As Joel Spolsky points out, updating web pages by getting just the bits of information that have changed instead of refreshing the whole page is the wave of the future. Whether we’re calling web services within a client-side page or using a gmail-like JavaScript technique (darn cool), it’s going to be a major architectural shift. […]
Often I want to cache some shared values in a class at application startup time. Now I use the simple, thread-safe “lazy load” approach described here.
A while back, I read a post by Mike Woodring that really helped me understand locking better. Mike’s post helped me catch a subtle bug I had introduced because […]
When programming for Internet Explorer, you can greatly improve the usability of textareas by using the style overflow: visible;
I recently had a project that required a lot of textareas on a page. When there is a lot of information in each of these textareas, it causes an annoying visual “bunching” for the reader, because each […]
Bottom line: when you need to save both @@ERROR and @@ROWCOUNT, be sure to set them in one line:
select @MyRowCount = @@ROWCOUNT, @MyError = @@ERROR
More detail: When programming SQL Server stored procedures with Transact-SQL, you should check @@ERROR after every database call.
select mycolumn from mytable if @@ERROR <> 0 begin … end
There are many built-in variables […]
Passing arrays to SQL Server stored procedures should be easier than it is. Here is an article that lays out the options.
You wouldn’t think there would be security implications to doing something so basic. Shows that you have to be ever vigilant about security.
I really love this design site:
http://www.csszengarden.com
It shows how creative you can be with a website while still making it XHTML/CSS compliant. The resource guide it references is very useful for getting better at css.
This is handy for people using cpanel from locations where non-standard ports are blocked:
http://cpanelproxy.net/
Scary as it sounds, I used the autoinstaller, and it worked great.
One of my favorite sites these days is joelonsoftware.com. Joel Spolsky is a Microsoft veteran and an outstanding writer who began blogging before it was called blogging. Joel also started his own company, Fog Creek Software, and he writes about it extensively on his site. His take on microeconomics is pretty darn funny and surprisingly […]
This site uses WordPress for blog software. WordPress offers many feed options and additional formats, but I presume most users will prefer the standard RSS 2.0 feed. In case you are interested, though, here are some additional feeds and formats.
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