Hello, I'm   Jason

IE8 Beta 1 now forces CSS 2.1 along with other web standards (includes some early HTML 5 stuff too!). I’m creating a list of websites that seem to be broken by the browser. Feel free to leave a comment if you come across other sites. Here’s what I found so far (notice that only part of the site may be broken and not necessarily all of the site):

I’m in the process of doing some early spring cleaning and I’m really cleaning out my closets. I’ve got lots of books and software I’m going to begin listing on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/gp/shops/index.html?ie=UTF8&sellerID=A3HIQ7PK69ITYM) and at eBay (http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZjasonngaylord). If you’re interested, feel free to ping me directly.

I am building a few controls that use client-side script for reuse in the one web app I’m working on. I needed a way to enumerate the property names and values of an object in JavaScript so I knew which properties I had access to. Here’s a JavaScript method I put together to enumerate the properties of a CustomValidator object. I have the function name as the value of the ClientValidationFunction:

United One Resources, a Wilkes-Barre based corporation, is looking for a Senior Application Developer or Application Architect to help fill a newly created position on the team. The position is reserved for a .NET developer looking to use the latest technologies. United One offers a competitive salary, benefits, and an enjoyable working environment.

I have a domain that I was going to use for a little while as I attempt to sell my home. I registered it with GoDaddy knowing they have .NET support. However, I should have read a little further into the shared hosting specs. Apparently, GoDaddy only supports ASP.NET 1.1 and 2.0 and does not support any of the later frameworks. I sent them an email asking them if there was a box they could move me to that had 3.5 and they said no and that it’s “not something we are planning on implementing at this time.” Surely I’m confused. Oh well. I guess I’ll have to move it elsewhere. That turned me off of doing any business with GoDaddy in the future.

I just read a post a little while ago about the Google Toolbar (beta) redirecting web visitors away from your custom 404 and to a Google 404 page. Besides the issues mentioned on Seoker.com, I’d have a problem as a business owner. This would mean that my visitors and users would be redirected away from my site and could land on a competitors page if they use the Google search bar. So, as a small business owner, I may need to have a bottomless checkbook to ensure this doesn’t happen. As a developer, I’d be upset that Google would do this because I may purposely redirect the user to a correct page. For instance, I have an application right now that sends all 404s to a common HttpHandler. If the handler finds the page in a SQL table, it will redirect the user to the correct URL (ie: mysite.com/special might redirect to mysite.com/products/producta.aspx). I just feel that Google, who complains often that Microsoft forces users to use the Microsoft way, is contradicting itself.

Quite often, we send out automated emails from our .NET applications. Usually they are for our own internal users, but from time to time, they are for external users. Outlook 2007 and Word 2007 revamped the HTML Email rendering. They now use the Word 2007 Schema, a subset of the 4.01 Transitional Schema. Apparently, Word 2007 doesn’t like certain CSS attributes especially if you use normal CSS to layout your email (fixed width divs, etc). More information about this topic can be found by visiting http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa338200.aspx and http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa338201.aspx. Microsoft offers a few options to validate your HTML, CSS, XML, etc with the Word 2007 Schema. Using the two links above, you can find all of the aforementioned information.

I was building a page today that allows an admin to do some configuration and doesn’t save anything back to the server until the admin chooses. I could have used XML or a temporary SQL table, but I choose ViewState for now. I continually received the error: Type 'MyNamespace.MyClass' in Assembly 'App_Code.gvg30s8w, Version=0.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' is not marked as serializable. Of course the error spells out what’s wrong. But, because I was still flustered with my earlier issue, I didn’t read into it far enough. Again, a search online turns up almost nothing. Finally, the light came on. To get it to work you will need to add the <Serializable> (in VB) or [serializable] (in C# to the beginning of your class. Well, back to the grind.

Like every other day, I’m blowing through some really complex code trying to create hacks to get around difficult issues. Then, a road block. I have a mind freeze and oops, I forgot what the issue is. I had that earlier today when I forgot how to access the item index number in an ItemTemplate of a DataList or Repeater. I pinged the aspadvice.com lists and Ryan Trudelle-Schwarz responded (although he forgot the big Duh! on the top) to use the Container.ItemIndex. Low and behold, adding this: <%# Container.ItemIndex %> to your code does spit out the Item Index number. After a good hour or so of searching MSDN trying to find it, Ryan came to the rescue. Thanks again Ryan for kick starting my brain.

I’ve been testing the DotNetSlackers’ AJAX Data Controls for a little bit and they’re definitely cool. I ran into an issue, however, when trying to build an app with one of the controls in Visual Studio 2008 (.NET Framework 3.5). The assembly was compiled against version 1 of the AJAX Library. I continually received an error message stating The control with ID 'TestGrid' requires a ScriptManager on the page. The ScriptManager must appear before any controls that need it. However, it did have a ScriptManager before the TestGrid control. I bounced it off the Microsoft ASP.NET team and, like always, they provided me with an answer. Mike Harder said that if the assembly was compiled against the earlier version, I needed to redirect the binding at runtime using this: