From time to time, I like to experiment with clever new ui tricks, and, today, I ran into the jparallax library, which is a jQuery plugin that enables you to add some pretty interesting effects to your site.  For those of you like me that didn't know exactly what parallax is, there are better answers available, but in summary, its the way that old side scrolling games achieved their depth by scrolling the background slower than the foreground as your character made its way through the game.  There is a really cool demo on the front page of the jparallax site at webdev.stephband.info/parallax.html.

Maybe it is because I grew up with arcades and nintendo in the 80s, but when I first saw the jparallax library today, I figured I had to make a header out of it, at least for a while.  So, for a while, anyway, you can see the jparallax jquery plugin at work in the header of this site.  It may not be used as intended, but its still a pretty cool effect, and it was really, really simple to implement.

Jesse Foster | jf26028

This week, I decided to upgrade to 1.4, primarily because I want to try out some new theme kung fu and I wanted to do it on the latest and greatest version of BlogEngine.  In short, the conversion was very simple.  I ran into a few hiccups, some my fault, some not, but all very minor.

Changes in CSS

There were some changes in css elements that caused me a problem or two.  The first issue was a collision with some of my own css classes being named "content", which is thrown around a lot in blogengine.  This caused some floating issues with the sidebar and the widgets.

Changes in Related Posts

The related posts section, when you view a blog post, has been enhanced.  And, I personally think it is better now.  But, there are some issues with the new technique that I know the blogengine team have seen before, and I'm sure it wont be long till they are fixed up.  The good news is that you can just replace the RelatedPosts.cs code file with the version from 1.3, and it works exactly the same way it did in 1.3.  There is more info on codeplex where I created an issue.

Changes in Blog Links

This fix is actually better for all of man kind....except for me.  Basically, I lacked the forethought of having "---" in your post slug, even though it was mentioned to me before.  Not only is it kinda ugly (some think so), but it creates invalid html, which is terrible, right.  Well, BlogEngine fixes that now, but I have lots of links to my posts with those three hyphens, and I didn't want to let that go, so I tweaked the code to continue to allow it.  That's the beauty of open source, right there.  And, just as a side note, when my posts were not being found, BlogEngine was good enough to do a quick search and provide the users with a link to the correct post anyway, so it's not like people were dead in the water, so kudos, once again.

Permission Issues

This one, I think, was caused by my host.  But, on app_statup, BlogEngine attempts to write all the xml configurations for the extensions you have installed.  The app has no issues writing to those xml files any time, other than on app_startup.  If anyone else has that problem, or has a fix, drop me a line.  For now, I just threw a try/catch around the trouble code, and everything is good to go.

Overall, the experience has been pretty painless.  The only real reason for me to upgrade was widgets and their affect on themes, but its so simple, it may be worth doing just to keep recent.  Just make sure you grab the comment security fix noted on codeplex before you do upgrade, though.

If you see anything else that is out of place because of the upgrade on this blog, please let me know.

Jesse

So, I rebuilt a workstation because I am soon to lose my current wicked awesome hp laptop.  Like many people, reloading a workstation is both, a pleasure and a pain.  On one hand, you get to refresh your xp installation, so everything seems super fast again.  On the down side, none of your tools, plug-ins, extensions, settings, or any of that stuff is in place, so you have to redo all that work.

Anyway, I installed visual studio 2008 and Visio.  Then, like zillions of other people, I said "Hey!  Where did the generate menu go?".  Turns out, Visio Professional is just not quite professional enough to generate a script from a database diagram.  Good grief.  So, where is this Enterprise Architect version?  Sweet.  Its on msdn.  Pulled it down, and started to install, and soon, all would be well in the world....or so I thought.

Now, I came up against the dreaded "You must first install one of the qualified Visual Studio editions" or it's evil cousin "you must first install visual studio 2003 enterprise architect".  Blast!  Turns out, you can only install the good Visio if you have visual studio 2003 or 2005 enterprise architect installed.  You have got to be kidding me.  I have msdn.  I have access to both of those applications.  I do not want to re-install visual studio 2005 over my new, pristine 2008 installation, but I really need Visio, with the generate functionality.

Well, after lots of searching, and accepting the fact that I was probably violating some sort of licensing agreement, I came up with a hack workaround.  If you have an installation of visual studio 2008, and want Visio enterprise architect, but do not want to install visual studio 2005, this can work for you.  I gave filemon a try, but it didn't look like it was doing anything interesting.  Then, I gave regmon a try, filtered on msiexec, and found some interesting keys.  The last thing it did before bailing out on the installation was look in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0.  I did have that key in my registry, but it obviously didn't have exactly what the installer was looking for.  In the 9.0 folder was my visual studio 2008 installation.

I exported the 8.0 folder using regedit for a backup, exported the 9.0 folder, opened the exported .reg file, did a search/replace on "9.0" to "8.0", and saved it.  Then, I imported the modded 9.0->8.0 .reg file into the registry, basically pretending that my visual studio 2008 installation was actually a visual studio 2005 installation, at least as far as the registry was concerned.  Fired up the Visio installer, and, kachow, it worked.  After installing, I reverted back to my original 8.0 export, and everything is good to go.

It is a hack to get you going, but if you have the same problem, and are crazy like me, this can get you going.

Jesse Foster | jf26028

I upgraded HydrogenCMS for it's second release to asp.net mvc preview 2 tonight, and updated the HydrogenCMS.net site.  Overall, it was not a difficult exercise.  I had a hiccup or two because I had a view unfortunately named "View", and with the renaming of the RenderView method to View, it caused some problems.

Another issue was simply changing ViewData to ViewData.Model for the strongly typed pages.  Simple enough.

And, finally, there were some routing changes.  Routing, apparently, is not my strong suit, so it took a little effort to get it lined up because I am trying for the super seo friendly url of just the slug of the page, so there is a little kung fu in there, but not much.  The biggest routing issue was how Default.aspx actually gets called now, so you have to put a redirect in the codebehind, where the old version just never got called.  I don't know what the reason for that is, but a little research can fix that.

All in all, considering how much effort the .net people are putting into asp.net mvc, and how much they are listening to the community, the changes were minimal.  If you have a project in preivew 1 or 2 (I upgraded from the first preview), then I suggest upgrading.  It is mostly painless, and it will keep you from having to drop a big chunk of updates in when the library goes rtm.

Jesse Foster | jf26028

Well, at least an early version was released. 

HydrogenCMS is a fully functional, extremely minimalist, open source, cms using asp.net mvc, linq2sql, linq2xml, and a bunch of code/ideas from BlogEngine, Kigg, and a ton of other places.  It started out as an experiment on some of the new technologies floating around in the asp.net world, but it also fills a need. 

Most of us, at one time or another, have had that relative or client who needs a simple, tiny web site that just has a few pages.  Something easy to stand up, configure, skin, and turn lose so they can do their own updates.  There aren't many apps like that, especially in asp.net.  Hopefully, HydrogenCMS can help fill that gap.  With the simple xml providers, you just deploy the site, change the admin username/password, and tell your client the metaweblog api url, and you are good to go.  They can use Live Writer or some other blogging utility to manage the whole site.  It doesn't get much simpler than that.

I will produce a set of blog entries in the next few days to help document the system, and give some insight into some of the features and design points that may not be obvious up front.  If you have any comments, feel free to drop me a line here, on my contact page, or at the CodePlex site.

Jesse Foster | jf26028