Thursday, May 7, 2009

Normal people’s guide to visiting the US

Recently I was given the task to plan a US visit for 10 people. My family and some family friends decided to come and visit me in the US for about a week or so as well as make trips to Niagara Falls, Washington D.C. and New York City – pretty much the most common destinations on the East Coast for all tourists. I had to plan their trip to the smallest detail and while doing it I had to answer a lot of simple questions like – where should we eat without breaking the bank and wasting time, what is a decent hotel that we can stay at, etc. Most guides already answer these questions but they do it assuming people want to go all out and try nothing but fancy dining. While this is true for some people, others like my family and friends don’t like shelling out $100/person every time. Don’t get me wrong – fancy food is okay every once in a while but simply not 3 times/day.

In this guide I will try to post some things that I thought were very helpful to them

Part 1: Food

This table will give you the basic idea about the most common places you could eat. It is being constantly updated so keep checking for new stuff. The number of “$” signs corresponds to the approximate amount you will pay per person per visit ie. 1 “$” sign = $10, 2 “$$” signs = $20 etc. This is a very rough figure and it will go up and down depending on what you actually order and how much you tip. While many of the full-service restaurants advertise cheap specials they are mostly during the day and without drinks and tip included. The cost here reflects both drinks and tip.
My suggestion is to print this table and when you get hungry and don’t know where to go – simply find the logo and get the details.

Name	Type	Service	Breakfast	Alcohol	Cost
Applebee’s	American	Full		Yes	$$
Arby’s	American	Self	No	No	$
Bob Evans	American	Full	Yes	No	$$
Burger King	American	Self	Yes	No	$
Cheesecake Factory, The	American	Full	Yes	Yes	$$$
Chili’s	American	Full	Yes	Yes	$$
Denny’s	American	Full	Yes	No	$$
Domino’s	Pizza	Delivery	No	No	$
Eat’n Park	American	Full	Yes	No	$$
KFC	Chicken	Self	No	No	$
Long John Silvers	Seafood	Self	No	No	$
McDonald’s	American	Self	Yes	No	$
Outback Steakhouse	Australian	Full		Yes	$$
Perkins	Perkins	Full	Yes	No	$$
Pizza Hut	Pizza	Full	No	No	$$
Ponderosa	American	Full	Yes	No	$$
Red Lobster	Seafood	Full	No	Yes	$$$
Ruby Tuesday	American	Full		Yes	$$
Subway	Deli	Self	Some	No	$
Taco Bell	Mexican	Self	No	No	$
TGI Friday’s	American	Full		Yes	$$
Quiznos	Deli	Self	No	No	$
Wendy’s	American	Self	No	No	$

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

How to render embedded text in an Image control with ASP.NET

The following quick tutorial will show you how to embed text in an image on an ASP.NET form in 2 simple steps.

The Render form

The first thing you have to do is add a the following form to the root of your website project

RenderImageWithText.aspx

     <%@ Page Language="VB" AutoEventWireup="false" CodeFile="RenderImage.aspx.vb" Inherits="RenderImage" %>

    <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

    <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

    <head runat="server">

        <title></title>

    </head>

    <body>

        <form id="form1" runat="server">

        </form>

    </body>

    </html>

and the Code-behind

RenderImageWithText.aspx.vb

    Imports System.Drawing

    Imports System.Drawing.Drawing2D

    Imports System.Drawing.Imaging

    Partial Class RenderImage

        Inherits System.Web.UI.Page

        Public Sub Page_PreRender(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs) Handles Me.PreRender

            Dim imageFile As String = "image.jpg"

            Dim textToRender As String = "Sample Text"

            Dim imageToRender As New Bitmap(Server.MapPath(imageFile))

            Dim g As Graphics = Graphics.FromImage(imageToRender)

            g.SmoothingMode = SmoothingMode.AntiAlias

            g.DrawString(textToRender, New Font("Arial", 12), SystemBrushes.WindowText, 1, 1)

            Response.ContentType = "image/jpeg"

            imageToRender.Save(Response.OutputStream, imageToRender.RawFormat)

        End Sub

    End Class

The background image

the second thing is to add any jpg file to the same location. Just make sure it is at least of some reasonable size and color for the test and has the same name as the value of the imageFile variable (in this case “image.jpg”)

Now if you preview the form you will see your text embedded in the image. Obviously you can use this from another form in bunch of different ways. In example you might want to display an email address but prevent it from ending up on some spammer’s list. In this case all you have to do is:

In your RenderImageWithText form - replace the imageFile string value with a Request.QueryString(“Text”)
In your working form add an ImageButton control that looks something like this

    <asp:ImageButton ID="ImageButton1" Runat="server" ImageUrl="~/RenderImageWithText.aspx?Text=johndoe@mail.com" />
  

Clickable and Double-Clickable GridView in ASP.NET

The following code will make your GridView both single and double clickable. All you have to do is replace the Response.Write lines in the GridView1_RowCommand with anything that you want to do instead. Obviously you can change the styling as you please too.

