Programming Archives
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Jan 24, 2009
People frequently ask us to code functions to build feed files for shopping comparison engines such as Google Products, Yahoo Shopping, Shopping.com, Shopzilla and the like. Google and Yahoo feed specifications are easy to find, but the others tend to remain elusive and require quite a bit of sleuthing to find. To save others time, I'm going to provide links to each of the shopping engine feed specifications that we've worked with.
Continue reading "Comparison Shopping Engine Feed Specifications" »
By Justin Gattuso
Posted on Aug 26, 2008
Comments (1)
Recently we rolled out our Silverlight File Uploader Demo out on our Sandbox. We also submitted it to the Silverlight 2 Beta 2 Gallery over at the official Microsoft Silverlight site. Within about a week it was reviewed and accepted and published out to the site, since that time we've received a few comments on the control, specifically asking for us to explain how it works.
Continue reading "File Uploader Demo 'Under the Hood'" »
By Donovan Myers
Posted on Aug 23, 2008
Last week I had the displeasure of applying for a new credit card and it's accompanying 0% balance transfer offer on the Internet. Now, I can't say that the whole process was horrible - and don't worry, everything worked out in the end - but one single thing could have made the process a lot more enjoyable:
Confirmations!
Read on to hear about my experience.
Continue reading "Online Banking No No: Um, what's going on here? " »
By Justin Gattuso
Posted on Aug 1, 2008
Serialization is the process of converting objects to a stream of information that can then be saved to disk, sent over the network, committed to a database or otherwise stored in a state where it can later be loaded and recreated.
Continue reading ".NET Serialization - What is it and how to decide which method to use?" »
By Justin Gattuso
Posted on Jul 10, 2008
Obfuscation, aside from being a tongue-twister to pronounce, is an important topic within the realm of .NET development. While some folks around the inter-webs might have you believing that obfuscation is a useless, needless or worse - a complete joke and waste of your time - they couldn't be any further from the truth.
Continue reading ".NET Obfuscation - A Waste of Time? Or Not?" »
By Justin Gattuso
Posted on Jun 24, 2008
There are generally two camps of thought when it comes to comments: (1) some people stress that they be used often and fairly heavily, and (2) others will advise that they are best not to be used at all except in very complex situations where some object, method or algorithm simply needs to be explained. In practice however, the use of comments typically falls somewhere in between. In the end, experience is the best determinant when it comes to using and managing code comments.
Continue reading "Code Comments" »
By Justin Gattuso
Posted on Jun 5, 2008
Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) provide an outstanding architecture on which to design and implement custom user interfaces and controls. Through the use of the XAML specification, the creation of UI's and custom controls has never been easier or more rewarding. In this post I'll be showcasing a very useful and completely custom new control built within Silverlight, the InetSolution File Uploader control.
Continue reading "What is Silverlight? - Part 2: A Custom Control Using Silverlight" »
By Justin Gattuso
Posted on May 30, 2008
Microsoft Silverlight is a brand new technology built on the heels of Windows Vista's GUI, or more specifically, the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). Silverlight currently exists in two versions: version 1.1, which is the only stable release out right now, and version 2.0, which is still in beta, though its expected to be released to the public in stable form sometime in August 2008.
Continue reading "What is Microsoft Silverlight? (and what it is not)- Part 1" »
By Justin Gattuso
Posted on May 21, 2008
I've never really seen a decent standard on writing SQL statements, that may be because I haven't looked for any standards or I didn't like what I have seen. For the most part when reading SQL statements written in stored procedures, SQL text files, embedded in data access layers etc, I cringe most times realizing the smashed blob of characters is actually a SQL statement.
Continue reading "SQL Formatting & Guidelines" »
By Donovan Myers
Posted on Sep 29, 2007
Do you have a long form on your web site that might be intimidating to users? After all, you only require about half of the fields on your form? Now you can use XHTML and JavaScript to allow your users to hide the optional fields and only fill out what is required of them. Heck, you could even hide the optional fields by default.
Continue reading "How To Hide Optional Fields on Long Web Forms" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Aug 2, 2007
The second most common question that managers at banks, credit unions and other financial institutions have asked me over the past year is, "What is the best way to secure our online forms, such as loan applications and contact us forms?" Here are a few simple guidelines your development team should follow when creating your online applications.
Continue reading "Seven Tips Every Bank and Credit Union Manager Should Know About Securing Online Forms" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Jul 30, 2007
We're fortunate to have two very experienced database engineers on staff at InetSolution, and we bill a pretty hefty rate for their services. Today a frustrating experience reminded me why the fees people pay for database design are worth for more than the price they usually pay.
