What are QR Codes?

QR is an abbreviation of Quick Response.
QR is a two-dimensional bar code which presents information as a series of squares within squares and they are machine readable. They can contain alphanumeric text and are often used to identify and feature URLs that direct users to sites where they can learn about a product, a place or an object. They can be quickly read by mobile phones. This is also commonly known as “mobile tagging”.

Typically, barcodes are used to distinguish between products. Every product that you purchase has its own unique barcode. When you buy a can of coke, just turn it around and you will notice a series of vertical black and white lines. These lines are called barcodes. These barcodes can be found on any product that you buy, as they help in identifying and differentiating products. Similar to these barcodes, QR codes work in a similar fashion. Many modern cell phones can easily scan these QR codes thus enabling you to receive the info in your mobile phones.

So what makes QR Codes different from a regular barcode?

1. A barcode can encode the data horizontally. That is why you see vertical lines on the barcode of products like soft drink cans, tooth pastes, etc. as the scanners read the width and distance between these vertical lines. Unlike a regular barcode, QR code can encode the data, both horizontally and vertically in the form of a grid, built of tiny squares. This helps to add more data in a smaller region.

2. It is absolutely necessary that the barcodes to be aligned properly (mostly vertically) to be read properly by a scanner, whereas QR codes can be read and intercepted from any angle.

3. Barcodes are merely used to identify products and can be used only to provide static information about the product, prices, etc. They cannot trigger an action on their own. On the other hand, QR codes can trigger actions like downloading a file, launching a website, etc. thus adding more options and flexibility.

Why are QR Codes used?

QR Codes can be used to provide tracking information for routing data on a mailing label, contact information on a business card, products in industry, etc. They are also used to grab information from transient media (such as online ads, etc.), store and digitally present this info (can include text, URL, geo coordinates, etc.) and save/upload this information to your cell phone.

Once this information is available in your cell phone, it may provide you with more details about the product/entity that the QR code corresponds to, thus possibly allowing users to search for nearby locations, show website URL, provide contact information, etc. All of this really adds to our convenience and flexibility of providing and accessing information.

QR codes are commonly used in Websites, advertisements, magazine advertisements, on a billboard, a person’s T-shirt, etc.

How are QR Codes used?

QR codes can be scanned and intercepted by modern day mobile phones. If you have a modern day Smartphone, chances are high that it can scan and store this QR code. Contact your cell phone manufacturer or refer to your user manual to find out if this feature is available in your cell phone. If it is, then you can simply run supplied software/take a snapshot with the inbuilt camera.

The decoding software built into the mobile phones will take care of interpreting the code, once it is saved into your mobile. If you do not have a decoding software installed, then you may download one for free from Kaywa or QuickMarks. You may then share this info with others by means of Bluetooth, etc.

That’s it for now!

Do you know anything else about that you would like to share with us? Please feel free to do so by commenting below.

What is WordPress?

WordPress is an open-source, free, web-based software that anyone can use to build and maintain a blog. Of late, WordPress is also used to build and maintain websites. And because WordPress is open source, it now serves more than just a website or a blog. It is also being used as a “Content Management System” (CMS), thereby enabling full-sized, social media-rich business websites to be built and maintained with relative ease.

Why WordPress is used?

Some of the most general reasons are listed below:

• WordPress was originally intended to be a blogging tool and it later evolved to be a lot more than just a blogging platform. The ability to blog lets you write individual articles on any topic of your choice and exchange views from your visitors in the form of comments. Visitors can also subscribe to your site content using RSS, without having to visit your blog for every article, thereby improving your reader base.
• WordPress offers several Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques that the search engines love to respond to. Hence it offers a very good opportunity to grow your website’s reach thereby giving you an excellent opportunity to expand your visitor and customer base.
• It’s very easy to change the look and feel of your WordPress blog/website, without having to write even a single line of code yourself. The WordPress designs are based on “Themes”. These themes are nothing but a collection of webpage layout, CSS and images that let you customize the look and feel of a WordPress site. These page layouts can be created using software such Adobe Fireworks, Adobe Photoshop, etc.
• WordPress offers “User Management” feature. You can also have others manage your WordPress website for you by assigning them roles and thus, have them add articles, moderate comments and much more. The basic requirement to be able to carry out such tasks is to have an Internet connection and access to the WordPress website, hence it makes it very easy for the WordPress website owner to maintain it personally or have it done by others.
• Let’s you expand the standard functionality of WordPress by allowing you to install “Plugins”. The functionality of the plugins can include addition of contact form, shopping cart, e-commerce facilities and a lot more.

