del.icio.us needs no introduction, and if you still do not use delicious bookmarking service, there is something obviously missing in your life! Delicious is a famous social bookmarking site that has achieved rapid popularity and growth ever since it was being purchased by Yahoo Inc in 2005. Delicious is my all-time favorite bookmarking service. Many features have contributed to this, including the website’s simple interface, human-readable URL scheme, a novel domain name, a simple REST-like API, and RSS feeds for web syndication. Hence I was really particular about placing a delicious badge in my blog from the very beginning.

As part of my recent blog redesign I’ve searched many places for a nice looking delicious bookmark button which can also display the total bookmark count just like the tweetmeme button. I wanted a button that blends along with other bookmarking buttons such as twitter, digg, facebook etc. A significant amount of my time was spent on googling and browsing through the wordpress plugin directory, but I never found what I wanted.

So finally, I’ve decided to create my own wordpress plugin. After going through some beginner level tutorials on wordpress plugin development nuts and bolts, I have created what I exactly wanted. I am really really happy, that I have become the proud owner of a wordpress plugin
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Have you ever felt the need for holding an embedded image inside an HTML file, without referring to an external image file? Personally I felt like so many occasions, where the need for a completely self contained HTML page, with all its supporting images embedded within that page itself. This may seem pointless in normal situations, but it can prove very useful when we want to make a standalone page, that we can pass on to other people. We give them just one HTML file. They do not even need to unpack anything, they can simply open the file in their browser, and all the images and embedded objects are immediately displayed. They can do this even without an internet connection.

Below you can see two images first one is included in the traditional way by referring to an external file, and the later by using data URI.

          

Try right-clicking the above images and check the file location in the properties panel. You can see the difference.

With Data URI (Uniform Resource Identifiers) we can easily do this.

What is Data URI Scheme?

Data URI scheme defined in IETF standard RFC 2397, as an URI scheme that allows inclusion of small data items inline, as if they were being referenced to as an external resource. They tend to be far simpler than alternative inclusion methods, such as MIME with cid: or mid: As per the wording in the RFC, data: URIs are in fact URLs, although they do not actually locate anything. Read the rest of this entry »