For the application I’m currently working on I have a simple interface that I implement in all of the pages.  One of the methods is for showing feedback to the user when records are updated or input validation errors arise.  The interface looks like this simplified version:

public interface IMyPage {
    void ShowFeedback(string message, ModalMessageType messageType);
}

ModalMessageType is an enumerator:

public enum ModalMessageType {
    Success,
    Caution,
    Feedback,
    Error
}

The meat of the application’s moving parts are encapsulated in user controls which themselves implement an interface of their own.  Here is a simplified version:

public interface ISubordinateCommonView {
    IMyPage ContainingPage { get; set; }
}

As you can see the interface provides a property called ContainingPage that allows a reference to the – wait for it – page containing the user control to be passed via the Page_Load event ala

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) {
    MyUserControl.ContainingPage = this;
}

The modal panel is made by taking advantage of the ModalPopupExtender control from the Ajax Toolkit.  In each page at the bottom is the following markup:

<asp:UpdatePanel  UpdateMode="Conditional" ID="udpModalMessage" runat="server" >
    <ContentTemplate>
        <ajaxToolkit:ModalPopupExtender runat="server" ID="mpModalMessage"
        TargetControlID="btnHiddenModalPopupTarget"
        PopupControlID="pnlModalMessage"
        BackgroundCssClass="modalBackground"
        CancelControlID="lkbCloseModalMessage"
        />
        <asp:Panel ID="pnlModalMessage" runat="server" Style="display: none;" 
            DefaultButton="lkbCloseModalMessage">
            <asp:Timer ID="tmrTimer" runat="server" Interval="2000" Enabled="false"
                 ontick="tmrTimer_Tick" />
            <div class="divModalMessageWrapper">
                <asp:Literal ID="litMessage" runat="server" />
                <br />
                <asp:LinkButton ID="lkbCloseModalMessage" runat="server" 
                Text="Continue" OnClick="lkbCloseModalMessage_Click" />
            </div>
        </asp:Panel>
        <asp:Button ID="btnHiddenModalPopupTarget" runat="server" Style="display: none" />
    </ContentTemplate>
</asp:UpdatePanel>

Notice that the panel contains a Literal control and a LinkButton.  The LinkButton is used to cancel the modal dialog while the Literal control shows the message.  The style of the message is determined by the ModalMessageType enum value (see the CSS below).  The panel also contains a Timer control which is disabled.  In the code behind for the page are ShowFeedback method as well as the handlers for the Timer ontick event and the LinkButton click event.

public void ShowFeedback(string message, ModalMessageTypes messageType) {
    litMessage.Text = "";

    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

    //the enum vals are used to choose the css class for the div
    sb.Append("<div class=\"divModalMessage" + messageType.ToString() + "\" >");
    sb.Append(message);
    sb.Append("</div>");

    litMessage.Text = sb.ToString();

    mpModalMessage.Show();

    if (messageType == ModalMessageTypes.Error) tmrTimer.Enabled = false;
    else tmrTimer.Enabled = true;

}

protected void lkbCloseModalMessage_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) {
    mpModalMessage.Hide();
}

protected void tmrTimer_Tick(object sender, EventArgs e) {
    mpModalMessage.Hide();
    tmrTimer.Enabled = false;
}

Notice in the last two lines of the ShowFeedback method that in my particular scenario I have chosen to have all non-error message automatically dismiss themselves after two seconds.  Error messages must be canceled by the user.  Putting it all together I can have the following code in my web control:

private void UpdateSomeRecord(string s, int i) {
    try {
        //code to update the record
        ContainingPage.ShowFeedback("Record updated", ModalMessageTypes.Success);
    }
    catch (Exception ex) {
        ContainingPage.ShowFeedback(ex.Message, ModalMessageTypes.Error);
    }
}

Here’s the associated css:

.divModalMessageSuccess {
    border-width: 2px;
    border-style: solid;
    border-color: #54864E;
    color: #54864E;
    background-color: #B8D4B5;
    padding: 4px;
}    

.divModalMessageCaution {
    border-width: 2px;
    border-style: solid;
    border-color: #B19707;
    color: #B19707;
    background-color: #F8E78B;
    padding: 4px;
}

.divModalMessageFeedback {
    border-width: 2px;
    border-style: solid;
    border-color: #26588A;
    color: #26588A;    
    background-color: #B7CFE7;
    padding: 4px;
}

.divModalMessageError {
    border-width: 2px;
    border-style: solid;
    border-color: #980202;
    color: #980202;
    background-color: #F2C8C8;
    padding: 4px;
}

I ended up rolling back to XP on my Acer Aspire One.  The boot time was annoyingly slow, and overall the machine felt sluggish.  I made some attempts to minimize the strain by adjusting visual effects for best performance, but that did not make an appreciable difference.  None of this was unexpected.  XP is snappier with a much faster boot and more responsive operation on the whole. 

