Jeff Cranford's Blog

Disasters caused by programming errors.

Haven't seen this anywhere else.... This is a list of programming errors which ended up causing fairly major disasters (loss of life, billion dollar losses, etc) including an in-depth description of the cause of the error. Puts those "returned licences"

Great 'retro' web interface.

I recently checked out the website for The Raconteurs (a "supergroup" made up of Jack White, Brendon Benson, and two other guys), and they've done their website up in old school terminal style interface (in Flash) complete with keyboard navigation. I

Web 2.0 people...don't forget your Ajax prehistory!!!

In a short time, Ajax has gone from a little known technology to a full-blown Internet phenomenon. In fact, the term "Ajax" has become so ubiquitous that it has all but encompassed the predecessors to which Ajax owes it's existance. I felt it was important

Google Base and hypocricy

Ok, I realize this is my second straight blog about the unfair treatment Microsoft receives from the media & public. However, I feel compelled to point out the hypocricy. Recently, Google Base (a free ad posting service) went public, and in doing

The most innovative browser, please step forward (...not so fast FireFox)

Wow! Its mind boggling sometimes how quickly misinformation can spread across the web...especially when said information has an anti-Microsoft sentiment. Recently, a customer sent my company an article entitled "New Web Software a Challenge to Microsoft"

Design-time server control persistence.

Usually, I am curious about any aspect of web development, but design-time WebForm stuff I am pretty happy to be ignorant of unless absolutely necessary. Well, that happened today, and since I couldn't find much info on this particular subject, I thought

Creating a dynamic ProgressBar server control

I wrote this for an ASP.NET portal, but they didn't use it. So, to the blog it goes. A progress bar…in a web application? Sure, it’s possible. In fact, progress bars have been in use for about as long as server-side programming has existed. Typically,

Server Control to Server Control data sharing

Recently, I had to implement an in-page communication system between custom server controls. Essentially, all controls had to have access to a shared property at any point in the Page life cycle INCLUDING design-time. So, when this shared property changes

Pushing callback technology to the limit. LivePaint (Part I).

I wanted to try to see how close to “real-time” my company's “callback-enabled“ LiveControls could come in terms of communication with the server. It occurred to me that a cross-browser web paint application would be a great test

Swag at Tech-Ed 2005!

What happens to us when we get into a conference setting? Here I am, a grown adult, father, husband, going up to another adult and meekly saying "Hey, what do you have to do to get one of those weeble-wobble business card holders?". One company had a

JavaScript on demand!

A few months ago, my company released a new product ( LiveControls for ASP.NET ) that we periodically find a new use for that was not in the original design. To save you a trip to the website, this product is a suite of server controls which use callback