ASP.NET Cafe

Enter button and several inputs

webmaster.nospam@nospam.aspnetcafe.com (dmitriy) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:43:00 -1100

In ASP.NET you have sometimes a problem. When you have several inputs (textboxes) and several buttons. You want user to submit it by hitting enter. For example one login box, one search box. You want to submit login box when user hits enter in password field, and search button when user hits enter in search field. The solution is easy! Just put controls inside the asp:panel with attribute DefaultButton="ButtonFind" ( where ButtonFind is ID of desired default button ). That's all! It works!

BlogEngine.NET Theme - Fruity

webmaster.nospam@nospam.aspnetcafe.com (dmitriy) — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 06:42:00 -1100

Hello everybody!

I've recently finished a new theme for BlogEngine.NET.

You can download zip here:

fruity.zip (51,19 kb)

Just unpack it to your themes folder. It works with 1.4.5.0.

That's all for today.

H.264 vs VP 6 in hd online video

webmaster.nospam@nospam.aspnetcafe.com (dmitriy) — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 10:00:00 -1100

What's better for your online video?

VP 6 is faster ( works on most pcs ) and requires only flash player 8.

The BAD side of VP6 - it's hard ( or even impossible ) to find free (opensource) encoding solution for it. You need to ask on2.com guys to give you their framework or for personal use you can buy something like "Flix Standard" for $39. That's really nothing even for poor blogger.

H.264 is slower. Only last fast pcs can run it without delays. For example, I've old Celeron 2.4 and it can't handle h264, but good with vp6. But my Core2duo is good with h.264. Another problem of h264 is loosing of smoothness on low bitrate. Picture is quite good, but action is not... if you encode 1280x720 with 1Mbit/s bitrate you can see the problems with slow zooms... it jumps. Usually you can play with complicated settings, but in the end it does not matters. The good enough bitrate for h.264 if you are using 1280 x 720 is about 2-3 Mbit/s.

As far as I know. Vimeo ( vimeo.com - super HD video service ) uses VP6. I think they use about 2-3 Mbit/s bitrate... and it looks good.

H.264 can provide VERY good results on such bitrates... for lower bandwidth 500Kbit/s - use VP6 and lower resolution. For example 640x360 is good to use VP6.

Advantages of H.264. You can encode it with FFMPEG ( linux or windows ). You can use 2 or 3 pass encoding to make "super-good" video and 1 pass to make just a video. I strongly recommend 2 pass encoding. If you don't have dedicated server for that, use HeyWatch! service http://heywatch.com/page/home .

Disadvantages of H.264. It's only for high-end processors and works good only with high bitrate. And end-user needs Flash player 9 or higher ( This is not a problem, they already have. I've checked 100,000 visitors stats - 98% already have Flash 9. )

Good links:

http://vimeo.com

http://on2.com

http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/

And what do you think about that ?

MailEnable - How to add new mailbox from code

webmaster.nospam@nospam.aspnetcafe.com (dmitriy) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 03:49:00 -1100

Mailenable is quite good Mail Server for windows. It has a free version ( and that's version works good if you don't need WebMail ).

Here is some code to add mailbox to PostOffice.

using System;

using System.Data;

using System.Configuration;

using System.Web;

using System.Web.Security;

using System.Web.UI;

using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;

using System.Web.UI.WebControls;

using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;

/// <summary>

/// Summary description for MailEnableConnector

/// </summary>

public class MailEnableConnector

    public MailEnableConnector()

            /// <summary>

    /// Gets Path to config folder of MailEnable

    /// Add this to appSettings in your web.config:

    /// add key="MailEnableConfigRoot" value="C:\Program Files\Mail Enable\Config\"

    /// </summary>

    /// <returns>Path string</returns>

    protected string GetConfigRoot()

        return System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.AppSettings.Get("MailEnableConfigRoot");

