Category: Web Building

Set up a Cron job in Windows to run an ASP script

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If you are used to Linux environments, and working on a web application which needs to execute a function at regular intervals, you’d use a cron job. On Windows, you’d use a scheduled task instead. There is one part of the process that isn’t obvious, so here are the steps involved:

  1. Create the web page that executes the desired tasks – sending email, creating files, etc. For example, I have some ASP scripts that create RSS and iCal feeds from a proprietary database, that need to run daily. Record the URL for later.
  2. You will also need a domain account that can run the task, or a server account that can be used in perpetuity to run these types of tasks. I usually have a “fake” account that will never expire created for this type of thing.
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Multiple JW players on a page, revised for JW Player 4.7

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The JW Player is a very popular open-source media player which not only supports many video, audio and image formats, but has many scriptable behaviors. Here we’ll make use of the JavaScript API to generate as many players as you want on a page. The generated players all have separate event listeners to keep them from interfering with each other. Events or actions executed in one player do not affect others.

Article Outline

  • Add placeholders for each player
  • Playlists
  • Call the init function

  • This is a new version of that was compatible with an earlier version of the JW Player. This one has been updated to work with JW Player 4.7.761 and later.

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    Enhancing Learning through Technology – Part I

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    This is a talk I gave recently to a group of educator/trainers within the U of M Health System. Although it contains many UMHS-specific references, the concepts outlined in it can be applied to other training environments as well. There’s nothing particularly original here, just some suggestions for how to select among different technologies commonly available. This was the first part of a two-part presentation. The second part featured tips for creating engagement and improving digital photography.

     

    Best Practice Showcase: Enhancing Learning through Technology

    Our team has lots of tools you can use to create online training. There are so many choices, in fact, that it can be difficult to decide which to select when you’re starting a new project.  

    To help you sort through all the options, I’m going to give you some typical instructional situations and suggest tools that might best support them, without breaking the budget in the process. These are all things you can use – they don’t require a computer science degree to get a good result!

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    Defeat the IE 7 z-index bug

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    Picture 33.jpg

    The z-index bug in action

    Although Internet Explorer 8 has been widely adopted, IE 7 is still the browser in use at my office, so all new projects must be compatible with it. Even though IE7 was already obsolete when we adopted it, it was a wonderful change from IE 6, because of the reduced need for CSS and javascript hacks, workarounds and compromises in general.

    So it was a surprise to realize that an old Internet Explorer 6 stylesheet problem, the “z-index bug” still lingers on. You’ll know you’ve hit this bug when your drop-down menus fall UNDER elements that are lower down on the page. (…I should add: and there are no iframes or frames on the page).

    There are several sites that do a fantastic job of telling you exactly why this happens. I’m just going to tell you how to fix it. In fact, if you want to jump to the fix right now, click here

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    Style Confluence with CSS using a back-door approach

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    I recently had the task of creating a new theme for a Confluence-based corporate wiki in time for a big launch date.

    There were a few restrictions on how I could do this, including:

    • There is no user access to the Space’s Page Layout features, which means that any changes needed there must be sent to an administrator to be added to the site. 
    • There is no user access to the server, so editing stylesheets would have to be through the application or by giving them to the admin to upload. We could put assets on another server but sometimes this can cause security issues with browsers, coming from mixed security level domains. Similarly, every image to be used at the Space Page Layout level would have to be sent to an admin for upload. 
    • The Documentation theme was not available to us yet. 
    • ThemeBuilder was not available yet. 
    • And – it goes without saying – the schedule was tight.
    Our first challenge was to add a collapsible navigation tree on the left side of the page, similar to the Documentation theme does, but without using the Documentation theme, since we do not have that option yet.

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