David Seruyange's Radio Weblog

Wednesday, December 04, 2002

Visual Design for the Intermediate

Check it out. Worth a post, worth OSK.

posted in [home], [technie]

10:04:57 PM    comment []

Just Politics

"The San Francisco Bay Area [Nancy Pelosi represents] has the most educated population America; it is home to three world-class research universities (Stanford, UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco) that launched Silicon Valley, the biotechnology industry and the atomic bomb. It boasts the most ethnically diverse population in America, with the least residential segregation. Trent Lott's Mississippi is near the bottom in education with no major research facility and has a long history of racism. Which, do you think, should be the future of America?"

- A letter from Barbara Kautz to The Economist

Hm... she does have a point there.

posted in [home], [prattle]

9:58:07 PM    comment []

Dynamic Web Control Generation: Breaking Old Habits

Ah, for the days of classic ASP I thought early today. I need to dynamically generate some things from the server side so my old habits kick in and I thinks to meself:

<%
For i=0 to 10
   Response.Write("<input id='dyn" & i & "'... >")
Next
%>

Doesn't quite work with ASP.NET. "Grrrr" I think to myself until I dig up an old post from The Code Project on the very subject. Two seconds and I realize ASP.NET is not only easier but more robust. For dynamic controls:

1. Use a placeholder control somewhere on your page:
<asp:PlaceHolder id="afronaut" Runat="server" />

2. Use some C# to access and build the controls collection of your placeholder:
private void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e){
   for(int i=0; i<3;i++){
      TextBox tx = new TextBox();
      afronaut.Controls.Add(tx);
   }
}

Once again it is proved that ASP.NET, while breaking old habits, surely is more robust. Probably the nicest thing I can think of right now is that it will work well with User Controls which are much more sophisticated than anything you could muster with the traditional Response.Write.

posted in [home], [technie]

9:21:43 PM    comment []

Groove is S1CK

I kept hearing about this thing called 'Groove' on other blogs, especially from people I respect and admire. A lot of time was spent on internals though - I had little idea what it did. When I finally found out it was surprising ecstacy.

Groove is powerful groupware - internet groupware that seems to be based largely on a peer to peer (P2P) approach. From a Groove 'workspace', one can collaborate from multiple machines or with multiple people. File sharing, discussion forums, chatting, even shared browsing becomes easy.

I got the other developers here to install it and now we have a workspace on my machine that we're using to collaborate on our project. The filesharing bit eliminates Source Safe for smaller tasks and the messaging and chat are less intrusive than IM software (we were using MSN Messenger).

But there are two things that really make me excited about Groove. One: it is free for personal use. Two: it seems the company is working really hard on opening it as a framework to develop custom applications on.

So, my less than subliminal message: use Groove!

posted in [home], [technie]

5:35:29 PM    comment []