Web Development

The blog now uses a new comment system – Disqus. I upgraded to BE v2.5, and found various instructions on how to move to Disqus… including these. There was one problem, however. The instructions state that on post.aspx, JavaScript needs to change to the following: <script type="text/javascript"> var disqus_title = '<%=Post.Title %>'; var disqus_identifier = '<%= Post.Id.ToString() %>'; var disqus_url = '<%= Post.AbsoluteLink %>'; var disqus_developer = '<%= BlogEngine.Core.BlogSettings.Instance.DisqusDevMode ? 1 : 0 %>'; (function () { var dsq = document.createElement('script'); dsq.type = 'text/javascript'; dsq.async = true; dsq.src = 'http://<%=BlogEngine.Core.BlogSettings.Instance.DisqusWebsiteName %>.disqus.com/embed.js'; (document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0] || document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0]).appendChild(dsq); })(); </script> However, that is not accurate and will result in errors. The correct code needs to reference Page, and not Post. ...

I needed to change the background color of the text region of a flash combobox – using AS3 at runtime. Styles for some reason were not working.  The solution was to directly address the textfield property and change its background color.  Here’s an example: cbo.textField.textField.background = true; cbo.textField.textField.backgroundColor = 0xDEDE29;

I tried to customize the combobox ( AS3 ), and everything was working fine by using cbo.setStyle( “embedFonts” ) and cbo.setStyle( “textFormat” ) while testing the movie.  However, when I published the SWF, the styles were no longer working. It seems like setStyle doesn’t really work properly for comboboxes for some reason.  The solution was to apply the setStyle to the textField inside the combobox, and not to the combobox itself. ...

It seems like FusionCharts does not support changing the color of a trendline via the TRENDVALUES style application.  The color always seems to default to the color of the trendline. The fix to this issue involves modifying the source of the XYPlotChart.as file (you’ll need the source for fusioncharts to be able to do this). Search the file for the following line (it should be line 1789): trendFontObj.color = this.trendLines [i].color; Right afer this line, paste the following code: ...

Here’s something I wasted like 45 minutes on, and it should be pretty trivial. I needed to make the TextArea component NOT selectable, yet still enabled (need the scrollbar to work). I started digging around the TextArea.as class, because no matter what I did in my code (such as myTextArea.textField.selectable = false; ), the TextArea was still selectable. It appears that when the TextArea calls the draw() or setSize() methods, it updates the text field in the TextArea to be selectable depending on whether the TextArea is enabled or not. ...

I downloaded the platform preview version of IE9 today to test out some CSS support. I ran a few tests through it, with the following results. The picture on the left was generated using Firefox 3.6 (keep in mind that I did have to use the “-moz” prefix in front of all but one style to make it work in FF). The IE content is on the right. It certainly is possible that IE requires some vendor-specific suffix like Firefox did. However, I did not use any prefix, so the style may actually be supported in some form. ...

Ok, I’ll get straight to the point: There is a lot to dislike about many websites right now when it comes to how these websites generate revenue. On many sites it is hard to actually find the content you were seeking due to the huge amount of ads that get displayed. I’ve had my browser crash countless times due to poorly designed ads (generally, it is due to Flash ads, but it certainly can happen with JavaScript as well). ...

I updated the look of the site so it doesn’t look like the default BlogEngine.NET theme. I’m not a graphic designer, but I think it could have turned out worse. It does look best in the latest version of Opera/Firefox (and probably Chrome and Safari…). Hopefully IE will have support for border-radius and box-shadow soon… I’m not holding my breath though.

This post is here for archival purposes only. The linked items are no longer available. I’ve added the reCaptcha to my contact page. If anyone who has installed the reCaptcha wants to add it to their contact page, the files are available here. These are just the updated contact page files.  You must have the reCaptcha already installed for these to work.

Update: When I switched hosting providers and upgraded BE.NET, I didn’t migrate the changes to the comment system to the newer version.  This post describes my updates to version 1.x, but is no longer being used on my website. BlogEngine.NET had a pretty decent commenting system, but it lacked some of the functionality I wanted in a comment system for my blog. So I decided to update it myself, which turned out to be a bigger deal than I thought it would be. Still, after a few evenings of work, I got my comment system. The following is a summary of the new additions. ...