56K Modem Sounds Slowed Down 700%

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Today, I just want to show a crazy thing. Remember when we were used to surf  the internet with 56k modems? Well, there's this guy who decided to make some sort of song with the sound that comes out when the connection is established and the result is absolutely creepy. See and hear for yourself and have a nice day (if you can...)

ASP: export data to a Ms Word document

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We can create a Ms Word document as output of an ASP page. In the past I published articles about exporting to Ms Excel, to Ms Access and to PDF. In this post we'll see how to export data to Ms Word.

The way data is exported to a Ms Word file is probably the easiest. I assume we gather data from a database and have a resulting recordset (called RS_Word). We can display the records with a repeat region or not. In the following example I assume the data is unique, thus we will not use a repeat region. Let's imagine the data is just some pieces of plain text.

One year ago...

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One year ago I published my first post.

The web thought has grown amazingly since then.

It has more than 100 pageviews every day, and, even if not many comments have been submitted, I must admit I am quite happy about it - comments will eventually come. On the other hand, I really would like to know more about what you think, what are your experiences and thoughts and how my articles helped you (if they did at all).

I really need to thank everybody who supported me during this year and I hope to continue offering good quality articles to all of you.

The web thought could really grow more and more... but I think I do need your contribution, now. Please, post your comments, share the contents, add your account to the followers list and - if you like - submit your articles for publishing. That way we might know each other better... and make The web thought a good place where to find information about web developing.

Test for echo...

ASP: use FPDF to create a PDF with a dynamic table

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Following my two previous articles about FPDF (Create PDF files with FPDF and FPDF MultiCell with multiple lines and positioning), today I would like to share a way to create a table dynamically, getting the items from a database, and displaying those items one after the other.

As usual, we have to make some assumptions. First of all we have a database from which we will get the records for the table. As an example, we can imagine our table is something like:

FRUIT	IMAGE_URL
orange	/images/orange.jpg
apple	/images/apple.jpg
pear	/images/pear.jpg

Our goal is to create the PDF with the above table. We will create the table dynamically, and the table will have two columns: one for the fruits and one with the image of the related fruit.

If you are interested in the following explanation, but you haven't read the previous articles about FPDF, I suggest you read them before continuing, because here I assume you already know how to create a basic PDF file using FPDF.

ASP & IIS: global.asa and current user count

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The first time I've heard about the global.asa file, it was a long time ago when I wanted to show the current users on a home page. In fact, using the global.asa is not that difficult, and showing the users online is an old trick. I would like to show you what global.asa is and then use it to create a users online badge.

The global.asa

The global.asa is a small and optional file that you create in the root of your web site. We use the file to specify event scripts and objects that have session or application scope. As I said in the previous article (where we talked about sessions), the global.asa can be used to handle sessions - or, more specifically, to bind events to session.
There must be only one global.asa in the root of your web site and it can contain only:

1. ASP built-in object events;
2. object declarations;
3. TypeLibrary declarations.

ASP: the session object (vs cookies)

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I've been talking about cookies some time ago, however you should know there's another way of storing information if you use ASP: the session object. There's a big difference between cookies and sessions: cookies are client-side, while sessions are server-side. When we open an ASP page, the server creates an unique identifier that will determine the session id. While cookies can have a long expiration time, usually sessions have a predetermined timeout (20 minutes). Cookies are completely controlled by the code of the page and can be created, changed and destroyed using appropriate commands - as we saw in the aforementioned article. That is true for sessions as well, however the session unique identifier is always created when an ASP page is opened. By default, when an ASP request is made to the server, the session is automatically started and the unique identifier is stored for future use. The session ends after 20 minutes by default (it's possible to change that value programmatically or in IIS).

ASP, CSS & jQuery: dynamic styles and jQuery code for accordion menus

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In a recent project I developed, I had to create a dynamic accordion with jQuery. The accordion is basically a gallery menu, and the tree structure of the menu itself is taken from a table in a database. What I had to do was to apply different styles to elements that needed to have different ids. Why different ids? Because I had to apply different behaviours to every single tree element with jQuery.
To do so I created a loop to style the elements and dynamically generate the related jQuery code. The following example uses asp, css style sheets and jQuery, all together.

We start from here

Some assumptions have to be taken. First of all, there's a database with a table containing the menu. Something like:

m	sm
Drawings	Hand drawn
Drawings	Printed
Photos	Colour photos
Photos	Black and white

The above table is called menugallery. What we want is a tree menu with an accordion effect. The menu will be dynamically generated from the table.