How to use WordPress?

I have written a full-fledged article that explains how to use WordPress with examples. Feel free to check it out here.

If you would like to own a WordPress website and would like us to help you with it, feel free to contact us and we will build a custom WordPress theme that will fit your requirement.

What is jQuery AJAX?

Before we start with the definitions and other good stuff, let’s take a quick look at what jQuery & AJAX stands for.

jQuery – It is a JavaScript framework that helps speed up web development by providing code for most commonly used actions, such as animation, display/hide elements on web page,  etc.

AJAX – It stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. “Asynchronous” means an action occurring on the page, after it’s loaded.

Why to use AJAX in jQuery?

Why to primarily use AJAX?

In general sense, when a page is loaded by a web browser, the content remains the same until the user leaves the page or up until he presses the submit button. When AJAX is used, the JavaScript requests new content from the server and makes changes to the current page and displays the new information dynamically. All of this happens within the already loaded page, without having to refresh, submit or redirecting it.

So in short, AJAX is used to load data in the background and display it on the webpage, without reloading the whole page.

Popular examples of applications using AJAX:
Gmail, Twitter Tweets, Facebook Like button, Youtube videos, Google Maps, etc.

So really, why should you use AJAX in jQuery?

Using AJAX with jQuery can be a great combination for immensely speeding up the process of web development. Once AJAX is implement, most of the process will be transparent to the user as processing takes place in the background and users will be able to take advantage of the facilities offered, without having to spend more time on page reload, refresh or redirection. So altogether, it will provide rich user experience and save time to your users.

Secondly, writing regular AJAX code can be a bit tricky and could get out of control at times. This is because different browsers have different syntax for AJAX implementation.So this means that its highly likely that you will end up writing extra code to test for different browsers and eventually end up spending more time. So to avoid this and to make sure that the same code works uniformly across different browsers, jQuery takes care of this automatically and lets us write AJAX functionality with only one single line of code and this code will work evenly across different browsers.

How to use AJAX in jQuery?

jQuery provides several methods for AJAX functionality. Using the different AJAX methods, you can request text, HTML, XML, or JSON from a remote server using both HTTP Get and HTTP Post. You can also load external data directly into the selected HTML elements of your web page & show animations in the process to keep the user interested. So before we start diving deep into AJAX, let’s look at the most important requirement. It is to add the jQuery library to your page. Without it, the AJAX functionality won’t work.

Add jQuery to web page:

<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery_1.7.1_min.js"></script>

In the above code src points to the physical location of the jQuery core file. I am using a minified version of the jQuery core library and it’s located in the js folder. This js folder is in turn, located in the root directory of my website. Just update the source and add the above code just above the </head> tag in your web page and make sure that you download and place the jQuery core file in the js folder. If you would like this to be take care of automatically i.e. if you would like to always include latest version of jQuery automatically in your web page, then click here.

