Install / Uninstall User Script in Google Chrome through Tampermonkey Extension

Posted on by Ooi Keng Siang

This post is intended to help the Google Chrome users on how to install or uninstall user script (or Google they call it Content Script) in their browser. Google Chrome rapid updates and changing had cause a lot of problems on how user can install user scripts and how the user script interact with the browser. To make thing simple, I’m going to introduce you all to Tampermonkey extension in Google Chrome which is very similar to Geasemonkey add-on in Firefox. Trust me, this will make your life easier.

 

How to install user scrips in Google Chrome

Step 1: Open Tampermonkey extension and install it. Once you have installed the extension, you should see a Tampermonkey icon button at the top right hand side corner near the Menu button in Google Chrome.
usersciptInChrome_01

Continue reading Install / Uninstall User Script in Google Chrome through Tampermonkey Extension

Facebook Missing Some Updates From Friends

Posted on by Ooi Keng Siang

“Why I never see the update post from my friend who everyone is discussing it now?” Does this sound too familiar to you? You know that you didn’t block your friend’s update but you just can’t found the update post on your news feed unless you go to that person’s profile / wall to see it.
There are some changes in Facebook which I’m not sure when and how, but here is what you can do.

Continue reading Facebook Missing Some Updates From Friends

Windows 8 – Screen Brightness Problem

Posted on by Ooi Keng Siang

A lot of peoples including myself can’t wait to try out the latest version of Windows which is the Windows 8 Release Preview. Everything work like a charm expect the screen brightness issue which cause a lot of trouble to me since the Consumer Preview version. Every time after my computer resume from sleep, hibernate or boot up after a shutdown, the screen’s brightness will automatically adjust to the lowest. No matter how hard I punch on the brightness increase button, it will automatically go down to zero again.

After some research and try-error, I finally able to fix this troublesome problem. If you are facing the same problem, you might want to go through the list one by one. Some might work for you, some might not, depending on your computers.

Continue reading Windows 8 – Screen Brightness Problem

Get Facebook Fans Page News Feed / RSS Feed / Atom Feed

Posted on by Ooi Keng Siang

 Wonder why it is so tricky to just get an URL to display RSS feed / Atom feed from a fans page. Anyway, here is a very simple 2 steps trick to get the URL for your fans page news feed update to RSS Feed  or Atom Feed so that you can export to your blog or app.

 

Step 1 – Get Fans Page Id

Open any picture / image in the fans page. Then extract the fans page id from the URL. the example of image shown below, the fans page id is 378156838895039

 

Step 2 –  Complete The URL

The  Atom Feed and  RSS Feed URL format are as follow:

 

If I use the facebook Id I get on the step one, the Atom Feed and RSS feed URL will be as follow:

 

Short and simple, but I just wonder why Facebook don’t have this button to save all the trouble.

 

by Ooi Keng Siang via Ooiks’s Blog 

Enable User Scripts on Secure Page (HTTPS) in Opera Browser

Posted on by Ooi Keng Siang

You might notice Opera actually did not allow user script to run on secure page (page with https address) by default, but we need this in order to run user script on our game in Facebook which now can be run on a secure connection or https.

The fix is simple, simply open the given link “opera:config#UserPrefs|UserJavaScriptonHTTPS“, tick User JavaScript on HTTPS and remember to click Save (at the bottom)!

You will need to restart your Opera browser to make it work (simply close and re-open back the Opera browser). You should see the dialog box below. just click Yes and you can now execute user script on https.

by Ooi Keng Siang via Ooiks’s Blog

Opera Browser Unable Play Embed Music / Sound Problem

Posted on by Ooi Keng Siang

This problem had bugged me for a few days bacause the code I written was working previously but not now. Search up and down but I can’t found any solution especially Opera is not commonly use by most people. I use the following code to play music at the background for other browsers like Firefox and Google Chrome, they work flawless but not on Opera browser for the latest version 11.50.

http://images.norack.info/prodigy_-_girls.mid


I reinstalled Apple Quick Time and Opera for a few time and nothing since to fix the problem at all. After some random testing and almost given up, I found the problem and solution. Opera latest version won’t play any music / sound / video if the hidden is set to true! Yes, that all, just because of the small changes and it screw me up for one whole week. But I still want to play the music / sound without letting people to see the player / control, so I use following code to achieve the same thing yet work on the latest Opera web browser.

