Thursday, December 15, 2005

Dont waste time in configuring - easy steps to install Apache, PHP and MySQL

Installing Apache, PHP and MySQL, separately, is easy and takes no time. But making them to work with each other takes a hell lot of effort. Specially if you are windows kind of person, who loves click and done, you don't really enjoying configuring http.conf file of apache. Now there is a better alternative - XAMPP which provides a bundle of Apache, PHP, Perl, MySQL, and PhpMyAdmin. All you need to do is to download the XAMPP installer and double click on exe file downloaded. Follow the instruction and you are done. As long as you are server is only for testing purpose this is a great package. Even if you planning to make a serious server, you can always configure the httpd.conf file by yourself later. So instead of spending time on configuring services you can spend time on developing things.

Have fun!

Friday, December 09, 2005

AutoLookup and Editable ComboBox for simple webpage

One of the problem with the HTML ComboBox is that it does not provide any facility related to autolookup. An example of autolookup and editiable comboBox can found at http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/r/j/rja171/AutoLookup/test.htm
(source code can be found here). The example is based on JavaScript.

The original source code and explanation can be found at http://www.webreference.com/programming/javascript/ncz/index.html

I have extended the original code so as to include an option of button and display all the choices in a comboBox rather than in a layer.

Following are the features of comboBox
1. Allows to type text as in text box
2. At text is being typed shows the drop down list of all available options
3. Allows to browse all the results using a button
4. Selecting a value in the comboBox updates the text.