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Using HTML5 Web Storage in ASP.NET |
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Most of the websites developed today deal with data in one or the other form. It follows that application data needs some storage mechanism. As far as server is concerned we have sophisticated storage mechanisms such as an RDBMS. However, storing data on the client side can be tricky. Traditionally developers used Cookies to persist data on the client side but with many limitations. To help developers get rid of these limitations and provide a streamlined data storage mechanism HTML5 has introduced what is called as Web Storage. This article explores what Web Storage is, its flavors and using Web Storage in ASP.NET websites. |
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Posted On : 25 Jan 2012 |
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Add a notification bar to your website using jQuery |
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Many websites display notifications or prompts in what is called as information bar or notification bar. Such an information bar typically contains some text, graphics or any other HTML markup along with a close button. The information bar is always visible and is flushed with the top edge of the browser window. Once user closes it it remains hidden for the active session. Such an information bar can be easily developed using jQuery. The remainder of this article explains how. |
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Posted On : 20 Jan 2012 |
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Running multiple websites in a single hosting space |
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Many small companies having limited budget for website hosting prefer to host multiple websites in a single shared hosting space using domain pointers. The shared hosting plans offered by many web hosts use some third party URL rewriting software or IIS URL rewriting module to segregate one website from the other. Often these techniques require that you keep files of individual website into a folder of its own. This approach goes well with websites using totally different codebase. However, if the websites under consideration are using the same codebase this approach may not be suitable. In such cases you need to take control in your own hands by programmatically handling multiple domains and sub domains. This article illustrates one possible approach to do just that. |
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Posted On : 07 Jan 2012 |
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Creating a Tag Cloud for Your ASP.NET Blog |
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Most of the blogs display a set of tags or keywords in the form of a Tag Cloud. A tag cloud presents the keywords in font sizes proportional to the number of blog posts having that tag. If you are using some blogging website or using some open source blogging engine you already have a tag cloud ready. However, if you are building your own blog engine or website you will need to build the tag cloud on your own. This article shows how to do just that. |
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Posted On : 05 Jan 2012 |
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Hide Web Form contents until the page is fully loaded |
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If your web forms consist of small amount of content they render quickly in the browser and user can start working with them almost immediately. However, when your web forms are bulky and render too much of content, the page is loaded in the browser slowly. Users can start using the partially loaded page and perform actions such as clicking on links or buttons. At times this is undesirable and you want users to wait till the complete page is loaded in the browser. You can accomplish this with the help of little client side script. Let's see how. |
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Posted On : 04 Jan 2012 |
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Book Review: Pro HTML5 Programming, 2nd Edition |
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If you are a web developer you must be aware of the rising attention being paid to HTML5. HTML5 is not merely about some markup tags. It provides a whole new set of features that make it a programmable platform. Modern web applications invariably make use of HTML markup, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX and related technologies. Noticing this trend HTML5 offers many new and exiting features to the web developers. If you want to be on the cutting edge of the web development technologies you must be well-versed in HTML5. To that end Pro HTML5 Programming, 2nd Edition does a great job of providing in-depth understanding of most of the HTML5 features. |
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Posted On : 02 Jan 2012 |
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Creating a Custom Output Cache Provider in ASP.NET 4 |
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Output Caching is a very common and popular performance improvement technique for ASP.NET applications. In the previous versions of ASP.NET the output caching mechanism of ASP.NET was rigid in terms of cache store. For example, developers didn't have any flexibility if they wanted to store the output cache in a disk file instead of the server memory. Luckily, ASP.NET 4 provides such flexibility to developers. ASP.NET 4 follows a provider model for output caching. This means you can now define a custom cache provider and plug it in using a configuration file. This article illustrates how such a custom output cache provider that stores cached output in disk files can be developed. |
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Posted On : 31 Dec 2011 |
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Dealing with Profile Access in ASP.NET MVC Applications |
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ASP.NET services such as Profile are available to MVC applications too and developers can make use of them when needed. While developing a Web Forms based website project developers can access profile properties in a strongly typed fashion. This strongly typed nature comes from the ProfileCommon class that is generated automatically in such projects. ASP.NET MVC and Web Application projects, however, lack this handy and useful feature. In this article you will learn how to access user Profile in ASP.NET MVC applications and also an alternative to overcome this limitation |
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Posted On : 22 Dec 2011 |
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Implementing Website Pinning in ASP.NET |
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Internet Explorer 9 introduced a new feature - Pinned Websites - that allows you to create a shortcut to a website on Windows 7 taskbar. A pinned website, however, exposes much more functionality than an ordinary shortcut. Normally to launch a website, the user needs to open a browser instance, type in website URL in the browser address bar and then navigate to the required part of the website. Pinning a website allows the user to launch it much like a desktop application. The user can simply click on the icon of the pinned website or select a specific option from a menu and start working with the website. Since a pinned website is always visible on the taskbar, website pinning also grabs constant user attention. This can result in significant increase in the usage of the website for obvious reasons. No wonder that every ASP.NET developer would like to take advantage of this feature in their websites. To that end this article discusses various steps involved in enabling pinning for your website. It also illustrates creating static and dynamic task entries and discusses a few other scenarios specific to ASP.NET. |
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Posted On : 15 Dec 2011 |
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Aggregating RSS Feeds |
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.NET framework provides classes to read and write RSS and ATOM feeds. I already wrote a couple of articles illustrating the use of these classes. These classes reside in System.ServiceModel.Syndication namespace and primarily work with one feed at a time. Sometimes, however, you need to aggregate multiple feeds to create a single feed. The code sample below shows you how to accomplish this in an ASP.NET web form.
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Posted On : 13 Dec 2011 |
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