The GridView

     <asp:GridView ID="GridView1" runat="server" AutoGenerateColumns="False" CssClass="GridViewStyle">        

        <Columns>

            <asp:ButtonField CommandName="SingleClick" Visible="false" />

            <asp:ButtonField CommandName="DoubleClick" Visible="false" />

        </Columns>

        <RowStyle CssClass="GridViewRowStyle" />

        <SelectedRowStyle CssClass="GridViewSelectedRowStyle" />

        <HeaderStyle CssClass="GridViewHeaderStyle" />

        <AlternatingRowStyle CssClass="GridViewAlternatingRowStyle" />

    </asp:GridView>

The Code-Behind

    Protected Sub GridView1_RowCommand(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Web.UI.WebControls.GridViewCommandEventArgs) Handles GridView1.RowCommand

        Select Case e.CommandName

            Case "SingleClick"

                Response.Write("Single click detected")

            Case "DoubleClick"

                Response.Write("Double click detected")

        End Select

    End Sub

    Protected Sub GridView1_RowDataBound(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Web.UI.WebControls.GridViewRowEventArgs) Handles GridView1.RowDataBound

        If e.Row.RowType = DataControlRowType.DataRow Then

            Dim SingleClickButton As LinkButton = e.Row.Cells(0).Controls(0)

            Dim DoubleClickButton As LinkButton = e.Row.Cells(1).Controls(0)            

            Dim singleClick As String = Page.ClientScript.GetPostBackClientHyperlink(SingleClickButton, "")

            singleClick = singleClick.Insert(11, "setTimeout(""")

            singleClick += """, 300)"

            e.Row.Attributes("onClick") = singleClick

            Dim doubleClick As String = Page.ClientScript.GetPostBackClientHyperlink(DoubleClickButton, "")

            e.Row.Attributes("onDblClick") = doubleClick

        End If

    End Sub

The Optional CSS Style

    <style type="text/css">

    .GridViewStyle

    {

        border:solid 1px #5D7B9D;

        color:#333333;        

        width:100%;

    }

        .GridViewHeaderStyle

        {        

            background-color:#5D7B9D;

             font-weight:bold;

            text-align:left;

            color:White;                                

        }

            .GridViewHeaderStyle a

            {

                color:White;                                                

            }

            .GridViewHeaderStyle:hover

            {                             

            }

        .GridViewRowStyle

        {

            background-color: #F7F6F3;

            color: #333333;

        }

        .GridViewRowStyle:hover

        {

            background-color:Yellow; 

            cursor:pointer;            

        }

        .GridViewAlternatingRowStyle        

        {

            background-color:White;

            color: #284775;

            cursor:pointer; 

        }

        .GridViewAlternatingRowStyle:hover

        {

            background-color:Yellow;

            cursor:pointer; 

        }

    .GridViewSelectedRowStyle

    {

        background-color:Red;

        font-weight:bold;

    }

    </style>

The most important part to remember is the two ButtonFields. They should always stay in this order and the rest of your columns should be added after them.

Note: If you get an Event Validation or Invalid Callback or Postback Argument errors you must eiter

Apply this to your web.config to resolve your problem for the entire site

    <system.web>

       <pages enableEventValidation="false"/>

    </system.web>

Add this to the top of every page where you have this GridView

    <%@ Page EnableEventValidation="false" %>
  

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Bind Hyperlink.NavigateUrl to mailto: action without using code-behind

This is a very simple and elegant (but annoying to figure out) way to bind HyperLink.NavigateUrl to an email address with a mailto: action without using code-behind

      
    <asp:HyperLink NavigateUrl=’&lt;%# Bind(”EmailAddress”, “mailto:{0}”) %&gt;‘ Text=’&lt;%# Bind(”Email”) %&gt;‘ runat=”server” ID=”EmailHyperLink”></asp:HyperLink>

Enjoy

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