Trapped in Hoth

Fix for Chrome Crashing with Youtube on Closing

2012-01-29T14:58:00.001-05:00

Here is a temp fix for the issue when you are watching a youtube video in Chrome and then you try to fix it, Chrome crashes. Unfortunately the fix is to disable the two Flash dll's. Chrome is working on a fix. These two dll's can easily be re-enabled as needed.

* In the chrome URL window type about:plugins
* Click show details
* do a find on gcswf32.dll and NPSWF32.dll, disable them both.

For reference-
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome/thread?hl=en&tid=1fe8d66c8677d694

Big Bad Malware: One Helpful program.

2011-10-27T15:02:00.000-04:00

I know several people now (including my wife) that have had their machines get infected with malware that is very hard to remove. Microsoft recently released a tool that might be helpful.

http://connect.microsoft.com/systemsweeper

Good luck!

Free Windows Virtual Desktop Manager

2011-10-13T12:48:00.004-04:00

I've been using an ancient virtual desktop manager called Yodem3D. It works OK, but it is beginning to show its age lately.

So the 4SysOps blog had an article on a few to try (see comments too)-

[Link]

I tried Windows Pager http://sourceforge.net/projects/windowspager/ and it works OK. Another mentioned is http://virtuawin.sourceforge.net/ that looks like it might be better. I'll give that one a shot later. If you know of any better ones please let me know in the comments! Thanks.

Regions in Visual Studio for Javascript

2011-08-30T14:10:00.002-04:00

I can't believe I didn't find this earlier. Collapsible regions for Javascript in Visual Studio 2010-

[LINK]

.Net Generate QR Codes on the Fly

2011-08-19T15:18:00.005-04:00

Pretty cool instructable tidbit on how to generate QR codes with .Net through an open source library.

http://www.jphellemons.nl/post/Generate-QR-Codes-with-AspNet-C.aspx

For one off's there are a few sites where you can generate QR's. Here is a link to one-

http://qrcode.kaywa.com/

And a way to decode QR codes online (if you don't have a smart phone app handy) -

http://zxing.org/w/decode.jspx

Some Useful Bookmarklets

2011-08-19T12:14:00.000-04:00

Here is a bookmarklet that allows you to check out what font's are used on a website-

http://fount.artequalswork.com/

Here is another that allows you to add live notes to a web page-

http://markup.io/

HTML 5 Web Application Demo Worth Looking At

2011-08-18T17:58:00.002-04:00

Dan Wahlin and a host of other .Net all stars created a demo HTML 5 web application that I suggest web developers look at (regardless of what server code you use on the back end, lots to be gleaned here). Here is a screen shot linked directly from Wahlin's blog-

Here is a list of the technologies used. There should be something to glean for everyone-

HTML5 features
Modernizer
HTML5 Boilerplate
jQuery along with several jQuery plug-ins
jQuery Templates
Canvas
SVG
CSS3
JSON and AJAX technologies
ASP.NET MVC 3
Entity Framework 4.1 Code-First
Repository Pattern for data access
Unity IoC Container
SQL Server 2008
Nuget

You can read about the application architecture and download it here-

http://weblogs.asp.net/dwahlin/archive/2011/08/15/building-the-account-at-a-glance-html5-jquery-application.aspx

Blizzard Goes User Based Micro Transactions

2011-08-01T13:33:00.001-04:00

Very interesting...I like this model. Diablo III will build it's revenue stream by taking a cut of micro transactions between players. The future is coming.

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2011/08/blizzard-invents-new-business-model.html

The Canvas Tag

2011-07-21T19:00:00.001-04:00

I'm taking my much belated first stabs at using the HTML 5 canvas tag from scratch, and I found a great site I thought I would share to get you going on the basics.

http://www.html5canvastutorials.com/

The basic elements of Canvas seem easy enough, putting it all together to make something unique and useful might be a different story.

And there are lots of great Canvas libraries out there, but I figured I'd start low level and work my way upward.

Remembering the COMBGuids

2011-07-13T15:51:00.007-04:00

The new SQL Server 2005+ NewSequentialID() function is great because you can use GUIDs for primary key's without suffering the the query performance hit normally associated with using random values for primary keys due to ordering in tables. But...you have to create these NewSequentialID's on the SQL side of things, which means that you have to pass them back to your web application, and sometimes that is problematic. It is much easier to create a GUID on the Web side of things before doing the insert, so that you have the key on the web side to access the just inserted data without having to have that key generated and then passed back to you.

