Compressing PNG Files

PNGCrusher is a handy utility for those of us who often struggle to keep images lean and mean. I have witnessed first hand a png image of size 2.7 KB getting compressed to 151 bytes! (~95%) by PNGCrusher. Excited? Here's how you can get it and use it:-

To get it, click http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/pmt/pngcrush-executables/1.7.9/pngcrush-1.7.9-win32.zip

PNGCrusher is a command line executable. So, if you'd like to use it from explorer's context menu, follow these steps:-
1) Extract pngcrush-1.7.9-win32.zip
2) Copy pngcrush.exe to windows\system32 folder or to a folder that is in the system path
3) Open Control Panel and choose Folder Options. Select the File Types tab, and scroll down to the ‘PNG’ entry. Click on ‘Advanced’, then click on ‘New…’.
4) In ‘Action’, type Crush, and in ‘Application used to perform action’, type the following:
pngcrush.exe -e _crushed.png "%1"

That's it. Have fun.

A must read for every web developer

This post is a collection of useful links that I frequently use. Hope you find them useful too. Feel free to post you favorite links and I'll add them to this post.

Tips
1. Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Website
2. URL Rewriting
3. Compressing PNG Files
4. How to create ICO Files in Photoshop?
5. Create valid SSL certificate recognized by most browsers @ www.startssl.com

Frameworks
1. My very own Wingsource Project
Currently under development. Check SVN repository to find all the exciting stuff, Samik and I are working on

2. Enabling security in a web application using SpringSecurity
The article is slightly outdated (it's written for SpringSecurity 2.0.4; the latest one is v3.0.4) but, still useful to get started with SpringSecurity.

3. Jquery - My favorite Javascript Framework