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This is my personal site where I share information about myself and my interests. There are no secrets on this site so feel free to poke around. The Links in the sidebar will take you to main stuff and feel free to contact me if you have questions.

News from my Blog

Avoiding Duplication When Dynamically Adding Scripts and Styles to A Webpage

Recently, I had a project where I was wanting to be able to create a reusable UserControl to display tooltips throughout the application. The control would need to access the jQuery framework, a jQuery plugin, required some inline scripting, and had its own class of styles.  Not every page i... [More]
Friday, 1 August 2008 15:23

UserAgent Fix for the RSSToolkit 2.0.0.0

I frequently use the RSSToolkit to consume and display RSS feeds from other blogs.  Recently, I've noticed problems with the RSSToolkit not being able to display feed from some external sources.  In particular, I've been having trouble consuming feeds from external blogs like Blogspot a... [More]
Thursday, 24 July 2008 13:16

Un-sucking the Radio Button

I swear radio buttons pucker up the closer my mouse gets to them.  Aside from the lack of good CSS options for radio buttons, they demand a certain level of commitment from the user. Unlike our promiscuous friend the checkbox, once you manage to jab the tip of your mouse into the pinhole of ... [More]
Monday, 19 May 2008 15:53

Flash/AJAX File Upload w/ Progress Server Control

Recently, I blogged about my favorite file upload technique for web applications--the free flash/JavaScript-based SWFUpload.  While this library is not the perfect solution for all circumstances, it certainly provides a very nice user experience and is worth seeing if it matches your project... [More]
Friday, 25 April 2008 16:28

Cool Timeline API

I recently happened upon this intriguing little API that provides a nice interface for displaying events on a timeline.  It was pretty easy to get my head around it and it's pretty easy to setup and use.  It's got a Google Maps-like scrolling interface that is very intuitive.  If you... [More]
Monday, 17 March 2008 13:25

Uploading Files: Multiple Files, Progress Bar, No Postback

UPDATE: This is now available as a free ASP.NET control.  Recently, Joe Stagner created some videos and talked about 4 upload scenarios that provide an AJAX-like file upload experience.  I've used or looked at all of those options at least once or twice in the past, but they were ... [More]
Friday, 22 February 2008 11:53

A Small Fix for RSSToolkit 2.0.0.0

What's broken?  It would appear that there are a couple of problems with consuming Atom feeds using the RSSToolkit. <pubDate/> shows up empty <link/> use the the base URL for the channel instead of the URL for each <item/> I opened up a work item for these issues, and ... [More]
Saturday, 26 January 2008 15:58

Tips for Attending the DevConnections Event in Orlando

I attended last year and, though a bit on the spendy side, it was a worthwhile trip and will probably be attending this year as well. Here are some tips if you've never been to this event at the Orlando, Florida location. The hotel is ginormous. Not just big, ginormous. Plan on getting lost a few ... [More]
Tuesday, 15 January 2008 13:39

Free Hosting For 2 Years From Verio

This MS Word Document flyer sums it up, but it looks like Verio is providing free web hosting for members of Microsoft User Groups through January 2010.  These are regional groups that regularly meet and are a great resource if you have one near you. The hosting plan is a little limited (100m... [More]
Thursday, 10 January 2008 14:43

Inline Editing Revisited

A while back I talked about this new inline editing control that was being worked on by Mike Davis over on the Encosia blog.  Yesterday, he posted an updated version that fixes some postback issues and adds some new features that make this a very useful control.  I played around with it... [More]
Tuesday, 30 October 2007 09:07

Delay Content Loading with AJAX.NET Toolkit

A while back I wrote an article for CodeProject that was just a simple demonstration of how to load portions of content after the initial page load using AJAX.NET.  Basically, using a timer and an update panel, this user control loads some RSS headlines after the initial page load.  S... [More]
Monday, 29 October 2007 03:00

CSDC 2007: Day 2 Roundup

Did you read Day 1 first? It was a rough start for me this morning as I battled an oncoming cold, here's what stuck during Day 2 of the Community Server Developer Conference 2007. Extending CommunityServer (Scott Watermasysk) Low-Tech Options Scott reminds developers not to overlook the obvi... [More]
Sunday, 21 October 2007 19:55

CSDC 2007: Day 1 Roundup

It was a beautiful day in Frisco, TX. Telligent picked a very nice venue and have been great hosts for the first CommunityServer Developer Conference.  Here's a wrap-up of today's events: Keynote (Rob Howard) Rob gave a little talk about Telligent and gave a quick demo of Enterprise Reportin... [More]
Saturday, 20 October 2007 13:40

Display RSS Feeds as A Calendar

I really like this DataCalendar control that I found a while back and, even though it's a few years old, I keep finding new uses for it. I'm working on this little project that includes a feature for posting events (live auctions in this case).  The project includes syndicating the event li... [More]
Tuesday, 16 October 2007 15:57

Inline Editing Makes Content Management A Snap

Inline editing can be a great supplement to the traditional "control panel" approach in content management systems.  The of editing web pages and the whole control panel concept can be difficult for non-technical people to latch on to.  Control panels typically takes users away from the... [More]
Wednesday, 3 October 2007 09:15