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Quite often, developers or designers include a list of fonts within their CSS. As an example, one might define a CSS rule such as: font-family: ‘Segoe UI’, Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica; However, what some developers or designers may not realize is that the font, Tahoma, will never be reached. The reason for this is that Arial is much more prevalent than Tahoma. In fact, most Mac users would not see the site render using the Helvetica font as one may expect. This is because the Arial font has been included with Macs since OS X. If your application targets the Windows … Continue reading Understanding Font Rules in CSS

Earlier today, I saw a user attempt to type his password in both Internet Explorer 9 and Chrome. In both browsers, he failed to successfully type it in. After 3 failed attempts, he realized it was due to his caps lock key being pressed. In some cases, a keyboard driver will inform you on screen when you press the caps lock button. If you are lucky enough to use Internet Explorer 10, you’ll notice that it is built into the browser as shown below: However, not all users are using Internet Explorer 10 and some users have a tablet that … Continue reading Detecting Caps Lock with JavaScript

How many times as a web developer did you make a change to a web application in your browser and were disappointed when the changes didn’t update back within Visual Studio? With the recent updates to Mads Kristensen’s VS Web Essentials, you can. The Web Essentials download is a VSIX package (Visual Studio Extension). To use it, open an existing project or create a new one. For purposes of this blog post, I created a new ASP.NET Web Application and used the MVC project template. The default project template has a master layout file that contains an ActionLink Html Helper … Continue reading Saving Design Changes from Internet Explorer to Visual Studio 2013

After over 10 years of dedication to United One Resources, I’ve decided that it’s time for my next life challenge. Later today, I’ll walk out the doors of the office on Sherman St in Wilkes-Barre for the last time as a United One team member. I will never forget the past 10 years of my life and what this company has meant to me both personally and professionally. I have some fond memories and new found friends. Below are a few specific people that I felt I needed to mention: Lou and Sean: Thanks for the opportunity that you’ve been … Continue reading Moving On… To Guard Insurance Group

Windows 8.1 has been out for a few weeks now. Along with Windows 8.1, Internet Explorer 11 was released. IE11 offers the best web standard support of any Internet Explorer browser. This means that the latest finalized specifications for HTML5 and CSS3 features have been implemented within the browser. In addition, the IE team revamped the developer tools (F12 tools). When you press F12 in the new IE, the first thing you’ll notice is that IE11 is bringing forward the modern Windows style. The options, in order from top to bottom, are DOM Explorer, Console, Debugger, Network, UI Responsiveness, Profiler, … Continue reading Review: New Developer Tools in Internet Explorer 11

This was long overdue. For quite some time now, I was running a very old version of Orchard CMS. I was also using a low-cost shared hosting provider. My site was sluggish and would time out… often. I decided it was time to switch to Orcsweb shared hosting. I spoke with Brad Kingsley who recommended that I make the switch. Since jumping to Orcsweb, I’ve been happy with the extremely efficient service and the response time of my site. However, I wasn’t done. I spoke with Abhishek KumarLuv regarding my Orchard instance. We’ve chatted in the past via Twitter and … Continue reading Upgraded My Hosting Provider and Website

Today I hopped back into Visual Studio 2012 to update a project from TFS. To my surprise, I was greeted with the following error: After some unsuccessful online searching, I used a snippet I had found within an MSDN forum post. It mentioned to delete the workspace cache from the machine at C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Team Foundation\… As I navigated through, I noticed the C:\ProgramData\Microsoft Team Foundation Local Workspaces folder instead. After exiting Visual Studio, removing the folder, and trying it again, it worked.

Have you ever needed to obtain a list or count of all tables, views, stored procedures, and functions in a database? It’s quite easy. Simply copy the T-SQL from below to a query window, set the desired database and execute. SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES WHERE TABLE_TYPE=’BASE TABLE’ SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.VIEWS SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.ROUTINES WHERE ROUTINE_TYPE = ‘PROCEDURE’ SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.ROUTINES WHERE ROUTINE_TYPE = ‘FUNCTION’ This will produce four result sets that will list the tables, views, stored procedures and functions. You can simply update the select statements with the keyword count to grab the count of each … Continue reading T-SQL Count of Tables, Views, Stored Procedures and Functions

I ran into an interesting problem earlier today. I was using a CDR dump from our Cisco system. However, all of the datetime fields were represented as seconds. I knew right away that it used an epoch value. What I didn’t know is what the originating date was. Apparently, I was correct at my first guess. I guessed that it was using the standard Unix epoch value of 1/1/1970. Many applications, such as Microsoft Excel, use 1/1/1900. Since I wanted to represent the correct date and time in Excel, I began looking around for a formula. To my surprise, nothing … Continue reading Converting Unix Epoch to Date in Excel

Last night, August 7th, on World News with Diane Sawyer, their research team collected evidence to show how carrying purses and other items can cause harm if too heavy. According to their research, a single shoulder strap bag, such as a purse, messenger bag, duffle bag, should not weigh more than 5% of your body weight on a consistent basis. So, if you’re a male weighing in at 200lbs, your bag shouldn’t be more than 10lbs. I wanted to see what that meant for me. I currently carry a 17” Dell Precision M6700 that weighs in at 7.76lbs. That’s hefty, … Continue reading Office Ergonomics – Carrying Laptops and Work