New Google Maps

Google Maps today is quite a great tool for what it’s supposed to do now, and you can navigate from location A to location B. Month back, I really enjoy the apps when I was in Europe. I get into a place that never been before and still can enjoy travelling with the help of the great Google Maps.  But things will never been so complete if Google enhance the maps to cater what a traveller needs. I got my feeling that Google Maps will be more advance with shop’s review because it bought Zagat and also getting better with street view and so on. And it finally here, today I am going to talk a little bit of New Google Maps.

I requested for New Google Maps preview since they introduced it in Google I/O, and it finally granted me to have a look on the great new Google Maps.

Here is the new look of Google Maps:-

Some of them name it your maps as it will collect your data and you can save all the information into this so called “your Maps” meaning that Google will create a specific maps under your name and you can then utilize the maps for your own data and the maps will adapt to the things that interest you, including restaurants you've been to, ones that you might like and what your friends have done. 

A new and smarter search box is the first thing you should use to search for direction or a point that you want to search. The box will give you some suggestion based on your browsing data:- 

Just search any keyword that you require and it will show up some of the location base on the area you searched. 

You can get more information from the info card below the smart search box and it will include Zagat ratings, reviews from your friends and quick entry points to photos of the venue from Street View, both inside and outside of the venue: Review will link directly to Google Plus location. 

It integrated with Google earth and allow you to switch between Maps view and Earth view and this time they have better view with photo sharing view which combined from public shared photo and allow you to have a look on the destination you want to go. 

The most interesting features that always keep me coming back to Google Maps is directions, and I am impressed with they even have information for KL which i think previously I don't see anything good in here. :P

I think i am getting excited with this New Google Maps now, and keep playing around with the new features and layout. 

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Twitter bootstrap

What is twitter bootstrap?

As you can see from the taglines: - Sleek, intuitive, and powerful front-end framework for faster and easier web development.

Wow! It explained!

Ok, let’s have some details description if it doesn’t. Twitter Bootstrap is a toolkit/framework to develop web apps and sites in faster way, as it includes basic CSS and HTML for creating Typography, Tables, Forms, Navigation, Alerts and lot more. It includes scaffolding section which including responsive 12-column grids, layouts, and component. It is includes 13 custom jQuery plugins. That is the reason why it becomes so popular nowadays.

Bootstrap was made to not only look and behave great in the latest desktop browsers (as well as IE7!), but in tablet and smartphone browsers via responsive CSS as well.

After all the craps, how to kick start using this powerful framework?

Go to http://twitter.github.io/bootstrap/ and click on Download Bootstrap button, and you will get a bootstraps.zip file in your Downloads folder.  Double clicks on it and you will see a folder in this zip file.

File structure: -

bootstrap/

  ├── css/

  │   ├── bootstrap.css

  │   ├── bootstrap.min.css

  ├── js/

  │   ├── bootstrap.js

  │   ├── bootstrap.min.js

  └── img/

      ├── glyphicons-halflings.png

      └── glyphicons-halflings-white.png

Copied from http://twitter.github.io/bootstrap/

Extract it into your development folder and start using it as your front-end framework.

I can say you have to go through the example and some tutorial to get yourself familiar with this framework, happy coding everyone! 

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Google chrome overtake Internet Explorer

This is not new news for people who keep track on the browser movement, and I think this is showing how Google serious on getting things improved.

Chrome's share of the market rose to 32.8% in the week ending May 20, while Internet Explorer's share of the market dropped to 31.9%, according to new data from StatCounter

And Chrome is going strong from there with 33.78% today, while IE’s share of market is 32.63%, according to data from StatCounter for now.

I have to agree on with google chrome come in we have never surf the web in boring way, it come with some of the plugin that contribute to the market share as well. It makes surfing activities become more interesting to keep track on what I suppose to do, and also give me some control on the things I want to control with available plugins.

IE will try to fight back anyway, but I think they still have way to go as their plugin is not a much as what chrome have and old version like IE9, 8 and 7 have some complication when come to develop their plugins. I had try it before for IE plugin development, it take me some times to get it done.

I hope IE will push their web browser improvement as web becomes one of the strong channel for user to access data from anywhere. 

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W3C: Getting HTML5 to Recommendation in 2014

I think the team is working on the HTML5 standard few years and it is time to give an end to this move with timeline setup. I see this is kind of great move as people who working closely with HTML5 having a date to focus on.

You can refer to link below for more details: -

http://www.w3.org/QA/2012/09/getting_html5_to_recommendatio.html

It the statement: “HTML Working Group Chairs proposed a plan today to work in parallel on stabilizing HTML 5.0 and developing the next generation of HTML features. The plan identifies, for the first time, how the Working Group will produce an HTML 5.1 Recommendation by 2016.”

So, this is quite a clear plan for HTML5 future and I am wonder if every party who involve in pushing HTML5 will be aggressively focus on the date, and move with it together.  “HTML5.1 recommendation by 2016” sound weird at least for me as I don’t have details on how they want to move 5.1 at this moment.  Will it be after 5.0 only reveal what is supposed to be in 5.1?

We all have to stay tune on the movement and figure it out sooner or later. 

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CSS ? - Cascading Style Sheets, CSS3?

Back to 10 years ago, it never been an important knowledge for web backend developer to know how CSS work. When I was a developers years back in a company who have a designer team setup, there are a guy called “Ah Beng” who always work  out lots of design template for me. And I always work very closely with him on getting web site up with colourful and nice design.

Then people realize that getting CSS to control on the web layout using DIV tag is better, CSS become an important for backend developer to know how to get the web site display dynamic way as like template setup with CSS styling. I had some lecture from “Ah Beng” as well, he was generous in term of guiding me on how to get used with CSS technology but not meal. I always pay the bill.

Here is some of the CSS code example: - 

1 2	#column1 {float: left; width: 100px; padding: 10px; } #column2 {float: left; width: 100px; padding: 10px; }

Some of developers are not sure on when CSS was started, Styles were added to HTML 4.0 to solve a problem. It became quite important for developer to know how it plug into a web site and get it styled.

External Style Sheets is always a common thing for developer nowadays as can save a lot of work and are stored in CSS files.

Then CSS allow web developer to work out on printing layout as this is because some of the people would like to have their printing format differently. example:-

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<style type="text/css" media="print"> label { float: left; display: block; width: 3cm; } </style>

With multiple size of screen come into picture as tablet and mobile phone are able to surf internet and access web site they like, CSS further enhance it standard to enable developer to detect user agent screen size, this allow developer to style their web accordingly. 

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<style type="text/css"> @media screen and (max-device-width: 480px) { } </style>

Story come more interesting when HTML5 is in picture. CSS3has become part HTML5, it allow developer to make the web site look more interesting with more animation allowed.

There are lots of web site that provide some tools to generate CSS3 like http://www.css3maker.com/, http://css3generator.com/ and so on. You can get it from searching through google.com

Sad to say that CSS3 is still need sometimes because some of the browsers still working on their capability to support the standard. you can check on the css3 supported browser at caniuse.com. hopefully browser provider can speed up their development on supporting these features. 

I have to agree that with CSS web site been look more interesting.

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