Archive for June, 2008
First experiences with Visual Studio 2008
Posted by fr3dr1k | Filed under ASP.NET
I attended the Microsoft Mix Essentials ‘08 event on the 26th of June 2008 and got two pieces of trial software, Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional and Microsoft Expressions Web. Today I am installing Visual Studio, and it’s taken 20 minutes so far to install. It’s a 2.9 GB install!!
The features I am most excited about is support for Silverlight and WPF as well as intellisense for Javascript and CSS. There are also a few server controls that Brad Abrams demonstrated that I am very excited. One server control in particular allows you to specify the type of markup that should appear in a server control instead of just accepting (or being forced) to live with the markup provided. Gridview controls use tables for layout, and I am pretty sure DataList controls do as well, and the simple fact is that tables are not always desirable.
Working with PowerPoint Presentations from Access
Posted by fr3dr1k | Filed under Application Development
Why would you want to use Powerpoint and Access together you may ask? I can give you a brief description of a scenario to illustrate the possible use of Access and Powerpoint, and I believe its always a good idea to narratively describe a problem (or solution) before you jump straight into it.
The church I go to every Sunday uses projectors to display hymns and scripture, and of course they use Powerpoint. For each sermon at our church we have a Powerpoint presentation that displays a certain number of hymns and certain parts of scripture. The order in which the scripture and hymns appear on the slides is pre-determined by our pastor’s liturgy. The liturgy determines in which order the hymns are sung and the scriptures are read. The hymns and scriptures might appear before and after each other. The key though is that the hymns and scripture are elements that are re-used the whole time, and are simply arranged within the liturgy, and theoretically you should not be re-creating the content for each sermon. Instead you should have a system in place that allows you to dynamically create the content as you need it. More specifically you should have a database that stores the scripture and hymn elements and have an interface that extracts the data as you need it and generates the content, which would be Powerpoint slides. So here I was thinking that there has to be some interoperability between Powerpoint and Access. On a simple user interface level this interoperability does not exist, but where it does seem to exist is in something called “Automation”. I found this MSDN article which uses VBA to achieve that exact result. It seems pretty simple at face value.
Light up the Web – Mix Essentials 2008 Review
Posted by fr3dr1k | Filed under AJAX, ASP.NET, Web 2.0, Web Design, Web Development, Web Technologies
I attended the Mix Essentials 2008 event at Canal Walk (Cape Town, South Africa) today and there were quite a few things that interested me. There were five speakers at the event:
- David Ives – Developer and Platform Strategy Group for Microsoft in South Africa – Microsoft
- Brad Abrams – Group Program Manager for the UI Framework and Services Team – Microsoft
- Michael Koester – Designer Marketing Manager for Middle East and Africa and Central and Eastern Europe – Microsoft
- Julian Harris – Conchango
- David Pugh-Jones – Microsoft
The event was split into two tracks, a developer track and a designer track, but it generally focussed on Silverlight, and more specifically on two software packages, Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Studio, and even more specifically it introduced XAML as a common way for these packages to share content between them. XAML, Extensible Application Markup Language is an XML-like language that defines graphic elements in a human readable form that can be used in vector-imaging programs as well as Visual Studio 2008. This gives designers the flexibility to design interfaces without having to worry about programmers not being able to replicate their designs in a programming environment. Julian Harris demonstrated that you can export files from Adobe Illustrator into XAML format and import that XAML into Visual Studio 2008. XAML is also used in the Expression Studio range of products which includes amongst other two interesting products:
- Expression Blend
- Expression Design
Expression Blend is, almost like Adobe’s Flash Studio, which is an IDE that allows you to create WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) and Silverlight applications. WPF is a technology that allows developers (and designers) to create applications that give users a better user experience (UX). Contemporary windows applications generally use square (often mundane) windows, whereas WPF applications allow designers to implement creative graphics into the interface. Rounded corners and transparent backgrounds for instance are used, and because Expression Blend can read and understand XAML, none of a designer’s creative flair is lost. The developer no longer has any excuses to develop interfaces that do not exactly meet the designer’s design.
Ideas for Facebook applications
Posted by fr3dr1k | Filed under Facebook, Web 2.0, Web Technologies
Social media is the new craze and one of the most popular platforms is Facebook. Facebook allows its users to develop applications which other users can add and use. So today I thought about a list of applications that I might use on Facebook.
Applications for Facebook can generally be grouped in two areas, business and entertainment. My focus is towards business. I can think of two ways of using Facebook so far:
- Advertise your product(s): Use Facebook to advertise your products and allow people to browse through your products.
- Advertise your service(s): Here I was thinking that maybe I allow developers and graphic designers to list themselves and find out about freelance work.
- An application for Facebook questions: An application that allows you to post questions directly from your website to Facebook questions.
5 Tips for Developing a new Website
Posted by fr3dr1k | Filed under Web Design, Web Development
- Firstly determine the purpose and aim of the website. What do you want to achieve with the website?
- Determine the type of content you want to put on your website.Once you have determined the aim and purpose of your website you need to determine what the nature of the content on your website will be.
- Look at design galleries I do spend time looking at other designs, not with the intent to directly copy them, but for inspiration. Sometimes you can’t get your head around a certain look-and-feel and you might get an idea from somewhere. I personally love Smashing Magazine. The designs they showcase are some of the best and most creative around.
- Use a CSS-based layout. Avoid the use of tables for layout. Rather focus on a CSS-based layout that looks the most consistent between browsers. I found The Perfect 3 Column Liquid Layout to be useful as well as a Simple 2 column CSS layout
- Don’t use pirated software. If you are not willing to pay the price for a piece of software, then you may have to spend time learning how to code web pages.