For some of you what I'm saying will make absolutely no sense. For others, you see where I'm going. But with a technique known as COMBGuids, you can create sequential GUIDs for IDs on the web side and then pass them into your database.

Here is an implementation of COMBGuids that I've used in the past.

Using A ValidationSummary Control's ShowMessageBox (kinda) with Telerik Controls in Medium Trust

2011-07-05T19:10:00.001-04:00

I guess there is an issue with Validation Summaries and Telerik Controls. If your site is running under Medium trust, you can't use the ShowMessageBox and instead you have to use the ShowSummary method. I noticed this through off the styling of some of my controls once the error summary was rendered so I came up with a work around. Note be careful where you call this code else you will get an error, this worked for me using the FormView_ItemCommand.

ValidationSummary vs =
(ValidationSummary)MyFormView.Row.FindControl ( "myvalidationsummaryname" );
if ( vs != null )
{
  string sErr = vs.HeaderText  + "\\n";
  for ( int i = 0 ; i < this.Validators.Count ; i++ )
  {
    if ( !this.Validators[ i ].IsValid )
      sErr += "* " + this.Validators[ i ].ErrorMessage + "\\n";
  }
  myRadAjaxManager.ResponseScripts.Add ("alert('" + sErr + "');" );
}

That should get you going.

Populating a Telerik RadListBox with JSON on the Client Side

2011-06-28T13:44:00.006-04:00

Ok, this is the poor man's way to do this. I'm actually not calling a web service to pull my jSON string back from the server, but rather a RadScriptManager, but this will get you going.

My approach. Note it assumed that you have a Telerik RadAjaxScriptManager on your page (or master page that you will need to access).

Step 1 Include the Following Namespace in Page Code Behind Class

using System.Web.Script.Serialization;

Step 2 Create a Class Object to be Serialized in the Page Code Behind Class

[Serializable]
public class itm
{
   public string val { get; set; }
   public string txt { get; set; }
}

Step 3 Create a Serialization Method in the Page Code Behind Class

public string ToJSON ( object obj )
{
  JavaScriptSerializer serializer = new JavaScriptSerializer ();
  return serializer.Serialize ( obj );
}

Step 4 Create a Method in the Page Code Behind Class That Will Take Data, Populate a list of itms,Serialize that list into a jSON string, then call the RadAjaxManager's ResponseScripts.Add method to pass the jSON string to the client side.

A few notes here. One you could use AJAX to make a call to a web service to accomplish the same thing, for my example was just doing a basic test so I didn't bother. Also note that you will need to call this method somewhere (on a databind of a form view, Page_Load, whatever, inorder for the method to do anything). Note I'm doing a very lazy and inefficient way to get my data out of the database, I actually defined a sql datasource on my aspx page, and then reference it in the code behind. You probably will want to get your data another way...

void JSONListBoxItems ( hsRadListBox lst, SqlDataSource ds, string txt, string val )
  {
  lst.Items.Clear ();
  List<itm> itms = new List<itm> ();
  if ( lst == null || ds == null || string.IsNullOrEmpty ( txt ) || string.IsNullOrEmpty ( val ) )
  {
   ;
  }
  else
  {
    DataView view = (DataView)ds.Select ( DataSourceSelectArguments.Empty );
    if ( view != null && view.ToTable () != null )
    {
      DataTable table = view.ToTable ();
      for ( int i = 0 ; i< table.Rows.Count ; i++ )
      {
       itm t = new itm ();
       t.txt = table.Rows[ i ][ txt ].ToString ();
       t.val = table.Rows[ i ][ val ].ToString ();
       itms.Add ( t );
      }
    }
   }
   myRadAjaxManager.ResponseScripts.Add ("POPRadListBX('" + lst.ClientID.ToString () + "'," + ToJSON ( itms ) + ");" );
 }

Step 5, Add the Following Javascript on the ASPX page.

function POPRadListBX(tid, js) {
        var lst = $find(tid);
        if (lst != null) {
          var zzz = lst.get_items();
          lst.trackChanges();
          for (var i = 0; i < js.length; i++) {
            var item = new Telerik.Web.UI.RadListBoxItem();
            item.set_text(js[i].txt);
            item.set_value(js[i].val);
            zzz.add(item);
          }
          lst.commitChanges();
        }
      }

Done. If I have time I'll circle back and make a downloadable example.