So now let’s look at the basic syntax of using AJAX in jQuery:

$.ajax();

Are you surprised? Yes, that’s it for the basic syntax. There are others things that go into it, such as declaration of events, etc. We will be discussing them later in this article. You may have even seen something like this:

$.ajax({ });

Or like this

$.ajax({

});

The above code means that you can split the code as shown and this will have the same effect as the code shown previously. So what would go within the curly braces? Well, that’s the place where you enter the “settings”.  Here is a general representation:

$.ajax({
settings,
events
});

The settings and events are optional. Here’s a much better example:

$.ajax({
cache: false,
type: "POST",
url: "target_url.php",
data: "country=USA&state=Texas",
success: function(response)
{
alert( "Response received: " + response);
}
});

There are some key points to understand in the above code. Here they are:

cache, type, url, data are individual settings.

cache – If the application is static, then cache can be used to cache AJAX calls to speed up the app. But if the data being dealt with is dynamic & can change, then it’s better to use cache value as false to prevent caching, thereby requesting the accurate results via the calls.

type – It indicates the type of request that is being sent i.e. whether if it is $_POST or $_GET or $_REQUEST. The most common forms are $_POST or $_GET.

url – It is the the server side processing target file that handles the incoming data, processes it & sends output based on the processing done or as per the coding. It this target file does not exist, then the page will simply not show any response other than 404 & that too in the debugging mode.

data – This is the actual data that is being sent to the target url to process. Here Country name & State name are passed for the sake of the example.

success – This is an event. This event, as it’s name suggests, occurs only when the response from the target URL is successfully received without any errors. There are other events such as error, complete that occur upon receiving an error or when the ajax operation is complete.

So this would be your starting point for ajax development understanding  and in understanding how jQuery html ajax php etc. can be used together to make a static/dynamic AJAX application. If you want to learn AJAX in much more detail, then remember to bookmark our blog and keep visiting it often for updates. You may also opt to subscribe for our emails so that you don’t miss our next tutorial on AJAX in jQuery.

Your Turn!

Do you know like this article on ajax Query? Feel free to share your thoughts by commenting below.

What is RSS?

RSS is an abbreviation for “Really Simple Syndication” or “Rich Site Summary”.

1. RSS is a technology that can be used by web users to track updates of their favorite websites, without having to physically visit the website URL. (OR)
2. RSS is a way of having your favorite websites update you automatically when they have new updates. (OR)
3. RSS is a way of “subscribing “to receive updates automatically from your favorite websites as they happen.
4. RSS is a file format used to publish content.

It is similar to bookmarking facility on a web browser, with the exception that you get to access all your favorite websites, using software that automatically fetches updates from the websites. In short, consider RSS as your one-stop place for receiving updates from your favorite websites automatically.

Why is RSS used?

Here are some of the main reasons why RSS is used:

1. Saves you time. You don’t have to visit your favorite websites manually to read updates.
2. Easy to add & track updates of multiple websites from a single joint.
3. Unlike the typical bookmarks, you don’t miss updates just because you haven’t visited the website. All updates are automatically brought to you as they are posted, so you get to keep in touch with the latest updates as they happen, saving you immense amount of time.

How is RSS used?

You can access the updates of your favorite websites via RSS by using software called “RSS Reader”. You would need to download and install this software on your PC and then subscribe to the updates of your favorite websites. Once you do that, you will start receiving instant updates, as they happen.

How does RSS look? Or how can you subscribe to receive updates from your favorite websites via RSS?

Softwares that you can download to access RSS:

1. My favorite software is FeedDemon. You can download the free version of this software from the official website by clicking here.
2. There’s another popular software called “RSSOwl”. Download RSSOwl for free. Visit the official website here.

Technical Mumbo-Jumbo:

The updates from your favorite websites are sent out in the form of XML. XML stands for EXtensible Markup Language that was designed to carry data, not to display data (unlike HTML). The RSS softwares intercept this data in XML format and convert into readable format and present it to you for easy reading.

Related terminology:

RSS Feeds, RSS Syndication

That’s it!

Was I able to introduce what RSS is in the most simplest way? Or do you have another simpler version of describing what RSS is? If yes, please share it with us below. If your version is much simpler than what has already been described, we will update this post and even share a link-back to your website!*

*Please note that all links will be manually checked and approved. No commercial links allowed. Only links that give more information about you or your own website are allowed. Thanks for your cooperation.