Category: Tech Desk

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Zoho Creator Tutoral Series – Coming Up

I hope you remember my earlier post 5 months back, Zoho Creator :- Only intuition, no programming. (You couldn’t have missed it, coz I didn’t really post anything after that). As promised, I am here again with the intention having a zoho creator series for all those who are not afraid to try.

Not all are programming experts and not every one can say the difference between relative fields and relational databases I get confused more than i am credited for .. thats the way it is . So, this is for the common man, who can read write and understand English. You see.. Zoho creator is in english & I am blogging about it in english…Oh!.. btw, they have a Japanese version of the sitetoo.. but “iie – arigato gozaimus” .. I don’t speak anymore than this in Japanese.

The idea is to walk you through the process of building an application using zoho creator from scratch.

Walk with me.. let me know if I can be of assistance.

Zoho Creator – What is that ?

Before I answer this question, tell me how extensively do u use MS Excel?. The reason I ask is, a layman’s concept with zoho creator is somewhat based on based on this. Hmm.. lets see… the rows and columns reduce half the work load. The auto filter in excel allows you to sort / organise your data. Perhaps you are even familiar with using formulas ( basic math – to – advanced formulas). Lets say we have an excel sheet like this & call it Guestbook.

Date Name Email BlogUrl Comments
         
         

But, if you want to gather data using excel, then you would have mail it as an attachment ,OR share it as excel sheet with other users using some file sharing platform. This will work great, if you know who is going to use them. Plus, you have to be sure that the people who are using this excel are within your network and trustworthy… That is to say, the “data is private among trusted users ” & “there is no way to gather data outside this small network of friends”…

So, ….Are you with me so far ????..

Now, think about this. You have a Form & this form reflect the “structure” of the YOUR excel sheet.


This has all the elements that you want the user to add. Yet, none of them can see the actual data. Now, this is your “web form” that you have customised to suit your needs. So what happens next, You can either embed this form within your website As Shown above , or share the permalinks of the form via email. (There is more to sharing.. .lessons follow…)

What zoho creator does is to “allow you to create forms” using their WYSIWYG editor. (.. lessons follow..) And, this also allows you to view / edit the data collected via these forms at Zoho Creator. ( .. lessons follow…)

In short – Zoho creator allows you to build custom database application using WYSIWYG editor.But, inorder to start, you need to Signup with Zoho Creator. So go ahead, Register yourself and get a login, You may also signin wiht your Google Account.

Thats pretty much for the introduction,
See you soon with your login at zoho creator.
Your appreciation is my motivation

From Deepa’s Template Tips

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Zoho Creator :- Only intuition, no programming.

It has been a while since I posted anything here. I was waiting for something worthy enough that is usable and feasible. I must say, my wait did not go in vain. I came across Zoho Creator, and have been trying it out for the past 6 months before making my first post about it here. I proudly admit the fact that I have integrated Zoho into my actual working environment, which has taken the load of report maintenance off my shoulders. These days, I spend only 2 hrs a week to consolidate my report. I use the free version, but sure have the plan to switch to business version soon enough.

Zoho Creator is one of the many products in the Zoho Family. ( I shall be talking about each of them in upcoming posts). ZC allows you to create forms that can be embedded in website and blogs ( see below). The data collected via this form is stored within your Zoho-View section

The advantage of Zoho lies in the fact that

  1. There is no huge download or installation.. Because this is a WEB APPLICATION
  2. The Registration is free
  3. You need not have any programming knowledge
  4. The interface is exceptionally intuitive
  5. Drag – and – drop allows you to design custom forms
  6. Logical flow of events will guide you to do the scripting.
  7. Embed the form in your blog and collect data
  8. Various choices on how you wish to process the data collected ( HTML, Excel, JASON, AJAX, Pdf , ) for novices and advanced users alike.
  9. The feeds can be integrated into feed readers, HTML displayed wthin iframe,.. possibilities are immense.
  10. Applications can be shared with any number of users ( say you have created the application and want you friend to moderate the content… go ahead and share it)

Here is the catch :-

  1. Only 5 Applications allowed for free users
  2. Unlimited Application for premium users + Custom Logo integration.

What you see below is a Form that acts as my GuestBook. Feel Free to share your thoughts with me.

Application Name : – Personal ( This has abt 8 forms, one is shared with you here)
Form Name : – GuestBook.

All you have to do is, Enter the details and submit. Take a look at the HTML display of data collected using Zoho Form.

I shall tell you more about creating custom forms using Zoho in the coming days.


You can develop a simple form like Guest Book , which has minimum scripting ( auto date ), or , developing a complex form that allows you to generate and send email-verification code right from zoho form, which involves more complex scripting.

Bloggers have long loved interaction with their readers. After all, isn’t that why we enable comments? Here is something to take this level of interaction a step further. How about developing a custom application to cater to your needs?. Well, if you feel lack of programming knowledge, and the mind boggling software installation ( not to mention the price) is pinning you down, not anymore. Try Zoho Creator, I am sure you will eventually end up using it. So, how about hsaring what you have in mind… ? ?

Your appreciation is my motivation

From Deepa’s Template Tips

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Show your Pdf documents from inside your webpage

Those who are involved with lot of document exchange will probably agree with me that Pdf’s are great way to distribute your original document. With Pdfonline.com, the conversion of documents from the various formats {MS Word (DOC | RTF)–MS PowerPoint (PPT)—MS Publisher (PUB)–MS Excel (XLS)–HTML (MHT)–Text (TXT)–JPG , GIF,TIFF, BMP,PNG, EMF,WMF } to pdf is just a click away.

