Papillon

Mystical Programming

2005-10-15T12:07:00.000Z

Touching on the Truth. Developer as medium (!?). I've always felt that this sense of beauty is what separates good developers from the rest. This also applies to artists, musicians, politicians, sports.......etc....etc. Reminds me of how, like painting a picture, when you're developing a program, you sometimes know you have the correct solution, but you don't really understand why until you've actually finished it, stand back and take a look. At that point, it won't be perfect, but the code will now be telling you what needs doing.

Easy Confirm Delete in ASP.NET. No code required!

2005-10-13T13:12:00.000Z

I got fed up of recreating the wheel all the time and of the messy bodge of attaching confirmation JavaScript as an attribute to Delete buttons during data binding. So...

I created this ickle JavaScript file (tested IE6 and Firefox) using non-intrusive, DHTML. As well as being simpler, you'll also get rid of all that old-style, heavy, spaghetti JavaScript that ASP.NET spits out all over your tidy HTML!

Instructions:

1. Paste the code below into a file called comdel.js

2. Add a link to it in your <head>

<script src="comdel.js" type=text/javascript></script>

3. Set CssClass="comdel" on any <asp:Button> or <asp:LinkButton> for which you require confirmation.

4. That's it! Never get bogged down in JavaScript attributes again.

function xPreventDefault(e) {
if (e && e.preventDefault) {
e.preventDefault();
}
else if (window.event) {
window.event.returnValue=false;
}
}

function xEventTarget(e) {
if (e && e.target) {
  return e.target
}
else if (window.event && window.event.srcElement) {
  return window.event.srcElement
}
else {
  return null
}
}

function comdel(e) {
var el=xEventTarget(e);
if (!el) return;

if (!confirm('Delete this record?')) {
xPreventDefault(e);
return false;
}
}

xAddEventListener(window,'load',onLoad,false);

window.onload - Fix so works ASAP after DOM loaded

2005-10-10T23:13:00.000Z

Solution here.

Lisa Bassinder

2005-10-09T23:04:00.000Z

Lisa Bassinder of Ecclesfield, Sheffield - where ARE you now?

Witchery

2005-08-01T19:53:00.000Z

The Secret Garden
Originally uploaded by PapillonUK.

Spent last night in the "Guard Room" at The Witchery in Edinburgh. This has gotta be Scotland's (if not the UK's) most superb hotel. When the receptionist told us "to follow that woman" to our room - we weren't prepared for the trek across the street, though a secret passageway and up a flight of Harry Potteresque spiral stairs that ensued! Sumptuous is too shallow a word for this place. Forgot my digital camera - but we bought a cheapy disposable, will upload some photos later - if any turned out! Have stuck one in of "The Secret Garden" where we had the most gorgeous food ever for now. Thanks to Lesley who surprised me with this for my birthday. Helped soften the blow!

Cove Boutique

2005-06-21T22:19:00.000Z

Fantastic fashion store in Kilmarnock, Scotland with an incredible website ;-)
Cove Boutique

Simple Character Entity Reference

2005-01-17T15:02:00.000Z

A Simple Character Entity Reference :-)

Show size of VIEWSTATE at the bottom of your page

2005-01-07T11:56:00.000Z

Stick this handy bit of JavaScript right at the bottom of your ASP.NET page to show the size of your VIEWSTATE in bytes

    <script language="javascript">
      var buf = document.forms[0]["__VIEWSTATE"].value;
      document.write("View state is " + buf.length + " bytes");
    </script>

Creating a valid XHTML web page - Step 1

2004-11-23T23:30:00.000Z

OK, with thanks to Colin Coller's fantastic utility CopySourceAsHtml for pasting code from Visual Studio into HTML, here's the templates. Choose the one you want then just cut and paste into your editor:

Strict XHTML 1.0

All presentation is to be controlled by CSS (no <font> tags etc.). The <target> attribute is also not allowed, so if you want a link to open in its own window you'll have to use JavaScript.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

<head>

<title>Title</title>

</head>

<body>

</body>

</html>

Transitional XHTML 1.0

Less strict - closest to HTML. Allows presentational markup, deprecated elements and attributes (eg: <body bgcolor>) and the <target> attribute on links.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<head>

<title>Title</title>

</head>

<body>

</body>

</html>

Transitional XHTML 1.0 Frameset

Inherits all the features of the Transitional XHTML DOCTYPE and also allows use of framesets.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Frameset//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-frameset.dtd">

<head>

<title>title</title>

</head>

<body>

Put your noframes content here.

</body>

</noframes>

</frameset>

</html>

Showing HTML and code samples in your blog - ugh!

2004-11-20T22:55:00.000Z

OK, I was going to paste in the XHTML templates required for STRICT, TRANSITIONAL and FRAMESET XHTML...BUT...what a pain the *rse it is trying to show example HTML code in a blog template?
As soon as i've worked out an easy way to do this (something i'll want to do a lot of) i'll carry on with the blog! . . . Advice needed methinks! There must be some sort of utitily, maybe this chappy (Colin Coller) has an answer - at least for code from Visual Studio 2003?

designing with web standards

2004-11-16T11:50:00.000Z

Just completed working through Mr Zeldman's book "designing with web standards" .
All i can say is, if you are a web developer make it the next book you read - for all our sakes! Comments, notes to follow...