December 29, 2005

i should probably include an entry here to let people know my site is now located at my own domain: ekizmet.com/michelle. new blog entries will be posted there.

September 23, 2005

i've been testing out My Ajax.NET - pretty cool stuff. i found some additional articles regarding the usability of AJAX:

September 22, 2005

AJAX - it's been a fad technology - google uses it with several of their beta apps (gmail, google maps), microsoft uses it (outlook web access, start.com), flickr uses it, the list goes on. you can read more about ajax at wikipedia. how web accessible is it though? an article at standards-schmandards does a great job in listing the pros and cons of using AJAX.

September 21, 2005

I had to figure out how to change the background color of a selected item in a RadioButtonList. But because of a bug, attributes that are added to a ListItem are not rendered. so the best way is to derive your own custom RadioButtonList. digging through google groups, i found a solution.

September 15, 2005

At work, we have a custom datagrid (derived control). we implement it in a similar way that's detailed in this article. a weird thing was happening with sorting when we set the SortCommand in the code-in-front: <uc1:CustomGrid OnSortCommand="MySortEvent"> there was a delay in sorting; assume we have a grid with the following columns: ID, Name, Department. Initially it's sorted by ID, when I go to click Department, the current SortExpression is still ID. Then when I go to click Name, it's the previous SortExpression, Department (the column I clicked last). In our custom datagrid, we wire up the control-level SortCommand in the overridded OnInit event. The article says to wire events in the constructor; following this suggestion, the sorting problem went away. the thing I don't quite get is that the sorting problem only occurs when we set the event in the page-level's code-in-front; the article does say "setting default properties in places other than the control's constructor make the control insensitive to the external, tag-level settings" - maybe that somehow caused the weird delay?

September 12, 2005

I've been working on asp.net themes and skins. when i tried theming a custom derived control, the theme wouldn't take. then i realized to theme custom server controls, you have to add the Register directive in the skin file. You declare the control in the skin file with the same tagprefix you used to declare the control in the aspx page. Before figuring that out on my own, i had posted a question about it. my question was answered at this blog post.

August 29, 2005

i downloaded this helpful Firefox extension called Fangs. it's a screen reader emulator that creates a textual representation of a web page as if it were read by a screen reader. i discovered this tool while reading on how to improve accessibility in asp.net 1.1.

August 5, 2005

i've been reading about the new code-behind model in asp.net 2.0. it made me realize asp.net 1.x's code-behind model has some issues. the code-behind contains control declarations and event handlers (which would sometimes un-wire themselves when you switch between Design and HTML view). this code-behind would then be compiled to a dll. the aspx page itself is also compiled to a dll that is stored in a temp directory. here we have 2 separate dlls and within the aspx's source code is where controls are instantiated. to see what i mean, introduce an error in a script block in an aspx page (ie <% this line causes an error %>). you get the error page - click on "show complete compilation source", you will see that all the controls that were declared in the code-behind are instantiated here. the aspx page is instantiating the controls while deriving from the code-behind class.

so now there are partial classes in 2.0 which allow a single class to be defined in multiple source files. this eliminates the 2 separate dlls and the control declarations. you can read about this new code-behind model and other features. Other links:

the last link above nicely sums up how there are some confusing things with the asp.net 1.x compilation model:

There is a complex division of responsibility between the base class (i.e., the code-behind page) and the ASPX page. The event-handling plumbing is done in the code-behind page. If we look at a code-behind file, we see that each and every control that exists on the ASPX file has to be declared in the code-behind file. The ASPX file and the code-behind files have to be kept synchronized. Visual Studio.NET handles this synchronization transparent to the developer. In this model there is a good probability that a developer could accidentally change the ASPX file outside the Visual Studio environment without updating the code-behind file. This would easily bring down a working Web application because of the mismatch between the code-behind and the ASPX pages.

August 3, 2005

do you know what a quine is? this is the first time i've heard of this, i find it pretty fascinating. it's a program that outputs its own source code. check out a C# example.

some interesting links i found that relate to microsoft...

July 21, 2005

Even the Web has design patterns. the site has pretty informative content.

July 19, 2005

Working near Chelsea Market definitely has its rewards. i've been fortunate to have eaten at several restaurants around the area (through company lunches and dinner) and i thought to make a list of them.

there are also some stores that i've been to recently where the stuff is really good:

i finally know the difference between sorbet and sherbets. sherbets has dairy (includes milk and eggs) while sorbets has ice and fruit (no dairy). i like sorbets more :)

July 13, 2005

my boyfriend drew this for me during work. i love it :)


July 12, 2005

I really agree with the following quote:

Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly.
-- Rose Franken

July 9, 2005

i like the song that's played during the recent ipod commercial, technologic by daft punk. the lyrics are cute...

