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	<title>Blog - PonticStar.com &#187; Web Development</title>
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	<link>http://www.ponticstar.com/blog</link>
	<description>Blog about various aspects of programming and web design</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Mon, 28 Jun 2010 19:53:52 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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		<title>Fire effect using HTML5 canvas element</title>
		<link>http://www.ponticstar.com/blog/2010/04/17/fire-effect-using-html5-canvas-element/</link>
		<comments>http://www.ponticstar.com/blog/2010/04/17/fire-effect-using-html5-canvas-element/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 17 Apr 2010 21:13:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Ryvkin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Web Development]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[JavaScript]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.ponticstar.com/blog/?p=128</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I have released JavaScript library to create an effect of burning text. There are number of options that you can customize &#8211; colors, font and burning speed. You can see the demo and play with all the options at ponticstar.com/projects/burning-words. The script uses canvas element that is a part of HTML5 specification. The element is [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I have released JavaScript library to create an effect of burning text. There are number of options that you can customize &#8211; colors, font and burning speed. You can see the demo and play with all the options at <a href="http://www.ponticstar.com/projects/burning-words/">ponticstar.com/projects/burning-words</a>.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.ponticstar.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/burning-words.png" alt="" title="Burning words" width="210" height="45" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-129" /></p>
<p>The script uses <a class="target-blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canvas_element">canvas element</a> that is a part of HTML5 specification. The element is currently supported by the latest versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, and Opera. It is not natively implemented by Internet Explorer as of version 8.</p>
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		<item>
		<title>Free music for your multimedia project</title>
		<link>http://www.ponticstar.com/blog/2010/02/22/free-music-for-your-project/</link>
		<comments>http://www.ponticstar.com/blog/2010/02/22/free-music-for-your-project/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:20:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Ryvkin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Web Development]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.ponticstar.com/blog/?p=123</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[On Valentine&#8217;s day David Orr launched the Dev Center that offers free audio samples for developers on a tight budget. Any project will qualify (even commercial ones!) You can use any of the music available in the Dev Center. There is no limit to how many pieces you want to use! No subscription fee is [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>On Valentine&#8217;s day <a class="target-blank" href="http://www.davidorr.net/">David Orr</a> launched <a class="target-blank" href="http://www.davidorr.net/Blog/?page_id=563">the Dev Center</a> that offers free audio samples for developers on a tight budget.</p>
<ul>
<li>Any project will qualify (even commercial ones!)</li>
<li>You can use any of the music available in the Dev Center.</li>
<li>There is no limit to how many pieces you want to use!</li>
<li>No subscription fee is required &#8211; you just need to register (for free)</li>
</ul>
<p>The only requirement is that you must insert the Dev Center splash screen at the start of your game.</p>
<p><span id="more-123"></span><br />
Below is my favorite piece of David&#8217;s work:</p>
<p>David wrote music for games like <a class="target-blank" href="http://www.candystand.com/play/copy-cat-a-painters-puzzle">Copy Cat: A Painter&#8217;s Puzzle</a> and <a class="target-blank" href="https://armorgames.com/play/4264/colony">Colony</a>. In these games the music alone can keep you playing for hours. Great work, David!</p>
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		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
<enclosure url="http://www.davidorr.net/Mp3/Nocturne%20Csharp%20Minor.mp3" length="4033016" type="audio/mpeg" />
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Force SSL using .htaccess and mod_rewrite</title>
		<link>http://www.ponticstar.com/blog/2009/11/21/force-ssl-using-htaccess/</link>
		<comments>http://www.ponticstar.com/blog/2009/11/21/force-ssl-using-htaccess/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 21 Nov 2009 23:42:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Ryvkin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Web Development]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Apache]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.ponticstar.com/blog/?p=107</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Sometimes you need to force your visitors to use secure connection if they forgot to type https:// in the browser. It can be accomplished by adding the following lines to .htaccess file located in the root folder of your web site. It will force secure connection for all pages on your web site. .htaccess RewriteEngine [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Sometimes you need to force your visitors to use secure connection if they forgot to type <code>https://</code> in the browser. It can be accomplished by adding the following lines to <code>.htaccess</code> file located in the root folder of your web site. It will force secure connection for all pages on your web site.</p>
<p><span id="more-107"></span>
<div class="filename">.htaccess</div>
<pre>RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}</pre>
<p>If you want to force secure connection only in certain directory (for example <code>/secure</code>), use this code instead.</p>
<div class="filename">.htaccess</div>
<pre>RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^secure
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}</pre>
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		<item>
		<title>Sending an e-mail with ASP.NET and System.Net.Mail via Google</title>
		<link>http://www.ponticstar.com/blog/2009/04/23/sending-email-with-asp-net/</link>
		<comments>http://www.ponticstar.com/blog/2009/04/23/sending-email-with-asp-net/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 23 Apr 2009 22:06:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Ryvkin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Web Development]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ASP.NET]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.ponticstar.com/blog/?p=32</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Few days ago I needed to develop contact form handler for the website hosted on Windows platform. JavaScript and AJAX were used on the client side to send request to the server. After some reading about ASP.NET framework it become clear that I need to write custom handler (.ashx) to process this request. In the [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Few days ago I needed to develop contact form handler for the website hosted on Windows platform. JavaScript and AJAX were used on the client side to send request to the server. After some reading about ASP.NET framework it become clear that I need to write custom handler (.ashx) to process this request. <span id="more-32"></span></p>
<p>In the example below Google is used as e-mail service provider. If you have Google Apps account replace <code>username@gmail.com</code> with your e-mail address including domain name.</p>
<p><strong>send_inquiry.ashx</strong>:</p>
<pre class="brush:csharp"><%@ WebHandler Language="C#" class="ContactFormHandler" %>