Test Data

2011-05-23T14:23:00.001-04:00

I found a test data generator site that was useful. Here is the link.

http://www.generatedata.com/

Web Forms Bloat

2011-05-20T16:10:00.000-04:00

When .Net web forms first came out I hated them. Then I got used to them. Now MVC is out, and if I would have skipped web forms I would have loved MVC I think, but because there are some great web form tools out there I find looking to doing something similar in MVC to be not worth it, at least at this point for me. But, web forms do have their draw backs. Look at the line number of this error...

Now I'm hoping this is a faulty line number, but unfortunately I don't think it is. MS Ajax -> Telerik generated Javascript handlers -> 200 lines of Javascript on a page with 5 web grids = a bazillion lines of code I guess.

I bet with MVC this would be about 1/20th of the line number...interesting.

By the way, here is how to do a global Javascript catch if debugging tools aren't working for you-

 window.onerror=function(m, u, ln){
       alert('Error: '+m+'\nURL: '+u+'\nLine: '+ln)
       return true
      }

More info here http://www.javascriptkit.com/

Passing Client Side Dates to Server Side Vars With Telerik Rad Controls

2011-05-11T10:59:00.000-04:00

Ok, sometimes you need to pass a client side datetime value from a Raddatetimepicker up to the server side for use. Sometimes with localization this can get kind of tricky, but Telerik introduced a new method to make this somewhat less painless.

in javascript

var dt = $telerik.findDatePicker("controlID", null);
  var dtValue = dt.get_selectedDate().format("yyyy/MM/dd");

This method will put your datetime value in a format that is SQL server friendly. Happy coding.

Remembering Page Methods

2011-02-20T20:28:00.003-05:00

Ok, I know ASP.Net web forms are all out of style now, even though if you are in a heavily data centric environment (one where you have grids upon grids upon grids) web forms still make the most sense in a lot of scenarios. So a lot of us are stuck with web forms and will be for as long as they are supported.

Anyway, one of the must under utilized capabilities in web form .Net apps are page methods. I sometimes forget the even exist in our jQuery / Ajax centered world. The preferred "best practice" method I'm sure would be to build a web service in WCF that you connect to through jQuery to do an Ajax call without a post back, but sometimes the quick and dirty approach that page methods offer is still useful.

So Zeeshan Umar has a good blog post about good old Page Methods here that the following code snip is based on.

http://zeeshanumardotnet.blogspot.com/2010/11/pagemethod-easier-and-faster-approach.html

I didn't add much to his example, so feel free to go right to his, but here is my own quick demo that I worked through just to remind myself that page methods still exists and how to use them based on Zeeshan's post.

The sample is just one aspx page with its code behind. This example demos submitting a registration form similar to what Zeeshan did-

The PageMethodsTest.aspx page (scroll bar at bottom, highlight all to copy/paste)

The PageMethodsTest.aspx.cs code behind.

Simple! Thanks for the reminder and quick code demo Zeeshan.

Bonus! Of course you can do all this with jQuery. One bonus using jQuery instead of Microsoft's ASP.Net AJAX is that you can leave the script manager off of your page. You can also easily call page methods ON OTHER PAGES (within the same project anyway), so then page methods really do become a poor man's quick and dirty alternative to WCF and ASMX for small task.

Here is an example HTML page that calls the above PageMethodTest.aspx RegUser method-

CallPageMethodsOnPageWJQuery.htm

Here is a useful blog post from Encosia for more info on jQuery / page method calls-

http://encosia.com/2008/05/29/using-jquery-to-directly-call-aspnet-ajax-page-methods/

JavaScript: Available Window Height and Width

2011-02-17T10:28:00.005-05:00

Ok, here is another junior varsity tip for using Javascript to get the true available window height and width. Note I stole this code from somewhere (though I tweaked it). I'd give credit if I remembered where I got it from, I don't.

function HSAvailWidth() {
  if (typeof window.innerWidth != 'undefined')
    return window.innerWidth;
  if (typeof document.documentElement != 'undefined' && typeof document.documentElement.clientWidth != 'undefined' && document.documentElement.clientWidth !== 0)
    return document.documentElement.clientWidth;
  return document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0].clientWidth;
}
function HSAvailHeight() {
  if (typeof window.innerHeight != 'undefined')
    return window.innerHeight;
  if (typeof document.documentElement != 'undefined' && typeof document.documentElement.clientHeight != 'undefined' && document.documentElement.clientHeight !== 0)
    return document.documentElement.clientHeight;
  return document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0].clientHeight;
}

Or with jQuery...

