Archives for Month: June 2009 ::
Building an Editable Grid with AJAX and ColdFusion Components
Posted on :: Jun 23
In the past few months, the design pattern of combining Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) to develop highly interactive Web applications has been growing in popularity. The individual technologies that compose AJAX are not recent developments; they have been around for some time and have been continuously updated and improved. However, it is the recent confluence of these technologies that is leading to interesting possibilities.
A common data editing interface consists in: an HTML table showing a list of database records. A form where you can edit each record. And some action pages to update, insert and delete records. In other words, when a user wants to change some data, there are a lot of navigation and page reloads involved.
In this tutorial, we will change an HTML table into an editable grid. That is, we will automatically create a form from grid cells using JavaScript and call some ColdFusion component methods - using AJAX - to update information.
The Future of PERL
Posted on :: Jun 19
Perl 6 is the next version of the Perl programming language.
The project attempts to address the interpreter, the language, and the culture. The internals of the version 5 interpreter are so tangled that they hinder maintenance, thwart some new feature efforts, and scare off potential internals hackers. The language as of version 5 has some misfeatures that are a hassle to ongoing maintenance of the interpreter and of programs written in Perl. And finally, the entire Perl community is invited to participate in the design and implementation of Perl 6.Open PPC Policy, Affiliate Marketing and E-Commerce
Posted on :: Jun 19
A recent ABestWeb forum thread has truly shocked me. Shocked I tell you! And I've become nearly immune to most everything, hardly blinking an eye in the face of even the most innovative techniques, trends and technologies that come my way. So what is that shocked me so greatly?
The Pia Jewelry affiliate program has an open PPC policy! This means that affiliates are free to bid on all terms, including brand terms. Pia believes this policy enables its affiliate to "better promote Pia products and therefore boost earning potential." You might want to take a deep breath as I'm sure you are equally shocked.
You might remember that back in April Amazon notified affiliates they would no longer be paying referral fees to associates sending users to Amazon through paid search (keyword bidding) practices. Allowing affiliates to leverage pay-per-click search engines is nothing new, but the debate continues about whether to allow affiliates the right to bid on brand related terms (which are often trademarked). Is it good business or misinformed marketing? A control issue or a strategic decision?Five PPC Landing Page Design Trends
Posted on :: Jun 19
If you are paying for clicks, you must ensure that the landing page where consumers end up post-click can convert. Impressions count more than ever when it comes to PPC landing page design so let's review what sites are doing right (and wrong) and perhaps even find some inspiration for our own PPC campaigns and the landing page designs they feature.
When you want to analyze what works best in PPC landing page design, you want to start with the most competitive terms. We took a look at ten landing page designs (only nine are featured as one was was ultimately just a parked page) to determine similarities and differences that the design concepts have. You might end up applying some of the techniques on your own site, but before settling on one, remember that testing is the only sure fire way to ensure that the right elements are available to convert your specific audience of consumers into buyers.
The keyword in focus (and of course the landing pages that result) are under the keyword "ringtone". Clearly our choice of keyword will influence the type of landing page designs that resulted. Expect the sites that bid on those terms to focus on acquiring a younger, more socially-connected, technology savvy audience.
How good is Microsoft's free antivirus software?
Posted on :: Jun 19
Microsoft has officially unveiled its long-awaited consumer antivirus offering. Formerly code-named “Morro,” it’s now been christened Microsoft Security Essentials, and it will enter public beta testing next week. If you have a licensed copy of Windows XP (Service Pack 2 or above), Windows Vista, or Windows 7, you’ll be able to download and install the software at no additional charge. No subscription is required for ongoing definition updates, either. The final release is scheduled for this fall.
The public beta will be limited to 75,000 downloads, Microsoft says, and the targets are global. The initial beta release is limited to the United States, Israel (where a core development team is based), and Brazil. Next month, the beta will open up for users in China. It’s no coincidence that Microsoft is rolling out early in Brazil and China, which are large-scale vectors of malware infections because of the sheer number of Windows users running without antivirus protection. According to Microsoft, barriers to adoption of paid security software are especially high in developing markets, where internet access is slower and credit cards are unavailable to a large percentage of the population.
Could you switch to Open Source?
Posted on :: Jun 19
Whether it’s down to the sagging economy or the slow but inevitable death of XP, I’m hearing from many people who are looking to jump off the Microsoft software bandwagon and pitch up with the FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) movement. But could you realistically move your home or business PCs over to open source software and make a 100% switch?
Spectral Core, great product, even better Service!
Posted on :: Jun 17
For a While now, I've been contemplating and evaluating a plethora of Database Conversion Scripts, ranging from ESF Database Express to Spectral Core Full Convert Enterprise and everything inbetween.
Of all the products I tried, Spectral Core was indeed the best one I had used. After Exiting my Trial Version, there's a nice little comments form asking for your feedback. Well I filled out, stating tha tI had no problems with the product, and that I'd buy it, just that it was too Expensive (I just didn't have the $300 for it...but I did have a small budget to work with) for me to Purchase.
