Simon Steed's Blog About Stuff!

I needed to detect if Safari was being used as there were some issues with styling on a website I was working upon, only on Mac Safari though!!!

The following code is what I use to detect safari and load the relevant script:

<script type="text/javascript">

	if(/Safari/.test(navigator.userAgent))
	{
 		//you are using safari, or at least you CLAIM to be
		document.write('<link type="text/css" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" href="/css/safari.css" title="example" />');
	}
	</script>

Add in the tags and set the path to the correct css file you wish to load. Same concept can be used to load javascript files.

Started to do a lot more Umbraco work recently so inevitably I will be looking for loads ot shortcuts, tips etc along the way – feel free to let me know of any I can include here.

The most recent one I came across was I needed to add external redirects in the main menu. The menu was built using XSLT for the main site pages which was fine although I needed to link to other pages off-site.

After a little searching, I found the following package that worked a treat – simply added a macor to my text page, add the redirect URL and bobs your uncle, it works great!

http://www.neehouse.com/umbraco_cms/packages/redirect.aspx

By default, you cannot group radiobutton controls within a repeater as the repeater mangles the names. I had this exact problem when changing from checkboxes to radio buttons – after searching Google for 10 mins, I found a post at the following site by Eric Smith which i’ll copy the relevant info here so I don’t lose it

http://www.codeguru.com/csharp/csharp/cs_controls/custom/article.php/c12371/

Add the following Javascript code to your page:

function SetUniqueRadioButton(nameregex, current)
{
   re = new RegExp(nameregex);
   for(i = 0; i < document.forms[0].elements.length; i++)
   {
      elm = document.forms[0].elements[i]
      if (elm.type == 'radio')
      {
         if (re.test(elm.name))
         {
            elm.checked = false;
         }
      }
   }
   current.checked = true;
}

Now for the repeater itself,

The code is linked to the Repeater through the ItemDataBound event. For it to work properly, you need to know the name of the Repeater control, as well as the GroupName you’re assigning to the RadioButtons. In this case, I’m using rptPortfolios as the name of the Repeater, and Portfolios as the group name:

protected void rptPortfolios_ItemDataBound(object sender,
                                           RepeaterItemEventArgs e)
{
   if (e.Item.ItemType != ListItemType.Item && e.Item.ItemType
      != ListItemType.AlternatingItem)
      return;

   RadioButton rdo = (RadioButton)e.Item.FindControl("rdoSelected");
   string script =
      "SetUniqueRadioButton('rptPortfolios.*Portfolios',this)";
   rdo.Attributes.Add("onclick", script);

}

Need to know which specific control posted back to your page? (Original article at http://geekswithblogs.net/mahesh/archive/2006/06/27/83264.aspx)

/// <summary>
 /// Tells us which control posted back
 /// </summary>
 /// <returns></returns>
 public Control getPostBackControlName()
 {
 Control control = null;
 //first we will check the "__EVENTTARGET" because if post back made by       the controls
 //which used "_doPostBack" function also available in Request.Form collection.
 string ctrlname = Page.Request.Params["__EVENTTARGET"];
 if (ctrlname != null && ctrlname != String.Empty)
 control = Page.FindControl(ctrlname);

 // if __EVENTTARGET is null, the control is a button type and we need to
 // iterate over the form collection to find it
 else
 {
 string ctrlStr = String.Empty;
 Control c = null;
 foreach (string ctl in Page.Request.Form)
 {
 //handle ImageButton they having an additional "quasi-property" in their Id which identifies
 //mouse x and y coordinates
 if (ctl.EndsWith(".x") || ctl.EndsWith(".y"))
 {
 ctrlStr = ctl.Substring(0, ctl.Length - 2);
 c = Page.FindControl(ctrlStr);
 }
 else
 c = Page.FindControl(ctl);

 if (c is System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button || c is System.Web.UI.WebControls.ImageButton)
 {
 control = c;
 break;
 }
 }
 }
 return control;
 }

If you are using master pages, simply add this to the master.cs file and where you need to call the method use the following code:

MasterPage masterPage = (MasterPage)Page.Master; // where MasterPage is the class name
 Control rep = masterPage.getPostBackControlName();
 if (rep.Parent.Parent.ID == "rpRegion")// only if postback is the regions control
 GetSelectedRegion();