using System;
using System.Web;
using System.Net.Mail;

public class ContactFormHandler : IHttpHandler {

   public void ProcessRequest (HttpContext context) {

       SmtpClient smtp  = new SmtpClient();
       smtp.Host        = "smtp.gmail.com";
       smtp.Port        = 587; // or 465
       smtp.EnableSsl   = true;
       smtp.Credentials = new System.Net.NetworkCredential("username@gmail.com", "password");

       MailMessage msg = new MailMessage();
       msg.From = new MailAddress("username@gmail.com");
       msg.To.Add("To@address.com");
       msg.Subject = "Web site inquiry";

       // Additional options
       // msg.IsBodyHtml   = true;
       // msg.BodyEncoding = Encoding.UTF8;
       // msg.Priority     = MailPriority.High;

       string strName    = context.Request.Form["name"];
       string strEmail   = context.Request.Form["email"];
       string strPhone   = context.Request.Form["phone"];
       string strMessage = context.Request.Form["message"];

       string strBody = "";
       strBody += "Name:   " + strName  + "\n";
       strBody += "E-mail: " + strEmail + "\n";
       strBody += "Phone:  " + strPhone + "\n";
       strBody += "Message:\n" + strMessage + "\n";

       msg.Body = strBody;

       context.Response.ContentType = "text/plain";
       try {
          smtp.Send(msg);
          context.Response.Write("Success");

       } catch (Exception e) {
          context.Response.Write("Failure (" + e.ToString() + ")"); ;
       }

       msg.Dispose();
   }

   public bool IsReusable {
       get {
           return false;
       }
   }
}
</pre>
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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>PHP5 / WordPress on Windows</title>
		<link>http://www.ponticstar.com/blog/2008/12/18/php5-wordpress-on-windows/</link>
		<comments>http://www.ponticstar.com/blog/2008/12/18/php5-wordpress-on-windows/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 18 Dec 2008 12:13:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Ryvkin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Web Development]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[PHP]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[WordPress]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.ponticstar.com/blog/?p=4</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Before going live with WordPress I have decided to try it out on my laptop. It was a time to upgrade my PHP installation as well. I downloaded and installed the most recent version of PHP5 in a zip package and configured Apache to use it. However the following message appeared when I tried to [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Before going live with WordPress I have decided to try it out on my laptop. It was a time to upgrade my PHP installation as well. I <a href="http://www.php.net/downloads.php" target="_blank">downloaded</a> and installed the most recent version of PHP5 in a zip package and configured Apache to use it. However the following message appeared when I tried to install WordPress:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL extension which is required by WordPress.</em></p>
<p>It turned out PHP5 was not configured to use MySQL by default. This is what I have changed in <em>php.ini </em>compared<em> </em>to <em>php.ini-recommended</em>.</p>
<pre class="brush:plain">extension_dir = "c:/php5/ext/"
...
extension=php_mysql.dll
extension=php_mysqli.dll
...
session.save_path = "c:/windows/temp/"</pre>
<p>Unfortunately it did not help. I was still getting the same error. It was a time to finally read <a href="http://us3.php.net/manual/en/mysql.installation.php" target="_blank">PHP installation manual</a>. And then the mystery was uncovered. In order for PHP to access MySQL, file <em>libmysql.dll</em> from PHP distribution &#8220;needs to be available to the Windows systems PATH&#8221;. I copied <em>libmysql.dll</em> to <em>C:\WINDOWS\system32</em> and voilà &#8211; it worked!</p>
<p>RTFM!</p>
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