Posted by MicheeRose, geek on November 29th, 2005 — Posted in .Net
See, I knew I could find the answer once I started hunting…
Indeed, I have discovered the .Net method for generating the table. I still hold that it’s not intuitive. Okay, maybe it could become intuitive but regardless it’s clunky. First I have to create row & cell variables, then set the various properties, then add the cell(s) to the row, then the row(s) to the table. Each action being a new line of code. Sheesh! And apparently I can’t (or it requires more steps) reuse a variable. Example: I was building my table header (here I have a problem: asp-generated tables won’t use the thead tag; although they will correctly generate th cells…). I didn’t want to create a new variable for all 5 of my header cells. So I set values, added the cell & modified the values again, wash, rinse, repeat. But that doesn’t work. I think there’s a cell.clear property somewhere, but I haven’t explored that yet (I will shortly).Edit 11/30/05: Ooops, wasn’t thinking about how it was referencing the variable. I started to explain my problem to someone else and it dawned on me.
Oh yes, and one more complaint (yes, this is a complaint): when setting column widths, I can’t simply do cell.width = “15%”. No. I have to do cell.width = unit.percentage(15). Gracious me!
I guess I’m just the “quick and dirty” sort of programmer.—even though I’d like to think I write well-thought-out code…I just don’t like to spend a lot of time actually coding my solution.
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Posted by MicheeRose, geek on November 29th, 2005 — Posted in .Net
I’m finally getting into the ASP.Net portion of my AJAX(ish) project. I’ve only recently acquired Visual Studio 2003. I managed to install the software a week or so ago but I’ve been too busy with other projects to anything on it.
I’ve got the javascript part of it work (which is nice). My next step is to generate the page.
The page is a large table of information. I probably should make each summary level its own row, which then would contain a table. But I’m not thrilled with the idea of lots of nesting tables (when the user clicks for details, that’s a nested table within a row). But then, nesting logically makes sense.
Well, regardless, I can work with the “template” I’ve got and make the decision with little fuss at a later date.
Now…if I were working in PHP or even Perl, I’d have this page generated in just a few minutes. I have the SQL statement to grab the specific data I need (yes, it’s complicated). I have a template of sorts (just needs the placeholders filled). With the aforementioned languages, this task is almost intuitive.
But I’m working with ASP.Net (with C# to brush up my skills). I did take a class this past spring on ASP.Net in VS2k3. But not only was that this past spring, it’s all guided examples. Their examples are peachy for their little demos…but less than helpful for me.
What I want is simply a “header” area—to be filled with static information and instructions—then a table filled with templated information, followed by a very simple “footer” area—again, filled with static information. I don’t want a table-dump of information. I don’t want server controls (because I don’t want to force a refresh—thus the presence of AJAX). I just want what amounts to a flat page with database-driven information.
Yes, I’m mostly ranting. I’m sure 75% of my problem is lack of familiarity with the language, IDE and methodology of .Net. And this really is much more of a rant than complaint. Just needed to comment that the method didn’t seem intuitive. Thanks. 
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Posted by MicheeRose, geek on November 8th, 2005 — Posted in AJAX, .Net, JavaScript
As mentioned previously, I’m doing a bit of AJAX research, with a specific slant on implementing it in ASP.Net.
I’ve gotten familiar with the AJAX concept in a general sense and while I’ve been waiting for my Visual Studio .Net 2003 software to come in, I figured I could at least hammer out some/most of the client-side logic. So I happily went about developing a dummy page and creating some JavaScript to make it do cool things. Case in point: I have a summary level list w/ a button to expand the summary to show the details. Only one summary is allowed open at any time and the js tracks if something has changed on any detail and even prompts for a save if another summary is attempted to be open. I’m pretty proud of myself.
So what’s this have to do with my title?
I was reading an article on using ASP.Net’s Postback for AJAX stuff, “Outpost: Postback over XmlHTTP.” I haven’t gotten too far…really not much farther than the introduction. I’ll edit this if I see I’m mistaken. But I have a beef with an assumption the author makes:
With AJAX you would call a web service to retrieve an array containing the subfolder names, links and icons and create the tree nodes using DHTML. You would have to create the web service methods, write cross-browser JavaScript to make it work and have hidden fields in your ASP.NET WebForm containing the state of the control.
Hrm. Well, actually you don’t need hidden fields in your form. I’ve quite successfully tracked two forms of state changes, simply using javascript variables. Now, granted, I haven’t integrated the server calls yet, but unless I’ve totally misunderstood the way things work, making a HTTP request won’t touch my variables. It’s not a page load, so nothing should be wiped from memory.
There are other bits of the article I’m not too keen on either…but I don’t know that I have a proper rebuttal for them. (i.e. “but it is not so cool, if you use 95% of the time on testing in different browsers” …um…isn’t a good portion of any web-project cross-browser testing & debugging? maybe that’s just me…).
Maybe it’s because I’m not in the “.Net Camp” but a lot of the article seems awfully narrow and without regard to other methodologies or technologies. Yes, it is about .Net technology, but the author doesn’t seem to be aware of any other technology. I think I’ll read this article with an eye of wariness.
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Posted by MicheeRose, geek on November 8th, 2005 — Posted in AJAX
So I’ve got this project at work. I could do a straight ASP.Net implementation. They wouldn’t care one way or the other. But I thought: perfect opportunity to learn something about AJAX; it would certainly make the program nicer to use.
But that’s not what I’m writing about. No, I’m referencing this article, titled “Implementing AJAX in ASP.NET - Getting Started.”
Now, it does mention that AJAX is actually a collection of methods, and in the intro suggests downloading AJAX.Net (a framework for using AJAX w/ .Net technology). But what I find irritating/amusing is that, as she begins to explain how to implement AJAX with .Net, she acts as if AJAX were a language, not a set of methods. I refer specifically to: “First, if you don’t already have it, download the latest version of AJAX.” Um. I think you mean AJAX.Net (and you forgot to link it there).
Immediately, I begin to suspect the credibility of this article. I may continue to skim through it, but I doubt I’ll take is as seriously as I once might have.
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