Tech With Ric » fast

Most Efficient Way of Including jQuery in your WordPress Theme

Richie Sajan — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 16:09:46 +0000

WordPress by default comes bundled with the jQuery framework. You can find it in the wp-includes\js\jquery directory. Many themes use this framework extensively for various effects and widgets alike. Unless you are on a dedicated server or are using a CDN, chances are that jQuery takes a whole lot of time to load. The best way is to speed up this process is to include the jQuery library fomr the Google’s Ajax Libraries API. Read on to learn how to include it in your theme.

Actually the method is quite simple. If your theme includes a direct jQuery call from the header.php (usually will be written like

or something similar) just delete the line.

If your theme designer had adopted efficient programming practices, he would have used the wp_enqueue_script() function. It can be identified by going to your Theme Functions (functions.php) file of your theme.

Now to include the script from Google`s Ajax Libraries API servers, just insert the following code into the Theme Functions (functions.php) file of your theme:

// smart jquery inclusion
if (!is_admin()) {
wp_deregister_script(‘jquery’);
wp_register_script(‘jquery’, (“http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js”), false);
wp_enqueue_script(‘jquery’);
}

Once done, save the file and your done. To check if the change has occurred, load your blog’s home page (or any other page for that matter). Now press Ctrl+Shift+R to force refresh the page.

Now take a look at the page source (Ctrl+U or View => Source). If the following line appears, you have successfully included this hack into your wordpress blog:

The advantage of this hack is that your page loading times will get faster and in lieu better!

Easiest Way to Schedule a Computer Shutdown

Richie Sajan — Mon, 31 May 2010 11:56:33 +0000

I listen to music all the while. Be it traveling, studying or even while trying to sleep. Talking about sleep, its not always convenient nor economical to leave you computer switched on all night. So an easy way out could be to tell someone in your family to switch off the computer after you’ve dozed off or still better, don’t trouble anyone and schedule a computer shutdown by yourself!

Well there are two ways here. One is the software way and the other is the command prompt way. Yeah cmd does look a little intimidating but just here me out. Once you complete the following steps, you’ll see how easy it really is.

So first you’ll have to go to Start => Run or Start+R.
Now just type the following

shutdown.exe -s -t 20

Thats it! But don’t press OK or Enter yet. There’s some explanation to be done with.

So the command that you’ve entered here is shutdown.exe -s -t 20. Lets break it down now.

shutdown.exe : Quite self explanatory. The program which shut’s down your computer.
-s : Called as an argument, it says to shutdown the computer. Similarly if you would replace it with -r, the computer would have restarted -l would have logged of the computer.
-t : Again an argument. It functions as a timer. The number succeeding it is the number of seconds the computer must wait before shutting down. So 20 here says the computer to shut-down after 20 seconds.

You could change the time. Suppose you want the computer to shutdown after 15 minutes, just enter the period in seconds. 15×60 = 900.

Animation showing the computer shutdown process.

Trick: Although this is not needed, this step can add a cool message to your shutdown window. Just add a -c “comment” to the earlier command. You can replace comment with anything you like. eg:

shutdown.exe -s -t 900 -c “This shutdown has been inititaed bby Richie – the greatest hacker!”

You’ll get a cool message like this:

Shutdown with Comment

You could use the following table for your reference as to which arguments to use:

Argument	Used for
-i	Display GUI interface, must be the first option
-l	Log off (cannot be used with -m option)
-s	Shutdown the computer
-r	Shutdown and restart the computer
-a	Abort a system shutdown
-m \\computername	Remote computer to shutdown/restart/abort
-t xx	Set timeout for shutdown to xx seconds
-c “comment”	Shutdown comment (maximum of 127 characters)
-f	Forces running applications to close without warning
-d [u][p]:xx:yy	The reason code for the shutdown: u is the user code p is a planned shutdown code xx is the major reason code (positive integer less than 256) yy is the minor reason code (positive integer less than 65536)

Opera Mini 5 Soon to be Released for iPhone

Richie Sajan — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 06:13:21 +0000

Wow, this is got to be great news for all iPhone fans. Opera Mini has successfully been run on iPhone in the Opera Labs, and is expected to soon be released in the Apps Store. Watch the video to see exactly what you can expect once the internationally-acclaimed mobile browser gets released on the iPhone platform.

The tests in the video shows that Opera Mini could render upto 5 pages, on a 2G Edge network, in the time the phone’s default browser renders 1 page! In other word nearly 5 times faster surfing.

If you aren’t an iPhone user, there’s a pretty good chance that your phone-specific Opera Mini has been released. You can download it from here.

Reduce Firefox’s Memory Usage with Memory Fox

Richie Sajan — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 13:43:42 +0000

Firefox is undoubtedly one of the best browser out there. Be it the speed, the security or the extend of customization, Firefox leads the pack. But one complaint, that all users of this great browser have in common, is the huge memory usage by it. In my 248 MB of memory, it uses up about 100 MB for itself, which roughly translates to about 40%. So here is a great add-on that will help you in this regard.

Memory Fox is a new add-on for firefox that considerably reduces Firefox’s memory usage. You can check out the below screen-shots taken by me.

Indeed its, good. Nearly 33 MB or 13 % of RAM recovered! Memory Fox primarily operates by flushing for memory recovery. As the developer stats:

“Memory Fox”, focuses on two ( 2 ) types of memory usage and with flushing for memory recovery. When resource requirements ( Stack and Heap ) have been reached, according to the user’s preset option settings, the memory will be flushed and recovered from Fragmented Orphaned ram memories.

You can read more about the add-on from here. The add-on is available for download at the Add-ons for Firefox site, here.

Once installed you can activate the add-on by going to Tools => Memory Fox => Activate Memory Fox or alternatively use the short cut Alt+A. Note that this add-on is still experimental and user discretion is advised.

First Image Credits: Orcon.net.nz. Technorati short code 7VFEZM729PBK.

http://www.orcon.net.nz/lifestyle/page/5_useful_firefox_add_onsO

10 Tips to Make your WordPress Blog Faster

Richie Sajan — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 12:16:15 +0000

WordPress undoubtedly is one of the best and most widely used blogging (or CMS?) platform in the world. Be it the wide support or the great many number of plugins, to the power of customization in ones hand, its so good. But as they say, along with great power comes great responsibility. As people just went on adding plugins, themes et al, the loading times of some blogs have gone through the roof. Here are some wuick tips to speed up your blog.

Use a limited number of plugins. (recommended is not more that 20)
Reduce the number of php calls your template makes. Refer this article for some quick changes
Serve your images from a sub-domain on your server. Refer this article to achieve this step.
Use a limited number of images in your template.
Optimize images the right way. Heres a good article from techpavan.
Use a caching plugin like Hyper Cache, Super Cache or W3 total cache.
Insert javascripts (like that of statistics) from your footer.php.
Compress your style-sheet. Use this CSS compressor.
Use the Closure Compiler to compress your javascripts.
Enable caching and GZipping from your .htacess. Refer to this article for other .htacess hacks along with the above mentioned ones.

Hmm. Definitely a checklist to be followed. Leaving the 5th point the rest are only one-time hacks. Just do it once and enjoy its benefits forever! Got some more tips? Share them.