Tom – Page 14

Calendar Sync with the IPhone for Google Apps for Domains

February 22, 2009 by Tom 1 Comment

Google just released a new feature – iPhone sync for Google Calendar! That was the first thing I tried to do when I got my iPhone. I ended up using a workaround through NeuvaSync.com. It worked perfectly and thus I was a little hesitant to try the official version out. The little banner at the top of my Google Calendar homepage, finally got to me though:

I had to try it out.

I went through all of the steps, but it the instructions didn’t work! It appeared that it worked perfectly for regular google calendar owners, but when you used Google Apps for Domains it didn’t work.

It took several hours of searching to finally figure out what was going on. The Mobile Sync wasn’t enabled in my Google Apps account. But also, I didn’t even have the ability to enable it! Here are the steps that I had to take to get Calendar Sync working for my Google Apps for Domains account:

1. Go to Domain Settings at the top:

2. All the way at the bottom, make sure that your control panel has Next Generation selected.

3. Now, go over to Service Settings on the top right. You’ll now have a “Mobile” option. This wasn’t there for me until I selected “Next Generation” in the control panel section.

4. Enable the Sync and you’re off. The original instructions link should now work perfectly!
http://www.google.com/mobile/apple/sync.html

Verify Email Address

February 17, 2009 by Tom 2 Comments

Sometimes you just want to test an email address to see if it’s valid, but you don’t actually want to send them an email.

Instead of sending an email with the subject of “Just testing”, it’s a simple programming task to check the validity of the address. You can check the syntax, if the domain name is valid and if the receiving mail server will accept mail for the address.

I did a search today and found several websites. One was broken, but this one worked perfectly:

http://verify-email.org/

Do you have any other good ones that should be mentioned?

Testing Your CSS and HTML accross multiple browsers

January 28, 2009 by Tom 1 Comment

It’s very important to test your code on multiple browsers. Your audience could have any of them and you want your site to look the best no matter what, even if they have an ancient computer.

I’ve found several very good resources out there that have excellent free options.

CrossBrowserTesting.com

I love this site. It actually gives you a remote desktop session with the OS and the browsers that you need to test.
NOTE: They used to have a free option, but it is gone now. Lowest cost is $19.95 for one month subscription.

BrowserShots.org

Enter your URL and it returns screen shots of your site in over 80 browser and OS combinations. It even gives you the option of downloading them all as a zip file. Extremely handy!

Lastly, if your site is running into problems with older versions of IE, there is no easy way to install previous versions of IE on top of a more current version.

Tredo Soft has a program you can install called Multiple IE’s. It lets you do just what you couldn’t. Install previous versions of IE and test them on your computer. No more waiting for browser sessions on CrossBrowserTesting.com just to test IE! Here is the link:

http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE

If you’re using Vista, Multiple IE’s won’t work, however. You may need to use My DebugBar’s IE Tester:
http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage

Best,
Tom