CSS server side pre processor

By rob

While I was going through links on smashing magazine and I come across the following link:

http://www.shauninman.com/archive/2007/06/27/css_server_side_pre_processor 

Its using php to call in constants and variables to place throughout the whole of the CSS document.

I.e. 

@server variables
{
    $variableName1: defaultVariableValue;
    $variableName2: defaultVariableValue;
    $variableName3: defaultVariableValue;
}

body { background-color: $variableName; }

will output: 

body { background-color: defaultVariableValue; }

Would be interesting to find if this method would work using ASP or .NET, anyone up for a challenge?

Going through the article,comments and links on the site I noticed that the css was also in nested declarations.
I really like the idea of using nested declarations, does this actually work? (note to self: test and play with this!) 

div {
    /* comment for div */
    color: green;
    p {
        /* comment for div p */
        color: red;
        b { color: blue;
    }
}

Source: http://blog.airbladesoftware.com/2006/12/11/cssdryer-dry-up-your-css
Will have to put this to the test to see if its all compliant etc. 

I've had a quick look on the web for asp versions of the php variable css sheet and returned the following:
http://www.neopoleon.com/home/blogs/neo/archive/2004/03/06/8705.aspx

Not too happy about the title though! "Screw standards - let's add variable support to CSS right this minute".

I think this is one for the techies to continue!


Edited: Adding resource link http://nubyonrails.com/articles/dynamic-css 

Debugging performance issues

By gareth

Along with IIS Reset, Are you debugging is the most commonly heard phrase in the Technical room. With shared projects, the problem is someone could be debugging whilst someone maybe working on other parts of the app. Due to performance, debugging creates an almost unusable project for all other users.

Maybe the hotfix that Scott Guthrie blogs about in the below post is the fix for this frustrating problem? 

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/08/21/public-hotfix-patch-available-for-vs-2005-f5-debugging-performance-issue-with-asp-net.aspx

CSS Reset

By rob

I've recently come across a tidy version of Eric Meyers CSS Reset style sheet by Dave Woods. Originaly using Meyers style sheet Dave Woods found that he didn't use a lot of the styles that were used in the reset. Creating a smaller, tidier starter CSS Reset become more worthwhile for him

 http://www.dave-woods.co.uk/?p=187

 The only thing I don't agree on is that padding is used for the heading tags and paragraph tags. This does give you a fixed control, but personal prefernece I prefer using margins on these elemets. Using the collapsible margin I find that you have better control of formatting the text's spacing above and below.

.Net Image and ImageButton controls

By tim

Just had an issue where i'd taken CSS from a colleague and there was a class for an image which had a nice looking blue border with a few pixel of free space around all the edges

While converting the raw HTML into ASPX i added the image a server-side asp:Image instead.  However, .net uses some rather insane preprocessing to add some in-line CSS styles automatically, overriding the CSS style and removing the border

After a tiny google search, i had two options.  One was mentioned by the CSS developer in that i add "!important" to my CSS class.  The other is to make your own Image class, based on asp:Image, which has it's own setters and getter for borderwidth

http://www.spidermaster.org/blogs/spidermaster/archive/2008/01/22/remove-border-width-0px-from-asp-image.aspx

CSS : .class vs #ID

By tim

What, if any, are the advantages of using CSS for ID'd controls as opposed to using class based CSS?

I, for one, prefer classes.  Being predominently ASP.net, I have to tackle the old #include method using MasterPages and UserControls.  The way ASP.net renders HTML in this fashion causes controls to be ID'd up in GrandParent_Parent_ControlID so as to ensure uniqueness of controls.  This works and allows UserControl to have a textbox, for example, to have an identical ID to a textbox in a MasterPage, each of them are able to access their individual controls in their own code, but allowing the page and it's client-side code to access each of them on the same page

This kinda throws ID based CSS out for me as i cannot guarantee what my controls will be called until I compile and run the application and look at the markup that is generated

Anyone have any thoughts on which approach works better for them?

ASP.NET Set Live Checklist

By tim

Rob sent round a really relevant link for us

http://daptivate.com/archive/2008/02/12/top-10-best-practices-for-production-asp-net-applications.aspx

it contains 10 points to look at before setting your .net apps live and there are some really good points in there.  Things like encryption key changes between live and development servers might be a bit overkill but there were some i never knew about, like changing the machine.config compilation tag to enable somethign called "Retail Mode".  That said, sometimes we host multiple sites on the the same server and the machine.config is a machine-wide settings store but it cetaintly points you in the right direction :¬)

The only one i was a bit sketchy about is the stress testing one as i haven't had very good experiences of stress test applications.  The last one i used would only install on windows XP so it was pretty old school but there must be some newer ones out by now.

I'll have a dig around and see what i can find

HTML defanger

By Admin

We regularly have problems when sending out HTML emails created ‘on the fly’ on a webpage postback. Various clients/users will get an email that does not display as expected, these display problems can never be recreated and the usual fix is to use plain text.

We stumbled upon the term ‘defang’ recently. Amongst other things, defanging means to ‘Render an email message or attachment harmless’, and is applied by Anti-Virus/email scanning software.

The only current problem with an HTML defanger, is that is can be too sensitive and may defang content that is not strictly HTML or non-harmful HTML. All text parts are scanned for HTML but this can be a complex issue since its hard to tell what the mail readers will interpret.

Anomy Sanitizer is an example of an email-scanner that defangs HTML.

The only safe option is use plain text, or use very basic HTML such as the <table> and <font> tags for every line of text – laborious but much more likely to get past the defanger!