https://blogs.lotterypost.com/speednet/ Technical articles and insight centered mainly on Microsoft development (ASP.NET, VB, C#, SQL Server). Written by the creator and architect of Lottery Post, the Internet's largest online lottery community. en-us Lottery Lottery Post RSS Generator Tue, 08 May 2012 19:32:53 GMT Tue, 08 May 2012 19:32:53 GMT https://blogs.lotterypost.com/speednet/2012/05/implementing-nth-child-css-selector-that-w.htm Wow, it's been almost 2 years since I wrote my last technical blog entry! I guess the busier things get, the harder it is to set aside time to document things and "give back" to the developer community. So I guess since it's been so long I should first mentioned that this is Todd, using my Speednet account at Lottery Post. I write technical blog posts using this user account from time-to-time (sometimes waiting 2 years or so, *ahem*) in order to share technical thoughts and articl... https://blogs.lotterypost.com/speednet/2012/05/implementing-nth-child-css-selector-that-w.htm Tue, 08 May 2012 19:32:53 GMT https://blogs.lotterypost.com/speednet/2010/08/fixing-a-long-standing-issue-with-tinymce.htm I do a lot of development work with the TinyMCE text editor, since it's the one that powers all the rich text editing capabilities at Lottery Post. TinyMCE is pretty much one of the most popular JavaScript-based text editors in use today. I wanted to pass along a solution to a problem I finally solved today, for other developers who also use TinyMCE in their development projects. The problem is that in Internet Explorer, when you hover your mouse over the blank text editor (no content cur... https://blogs.lotterypost.com/speednet/2010/08/fixing-a-long-standing-issue-with-tinymce.htm Wed, 18 Aug 2010 20:46:27 GMT https://blogs.lotterypost.com/speednet/2009/06/new-jquery-watermark-plugin-released.htm I have just finished publishing my latest free plugin, called Watermark plugin for jQuery. The new project has been released on the Google Code site, and the link to the project home page is: https://code.google.com/archive/p/jquery-watermark/ The plugin makes it simple to add those little light gray tips inside text entry spaces on a Web page. For example: The minified version of the code, which is included in the download package, adds less than 2,000 bytes to the page size, so ... https://blogs.lotterypost.com/speednet/2009/06/new-jquery-watermark-plugin-released.htm Mon, 01 Jun 2009 13:56:56 GMT https://blogs.lotterypost.com/speednet/2009/04/nifty-file-utility-that-every-developer-can-u.htm Here's a scenario faced by practically every developer at one time or another: you want to delete a file, but it refuses to delete because Windows sees the file as "locked" by another user. Sometimes this can be a real file lock, when a user on a different computer does actually have the file open, or sometimes it can be file-locking "junk" left over when a computer that did have a lock crashed or suddenly closed an application. There has never been a simple "unlo... https://blogs.lotterypost.com/speednet/2009/04/nifty-file-utility-that-every-developer-can-u.htm Wed, 22 Apr 2009 03:08:45 GMT https://blogs.lotterypost.com/speednet/2008/11/aspnet-ajax-avoid-using-css-addremove-func.htm I came across a major performance issue in the Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX client library (JavaScript library) today. Because the nature of the issue is engrained in the client library code, the only way around it was to completely abandon use of the functions that add, remove, and test for the existence of class names assigned to DOM elements, and develop my own. Specifically, the following functions are involved/affected: Sys.UI.DomElement.addCssClass Sys.UI.DomElement.removeCssClass ... https://blogs.lotterypost.com/speednet/2008/11/aspnet-ajax-avoid-using-css-addremove-func.htm Fri, 28 Nov 2008 07:15:06 GMT https://blogs.lotterypost.com/speednet/2008/09/supporting-google-chrome-with-browserhawk.htm Lottery Post uses Browserhawk (from Cyscape) to detect browser capabilities, so if a user's web browser does not meet the minimum standards required by the site, they can be shown a detailed message page, with a description of exactly what is under-functional. When the new Google Chrome Web browser was released in the past week, Browserhawk did not detect the new browser properly (and still does not), so users of the new browser had problems logging in to the site. Since Chrome uses the Ap... https://blogs.lotterypost.com/speednet/2008/09/supporting-google-chrome-with-browserhawk.htm Wed, 03 Sep 2008 23:37:07 GMT https://blogs.lotterypost.com/speednet/2008/05/aspnet-ajax-client-library-combining-create.htm When working with the ASP.NET AJAX client library, I find that I occasionally need to use both Function.createDelegate() and Function.createCallback() simultaneously. Each time you use one or the other of these methods, the library places a "call wrapper" around your function. Then, when the new delegate (or callback) is called, there are actually two calls being made: the first to the wrapper, and the second when the wrapper calls your function. By combining the use of both met... https://blogs.lotterypost.com/speednet/2008/05/aspnet-ajax-client-library-combining-create.htm Wed, 28 May 2008 20:27:48 GMT https://blogs.lotterypost.com/speednet/2008/04/smart-string-concatenation.htm Whether on a individual computer or a server attached to the Internet someplace, people are always