messaging products are ICQ (www.icq.com), MSN Messenger (www.msn.com), AIM (www.aim.com), and Yahoo Messenger (www.yahoo.com).

btw (By the Way …)

Each one is free and simple to download, install, and sign up. You can locate your "buddies" by searching in an online directory by their screen name, e-mail address, name, or telephone number. Once you get the hang of it, text messaging can be extremely addictive. As you continue to use text messaging, you will find yourself learning to abbreviate words and sentences. When you leave an online chat, you might say BRB (Be Right Back), I'm afk (away from the keyboard), or TTYL (Talk to You Later). See glossary below.

Some text messaging products are beginning to offer voice and video chat. The future of digital communication is an integrated product, since voice, video, interactive text messaging, and e-mail are all effective means of communication. In the future, you will be able to switch between text, voice, and video with ease. Until then, we will continue to use different methods for different communication needs 🙁

Glossary

🙂 Smiley face. Means that someone is happy

😉 Smiley face with wink.

🙁 If someone sends you this in an e-mail, they're probably not having a good day

BTW – By the Way

FYI – For Your Information

FWIW – For What It's Worth

IMHO – In My Humble Opinion (or IMO)
TIA – Thanks in Advance

WRT – With Respect To

LOL – Laughing Out Loud

ROTFL – Rolling on the Floor Laughing

AFK – Away From Keyboard

TTYL – Talk To You Later

CYA – See You Later

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Source by Deryck Richards

Rowing to Music – A Fun New and Effective Fitness Training

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Physical training in indoor rowing machines have been popular in many rowing clubs. A new and motivating training form is to use training programs with rowing adapted music. In this article we will look at how to:

  1. Select music suitable for rowing training
  2. Get free tools for audio editing
  3. Adapt music to your rowing training programs
  4. Motivate and inspire your rowing club friends

The goal is to give you an understanding of how to make your very own rowing training programs with music of your personal taste. It is a fun and rewarding experience.

Energetic music with a clear and constant rhythm is perfect for your rowing program

Browse through your music library to find your favorite music that sounds energetic and motivating. Make a folder for the music on your computer and place copies of the music in it. A selection of slow, medium pace and fast music is needed. Ideally you should have about 10-20 songs of each pace.

We will only use music in 4/4 rhythm. To sort the songs pace you need to count the beats per minute (BPM) in the music rhythm. Music with a BPM within the range of 80 to 128 is suitable. On the internet you can find free software that can auto detect the BPM of your music. But the best and most accurate way is to count the BPM manually.

When training in a rowing machine we talk of rowing pace = strokes per minute. Therefore we divide the musics BPM by 4 to find which rowing pace (strokes per minute – SPM) the music rhythm equals. Add the SPM as a note to songs titles.

You can use a standard stopwatch to measure the BPM and divide it by 4 to get the SPM. There is a special stopwatch model called DIGI DT-320 which in a special mode can read out SPM directly, so you only need to push start and stop. Start the stopwatch when you start counting beats 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4 and then stop the watch when reaching the following beat 1. Next step is to edit the music .

Audacity is a free software tool for editing your music

Audacity can freely be downloaded from the Internet. There are versions for both PC, Mac and Linux. There is documentation for the software. Another nice source for learning Audacity is to look for tutorials on YouTube. Audacity offers many advanced features, but we only need a few simple functions for our purpose.

You only need to learn how to:

  1. Import your music into Audacity
  2. Cut away unneeded parts of the song
  3. Fadeout the last 2-3 seconds of the used part of the song
  4. Connect the songs on the timeline
  5. Export the edited songs as a new single music track (the final rowing music program)

The learning curve for using Audacity this way is reasonable short when using YouTube tutorials. Next step is to decide how you will build up your rowing program.

How to build your rowing training program with SPM and time intervals

A classic rowing program would consist of 24 SPM for 3 minutes then 26 SPM for 3 minutes and then 28 SPM for 2 minutes. This program equals approx. a standard 2,000 meter. You can mix the training music programs according to your personal training style and preference. The key to success is to use music that is easy to follow in rhythm. By counting the beats 1-2-3-4 you should end your rowing stroke at beat 1 and begin a new stroke at beat 3.

