Web Developer Blog

Updated batch file in post Replace Notepad (Windows XP/2000 and later) post - fixed issue when another copy of notepad.exe was in other locations that were used by Windows File Protection (service pack folder and C:\I386 folder). This replaces the Windows notepad with a notepad alternative (single exe file only, not one that comes with other files) of your choice (i.e. Notepad2 ). Tags: Web Developer Blog , Replace Notepad , Notepad Alternative , Notepad2

XMLHttpRequest & Ajax Working Examples - Links and Resources, Fiftyfoureleven.com . Many examples, showing the power of AJAX . AJAX is nothing new (just the latest web development 'buzzword'), it has been around for a while, but was more recently popularised by Google with GMail and Google Suggest . It is a combination of JavaScript, XmlHttpRequest , DOM, XHTML etc. Should not be required to use a site (just make it more responsive and give a better experience to those that can use it), but a fall back to server side processing (via ASP, PHP, ASP.NET etc) should be offered, otherwise it would make a site inaccessible (browsers that are not capable of it, or with JavaScript (and/or ActiveX in IE) disabled). Tags: Web Developer Blog , JavaScript , XmlHttpRequest , AJAX , DOM

ASP.NET Resources - Announcing Lightweight Source Code Highlighter Tags: Web Developer Blog , ASP.NET , Code Highlighter

ASPAlliance.com : ASP and ASP.NET Tutorials : Review: Free Components For ASP.NET 1.1 . Lots of useful ASP.NET controls that are free for use in your ASP.NET applications. Tags: Web Developer Blog , ASP.NET

gazingus.org - DOM-Scripted Lists, Revisited . Takes an unordered list and makes it collapsible via JavaScript. No inline JavaScript needed (not even body onload=... ) - just include the .js file in your page and flag the lists you want to apply this to. For loading the event when the page loads it uses the method described by Simon Willison - Executing JavaScript on page load . Edit (12:50): Kae Verens also has something similar on his blog - collapsible menus updated Tags: Web Developer Blog , JavaScript , DOM

FireTune download . Tweak Firefox setting with this tool to improve performance (connection speed optimizations). Tags: Firefox , Firetune

Phalanger - the PHP Language Compiler for .NET Framework . Write your code in PHP, and compile it for .NET. Channel9 has a video about it: Phlanger: PHP .NET compiler revealed . Tags: PHP , .NET , Phalanger

CNET is doing another browser poll. Which is better Netscape 8 (beta) or Firefox 1.0 ? Firefox will probably beat Netscape. They may do a poll when Netscape is no longer beta (but Firefox may win again). Tags: Netscape , Netscape Beta , Netscape 8 , Firefox

Comparison of different SQL implementations lists several databases (PostgreSQL, DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL and Oracle) and how they differ (when they do), from the SQL Standards. Not all conform to the standards (DB2, MS SQL and Oracle comply with SQL-92; PostgreSQL and MySQL do not comply fully (MySQL lacks views, PostgreSQL dissallows updates of data in views)). Very useful resource when porting SQL code between systems. Tags: SQL

NVU 0.90 is now available for download. A free, open source WYSIWYG Html editor for Windows, Mac and Linux systems. Basic support for PHP. No support for ASP though (and no plans to support it either). Cannot even open ASP(C)X files. Has XHTML support. OK for just basic editing of static htm, html files (and some php files) and those starting out on web design. Macromedia/Adobe/Microsoft don't need to worry too much about it at the moment (their tools have far more features). Tags: NVU

ASPAlliance.com : ASP and ASP.NET Tutorials : Control Tree Recursion . This shows you how to loop through controls on an ASPX page (or ASCX control). Very simple to do.

Writing Files using ASP.NET and the .NET Framework . Shows you how to write/read files (text, binary, XML) using C#.

According to Paul Thurrott , IE 7 will have tabbed browsing. Tags: Internet Explorer , IE7

Now supports Thunderbird / Firefox / Netscape. Google Desktop Search Download . Can be extended via plug-ins (in any language that supports COM and XML) and integrated into your applications. Tags: Google , Desktop Search

bitter pill: w3ctextarea 'textarea xhtml validator' : "w3ctextarea is a Firefox extension that allows you to validate data within a textarea as 'XHTML 1.0 Strict' using the w3c xhtml strict validator. It gleans any text from any and all textareas on the page, and validates said text with the w3c validator." Tags: Firefox , Firefox Extension

You can block flash initiated popups, it is just disabled by default: adot's notblog*: blocking those flash pop-unders with firefox Tags: Firefox

Howstuffworks has added a new article on Firefox - "How Firefox Works" . Very good site that has many articles on how various 'stuff' works. Quite a popular site, and with Firefox featuring prominantly on the front page, more people may download it. Tags: Firefox , HowStuffWorks

Beta of the new Netscape Browser is available for download. Download is twice the size of Firefox, perhaps because they have added so many new things (bloat?) to it. Firefox extensions won't work on it either. Daniel Glazman ( NVU WYSIWYG Html Editor developer) has done a review , and he does not like it. The first time I tried it, it crashed. Did managed to get it running, but it still crashes frequently. When it crashes, the feedback agent does not load (which is strange as it is in beta). It also uses Trident (IE rendering engine) on Netscape.com pages, which shows they have little confidence in Gecko, or code for IE (why do they do this?). The user agent string (Win2k) is: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20050302 Firefox/0.9.6 Build number: 20050302 , so browser sniffing will pick it up as Firefox 0.9.6 (which is a bad way of detection, feature sniffing ( if(document.getElementById){...} ) is better). A better string would be Mozilla/5.0 (Windo...

Merriam-Webster Online - Firefox downloads . Lookup words in Firefox with these various tools (search plug-in, context-menu extension, sidebar, lookup button (bookmarklet) and toolbar) Tags: Firefox , Dictionary Extension

The Code Project - Save An Image Into SQL Server 2000 Database - ASP.NET . When you need to upload a file and don't want to worry about file name conflicts (i.e. overwriting an existing file).

ASPAlliance.com : ASP and ASP.NET Tutorials : Easy DataGrid Paging with the DataGridPager