One issue that I have noticed is painfully slow wireless connectivity.  I fixed this by going into the Device Manager and opening the properties dialog for the Atheros Wireless Network Adapter.  On the Advanced tab I clicked on Power Save Mode and set the Value to "Off".  This lets the wireless connection have its fill of power while running on battery.  As I'm sure you can guess, the downside is that it does in fact use more battery power. 

I received my Acer Aspire One (AAO) this weekend.  As I mentioned before, the first order of business was to reload the operating system.  Loading the OS on this class of device - netbook - requires the use of a USB flash drive if you don't have access to an external CD drive.  You can find a tool called USB_MultiBoot_10 at boot-land.net.  That is the tool referenced in the how-to video I found on YouTube.  Even though I wanted to use Vista, I ran through the process as shown in the video for an XP install to familiarize myself with the procedure.  I made it through without any problems using a 4GB Corsair Flash Voyager.  Next I moved to Vista.  The USB Mulitboot tool allows this as well.  The setup is not as straightforward as XP steps without a video as a guide, but I found this post that made the process clearer.  The steps are laid out in the Aug 30 2008, 11:54 PM post by user 'wimb'.

Drivers

This table shows the drivers you'll need for the AAO:

All the XP drivers can be downloaded from the support section of the Acer site.  As shown above, the Vista drivers are included for the sound card and chipset.  The others worked anyway except for the network, both NIC and WiFi.  I found this post that showed where the Atheros WiFi drivers could be found.  The downloads were slow, but worked.  As the post says, after installing the drivers in the "Install Vista 6120 1009.zip" use the other download files to update the last errant device in the device manager.  Under XP, the touchpad software adds the ability to scroll vertically and horizontally using the edges of the touchpad.  The software will not install under Vista.  One other note: when installing the video driver I was asked whether to install it even though the currently installed version was newer.  If you encounter the same thing yourself you'll notice the version number of the one from Acer is a higher revision.  I continued with the installation.

All that's left to do now is download several hundred megabytes of updates.

Not that I post all that often, but I've noticed my "Off Topic" post are adding up.  Rather than continue to post non-technical entries in this blog I've created another one where I can write about the other things in which I'm interested. 

Behold the glory of the Off Topic blog.

I've been wanting a netbook for use around the house to browse the web and watch television.  My wife and I made the switch to HD this past summer.  Since then we only use the television to watch movies because as bad as standard def looks on HD, what comes out of the VCR is worse.  For the few programs that we do watch - Sarah Conner Chronicles, Life, The Office, and eventually Lost and Battlestar Galactica - we catch them online via Hulu.com.  For that and Netflix a netbook looks to be just the ticket.  Also it will be a lot easier to take to China than a full size machine.

I had been pretty wound up about the Dell Mini during the late summer.  I've had a good experience with Dell for all of my work machines.  However, when I saw the specifications and price points for the Mini, not to mention what they did with the keyboard layout I turned elsewhere.  After more reading and comparisons I settled on an Acer Aspire One.  Yesterday I ordered the XP, 1GB RAM, 160GB drive, 6-cell battery version from Buy.com.  I even managed to hunt down a 5% discount coupon.

The first thing I do with any computer out of the box is reload the OS.  This of course makes sure you've rid of any bloat-ware.  The Aspire One doesn't have a CD drive so the OS install requires the creation of a bootable USB stick.  I found a video on YouTube that does a good job of guiding you through all of the steps.  I'm going to prepare the USB stick while I'm waiting for delivery of the machine.  Drivers for the Aspire One can be found on the support section of the Acer site.  I'm also going to give nLite a try.  nLite allows you to create customized installations of Windows.  According to the documentation you can integrate service packs and hotfixes and prevent the installation of unwanted components as well as integrate drivers.  I've never used it before, but this seems like a good opportunity to give it a try.

We're headed back to China for one last ride on the Adoption Express.  We adopted our first daughter in 2003 and our second daughter in 2005.  Both were nine months old when they joined our family.  In 2006 we added a son who was six years old.  Now we are about halfway through the home study to adopt a 5 year old boy.  According to the information we've received about him, today is his birthday.  We wish it could be spent here with us, but the next one will be.  Until then, shengri kuaile, erzi - happy birthday, son. 

I came up with this to get the time portion of a datetime data type formatted in 12 hour time with the AM/PM on the end:

Example outputs look like 10:30 AM or 4:10 PM.