It is very important that the participating training partners rows synchronously according to the music beats. After a little practice you will find it easy, fun and very rewarding to exercise with music this way. Paces below 24 SPM and over 28 SPM are bit more demanding to follow for less experienced rowers. Remember to praise your training partners for their efforts. Training to rowing adapted music is growing very popular, because it is a lot more fun to train hard to good music. Have fun!

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Source by Kim H Holm

Fixing "Inf File Txtsetup (.) Sif is Corrupt …" Error Message

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Is your Windows XP based system completely unbootable? Or the booting process halts in between? Or you receive an error message at the start of the booting process? If the answer for any of the above questions is 'yes', then you are in great trouble. While the reasons for the above questions are countless, the result for all the above remains the same – inaccessibility of hard drive data. These problematic situations can be easily surmounted by restoring the data from an updated backup. However, not all computer users have the time to create and maintain a backup. For those users, the only hope of recovering the data is by using an advanced third-party Partition Recovery Software

To illustrate the above case, consider a practical situation where you attempt to start Windows XP based system, but it does not boot. The booting process halts before the Windows logo appears on the screen. However, when you attempt to boot the system using a Windows XP CD, it displays:

"Inf file txtsetup.sif is corrupt or missing, status 32768. Setup can not continue. Press any key to exit."

After the above error, the data saved in the Windows XP based hard drive becomes inaccessible.

Cause:

The reasons for occurrence of the error message are:

MBR corruption Hardware failure

Resolution:

To resolve the above error message and to access the data, you need to follow the below measures:

Run "fdisk / mbr" command to resolve the first cause of error. In case of hardware malfunction, change the damaged system component.

However, if the problem still persists, then you need to format your hard drive. The process of formatting deletes the data saved in the hard drive, which can only be recovered by using an effective Partition Recovery Software.

A Partition Recovery tool is a powerful utility That recovers formatted data in very quickly. The recovery applications comprehensively scan the hard drive by using advanced methods and allows you to restore the data from an updated backup.

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery is a powerful tool that salvages deleted data from a formatted hard drive. With no prior technical knowledge required, the software ensures recovery by even a novice user. Compatible with FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, VFAT, NTFS, and NTFS5 file systems, the Partition Recovery utility Windows supports 7, Vista, XP, 2003, and 2000 operating systems

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Source by Dushyant Singh

Some Standard and Advanced Features of Pen Drive

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Sporting all the convenient features of a removable storage device – feather weight, small size, larger storage space, and durability – pen drive is a must-have device for the technology freaks. Of late, pen drive has evolved from being a mere storage device to multi-functional unit for the computer users.

For average users of pen drive, the device is a simple storage mechanism and they scarcely bother about the features so long as it solves their basic purpose of storing and transferring information. But the tech-friendly and discerning users of pen drives are more careful about the features.

Though the basic selection of pen drive is based on prime feature of storage space, technical enthusiasts are developing special interest for advanced features of pen drives.

Apart from the generic features of huge storage capacity, pen drives also feature built-in micro camera, voice recorder, biometric security, MP3 playback. Let us discuss about some of the basic as well as advance features of pen drives.

Storage capacity:

The ubiquitous Pen drive has earned its popularity due to its exceptional storage capacity. Earlier, the pen drives were available with 8 MB storage capacity, that was several times more than other removable storage device such as floppy and CD-ROM. Recently, pen drives are available with storage capacity of 32 GB, 64 GB and 80 GB.

Technology experts are looking forward to develop pen drives with tera bytes. Before a year, the pen drives with high storage space was not popular for their high price tags. But the rapidly decreasing price has made pen drive a easily accessible device.

