blog.aaziz.org » Development http://blog.aaziz.org ramblings and opinions of a geek Fri, 08 Oct 2010 00:26:18 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9 en hourly 1 I Hate CSS http://blog.aaziz.org/i-hate-css http://blog.aaziz.org/i-hate-css#comments Fri, 04 Dec 2009 17:16:48 +0000 Anthony Aziz http://blog.aaziz.org/?p=145 My latest project at work is a bit confidential, but I can say that it has me designing a webpage. I grew up on this stuff and I’ve almost entirely self-taught myself it. This time, I was given the design prototype, and didn’t have to worry about the actual design of the document.

But it was still a huge bitch. I began by reading up on some extra CSS articles. Maybe this time I’ll try absolute positioning instead of floating divs. It has its own issues. Creating web pages is fun for me … up until I run into the issues. I seems the W3C specs aren’t designed to make things easy for web designers. Some of the most common practices in web design are using CSS specs that aren’t designed specifically for layouts. Absolute positioning is generic – it’s useful for positioning arbitrary elements, which has a lot of use in layout design, but it has limitations and problems. Using floating divs and wrappers and margins to create a particular layout is using these tools for something other than what they are design for.

Take float – it’s a property to make text flow around an object. It wasn’t designed to create columns on a webpage. And there’s no CSS property that creates columns, or a header. In simple cases and the beginnings of large projects, working with a web layout seems simpler than a desktop application layout. All you need are some elements and style rules – no worry about creating objects and adding them and listening for events.

But I’m beginning to wish we had a better approach to creating webpage layouts. Something that’s actually designed to create web forms and two-column pages. The SWING library for Java is a good example. It was designed to create layouts for people to use an application. CSS is designed to style documents. It does have its uses, and that is styling documents. But there are a lot of cases where that doesn’t apply. I would guess that the majority of uses of CSS are either web applications or websites (with columns, headings, footers, and the whole bit) I have no clue what the actual distribution is, or if even the majority of cases are that way, actually, but you can’t argue that there’s a lot of cases like that. And CSS simply doesn’t lend itself well to that.

I’m not saying to abolish CSS. It needs to be improved though, perhaps split into separate specifications. Give me something where I can layout a page as easily and reliably as I could with a table, without the actual horrible atrocities of table design. I’d like something where I can say “this element is going to be a left column that spans from below the header to the bottom of the document” and “the element is going to be a horizontal menu whose items are centered and spaced evenly”. I’m sure some would say that was too specific. Rules that would be used to do that simply would be very narrow-focused. But there are so many cases where this could be used.

CSS is about separating the content from the design. But we should be able to separate parts of a CSS document: style and layout. Fonts, colours, paragraph spacing, etc, are all design properties. Floating divs and absolutely positioned footers are all things that make up a layout. I haven’t looked into to HTML5 much, so maybe there’s a step in the right direction, but what about something like this?

<html>
<head>
	<title>FGC Sample</title>
	<style>
		page {
			width: 800px;
			horizontal-position: center;
		}

		header {
			width: page-width;
			height: 100px;
			color: white;
			background-color: black;
		}

		navigation {
			nav-style: horizontal;
			item-spacing: equal;
			item-position: center;
			background-color: blue;
		}

		item {
			color: white;
		}

		item:hover {
			font-weight: bold;
			background-color: green;
		}

		content#aside {
			type: column;
			top: auto;
			bottom: document-bottom;
			width: 300px;
			position: left;
		}

		content#aside h1 {
			text-transform: uppercase;
		}

		content#main {
			type: column;
			width: auto;
			position: center;
			height: auto;

			color: black;
			background-color: blue;
		}

		content#main #execphoto {
			float: left;
			margin: 5px;
		}

		footer {
			width: page-width;
			font-size: 0.8em;
			font-style: italic;
			color: grey;
			background-colour: black;
		}
	</style>
</head>
<body>
	<page>
		<header><img src="header.png" /></header>
		<navigation>
			<item href="#">Home</item>
			<item href="#">Products</item>
			<item href="#">About</item>
			<item href="#">Contact</item>
		</navigation>
		<content id="aside">
			<h1>New product launched!</h1>
			<p>We have launched a new product XXBBYY</p>
			<p>Herp derp derp</p>
			<p>FARBLE GARBLE FBRARFGARFGB</p>
		</content>
		<content id="main">
			<h1>Welcome to FarbleGarb CO</h1>
			<img id="execphoto" src="mrfarble.png" />
			<p>At FGC we have pride and garbs to make you garble in pride.</p>
			<p>These paragraphs will float around that image like in regular CSS</p>
		</content>
		<footer>Copyright &copy; FarbleGarb 2009</footer>
	</page>
</body>
</html>

I don’t even have to tell you what it would look like, really, because the CSS explains it. Not perfectly, perhaps, but that’s why I’m not working with the W3C to design the next specs. I’m not even that great of a web designer. But I do know what problems I run into when I’m working on a website, and all the articles across the web that take a genius to get a properly flowing 3-column layout with variable length columns and a footer.

