Currency converter using API

By Deepak Sihag in Useful Applications 0 Comment

Currency conversion and language conversion are two most frequent required features for a web developer. There are multiple options too available for both such as Google language widget etc. to acheive feature quickly in couple of mins with no code but some where they limit functionality due to dependency on 3rd party code. Personally I prefer use of API as much possible for integration of any functionality in compare to being dependent on any 3rd party provider and hamper own website’s design and programming creativity.

In one of such scenario I recently come across Currency converted using Google API by TechMug, this really impressed me a lot. My requirement was to allow users to check the price (default in USD) and this solution worked like a charm. Demo of same can be viewed here.


It make an ajax call to Google API using JQuery and pass the ‘To’ & ‘From’ currency and amount as argument. In response API return the value of currency in real time.

Download Mirror

CTRL + ALT + DEL in remote desktop

By Deepak Sihag in Useful Applications 0 Comment

It was always an issue for me as having multiple CPU but single monitor and I hate most when I have to access a System remotely because there is no option for CTRL + ALT + DEL, one of any computer users most favorite key combination. : )

Finally I found it, here is a solution to access CTRL + ALT + DEL over remote desktop, just need to replace DEL with END. So combination while using remote desktop is CTRL + ALT + END

Cheers!!

Share on Facebook with Description

By Deepak Sihag in Useful Applications 0 Comment

Recently one of my collegue was struglling with sharing information on Facebook using Sharer.php, earlier it was a good and easiest way to share or post on Facebook progrmatically. It used to take 2 arguments u & t:

http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http://yahoo.com&t=description_here
The u argument is the url that you are sharing.
The t argument should be the descriptive text that goes along with the post. However this is deprecated and no longer works.

Now if this is used it post, page title as description which is not desirable in most of cases.

I googled as well checked Open Graph meta tag (https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/), which same I also reviewed an article by Petisia showing same using meta tags but we need a separate PHP code file in this.

Finally after bit of study I was able to come up with an option which allow to post URL, description, image etc. to wall using single share file link:

http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?s=100&p[title]=YOUR TITLE HERE;p[url]=YOUR URL HERE&p[images][0]=IMAGE PATH HERE&p[summary]=YOUR DESCRIPTION HERE”>

Click to view live demo

Above link will allow you to post a link with details on Facebook to this blog post

XML based slideshow in Flash

By Deepak Sihag in Useful Applications 0 Comment

Recently I was going though some old open source code in archive and found few code snippets of JQuery, Flash application, PHP, wordpress helpful in web development. I have added a flash based slideshow managed using XML here. It uses a simple XML file to manage flash and different images can be managed category wise with no much efforts. It is quite suitable for a portfolio display.

Click to Download

I am unable to recall original source of download but still appreciate efforts of Flash developer who invested efforts in this nice Flash based slideshow.

Show External RSS in WordPress Page

By Deepak Sihag in Featured, Wordpress 0 Comment

Recently in one of project there was a requirement to show data from a RSS link on a wordpress page along with formatting and other features.

Implementation of RSS using PHP is quite easy using RSS reader but implementation of same using wordpress plugin involves a bit complexity and for any wordpress lover first thought in mind if for any such available wordpress plugin. I found one such plugin and as author or this seems not continuing support for this wordpress RSS feed reader plugin so I thought to add it library and share with users.

You may download Rss Feed List Plugin here, steps for integration are as below:

1. Upload plugin and activate

2. Create page for RSS Feed

3. Add below code to page:

For EACH RSS Feed you wish to add, the options are quite self explanatory, there are more such as adding custom tags before and after each item in the list, by default there is “li>” before and “/li>” after each entry.

After you’ve saved and published the page, you can check to see if it’s worked.

You may view a sample page here. This example display data from Networkers.

Happy Coding!!