Compatibility:

Compatibility is the most remarkable feature that you can find in your pen drive. The prime reason why you are using pen drive is to access the same data or information in different computers. But all computers you use may not have the same operating system to support. Most advanced pen drives are compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux. Basically, while choosing a pen drive you should look for this feature to get maximum benefits out of it.

Rechargeable battery:

The pen drive that provides MP3 playback through earphones needs power backup. That`s why some pen drives come with built-in rechargeable batteries. The battery gets charged when connected to the USB port of the computer.

MP3 player:

Music lovers can get their best from the MP3 player facility available with pen drives. The pen drive with MP3 player also features mini USB port, and an audio input and output.

LCD displays:

The LCD display of pen drive has made it a high-end device. The LCD display enables browsing through the list of songs that you store in pen drive.

Camera:

Camera is one of the most advanced features that are available with a pen drive. Basically, it is a still camera for a generic use. But when the pen drive is connected to the USB port of a computer, it functions as a web cam.

These days, pen drives are being developed with tiny speakers. Some pen drives are coming with inbuilt card readers. You can also find pen drives with finger print scanner as advanced security system.

While selecting pen drive you may be flooded with options regarding the shapes and sizes. Some resemble bricks and other toys. Of late, pen drives have been integrated with other necessary items that people love to carry such as watches and pens. If you look for advanced features in your pen drive you should collate adequate information regarding pen drives, their features and feasibility for your purpose.

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Source by Roberto Sedycias

Router Simulator For Cisco Lab Scenarios

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I have recently been investigating router simulators and have found several on the internet with free demos. After reviewing them I have narrowed down the available packages to four manufactures. The following is my opinion of each of these.

Dynamips:

Dynamips is available for free and runs on Linux, Mac OS X or Windows and can simulate the hardware of the Cisco series routing platforms by directly booting actual Cisco IOS software image into the emulator. It allows users to build complex network topologies to test the functionality of IOS on a desktop PC, without the need of an actual physical Cisco device. Dynamips currently supports different networking medium such as Ethernet, Serial link, ATM, and POS interfaces for the Cisco 1700, 2600, 3600, 3700, 7200 and Juniper router hardware platforms as well as Cisco PIX and ASA security platforms.

Even though there are switching platforms included in the application, there is no configuration on them but simple port vlans. There is no VTP, STP or ether-channel configuration and of course no layer 3 switching.

Once installed you must install an appropriate Cisco IOS for every routers and security platforms you wish to use. The switches require no IOS as they have no configuration capabilities. A frame-relay switch is included and be configured with a number of virtual circuits and DLCIs. Dynamips does not support ISDN.

This product is easy to install and use as long as you have access to the Cisco IOS for the devices, and even though it has no labs or tutorials included the price is right. I would recommend this product for anyone studying for the CCNA or routing portion of the CCNP. The inclusion of the PIX, ASA, and IDS security devices give it the added capability for security labs. I would not recommend it for those studying for the CCIE due to the lack of switch configuration.

Boson:

The Boson simulator NETSIM is available in three variations. The CCENT (99.00), CCNA (179.00), and CCNP (349.00). Each comes with additional functionality as the price increases.

Netsim will simulate 47 different Cisco devices. Cisco 800, 1000, 1600, 1700, 2500, 2600, 2811, 3600 routers; 1900, 2900, 3500 switches and 7960 IP Phone. It also supports a several networking medium such as Ethernet, Serial, ISDN and Frame-Relay. As well as Simulates network traffic with virtual packet technology and SDM emulation.

Netsim provides more switch configuration than any other simulator on the market today, but still can not match that of hardware as switches use ASIC design to do the switching and software has not been capable of completely emulating yet.

Netsim includes an extensive collection of CCNA and CCNP labs, tutorials and can support up to 233 IOS commands depending on which version of the software you purchase. Although it has no provision for security labs it does have limited VOIP capability.

Netsim is easy to install and requires no additional software or IOS to use. Although it is pricey I would recommend it to anyone studying for the CCNA or CCNP.