Well, within 10-20 minutes later I have this email in my mailbox from them, asking me what price range would I be suitable with to purchase the system, I nearly insulted him with the Price I had recommended to him (I later discovered that the Person with whom I was commnicating with was the owner), however I have to say that he did indeed agree with me that the price that I was quoting (which was the MAXIMUM of MY Budget for said software type) was indeed somewhat disagreeable.
Well, an email later I was offered a substanital discount (nevertheless still out of my budget).
All things aside, we worked out an arrangement for a suitable and agreeable price, and the owner of the Company has been very very responsive to my emails.
Now, onto the product itself...
Preventing SQL Injection in .NET
Posted on :: Jun 12
Over the past few weeks there have been reports and commentary about SQL injection attacks being launched against both classic ASP and ASP.NET sites.
Included in this post are VB.NET and C# samples that can be used to screen incoming query-string, form and cookie values for potential Sql injection values. However because valid input data varies from website to website, it is not possible to write a one-size-fits-all screening mechanism. You can modify the sample code included in this post to tighten or loosen the character sequences as appropriate for your website.
Also as a reminder, if a website makes heavy use of dynamically constructed Sql (as opposed to parameterized Sql or parameterized stored procedures) it is a best practice to escape all single quotes contained in un-trusted web input. Since it is not possible to make this replacement using the HttpModule/BeginRequest approaches shown below, you can instead scrub a website's code and perform the escaping in all places where dynamic Sql is being built.
Nice & Clean Sliding Login Panel built with jQuery
Posted on :: Jun 10
A while ago, I created a Slidedown Panel similiar to that on Dynaic Drive (though the script there isn't mine). Well I've re-tooled it to work with JQuery, and have included it in this here tutorial.
What's the scope of this tutorial?
- Panel has been redesigned to be “slicker”.
- Panel overlaps content instead of “pushing” it.
- Images are transparent… and work in IE6! (Thanks to 24Ways for their IE PNG Fix.) This means, you can change the background color of the body as you wish or even set a background image.
- Login button that slides the panel down changes from “Log In | Register” to “Close Panel” on click and I have added some nice rollover images
The MVC paradigm
Posted on :: Jun 8
The Model-View-Controller (MVC) is a commonly used and powerful architecture for GUIs. How does it work?
The MVC paradigm is a way of breaking an application, or even just a piece of an application's interface, into three parts: the model, the view, and the controller. MVC was originally developed to map the traditional input, processing, output roles into the GUI realm:
Input --> Processing --> Output
Controller --> Model --> ViewA Framework Is...
Posted on :: Jun 8
From my perspective, a framework does several things:
- it makes it easier to work with complex technologies
- it ties together a bunch of discrete objects/components into something more useful
- it forces the team (or just me) to implement code in a way that promotes consistent coding, fewer bugs, and more flexible applications
- everyone can easily test and debug the code, even code that they didn't write
If I look at this list of vague framework requirements, I come up with a set of specific classifications that define a framework:
Why IT hates Facebook and Twitter
Posted on :: Jun 4
With as much as the media might talk about the “new enterprise” and “social media” you’d think that IT would be in lock-step with the rest of the businesswhen it came to social networking. But as my recent work with Michael Osterman shows, there’s a big difference between applications that are allowed by organizations and the ones IT professionals consider to be legitimate.
Preventing Infinite Redirect Loops with Apache mod_rewrite
Posted on :: Jun 2
Have you tried using Apache's mod_rewrite to redirect web traffic to custom URLs only to create an infinite loop? When creating rewrite rules for URLs without a trailing slash, an infinite redirection loop will be your likely result. To prevent this problem, create a preceding rewrite condition which adds the trailing slash to the requested URL. This tutorial will show you how remedy this problem and assumes that you have experience with Apache's mod_rewrite and .htaccess files.
Update one table from another using a join
Posted on :: Jun 2
What’s So Bad About CSS Frameworks?
Posted on :: Jun 2
CSS frameworks are by no means breaking news. There have been several to choose from for a good couple of years now, with one of the earliest and most well-known being Yahoo’s Grids CSS.What’s amazing to me is that many are failing to take advantage of these great little time-savers.
A quick stroll through any forums reveals plenty of people having the same frustrating, discouraging issues with floated layouts and positioning; I’m quite sure these could’ve been avoided if the developer had simply used tried and tested layout methods grabbed from a CSS framework.Hey, hold on — put those rotten tomatoes away! I’ll explain, I promise.
AJAX APIs help for Dreamweaver
Posted on :: Jun 2
I didn't write these extensions, however I am making them available here.
These are Dreamweaver CS3 & CS4 extensions for both the JQuery and Prototype API's for Ajax.
// Code jQuery FASTER in Dreamweaver!Reduce tons of typing. If you are into jQuery and use Dreamweaver then you really need this extension. Let us save you tons of time by reducing keystrokes with our jQuery API extension for Dreamweaver which provides code coloring, Snippets, and code hints that list every jQuery and jQuery UI function for you.
// Code Prototype FASTER in Dreamweaver!Reduce tons of typing. If you are into Prototype and use Dreamweaver then you really need this extension. Let us save you tons of time by reducing keystrokes with our Prototype API extension for Dreamweaver which provides code coloring, Snippets, and code hints that list every Prototype function for you.