April 2006 - Posts
If you read my last post "First
experience with CSS friendly control adapters beta" you might have realized
that I am referencing in my CSS file a http handler:
background:
url(../../PersistantImage.ashx?theme=Default&file=Rounded.gif)
This is a gem coming with the adapters project. It avoids the flickering you
might have with pure CSS menu using images. This flickering is caused by the
client browser failing to cache images used in hover styles (CSS).
[ Currently Playing : Upside Down - Jack Johnson and Friends -
Sing-A-Longs and Lullabies for the film Curious George (03:29)
]
I had the chance to realize that CSS friendly control adapters beta from the
ASP.NET Team was online for a short time and downloaded it, so I had the
pleasure to experience it a bit this evening.
By the way I recommend the reading of the White Paper, that is well
written.
So my first idea was to integrate the Menu on Tech Head Brothers. IMHO this new
menu is far better than the one delivered with ASP.NET because it uses a pure
CSS approach.
After copying the set of needed files to my project, I was able to start
changing all the CSS to meet my needs. I did not faced any real issue to change
the whole thing, but then I realized that I missed the possibility to know the
selected item of my menu. I started to look at the code and in 2 minutes it was
changed. Nice.
So I render this:
<div class="THBMenu">
<div
class="AspNet-Menu-Horizontal">
<ul
class="AspNet-Menu">
<li
class="AspNet-Menu-Leaf">
<a
href="/Website/Default.aspx"
class="AspNet-Menu-Link">
Accueil
</a>
</li>
<li
class="AspNet-Menu-Leaf">
<a
href="/Website/Articles.aspx"
class="AspNet-Menu-Link">
Articles
</a>
</li>
<li
class="AspNet-Menu-Leaf">
<a
href="/Website/Astuces.aspx"
class="AspNet-Menu-Link-Selected">
Astuces
</a>
</li>
To achieve this I modified the method BuildItem in the file MenuAdapter.cs
like this:
if (item != Control.SelectedItem)
writer.WriteAttribute("class", "AspNet-Menu-Link");
else
writer.WriteAttribute("class", "AspNet-Menu-Link-Selected");
And then I added the new thing in the CSS, MenuExample.css:
.THBMenu ul.AspNet-Menu li.AspNet-Menu-Leaf a.AspNet-Menu-Link-Selected
{
color: #1A2633;
background: url(../../PersistantImage.ashx?theme=Default&file=Rounded.gif) no-repeat bottom center;
}
For such a result:
[ Currently Playing : Because I Want You - Placebo - Meds (03:22)
]
At last TechEd in Amsterdam I was convinced by Aurel to switch the whole design of my community website Tech Head Brothers from tables formating to CSS. Aurelien shown me crazy stuff they are building in Wygwam using CSS and in 5 minutes I was convinced for that change. Now Aurel is kind of my mentor on that and also decided me to go the Atlas way. As I had decided to rewrite the site in ASP.NET 2, I also decided to switch to CSS.
My first experience with CSS was that it is really difficult to get it running on all browsers, but at the time of table I remember that I also had issues. The second problem I had was that lots of the ASP.NET controls are rendering with tables and the mix was not always good and even sometimes difficult to hack.
So when I first heard of the CSS friendly control adapters I thought that's my man. This morning I was able to download it and I don't know why they removed the site now, but as I have the setup I will try it over the long weekend.
CSS Rocks !!! Thanks Aurel.
The application is written as a n-tier web application and
modeled with domain objects.
It uses those differents technologies:
[ Currently Playing : Temporary Remedy - Ben Harper - Diamonds On
The Inside (03:11) ]
This morning I was able to integrate Atlas in the new release under development of Tech Head Brothers. In less than a hour I had an UpdatePanel in the page that describes the differents authors of the site. Now when you click on the picture of an author the biography is shown without the full post back. And it is really really easy. I am also adding a tab to show all publication of the auhtor.
Congratulations to the Atlas Team!!! Great work.
As said in a past post: Yeah!!! :-)
Publications are working, I am working on the new publishing tool for my
website Tech Head Brothers, and
today I reached another milestone: The tool is now installed on Laurent
Duveau notebook and he is able to post directly from Word 2003.
Currently the tool let the author
- choose images to insert using a Document Action Pane
- copy source code from Visual Studio and paste it into Word 2003,
generating an external source code colorized XHTML file
- have a local disconnected preview of there content through a XSLT
rendering
- post there content on the website using Web Services
And finally here is a picture of what you can get (the design is not finished
and still a bit buggy) with the tool when the content is published:
This year edition of the French DevDays held in Toulouse the 30th March,
2006 was marked by the presence of 6 Tech Head Brothers authors as
speakers !!! Nice :-)
And a picture of the audience
Incredible what you might do with javascript, I cannot
believe it. You made an awesome work Aurel.
You might see this gadget here.
 |
First of all, I want to say that this gadget is not a Flash or Java
applet one. It has been thoroughly coded with Javascript using various
tips and tricks as Fade In/Out, Clip In/Out, Sprites animation and so
on.
Option pannel will enable you to set the difficulty of the
computer and also see the playable squares. The computer is an artificial
intelligence hosted on my server.
Moreover, this gadget is
localized on your Live.com settings. At present, only french and english
versions are available, for other ones, english is set by default. I'm
looking for sympathetic translators for the remaining ones.
Enjoy
!
|
I was renewed as Microsoft MVP in the category Visual Developer -
ASP/ASP.NET. Great!!!
Congratulations to Michel
Perfetti, that is now MVP Dev C#, and to all the other authors of Tech Head Brothers that get
renewed:
Now we are 11 MVP on Tech Head
Brothers. Nice :-) Who's next?
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