Quxior Web Site circa 2008

Finally the new version of the Quixor.com web site is live. This version includes new graphics rather than the Zen inspired simplicity of the old site site which consisted soley of text formatted via Cascading Style Sheets. The essentail layout and features remain the same, but I like having my company logo back in place.

Although not visible, one big change was the move from a table based layout to one driven by css formated <div> tags. The change to div made it somewhat simpler to design the page but not terribly so. Complicating matters was the concurrent change to the use of ASP "Master Pages." This new technology allows a single main page (Master) to be designed that determines the essential layout and the detail pages supply the content. The advantage here is the reuse of site-wide code for things like navigation and user login and security. The key new technique is to learn how to use the FindControl() method to reference portions of the master page HTML inside the detail page's code.

The site is now .Net 3.5 ready as soon as the transfer to a new server takes place. With any luck this should be complete this evening. Now everything is in place to allow me to play with Ajax and Linq.

I finally attended a GCPCUG web development SIG and was very glad I did. Brian Gorbett is a recent addition to MS’s developer evangelist team and his presentation convinced me to add Silverlight to my “technologies to check out” list. Apparently MS is planning on using the 2008 Olympics to push version 2.0 into prime time. One gee wiz thing he showed was called “deep zoom” that allows you to embed one large graphic inside another and then zoom in several levels deep - fractal style. Not really something you would do everywhere but it could have some interesting possibilities. For example you might want to do a Google Earth type thing and scale details of a map.

He also mentioned that the upcoming IE 8 has been made to be more standards compliant and will reportedly break 40% of the existing sites. Fortunately they have a compatibility mode that reverts it back to a version 7 rendering engine. He convinced me to run right home and download it since I’m in the middle of a complete conversion of my web site and want to make sure it's legit HTML-wise. So I did. Big mistake. Apparently it is not yet compatible with VS 2008 new menu control which is now front and center inside my site. I should really know better that to try something in beta on my development machine. Can you say “Virtual Machine?”

If you are just dying to see Silverlight in action you can check out MIX or Memoribilia portion of the Hard Rock site.

Funny Stop

Amateur night at The Funny Stop proved to be worthwhile tonight. It's easy to sort out the people with potential from the rest. Some comics seem to think that all that is necessary for a laugh is to point out the faults in someone else. This is not enough. Surprise is the essential element that makes a joke funny. Take us down a familiar road and then suddenly make a left turn leaving us someplace we didn't expect to be. That is the fastest route to a laugh. Tom Foss was able to do this at a rapid clip.

History Boys

We went to see "The History Boys" at the Beck Center in Lakewood. The play was fine, even if an hour too long. Student -teacher relationships and attitudes toward homosexuality were explored.

We followed up with a dinner at Players on Madison with a few friends from CFI. The Tortilla Encrusted Organic Chicken Breast was great but Mary was not happy with the "special" fish meal she ordered. The conversation was great as usual.

Post One

The last blogging software I used (RadioUserland) was self-hosted one my web site, but it had a way of slowly falling apart, loosing graphics and even whole posts. So why waste time fixing it? This site has great features and templates, plus no software is required. Now I'm happily blogging again.