Came across an interesting bug on one of my client's sites the other day. She was having problems with a link being pushed off her screen. So following the basic diagnosing a problem rules, I found out she was using Firefox. Checked that it was fine no problems. So naturally asked her to provide a screen shot. Snap shot below.

As you can see this was most strange as her browser had added in all this additional formatting around the phone number, causing the email link to be pushed out. Naturally this intrigued me to find out what was causing it, so after looking on several forums found out that it was a Skype Plug-in on Firefox. So basically when you browse a website and see a phone number on the site, the Skype extension automatically converts it into a button that you click to call the person using Skype. Although quite handy for some, very annoying for others, and looks like Skype secretly install it without you knowing.

I've been trying to fathom this for ages and finally have found a solution

When we're been working on the older ASP sites, using ADO for the data access, Text fields are constantly coming in blank.  We try casting them as VARCHAR(8000) but this is a bit dodge as you can't guarantee that you won't be truncating any data.  Text is meant to be infintely long, after all

After some digging around, I noticed a few threads on the same problem, some indicating that the issue was a bug in the driver we were using.  We use a set of standard connection include files, all with DRIVER={SQL SERVER}.  This was the cause of the problem.  There is a bug in the standard sql server driver which stops Text fields coming back to your Recordsets correctly

We changed it to Provider=sqloledb and it works a lot better :¬)

Creative Jar are pleased to present our Silverlight Labs - http://silverlight.creative-jar.com, this area of the CJ site feature and showcase our Silverlight development over the coming months... so watch this space!

Dont forget to see us at VBUG tonight - http://www.vbug.co.uk/Events/August-2008/VBUG-Bracknell-Creating-Silverlight-apps-using-Blend-and-VS08.aspx

WOW - MOSS meets Silverlight and one hell of a blog system, check out http://blogs.msdn.com/imm/

The future is here!

So, IE6 is a pretty out dated browser and amongst other things doesn't support PNGs. Unfortunately there is still a percentage of people using IE6 so we still need to support it which can be a real bummer when the only way to successfully execute your design is to use PNGs for transparency.

Well there are a few solutions out there which will do the trick, however the one we have recently been using has a few issues which limits it;s abilities, mainly the lack of being able to repeat background PNGs, and a few issues with Z-Index of links.

Today Rob pointed me in the direction of a new PNG fix which is real easy to implement.  You can download the script here.

All you have to do is put the JS file somewhere in your solution along with a blank GIF file and then call the script from any page using PNGs using the following bit of code:

<!--[if lt IE 7]><script type="text/javascript" src="unitpngfix.js"></script><![endif]-->

 As long as all your paths are set correctly you should be up and running!

I stumbled across an issue today when using this script but Rob managed to fix them up pretty easily. The problem I discovered today was as soon as I put a link on an image, the image wouldn't render, but as discovered by Rob all you need to do to fix this is on all your PNGs simply put display:block and everything is back to normal!

Before starting a project (website) it is essential to ensure that a project has been properly planned and a clear specification produced. This ensures (hopefully...) that all project stakeholders have the same expectations, the development team know exactly what they are building and the client knows what the deliverables and end result will be.

An important component of the specification process is the production of a wireframe. A wireframe is a schematic representation of a website/application that encompasses navigation, functionality, page content and potentially usability. Wireframes are invaluable in the planning stages as they enable the top level functional aspects of a project to be tested before any development takes place.

A great tool for creating wireframes is Axure this package allows you to quickly design wireframe templates and re-useable components. You can set links between pages and export to HTML, this is a fantastic feature as it enables the viewer to interact and navigate through the wireframe.  What’s more Axure is available as a full 30 day trial.

Project account management room:

Server room:

Stairs artwork:



Tech room:



Time-lapse video of tech room: 

We had a problem where a website looked great on Windows and Mac – all browsers, but on Linux there were several issues. On analysis, these were caused by the differing font styles used by Linux. So we came up with the ultimate work around.

Before the fix we had the following CSS:

Body { font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif; }

Arial is not installed in Linux so the closest font (tested on Ubuntu and Kubuntu) is Freesans.

We then changed the CSS to:

Body { Font-family: Arial, Freesans, Sans-Serif; }

As a browser will pick-up the next font to see if it is installed or not. In this instance that will be Freesans, which is installed. If any operating systems don’t have Freesans installed, the next font of the font-family will be Sans-Serif, which doesn’t look too bad.

What about Windows and Mac OS? In case Arial is not installed (what is very unlikely to happen) it will simply skip Freesans (Windows and Mac OS don’t have Freesans installed) and use Sans-Serif as a font to render the page.

That’s how crossbrowser and crossOS compatibility works.

Tested on Kubuntu (version 8.04) on Konqueror and Firefox 3, Ubuntu (version 7.04) on Firefox 2, Safari 1.3 and Firefox 2 in Mac OS X (10.3), IE 6, IE7 and all other windows browsers as usual.

Looks good.

If you want to understand online advertising or simply want to understand who does what in the world of online advertising, then read the following three blog posts. A very easy to read and comprehensive guide to online advertising, relevant to Google adwords, Live Adcenter and Yahoo Advertising, and probably a load of others that exist.

Online Advertising Business 101, Part I - The Online Advertising Value Chain

Online Advertising Business 101, Part II - How does adserving actually work?

Online Ad Business 101, Part III - Ad Networks

Now having read these posts, it's time to start an online advertising campaign, or get someone who knows what they are doing to run your Pay Per Click campaign for you!

Embedding custom fonts into your Silverlight Application couldn't be easier. This video is downloaded from http://channel9.msdn.com/