I doubt there’s going to be anything like this soon, or even not soon. CSS3 is barely implemented, and IE still has troubles with most of CSS2 and some of CSS1. But I can dream (and rant), right? One day I’m going back to party like its ‘99 and make a table-based layout. Yes, <font> tags and all.

(I’m extremely interested in other folk’s opinions. I know there are a lot better web designers out there, and I know they don’t read this blog. But if there’s any post that I think deserves commentary and discussion, it’s this one.)

]]> http://blog.aaziz.org/i-hate-css/feed 23 Referencing ASP.NET User Controls in Code-behind http://blog.aaziz.org/referencing-aspnet-user-controls-in-code-behind http://blog.aaziz.org/referencing-aspnet-user-controls-in-code-behind#comments Tue, 26 May 2009 20:52:04 +0000 Anthony Aziz http://blog.aaziz.org/?p=108 I recently had an issue where I converted some User Controls to code-behind model, and moved them to another directory. I then found I couldn’t reference them in code. After a post on the ASP.NET forums, I came to a solution, and devised the rules as to how you can reference a User Control in code:

  1. The control needs to have a ClassName tag in the <%@ Control %> tag (actually, I think if it doesn’t you’ll use the generated class name?)
  2. The page has to use a <%@ Reference %> tag in the .aspx file to reference the control
  3. If page uses a code-behind file, the namespace “ASP” contains all controls reference with the <%@ Reference %> tag. If it’s inline code, there’s no need for this.

If your page is inline code, you don’t have to worry about the ASP namespace. The ASP namespace is a dynamic namespace that contains the controls you referenced with the <%@ Reference %> tag in the markup file.

I hope this helps anyone having problems referencing User Controls by classname in their code. I searched for quite a while and I only got answers like “don’t use code-behind if you want to do that” or “have all your controls implement a Interface and reference them by that interface”.

Please post any comments or questions. I check my email/comments daily, so a response should be pretty quick (usually about 1 business day maximum. If I’m at a computer working, I usually respond right away). You can also contact me by email.

]]> http://blog.aaziz.org/referencing-aspnet-user-controls-in-code-behind/feed 9 Configure Crystal Reports 2008 for ASP.NET on IIS http://blog.aaziz.org/configure-crystal-reports-2008-for-aspnet-on-iis http://blog.aaziz.org/configure-crystal-reports-2008-for-aspnet-on-iis#comments Mon, 25 May 2009 14:34:26 +0000 Anthony Aziz http://blog.aaziz.org/?p=103 Earlier I posted a “solution” to a problem where I couldn’t export. I searched high and low, running through DLLs and assembly references. I thought I had it working by changing the DLL of one assembly reference the to version 10 reference (CR 2008 is version 12). I stopped the post there. Later, I realized the different assemblies were pretty integrated with each other, and you couldn’t just have different versions floating around (DUH). So I changed them all back to version 10.

Of course I still had issues with that. I forget what, but it wasn’t good. I think it wouldn’t run on the production server. That server doesn’t have Visual Studio installed, only the CR engine. The version 10 assemblies I were using were the Crystal Report packages that came with VS.NET 2008.

In order to successfully be able to use all the correct assemblies, I had to do more research. What I ended up doing was completely uninstalling Crystal Reports and reinstalling it, and configuring some Virtual Diretories. The steps and and explanation after the jump.

When version 12 was installed, I had a javascript error on the Report Viewer page. It complained that object “bobj” was not found. It was a javascript object. I found the page was referencing a js file in the directory http://host/aspnet_client/system_web/2_0_50727/crystalreportviewers12/. There was no crystalreportviewers12 directory there, however there was one at the root… and one in the CR install directory, C:\Program Files\Business Objects\Common\4.0\. Then it was clear that the browser needed to find that folder somehow. I copied it there to test, and it worked. Later, as per direction, we created a Virtual Directory to the install folder. I also had to add C:\Program Files\Business Objects\BusinessObjects Enterprise 12.0\win32_x86\ to the PATH environment variable, otherwise I would get a DLL error when trying to export to Excel format.