Buy it, use it, break it, fix it, trash it, change it, mail - upgrade it,

charge it, point it, zoom it, press it, snap it, work it, quick - erase it,

write it, cut it, paste it, save it, load it, check it, quit - rewrite it,

plug it, play it, burn it, rip it, drag and drop it, zip - unzip it,

lock it, fill it, call it, find it, view it, code it, jam - unlock it,

surf it, scroll it, pause it, click it, cross it, crack it, switch - update it,

name it, read it, tune it, print it, scan it, send it, fax - rename it,

touch it, bring it, pay it, watch it, turn it, leave it, start - format it

July 7, 2005

Behavior: Using CSS selectors to apply Javascript - i am impressed. check out the cool examples.

script.aculo.us - more cool javascript

uploaded another new stylesheet - i wanted to try the overflow:auto property.

June 10, 2005

i uploaded a new stylesheet - titled 001, i'm getting somewhat stuck in naming them, so the easiest naming convention is to use numbers. i haven't used yellow colors before so i thought i try. it's interesting how the latest stylesheet always becomes my new favorite.

June 9, 2005

How to be a programmer - a pretty thorough article.

June 7, 2005

How to survive a bad manager - I'm sure everyone can relate, I felt I was in a similar situation a while back.

May 11, 2005

a good DHTML example. i've been learning a lot at quirksmode.

May 6, 2005

breaking the rules can be okay - web standards is not all about validating code.

May 4, 2005

some good microsoft links...

April 29, 2005

Why Geeks and Nerds Are Worth Dating... I agree!

April 27, 2005

i encountered the following while at work:

<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 1. Arbitrary text for item 1</p>
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 2. Arbitrary text for item 2</p>

why not an ordered list?

April 26, 2005

great diagram of the CSS box model.

April 25, 2005

additional links that i've found very informative:

April 22, 2005

i think my boyfriend may find this link helpful: Ten good practices for writing JavaScript in 2005.

some .NET info he'll find useful as well - what the AssociatedControlID property of ASP.NET's <asp:label> control can do. <asp:label runat="server"> outputs a <span> on the browser. To output the <label> element, use the AssociatedControlID property.

By adding the property AssociatedControlID and setting it to the id of a form control, the HTML <label> element with the "for" attribute will render and will be set to the id of the associated form control. When users click the label, focus passes to the associated control (ie a textbox, a drop-down, a checkbox, or a radiobutton)

April 21, 2005

The Acid2 Browser Test. The test is pretty amazing.

April 11, 2005

a very good web design and standards resource: stylegala. i really like the css reference. some other impressive css sites:

April 8, 2005

2 additional stylesheets! i really like the loose-leaf one. Adam Polselli's site is inspirational - some of the colors i've used are from his creative color schemes.

April 6, 2005

i created another stylesheet and added a stylesheet switcher (courtesy of alistapart.com). amazing what css can do :) switch between the 2 flavors that i currently have.

Semantics, HTML, XHTML, and Structure - this is a really good article on semantics and structure.

April 1, 2005

this is another sample of my work. i had to implement a tab styled menu where the selected tab would be larger than the rest. i tried it the first time using unordered lists, then tried it with tables. the html markup was definitely cleaner when using lists than using tables. plus it's more accessible with lists. both look identical. see the code.

March 31, 2005

had to implement some nested lists where the first level item was bold, second level's ID number (only the number) bold, and the third level item with colored bullets. these lists were generated through recursion using c# - to format them as simply as possible, i set class names for <ul> tags and added some <span> tags. this is the code.

March 9, 2005

these are great resources to learn about web standards and accessibility, i know i've learned a lot:

March 7, 2005

CSS Enhancements in IE6 - an article i read today at MSDN. i've read about the box model but i didn't think to find an explanation here.

CSS Attributes - a list of valid CSS attributes in IE, a helpful reference to see the CSS IE supports and what has been proposed to W3 to make it standard.

March 5, 2005

I tried tempura ice cream tonight for the first time. it's just like the shrimp and vegetables tempura but with ice cream instead. a little too much fried batter for me but it was good. it tasted somewhat like ice cream cake.

March 1, 2005

Decided to start a little blog where I can post entries, store pictures, and share links. This site also is a small portfolio of mine where there's some macromedia flash, html and css that I've worked on in the past. i actually wrote my own blog application in asp.net and c# but i didn't want to spend the monthly fee of running it. so here are some static html pages that work just as well.

February 28, 2005

Remember Mr. Men? Go to Make A Mr. Men to make your own Mr. Man or Little Miss. This brought back memories. I made a Mr. Man to look like my boyfriend, lol.