    /// <summary>

    /// Registers Mailbox

    /// </summary>

    /// <param name="username">Username</param>

    /// <param name="domain">Domain</param>

    /// <param name="postoffice">Postoffice</param>

    /// <param name="FriendlyName">Friendly Name (for example Tyler Durden)</param>

    /// <param name="password">Password</param>

    /// <returns>True if ok. False if failed.</returns>

    public bool RegisterMailbox(string username, string domain, string postoffice,string FriendlyName, string password)

        bool res = true;

try

            MailEnable.Administration.Mailbox mb = new MailEnable.Administration.Mailbox();

            mb.Postoffice = postoffice;

            mb.Mailbox = username;

            mb.Host = domain;

            mb.Limit = 5000;

            mb.RedirectAddress = "";

            mb.RedirectStatus = 0;

            mb.Status = 1;

            mb.AddMailbox();

            MailEnable.Administration.Login login = new MailEnable.Administration.Login();

            login.Account = postoffice;

            login.Description = username + " at " + domain;

            login.Host = domain;

            login.Rights = "USER";

            login.Status = 1;

            login.Password = password;

            login.UserName = username+ "@" + postoffice;

            login.AddLogin();

            MailEnable.Administration.AddressMap map = new MailEnable.Administration.AddressMap();

            map.Account = postoffice;

            map.DestinationAddress = "[SF:"+postoffice+"/"+username +"]";

            map.SourceAddress = "[SMTP:" + username + "@" + domain + "]";

            map.Scope = "";

            if (map.AddAddressMap() == 0)

                throw new Exception("Failed address map");

            // Add Friendly name //

            SetFriendlyName(username, postoffice, username + "@" + domain, FriendlyName);

        catch (Exception e)

            res = false;

        return res;

    /// <summary>

    /// Adss a Friendly name to mailbox by direct writing into config file

    /// </summary>

    /// <param name="username"></param>

    /// <param name="postoffice"></param>

    /// <param name="replyaddress"></param>

    /// <param name="frinedlyname"></param>

    protected void SetFriendlyName(string username, string postoffice,string replyaddress,string frinedlyname)

        string SysFilePath = System.IO.Path.Combine(GetConfigRoot(), "postoffices\\" + postoffice + "\\mailboxes\\" + username + ".sys");

        using (System.IO.StreamWriter sw = new System.IO.StreamWriter(SysFilePath, false))

            /*      [General]

                    ReplyAddress=

                    DisplayName=

*/

            sw.WriteLine("[General]");

            sw.WriteLine("ReplyAddress=" + replyaddress);

            sw.WriteLine("DisplayName=" + frinedlyname);

            sw.Close();

How to remove IE 6 background flicker

webmaster.nospam@nospam.aspnetcafe.com (dmitriy) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 03:14:00 -1100

I know one thing that makes cranky all web developers who still support IE 6. Usually we can hope that soon IE 6 became history ( maybe Windows 7 will be so good... and everybody use it and new IE ). But yet many designers still support IE 6. Main trouble that IE does not cache CSS background images. And that's why you see "flicker" effect on reload of you well formed css sites. To get rid of this try to add this script somewhere in the HEAD section...

JavaScript-Code:

try {document.execCommand('BackgroundImageCache', false, true);} catch(e) {}

This works for me.

ps: You can see this effect good in AJAX.NET Tabs control. http://www.asp.net/AJAX/AjaxControlToolkit/Samples/Tabs/Tabs.aspx

MS SQL. How to get only date from datetime field

webmaster.nospam@nospam.aspnetcafe.com (dmitriy) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 09:25:00 -1100

And another quick tip for SQL. Sometimes we need to remove TIME part from DATETIME. For example need to group by date or so. You know your needs better.

Here is my solution.

DATEADD(day, DATEDIFF(day, '20000101', RecDate), '20000101')

I saw some freaky CASTs and I don't like these. This returns DateTime type, not string.

MS SQL. Get rows in random order.

webmaster.nospam@nospam.aspnetcafe.com (dmitriy) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 06:42:00 -1100

During web development often task is to get some stuff in random order. For example, to display random articles, products, testimonials and so on.

First thing you want to do is to write something like this:

SELECT TOP 10 *
FROM Articles
ORDER BY RAND()

And previous query DOES NOT work. It shows records in regular order. Why? Because RAND() calculated once, not in each row.

