Tools

Analysis / Tools / Web, present and future — Comments Off
28
Aug 06

Windows Live Mail Desktop: First Impressions

This new mail client, based on Outlook Express, delivers more simplicity than its descriptive but uninspiring name (will the next Excel be called “Windows Live Spreadsheet Desktop”?)

At first sight, the program seems completely new, with a UI inspired by Vista and those soft, rounded edges… In reality, the foundation is clearly Outlook Express, as any visit to the options or the menus will show. Support for IMAP is improved (goodbye, “Purge”), although still wobbly (slow interaction with subfolders). Spellcheck is inline, and ads are back, something that Outlook Express lost long ago.

The UI is promising, but there’s a lack of visual contrast between the four vertical panes (shortcuts, list of messages, preview and ads), and between the different accounts in the shortcuts.

Hotmail/Livemail support is similar to Outlook Express – solid, but without support for the newer features in Hotmail, such as junk management.

Gmail support is claimed, but this relies on Gmail’s POP support. Nothing impressive there (the program started downloading two years worth of Gmail messages, which was not my intention.)

It appears that this client can import messages from PST, but not access a PST folder in the way that Outlook can

Tools / Web, present and future — Comments Off
1
Mar 06

Goodbye Outlook Express, Hello Live Mail Desktop

If anyone was wondering why the next version of Office for the home won’t include Outlook – here’s why. Microsoft is brewing a new desktop mail client called Live Mail Desktop.

Now if it natively and quickly handles PST archives, I’m leaving Outlook!

Tools / Web, present and future — Comments Off
19
Jan 06

Google discovers the delete button

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=32608&hl=en

Finally, Google acknowledges that even with constantly growing storage, there are e-mails that are obviously not worth keeping, and we can now delete them easily.

Delete button

Thank you!

Tools / Web, present and future — Comments Off
7
Jan 06

Google’s Pack

Google’s just given me an extra 6 months of Norton, so I gladly installed the Google Pack, since most of its contents were already on my computers. The more puzzling is the screen saver – unless I’m mistaken, there isn’t anything here that’s earth shattering. I wish for a strong integration with Picasa.

Analysis / Tools / Web, present and future — Comments Off
20
Dec 05

Another Google free proxy – Google Hack

Bigthisle comments on how to use Google’s translation service as a free proxy: Google free proxy!

Another method is to use Google’s mobile phone gateway and compressor. The page format is lost, but the content maintained:

http://www.google.com/gwt/n?u=www.oreilly.com
(insert your own URL after the u parameter)

See Bigthisles’ post on Google Mobile:
http://www.google.com/gwt/n?u=http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/h/4807

Analysis / Tools — Comments Off
22
Nov 05

Google Analytics, and others

For once, let’s talk about the usual application of the term “web analytics”: the analysis of web site traffic data. If the web site you’re analyzing is your own, and you have access to its traffic data, understanding how your site is used and visited is essential. Since this is turning into a platitude, and the topic is exhaustively documented, here are the two most appealing tool options for this task:

  • The newly released Google Analytics, which is the best of the freely available tools. Google Analytics has a lot of depth out of the virtual box. This site is now tracked by Google Analytics
  • Analog, which is included by some hosting services, but is the best free choice for those who control their own server and/or have direct access to the server log files. Analog is also more customizable.
Analysis / Firefox / Tools / Uncategorized — Comments Off
20
Oct 05

PDA Testing

PDA Browser Spoofing

One effective technique for basic PDA smoke testing is to use browser spoofing, in effect making a desktop browser lie about its identity to the server and thereby requesting a PDA version of a page.

Spoofing Advantages & Disadvantages

Spoofing is useful to look at pages and track basic functionality, but it is not subsitute for device or emulator testing, becaus spoofing will not necessarily render the page as intended for the target device. 

On the other hand, spoofing has its advantages:

  1. Allows a tester to make sure a PDA version of a page is present on a test server (since PDAs can’t usually access the internal network)
  2. Allows easy screenshot capture (when the problem is not a rendering issue)
  3. Much faster to go through a set of links
  4. Can test server scripts rapidly, ensuring that the right versions of pages get shown

How to spoof using Firefox

  1. Get Mozilla Firefox.
  2. Firefox can be enhanced by extensions (read more about it). In Firefox, go to this page to install the extension “user agent switcher” – http://www.chrispederick.com/work/firefox/useragentswitcher/
  3. (note: the same developer has also created a “Web Developer Extension”, which I highly recommend). Once you restart the browser, user agent switcher is available as a menu item under “tools”.
  4. You can now add specific user agent strings in the Options. The user agent string is the text that the browser passes to a Web server to identify itself
Analysis / Firefox / Tools / Uncategorized — Comments Off
20
Oct 05

What color is this?

Many hours are lost by the analyst trying to figure out what color(s) is used in a Web site. To simplify this task, I recommend two different tools:

  1. Colorzilla, a Firefox extension which places a color picker in the status bar, and helps determine the color of any item in a Web page in Firefox.
  2. Cpick, an amazing freestanding utility that allows the same for anything on your screen.
Analysis / Firefox / Tools — Comments Off
29
Sep 05

Firefox for Analysis

This is a little bit of a foundational post, but one crucial tool of the web analyst is firefox. Several of the tools referenced here require firefox, so get firefox now!

Get Firefox!

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is also foundational, but the assumption is that you already use it. It is also extensible, but few have bothered to create free useful tools for Web analysts.

Analysis / Tools — Comments Off
13
Sep 05

Can you recommend a good text/code editor?

There are many fine free text/code editors out there. I recommend “Crimson Editor,” which is a richly featured tool to view code and edit it.

Update: after some additional research, I also recommend PSPad.

With this Windows tweak, you can use your new favorite tool as the viewer for “View Source” in Internet explorer.

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