Continue reading "A Simple Database Design Decision Can Save (or Cost) Thousands of Dollars" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Jul 21, 2007
Comments (3)
Subversion is a slick, easy to learn and use version control system for software developers. One nice feature of Subversion is that it runs equally well on Windows and Unix, and it also works over HTTP & HTTPS, which is great if your development team works offsite often. But setting up HTTPS access and web-based repository viewing via WebSVN can be tricky on Windows, so I’ve documented the steps I use to setup Subversion 1.4 + Apache 2.2 + WebSVN 2.0 on Windows.
Continue reading "How to Setup Subversion + Apache + WebSVN on Windows" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Jul 18, 2007
Many site owners use Google's Co-Op Custom Search widget to allow visitors to search for content on their website. It works well and it's free, but seeing your competitors' Google Ads in the search results on YOUR website is irritating. Now, for $100 per year, you can eliminate those ads and also customize your search results using Google's Custom Search Business Edition that Google launched yesterday.
Continue reading "CSBE Puts Google's Search Technology On Your Website, with No Ads" »
By Donovan Myers
Posted on Mar 16, 2007
Recently, I was asked by one of our clients to come up with a way to make one set of input fields required if a particular radio button was checked and another set of input fields if the other radio button was checked. That would be just a simple JavaScript form check, however we also wanted to use CSS to visually let the user know that the field had just become required by making the text bold as well as adding a red asterisk (*) to the beginning.
Continue reading "Creating conditionally required input fields with visual feedback using DHTML, XHTML, and CSS" »
By Justin Gattuso
Posted on Nov 21, 2006
Here at InetSolution we do a lot of work with banking applications and due to this we run into the need to validate ABA numbers for proper length, format and checksum. ABA numbers are bank routing and transit numbers that are assigned to banks and credit unions in the United States. These are 9 digit values with a built-in checksum value that results from an internal algorithm to ensure that a given 9 digit string is in fact a real ABA number.
We have a small and very simple component to help programmers using .NET to perform the ABA validation without worrying about the internal algorithm involved, just feed it a string and it will perform its magic to let you know if the string is a validly formatted ABA number or not, and if it isn’t, how it is wrong so you can let your users know.
Continue reading ".Net Component to Perform ABA Validation" »
By
Posted on Sep 13, 2006
Comments (3)
In this example, I’m showcasing how we can use ASP and AJAX to check for whether a username exists before a user completes a website registration form. When registering to join a community website, such as www.digg.com, users must typically choose a username or handle. Normally such usernames must be unique to the community, and because of this new users often run into the problem of choosing a name that is already in use. A couple common results occur on a typical registration form when a user submits his data:
- The page reloads with a message indicating that the username is already in use, allowing him to choose another username and try again.
- In some very bad cases, the page is refreshed, destroying everything the user input on the form requiring him to start over.
I’ll be adding a feature that allows the user to enter a username and check immediately if the username is available before submitting the entire form. Through the use of AJAX and ASP, we will update only a small section of the page rather than reloading the entire page.
Continue reading "Using ASP and AJAX to check availability of a username" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Aug 31, 2006
Comments (1)
Numerous bank and credit union website managers have asked me why their website traffic and sales dropped after launching new, improved websites. Numerous factors have contributed to the declindes, but there is one frequent cause that the designers didn't plan for when building the new sites - page renaming without setting up proper redirects. If you’re planning to redesign your credit union or bank's website, you need to understand what this means, why it happens and how you can avoid the problem.
Continue reading "Prevent Search Rankings Drop After Site Redesign with 301 Redirect" »
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Aug 22, 2006
Most search optimization experts know the benefits of including keywords in URLs. But many credit union and bank websites store content in a database and use query string values to pass a record identifier to a single page that displays the content dynamically. The URLs look like http://…/news-display.asp?articleid=7584. Unfortunately, this method does not allow you to show search engines your keywords in the page file name like you could with a static HTML page. There is a solution however, and it’s called URL rewriting.
Continue reading "How to Rewrite URLs in ASP on IIS Using ISAPI_Rewrite" »
By Donovan Myers
Posted on Jun 28, 2006
Before you begin to start switching CSS styles on your web site, it is very important that you have already developed it using structural XHTML. It is also necessary that you have created at least 1 style sheet, and for the purposes of this tutorial, 1 alternate style sheet.
Continue reading "CSS Style Switcher: A quick and dirty how-to" »
By Eric Repec
Posted on Jun 27, 2006
Comments (1)
When working with database recordsets in an Active Server Pages environment, I often need to store my data in an array. The difficulty with arrays is that there are no native functions in VB Script to easily sort an array. I've created a quick function that will easily sort arrays.
Continue reading "how to sort an array in ASP" »
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