Tech Tips, Tricks & Trivia

Driven by the questions that keep popping around my article " Dynamically generate a MS Word document using HTML & CSS " I've been finding new possibilities . My last experiment was about generating a Word document dynamically with user submitted text formatted with a rich text editor control like Free Text Box . By cross posting the formatted text to a separate Word file generation page the HTML content that makes up the Word document is cleaner. When I was scouting for a rich text editor control, I found Free Text Box easy to use. It embeds all external files - CSS, Javascript & images into the DLL & the puppy is easy to handle. The free version of FreeTextBox allows basic HTML editing. Some other free HTML text editor controls that have good cross browser support are: FCKeditor TinyMCE Related links: *  HOW TO implement "Download as Word/Excel" functionality through a web page *  HOW TO send an email with a Word or Excel file attachme

"..the Colonel, seeing his mistake, turned to fluent and picturesque Urdu and Kim was contented. No man could be a fool who knew the language so intimately..."   Kim (Rudyard Kipling) Bollywood movies owe their popularity to the mandatory song & dance routine. Many of the popular Bollywood songs are in Hindustani / Urdu & understanding them requires a good grasp of the language. This was not however the reason I was overjoyed when I found a Urdu to English mini dictionary IN ENGLISH compiled by a Urdu enthusiast at NASA & converted it into a Windows app for easy personal reference in my VB6 days. Although I'm not a native speaker, I just fell for the language's charm. I have been following the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit developments with interest and I like the convenience they offer in enhancing the UI & web applications without complicated code. With the code examples online , learning about the AutoComplete Extender was easy & I decide

Using the RssDataSource control of the ASP.Net RssToolkit Version 2.0 , fetching a RSS feed, binding to a data control like the GridView can all be done declaratively and rolling out your own RSS/Atom Reader/Aggregator is a cinch. I learnt about the free RSS Toolkit - which makes consuming and exposing RSS feeds in ASP.NET super easy , from Scott Gu's weekly link-listing series . One link led to the other and while monkeying around with the RssToolkit controls, I thought cranking up a frill-free ASP.NET Forums feed aggregator that updates itself at intervals would be a worthwhile thing to do. Knowing that the ASP.NET AJAX Timer would be helpful for this, I set about building my app. I started by choosing the ASP.NET AJAX-enabled Web site template. Moving to Design mode, I dropped a ASP.NET AJAX UpdatePanel & Timer controls . Into the UpdatePanel I dropped the RssDataSource. Clicking on its Smart Tag prompter, you can provide the ASP.NET Forums RSS Feed URL http://forums.as