Posts

Previously we have discussed one approach and gave some implementing code for providing time zone adjusted date times to client web applications. Within the space of user facing web applications there are few different approaches to handling the storage and transmission of date time information. Today we will look at a couple broader themes for delivery of date times to client applications from servers and some thoughts on how to do it well. ...

This is short post about a couple issues that end users might run into when using a method of displaying dates I described in a prior post. In short, Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 cannot parse certain types of ISO8601 dates correctly and Google Chrome does not track the system’s time zone correctly. ...

In today’s post I’ll cover some of the potential use cases for AWS DynamoDB, why you might want to use it or not. ...

Today’s post one covers one approach for displaying the correct timezone adjusted date and time in a web application. A common example for the problem being addressed is user A located in London, UK uploads a file to a central server located in New York City, US and then user B located in Seoul, SK views the file. When user B attempts to download the file we would like show the user when the file was uploaded in his or her current time zone. ...

A quick tip post on using Knockoutjs to create a certain type of common web UI component. The short and sweet summary is that I’ll show how to create a shuttle control using two select boxes that are bound to arrays of Javascript objects (instead of simple value types) using Knockoutjs. Before getting to that though I’ll provide some background on the various component used to create the UI. ...

I saw an advertisement for a ‘smart’ laundry machine yesterday. The washer was smart because it came with the capability to connect to a wireline network and phone back to the manufacturer for updates and service information. I have seen similar smart refridgerators that also can connect to a local network for internet access. As an idea this seems great, it’s all part of the internet of things concept where our devices are all intelligently interlinked. I’m going to make the argument that smart appliances unlike smart devices is a bad idea. ...

One of the advantages of operating in an environment like AWS or Azure is the ability to template and programmatically deploy both infrastructure and application platforms. This advantage is sometimes overlooked in place of a more adhoc deployment model where resources are created as needed. Today’s post provides brief commentary on some of the advantages of handling deployments in a more structured manner. ...

I just wrapped up working on a month long project planning phase with a new customer. We gathered user stories, made technology selections, built proofs of concept, and generally got to know the customer’s business. What was interesting about this planning phase was that we started with a detailed product specification and worked backwards to define user stories and acceptance criteria for the project. While at first this may seem like a waste of time, it was actually extremely valuable to all parties involved. ...

The Re­portView­er control that Microsoft provides to display SQLServer Reporting Services reports in ASP.NET web ap­pli­ca­tions does not support custom cultures. There doesn’t appear to be any good, or easy work around for the lack of custom culture support. Fur­ther­more, it appears that the Reporting Services team is intent on continuing to use locale IDs to identify .NET cultures instead of culture names regardless of the preferred method of iden­ti­fy­ing cultures in .NET being by name. ...

Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is a useful framework for building asyn­chro­nous web ap­pli­ca­tions. Among other features, GWT handles the Javascript (hereafter JS) engine dif­fer­ences between various versions of Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Firefox, can handle UI layout, and comes with a number of pre-built in­ter­ac­tive components. ...