Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1: First Impressions

submitted by ColinCochrane 6 months, 29 days ago

colincochrane.com — Since the IE development team releasing the first beta version of Internet Explorer 8 for developers last week, I've had the chance to play around with this latest incarnation of the Internet Explorer family. While most of the focus has been on the improved support for web standards, which is immediately evident even in this early beta, there are many more new features and enhancements that are making IE8 look like its shaping up into a solid browser. read more...

add a comment | category: IE | Views: 3

Catching Unwanted Spiders And Content Scraping Bots In ASP.NET

submitted by ColinCochrane 9 months, 11 days ago

colincochrane.com — If you have a blog that is even moderately popular then you have likely fallen victim to some form of content scraping. Ever since it became possible to earn money through ads on a website there have been people trying to find ways to cheat the system. The most widespread example of this comes in the form of splogs and similar spam-based websites, which consist only of ads from Google AdSense and duplicated content that is scraped from other sites. In this post I share a method you can use to identify "evil" spiders and content scraping bots that are wasting your website's resources. read more...

add a comment | category: ASP.NET | Views: 0

Using CSS To Create Two Common HTML Border Effects

submitted by ColinCochrane 10 months, 7 days ago

colincochrane.com — Seperating the style from the markup of a web document is generally a painless, if sometimes time-consuming, task. In many cases however, the process can have some added speed-bumps; most notably when the original HTML is using an infamous table-based layout. The two most common speedbumps when dealing with table-based layouts and styling are recreating the classic borderless table and keeping the default table border appearance read more...

add a comment | category: Tips & Tricks | Views: 1

7 Firefox Add Ons For Web Developers

submitted by ColinCochrane 10 months, 16 days ago

colincochrane.com — Firefox add-ons can be one of the best set of tools a web developer can have but with so many out there it can be hard to decide on which ones are the best for you. I was reluctant to post this at first, given the countless other blogs out their who have posted their own add-on lists, but felt this would be of value for those looking for recommendations that weren't posted 2-3 years ago. I avoided going for the "Top 841 Add Ons Every Web Developer Must Have!!!!" angle, as this isn't a top list. It's simply a list of my personal favourites because, as a guy who's known around the office for having too many add-ons installed for Firefox, I've definitely used a lot of add-ons, some which were fanstastic, and some which left something to be desired. Over time I managed to pare down my pile of add-ons in to a core set that all save me a considerable amount of time, and also share the same basic qualities. read more...

add a comment | category: Other | Views: 1

Disabling Configuration Inheritance For ASP.NET Child Applications

submitted by ColinCochrane 10 months, 26 days ago

colincochrane.com — Configuration inheritance is a very robust feature of ASP.NET that allows you to set configuration settings in the Web.Config of a parent application and have it automatically be applied to all of its child applications. There are certain situations, however, when there are configuration settings that you don't want to apply to a child application. The usual course of action is to override the setting in question in the child application's web.config file, which is ideal if there are only a handful of settings to deal with. This is less than ideal when there are a significant number of settings that need to be overridden, or when you simply want the child application to be largely independent of its parent. read more...

add a comment | category: ASP.NET | Views: 1

Using the ASP.NET Web.Sitemap to Manage Meta Data

submitted by ColinCochrane 11 months, 11 days ago

colincochrane.com — In an ASP.NET application the web.sitemap is very convenient tool for managing the site's structure, especially when used with an asp:Menu control. One aspect of the web.sitemap that is often overlooked is the ability to add custom attributes to the <siteMapNode> elements, which provides very useful leverage for managing a site's meta-data. read more...

add a comment | category: ASP.NET | Views: 5