SemSim, Cert Exams and Others:

SemSim, Cert Exams and a number of other simulator available are inexpensive usually about 30 to 40 dollars and most do have labs and tutorials included as well as practices exams in some cases. This said it is my opinion that they lack functionality and ease of use. Myself I would opt for the Dynamips product over these products. It may not have the labs but the price is right.

Any product you get will provide additional hands on training but should not be you only training media. You should always purchase good books such as Cisco press and practices exams to supplement you training materials. Remember when you take the test you will not be asked to configure a lab at least not till you are ready for the CCIE.

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Source by Barry Burdette

Why To Convert Word To PDF – 10 Advantages Of PDF Files

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Since Adobe Systems introduced the PDF format in 1993 it has rapidly become the number one universal document format on the internet. Not without any reasons, as there is a growing demand for such a universal format to allow people to share their ideas and work digitally on the internet. The number of different software programs keeps on growing and growing, from fantastic organizers, spreadsheet programs, to photo editing software: they all tend to make our lives easier, but often forget one major point: the ability to allow the user to share his / her work! The so called web 2.0 is already a fact, and the internet is becoming a place of creating and sharing your own ideas and work.

The popular PDF format solved this problem by introducing itself as a system-wide universal format: almost anyone on any computer system is able to open a PDF file these days. People have clearly discovered some advantages of PDF files, but yet only a few are actively creating PDF files themselves. So why should you consider creating your own PDF documents? I present you the top 10 advantages of this widely popular format:

  • 1. Compatible Across platforms
  • From Windows, Mac, Linux, to even modern mobile phones and PDA's: PDF files can be opened on basically any system! You do not have to worry about your co-workers, students, family, or whomever you're sharing your work with, not being able to open your files.

  • 2. Compact & Small
  • When you convert an existing document to a PDF file, it will automatically be highly optimized making it much smaller in size without losing any quality. Note that you can often also combine and merge multiple documents into one single PDF: spreadsheets, word documents, photos, etc ..: you can join them all together into a single PDF File!

  • 3. Can be created from any source document / application
  • The powerful technology behind the PDF format allows you to convert almost any document, from any application to a PDF file. A decent With PDF Creator your PDF file will by just look like you printed your file on high quality paper.

  • 4. Securable, avoid people from modifying & redistributing your work
  • Protect your PDF File, and prevent users from printing, duplicating or even opening your work. The encrypted protection makes it possible to share your work, without having to worry about various doom scenarios.

  • 5. Secure, almost no chance of getting infected with viruses.
  • There's almost no chance of a PDF file getting infected with something like a virus or trojan, which makes it a safe and trusted way of sharing your work.

  • 6. Easy and quick to create when using the right software
  • You'll find a ton of different pdf conversion programs on the internet, one looking even more fancier than the other, with prices varying from $ 30 to $ 4000. Most of them are pretty easy to use though, and you'll usually be able to convert your documents to PDF in a few simple clicks. A good software Choosing solution is Reviews another story A , but you can the find some at my advice : other PDF Creator following article.

  • 7. Software to view PDF Files is completely free
  • Software like Acrobat Reader to open PDF Files can be downloaded for free, and is already installed on most computers. Often it will be installed in combinations with other software you bought on CD-Rom. (A lot of companies deliver their documentation as PDF files.)

  • 8. Viewable within most web-browsers
  • You're simply able to open and view PDF files in your favorite web-browser. You can simply click a link whenever someone links to a PDF file on a website, and the file will be opened automatically.

  • 9. PDF Files meet legal document requirements.
  • A document must be kept in a format that can not be changed or altered without leaving any footprints, if you want it to be admissible in a court of law. A created PDF file can not be altered, and usually meets these legal requirements. (Contact a legal advisor for more info.)

  • 10. Compatible with modern portable reader systems
  • This is a whole new but powerful phenomenon: various companies like Sony are working on digitally paper pads. These flat panels, not much larger than a regular book, allow you to upload your PDF files to the device, so you can read through the information like a normal book. Sounds like science fiction, but you can already buy these devices for + – $ 299. Prices are guaranteed to drop the coming years, and it's a great way to save literally heaps of paper!