http://images.norack.info/prodigy_-_girls.mid


Hope the information is helpful for those who had trouble with Opera web browser. Opera had lot of problem with the embed tag, I still can’t found a way to let the Opera continually play the music even I set loop to true. If you know how, do tell me in the comment, thanks.

by Ooi Keng Siang via Ooiks’s Blog

Google+ Profile Custom / Username Link

Posted on by Ooi Keng Siang

Google Plus Logo

A lot of you might have an account in Google+ already and those of you who are working with social networking might already posting lot of stuff at there already. One problem you encounter is that you are unable to customize your Google+ profile URL with your own username like Facebook or Twitter which was very troublesome when you want to tell other your Google+ profile link.

Instead of showing http://plus.google.com/username/ it show http://plus.google.com/bunch-of-random-number/ . You want something more meaningful to represent your profile link to others. Although some of you might use your own domain name to redirect to your own Google+ profile or use some shorten URL service to achieve the same thing, that taught by many websites, but there is already a security concern about this unknown domain name of your own or unknown destination of the shorten URL compare with some domain linke Google.com or Facebook.com can provide. For example, you will be more happy to click into http://www.facebook.com/username/ than http://tinyurl/facebook-username/ right?

Enough of the explanation. Actually Google already have what we want, just we don’t realize or or knowing it. Since all user information in Google+ is taken from Google Profile, then actually by using your Google Profile URL now, it redirect to your Google+ profile instead now. For example: http://www.google.com/profiles/username . Just in case you don’t know what to put into your username, just put the username you login to your gmail. It work perfectly for me (http://www.google.com/profiles/ooikengsiang).

by Ooi Keng Siang via Ooiks’s Blog

Setup Microsoft Outlook 2010 for USM Student Mail

Posted on by Ooi Keng Siang

This no longer work after USM move the server to Microsoft Exchange server. Check my latest post instead https://ooiks.com/blog/how-to-2/how-to-configure-outlook-2010-for-usm-student-mail-updated

If you are a Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) students and you have Microsoft Outlook 2010 installed on your PC. You might have the trouble connecting your Microsoft Outlook 2010 with your student mail. Although USM student mail can be access through http://mail.live.com just like other hotmail or live mail, but direct enter your e-mail address on outlook like hotmail or live mail will not work in Microsoft Outlook 2010.

Your probably had search through http://student.usm.my/ for an answer for this problem but end out with no solution other than just using POP3. I personally dislike POP3 as it download the all mails from your inbox and it will not sync with your mail box online after that. I prefer IMAP which allow my outlook to sync with my mail online so that I can continue my work on e-mail through web browser on other PC without worry that what I see is different on my outlook.

So how we do the trick using IMAP on Microsoft Outlook 2010? It is very simple.

Step 1: Go to File on top of your menu and click on Add Account.

Step 2: Select Manually configure server settings or additional server types instead of E-mail Account. Then click Next.

Step 3: Select Other and choose Microsoft Outlook Hotmail Connector. If your Outlook does not have Microsoft Outlook Hotmail Connector, just do a simple search on Bing, you should get the installer very easy. Then click Next.

Step 4: Enter your name, your student e-mail address and password. Then click OK.

Step 5: Done, we had finish setting up the account. Just click Finish and start access your student mail through Microsoft Outlook 2010.

Aren’t it is simple? Just wondering why Microsoft Outlook 2010 cannot automatically do the trick instead.

by Ooi Keng Siang via Ooiks’s Blog

Step by Step Deploying Orchard to Windows Azure

Posted on by Ooi Keng Siang

Although you can find a tutorial regarding Deploying Orchard to Windows Azure at Orchard project web page, but I found that the page is not so friendly for those who came across Windows Azure for the first time. So I re-write part of the tutorial especially for those who used / learn Windows Azure for the first time. I also include screen shot for each step so that you know where to click and so on.

This tutorial divided into:

  • Building Orchard Package
  • Setting Up Windows Azure Storage Account
  • Setting Up Azure SQL Database
  • Setting Up Windows Azure Hosting
  • Moving From Local Host to Windows Azure

 

Building Orchard Package

This section show you how you can download the latest Orchard’s project source code and build the Orchard package for Windows Azure. If you want the Orchard package that I had already build, you can grab it here (Build on 17th of May 2011) or through official website and jump to step 7 instead.

