Web Developer Blog

Follow these steps if you have problems with Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC) : MDAC - Download and Repair-Page Tags: MDAC , Microsoft Data Access Components

About the PDFizer Library : "PDFizer is a simple XHTML to PDF converter; with this library, you can transform simple XHTML pages into nice and printable PDF files." For Microsoft.NET / Mono. Tags: DotNET , PDF , XHTML

Tips for the latest beta build of Programmers Notepad, by the developer Simon Steele. Tags: Notepad Alternative

Programmers Notepad 2.0.5.48 Released . Looks good and is fast loading and stable. Very customisable (syntax schemes and ability to use other tools with it). When it is final (i.e. not beta as it is now) it should be even better. Tags: Notepad Alternative

Answers.com - Online Dictionary, Encyclopedia and much more . Very good site. You can even search by a persons name as well. Searches Wikipedia and has thesaurus and translation features.

Wired 13.02: The Firefox Explosion : "It's fast, secure, open source - and super popular. The hot new browser called Firefox is rocking the software world. (Watch your back, Bill Gates.)"

Hixie's Natural Log: <div style="font-weight: bold">Lost cause</div> . Makes a good point. Why change from deeply nested <table> tags and liberal use of <font> tags to deeply nested <div> tags and inline css (the code, although taking up less disk space, is still untidy) when it is better to design pages semantically (i.e. the code is self descriptive and content truly is seperated from layout). It is easier to modify as well, and any kind of layout can be designed using CSS. So instead of: <div id="leftfloat"> Menu here... </div> <div id="middle"> Contents here... </div> You do: <div id="navmenu"> Menu here... </div> <div id="contents"> <a name="contents">&lt/a> Contents here... </div> That way if you decide the menu needs to float to the right, or be below the content then it makes more sense (you can al...

Nofollow in Firefox . Shows you how to highlight hyperlinks in web pages that will be not be followed by search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN).

PostgreSQL 8.0 (open source database) is out. It runs natively on Windows, so performs much faster that the previous versions (which used Cygwin to emulate Linux and thus suffered a performance penalty). Highly scalable and enterprise ready as well as completely free (commercial support is available). How will it do against DB2, SQL Server and Oracle? Only time will tell. May bring down prices on these proprietary databases.

gemal.dk - Netscape Updates Browser Prototype . More screenshots of the new Firefox based Netscape browser. Based on version 1.0 rather than 0.9.3. I wonder if it will be popular when finally released? Perhaps if it offers corporate features that Firefox does not (like an MSI installer, ability to disable user from changing settings or installing extensions/themes).

FreePOPs : "FreePOPs is an easily extensible program, which allows to have an access to the most varied resources through the POP3 protocol. Mainly, it can be used to download mail from the most famous webmails, but it could also be used as an aggregator for RSS feeds and many more. This way it is possible to get all your messages in your favourite email client."

Foxit PDF Reader is an alternative to Adobe Reader. A much smaller download, so lacks some features that Adobe's offering has (which you may not need if all you want to do is read PDF's).

A UserControl for ASP.NET that displays a menu generated from an XML file. Very basic. If the XML file is missing (or not valid XML markup) nothing renders. UserControl: menu.ascx <%@ Control Language="C#" src="menu.ascx.cs" Inherits="Menu" %> <asp:Repeater runat="server" id="rptMenu"> <HeaderTemplate> <ul> </HeaderTemplate> <ItemTemplate> <li><asp:HyperLink runat="server" Tooltip='<%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "Tooltip") %>' NavigateUrl='<%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "NavigateUrl") %>' Text='<%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "Text") %>' /></li> </ItemTemplate> <FooterTemplate> </ul> </FooterTemplate> </asp:Repeater> Code Behind: menu.ascx.cs using System; using System.Data; using System.Web; using System.Web.UI; using Syst...

