DevTopics

Last week, Browserling, world’s leading cross-browser testing company, announced that they’re launching a network of online developer tools that offer simple, free and easy to use utilities for programmers.

They’re starting with four sites in the network and will be expanding their network to thirty websites. Each site in their network covers one specific programming category. There are no ads, popups, blinking download buttons, or other garbage. Just useful utilities that work in your browser. All utilities are created by skilled software engineers and they just do the right thing.

Let’s review first four sites in the network.

#1 Online JSON Tools

Online JSON Tools

Online JSON Tools is the first website in Browserling’s online tools network. It’s all about working with JSON data structures and objects. You can perform all the most common operations, such as minify JSON, beautify JSON, validate JSON, escape and unescape JSON, convert JSON to XML, CSV, TSV, and YAML, and encode/decode JSON to/from base64 encoding.

Soon you’ll also be able to syntax highlight JSON and edit it in your browser, display a summary of JSON object statistics, flatten JSON objects, convert JSON to HTML tables and LaTeX tables, compare two JSON structures, and encode and decode JSON to and from percent-encoding.

#2 Online String Tools

Online STRING Tools

Online String Tools is the second and the largest website in Browserling’s online tools network. It’s all about working with strings. There are over 100 tools in this website and many more are getting added every week. Online String Tools allow you to encode, decode, convert, filter, replace, and generate strings right in your browser.

For example, you can URL-encode and URL-decode strings, HTML-encode and HTML-decode strings, base64-encode and base64-decode strings, slash-escape and slash-unescape strings, generate random strings and generate strings from regular expressions. You can split strings, join strings, convert strings to binary and ASCII codes. And much more.

The upcoming tools in Online String Tools website will be a multi-replace string tool that allows you to replace multiple strings at once, online diffing tool that will show changes between two strings, Levenshtein distance calculator, which will also let you view the distance visually, a string rewriting system, Zalgo string generator, and a string typo generator.

#3 Online CSV Tools

Online CSV Tools

Online CSV Tools is all about working with Comma Separated Values (CSV) files and data. It currently offers over 20 CSV tools. You can convert CSV to JSON, XML, TSV, and YAML. Encode and decode CSV to and from base64 encoding, and perform various row and column operations, such as swap CSV rows, replace, append, insert, and delete CSV columns and transpose CSV.

Here’s a list of CSV tools that Browserling has planned adding in the next few months. You’ll be able to convert CSV to a PDF document and HTML, Excel, and LaTeX tables, then create images of CSV data, generate SQL queries from CSV files, merge CSV files, change quoting of CSV fields, delete empty CSV rows and columns, minify CSV and also diff two CSV files to find differences.

#4 Online XML Tools

Online XML Tools

Online XML Tools is a collection of useful XML utilities for working with Extensible Markup Language documents and data structures. You can beautify XML, minify XML, escape and unescape XML, validate XML, and convert XML to various other data formats, such as JSON, CSV, YAML and XML. You can also encode and decode XML that’s been stored in base64 encoding.

Some of the upcoming tools in XML tools collection will be XML syntax highlighter and XML editor, then you’ll be able to view XML document statistics, and compare two XML files for visual differences.

#5 And beyond

Browserling is adding 25 or more sites to their network in the next 2-3 years. Here’s a list of upcoming sites:

• Online TSV (Tab Separated Values) Tools
• Online YAML (Yet Another Markup Language) Tools
• Online PDF Tools
• Online IMAGE Tools
• Online AUDIO Tools
• Online BROWSER Tools
• Online CSS Tools
• Online JS (JavaScript) Tools
• Online CRYPTO Tools
• Online RANDOM Tools
• Online FILE Tools
• Online TIME Tools
• … and many more!

If you love what Browserling is doing you can follow @browserling on Twitter or follow Browserling on Facebook.

If you change the nameservers of an Internet domain, it may take a few minutes or even hours before the changes appear in your web browser. 

