Rick Strahl's Web Log

Weblog Posts in September 2008

Introduction to jQuery Article posted
September 28, 2008 @ 2:04 pm

I've posted Part 1 in a two part series on jQuery today. Part 1 covers the client side features of jQuery from the basics all the way through creating simple plugins and extending jQuery. This is a long article that discusses a host of the really useful features that jQuery brings to the table for client side Javascript development. Part 2 will then follow up with server side ASP.NET integration.

25 comments

Calling JavaScript functions in the Web Browser Control
September 27, 2008 @ 4:37 pm

If you're using the Web Browser Control or the Internet.Application Shell object, you might need to call Javacript t code inside the pages loaded in the browser to manipulate the page from say a WinForms app that interacts with the Web Browser control. Some things are just much easier to do with client side script code and being able to initiate this code from .NET can be very useful. This entry describes how you can access the DOM to call script functions both in .NET and FoxPro.

10 comments

Browser Rendering Differences and Browser Resets
September 24, 2008 @ 5:31 pm

As ASP.NET develoers it can be really easy to not pay attention to good CSS style layout practices. But CSS is vitally important especially when dealing with different browsers and consistent formatting. Using browser resets in particular is a big help in taking some of the pain out of cross browser rendering differences.

13 comments

jQuery.position() on Invisible Elements fails
September 20, 2008 @ 4:02 am

Ran into a little issue today with jQuery.position() failing when elements are not visible. Apparently when elements are hidden jQuery is unable to retrieve the computed styles necessary to get the positioning information and bombs. Making the element visible first fixes the problem.

4 comments

ASP.NET Designer Control Problem in VS 2008 SP1
September 18, 2008 @ 4:55 am

I've been running into problems with VS 2008 SP1 where controls appear to be failing frequently with property assignment errors that seem completely unwarranted. Controls work fine on a page, and next thing I know they fail for no apparent reason.

23 comments

Running VisualSVN Server for Subversion Source Control
September 14, 2008 @ 3:39 am

I've been running Subversion for some time, but only recently did I switch over to using HTTP as the protocol to transfer files. I checked out Visual SVN Server and it makes the process of setting up Subversion and Apache for serving over HTTP super easy.

15 comments

jQuery CSS Property Monitoring Plug-in updated
September 12, 2008 @ 3:30 am

I've revisited a jQuery plug-in that can be used to monitor changes in CSS properties and be notified when a specific property changes providing an Observer style callback. This can be a handy feature when building behavior components that attach functionality to other elements and need to keep these behaviors in sync with the original object. This update utilizes a more efficient approach and allows monitoring many properties at once.

1 comment

Client Script Resources in ASP.NET Controls revisited
September 09, 2008 @ 4:05 am

Embedding script resources as part of ASP.NET Control development is tricky business and requires a bunch of options to ensure that script code loads correctly and maybe more importantly allows the page developer to decide whether the resources should be used at all. Here are a few thoughts and some work in progress on how I deal with script resources in my controls.

5 comments

Retrieving Web Resources and Content Types in Code
September 08, 2008 @ 1:39 am

One of my components requires to serve specific Web Resources directly and optionally compress them optionally. While serving resources is straight forward, also grabbing the content type to know what type of resource you're dealing with is a little more work. Here's how.

17 comments

Mousing Around: Mobile Mouse with Desktop Mouse Radio
September 07, 2008 @ 8:14 pm

I travel a fair bit and use my machine on the road a lot when I do, so portability is reasonably important to me. One thing is that in the process I got really used to the small 'mobile' mice that Microsoft makes - the small Soap bar kind. I've really grown attached to this mouse and I really can't get comfortable with the monster desktop mice any more. So the small mouse works great but one of...

10 comments

jQuery Form Serialization without ASP.NET ViewState
September 04, 2008 @ 2:31 am

When building AJAX applications that send client form content to the server, ViewState and EventValidation fields can get in the way. Using jQuery you can make short work skipping over these fields and send only the raw POST data to the server.

14 comments

DataTable JSON Serialization in JSON.NET and JavaScriptSerializer
September 03, 2008 @ 1:22 pm

I've recently made a switch to JSON.NET for my JavaScript parsing which has been a great move for flexibility. One thing missing from JSON.NET though that I had previously running is DataTable serialization I have in use in a few older apps. In this post I describe how to use JSON.ENT and how to add a custom DataTable/Row/Set converters. For completeness sake I've also provided similar Converter classes for JavaScriptSerializer.

4 comments

Watch out for Date Kind in JSON Deserialization
September 03, 2008 @ 1:54 am

If you're working with dates in JSON serialization make sure you carefully normally dates returned from JSON deserialization. Reason is that especially the Microsoft Serializers return dates as Utc dates which can produce some unexpected and often missed results.