That pretty much sums it up. But I’m going to outline the steps anyways:

  1. Completely uninstall Crystal Reports (all version, make sure DLLs do not exist in Common Files folder, or Bin folder of web application)
  2. Reboot
  3. Install Crystal Reports 2008, doing a custome install and making sure to install packages for Visual Studio and the .NET framework (I don’t believe they were selected by default, this may have had something to do with it). I opted to install all features on my development machine, just in case.
  4. Add C:\Program Files\Business Objects\BusinessObjects Enterprise 12.0\win32_x86\ to the PATH variable (adjust path if needed)
  5. The directory crystalreportviewers12 must be accessible by client browsers from the aspnet_client\system_web\2_0_50727 folder. Copying the folder or creating a Virtual Directory to C:\Program Files\Business Objects\Common\4.0\crystalreportviewers12 are options
  6. Reboot

I hope this helps anyone having Crystal Report 2008 problems with a ASP.NET site (or helps in any other way). The reason I revisted this was because I am configuring a new developement workstation I was upgraded to at work, and have to go through this process again. It’s good to refresh myself. If I run into any more problems I’ll post them. Please add your comments or ask any questions if you’re having problems!

]]> http://blog.aaziz.org/configure-crystal-reports-2008-for-aspnet-on-iis/feed 15 Export Error with Crystal Reports 2008, in ASP.NET http://blog.aaziz.org/export-error-with-crystal-reports-2008-in-aspnet http://blog.aaziz.org/export-error-with-crystal-reports-2008-in-aspnet#comments Fri, 20 Mar 2009 15:13:06 +0000 Anthony Aziz http://blog.aaziz.org/?p=97 NOTE: THIS IS WRONG. I later came across troubles with this approach. As I had a suspicion, all DLL versions have to be the same. This “solution” posted here is no longer relevant. I do, however, have a solution, which I will post shortly.

UPDATE: I’ve posted an updated solution.

(There is a solution here, skip down a ways if that’s all you care about, but the introduction might help some)

Frustrating situation at work today. Here’s the situation. I’m currently building a new report system in .NET (currently implement in classic ASP, like the rest of the site). We’re going to be using the latest version of Crystal Reports (2008, or, version 12) as it supposedly solves some issues with scheduling and other server-side issues.

I’m at a point where I’m actually starting to implement the Crystal Report components and objects into the system to produce report previews, exports, etc. The first thing I do is write the code for exporting (it’s fairly simple). First, Excel exporting, because it’s the most common format our customers/users will use.

Protected Sub excelLink_Click(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs)

Dim reportFile = GetReport(reportId)
Dim reportDoc = CreateReportDocument(reportFile)

reportDoc.ExportToHttpResponse(ExportFormatType.Excel, Response, True, ReportFile.DisplayId & “_” & Today.ToString(“yyyy-dd-MM”))

End Sub

Yes, I hate VB too, but what’s important here is the line ExportToHttpResponse. First argument is the format type, an Enumeration, there’s about 10 or 12. Second is the HTTP Response object to send the output to, easy enough.

Third is a flag “AsAttachment”. From what I gander, if true, it outputs as a download (no output is sent to browser except a “download” box). If it’s false, then it sends the output to the browser, so if it’s a PDF it could possibly show in the browser window, the some for Office documents in IE.

Last is the filename of the exported file, without the extension (this is added automatically)

That’s vey simple. So I load up the page, choose a report, and click “Export to Excel”. Here’s my wonderful output:

System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException: Invalid export DLL or export format.

FFFF.

First thing I did was change it to another format – this time “ExcelRecord”, which is an .xls file with no formatting. Still I get the same error message. Ok, this isn’t too surprising. Next, I try PDF export. Badda-bing, it works. Okay, somethings wrong with the excel exporting. A couple of other tests confirm that other formats work.

Then I remember in my early testing, I had issues using the newest assembly references. I had been using version 12.0.2000.0 with some issues, but there was also a slightly older version that had been automatically added to Visual Studio, 10.2.3600.0. In developing the new page, I wanted to stick to the most recent version, so I had commented out the version 10.* lines in web.config file, and added the version 12.* ones.

I had this lead, so now I comment out the version 12 lines, and replace the version 10 lines, and it works. Hmmmm.

Some research proved that people had some issues with this problem as well, and I didn’t really see any solutions. The first thing was reinstall Crystal Reports, multiple versions could be a problem. So I did that. Wiped clean everything CR on my machine until my application wouldn’t run. Then I rebooted and did a clean install of just CR 2008.

