For about 4 years I have been preaching to my customers why they do not need a mobile site. Instead, it is better to spend money on a responsive site. If you are getting your site done or redone, find a designer who will give you a responsive site. A responsive site should not cost you more and it should be the only solution.
Year: 2014
The Lawn Mower Woes
Last weekend was a holiday weekend where I was supposed to get a lot of yard work done. Part of the yard work was to cut the grass, but alas I suffered the lawn mower woes. You may recall in October 2013 a post that I wrote entitled “HTML Will not fix the Lawn Mower“. Continue reading The Lawn Mower Woes
French and Other Language Characters – Classic ASP
Recently working with PayPal and Classic ASP I stumbled unto a problem where French characters were being encoded and displayed as unreadable text. It turns out that PayPal returns the result to you using UTF-8. In C# this would be an easy fix. Language characters can be tough in classic ASP. I had searched for quite a while until I found the following code: Continue reading French and Other Language Characters – Classic ASP
Tricking Out Classic ASP With JSON – The Mandrill Experience
Using JSON with Classic ASP can be a tricky thing, but the developer of ASPJSON has made it very easy. This library ( or include ) has made my life so much easier, but the instructions to get me started was somewhat raw and difficult for me to follow.
Since my original posting about Tricking Out Classic ASP with JSON, I have had several people ask for the solution to SendGrid and Mandrill. Both systems are very different, but the principals are similar. I found Mandrill the easiest to implement.
The following code is the magic to it all, but this example is specific to Mandrill.
jsonstring = ""
If Request.TotalBytes > 0 Then
Dim lngBytesCount
lngBytesCount = Request.TotalBytes
jsonstring = BytesToStr(Request.BinaryRead(lngBytesCount))
End If
Set oJSON = New aspJSON
'Load JSON string
jsonstring = replace(jsonstring, "mandrill_events=","")
oJSON.loadJSON(URLDecode(jsonstring))
' Loop Through Records
for i = 0 to oJSON.data.count -1
str = oJSON.data(i).item("event")
straddress = oJSON.data(i).item("msg").item("email")
next
You can download the full code sample from: http://www.unlatched.com/sample/Mandrill%20with%20Classic%20ASP/mandrill%20aspjson%20testing.zip
I did include the ASPJSON include file so that you would get the complete solution; but you should ensure you have the latest once you have my example working. Goto ASPJSON to get the latest library.
Auto-Link Using Regular Expressions
I was recently asked if I could automatically turn website text (ex: www.google.com ) into HTML hyperlinks. My first thought was ah CRAP! I also wondered why they could not use the link tool in the editor, but they asked so I delivered. With about 5 minutes on Google, I found the perfect solution that worked for me.
Mind you I was working in C# for this, but since it is a regular expression solution; it will apply to virtually any language. The one change that I had made from the original code was to add in a piece that also auto-linked when the text included “http://www.”. You may or may not want the extra addition that I had made.
I flipped over Flipp
I don’t often promote apps and products, but my wife found an app that makes shopping more efficient.
If you have an Apple or Android phone and you like deals or price matching, you must try Flipp ( http://www.flipp.com ). My wife “clips” the deals on her iPad and it immediately shows up on my iPhone or iPad under “clippings. At the grocery store checkout, I just show them my clippings and the price nicely decreases saving me money. The synchronization is a nice touch in it self, but this app also has an awesome search feature that allows you to search for a product and it shows all the flyers that it is published in. This app is its weight in gold. One stop shopping at No Frills and I have most of my savings as if I drove from store to store.
Life has become simpler with Flipp
Microsoft MVC vrs WebForms – What do you prefer
I recently had a lively discussion with a colleague over what is better Microsoft MVC or WebForms. My friend had stated he liked MVC because it kept his code organized and clean. He also stated that he has seen many WebForm projects that was just a mess of spaghetti like code. My response was simple; It is all about developer discipline. If the coder is well disciplined and refactored their work rather than just keep stacking on band aides and fixes, the code would be clean and organized.
I think it was said well “It is the latest craze!”. Continue reading Microsoft MVC vrs WebForms – What do you prefer
February Recap – jQuery Made Simple
February is a month that I made jQuery made Simple examples that helped me at to my library and hopefully will help you. I typically try not to use jQuery libraries or plugins as I feel it is often easy enough for me to do quickly and allows me stretch my creativity and increase my skill-set. I fee it is important to practice or you loose it.
You may use all of my examples free with no strings attached.
All of my examples use no additional libraries or plugins. Just basic jQuery!
Here are the examples created in February: Continue reading February Recap – jQuery Made Simple
jQuery Folder Tree Menu
Today I thought that I would put together a simple jQuery folder menu for myself to use in projects to come. It is easily modified, easy to create dynamically and easily styled. The jQuery script portion is rather simple and has been tested on Chrome, FireFox and IE. This is another step in the direction of building a base library of scripts for me to use.
Download full Sample Code: http://www.unlatched.com/sample/foldertree/FolderView.htm
Run Sample Code: http://www.unlatched.com/sample/foldertree/foldertree.zip
Continue reading jQuery Folder Tree Menu
Simple jQuery Menu
Now days it seems that there is a plug-in for almost any jQuery task. The trouble with plug-ins is that they are often not flexible enough and the designer / developer who is using them is not practicing developing their own solution. It is too easy to Google for a plug-in to do the job. Googling for the correct solution may take just as long as creating one yourself. Do not take me wrong; I use plug-ins, but I use plug-ins when it is a more complicated solution and not worth my time or it is just a one-off solution. Continue reading Simple jQuery Menu