Microsoft Vista and Office 12 screenshots from cnet.com

Cnet.com has got awesome screenshots of Microsoft new products ... they look so beautiful. They also accompany very informative descriptions.

Windows Vista Beta 2 gallery
Powerpoint 2007 Beta 2 gallery
Word 2007 Beta 2 gallery
Outlook 2007 Beta 2 gallery
Excel 2007 Beta 2 gallery

Real pleasure for eyes :)

Useful links for web development.

In my very few days of experience in industry I came accross a few usefull web destinations which are quite useful I tried to lest out them according to the site design methodology.

1. Data & Content Collection(Word,Excel, Google, net,Cleint & leg Work)

2. Project Defination Document.(Budget,schedule,client staging,team, project plan,project scone,in scope-not in scope)

Useful :
http://www.web-redesign.com/
http://www.sitepoint.com/books/freelance1/
http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/

3.Site structure (Visio, Word, Excel, Photoshop, Fireworks, Dreamweaver, Frontpage, Homesite, Notepad)

Useful:
http://iainstitute.org/tools/
http://www.aiga.org/
http://www.nickfinck.com/stencils.html
http://www.yourtotalsite.com/archives/information_architecture/free_visio_ia_stencil/

4. Design Visual Interface(Photoshop, Imageready, Fireworks, Golive, Dreamweaver, Flash)

Useful:
http://www.adobe.com/
http://www.good-tutorials.com/
http://www.pixel2life.com/twodded/
http://www.photoshopsupport.com/

5.Build & Integrate(Dreamweaver, PHP, ASP.Net 2, Java, JSP, EJB, PHP Framework, CakePHP, Seagull, Symphony, MVC, Mojavi, CMS, drupal, e2, joomla, oscommerce, zencart, XHTML, CSS 2, DHTML, XML, SGML, SVG, XUL, XBL, RDF, RSS, Web Services, AJAX, Prototype, Ruby on rails........................)

Usefull:
http://developer.mozilla.org/
http://devzone.zend.com/public/view
http://www.alvit.de/handbook/
http://andybudd.com/links/well_designed_css_sites/
http://prototype.conio.net/
http://cakephp.org/
http://www.rubyonrails.org/
http://www.artypapers.com/csshelppile/
http://www.symfony-project.com/
http://seagullproject.org/
http://itredux.com/office-20/database/
http://www.maxkiesler.com/index.php/mhub/category/

duhaa !!!!.................

Testing and Usability(WebXACT,Web Developer extension,Open source Testing)

Useful Masala:
http://opensourcetesting.org/index.php
http://webxact.watchfire.com/
http://chrispederick.com/work/webdeveloper/

Web 2.0 application listing sites

There are many new cool web application out there ... using latest technologies like AJAX and they do maintain web standers. I was looking for good listing of such application and came up with few equally good links.

Mashable is a blog covering Web 2.0 startups, peer production, user-generated content, revenue sharing, social software and the web as a platform.

Web 2.0 Zen

Office 2.0 Database

Nice lists.

Vista Transformation Pack 4.0 Released

This is awesome. It makes your desktop look close to Microsofts new Operating System Vista.Although it doesnot have all the Aero effects but pretty close to it.

Enjoy it.

Rapidshare Download link
The Home Page of Vista Transformation Pack 4.0
Windows Vista Home Page

With Expression - Day 1

Last night I downloaded the new Microsoft Expression 3 CTP. Its a huge 224 MB download but later I understood it's worth every bit of it. In the next few days I am going to explore and cultivate the all new Microsoft Expression and also will share my journey with all of you...
So lets start.

The installation is pretty simple as usual. My system has Windows XP Pro SP2. And it installed without any hickup. I has .Net Framework 2 installed previously.

The startup is also pretty smooth and quick.



Once you are in you are all set. Ready to design. Only thing I found missing is the welcome wizard that every Microsoft product seem to have. but thats not of much importance though.

Now I tried to make a new document.Now the biggest setback. its all ASP.Net. In dreamweaver you have different choices, much more than this.This is where Expression will loose to Dreamweaver a long way.






Once you setup the new page then designing page is pretty simple. Just drag and drop unlike Dreamweaver where you just have to Single click it. here you have to double click ...not much pain though huh !!! :)

The code is very clean and starts with minimum tag necessary in which you can add style or properties. All the panels are well layed out. The first time visible panels are Toolbox, Style, Properties(Tag and CSS) and Folder List.

Removing or editing a tag is quite simple. Once you place cursur at any position on the top you will see the full tag structure. Select the tag and click on the small arrow beside it and you will have all the options you can do with that Tag. Pretty simple fast and elegent :)



Thats all for today. I need to get breakfast now :). More tomorrow.

List of frameworks and CMS

In Wikipedia I found a very exhaustive list of Web Application frameworks and Content Management Systems.

They inludes frameworks in all languages i.e. PHP,Python,Java etc.
Take a look

List of web application frameworks

The CMS list is not just a list its a comparison chart very helpfull to get stated.

Comparison of content management systems

PHP Framework

For few days I was in search of a PHP framework which is easy to use as well as have enough features to complete small and medium scale projects. After few look around I short listed few frameworks and downloded them and tried it.
The frameword I downloaded are

• Zend
• Symfony
• Cake
• Seagull

Among them finally I sticked to CakePHP for the following reasons.

It's simaple as promised
Setting up is relatively simple unlike Symphony which even require some commands to execute.
Its although still under development but somewhat complete for small and medium projects, unlike Zend which seems to be missing many functionlity.
It has native support for AJAX which is missing in Seagul.
Good documentation although not vast as Symphony.
Very active community
The development is done by a core team thun maintaing staibility.

I have come accross a good comparisons and articles about PHP Frameworks listed below.

Gráfica Comparación Frameworks

Yahoo My Web 2.0

I just came accross a new service by Yahoo!. They are calling it My Web 2.0.

My Web 2.0 is a social search engine. What does that mean? It means that we've combined the power of search technology with the power of people. My Web 2.0 is a new way to find and share knowledge on the Web — you'll find better answers by tapping into the shared knowledge of the people you know and trust.

Quite interesting. I wanted to explore more. Sign Up is not an headech at all. If you have yahoo account it will work here also. I havn't seen My Web 1.0 so dont have any idea of it. But Yahoo says that they have kept all the features of My Web 1.0 and added few new cool features like Tagging, My Rank.

I personally liked the My rank feature. Its a pretty cool feature i belive. This feature really shows how computer technology is gradually mixing with real human behaviour. Using this feature you can rank pages acoording to your importance and liking. And people connected to you, i.e. in your community may also do so.
So when you search it will take into their page rank also in consideration. Thus giving you a human touch in your serch.
Pretty cool huh!!!