When compiling a .NET application you often use the command line tools csc or vbc to compile the code to a dll file. However, the path environment variable does not always contain it (if all you have done is install the framework, or use SharpDevelop ). Here is a way to add the folder to the path via a batch file. It does not add it twice if you have already added it to the path (i.e. it checks the path before adding). Don't run directly, rather place it somewhere that is already in the path (e.g. c:\windows\system32), and do Start > Run > cmd /k DotNetSetPath[1.0|1.1|2.0] "DotNetSetPath 1.0" for v1.0 of the framework, "DotNetSetPath 1.1" for v1.1, "DotNetSetPath 2.0" or "DotNetSetPath" for v2.0 Update (13 Feb, 2006) : .NET 2.0 is now an option DotNetSetPath.cmd @echo off rem v1.0.3705 is .NET 1.0, v1.1.4322 is .NET 1.1, v2.0.50727 is .NET 2.0 if "%1"=="2.0" goto dotnet20 if "%1"=="1.1"...

A web tool for general feedback to Mozilla. Bugs should still go via bugzilla. Hendrix Bugzilla

ASP.NET Resources has an article ( CSS Challenge: Styling Definition Lists ) on using CSS to format forms, using definition lists for the markup. Less code than using tables, and a lot tidier. A tweak was needed to get it to work with Internet Explorer. Opera seems to have an issue (but someone has posted a possible fix). Despite it primarily being an ASP.NET site, the code is only CSS and HTML, so will work with whatever language is used server-side and on static HTML pages).

A template from 4Guys for creating a DataGrid that you can page and sort (both ascending and descending): A Code Template for a Pageable, Bi-Directional Sortable DataGrid . Class extends the System.Web.UI.Page class.

PCWorld.com - The New Web Challengers : "Watch out, Internet Explorer and Google: A pack of powerful browsers and search engines are gunning for you. We rate 45 tools--and crown a new champion browser." Firefox comes out at the top. Includes Gecko based browser (Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape), Opera and Internet Explorer Shells.

Web File Manager (@ Code Project) has been updated to include the ability to create zip files and sort.

CodeProject article: A small Class for simplifying the Work with URL Parameters . Similar to UrlQuery ( Url Manipulation (C#) - Jul 22nd, 2004, Url Manipulation v2 (C#) - Sep 22nd, 2004)

Tutorial for creating a toolbar for the Firefox web browser. Born Geek: Firefox Toolbar Tutorial . Creating extensions would be a lot easier if there was a Visual IDE for doing them (rather than hand coding the visual aspects).

DefaultBrowser allows you to set a default browser on a per user basis (so each user can have their own). DefaultMail does this for the email client. For Windows XP (older versions can only have a machine default).

DefaultTextBoxControl is an ASP.NET Web Control that you can use to specify which button to 'click' on a form when a user presses Enter when focused on a text box (otherwise the first button in the form gets 'clicked'). You have to replace TextBox controls with DefaultButtonTextBox and add DefaultButtonControl. Works with LinkButton and Button. DefaultButtons (by Andy Smith of MetaBuilders) also does the same thing (without the need to change any controls, just add extra tags at start of page/user control), but only works on Button controls for submitting. Does not solve the accessibility issue (if it is even solvable) when JavaScript is disabled (as ASP.NET pages can only have one server form on a page).

Adobe Reader SpeedUp is a utility that helps speed up the loading of Acrobat Reader. It does this by enabling you to prevent plugins from loading. PDF SpeedUp also does the same thing.

w.bloggar , a desktop tool for publishing to web logs has a new version for download (4.00). A useful tool for working on posts offline through a Windows based application, supports many different types of web log system (including Nucleus , WordPress , .Text and Blogger )

There are a few projects for .NET that are available as Open Source. A lot are hosted on SourceForge. Tom Gilkison has a list: ASP.NET Article: Open Source ASP.NET? .

dp.SyntaxHighlighter can highlight your source code on a web page (inludes line numbers and the ability to print or view in plain text format) and supports the following languages: C# VB VB.NET JavaScript PHP SQL XML style (XHTML, XML, HTML etc) If used, the page will not validate (at W3C's validator ), due to use of <textarea name="code" language="vb"> but if 100% validation is not required, this is a good tool. Tags: Web Developer Blog , Syntax Highlighter