Friday, January 30, 2009

CDONTS email form - download working example

Folks who still use Microsoft FrontPage to build their web sites are finding that more and more hosting companies are not supporting FrontPage extensions.  As a result, forms, database connections, and forms-to-email that relied on the little "webbots" no longer work. As a moderator on several development forums I see the same questions weekly, "How can I send my form information to an email."

Since we are ASP and .NET developers and stay (mostly) within the code confines of those languages (and the related Microsoft Servers) I can say that creating a form, validating it, parsing the form fields to create an email object, sending the email and, finally, thanking the user for their contact  -  all while wrapping the UI in a tableless (CSS) form that is compatible for the sight-impaired and cross-browser friendly is no easy task for the beginning coder.  Taken in baby steps it is great to learn each of these related web building tasks (form validation, passing and catching variables with ASP, CSS) but mostly the erstwhile web-builder just wants a form that works. 

Microsoft servers have two ways of handling emails.  The older servers use CDONTS (Collaboration Data Objects for NT Servers) and the newer servers use CDOSYS (but can be configured to continue to use CDONTS).  Since we're seeing most FrontPage sites on older servers we built this "form to email" page for CDONTS.  Tune in next week to the CDOSYS version.

Screen Shot is below:
Download the code in a 10.9K .zip file HERE.

Screen shot and link to example page

Thursday, January 29, 2009

HTML 4.01 Entity converter

When manually creating RSS feeds or other XML documents I usually have to refer to a chart of some sort to convert the ASCII or Entity Name into an Entity Number.  What I needed was a faster way to paste in the text or symbols to be converted and to both render and test the converted entity.  I also wanted to have the option of seeing the output in either Decimal or Hexadecimal format.

The solution was the HTML 4.01 Entity converter

The converter is fast and easy to use and also contains visual charts including ASCII Entities with new Entity Names, ISO 8859-1 Symbol Entities, ISO 8859-1 Character Entities and a few other Entities supported by HTML (thin space, em space, and so on).
A verification box asures the user that the converted text will indeed render correctly in the browser.

Entity Converter Screen Shot

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

CSS reference and web standards curriculum

There are a number ofresources available via the web to quickly reference HTML or CSS code and examples. Many are stuck in static PDF files and some are simply not maintained as standards change.Opera, the browser that promotes itself as the most standards-compliant Web browser and Yahoo! Developer Network created the WSC (Web Standards Curriculum) to help teach students and beginner coders to have a solid grounding in standards-based web design. Their courses in HTML, CSS and JavaScript are good...

Read More "CSS reference and web standards curriculum"

Friday, January 23, 2009

Resize images on the fly with CSS

Sizing images with CSS is a little used but powerful tool that gives web sites real liquid design.The size of the image (in percentages) is based on the browser interpretation of the size of the containing element rather than as a percentage of the actual size of the image.An image 300px wide with a percentage size of 60% may be rendered many different sizes depending upon the size of its container. And, if that element is itself sized with a percentage, it may also change depending upon screen...

Read More "Resize images on the fly with CSS"

Thursday, January 22, 2009

301 Moved Permanently - Redirecting URLs with ASP

You may have used the meta re-direct in the past. The numeral sets the number of seconds before page refresh (zero in the following example):<meta http-equiv=refresh content=0;url=newpage.asp>This 301 method allows you to quickly implement a 301 Moved Permanently status from an old page to a new one.First, simply replace ALL of the old HTML/XHMTL code with this:ASP Version<%@ Language=VBScript %><%Response.Status=301 Moved Permanently Response.AddHeader Location, /newpage.asp%>In...

Read More "301 Moved Permanently - Redirecting URLs with ASP"

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors

January 12, 2009 in Washington, DC, experts from more than 30 US and international cyber security organizations jointly released the consensus list of the 25 most dangerous programming errors that lead to security bugs and that enable cyber espionage and cyber crime. Shockingly, most of these errors are not well understood by programmers; their avoidance is not widely taught by computer science programs; and their presence is frequently not tested by organizations developing software for sale.The...

Read More "25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors"

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Free MS Windows XP Programs

Here you'll find a long listing of available downloads from Microsoft relating to the Windows XP programming. The listings include such useful links as Sysinternals (if you want to get friendly with the guts of Windows) and arcane BETA programs such as Group Bar. We've also included links to the newly acquired (by Microsoft)3D modeling tool TrueSpace as well as to Games like Carioca Rummy andHardware like the FingerPrint Reader. You may also find your fill of Screensavers (including BSOD) and...

Read More "Free MS Windows XP Programs"