$(window).height(); $(window).width();

Note: different browsers will have different available viewport height/widths because the browser tool bars very is size.

More here...

http://api.jquery.com/height/

Very Cool jQuery Sorting/Suffling Plugin called Isotope

2011-02-15T09:37:00.001-05:00

Check this jQuery plugin called Isotope out.

http://isotope.metafizzy.co/

It has some pretty cool animation features, worth a look.

This Looks Interesting

2011-02-15T09:34:00.001-05:00

A new Javascript/jQuery framework called the iX Framework looks pretty cool. It looks like it can do a lot (but not all) of what Telerik controls can do (though without the back end .Net integration). Might be work a look. $99 bucks for now.

http://www.intelligentexpert.net/

Quick Tip: Generate Unique ID's in Javascript

2011-02-04T14:53:00.000-05:00

Here is a little code snippet I use to create unique id's in Javascript when I'm dynamically adding dom elements.

function HSCreateID(apd) {
  return apd + '' + new Date().getTime();
}

More on the Date().getTime() function in Javascript-

http://www.w3schools.com/jsref/jsref_getTime.asp

Basic Polling Web jQuery Chat Example Using WebMatrix

2011-01-25T01:30:00.008-05:00

*** Update: I had a bunch of junk comments left over from testing in the sdf database, some were kind of crude. I removed them from the source. Numbers 32:23 in action :) ***

Ok, here is a VERY rudimentary example to help you get web chat functionality going in a webmatrix site. I'm not getting fancy at all here, just three pages and a SQL CE database -> Chatpage.cshtml, pull.cshtml, push.cshtml. Essentially I've got my chat page that uses jQuery to poll a "pull" page every 1.5 seconds. I keep track of what data to return by using session time variables. And there is a simple jQuery post method to post new chat messages.

Note! This is just meant to help get you going, not meant to be production code (no SQL injection defense, might need to watch out for Chars in Javascript that might throw things off, not styled at all, yadda yadda yadda). But there is enough here to get you going. Also be warned that you need to test this with two different types of browsers if you are testing the code on your local machine (else a same browser just different windows will share the same session and messages will start disappearing).

Here is the [Source Code]. Or you can look at each page's source individually (scroll bars at the bottom of the code if it over flows).

Here is the ChatPage.cshtml

Here is the Push.cshtml page source

Here is the Pull.cshtml page source

Here is a picture of the database schema

Using SQL Server Dates Without Time

2010-12-07T11:59:00.001-05:00

I often find myself in a scenario where I want customers to be able to select dates, delete items by setting an inactive date to today rather than actually removing something from a database, etc...

Sometimes it helps to only deal in dates, rather than in date/time. Using the GetDate() function in SQL brings back a full date with the time string, but here is a great method to fix that.

declare @somedate = cast(floor(cast(GetDate() as float)) as DateTime)

There are a few other ways to do this, but this one seems to perform the best. Tested with SQL 2008 and works great.

Hat tip too Ben Nadal's blog, more info here-

http://www.bennadel.com/blog/122-Getting-Only-the-Date-Part-of-a-Date-Time-Stamp-in-SQL-Server.htm

Google Ads

2010-11-28T18:26:00.003-05:00

For the very few of you that straggle across this blog every now and then you might notice that I succumbed and put up some Google ads. I resisted for awhile, but I'm poor, so I figured what the heck. Hey, I made a whopping 20 cents my first week!

But 20 cents is 20 cents. I figure a little sugar will invigorate me to write and post articles that have relevance to folks with code and links that line programmers will find of value. Maybe I can boost that 20 cents to a dollar a week. Multiply that by x number of other blogs and web sites that I have just dying on the vine that I might start working on, and I might make 50 bucks or so. That pays for a few domain names, maybe a book or PDF here or there, and some low end 3D software now and again. I will write/code/post for about six months and see what I can get going.

If ads piss you off I'm with you, they piss me off too. But when in Rome...oh well.

Happy Thanksgiving every one. I had a great one, hope you did too.

AWS Free Usage Tier

2010-11-01T12:51:00.000-04:00

The cloud battle heats up! Who benefits? Us! AWS Free Usage Tier

Microsoft HTML5 Tooling...Meet Glimmer

2010-11-01T11:54:00.001-04:00

Just found this, haven't played with it, but it is a start of Microsoft's efforts to provide tooling for HTML 5.

Meet Glimmer