Website Design – Establish a consistent theme
For developers who use ASP.NET, DesignBais, and other tools, it’s important to design the look and feel of a website before too much front-end work is done.
Is it OK to Extend DesignBais?
It’s started – people are getting more comfortable with DesignBais, learning the strengths and how to deal with the weaknesses. When the first release of a new application UI is in production and developers look back to see what they can do better (and respond to the end-user enhancement requests), they’re starting to get creative, get more out of the […]
DesignBais Connection Issue Solved
I just had a situation with DesignBais connecting to two servers. Huh? Problem solved!
“Using DesignBais” Book Coming Soon!
My first book, Using DesignBais, will be available soon. Here’s the current status. Comments and suggestions welcome.
DesignBais Tip – Changing MV Header Behavior
A user in the DesignBais forum asked if there was a way to use a Header Process to put data at the bottom of an MV grid, rather than changing the value of the currently selected MV value. This was a fun and challenging problem, and I have a solution. I don’t know if it’s the right one. But it […]
D3 – Recompiling Code
The following is some great information posted to the Raining Data web forum by Robert Burke, their new Technical Support Director. I’ve posted it here verbatim for your benefit.
The Dreaded Back Button – Part 2
From the "give um an inch" department, it seems people aren’t happy with eliminating the back button from the browser. Eliminating all of the browser buttons wasn’t good enough either. No, the very first request was "now can we get rid of the X button in the corner that closes the application? Sigh – OK, the answer is yes.
DesignBais Tip – Goodbye plain text forms
How’d you like to get complex text and image formatting into your DesignBais forms? How’d you like to edit that text with a WYSIWYG editor, without having to see any HTML at all? Might your users be interested in storing formatted data rather than plain old text – including images?
Running scripts from your desktop
You can easily find answers elsewhere to the security problem documented here, but since one of my recent posts might lead you into the problem I thought I’d provide the solution.
Outlook Appointments from MV
I have code that updates the Outlook Calendar from MV apps. I decided to hook it up with DesignBais. This is just too cool.
The Dreaded Back Button
Once in a while this question comes up about what to do when the user hits the Back button in a browser app. Well, the italian in me says "break their fingers", but most of my colleagues aren’t italian, so here’s a solution for the rest of you.
DesignBais Hacks – Introduction Part 1
One of the neat things about DesignBais is that the product itself is written in DesignBais. This isn’t uncommon in the world today. Java is written in Java, C is C, C# is C#, etc. While we can’t open DesignBais system forms in the Forms Designer, we can manually customize them. We could do this with the editor but I […]
DesignBais Tip – The Art of Indirection
One of the less intuitive aspects of working with DesignBais is that things aren’t always done directly. We don’t always use Field=Data to assign data to a field. We frequently need to tell the field where it needs to go to get its data, and then we load that data source as necessary.
DesignBais Tip – Launching a URL – Part 2, E-mail
Part 1 on Launching a URL provided details about how to launch a complex URL from a DesignBais form. In this Part 2 of 2 I’ll show you how to send e-mail from the user’s PC. The effect we’re looking for is a Click Here link which will launch the end-user’s email client, rather than sending mail from the server.
DesignBais v3.3 Startup problem
There is an issue with DesignBais v3.3 and mv.NET v2.1.4 where starting DesignBais from the startDB.asp web page consistently fails with "cannot connect"-type messages that don’t lead to any specific problem. If you have not seen this then you don’t need the solution presented here, but for some of us the problem seems chronic.
DesignBais Tip – Launching a URL – Part 1
I was asked by one of my clients to provide a button on a Customer Master Maintenance form which would launch a browser window to display a map showing directions from the home office to the customer being viewed. Oh boy, a challenge! This article provides info required for doing this.
Updated DesignBais Code Template
When starting work with DesignBais all of us are introduced to that initial bit of code – the big Case block that does the Gosub to handle each event. Many of us copy this template to all of our programs, then cut out what we don’t need. Some of us leave it all in there, just in case we do […]
DesignBais Tip – Alternative Graphs
The Graph component in DesignBais is great. The documentation might make the BASIC code for graphs look complex, but after you do it just once, you’ll realize it’s quite simple. This article discusses how to generate graphs using alternative components. As a bonus we’ll see how DesignBais can be integrated with lots of third-party products and services, to provide functionality […]
DesignBais Tip – Getting Client Info
A question came up in the DesignBais forum : "Is there any way for me to find the IP Address or Hostname of the requesting machine?" There are a couple "unorthodox" ways to do this. With the information provided here you will get an idea of how to get any data into your application from other sources in your network.
DesignBais Tip – Dynamic Color and Images
DesignBais uses CSS styles to help us maintain a consistent style and color palatte throughout our applications. Too much variety decreases the professional look and feel (L&F) of the environment. But there are times where a little splash of color can be helpful. Displaying one or more images programmatically can also help to accentuate significant data.