Author: NG

Quick Tip

Display CPMStar ads at the start of HTML5 game

NG HTML5, JavaScript, Quick Tip

Create a css file as following * { padding: 0; margin: 0; } body{ padding:0px; margin:0px; overflow-x: hidden; } canvas { touch-action-delay: none; touch-action: none; -ms-touch-action: none; } #topContainer{ position: relative; overflow: hidden; } #adContainer{ position:absolute; top:0px; left:0px; width:100%; height:100%; text-align:center; background-color:rgba(0,0,0,0.9); z-index:1000; } #closeBtn{ cursor:pointer; background-color:#2196F3; width:250px; margin:20px auto; padding:10px; font:bold 14px Arial; color:#FFF; text-transform:uppercase; } Create game HTML as following <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>HTML5 Game</title> <meta name=”author” content=”Netexl” /> <meta name=”description” content=”HTML5 Game.” /> <meta name=”viewport” content=”width=device-width, initial-scale=1, maximum-scale=1″ /> <link rel=”stylesheet” href=”app.css”> <script src=”phaser.min.js”></script> <script src=”game.js”></script> </head> <body> <div id=”topContainer” style=”width:500px;”> <div id=”mygame”></div> <div id=”adContainer”> <div style=”margin-top:20px”> <script language=”Javascript”> var cpmstar_rnd=Math.round(Math.random()*999999); var cpmstar_pid=xxxxx; document.writeln(“<SCR”+”IPT language=’Javascript’ src=’//server.cpmstar.com/view.aspx?poolid=”+cpmstar_pid+”&script=1&rnd=”+cpmstar_rnd+”‘></SCR”+”IPT>”); </script> </div> <div id=”closeBtn” onclick=”closeAd()”></div> </div> </div> <script src=”ads.js”></script> </body> </html> Replace cpmstar_pid with your pid The ad is initialized and loaded as soon as HTML is loaded. The ad is positioned on top of HTML5 game area. We will initialized a timer which[…]

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Configuration Options to Secure ASP.NET Application

NG Asp.Net

If you have ASP.NET website on internet, you must make sure to implement following cofiguration steps to secure your website. Block libwww-perl attack in ASP.NET Application hosted in IIS – Follow this article to configure this. Some response headers reveal technical details about the server which must be removed. For example a sample response from an ASP.Net application may look like this In this response “Server”, “X-AspNet-Version”, “X-Powered-By” headers are revealing technical details about the server. We can remove these unnecessary IIS response headers as following Remove “X-Powered-By” Header – Open web.config and check for customHeaders tag. If this is not already there, then add it as child of “<httpProtocol>” and add “remove” entry for X-Powered-By as shown below <configuration> <system.webServer> <httpProtocol> <customHeaders> <remove name=”X-Powered-By” /> </customHeaders> </httpProtocol> </system.webServer> </configuration> You should also check the response from your Asp.Net application if this is using a shared hosting which may add additional server specific information to response headers. Add remove entry[…]

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Quick Tip

WebP Image Fallback Options

NG How to, HTML5, JavaScript, Quick Tip, SEO

WebP is a relatively new image format which provides lossless and lossy compression for web images. It was developed and released by Google in 2010. Accroding to Google WebP format saves around 25-30% of image size which is a big saving for image-heavy sites. Even for normal sites, it saves a lot of network bandwidth and results in overall performance improvement of a web site (in turn a better ranking by search engines). Even though this format has been there since 2010, it is still not supported by all browsers.The good thing is that it is natively supported in Google Chrome and the Opera browsers which cover for bigger chunk of browser market share. For mobile sites this format has become a necessity to optimize load time of websites on mobile. Google provides tools to convert images from one format(png, jpg etc) to webp and viceversa https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/ If we are using webp format of[…]

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Pixel Drawings

NG Pixel Drawing, Tool

A little online tool (Pixel Draw) I made a while back to test out my creativity has attracted some very creative people from around the globe. I recently checked out archived images and and have been pleasantly surpised to see some very creative designs. Below are a few examples Thanks to the original creators. More such drawings @ http://www.netexl.com/pixeldraw/drawings  

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“App not Installed” Error on Android When Updating to Newer Version

NG Android, Cordova, Intel XDK, Issue, Mobile

I recently updated an old Cordova Android app and tried to install it on my Android phone which had previous version installed already and the install failed with the message “App Not Installed”. Other than updating Android version and couple of plugins, everything else was same old and I had correctly changed “android-versionCode” as well as “version” to higher number so nothing looked wrong but I suspected it had something to do with either the version code or the certificates I was using to sign the app so I decided to look into the previous APK file and try to find something out. We can use AAPT tool to look into APK files which can be found in build-tools\<buildToolVersion> folder (for ex, C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-sdk\build-tools\23.0.1). Go to the folder and run following command in the command prompt aapt dump badging myapp.apk It turned out that though I had android-versionCode code[…]

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Quick Tip

Use Standalone Visual Studio Emulator for testing Android Apps

NG Android, Mobile, Visual Studio

Microsoft is now providing Visual Studio Emulator for Android which can be used to deploy, test and debug Android apps. It also comes with a standalone version which can be used for quickly testing your APK files without needing Visual Studio which is very helpful for hybrid apps which are not built using standard development tools. For example if you have built your app using cordova and are looking for testing your app on a few emulators and are short of actual physical devices then this emulator comes handy which currently has support up to Marshmallow (API level 23). Download the standalone emulator installer from https://aka.ms/vscomemudownload Click on the installer and go through the installation process. It uses Hyper-V for running the emulator so it may ask you to confirm on activating it. Once it is installed you can open the emulator by searching for “Visual Studio Emulator for Android” in your windows[…]

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Cordova Error: Android SDK not found. Make sure that it is installed

NG Android, Cordova, Issue, Mobile, Plugin

I recently tried to upgrade Cordova app which was last compiled almost an year back and got the following error Error: Android SDK not found. Make sure that it is installed. If it is not at the default location, set the ANDROID_HOME environment variable. I turns out that I had updated Android SDK version on my PC during that time and all I needed to do was to update the platform version in the app as well. Using Node.js Command Prompt and cordova commands, check the installed platform in the app using the following command cordova platform version android Update the installed platform version in the app using the following command cordova platform update android While upgrading the app additional issues I faced were related to plugins not being compatible with the new platform version which were fixed by simply removing the plugins and re-adding it which in some cases[…]

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Quick Tip

Trim object info in Javascript

NG JavaScript, Quick Tip

Use this method to trim JS object values and display only the required info (which I do a lot for deugging purposes). Here is what gives me a concise info I am looking for while debugging my code in JS. function trimInfoInArray(array, props) { return array.map(function (item) { var obj = {}; for (var i = 0, len = props.length; i < len; i++) obj[props[i]] = item[props[i]]; return obj; }); } function trimInfoInObject(object, props) { var obj = {}; for (var i = 0, len = props.length; i < len; i++) obj[props[i]] = object[props[i]]; return obj; } Now the example on how to use it is as following var player1 = {id: 1, name:’Tom’, Age: 30} var player2 = {id: 2, name:’Jon’, Age: 28} var players = [player1, player2] console.log(JSON.stringify(trimInfoInArray(players, [“id”, “name”]))); console.log(JSON.stringify(trimInfoInObject(player1, [“id”, “name”]))); With some objects having hundreds of properties and printing those values and searching for just the[…]

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