I'm not sure if this is the most efficient way, but it seems to work whether the time has single or two digit hours both before and after noon.  Replace the GETDATE() function, which I've stuck in for demonstration purposes, with your datetime column reference.  If there is a better way to do this please post a comment.

I renewed my hosting account a few weeks ago.  I'm with WebHost4Life.  They are a three nines host.  Three nines means 99.9% uptime as opposed to a five nines (99.999%) uptime.  Three nines is good enough for me and about all I can afford.  Every year at this time I try to think of a way to get more for less with the ideal being something for nothing.  This year I went so far as to poke around for free hosts.  I was surprised to find several.  One called heliohost goes so far as to offer ASP.Net hosting via Mono.  Free is free so I signed up, but literally as I was logging into the new account for the first time the site died and was gone for a couple of weeks.  Weird.  I found another one called 000webhost that offers PHP with MySQL.  The site appears to be professional and well maintained.  In their information they say their cost are offset by donations and other for-fee services.  I've got another unused domain name that I bought when I thought I was going to write the successor to Twitter.  (Don't act like you haven't had the same thought yourself.)  I could set up a WordPress based blog their that I could neglect just like this one, but figure the height of neglect is to not bother setting it up.  If something is worth neglecting, then it's worth neglecting completely. 

Another area of recurring costs (or at least potentially recurring costs) is HappyFish.  In December I will have put in four years on my little pet project.  I'm guessing I've spent upwards of 1500 hours of work on it either coding, debugging, rewriting, or learning.  As I think I've mentioned before, I've gotten much more out of it than it cost me.  The only thing I've learned from working on HappyFish that I have not repeatedly used in my ASP.Net work is multithreading, and I even used that once to handle a long-running action in a web app.  Up to this point all the costs have been modest - annual hosting fees, domain renewals, and my time. 

In my MVC post I explained the new data synchronization features I want to add to HappyFish.  Several choices of data stores are available.  SQL Server, Microsoft's SQL Data Services (formerly SQL Server Data Services), and Amazon's Simple DB are the ones I've investigated so far.  The problem is that they all cost money.  I can of course charge fees for the service or offset costs with advertising, but neither of those options seems too appealing.  Once you start charging for something you have a responsibility to deliver a certain level of service - those nines I mentioned earlier.  Plus you've got to manage all those accounts and billing and all that comes with it.  Still, after learning a few new tricks at DevConnections I thought I could at least pull it all off without the hassle of charging for the accounts on a limited introductory basis to test the waters.  Synchronization Services with SQL Server via a WCF SOA layer appears to offer what I'm looking for.  But after beating my head against the wall, or perhaps ceiling of my shared hosting plan, it looks like it cannot be done.  What I want to do costs more money (read: dedicated server).  So at this point I'm stuck.  If anyone has a racked server with Windows 2003 and SQL Server installed just laying around let me know.

You know you're in Vegas when you pass a guy getting onto the elevator who is carrying an open bottle of beer...on your way to breakfast.

I made it to DevConnections.  I had a flight delay that lengthened my layover in Atlanta yesterday by a couple of hours.  The Mandalay Bay is an impressive hotel.  To give you a sense of scale I took the above image standing by the elevators.  That black dot is a person standing not quite at the far end of the hall.  There are three identical halls radiating out from the central room in the foreground.  My room is bigger than my living room at home, and the bathroom is larger than either of the kids' rooms.  It's a big place.

I started the day with a run north on the Las Vegas strip.  That took me past all of the famous casinos including The Mirage, The Excalibur (think Cable Guy with Jim Carey),  The Bellagio (think Ocean's Eleven), the MGM Grand, and The New York New York among others.  The New York New York has a roller coaster on top that I think Gil in C.S.I. rides in a few of the episodes.  I covered a about six and a half miles.  Back at the hotel I cleaned up and grabbed a bite before heading to the SilverLight pre-conference session given by Dan Wahlin.  It was a good session and I learned a lot.  Wahlin clearly knows his stuff.  As I said before, I've played around with SilverLight some, but not enough to have a good coherent picture.  I feel like I've got one now.  So far so good.  The main sessions start tomorrow. 

I'm headed to the Fall 2008 DevConnections next week.  I attended DevConnections in the Spring of 2005 in Orlando and learned a lot.  I'll be spending most of my time on the ASP.NET track, although there are a few Visual Studio and SQL Server sessions I'm going to catch.  As usual, the schedule has a couple of sessions where I'd like to be two or three places at once, but I'm not complaining.  I'm also going to take in the Silverlight 2 pre-conference workshop.  I'm looking forward to a comprehensive primer.  I've played around some with Silverlight, but my approach has been so haphazard that I'm basically still on square one.  I'll be blogging and Twittering along the way with all the standard, cliche pictures of the sites of Vegas.