The following way works fine:

SELECT TOP 10 *
FROM Articles
ORDER BY NEWID()

That's all. Nice and easy. Not recommended for HUGE tables... but this is crazy to try show something randomly from the huge table. Use other ways. For example sub queries.

Google Chrome fails ACID 3 test and pass ACID 2

webmaster.nospam@nospam.aspnetcafe.com (dmitriy) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 10:03:00 -1100

We used this test to try IE 8 sometime ago... it failed.

http://acid3.acidtests.org/

But Chrome failed it too.

But acid 2 passed without troubles:

Google Chrome Beta Available For Download

webmaster.nospam@nospam.aspnetcafe.com (dmitriy) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 09:27:00 -1100

Woo Hoo! Just get it!

http://www.google.com/chrome

Fisrt impression - very fast...

Tried my site that was developed and tested in FF, IE 7 and Safari - no visual problems, anything.
What's good - very large display/client area... no header. And looks very clean. I don't see that usual Safari's text anti-aliasing in XP... and this is good.

And Gmail works very-very fast, I think JS engine is really optimized. Let's hope that my first impression is right.

Some big screenshots here:

chrome3.jpg (593,48 kb)

chrome4.jpg (489,40 kb)

Download link:

http://www.google.com/chrome

23 august FFMPEG Win32 build (updated)

webmaster.nospam@nospam.aspnetcafe.com (dmitriy) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 06:31:00 -1100

If you don't know what is FFMPEG... you possible don't need this.

Or can check out http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/

But really, originally written for Linux it's hard to find fresh Windows binaries. It's possible to build it, using MinGW and MSys.

I'm posting my 23 august build:

build_08_23_08.zip (4,14 mb)

But it was sad build, it still does not encode to h264 (mp4). If someone knows how to build it with such support, please let me know.

Added:

Build with libx264 and even makes h264 videos ( some troubles with bitrate, but I think minor )

ffmpeg_13981.zip (6,26 mb)

ASP.NET 2.0 Big files upload on IIS 6.0 under Win2003

webmaster.nospam@nospam.aspnetcafe.com (dmitriy) — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 06:21:00 -1100

Recently faced the big problem with big files. Not so big, just needed to post files with size about 10-20MB to aspx page. With usage of quite standard control on the page.

Everybody know ( if not - I notice here ) that in web.config you have HttpRuntime settings. And one of these settings is maxRequestLength .In theor, after adding of this line to web.config file everything should work fine.

But in fact you can face the problem of limit in IIS. And this is a pain in the ass. Because you need to edit Metabase.xml on server. Sometimes this can be impossible, but sometimes you can do this yourself or ask support. Here is some insturctions to make big files uploads work for you.

IIS 6 has a limit on the maximum number of bytes that can becontained in an ASP request. By default, that limit is 4 MB. To change this:

Open IIS (Start->Programs->Administrative Tools-Internet Information Services)
Right-Click the server name and select Properties
Check the Enable Direct Metabase Edit box and hit Apply
Next browse to and open the Metabase.xml file. It is typically located in c:\Windows\System32\inetsrv directory. You can use Notepad to modify this file.
Search for "ASPMaxRequestEntityAllowed" and change its value to "1073741824"
Save changes in Notepad and exit.

Later you can set your own limits in web.config. For example, using <location> tag you can apply maxRequestLength only for specific pages.

Better call for NotifyScriptLoaded in AJAX

webmaster.nospam@nospam.aspnetcafe.com (dmitriy) — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 09:54:00 -1100

Recently found one thing. Perhaps in docs for AJAX client or somewhere else was such line:

Sys.Application.notifyScriptLoaded();

You need to write this line at the end of your JS files. But this can cause the problems if you wish to re-use this code in non-ajax enviroment. For this better to use following line:

if (typeof(Sys) !== 'undefined') Sys.Application.notifyScriptLoaded();

This makes things a bit better. Also, it answers another question - "Testing for defined variables in Javascript". Sometimes I see the code like:

if( Sys )... // And this will fail in case Sys is undefined.