A brief delay occurs while the new nameserver values propagate over the global DNS.  But typically that happens within minutes.

The greater delay is usually from the DNS cache on your PC and in your browser.  DNS values are stored locally to speed website lookup, and they’re updated infrequently such as once per hour.

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Facebook status updates must be 420 characters or less.  If you try to post a longer update, you will receive the “Status Too Long” error message:

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Owning an Internet domain is like owning a virtual property lot.  You can build a website on a domain, place ads on it, or resell it for a profit.  In addition to the initial purchase price, each domain requires an annual renewal fee.  If you fail to pay the fee, the domain returns to the market, and someone else can buy it.

Fortunately domains are not very expensive.  There are many low-cost domain sellers like GoDaddy.  Domain prices vary by top-level domain (TLD, i.e. the suffix after the final dot, such as .com and .org).  GoDaddy prices range from $11.99 for general domains (gTLD) such as .com, to $29.99+ for country-code domains (ccTLD) such as .co for Colombia.

The good news is that many domain sellers offer deep discounts on domains for the first year.  But the important thing to remember is: 

The annual domain renewal price is often much higher than the initial purchase price.

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The Internet is a fickle beast.  Websites come and go.  Connections break and are restored.  With so many working parts and points of failure, it’s amazing the Internet is as reliable as it usually is. 

But when things go wrong — as they inevitably do — and you cannot access a website, it can be challenging to determine where the problem occurred: your PC, Internet modem, cable connection, Internet service provider, the website itself, or any of the thousands of lines in between.

Fortunately there are free online services that independently check if a website is down:

• Check Site US
• Down For Everyone or Just Me
• Down.IO
• Is That Site Down

Most services allow you to enter a domain name to determine if it’s accessible.  However, CheckSite.us also allows you to enter a full URL path, domain with a specific port (e.g., checksite.us:2082), or an IP address (e.g., 209.41.89.150:2082).  For websites it cannot access, CheckSite.us will continue trying the website every 15 minutes for up to 3 days.  If it can access the website, it will send you an email or SMS text message.

The one thing we can all count on with Facebook is change.  Facebook performs major updates to its user interface about twice a year.  Some changes are welcome, but sometimes the Facebook UI designers make things harder than they should be.

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Today the world’s most popular social network Facebook introduced its biggest interface change since the complete revamp in March.

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BugSpy crawls the web in search of the latest bug reports in open source software.  It tries to display only open bugs.  You can search by tag or product name.

The NFL has punted the popular social network Twitter.

On Monday, the National Football League announced that players, coaches, and other team personnel can use social networks such as Twitter and Facebook during the season.  However, they are prohibited from using social networks starting 90 minutes before a game, through the game, and until post-game interviews are complete.

The rules extend to people representing a player or coach, such as agents, friends and family, and even include the media covering the games.

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"The Longest Poem in the World" is composed by aggregating real-time public twitter updates and selecting those that rhyme.  It grows at a rate of about 4,000 verses each day.  This novel site was created by Andrei Gheorghe, a web developer from Bucharest, Romania.

Here is the most recent start of the poem when it had 370,866 verses:

If life were easy and not so fast, I wouldn’t think about the past
and all the sudden, life is changing and its changing so fast.
is watching Ren and Stimpy. It’s becoming a nightly habit.
I had a dream that I had a sidekick and a rabbit.
Pride pride pride and now more harry potter!
and its only going to get hotter…
and learning again…
and then….
Tired and going to bed.  Good night everyone.
cup of tea and a caramel slice anyone?
and you know this working on a new song
Second day of school and still going strong
College just gets worse and worse.
Gift and the curse!
super bored and tired. cant sleep tho
And away we go…
oh no, are the bad word police after me and my potty mouth again?
Just done something a bit mad and creative. Lets see what happens then!
The Internet; where courtesy and reason go to die.
Yup im at school and i passed up a fine ass guy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OK, it isn’t Shakespeare, but it is a pretty cool idea.  This may also go down in history as the greatest collaborative work ever.