Step 1: Download and install TortoiseHg. Tortoise will be used to download the source code from CodePlex where the Orchard project’s source code store.

Step 2: Create a folder to store the Orchard project’s source code (for example C:/OrchardEnlistment). Then goto the folder and Right-Click > TortoiseHg > Clone

Step 3: As the URL of the source, type “https://hg01.codeplex.com/orchard“. Then click Clone to start copy. Wait until the copy finish.

Step 4: Run Visual Studio Command Promot (2010) in administrator mode. Visual Studio Command Promot (2010) is came together with Visual Studio 2010.

Step 5: Go to the folder where you just download the Orchard source code, and run ClickToBuildAzurePackage.cmd. Then wait until the build complete.

Step 6: When the command completes successfully, the Orchard package for Windows Azure will be available under the artifacts folder (artifactsAzureAzurePackage.zip).

Step 7: Unzip the AzurePackage.zip file. You should have Orchard.Azure.Web.cspkg and ServiceConfiguration.cscfg

Setup Windows Azure Account

First, you need to sign in to Windows Azure Platform (https://windows.azure.com/) first before taking any step below.

Setting Up Windows Azure Storage Account

Step 1: Goto Hosted Service, Storage Account & CDN. We need to create a storage to store file or image for Orchard at Windows Azure.

Step 2: Click on New Storage Account to create a new storage for Orchard. You can also click on Storage Accounts to use any existing storage account that you had created before for Orchard.

Step 3: Enter a unique URL for your storage. Then select Create or choose an affinity group and choose Create a new affinity group. Although you can just select a region where you want to host your storage, but create an affinity group will help automatically optimize the location of your storage and azure instance.

Step 4: Enter a name for new affinity group, for example “orchard” and select the location you want to host the storage account and your azure instance later. Then click OK to create the affinity group and click OK again to create the storage account.

Step 5: You should see the storage account you created under the list of your subscription.

Step 6: Go back to the Orchard package that we build just now. Open ServiceConfiguration.cscfg for edit. Notepad will be good enough.

Step 7: We need to replace <Setting name=”DataConnectionString” value=”UseDevelopmentStorage=true” /> with the storage account setting that we had just created. Copy the line below and replace with the original setting (Make sure the open quotation and close quotation is the same with other in the configuration file, some user fail to upload the file later on due to the open and close quotation used was not recognized by xml).

<Setting name=”DataConnectionString” value=”DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=your-account-name;AccountKey=your-account-key” />

Step 8: Replace your-acount-name with the URL that you had given to the storage account (name of your storage account) you had just created and replace your-account-key with your storage account primary access key or secondary access key. You can find those information at your Windows Azure storage account properties.

Step 9: After edit the ServiceConfiguration.cscfg, save it.

Setting Up Azure SQL Database

Step 1: Goto Database. We need a SQL database to store Orchard setting like user login information.

Step 2: Select your subscription account and then click on Create to create a SQL server under your subscription account. Skip step 2 – 6 if you already have the SQL server on your azure.

Step 3: Select the region where you want to host your SQL database. Please use the same region with your storage account for optimize performance and cost. Then click Next. Step 4: Enter Administrator login and password for your SQL database. We will need this later when we setup Orchard. Then click Next.

Step 5: Check Allow other Windows Azure services to access this server. If you would like to access this SQL database from your local machine, you need to add your local machine IP address by pressing Add button (you can do that later if you think you want to access the database from your local machine). Then click Finish to create the Azure SQL database.

Step 6: You should see your Azure SQL database listed when it is successfully created.

 

Step 7: Select your SQL server you had just created and then click on Create to create a SQL database under your subscription account (Click the create under the database not the server).

 

Step 8: Give your database a name and click OK.

Step 9: You should see your database created when you hit OK.

Setting Up Windows Azure Hosting

Step 1: Goto Hosted Services, Storage Accounts & CDN. We need to create a hosted service to host Orchard in Windows Azure.

Step 2: Goto Hosted Services and then select New Hosted Service.