Searching google turned up nothing on this so did some digging in MSDN and worked out a method of disabling all the style sheets, javascript etc to produce a text only page:

1/ Add a content block to your master page – i’ve called mine ‘cssContentHolder’

<asp:contentplaceholder id=”cssContentHolder” runat=”server”>
<link rel=”stylesheet” href=”css/master.css” type=”text/css” media=”all” />
<link href=”css/flyout.css” media=”screen” rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” />
<script src=”scripts/APIs/JQuery/JQuery-1.3.2.min.js” type=”text/javascript”></script>
<script src=”scripts/APIs/JQuery/Plugins/jquery-ui-1.7.1.custom.min.js” type=”text/javascript”></script>
</asp:contentplaceholder>

2/ In the markup, add a link button so the user can click it to remove the formatting

<asp:LinkButton  PostBackUrl=”#” ID=”textLink”  runat=”server” Text=”Text Only Version” onclick=”textLink_Click” ></asp:LinkButton>

3/ In the code behind, create an event handler for the button and add the following code

protected void textLink_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
bool Hidden = Page.Master.FindControl(“cssContentHolder”).Visible ;
Page.Master.FindControl(“cssContentHolder”).Visible = !Hidden;
if (Hidden)
textLink.Text = “Switch to Graphical Version”;
else
textLink.Text = “Text Only Version”;
}

That’s it. When you click on the link, you will perform a postback to the server, get the state of the control and show/hide accordingly. It will also change the text so you can click back again.

Simple when you know how!

Using Javascript, another method to remove all the CSS but not update any link text etc is to call the following function:

function hideCSS(){
	if(document.getElementsByTagName){
		for(n=0;n<document.getElementsByTagName("link").length;n++){
			if(document.getElementsByTagName("link")[n].getAttribute){
				if(document.getElementsByTagName("link")[n].getAttribute("rel").indexOf("stylesheet")!=-1){
					document.getElementsByTagName("link")[n].disabled="disabled"
					}
				}
			}
		}
	}

Not a happy bunny this morning. I uploaded a long post this week regarding using the Windows Mixer control API and the formatting is so screwy it’s not true.

Even the title does not appear on the summary page, rewritten it twice already but still no joy

I recently had a problem on a job where no matter what we did, we could not control the left/right balance programmatically on two specific PC’s.

We tried using various methods:

1. Windows Media player API
2. DirectSound APi
3. WinMM.dll
4. Praying

None of them worked although you could control the balance using the Windows sound vol (sndvol.exe) program from the taskbar.

We decided to try and use the same method so out came Depends.exe and we loaded the sndvol.exe to see what libraries and methods it was loading. We discovered a likely method called mixerSetControlDetails() and promptly started to google it to discover how it worked.

The following example is the result. After a lot of searching for c# code samples, I found a chinese site that had a code listing that I could modify to possibly fix our problem.

Well to cut a long story very short (not much time today), I got it working and implemented into the project. The code is below so feel free to use as you wish.

SoundControl.cs

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

}


Download the source files here

Enjoy – remember if your machine blows up or crashes, do not blame me

Firefox 3.0 is officially the most popular web browser in Europe, according to StatCounter’s latest statistics.

Although Mozilla’s browser lags behind Microsoft’s Internet Explorer if you add all of the latter’s different versions together, FireFox has finally pipped IE7 as the most used individual browser version – with 35.05 per cent of the market, according to the data.

Firefox, benefiting from the fact that it doesn’t have the same problem with ‘legacy’ users who stay on older versions of the browser and the arrival of IE8 which is prising people away from IE7.

Not much in it

The gap is currently just over half of a percentage point, and StatCounter CEO Aodhen Cullen believes that it will overtake IE’s complete range shortly.

“The move is partly explained by a small switch from IE 7.0 usage to IE 8.0 but also by growing market share overall by Firefox 3.0,” said Cullen.

“The data shows that Firefox is closing the gap and is now just 10% behind all IE versions in Europe.”

Apparently StatCounter analyse four billion pageloads per month, but it should be pointed out that other major website traffic monitoring companies come up with different figures.

By Patrick Goss

via Firefox 3.0 is Europe’s most popular browser | News | TechRadar UK.