However, it has been in the wish list of many bloggers and e-publications , over some procedure to display the contents of the pdf documents by embedding them directly in a web page. Until now, the pdfs would be uploaded to some common file sharing network , and the link to the pdf would be specified in the web page. The person whoever wishes to read, has to download the pdf to his system.

Not anymore… now you can show the contents of the pdf right inside your blog / webpage. Surprised.. below you will see a pdf document that I have created as a test document and its content displayed for all of you to see ( without downloading). Use the slider near the ZOOM tool to get a closer look and the HAND tool to drag the page



This is now possible with the help of services from http://www.scribd.com.Not only with pdfs, Scribd allows us to upload and publish documents in other formats also (check out their FAQ)

You can also customize the document for private – public viewing, Allow – disallow printing, Allow-disallow comments, and even more.. Just explore and you get to know better. I personally find this extremly useful for pdf’s ( for other formats depending on the file size, the conversion might take a little longer).. so.. Liked this… Its simple and easy.. just follow the instructions closely

  1. Register with http://www.scribd.com

  2. Look for a link that says UPLOAD

  3. You may upload a document from your Hard Drive (or) specify the URL of the document

  4. Once upload is completed, it will start converting , so that your document is embedded in a flash player ( which is used in the webpage)

  5. Depending on the number of previous documents in queue, this might take some time

  6. Once the conversion is completed, you just have to click on the file to see it on Scribd

  7. On the LeftHand side of the document page ( in scribd), you will see various options to share the file

  8. There is also an Embed Option ( You may not see this immediately after the file upload.. I had to wait for abt 12 hrs to see the embed code… so just upload the files one day ahead of schedule, to be on the safer side)

  9. You may copy paste the Embed code to your blog to show the pdf

  10. The Advanced option allows you to change the height and width of the display area.. so that you may modify it suit the appearance of your blog / website

  11. Thats it… you have the embed code.. now all you need to do is Copy paste the code at the appropriate position in your blog for your friends to see

So you see… displaying the contents of a Pdf file in a webpage is not impossible after all… it just took us a little longer to know about Scribd. I prefer to use this exclusively for Pdfs .. perhaps, you may find other attributes of Scribd more interesting. Dont hesitate to share your thoughts with the rest of us. If you find this post has been helpful in some manner, do drop in a word at the comments page
Your appreciation is my motivation

From Deepa’s Template Tips

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Blog Posts can be saved as PDF's to be printed later

This might not come as a new information to many of you, yet I am making this post as per the request made by Bruce – from Brazil. You may have noticed a small link at the bottom of the post Clicking on this link (at the post-page) will save the post as a pdf file, which you may either save to your system and /or take prints later.

This is the PDF creation widget from http://savepageaspdf.pdfonline.com/index.asp. This is free and is very easy to incorporate in you blog.

GENERATING JAVASCRIPT CODE

  1. Signup with http://savepageaspdf.pdfonline.com
  2. You will be directed towards PDF conversion-setup page
  3. Before actually configuring the pdf widget, do paste one of your post-urls in the Textbox and click the CONVERT TO PDF button…. take a look at the resulting pdf page..for contents, margin , paper orientation (portrait or landscape etc)
  4. IF you are not satisfied by the default values… modify the margin accordingly and obtain pdf that suits your need.
  5. Now that you have tired and tested the margins and orientation. You may proceed with customizing this widget for your blog by clicking the GENERATE JAVASCRIPT button
  6. Now the code for pdf creation is ready and is displayed in the bottom textbox

Adding the script to the POST-PAGE ONLY
This will display the at the post page only…will not be displayed in the blog indexpage (unless you specify in the sidebar). Locate the code in blue and insert the code as inditated in red in Template – edit template – expand widgets template
<b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType == “item”‘>
<h2 class=’date-header’><data: post.timestamp/></h2>
ADD THE JAVASCRIPT CODE
<b:include data=’post’ name=’post’/>

Adding code below each post to be displayed in blog index page
Remember :-… what you see is what you get in the PDF file.IF the index-page of your blog displays post summaries (like here) then .. saving as PDF will only save the displayed information that you see in the index-page of the blog
The entire post shall be saved as pdf only of the permalink of the post (post-url) is displayed in the browser
<p class=’post-footer-line post-footer-line-1′>
<span class=’post-author’>
<b:if cond=’data:top.showAuthor’>
<data:top.authorLabel/><data: post.author/>
</b:if>
</span>
<span class=’post-timestamp’>
<b:if cond=’data:top.showTimestamp’>
<data:top.timestampLabel/>
<b:if cond=’data: post.url’>
<a class=’timestamp-link’ expr:href=’data: post.url’ title=’permanent link’><data: post.timestamp/></a>
</b:if>
</b:if>
</span>
ADD THE JAVASCRIPT CODE
<span class=’post-comment-link’>
<b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType != “item”‘>

Hope this helps.Your appreciation is my motivation

From Deepa’s Template Tips

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Track your comments in Blogger

The first step being a blogger is ones willingness to read other bloggger’s posts and leave a comment without feeling lazy. But , imagine bookmarking all the URLs where we have commented . Thats a long list in our Favorite folder. I used to hate when I have to ‘spring clean’ my favorites.. especially for past posts where I have posted comments. Sometimes in a hurry, I also forget to bookmark the link

But now you can keep track of the comments you make in blogspotblogs by just clicking the textbox that shows up when you post a comment. Isnt this a cool thing. Now all you have to do is just click on the check box.

In course of time we tend to get bored by the same topic and decide to unsubscribe from a particular post’s comments.You can unsubscribe any time using the “unsubscribe” link at the end of the mail you receive in the mail box (or) click on the “unsubscribe” link in the comment-page

Your appreciation is my motivation

From Deepa’s Template Tips

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