Tuesday, June 17, 2008

HTML entry character lookup

I am sure most people will know the HTML markup for an & or a © (Copyright). But what do you do if you have to display other non-english characters such as currencies of countries like the Japanese Yen, Pound and so on... You refer a HTML entry character lookup.

In Linux, if you are running Gnome desktop, you have the Gnome character map which can be used to copy the required characters and paste in the HTML document.

Fig: Gnome character map

There is another easier way though; you can use the online HTML entry character lookup which prints out the HTML code for the characters you are searching. For example, if you want the code for the Pound sign, just type "Pound" in the text box and the web page spits up the equivalent code for what you have typed.

Fig; HTML character lookup

The features of this facility are as follows :
  • Search for entity characters based on how they look (taken from the W3C list of entities)
  • Switch between standard and compressed views
  • Copy the HTML entity to the clipboard
  • Add your own keyword terms and characters to entities
  • Settings stored in a browser cookie
Check out the website here.

Read more!

June 11, 2007

Beginner MySQL, PHP and Perl tutorials in pictures

Inpics - short for In Pictures is a website with a difference. While most websites provide tutorials and howtos which are quite verbose, Inpics takes a different path to teach the basics of technology related subjects. It explains things in pictures. And indeed, a picture is worth a 1000 words. The pictures are simple black and white photos.

They have a growing collection of tutorials which are quite easy for beginners. Inpics began as part of a research study conducted for the U.S. Department of Education. The goal was to make it easier for people with learning disabilities to grasp computer subjects.

As part of the study, they created simple, illustration-based tutorials. Everyone who tested them—not just people with learning disabilities— are claimed to have said the new tutorials enabled them to learn faster and easier than conventional text-heavy books.

For the Linux enthusiast, they have a couple of tutorials on MySQL,PHP and Perl which are quite refreshing to follow. Do check them out.

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