DNN Musings

Sprites - not just soda pop! - Skinning Tip

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 02:20:00 GMT

At Open Force 2009 this past November, I attended a presentation by Kevin Schreiner (DotNetNuke on Speed and Performance) that spoke in part about the use of Sprites. What on earth are sprites? Well I had heard of the term sprites in relation to Computer Graphic programing, but not when it came to Web sites and DotNetNuke in particular.

So what are Sprites in terms of a Web site? They present a way to reduce traffic between the server and the client. Specifically, a sprite will contain a collection of images in one file, that can be reference to supply various graphic elements on a page. Since only one image file is required, the site will load faster. Additionally, since one image is used, less memory is used by the browser to render the page.

How is this done? Well, after I had seen the presentation, I understood the concepts, but had yet to put into practice as I had no real need. So it took me until now to sit down a try to use sprites. Read on to see a simple example using sprites.

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What's IN your database - Using a UDF with SGSV

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 15:36:00 GMT

One of the most useful T-SQL features is the keyword "IN". THis keyword allows the user to filter the selected data against a list of comma separated data. For example, using the Northwind sample database:

select * from Customers where Country IN ('Canada', 'Mexico')

However, this is rather limited syntax as the parameter list is static. Read on to see how you can use a User Defined Function to improve the IN keywords useability.

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What's New At Tressleworks

Sat, 02 Jan 2010 21:54:00 GMT

First of all it's a new year. Welcome to 2010 everyone -- I for one am looking forward to what the year will bring.

The Holidays has given me some time to get several items completed that I have been working on for some time. They are -- in no particular order:

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NorthWind Customer Paging Example using XLST and XMLdb

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 21:42:00 GMT

The second module I developed was called XMLdb. This modules uses the "For XML" functionality of T-SQL along with power of XLST to provide some awesome results.

Recently, I rewrote a good portion of XMLdb to utilitize the revised ASP.NET V2.0 XML routines. Sadly, the existing module as still using the ASP.NET V1.0 methods, so the module was in need of some TLC.

To demostrate the power of the module, I developed an Paging Example using the Northwind database and the Customer table. While implementing paging is simple using the various grids, typically the performance suffers when the database table is larger. In most cases the entire table must be returned from the database the the grid selects the disired records for display ... all the other records are unused. On a 1,000,000 row table -- this can hurt performace especially if this is done several times as the user pages through the data. However there are alternatives, and this demostration illustrates such an alternative.

You can read about the demostration here, see it in action here, or download the sample code and modules here

Hope you enjoy this version of paging.
Paul.

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Display EXCEL Spreadsheet data - Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Clause

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 01:34:00 GMT

Ever wondered...

How can I display an EXCEL Spreadsheet in DotNetNuke?

I have been asked this question several times in the last few weeks and have seen the same question posted in the forums too. The answer is rather straight forward and the work is mostly done by Microsoft. But there is always a catch. In most causes, it's view only! Also, the syntax to extract the data is a special version of T-SQL, so there are some limits.

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SQLGridSelectedView V5.5 - Let's Review

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:28:00 GMT

Self promotion can be difficult especially if it's not in your nature. In my case, I find it difficult. However, I received a forum post from a new subscriber to my site that indicated that he had been looking of a SQL Grid display module for some time and just discovered my module. So I guess it is time to do some self-promotion.

So what is SQLGridSelectedView? First let's take a look a the name:

SQL - indicates the use of SQL to query a database
Grid - indicates the typical display format although templating is available
Selected - indicates the ability to filter the selection of data
View - the primary focus is to view data, but creating and updating data is possible.

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It's 5 o'clock somewhere...

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:50:00 GMT

I have been fighting a problem with user subscriptions on my site for some time. It would take some time for a user to obtain access to the subscriber viewable items on my site. I am using the Subscription Tools from Ventrian ( highly recommended by the way) and works as expected except for this one issue.

I originally blamed everyone else (a good trait of a developer) - first PayPal, then subscription module, then server performance, then caching ... Yesterday, I happened to be on the site and trying once more to figure this out when a user subscribed to the site. Perfect, I immediate validated all the appropriate table at ensure all was correct. I contacted the user and asked to see if he did have access.

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Creating Emptiness ... or a Stored Proc to create empty pages.

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 03:42:00 GMT

I have been working on skinning and playing with menus. Menus of empty pages. I manually would create a structure and then work the skin and menu classes to define the look wanted. If you want a good tutorial on menus, see DNNCreative's #47 edition -- good stuff.

But after creating these empty pages over and over ... I got thinking there must be a better way. I binged and googled (boogled it?) and found no hits, so it was time to play around in T-SQL again.

I developed a procedure called CreateEmptyPage

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New Version of MenuLinks Released - V2.0

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 17:57:00 GMT

The latest version of MenuLinks has been released on Tressleworks site. This version has several enhancements that may interest the power users out there.

However, first a bit of recap if you are not familiar with MenuLinks. MenuLinks displays the relative menu items as links based on the current page. What?

Consider this scenario, you want to display a list of links for all other pages at the same level on the menu. Well this can be done maually with the DotNetNuke Links modules.. but it will take time. MenuLinks allow the user to do this by setting a few modules settings once. If addition pages are added (or removed) MenuLinks will display the links based on the current menu contents. Like the DNN Links menu, the list can be horizontal or vertical and align left, center, or right within the container. Very handy. You can see examples of MenuLinks here

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Hunting for dots ... or finding GetPortalTabs

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 03:05:00 GMT

It seems lately that I have been taking the long way around when attempting to do something involving DotNetNuke. My latest extended effort was attempting to add a indented dot tab list to my MenuLinks module. It’s a long story that I will shorten so you can learn the lessons I had to learn the hard way.

It start simply enough, I wanted to add the ability to display any sub-menu within MenuLinks, not just the current page’s relative menu items (Parent, Siblings, or Children). The module currently uses the tabid of the current page to determine the relative menu position. I thought that if I allowed the user to supply the starting menu item, the module could easily display any relative menu. So begins the hunt for the indented dot tab list.

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