That's all for now, it's summer. Everybody enjoy their resort life. But I'm still working.

ForceWrap or when you need a whitespace

webmaster.nospam@nospam.aspnetcafe.com (dmitriy) — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 07:08:00 -1100

Sometimes on websites with user content you can find some design issues because of their content. Actually, I'm about the stuff like

"Swimming*Skimboaring*AquaFitness*Snorkeling*Kayaking*Basketball*Archery*Volleyball*Soccer*Table Tennis*Mini Golf*Badminton*Rock Climbing* Kiteboarding*Fencing*Gymnastics*Yoga*Pilates*"

But we ( as developers want to get rid of such ugly stuff that moves across the bounds of area and can't be wrapped - because there are no white-space inside.

For this I just written force wrap function. It is quite simple, using regular expressions

C#-Code:

 protected static string ForceWrap(string aStr,int max)
        {
            Regex LongLine = new Regex(@"(?<long>\S{"+max.ToString()+",})");
            MatchCollection matches = LongLine.Matches(aStr); // find all matches of "Long Strings" //
            if (matches.Count > 0)
            {
                StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(aStr);
                
                for (int i = 0; i < matches.Count; i++)
                {
                    string s = matches[i].Groups["long"].Value;
                    string origS = s;
                    int segments = s.Length / max;
                    for (int j = 1; j < (segments+1); j++)
                    {
                        int pos = j * max + (j-1);
                        s = s.Insert( pos , " "); // Insert Space //
                    }
                    sb.Replace(origS, s);
                }
                aStr = sb.ToString();
            }
            return aStr;
        }

First parameter - the string you want to output, the second - max lenght is chars. Return value is new string with whitespace inserted if needed.

I think this is useful, but if there are something better, please let me know.

Google maps for Flash (Flex) API

webmaster.nospam@nospam.aspnetcafe.com (dmitriy) — Sat, 17 May 2008 09:03:00 -1100

Good news from Google Maps team again. Recently I've found api for Flex. This is a great advantage for actionscript developers. First of all, I've already mentioned that JS api is a bit slow thing... And specially I though about Flex/Flash maps API ( like Yahoo maps provided before ). And right now we have it.

At the first look not so "super" like JS api. But this is a big hit, I think.

Preformance of Flash API is great - very smooth moving, great animations. But you can see that graphics is not so awesome, info window looks "poor" and marker not so good like in JS version. But I think that Flash engine much better fits mapping tasks, first of all because of performance, it does not affect other stuff on your page, running inside flash player, optimized for animation and that's why very-very fast. API is done for Flex ( Flex SDK is free stuff that you can run from Eclipse ). Frankly, I think this is a good news , but I'll wait a bit... First of all I don't think that everybody updated Flash player to version 9 ( exactly this version needed to run Flex application ).

Anyway - this is a great news for everybody who is working with maps.

http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/flash/intro.html

Google maps: Static maps

webmaster.nospam@nospam.aspnetcafe.com (dmitriy) — Fri, 16 May 2008 09:06:00 -1100

Google maps one of the best mapping API. But sometimes you don't need navigation, zoom and other cool stuff. Sometimes you need something simple. Simple and fast. Yes, google maps makes a page a bit slowly, a bit big, just because this is maps. Looks like guys from Google understood this. Sometimes you don't want to load all the tiles and JS API. You just need to show some address or route on the map. And here static maps can help you. Static map can show simple markers and even routes.

What is so special with these static maps? Static maps is just an url, nothing more, no JS. This is URL that points to the image.

http://maps.google.com/staticmap?center=40.714728,-73.998672&
zoom=14&size=512x512&maptype=mobile\&
markers=40.702147,-74.015794,blues%7C40.711614,-74.012318,greeng%7C40.718217,-73.998284,redc\&
key=ABQIAAAAb1NmS6C8S9-MMXlYL9Q-RRSx6c7sV4hKqe-jPp9AwgHIMiXszhRaLoR4qw61u_5jZn9ohtUjCjYruw

And looks like

Looks impressive. I found this very useful in my projects. Maybe you find too.