URL Rewriting in asp.net (c#). (Download Example Project for URL Rewriting in asp.net at the end of this article)

One way to get yourselves rated better in the search engines is to get rid of the basic aspx page and replace it with something much more descriptive i.e.:

If I were selling Nokia phones, I may have a page called http://www.mydomain.com/nokia.aspx – not much good if I am trying to target a specific phone though is it? What about this then?

http://www.mydomain.com/Nokia-E71-Mobile-Phone-With-Email-And-Internet-Browser

Much more descriptive and much more likely to get the search engines juices flowing more and hence get you rated higher in the listings.

After searching around for a few solutions, I found this article by Scott GU (Microsoft Guru Extraordinaire) http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/02/26/tip-trick-url-rewriting-with-asp-net.aspx which got me excited.

He mentions a few methods, one of which I use on http://www.simonantony.co.uk which is running IIS7 by using the Rewrite module built into IIS – works a treat and has allowed me to convert a static html site into a more dynamic and search engine friendly version.

The other is to use a library from http://urlrewriter.net/ which is the other route I have taken. I’ve successfully implemented this on a project I am currently working upon and thought it would be nice of me to post some fully working example code that you can actually understand – the examples on the urlrewriter website/demos are very poor and not clear at all – no wonder so many people struggle to get it working.

Some blurb from the URLRewriting website will explain it more:

UrlRewriter.NET is an open-source, light-weight, highly configurable URL rewriting component for ASP.NET 1.1 and 2.0. UrlRewriter.NET provides similar IIS Rewrite capabilities that the Apache web server provides with mod_rewrite and .htaccess. You don’t need to install an ISAPI Rewrite filter to use the component. Best of all, UrlRewriter.NET is free and licensed with a very permissive MIT-style licence.

UrlRewriter.NET is a great Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tool. Using UrlRewriter.NET, you can create URL’s containing your target keywords, boosting your rankings.

With UrlRewriter.NET, you can:

* Rewrite URL’s from “user and Search Engine” friendly urls to the actual .aspx pages (also known as URL Masking, IIS Rewrite or ASP Rewrite)
* Redirect from old URL patterns to the new ones, ensuring the Search Engine spiders continue to follow your links (also known as URL Replace)
* Block certain visitors based on the User-Agent – very helpful for blocking crawlers that don’t obey the robots.txt protocol
* Ban users based on IP range (provides the capabilities of mod_rewrite on IIS)
* And much more…

UrlRewriter.NET is a pure .NET component written in C#, and does not require any ISAPI rewrite dll’s to be installed in IIS. You configure rules in a very readable XML format, either in your web.config file or an external rewriter configuration file.

UrlRewriter.NET is in use in many websites large and small such as DotNetKicks, and is embedded in several open source packages, such as the fantastic Yet Another Forum.NET.

Anyway here is how the project is constructed and how to get it working.

1. Create a new web project – I am using C# but if you really want to you can use VB
2. Download the urlrewriting library from the official site http://urlrewriter.net
3. Add a reference to the UrlRewritingNet.UrlRewriter.dll to your project
4. Open up the web.config file and replace the content with the following code:

<?xml version=”1.0″?>
<configuration>
<configSections>
<section name=”urlrewritingnet” requirePermission=”false”  type=”UrlRewritingNet.Configuration.UrlRewriteSection, UrlRewritingNet.UrlRewriter”  />
</configSections>

<urlrewritingnet
rewriteOnlyVirtualUrls=”true”
contextItemsPrefix=”QueryString”
defaultPage=”default.aspx”
defaultProvider=”RegEx”
xmlns=”http://www.urlrewriting.net/schemas/config/2006/07″ >
<rewrites>
<add name=”this-is-a-long-page-name”  virtualUrl=”^~/this-is-a-long-page-name”
rewriteUrlParameter=”ExcludeFromClientQueryString”
destinationUrl=”~/longpage.aspx”
ignoreCase=”true” />

<add name=”Product-Search-uk”  virtualUrl=”^~/Product-Search-uk”
rewriteUrlParameter=”ExcludeFromClientQueryString”
destinationUrl=”~/search.aspx”
ignoreCase=”true” />

<add name=”submit-your-company”  virtualUrl=”^~/submit-your-company”
rewriteUrlParameter=”ExcludeFromClientQueryString”
destinationUrl=”~/submit_company.aspx”
ignoreCase=”true” />

<add name=”this-is-my-site-blog”  virtualUrl=”^~/this-is-my-site-blog”
rewriteUrlParameter=”ExcludeFromClientQueryString”
destinationUrl=”~/blog.aspx”
ignoreCase=”true” />

