Better ToDo It – A Google Chrome Extension for Better Task Management

When ever I looked out for something simple but feature rich application where I can manager my todos in the simplest way, I struggled alot to find nothing.

I was looking for a to do management application where I can manage my todos locally (and optionally with server sync). The applications should be so simple, that I should be able to just add tasks and put some notes over there. All the applications I saw were server client based applications or windows based applications.

Why it is not possible to have an application which has the power of a windows like application and beauty of the web application. It is possible, I thought, Better To Do It myself. I created the Google Chrome (if you are not using this browser, you should give it a try, a simple yet powerful browser) extension and named it Better ToDo It. The extension is my very early efforts of providing an in browser ToDos and Notes management application, where the user need not to be dependent on the internet connection for its regular operations.  This extension I have published in Beta form to the chrome web store with very few entry level features coded. Currently one can

  • add task
  • modify task
  • add notes
  • delete tasks
  • reset the local task data from options page of the extension.
the application is so light weight that one wouldn’t even notice that it is running.

Here are the silent features of the app yet to be developed or enhanced:

  • normal features
    • totally offline for the regular operations like manage the tasks and notes.
    • set the task priority
    • set the task category
    • custom categories
    • custom priority
    • grouping and sorting by different prime properties of todo items
    • provide search feature
  • pro features
    • sync with central server
    • sync with google task
    • password protected list
    • and lots more

The main target of making this extension is that an application, which does exactly what is meant to do. If some applications is not doing that the way, I will suggest Better ToDo It your self.

You can visit the extension’s web store page here “Better ToDo It“ and try it. Do post your reviews here or on the Google Chrome Extension’s Page. I am in a way to develop the features you request.

Start managing your tasks with Better ToDo It, from Today!!

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Tools: vCard Splitter Application

Name: vCard Splitter
Application: splits the phonebook.vcf into contact.vcf files.
Requirement: Copy contacts from Sony to Nokia or other phones.

Preface:

So many of my friends have asked me who are moving from Sony to other brand for Mobile phones, specially to Nokia, that they want to copy there contacts. and they are not able to do that. There are many ways to that out of them one is to export the whole address book from Sony and split it into individual contact file and transferring them to your other handset.

Steps:

You can use the below steps to do that:

  1. Open your address book in the Sony Mobile.
  2. Use Options -> Advance -> Send All Contacts -> Via Bluetooth.
  3. Select the Computer where you need to send the Contacts from the searched devices.
  4. Download the vCard Splitter from here (old version removed).
  5. Extract and open the application.
  6. Select the “whole phonebook.vcf” file in the input file.
  7. Select the output directory where the vCard files need to be created after splitting.
  8. Click on Split button.
  9. Open the output directory.
  10. Transfer them to your other handset.

Notes:

Above method depends on the type of the handsets you are having at both ends.

Update:

Thanks to all you guys suggesting out the features and finding out the problems in the applications. I have updated the vCard Splitter Application nearly re-writing the most of the code. You can download the new updated version from below mentioned link.

vCard Splitter v1.1

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Website Optimization: Try to Escape from 404 – Page Not Found

Article ID : Tip-003
Article Topic : Website Optimization
Article Title : Try to Escape from 404 – Page Not Found

Preface

Wen client always creates a request for the resources referenced in the page it is rendering and if server can’t find it sends 404 – Page Not Found.

Explanation

When we create a website with a number of webpages and embedded resources like images (in HTML and CSS), JavaScript Files or Cascading Style Sheets, it is well obvious that we may skip something to include or we have referenced which is not present in the application. If this missing is visible, it can be caught and taken care. But, what if it is not visible?

Let’s talk about the favicon.ico. Microsoft started the concept of the favorite’s icon with IE 4. Since then the trend is started ad is adopted by major browsers to fetch and display the favorite’s icon in the address bar o on the tabs icon (for the bowsers supporting tabs). Earlier the concept was to fetch this icon only when the page is added to the favorite’s menu. But today if the browser has no previous visit recorded for the site the page belongs to will create a domain/favicon.ico request. Once the data is fetched it will cached by the browsers. But if the server returns 404 Error it will try to get that every time the page is requested from the domain.

Most of the cases even after the deployment is over for the site we skip this small thing favicon.ico to be included in the application root and the server is bothered again and again by the requests to provide the information which actually it doesn’t have. Every time without getting frustrated it calmly says 404 – Page Not Found.

How to Resolve

You can avoid this very common situation specifically for the icon case by

  • Using a favicon.ico file in the root of the application.
  • Specifying the page icon in the header of the page.

There a number of tools available out there in the market (freeware or paid), which can help you find out the web requests and response for your browser. Using them you can identify what is requested and what you have received in response. Fiddler is a free tool used for the same purpose.

Conclusion

Any request which cannot be fulfilled by the server is a burden to the server and to the network and to the client who is making that request. We can actually avoid them by using little cautiousness.

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Website Optimization: Serve Resources from Different Hosts

Article ID : Tip-002
Article Topic : Website Optimization
Article Title : Serve Resources from Different Hosts

Preface

Today all modern browsers are multi-threaded. Means they can server the contents while downloading more than one resource simultaneously. But there are still a few restrictions. There can’t be more than 2 parallel requests threads from the same host.

Explanation

When your browser finds an embedded resource in your web page it creates a request from the host to deliver that resource. The browser adds these requests in the host wise resource download queue where they are served on the FIFO basis. If two resources are on the same host and the third one is on the other host it may be possible that you are receiving the third one before the first or second are downloaded. Here are few facts:

1.   Resource Download Queue
Each browser adds the resource request in a download queue. While parsing the HTML contents if the browser comes across any embedded resource like an image file or a style sheet file. It will add it to the download queue.
2.   Priority on the Bases of Resource Type
Every embedded resource download request will go into the queue as and when the parser comes across it and continue to parse the rest. In case of a JavaScript file however the case is bit different. If the browser finds a script file embedded in the Webpage it will stop parsing the rest of the page and will wait for that file to be downloaded first. So if that file is late in the queue, the wait and parsing time is high.
3.   Number of Requests per Host
Today the browsers are multithreaded to serve the content by parallel download and reduce the wait time. But according to the ISDN rule this limited to 2 parallel connections to the same host. So if there are more files embedded in a Webpage. It is going to take a considerably high time to fetch those resources.

How to Resolve

If the contents are served from different hosts the browser can create separate threads for them and have them downloaded parallel. However actually it impossible to have the separate host for each resource, we can have the separate hosts for different type of resources. In real scenarios having separate resource type hosts are also difficult, so we can fool the browser by serving the resources from different Subdomains, like Images from image.domain.com and scripts from script.domain.com. Here are a few points in short

  • Create the separate Subdomains for different type of objects.
  • Separate user images from the interface images and serve them from different Subdomains.
  • You can use the alias in place of actually creating subdomain in the DNS server like image.domain.com -> domain.com. However efficiency is at its max when you have not more than 4 alias per domain.

Conclusion

In case of rich user interface sites where there are high number of images and media files are embedded this technique is quite useful. Simply split the resources across multiple hosts and serve your users a much faster.

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