Tech Jargon - 16 Dec 2008

• Content Delivery Network - A network of Servers delivering cached content (generally images, flash and scripts) to improve performance of a site.
  
  
• Akamai - A leading CDN company providing services to comapnies like SONY, Yahoo and Microsoft.
  
  
• Embryonic Connection - A TCP connection which is not completely established.
  
  
• Terracotta - is an open source JVM-level clustering software for Java. It delivers clustering as a runtime infrastructure service, which simplifies the task of clustering a Java application immensely, by effectively clustering the JVM underneath the application, instead of clustering the application itself.
  

ArrayList ClassCastException

When trying to typecast Object array to the Actual array type, a runtime ClassCastException is thrown.

ArrayList lst = new ArrayList();
lst.add("String 1");
lst.add("String 2");
lst.add("String 3");

String[] strArr = (String[])lst.toArray();


Solution for this is to use the toArray method with argument.

String[] strArr = new String[0];
strArr = (String[]) lst.toArray(strArr);


Customizing Blogger Menu

I wanted my Blog Archives Menu to display the Post Title instead of Months or Years. And after some R&D I came up with the following code that prints the Post titles without any Year or Month information.


<div id="r_sidebar">
  <b:section class="rsidebar" id="rsidebar" preferred="yes" showaddelement="yes">
      <b:widget id="BlogArchive1"locked="false" title="Archive" type="BlogArchive">
        <b:includable id="interval" var="intervalData">
            <b:loop values="data:intervalData" var="i">
              <b:if cond="data:i.data"><b:include data="i.data" name="interval"/></b:if>
              <b:if cond="data:i.posts"><b:include data="i.posts" name="posts"/></b:if>
            </b:loop>
        </b:includable>
        <b:includable id="menu" var="data">
            <select expr:id="data:widget.instanceId + &quot;_ArchiveMenu&quot;">
              <option value="">
                  <data:title></data:title>
              </option>
              <b:loop values="data:data" var="i">
                  <option expr:value="data:i.url"><data:i.name></data:i.name> (<data:i.post-count></data:i.post-count>)</option>
              </b:loop>
            </select>
        </b:includable>
        <b:includable id="flat" var="data">
            <ul>
              <b:loop values="data:data" var="i">
                  <li class="archivedate"><a expr:href="data:i.url"><data:i.name></data:i.name></a> (<data:i.post-count></data:i.post-count>)
                  </li>
              </b:loop>
            </ul>
        </b:includable>
        <b:includable id="posts" var="posts">
            <ul class="posts">
              <b:loop values="data:posts" var="i">
                  <li>
                    <a expr:href="data:i.url">
                        <data:i.title></data:i.title>
                    </a>
                  </li>
              </b:loop>
            </ul>
        </b:includable>
        <b:includable id="main">
            <b:if cond="data:title">
              <h2>
                  <data:title></data:title>
              </h2>
            </b:if>
            <div class="archivos">
              <div id="ArchiveList">
                  <div expr:id="data:widget.instanceId + &quot;_ArchiveList&quot;">
                    <b:if cond="data:style == &quot;HIERARCHY&quot;">
                        <b:include data="data" name="interval"></b:include>
                    </b:if>
                    <b:if cond="data:style == &quot;FLAT&quot;">
                        <b:include data="data" name="flat"></b:include>
                    </b:if>
                    <b:if cond="data:style == &quot;MENU&quot;">
                        <b:include data="data" name="menu"></b:include>
                    </b:if>
                  </div>
              </div>
              <b:include name="quickedit"></b:include>
            </div>
        </b:includable>
      </b:widget>
  </b:section>

IE Security Warning for Mixed content

Internet Explorer gives a Security warning when a page with mixed content is loaded. This happens when a Secure page (HTTPS) contains resources(images/ javascript/ css/ iframes) that are not secure... meaning if the URL for a resource in a page is HTTP then IE gives the below warning.


"This page contains both secure and nonsecure items. Do you want to display the non-secure items?"


This warning message is very annoying if it appears for every page. The solution for this is to check the pages for non-secure urls and convert them to secure. The best is to always use relative URLs where possible.

What we also observed is that 'about:blank' url loaded in an IFrame of a secured page also gives the same warning. Solution for this is to create a blank.html in the server with a blank page and load this as the default url in the iframe.