All data comes in URL. And this makes things a bit limited. But in case if you want to show just address of the company/shop on the map - useful. You can even show some routes from one location to another location. And nobody limit you in your fantasy. You can write back-end in ASP.NET which can easily show any place on the map. And the last advantage - it's very simple to understood and start using - 5 minutes at all.

More about Static Maps at : http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/staticmaps/

Static maps Wizard at: http://gmaps-samples.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/simplewizard/makestaticmap.html

Special thanks to Google Maps team.

Credit Card number validation in C#. Visa and MC.

webmaster.nospam@nospam.aspnetcafe.com (dmitriy) — Mon, 12 May 2008 12:25:00 -1100

Credit card numbers are full of magic. First of all not every 16 digit is CC number, but only by number you can know the issuer. So no need to place on the web form "Visa" / "MasterCard" radio button. Ok, so what's interesting. I found two great articles that helped me with this:
http://www.merriampark.com/anatomycc.htm and http://www.beachnet.com/~hstiles/cardtype.html .

And what now ? I just finished small helper class to validate Credit Cards. Here is the source.

C#-Code:

public enum CCType 
    {
        VISA, MC
    } 


    /// <summary>
    /// Credit card validation.
    /// Supports : VISA and MasterCard
    /// Reference: http://www.merriampark.com/anatomycc.htm
    /// Contains LUHN (mod 10) check
    /// by D.S.
    /// http://aspnetcafe.com
    /// </summary>
    public class CreditCardValidator
    {
        protected string _CardNumber = ""; 


        public CreditCardValidator(string aCardNumber)
        {
            _CardNumber = aCardNumber.Replace(" ","").Replace("-","");
            ProcessValidation();
        } 


        protected bool _IsValid; 


        public bool IsValid
        {
            get { return _IsValid; }
            set { _IsValid = value; }
        } 


        private CCType _CardType; 


        public CCType CardType
        {
            get { return _CardType; }
            set { _CardType = value; }
        }
        
        protected void ProcessValidation()
        {
            bool passRegEx = false;
            bool passIssuer = false;
            bool passLuhn = false;
            IsValid = false; 


            do
            {
                // Reg Ex check //
                Regex RegExNumber = new Regex(@"(?<firsttwo>(?<firstone>\d)\d)\d{11,14}");
                Match m = RegExNumber.Match(_CardNumber);
                passRegEx = m.Success;
                if (!passRegEx) break;
                string number = m.Groups[0].Value; // only digits //
                string firstNum = m.Groups["firstone"].Value;
                int firstTwoNum = int.Parse(  m.Groups["firsttwo"].Value );
                passIssuer = (firstNum == "4") || ((firstTwoNum >= 51) && (firstTwoNum <= 55));
                if (!passIssuer) break;
                if (firstNum == "4") CardType = CCType.VISA;
                if ((firstTwoNum >= 51) && (firstTwoNum <= 55)) CardType = CCType.MC;
                // Now make Luhn check //
                passLuhn = LuhnCheck(number);
                if (!passLuhn) break;
                //
                IsValid = true;
            } while (false);           
        } 


        /// <summary>
        /// Performs mod 10 check
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="cardNumber">Card Number with only numbers</param>
        /// <returns></returns>
        protected bool LuhnCheck(String cardNumber)
        {
            int sum = 0;
            int digit = 0;
            int addend = 0;
            bool timesTwo = false; 


            for (int i = cardNumber.Length - 1; i >= 0; i--)
            {
                digit = int.Parse(cardNumber.Substring(i, 1));
                if (timesTwo)
                {
                    addend = digit * 2;
                    if (addend > 9)
                    {
                        addend -= 9;
                    }
                }
                else
                {
                    addend = digit;
                }
                sum += addend;
                timesTwo = !timesTwo;
            } 


            int modulus = sum % 10;
            return (modulus == 0);
        }
    }

The code is quite simple. But works good for me. I'm not providing you with a sample application, you know there are my credit card number :)

Check the articles at the top of the page if you want to know how it's works. And what is Mod 10 check.