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Source by Abby Randal

Patterns in Powerball – Learn to Predict Powerball Numbers

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Powerball is an American lottery game sold through lotteries as a shared jackpot pool game. Each participant purchases as ticket. Each player selects five numbers from a set of 59 (white balls) and one number from a set of 39 (the Powerball). Players can either select their numbers on their own or they can elect to have them randomly selected by a machine. At the time of the drawing, five balls are drawn from a machine containing white balls numbered 1 through 59. One red ball is picked from another machine containing red balls numbered 1 through 39; these become the official winning numbers. Tickets which match at least three white balls and / or the red Powerball are winners.

Now that you have basic idea of ​​how the game works, we get back to the original topic: Can you learn the pattern of the numbers? At first, all of this seems random, Right? A double millionaire in this game suggests studying the past outcomes in Powerball game to improve odds of winning in the future. Let's take this advice (he has won twice!) And study the past of this games to unravel the mystery, this might involve a bit of Statistics so bear with me:

We will look at the 100 Powerball draws in the month of May of 2010. Within the 100 draws of the Powerball, 70 draws did not result in consecutive numbers. This is what one would expect according to statistical analysis. Just like in the tossing of a coin there is 50-50 percent chance of getting a head of tail. Similarly, in Powerball draws there were, one can say that there was 70-30 chance that the draw would not result in consecutive numbers. So, there seem to be some light at the end of the tunnel.

That was all theory. Now let's see what reality has to say: If you look at the results and look for consecutives, it comes out to the same 70-30 statistical norm. But there is one more occurrence to be mentioned: In the 100 draws there were 26 had two consecutive against the theoretical expectation of 27. So collectively, 96 out of 100 draws were either no consecutives or exactly two consecutives.

So, in 10 weeks, you can expect the winning Powerball number to have no consecutive numbers or only two in 9 times. So the bottom line of all this statistical mumbo jumbo is this: Bet on either,

• All Non-Consecutive numbers, OR

• Only Two Consecutive numbers.

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Source by Mico Jonathan Ellison

Advantages Of Java Programming In Software Industry

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The modern history of computers was set to change forever when in 1995 James Gosling of Sun Micro systems unveiled Java to the world. Since then, there has been no turning back and Java is the most popular programming language preferred by programmers the world over. It is used to design software as well as a host of other web applications.

Like most programming languages ​​it is constantly evolving and the language has been tweaked a lot over the past fifteen years to smoother it out as well as improve its efficiency. Even though Java has a totally different purpose it can very easily be compared to PHP which was also released in the same year. While PHP is used to design innovative websites, it is an open source language just like Java which means it is freely available to the public at large.

The advantages of the Java programming language are many but what can be more important than the fact that it is simple to understand and for budding java programmers in the virtual world it is a dream comes true. The task of writing and compiling in Java can safely be called lucid and it creates such groundbreaking software applications that it easily found its way into a serious computer user's life.

Another point worthy of mention is that Java can perform on any platform without any glitches. Be it Windows or Linux, the Java language will give you the same result irrespective of the operating system. Not all languages ​​can boast of such an innovative feature.

In today's age where Wiki Leaks has opened up a Pandora's Box, the Java language has been put together keeping security as the topmost priority. When the Java language is being utilized one can work in a secure environment so that no viruses can attack the host system.

A general overview of Java sets it apart from the other languages ​​out there. Not only is it dependable (it was created after omitting a host of initial errors) but it also supports multi-thread programming thus assisting software developers to make applications with many levels. The Java language on a whole is highly progressive: the code is stored in units known as classes which are fed to a Java interpreter only when required.

The bottom-line of this pioneering language is its versatility, simplicity and overall error-free running. Since it was brought out, Java has given the web world a host of software which have been used in diverse fields. Giant leaps have been made with this language and many pundits have compared Java with Clarion.

