Blog ranking... just for fun

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Just a quick note, out of the ordinary flow of posts...

I've read a short article a few minutes ago and I can't stop laughing. In the article it is said that if you want to increase the traffic to your blog, you should place at the beginning of every post a photo of a beautiful girl... possibly with a small dress... if any...
I won't put the link of the aforementioned article, so don't ask...

I am just still laughing out loud (and my boss looks at me suspiciously...)

ASP & CSS: highlight selected menu item

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When creating menus for a web site, it is a good practise to use an inclusion, so that we write the menu only once. When the menu is included on every page, we might need to highlight the selected option in the menu itself.
For example, we can have a menu like:

• Home Page
• Option 1
• Option 2
• Option 3

When the user selects "Option 2" and load the related page, the menu should look like:

• Home Page
• Option 1
• Option 2
• Option 3

How can we do it? It's quite easy: we will use some ASP and CSS.

ASP: is the client still connected?

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I recently wrote a short post about things not to forget when creating ASP document. One of the general tips I mentioned was about checking if the client is still connected, before starting long procedures like complicated server requests (i.e. SQL queries).
In this article we are going to see how to do it with the response object (IsClientConnected).

CSS: fixed header and footer

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Today we are going to create a header and a footer with fixed position. Our page will have a center part which will naturally overflow when needed, while the header and the footer will stay where they are (top and bottom). The content in the central part will eventually go under the header (when scrolled down) and under the footer (if longer than the viewport).
Nothing complicated, but we will need some little CSS tricks.

Let's start.

HTML5: is div dead? Not, really...

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I must admit I am not a great fan of HTML5. First I've tried to understand the new tags and then I've started using them on new projects, sometimes ago. I even contacted the Doctors on HTML5 Doctor to submit some questions and prepare an interview to be published on the web thought. They were obviously too busy and, even if they initially agreed on the interview, they've never got back to me with the answers.
Anyway, in this short post I will try to explain where the new content formatting tags should be used and how they can replace the div tag... if ever.

SQL: the IN operator

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The IN operator can be very useful when we need to perform SQL queries where we need to filter the results with more than one possible value.
Just to understand the power of the IN operator,  we need to go back a few steps and see how we usually filter data from a table with the OR operator.

Web Development: handheld device emulators

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In the past months I've made some researches about web development and design for handheld devices. The main problem, as we all know, is that we should have most of the devices sold, just to test how our web sites or applications are displayed on them. Does our newly created web site look just right on an iPad or a Galaxy Tab?

To be sure we are doing things properly, we need to test the web creation, and emulators can be of some help. In this post I gathered all the relevant tools, as a repository for future reference.

HTML: what is a DOM tree?

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If you are a regular visitor of web sites related to coding and web development, you have surely encountered the term "DOM" or, more often, the concept of DOM tree. In this short post we will explore the meaning of DOM and of DOM tree. I will try to put it in the simplest way possible, so that whenever we will encounter the term again in other documents or reference web sites, we will know what they are talking about.

What is DOM?

When we create an HTML page, we know that the document is meant to be understood and processed by a dedicated software. The latter is called "User agent" and usually it is a web browser. When our beloved user agent starts to parse the HTML document, it basically transforms the HTML markup into a DOM tree. DOM is an acronym and it stands for Document Object Model.

The DOM tree

The DOM tree is actually - guess what - a tree. It has a root and branches that are called nodes. Inside nodes there are elements or other nodes. We can visualise a DOM tree exactly like a tree and nodes like branches that can have other branches and so on.

jQuery: loading content while user scrolls (infinite scroll)

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There's this new fashion of creating page with infinite scroll. In order to obtain the desired effect, there are some jQuery plug-ins out there.
Here are some.

ASP: some general tips

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The new year has just began, and you're probably still trying to get things working after your well earned holidays. Don't worry, it won't be a too much complicated article: just a few tips not to forget when programming in ASP.

We will examine tips in no particular order, just as they poured in my mind while I was thinking about how some basic things are easily overlooked while programming. That could happen because we aren't aware of them or just because we might be lazy enough to forget about them.

Ok, take a deep breath and let's start.

Web Design: develop an effective navigation menu

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When developing a web site, one thing we should concentrate on is the navigation menu. Considering that probably a menu is the most important part of our web development process, I would like to share some ideas about it, things to keep in mind while we start thinking about an effective navigation menu.

What kind of menu we need

The first thing we should consider - while our project is still a blank and white piece of paper - is: what kind of menu we really need? It seems a dumb question, but we need to focus on what is the true purpose of our - yet to be born - navigation menu.
Knowing what is the general purpose of our web site, lets us concentrate on the structure and content of the menu. For example: if our site is a marketplace, we need to focus on selling products, while if our site is just displaying our production range, we need to focus on products marketing.
The concept is quite clear if we compare two well-known web sites: Apple and Amazon.

CSS: iPhone 4 in pure CSS3

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Yesterday I've received an interesting link from a friend of mine. I won't comment it but I would like you to say what you think (in case you still have time and need to do it).
Here's the link:

iPhone 4 in pure CSS3

Enjoy and see you next time...

Top ten most followed posts

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Today I'm going to do a bit of self-promotion.
The following is the top ten of the most viewed posts on the web thought. It was taken from statistics near the end of December.
Maybe you have missed some articles and this is the opportunity of rediscovering them...

10. CSS: Custom fonts with CSS3 (@font-face) 28 Feb 2011
9. VBScript: How to check if a file exists on a remote server 15 Sep 2010
8. ASP: FPDF MultiCell with multiple lines and positioning 25 May 2011
7. CSS & HTML: nested lists with style 1 Jun 2011
6. jQuery & JavaScript: Christmas effects 25 Nov 2011
5. jQuery: random quotes from a txt file 22 Nov 2010
4. jQuery: enhancing html tables' usage with DataTables plugin 20 Oct 2010
3. jQuery & JavaScript: Analogue clocks 10 Jan 2011
2. ASP: Create pdf files with FPDF 11 Oct 2010
1. CSS: Making background image fit any screen resolution 18 Oct 2010

2011: what happened (internet related main facts)

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2011 has ended and we all truly hope that 2012 will be a better year.
Just for fun, I've gathered some notable facts happened in 2011 that are related to Internet, in some way or another.
Here is the list and I hope you'll enjoy reading it, while we are still relaxing during Christmas holidays.

The facts are presented in no particular order (and surely not by relevance), and they are included just because in some way they caught my attention.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

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I hope that not many will see this message at exactly the time I scheduled it.
In any case

HAPPY NEW 2012 TO ALL OF YOU

Hoping it will be better than 2011.