Tech Tips, Tricks & Trivia

Smashing magazine has compiled a list of 53 uber cool CSS solutions to recurrent UI functionalities/ patterns . Although CSS contributes a lot to increasing the effectiveness of a page and front-end performance, it is underrated in my opinion. For instance, compared to the reams of Javascript you have to write to build a menu in a web application, the CSS-based Suckerfish menu lets you build an elegant cross-browser menu with just 12 lines of Javascript and some clever CSS. Chief Performance Yahoo! Steve Souders' golden rule for performance is: optimize front-end performance first, that's where 80% or more of the end-user response time is spent .

If you do browser detection with Javascript using navigator.appVersion , it returns the browser version as 4.0 for IE versions 5, 6 and 7! Javascript guru Peter-Paul Koch has a script that handles many of the popular browsers & finds name of the browser, its version and OS it is running on.

Key points from the article " Top 5 Web Service Mistakes " paraphrased - For maximum interoperability of .NET Web Services with non .NET clients, use standard XML Schema base types instead of .NET specific types. Web services developed in .NET are deployed in ASP.NET and so they have access to all of the same great features of any ASP.Net web application like Output caching, application data caching, SessionState persistence (including out-of-process State Server and SQL Server) and client cookies. Significant performance benefits can be achieved by leveraging these state persistence features (with some caveats, however) Consider aggregating smaller requests into a larger single request to improve performance while suitably handling the increased complexity. Use web services to expose functionality and not data. For example, Google Search Web Service's usefulness is in its ability to give organized and relevant results rather than plain data. Secure the data exchange and...

I use Google Search and Live Search fairly well and I noticed that the keywords I used to search in Live Search came up to prompt me while I started typing in the Google Search textbox and the reverse was also happening in both IE as well as Firefox. For a few seconds I was stumped but soon guessed it was the AutoComplete feature at work. I verified this by looking into the source code and it turns out that both Google & Live Search use a text box that is named "q". The AutoComplete feature is an IE (version 5) innovation that works in Firefox (presumably from 1.0 onwards) as well and this can be utilized by developers to minimize typing in scenarios like requesting personal information through a form in a web page. AutoComplete information is shared among sites that are viewed through the browser and the feature can typically be invoked by using the same text box name in a form as one previously used for the same purpose. For instance, if they are many places in a s...

In my opinion, the popularity of a technology depends on its cost, ease of use, documentation and resources available to learn about it. The easy availability of information through blogs, webcasts, books and community forums " decrease the barriers of entry " & provide a great deal of confidence to programming enthusiasts & professional developers. The free Microsoft Visual Studio Express products are a set of cool tools for code enthusiasts who wish to build Windows and Web applications targeting the .NET Framework. For folks new to application development with the .NET Framework, the Beginner Developer Learning Center (BDLC) and the e-books from Microsoft Press that can be downloaded at no cost on registering the Express products , are good learning resources to start off. Jim Buyens' Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition: Build a Web Site Now! is the e-book from that collection which familiarizes the reader about key features in ASP.NET 2.0 an...