<add name=”contact-my-company”  virtualUrl=”^~/contact-my-company”
rewriteUrlParameter=”ExcludeFromClientQueryString”
destinationUrl=”~/contact.aspx”
ignoreCase=”true” />

<add name=”Product-Search-uk-partnumber”  virtualUrl=”^~/product(.*).aspx”
rewriteUrlParameter=”ExcludeFromClientQueryString”
destinationUrl=”~/search.aspx?id=$1″
ignoreCase=”true” />

<!–<add name=”Rewrite”  virtualUrl=”^~/(.*)/Detail(.*).aspx”
rewriteUrlParameter=”ExcludeFromClientQueryString”
destinationUrl=”~/Default.aspx?language=$1&amp;id=$2″
ignoreCase=”true” />

<add name=”RedirectInApplication”  virtualUrl=”^~/(.*)/Default.aspx”
rewriteUrlParameter=”ExcludeFromClientQueryString”
destinationUrl=”~/$1/Detail_Redirected.aspx”
redirect=”Application”
redirectMode=”Permanent”
ignoreCase=”true” />

<add name=”KickBrowserToDomain”  virtualUrl=”^http\://(.*)/SampleWeb/kickto/(.*).aspx”
rewriteUrlParameter=”ExcludeFromClientQueryString”
destinationUrl=”http://$2?source=$1″
redirect=”Domain”
redirectMode=”Permanent”
ignoreCase=”true” />–>
</rewrites>
</urlrewritingnet>

<appSettings/>
<system.web>
<customErrors mode=”Off”>
</customErrors>
<httpModules>
<add name=”UrlRewriteModule” type=”UrlRewritingNet.Web.UrlRewriteModule, UrlRewritingNet.UrlRewriter” />
</httpModules>
<compilation debug=”true” />
</system.web>
</configuration>

• Create the aspx pages

1. blog.aspx
2. contact.aspx
3. default.aspx (this should already exist)
4. longpage.aspx
5. search.aspx
6. submit_company.aspx

• In Default.aspx add the following code:

<div id=”nav”>
<div id=”navcontainer”>
<ul id=”navlist”>
<li><a href=”default.aspx”>Home</a></li>
<li><a href=”this-is-a-long-page-name”>this-is-a-long-page-name</a></li>
<li><a href=”Product-Search-uk”>Product Search</a></li>
<li><a href=”submit-your-company”>Submit your company</a></li>
<li><a href=”this-is-my-site-blog”>Blog</a></li>
<li><a href=”contact-my-company”>Contact</a></li>
<li><a href=”product123.aspx”>Note that this aspx page does not actually exist – click it and see what happens</a></li>

</ul>
</div>
</div>

You will notice that the href links are defined in the web.config file.

• In search.aspx, add the following html code:

<div>
This is the region page – if you click on <a href=”product12345.aspx”>product12345.aspx</a>, you will be redirected here but the code will show the arguments of the page i.e. 12345 – confused? You will be!

</div>

• Now open up the code behind file for search.aspx and add in the Page_Load event:

if(Request.QueryString["id"] != null)
Response.Write(“querystring passed in: ” + Request.QueryString["id"]);
else
Response.Write(“No query string passed in”);

• Run the project. If you click on the search link, you will be taken to the search page but notice the URL in the browser window as it should be reading Product-Search-UK. Same for the other url’s as well except for the last one, if you click on that, a product id will be passed into the page as a querystring that you can use to display specific products on a single page – clever eh!

Anyway I hope this has helped you understand how to get a basic implementation of URL Rewriting in your site – i’d love to hear of any more examples you have used, if you want to post them here let me know.

Si

Download Example Project for URL Rewriting in asp.net

Quake Live – can’t wait to play this….

Eagerly awaited online shooter Quake Live goes into open Beta today, with the ad-supported game likely to quickly pick up a fan base.

The game formerly known as Quake Zero is id software’s and uses the id Tech 3 engine, but it is likely to be speed of gameplay rather than graphics that are the focus of this first person shooter.

Somewhat excitingly, the free game is expected to take advantage of advertising, and with the reputation of Quake, John Carmack and id among serious gamers, could help create a whole new model for games playing.

via Quake Live launching in open beta | News | TechRadar UK.