I spoke to you back in January about Lijit. Remember I showed you that Lijit allows you to easily create your own search engine. One that searches your blog, bookmarks, photos, blogroll, and more.

I really liked Lijit then but I was disappointed that I couldn’t integrate the Lijit search functionality into WordPress. That is let Lijit take over my search box that was already there and is ALREADY there in just about every other blog too. Instead you had to put a widget on your page. I felt like this was such a mistake I actually went to visit Lijit in Boulder and told them so. Well I’m happy to say that they have listened and now allow you to let their search take over your search box. Here’s what they say:

Lijit’s integration with WordPress.org just keeps getting better! Now you can either install the Lijit Search widget OR have Lijit power your existing WordPress search box. As if that weren’t exciting enough, our Lijit stats will automatically display within your WordPress dashboard for one-stop stats viewing too.

Go ahead and have a look, try the search located in the top left corner….

If you like it you can find the Lijit WordPress plugin here.

The above photo is my stack of geek books from last Christmas. Yes, I love books — I love the way they smell, thumbing through the pages and oh yes, the wisdom they bestow. I admit, often times I don’t make it through the entire book. Sometimes just a handful of chapters. But every now and then you come across some great books that are gems. So I thought I would share a few of my favorite books from this year.

Head First C#

Each morning before work I stop and enjoy a latte or cappuccino. This is my book of choice to read while sipping down my caffeine kick-start. That’s because it’s not like your typical code book which can be pretty dry. This book is very visual, full of pictures and diagrams that help to illustrate and drive home key points. Often times it finishes the chapter with a crossword puzzle helping you to retain the points of the chapter. In fact those crossword puzzles inspired this post. It’s a great read for beginners and advanced users alike.

Object-Oriented ActionScript 3.0

If you are just starting to learn Flash or Flex or ActionScript then this is the book for you. Actually, even if you are a seasoned pro this is still the book for you. Why? Because it teaches you the correct way to do things. It teaches you true object oriented programming in ActionScript. With topics like: Encapsulation, Classes, Inheritance, Polymorphism, Interfaces, and Design Patterns you will not only learn ActionScript, but also principles of OOP. If you wish to learn proper Flash/Flex development then this book is for you.

The ASP.NET Anthology

This book takes a problem solving approach to a handful of common everyday ASP.NET developer needs. Things like: form validation, membership and access control, working with email, rendering binary content, Ajax, handling errors and more. Sitepoint says this about the book, which I agree with: “Solve specific ASP.NET problems fast — without wading through mountains of reference material — and rest assured your code follows current best practices. For the serious ASP.NET coder, this book is a must-have.”

The Ultimate CSS Reference

Perhaps the last CSS book you’ll ever need. Written by our very own Paul O’Brien whom regulars to Search-This will know does an amazing job making sense of often tricky, finicky or strange CSS behaviors. Almost every web site created today is built using CSS, which is why a thorough knowledge of this technology is mandatory for every web designer. There are plenty of good resources to help you learn the basics, but if you’re ready to truly master the intricacies of CSS, this is the book you need.

ASP.NET 3.5 Unleashed

Make no mistake about it, this is a reference book at almost 2,000 pages. But it may be the best ASP.NET reference book on the market. It covers everything: LINQ to SQL, ASP.NET AJAX, ListView and DataPager data access controls and all the rest. What’s especially nice is that you can tell the author, Stephen Walther, has spent time in the trenches. He knows best practices, like using CSS for all his layout work and having well-formed cross-browser friendly code all the while teaching you ASP.NET 3.5. This is a must-have book for all ASP.NET developers.

Well there you have it, five of my favorite geek books of 2008. Do you have a book that you read this year that you thought was a gem?

I love ASP.NET, but one thing I find extremely frustrating is dealing with the automatically generated ID properties that it places on page elements.

For example, let's say you have a div with an id of "contentTop" like below:

Because you have made the control a server-side control by adding the runat="server" attribute it will now be rendered with a different ID when it hits the browser (view the source code and you will see). It will get rendered as something like this:

This is because ASP.NET generates its own IDs to ensure that every element on the page has a unique ID. Developers that work with JavaScript and CSS will immediately see the problem. This causes difficulty when using JavaScript and CSS which rely on those IDs to reference elements, as they can't easily predict what the generated ID will be. When it comes to CSS specificity the ID selector is extremely useful. In addition, anyone that uses JavaScript knows that getElementById (or one of the JavaScript library ways) is the most popular way to target an element. So why the hell does ASP.NET do this to us? Honestly, I can't really tell why, other than the fact that they must not trust us enough to be able to uniquely ID our elements ourselves.

But I don't want to just complain here, I would like to provide some solutions too.

Solution

The solution will be found in the ClientID property of the server-side control. The ClientID property represents the ID that ASP.NET will use for the element on the client.

Using the ScriptManager we place the ClientID in a hidden form field. This can all be done in the code-behind file by using the following code:

Be sure to have included the ScriptManager to your page, like so:

Now we can use JavaScript to retrieve the value from our hidden form fields.

That's it, if you know of another way, please let us know.
Happy coding.

This article details how to produce a product category list with associated images and text. This is the sort of thing you would see if you did a search on Amazon.

I am going to start by showing the finished product as this will help you visualize what we are going to achieve along the way. Figure 1 below shows a smaller version of the task ahead.

Figure 1

We are going to make a similar display but without using tables as in my view the information presented is not tabular and does not have a logical correspondence between rows and columns. Even if you do present a good case of why this should be in a table, please don't comment on this as we are interested in the layout techniques rather than perfect semantics (for this example). The techniques presented here can be used in other layouts that are certainly not tabular and will prove useful in many situations.

(more...)