Step 3: Do the following step by step.

  • Enter a name for your Windows Azure instance and URL (you will access Orchard through this URL later).
  • Select the affinity group you created for your storage account or select a region where you want to host your service if you did not create any affinity group just now.
  • Use Deploy to stage environment if you don’t want other to access your Orchard hosting easily (Windows Azure will create a very long unique URL for you to access) or use Deploy to production environment where everyone can access to your Orchard hosting through the URL you given just now.
  • Give a deployment name for this hosting, for example “My First Orchard at Azure”.
  • Browse for Orchard.Azure.Web.cspkg that we had build just now in Package location.
  • Browser for ServiceConfiguration.cscfg that we had edited just now in Configuration file.
  • Finally click OK.

Step 4: A warning dialog might be popup saying about only 1 instance of Windows Azure will be created. Just ignore that and continue to create our hosting service.

Step 5: It may take a while for the package to upload to Windows Azure, install and start the instance. Meanwhile, go grab a coffee while waiting. When the status change to Ready, mean your Orchard is ready to use. You can access your Orchard website by following the DNS name.

 

Setting Up Orchard on Windows Azure

Step 1: Enter the URL where you host your Orchard project on Windows Azure. You can find the URL at DNS name on your hosted service’s properties. You should see the Orchard setup screen.

Step 2: Enter name of your site, user name and password. The select  Use an existing SQL Server (or SQL Express) database. See the next step 3 to 5 if you don’t know what to enter for the connection string.

Step 3: Go back to your Windows Azure platform. Goto Database, expend your subscriptions and server then select the SQL database you had created just now.

Step 4: You should see the SQL database properties on the right with Connection Strings field. Click on the button.

Step 5: Copy the ADO.NET connection string to Orchard setup page. Remember to change myPassword to your password for your SQL database.

Step 6: After you have enter everything on the Orchard setup screen. Click Finish Setup and wait for a while. Your Orchard page should be ready after that!

 

Moving From Local Host to Windows Azure

If you had already build your website on Orchard at your local host and now you want to move to it to Windows Azure, you might think that you need to work from zero again. Actually you can export some of the post and setting problem local host and import it to your Orchard at Windows Azure (after you setup Orchard at Windows Azure first). By default, import and export module is installed but disable.

Step 1: Goto Modules in your Orchard.

Step 2: Look for Import Export and Enable it if it is disable.

Step 3: After you enable Import and Export, you will see it is available on your left menu. Goto Import/Export.

Step 4: Now you can export your Orchard setting and data from your local machine to Windows Azure. You need to enable Import Export feature on both side as well. Remember to install all necessary modules because Import Export don’t include modules installation, you need to install manually before import.

That all for the tutorial, hope it can help those who use Windows Azure for the first time.

by Ooi Keng Siang via Ooiks’s Blog

 

Easy Way To Add User Script in Firefox

Posted on by Ooi Keng Siang

Ever downloaded a user script from website other than userscript.org and figuring how to install it into Firefox? Ever write your own user script and have problem install it into Firefox?

I do have those problem when I first installed Greasemonkey and download some user script to try. The Greasemoneky Installation dialog usually won’t pop up if I download any user script from website other than userscript.org. Every time I drag and drop a user script file into Firefox, the Greasemonkey will definably pop up a install button on top of the page, but the button never work out for me.

After spending some time playing with user script, I finally discover a better way of install a user script into Firefox instead of click on the New User Script menu button and paste all code into the new created script. It is nothing new or special, but the menu button is hidden instead of disable when no user script is open in Firefox. This cause many users include me did not realize the existent of the button at all.

To install a user script after download and save at local disk, just drag and drop the file into Firefox, then go to Tools > Greasemoneky > Install User Script. If you did not found the Install User Script button, this is because you are currently not viewing the tab that contain the user script file open in Firefox.

After click on the Install User Script button, the Greasemonkey Installation dialog will pop up. Click on Install button after the countdown end and the user script will be installed into Firefox.

I’m very curious why the button is hidden instead of disable. It just doesn’t make sense to me. The install button pop up on top of the page every time user drop a user script into Firefox never work, a bug? Anyway, I never know the answer unless I go and ask the developer, which I’m not going to do.

by Ooi Keng Siang