However, Java seems to have come out on top for the simple reason that you can write whatever you want with this language. The entire gamut of Java codes is just mind-boggling to comprehend and the scope for further maturation of this language is bright.

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Source by Joanna Gadel

Review of the New BlueGriffon Web Editor

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BlueGriffon is a free WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editor powered by Gecko, the rendering engine inside Firefox. It is cross-platform with versions for Windows XP and Windows 7, Mac OS X and popular Linux distros. There is also a portable version (for Windows only).

Like its predecessor, NVU, BlueGriffon provides an easy to use interface and includes all the most common options to build web pages that comply with the W3C's web standards (HTML 4, XHTML 1.0, HTML 5 or XHTML 5 / CSS 2.1 and parts of CSS3 already implemented by Gecko).

A handy wizard guides users to set up their canvas, starting with selecting the document type, filling in data for the property, picking the colours, adding a background image, and deciding on the page layouts.

The interface is intuitive and almost basic at first, as it closely mimics a word processor toolbar layout. Icons to the most common options are clearly laid out: adding a table, a single image or a thumbnail linking to a large image, a link, a video, an audio file or a form to a web page is easy. Switching from WYSIWYG view (where you can arrange objects visually) to the web page source code (where you can manipulate the web page by editing the HTML code) is done by clicking on the two buttons at the bottom of the page. Several web pages can remain open in multiple tabs, which makes it easy to quickly switch from one document to another, copy and paste, etc

Adjusting styles can be done through the style properties panel, which would require some coding knowledge for most functions other than the most basic ones though. For example, it is easy enough to change a font colour or adjust the style of a border but, while the style properties organises the numerous style options quite neatly, most of the style options available would probably not be understood immediately by novices: this makes BlueGriffon more adapted to intermediate coders.

Another drawback of BlueGriffon if you start building your first website layout is the lack of proper (offline or online) documentation yet. If you have previously used any decent web building tool or if you want to build a fairly basic page, this should not be too much of a problem. However, if you're a beginner in website coding, you may find yourself stuck at some point without much help available. Let's hope that BlueGriffon documentation will improve with time, starting by offering a few walk-throughs on creating new pages and sites and developing its forum.

On the other hand, one of BlueGriffon strengths is the add-ons: the most obvious one is the free FireFTP add-on to easily publish your page from BlueGriffon. Most of the other add-ons need to be purchased for a small fee though to support future development, according to the BlueGriffon website. The CSS Pro Editor extension for example is much more powerful than the default CSS toolbox and provides web authors with full control over their stylesheets. Some popular paid extensions are the Mobile Viewer add-on (to test your pages with a large number of mobile devices), the Eye Dropper (a colour picker which allows web authors to pick a colour from sources that are not directly viewable or editable inside the editor), the Project Manager add-on (a sync tool between a local directory on your hard disks and a remote directory reachable through FTP), the Snippets add-on (useful when manipulating the exact same chunk of HTML code or text inside the documents) and the Toolkit Manager add-on. It is possible to buy all add-ons at once at a discount price on the publisher's website.

Clicking on the Preview button will open the web page in any browser of your choice (as long as it's already installed on their system of course) which is useful for cross-browser testing, to check what your page looks like in Internet Explorer or Google Chrome for example. This is also useful to check your scripts since these will not run directly in BlueGriffon.

The Markup Cleaner which can be found at Tools menu can help you with cleaning your HTML code. You can also spell-check your pages and BlueGriffon even integrates a small SVG editor (svg-edit, originally distributed as an add-on to Firefox and adapted to BlueGriffon) for quick drawing jobs.

BlueGriffon is a very promising open-source and cross-platform web editor. At only version 1.31, it can not of course compete directly with massive and expensive web development applications such as Adobe Dreamweaver, but this is already a very nice application to create web standard compliant pages without too much effort. It also makes a great tool for educational purposes, such as teaching design students the basics of HTML and CSS. Documentation and online forums need to be improved but, once it gets traction and support from the community, it could quickly become much more popular.

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Source by Christophe Marceau