Wordbook and Armin van Buuren ASOT ep 356
Posted by fr3dr1k | Filed under Facebook, Web Technologies, Wordpress
While chilling to Armin van Buuren’s A State of Trance Episode 356 I decided to instal Wordbook, a plugin that:
Use your WordPress blog to publish updates to your Profile Mini-Feed and your friends’ News Feeds.
It takes a few seconds to download the WordBook plugin and a few more seconds to extract the contents and upload it to a webserver. Once uploaded go to “Settings”, where you will be prompted to provide a one-time code, which is generated through Facebook. The code just allows you to post on Wordpress and this allows the posts to be displayed on your Facebook profile, without having to login to Facebook. This is my first post with this plug in! So I will see if it works!
Its sad to say but the Wordpress theme directory is not up to scratch. The themes seem old and out of date. I have added a new theme called TechJunkie and it seems like a pretty awesome theme.
Ora Time and Expense
Posted by fr3dr1k | Filed under Web Development, Web Technologies
As a web developer I have not find a way of tracking my work, and creating invoices or time sheets for that work. Its often a tedious and difficult task, and I do believe if it time management is applied wisely it can greatly improve productivity. In comes Ora Time and Expense, a Flash Application that uses the AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) to run as an application on your desktop. Running this application requires Flash and you have to install the runtime as well. Once the flash player and runtime is installed the application will be downloaded to your PC from where you can install it. Running the application for the first time you are greeted by the screen below:
The first thing you might want to do is configure the application for your specific use. To do that you simply go to the configure section, a button is located top right, which once clicked will bring up a screen similar to this one:
The screen contains all your personal details, and you will note that there are 7 tabs at the bottom:
Each tab needs to be configured individually for your specific needs. Once you have configured them you can start using Ora Time and Expense to track the amount of time you spend on a project. To do this you simply click on the Start Timer button at the top. Before the timer starts another screen will appear asking you to provide task details. Complete it and click start, and you should notice a timer appearing in the top left corner. You can pause, restart and stop this timer for each task. So if you take a break between working on a project you can pause the timer. Once you have completed a task you click stop and it will record the time spent on that task and project. If the task and project is approved you can tick the approved tick box.
The best feature of this application is the reporting it does on your project work. You can export reports in several formats, xls, csv, xml, etc. You can export reports based on your expenses and time. It can also generate invoices. This is proving to be really useful. It is not suitable for a team environment or a multi-user environment, but is ideal for a developer or designer working by them self.
Business meets Web Development meets Web Design
Posted by fr3dr1k | Filed under Web Design, Web Development
One of the issues that has been plaguing me for the last couple of years is the issue of bringing the design of a website closer to the functional requirements of a website. Web development, in my opinion, involves the creation of frameworks that allow a business requirement to be effectively represented in a web-based environment. Often this involves the analysis of a business requirement and translating that business requirement into a functional business resource. At the end of the day a web-based resource for any business should be a functional one that speaks directly to your business need. The process of developing a website should ideally start off by looking at your business and specifically looking at the way your business is structured. It helps, but is not necessary, if your business has a strategic model by which it defines itself. A strategic model, however, is not necessary to build a great and effective web-based resource. What is needed, though, is a good understanding of what your business does. By understanding what your business does and by defining what it does in a formal manner, you can develop a web-based resource. Formal definitions may need to be captured, and I think that it makes sense to develop a strategy that allows you to capture the way your business works in a way that is easy to access and edit at any given time. The key to capturing information about your business is to actively keep it up-to-date, because effectively you are developing your business even more by defining it. One way to capture business-related information is to use a wiki. Wikipedias are great for sharing information in a structured way, and allowing others to contribute to that information in a collaborative and sharing manner. A wiki can be created within a business environment with a minimal amount of effort, and it should ideally be used to store definitions that are unique within your business. I have found that if I compile information in a narrative fashion before I build a solution, I tend to develop a better understanding of the solution I am building. The most popular wiki software available has to be MediaWiki. It requires Apache, PHP and MySQL to work and takes less than 30 minutes to install and configure. Popular websites such as Facebook use a wiki to store information relating to their API’s, Markup Language (FBML), Query Language (FBQL) and JavaScript (FBJS). I have seen or heard people compare Wiki’s to Blogs, but I do believe and strongly feel that they are not the same. Blogs have a chronological nature, whereas wiki’s have a more static nature. Wiki’s also differ because a wiki works on a search-and-if-not-found-create basis. It means that if you do not find an item that you search for, you can create that item.
Web Design Techniques
Posted by fr3dr1k | Filed under Web Design, Web Development, Web Technologies
There are a couple of design techniques that I have not spent enough time to learn, or master. Web design is not one of my strong abilities, but it is a skill that I believe you can learn and become good at. As with a lot of things good web designs can be created by following some basic principles and guidelines. One key thing that I have not yet mastered is designing nice rounded corners for buttons or areas of content. It has to be mentioned that there are a two basic ways of achieving the rounded corner effect:
- JavaScript
- CSS and Images
What are the benefits of both or either method? ASP.NET Ajax provides a rounded corner control that is extremely easy to implement on an ASP.NET website. What if you do not use ASP.NET? Well then you can use Nifty Corners to add rounded corners to your website.
After searching Google for articles on rounded corners, I came across an article on 456 Berea Street that explains how to use Javascript and CSS to achieve the rounded corner effect. Strangely enough they don’t seem to use that effect immediately on their own website. How important is it to use rounded corners on a website?
CSS Balanced Columns
This is another technique worth knowing. Faux columns without using images? Now thats interesting. Balance your CSS Columns with JavaScript