looking for better performance of their software. The first thought that comes to mind is often adding memory or a faster processor, or choosing a faster operating system or web browser. But many times (perhaps most times) the real culprit for slow performance is the programmer who wrote the software. As a programmer, my philosophy is that I personally take responsibility for the performan... https://blogs.lotterypost.com/speednet/2008/04/smart-string-concatenation.htm Fri, 04 Apr 2008 17:29:51 GMT https://blogs.lotterypost.com/speednet/2008/03/three-cheers-for-microsoft-the-web-is-about.htm I am so happy to report that Microsoft made an announcement this morning that its upcoming IE8 web browser will support all current web browser standards as the default browser behavior! While I knew that IE8 was going to support the current set of web standards, Microsoft's plan to-date was to require web sites to add a special indicator to their HTML code that would "turn on" this support. The result of that previous plan would have been a confusing mess of web sites, with many... https://blogs.lotterypost.com/speednet/2008/03/three-cheers-for-microsoft-the-web-is-about.htm Tue, 04 Mar 2008 02:37:00 GMT https://blogs.lotterypost.com/speednet/2008/02/applying-vista-sp1-caused-vs-2008-compiles-to.htm Being a Microsoft Developer Network subscriber, yesterday I was able to get my hands on the new Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1), which includes hoards of fixes and performance tweaks.The install went well, but is slow. It probably took an hour to install, but that was only after an hour to uninstall the SP1 Release Candidate that I had previously installed.The biggest pain was having to tell my virus protection software that every file that changed on my PC was OK. I wish there was an easy way to d... https://blogs.lotterypost.com/speednet/2008/02/applying-vista-sp1-caused-vs-2008-compiles-to.htm Fri, 15 Feb 2008 18:28:43 GMT https://blogs.lotterypost.com/speednet/2008/01/aspnet-ajax-half-way-between-createdelegate.htm I stumbled on a use of Function.createDelegate() method today that seems to be a cross between Function.createDelegate() and Function.createCallback().I had the need to pass a context to a handler function, with the context being a JSON object containing the state of a few variables. I tried using createCallback(), which is designed for that purpose, but it did not seem to work well because I was not using it together with a DOM event -- just with an internal function call.So I turned to create... https://blogs.lotterypost.com/speednet/2008/01/aspnet-ajax-half-way-between-createdelegate.htm Mon, 14 Jan 2008 19:47:12 GMT https://blogs.lotterypost.com/speednet/2008/01/changeall-extension-method-alters-every-item.htm My favorite feature of the new .NET 3.5 framework is extension methods. Ever since I heard they would be available in this version of the .NET framework I have been designing functions in a way that they could be easily converted to extension methods.For the unenlightened, extension methods are a new feature of the .NET 3.5 framework that allows you to extend any class -- whether it is a built-in class, a third-party class, or your own class.When you create an extension method, you can call the... https://blogs.lotterypost.com/speednet/2008/01/changeall-extension-method-alters-every-item.htm Wed, 02 Jan 2008 21:26:42 GMT https://blogs.lotterypost.com/speednet/2007/12/ie7-has-now-overtaken-ie6.htm I am happy to be able to report the news that is the subject of this blog entry: that IE7 has now apparently overtaken IE6 for browser share. I base this information on the Active Users page here at Lottery Post, in addition to regular web site log analysis. Over the past several weeks I have monitored consistent statistics showing at least 25% more IE7 users than IE6 users. (Looking further down the chain, the IE5 user population is so small at this point that it's a mere blip, and cert... https://blogs.lotterypost.com/speednet/2007/12/ie7-has-now-overtaken-ie6.htm Sun, 16 Dec 2007 22:04:54 GMT https://blogs.lotterypost.com/speednet/2007/11/avoid-pipelining-in-firefox.htm Last month I posted some tips to help speed up Firefox.Strangely, Firefox has been giving me some performance problems lately. It loads all the content of a page and about half of the images. Then it has an extremely long pause, maybe 2 or 3 minutes, before it finally completes loading the rest of the images.After about an hour of uninstalling, re-installing, and tweaking, I have narrowed it down to the pipelining settings.If I turn OFF network.http.pipelining the page and all the images load ... https://blogs.lotterypost.com/speednet/2007/11/avoid-pipelining-in-firefox.htm Sun, 18 Nov 2007 23:46:16 GMT https://blogs.lotterypost.com/speednet/2007/10/nifty-microsoft-utility-fixed-my-intellipoint.htm IntelliPoint is Microsoft's mouse companion software, which adds a number of handy features and functions to just about their entire mouse product line. I have always liked Microsoft's mice the best, so I always try to keep up with the latest version of IntelliPoint. My current favorite mouse is the Wireless Laser Mouse 8000, which connects via a small bluetooth dongle, is as smooth as glass, and is fantastically accurate. The only grudge I have is the location of the "forward"... https://blogs.lotterypost.com/speednet/2007/10/nifty-microsoft-utility-fixed-my-intellipoint.htm Mon, 22 Oct 2007 15:22:48 GMT