Some notes about your video for the web

webmaster.nospam@nospam.aspnetcafe.com (dmitriy) — Wed, 07 May 2008 12:26:00 -1100

Recently faced the problem to quickly insert video inside web page. Here are the things I found and you need if you wish to start with that deal.

First of all, we are going to insert FLV video. But sources in avi or m4v, mov... To convert them we need some kind of converter. Awesome project FFMPEG is best for this. Binaries for windows here: ffmpeg.rev12665.7z (2.46 mb)
Frankly, I forgot the URL to download this, but this file is unchanged.

The utility is awesome! Really good. But you need some luck to make video really good. My problem was to make 16:9 high resolution video, something like you can find on F1 official web site. I'm posting my setting, maybe someone like these settings too. This is not for the size, but for the good quality.

ffmpeg -i "inputfile.m4v" -y -vcodec flv -b 500000 -flags mv4+obmc+qpel+loop+gmc+mv0+umv+trell+aic+cbp+qprd -strict 5 -idct h264 -ildctcmp 3 -precmp 3 -skipcmp 3 -subq 1 -coder 5 -mbd rd -flags2 mixed_refs+brdo+skiprd+non_linear_q -refs 5 -trellis 1 -partitions parti4x4+parti8x8+partp4x4+partp8x8 outputfile.flv

The bitrate in bytes underlined. Ok, now you have good ( or not good ) flv file. How to insert it into your page, you need a player.
Google "flash video player"... the first line. Really good thing.

http://www.jeroenwijering.com/?item=JW_FLV_Player

My suggestion is to add this line to your SWF object javascript

so.addVariable("bufferlength","40");

This makes things to load before play. 40 is a size of buffer in seconds.

JavaScript-Code: SWF object script

var so = new SWFObject('mediaplayer.swf','player','416','234','8');
  so.addParam("allowfullscreen","true");
  so.addParam("bgcolor","#000");
  so.addVariable('file','yourflv.flv');
  so.addVariable('linkfromdisplay','true');
  so.addVariable('lightcolor','0xfff');
  so.addVariable('searchbar','false');
  so.addVariable('shuffle','true');
  so.addVariable('overstretch','true');
  so.addVariable("width","416");
  so.addVariable("height","234");
  so.addVariable("autostart","true");
  so.addVariable("bufferlength","40");
  so.addVariable("usefullscreen","false");
  so.write('mediaspace');

This is my code to embed flash video player.

Javascript:void(0); may cause problems in old IE6

webmaster.nospam@nospam.aspnetcafe.com (dmitriy) — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 10:46:00 -1100

Just found VERY hard bug. The problem appears only in IE6, but some projects still support this browser. If you are using <a href="javascript:void(0);" >Button</a>

And attached OnClick event. You can encounter some really weird things (in event hadler, it works but some strange way). For me - I had to change src of some img tag. But after this no reload happened. Then I've used href="#" the problem was solved. Somebody knows more about these problems?

Focusing controls from serverside with and without AJAX Extensions

webmaster.nospam@nospam.aspnetcafe.com (dmitriy) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 09:03:00 -1100

There is a thing that allows you to point user on the right place on page after postback. The secret is not a secret - just javascript focus() function called. But how to make this right using the ASP.NET framework. It's not a big deal... there are a function for this:

C#-Code:

Page.SetFocus(top.ClientID);

And this works good in case of PostBack. But what going on if you are using partial postback ( using update panel of Ajax extensions )?
This does not work any more. But works this.

C#-Code:

ScriptManager.GetCurrent(Page).SetFocus(top);

What also can you find useful ? Hmm... sometimes it does not work. Why? 90% that are you trying to set focus on the Control that does not receive focus in browser.
Don't try to focus a Label. Focus Anchor tag if you need to focus a place on your page.

Usually peoples try to include javascript functions that do this job, but I think that this way is better.

Chess Titans from VISTA - 3 Queens on board.

webmaster.nospam@nospam.aspnetcafe.com (dmitriy) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 03:51:00 -1100

Just played Chess :) with 3 Queens.

If you want to make your own 3 queens. You need to: take a black queen and promote as much pawns as you want to Queens!

chess.jpg (96.25 kb)