Then I removed everything about CR from my web.config file re-added the references through the project property page. I only chose references that were version 12.0.2000.0 (it still reported 10.* ones). I ran the page again, and the export still didn’t work. FFFFFFFF again.

Now what do I do? More research. Back to the pages I had from before, and even some other ones. Most prominent comment was a blaming finger towards crxf_xls.dll in the Program Files/Common Files/Business Objects/2.7/Bin directory, which apparently deals with the actual exporting. Some suggestions were to delete the dll, try registering it, replace it with another, etc. None of them worked.

I looked up the version info on the DLL itself, which was 10.*. I thought this was perhaps the issue, but then again, the other export DLLs were the same version, that is, crxf_pdf, etc.

After some more researching and still no answers, I thought perhaps I’ll just stick with the version 10 assembly, but the geek in me wanted to do it right, which was use the actually version we’re supposed to be using. I don’t really even know if it made a difference – perhaps the version isn’t correspondent to old DLL versions, or what not, but I wasn’t going to give up yet.

My next attempt was to try to replace just one of those assemblies with the other vesion, see if that truly was the issue, and if so, which one. Here’s the assembly web.config entries:

<add assembly="CrystalDecisions.CrystalReports.Engine, Version=12.0.2000.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=692FBEA5521E1304"/>
<add assembly="CrystalDecisions.ReportSource, Version=12.0.2000.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=692FBEA5521E1304"/>
<add assembly="CrystalDecisions.Shared, Version=12.0.2000.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=692FBEA5521E1304"/>
<add assembly="CrystalDecisions.Web, Version=12.0.2000.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=692FBEA5521E1304"/>
<add assembly="CrystalDecisions.Windows.Forms, Version=12.0.2000.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=692FBEA5521E1304"/>

The most obvious assembly was the Engine, so I changed that version to 10.2.3600.0 and tested. I didn’t think it would work, but then again, usually you don’t. But it did.

So that was my solution, though I’m not sure if it’s the best way. However, I got what I wanted, or as much as I can. I don’t want to spend more time on this. I only have CR 2008 installed now, and if this version 10 assembly works, then it should work in production – which is, really, all I care about.

I offer this here as help to anyone having a similar issue, and I am also open to others’ comments. Perhaps I’m missing something here. Any help would surely be appreciated, I simply have no where else to go by myself.

]]> http://blog.aaziz.org/export-error-with-crystal-reports-2008-in-aspnet/feed 1 The lack of standards for standards http://blog.aaziz.org/the-lack-of-standards-for-standards http://blog.aaziz.org/the-lack-of-standards-for-standards#comments Mon, 07 Jul 2008 17:25:00 +0000 Anthony Aziz http://blog.aaziz.org/?p=18 At work I’ve been developing a inital draft for the new company website. Based on some browser statistics, Firefox holds 41% of the browser market, with IE6 and 7 close at 26.5% and 27%, respectively. However, I’m willing to bet a good 30% of the people using Firefox (a statistic pulled out of my ass, of course) are geeks and/or in the IT profession (including web designers). The company I work for is a manufacturing company, who sells machines that make gel capsules. So I have to assume the a larger percentage of the audience will be using IE7 and 6 (IE6 is still out there – there’s a lot of companies still using Win2000).

That about puts them all on the same plate, which means I have to develop for three different browsers, all with their own little perkiness. Of course, I could just use tables – hell, tables work anywhere. Or I could make a navigation bar with images only. But as a geek and supporter of standards, I of course have to use CSS only. And the navigation menu isn’t in a line of text. No, it’s an actual list element. And it’s floated and horizontal, with no bullets.

And the best part – it’s a rollover, drop-down menu. Without Javascript. Of course, that was the point, except in order for IE to accept rollovers properly, I had to use some Suckerfish javascript. Well – at least it was tidy, and worked. Sprinkled throughout the code are little hacks and tricks to make everything fit in place, like !important flags and .margin-top: -2px tricks. In my quest to achieve standards compliance and full accessibility, I have broken my core religious believes and broken my balls over gettings everyone to play nicely. Isn’t it just easier to say eff that browser I don’t care about you? Well, certainly. But then I’d be a rational, productive person.

]]> http://blog.aaziz.org/the-lack-of-standards-for-standards/feed 4 Projects page http://blog.aaziz.org/projects-page http://blog.aaziz.org/projects-page#comments Wed, 25 Jun 2008 20:50:19 +0000 Anthony Aziz http://blog.aaziz.org/?p=9 Check out the Projects page. There’s quiet a bit of content for LifeEngine.

Be free in commenting!

]]> http://blog.aaziz.org/projects-page/feed 2