This problem took me a few days to sort out.  We just started using Ajax in our application and everything was running fine, loading fast and being totally awesome (because its Ajax , and I heart Ajax).  I couldn’t figure it out, every browser and every O/S this was working fine, there was just one customer using IE6 with windows 2000.  The problem was the Ajax call was hanging, for a really long time.  At first I thought the Ajax wasn’t firing at all, but with out live http headers for IE6, there wasn’t any way I could confirm this.

So after about 5 minutes of sitting there pulling my hair out…..the ajax returned a result and the next part of the process ran.   Sooo….what the hell?!?!  A few days of googling, trying different things, asking other people in the development team, and finally praying (all religions), I came across a blog post that explained that IE6 doesn’t handle closed connections very well.  We had this line in our javascript:

xh.setRequestHeader(“Connection”, “close”);

We now had to change our code to only include this if the browser was not IE6.  I wasn’t sure what performance hit this would have or what side affects it would have, but we’ve been running this for a few years and haven’t seen any difference with performance or had any problems.  If anyone else has a better understanding of why IE6 behaves like this, please leave me a comment!!

I’ve always used CSS to handle page breaks when printing from the web, and its always been easy and pretty straight forward to implement.  However FireFox would stop printing after 1 or 2 pages from what should have been about a 10 page print job.

After some googling I found that a fair few people have been having the same problem as me, only in FireFox though, every other browser is fine.  The problem was the CSS I was using:

page-break-after:always;

FireFox didn’t like this.  From what I found on the web the work around was to use page-break-before instead.  I searched bugzilla to try and find out more details on why this happens, the best I could find was this lengthy discussion, with instances of this problem from 2002.   So my lesson from this is to use page-break-before:always instead of after.

Twitter, the perfect app for when I have nothing of interest or importance to say…. but I need to tell everyone.  I added a “follow me on twitter” button on my blog today, I figure all the cool kids are doing it now days: Vanilla Ice, K-Rudd, and even the fat kid from hey dad.  I got the button from this blog, a canadian designer.

So this is the start of my 3 step get rich twit plan:

Step 1.  Create twitter account
Step 2.  Add button to blog
Step 3.  Profit.

So do you think my tweets will be worth following? Well i just changed my twitter pic to a wookie feeling up princess leia….you be the judge.

We came across a weird problem a few weeks ago where we were using an UpdatePanel through ASP.NET AJAX (.Net Framework 3.5 SP1) with an asp:dropdownlist on that page.  When the update panel did a post back using ajax the drop down lists stopped working.  You could click on the select list but they would not drop down with any options.  This only happened in Firefox 3, no other FF version or Internet Explorer.

Through ages of google searching we found a work around online, adding a window.setTimeout() around the alert box, eg:

ScriptManager.RegisterClientScriptBlock(this, typeof(Page), "validationAlert", "window.setTimeout(\"alert('Just testing')\", 0);", true);

Hope this saves some other people time and heart ache.

I got a couple of holiday units at brooms head.  I’m trying to make it easier for people to find out info and to get in contact with me to book.  For now its just a basic web site with:

• photos 
• contact info
• things to do at brooms head & surrounding areas

I also found this cool slide show thingy from picasa which I added.  Its pretty cool, I was after a free image rotator and I already use picasa for all my brooms head photo albumn, so it was a match made in heaven.  I would like to see some extra customisation, for example not displaying my name, but for free its awesome and it works on all browsers… that I care about.  Hosting is with webhost4life which have been really good so far, and reasonably priced.  Its my first .net hosting company I’ve gone with and it all self controlled within a cool online control panel.

The css design is a template by bryant smith, a web designer in Florida.  I liked it immediately, great colours and simple design.  The content was written by my dad, and the brooms head photos were partly taken by me and Dad.

I hope in other releases to sex the site up a bit:

• Public calendar for people to check availability online
• A simple 1 page booking fee (as minimal and easy as possible)
• Hook up to online secure payment gateway
• Web admin to add bookings via phone (for multiple people)
• Web admin to enter bills I receive or my dad does (he lives close).  I’m hoping I can use the freshbooks API to do this, but will need to look into it.
• Web admin setup email templates to make it easier for me or other admins to reply to emails.
• Setup Subversion & automated testing with mozy backup
• Pretty up the design

I’d be pretty happy if I get all this done, but this is a big investment on time….wish me luck!