This year I have found myself looking for jobs on two separate occasions. As a result I have had a good number of interviews. One question that I found harder to answer than I had anticipated was when asked how good I am at JavaScript and CSS.

Why was this question that hard to answer? I actually feel that I am quite knowledgeable about both CSS and JavaScript. I've built probably close to a dozen websites using entirely CSS-based layouts over the last few years. In addition, I have used JavaScript quite often to enhance those websites, usually with Ajax and spiffy web widgets like the Comment Info Tip Plugin. I may not be as knowledgeable as Paul O'Brien when it comes to CSS or Jonathan Snook when it comes to JavaScript, but I certainly am competent. So again, what's the problem?

The problem is the damn cross-browser problems that still trip a person up from time to time. Almost every time I ask Paul for his help with CSS it has to do with a cross-browser issue: something works in Firefox, but not in IE or vice versa. Same with JavaScript; think addEventListener method in Firefox and attachEvent for Internet Explorer. This is a bloody mess for the developer and I suppose makes me question my abilities at times.

Such cross-browser issues make it hard for a developer. I don't know about you, but I've often spent more time trying to make a site work across all browsers than on the actual design of the site.

There are people that I know and respect that have chosen not to learn JavaScript at all because they were so put off by such difficulties. Also consider how difficult it's been to get people to leave HTML table-based designs behind in favor of CSS layouts. It's been slow at best. No doubt due much to the differences across browsers.

What's your take? How has the difficulties in trying to achieve all browser support effected your attitude of CSS and JavaScipt?

1. DOCTYPE Declaration

   DOCTYPE (short for “document type declaration”) informs the browser of which HTML or XHTML standards you would like your code to be checked against. You're essentially declaring to the browser that these are the rules that you have used to create this page and in return you are expecting that it will render accordingly. Failure to specify a DOCTYPE can lead to unexpected rendering -- a developers worst nightmare.

   [ further reading ]

2. Navigation

   A website's navigation plays a key role in the success or failure of a site. It allows humans and search engines alike to easily locate the desired information. Or it doesn't. Navigations made up of Flash or JavaScript/DHTML may seem attractive at first, but ultimately can cripple a website by not allowing search engines to crawl and index the entire site. In addition, viewers that choose not to partake in these technologies can be left with no means to move within the site.

   Most experienced webmasters have left such navigations back in the 90's with all those AOL discs.

3. CSS is Not an Option

   In the past webmasters could choose to ignore CSS if they so desired. Those days are gone. CSS is no longer an option, it's part of the trifecta (see The Separation of Concerns for the trifecta) that makes up a quality website. A good webmaster will use CSS exclusively to define the look and layout of a website.

4. The Separation of Concerns

   In days gone by web developers would meld HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code all into a single page; like a web page jambalaya. Inexperienced web developers may still do this, but the experienced ones took notice that the make up of any given page is defined by three elements: the content of the page, the presentation of that content and the behavior of that content.

   Realizing this, competent developers have made an effort to keep these three layers separate from one another. Kevin Yank does a fine job explaining our three layers in his article: Simply JavaScript: The Three Layers of the Web

   When building a site, we work through these layers from the bottom up:

   1. We start by producing the content in HTML format. This is the base layer, which any visitor using any kind of browser should be able to view.

   2. With that done, we can focus on making the site look better, by adding a layer of presentation information using CSS. The site will now look good to users able to display CSS styles.

   3. Lastly, we can use JavaScript to introduce an added layer of interactivity and dynamic behavior, which will make the site easier to use in browsers equipped with JavaScript.

5. Cross-Browser Support

   Any developer that has been building websites for awhile has the battle scars that you get when you try and make your website work on all browsers. Each browser has it's own idiosyncrasies (some more than others) and designing and redesigning your site to function under each can be a battle; but it's a battle that must be fought and won.

   [ for more help with cross-browser CSS read this ]

(more...)

There's no doubt in my mind that the little blocks from Denmark known simply as LEGO are the greatest toy ever. I put in more hours playing with Legos than all other toys combined. I loved to use my imagination to build with them. It really didn't matter what: a car, a fortress, star destroyer, space station, whatever. It was about taking an idea and bringing it to life piece by piece.

This love to build something from nothing still resides within me; it's just been replaced with web technologies instead of plastic bricks. Today I build websites, plugins, widgets and anything else that takes life in my imagination. The thing I enjoy most is seeing if I can pull it off -- can I get what's in my head to take form on the web? Most of the time I can.

But there's something that really bugs me about all of my creations. They simply don't last. In fact, over the years I've found the life span of any web-based product to be short, very short. Of all the websites I've built, more are gone than remain. They've been replaced by newer versions or completely phased out. There's no place for nostalgia on the web.

I have a deep jealousy of designs that last. I look at Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel which has been around for five hundred years and is in no danger of ever being updated or phased out. Or Beethoven's 9th symphony which he completed in 1824 and still moves the soul today. I'm betting that even more recent artists like Christian R. Lassen probably never worries about their work becoming dated and needing to be replaced. But in the world of computers, nothing lasts.

Does anyone else find this frustrating or at least a little depressing? Of course it's not just my work. I already have images of a new 3G iPhone dancing in my head and my current iPod is only two years old. My three thousand dollar computer that I hand built from the greatest specs three years ago doesn't run today's DirectX 10 games. How sad...

You have to ask yourself when developing software or web pages if pixel perfection's really all that important when it's only going to last a handful of years anyways? Could this be why Microsoft released Vista knowing full well that it was far from done? Microsoft is already talking about their next OS, Windows 7 and Vista is barely out of the wrapper.

I know, it is what it is, the beauty and the curse all rolled into one. The ability to create knowing full well that you will do it all over again in a handful of years. I guess it's job security, right?

Your thoughts?