Introducing TinyPop
Posted by Srinath
TinyPop is a lightweight (1.5 KB minified) JavaScript for Growl like notifications. It can be used as an alternative to jGrowl when you don't want to use jQuery for a simple task.
phpUserAuth Released!
Posted by Srinath
It's finally done! The package is up for grabs, with a quick starter guide.
Please go through the project page for more details!
The Readme.txt file inside folder "readme" contains instructions for installation and usage
Leave your comments/questions/suggestions on the project page.
Out.
Introducing phpUserAuth
Posted by Srinath
Update: Please visit the project page for more details
After weeks of fighting with myself, I finally got down to work on something that has been on my mind for sometime now. Yes, it is yet another user authentication/management system in PHP. There are already some great ones out there, and some not so good ones. I wanted a system that was secure, flexible, and easy to work with. What took me an entire week of effort is presented below. Without further delay, presenting phpUserAuth
Features
- Secure with support for sessions based and/or cookie based authentication
- Tons of configuration option for those who know what they are doing. For others, its easy as a cake!
- Passwords are *always* hashed before they are sent over the network, with fallback to plain text if JavaScript is not supported in the browser
- Only salted, hashed passwords are saved in the database. Even if the DB is stolen, it is almost impossible to get the original password
- Support for multiple simultaneous sessions or a single active session
- Administrator can choose how users are activated after they signup. It can be automatic activation, manual activation by the admin, or an activation mail can be sent to the user
- Password is NEVER sent over the email. If the user forgets his password, he can request a password reset mail.
- User defined access control levels
- Flexible. If the administrator wants to add another field, simply updated the configuration file, and put the field in the signup form! The rest is taken care of by the script!
- Prevention from XSS attacks - all data sent to the server is cleaned using the excellent InputFilter class
- Support for template based HTML email notifications with changeable templates
- Emailing done through the excellent PHPMailer with support for SMTP+SSL
- Custom redirection after login/logout
- Pre-designed forms
- Snap in install - Simply drop the folder into your existing application, configure a few site options and database settings, and you are done!
Requirements
- PHP 5+ as the core classes are OO
- MySQLi support
- MySQL 5+ database server
Is that too much to ask? That being said, if you run a fairly recent server, all these should be there by default. For testing, you can check out XAMPP which is available for Windows, Mac and Linux!
License
I'm planning to release it under some open source license. If that doesn't work out, it will still be FREE
Download
It is not completely done yet. The admin area needs some work. So it will be released, when its done
Notes
1) As always, it isn't perfect! If you find any bugs, errors, or know a way where things can be done better, please leave a comment!
2) The application hasn't been profiled yet. There WILL be places where I might have complicated things. Will be taken care of after its been released
Loud SMS/Ringtones for iPhone
Posted by Srinath
If you use an iPhone, you know the ringtones that come with it suck. Big time. They aren't loud enough to hear if you carry the phone in your pocket. After much searching, I've stumbled upon a ringtone that is really loud, and does the job well. As a bonus, there are 3 tones for SMS which are slightly louder than the ones built in.
For the ringtone, download the .m4r file here. Simply drag the file to iTunes, and it will show up as a new ringtone. Then you can sync your iPhone and voila, the tone will magically pop up in the Settings -> Sounds -> Ringtone menu.
To replace the SMS tones, you will need to access the filesystem on the iPhone, and then replace a couple of files.
- This can be done either via openSSH (if your phone is jailbroken) or you can use a program like iPhoneBrowser
- Navigate to /System/Library/Audio/UISounds directory
- The tones have the extension .caf. You will find 6 files named as sms-received1.caf to sms-received6.caf
- The iPhone OS does not allow us to add new SMS tones. Even if you drop in a new tone as sms-received7.caf, the tone will not pop up in the menu. So you will have to replace the tones that you do not like with the newer tones
- Get the 3 tones here. Expand the iPhone tab, and download the 3 .caf files
- Rename the files to the tones you want to replace (by default, the files will replace the last 3 tones, that is Horn, bell and electronic)
- Make a backup of the original files in the directory and replace the new files
- Goto Settings -> Sounds -> New Text Message and select the tones that you replaced. Note that the name of the tones will still be the same, but the actual tone would have changed by now
And thats that. Drop in your comments/doubts if any.
How to create a Mac OSX finder like download script using PHP
Posted by Srinath
This is a small tutorial/article on how to create a Mac OSX Finder like navigation page and to use it to list and download files that you have. A screen shot below for people who do not know how it looks. It can be used as a simple yet elegant download script.
