Melrose Solutions Blog

Turn SELECTs into Comboboxes with jQuery UI Autocomplete

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 15:08:00 +0100

This entry is about a script I've written using jQuery, that turns ordinary html select elements into comboboxes. You don't need to re-write any of your code, and users without JavaScript will still have fully functioning select boxes.

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Are SES URLs evil?

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:08:00 +0100

I was reading a recent article in .NET magazine about optimising Flash sites for Google. When I got to the box on Friendly URLs, I thought it ironic that they were perpetuating another web design myth. After all, their recent June issue had been dedicated to myth busting, and SES URLs are the biggest myth out there?

Checking back however, I realised that even .NET magazine are still taken in …

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Book Review: Regular Expressions in 10 minutes

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 08:47:00 +0100

Regular expressions have always been a bit of a mystery to me. I knew they were very powerful, but they've never been very intuitive. In the past, I've been fortunate to work with developers who could build them for me. I also have the book Regular Expression Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach, and as a last resort, I've used RegExLib.com

Eventually, I realised that I needed to learn Regex properly, so I bought Regular Expressions in 10 minutes by Ben Forta

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IE8 goes mainstream

Tue, 05 May 2009 12:15:00 +0100

This week, one of my machines installed Internet Explorer 8 via Windows Update. Unless Microsoft have put me into a trial group without me realising, it seems that IE8 is now a reality.

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How to save 10% on Adobe software, hosting etc

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:03:00 +0100

Register with Top Cashback and you can get 10% cashback on all Adobe software, up to £340 on hosting and loads more deals.

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Rounding image corners in CF8

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 09:39:00 +0100

I'm currently working on a site where the staff can upload images for display. Part of the design requirement, is that the corners of these images are rounded off. Step forward coldfuson 8...

Image support in coldfusion was long overdue. Although there were some very good 3rd party components (such as the Alagad Image Component), there should have been something bundled with coldfusion many versions ago. Coldfusion 8 comes with the new <cfimage> tag and dozens of image manipulation and drawing functions. So drawing rounded corners should be easy?

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Google Chrome - First Thoughts

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 19:55:00 +0100

I've been using Google Chrome for a few days now.

First experiences have been quite good:

It hasn't crashed on me yet.
Flash ads on yahoo mail don't max out the processor
I really like the homepage thing that shows snapshots of your most popular pages.
The added functionality in the address bar is powerful, yet intuitive.
I haven't found any rendering problems with existing sites yet.

I remain to be convinced on the skin, although I'd imagine plugins will start appearing soon for it. I also missed the homepage button until I realised it was an option you had to turn on.

The big downside though is the lack of a 'print preview' facility. Until Google add this feature, I'll still be using other browsers.

Overall though, I've been quietly impressed. If only Microsoft would give up on Internet explorer and concede to the other browsers. I'd be a happier developer then :)

Book Review: Lucene In Action

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 16:08:00 +0100

I first heard about Lucene a few years ago, as it's used to power the search functionality in BlueDragon. Although that makes it sound like an open-source version of the Verity Search Engine software, it is so much more. I've been using Lucene on my current project and have turned into a big fan. I bought the book Lucene In Action to help, and I've been equally impressed with the book.

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Book Review: Java Phrasebook

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 08:44:00 +0100

I've recently been using a Java for a project, which I hope to blog about later. I haven't done any Java development since version 1.2 back in 2002, so I had a a bit of catching up to do. I also needed to update my library with some Java material.

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SQL Injection Attack going around

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 19:26:00 +0100

I would imagine that most developers are already aware of this by now, but for those who haven't heard, there's a nasty sql injection attack going around. Details are here and you'll find plenty more on google: http://www.rtraction.com/blog/devit/sql-injection-hack-using-cast.html

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Browser Bugs in IIS Logs

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 22:43:00 +0100

I spent several hours today wading through IIS access logs. Not the most fun part to my job, but sometimes necessary. During the course of it though, I found a subtle difference with the way clients (browsers) pass the information that goes into these logs. Hopefully it will be of use to someone else.

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Developer, Project Management and Sales Jobs in Coventry

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 22:48:00 +0100

A digital solutions company I've recently being doing work for in Coventry are on a requirement drive just now.

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Book Review: AdvancED DOM Scripting

Thu, 29 May 2008 22:46:00 +0100

The last few years have seen a huge shift towards building Rich Internet Applications, with technologies such as AJAX and DOM scripting to the fore. Unfortunately, the web is littered with bad examples. This book shows you how to do it properly.

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How to tweak IIS to improve your coldfusion sites' performance

Mon, 26 May 2008 17:36:00 +0100

Following on from yesterday's review of High Performance Web Sites, I had a quick go with YSlow, to see where I could optimise this site.

The starting point was a respectable score of C(71) for the home-page. The first rule that didn't score well was number 2: Use a Content Delivery Network. A CDN is over-kill for a blog, so that left me looking at the following rules 3 (Add Expires Header), 4 (Gzip components) and 13 (Configure Etags).

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Book Review: High Performance Web Sites

Sun, 25 May 2008 22:59:00 +0100

When a website is running slow, the traditional response has been to look at optimising the application code. In fact, 90% of the response time is taken downloading and rendering the page and it's constituent elements. In the book High Performance Web Sites, Steve Souders describes 14 rules for improving front-end performance.

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