Adam's Blog

Forcing a scrollbar in FireFox

2008-01-06T03:06:00Z

If you have ever developed a site that is centrally aligned that has a vertical scrollbar on some pages and not on others then I am sure you have come across this problem in Firefox. Basically the page layout appears to jump left and right when switching to a page that needs the scroll bar. This is especially troublesome in Ajax applications as sometimes Firefox will make it look like the entire page has reloaded because of this jump in client side page width.

There is a fix which will force the scrollbar gutter (notice I did not say scroll bar) to appear and, by doing that will prevent the jumping of the page. The good news is it’s actually really simple to implement.

After investigating about 10 different fixes, this one seems to be the most reliable, and causes the fewest side effects.

html
{
       height: 100%;
       overflow-x: hidden;
       overflow-y: scroll;
       overflow:-moz-scrollbars-vertical !important;
}

Vista RDP Client Is Slow Connecting To Non Vista Machines.

2007-12-15T11:20:00Z

Ever since I upgraded my personal and development machines to Vista, I have been having problems connecting to non Vista machines over the internet using Terminal Services. I could connect and log in no problem, but they were incredibly slow. I could move windows around and then I would have to wait about 20 seconds and the screen to update. Now I am quite familiar with slow connections and update lag, but this was different. In normal slow situations the screen would re-draw itself, 100 pixel at a time block by block, but what I was seeing would not update at all and then after about 10 to 20 seconds the entire screen would just update.

Well all of those problems are behind me because I have finally found the answer. I figured I would post the solution here for two reasons #1 it's a lot easier for me to come back here and reference it, (I know that sounds selfish) #2 I know a lot of our users / clients use terminal services, and I can only assume that a vista upgrade has happened or is in a lot of peoples future (either by choice or necessity).

RDP 6.0, the version that currently ships with Vista, has an auto tuning feature that has at least in our environment (and many others by the looks of things from a simple Google search) has been known to cause connection slowness or choppiness.

To get around this the solution is to simply disable the new auto tuning feature of RDP, this basically just makes it work like the prior version used to.

You have to get to a cmd prompt with Administrative Privlidges.

The easiest way to do this is to type cmd into the vista search box, and when the CMD program comes up in the list of available program shortcuts, right click on it and select "Run As Administrator". This will put you in a cmd prompt with Administrative Privileges.

Here comes the part you have all been waiting for

at the cmd prompt type the following

netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled

and then hit enter. Once the command completes you will see an "OK", after this you should be able to connect using RDP with no problems.

If you ever want to turn the Auto Tuning features back on just run the same command, changing the last part to "enabled" instead of "disabled". (I know I just had to make sure I said something about it.)

-Adam

My first blog post / Exciting things are happening / We are hiring

2007-06-15T02:29:00Z

I told my self that I was going to write my first blog post about something really interesting, and basically what happened was that I thought about what to write so long that I never actually got the time to sit down and write it. So, now I am writing a post out of necessity as much as I am to get the blog-post-writing ball rolling.

Right now we are in the process of working on new versions of LoadMail, CompanyWebsite, YouLoad as well as some additional products that we have not announced just yet. As you can imagine, we are extremely busy. Additionally, doing all of this new development while growing the company organically has made things even more challenging when new deals come to the table.

I am looking for a few good men (or women, I didn't forget about you ladies) to join our crack team of elite developers (ok, so they made me write that). We have a very tight group of developers at Load and we are looking to expand our group while still maintaining the cohesion that you get from a small development team. The ideal candidates should be performance freaks (just to clarify, effective immediately Load will no longer be hiring freak performers, I'm sorry but its just not going to work out, we have met our federally mandated quota). But seriously, we strive to squeeze every last drop of performance from our servers and that starts at the code and planning levels. We know that what we are trying to achieve has been tried by larger firms, with more developers, and there are no questions about it -- this is a difficult task, but I know we are up to it.

The first requirement of the ideal candidate is that you must know C#, and I mean really know it. You should know about generics, and know when and when not to use them. You should understand reflection and it's benefits and drawbacks. You should have an understanding of what linq is *(it is not a Nintendo character, although I do have a dog named Zelda) and how it is going to affect C# and SQL development in the future. You should understand and appreciate the implications of designing for scalability and availability and it's tradeoffs with raw performance. This can be a real Doozie, (YES! I found a way to get my other dog's name in this paragraph). I believe that many programmers can build fast programs, but it's the ones whose fast programs scale that interest me.

The second requirement of the ideal candidate is that you are a JavaScript rock star. What does this mean . . . ? Well again, a lot of web programmers know JavaScript, and use it in form validation or DHTML scenarios, alert, confirm, document.write() are all 101 level stuff here when compared to what is needed to achieve the types of applications we are trying to bring from the desktop to the browser. You should know about JavaScript prototyping, browser capability abstraction methodologies, and the implications of using JSON vs XML in your AJAX applications. Above all, you should treat JavaScript as a full fledged programming language and not the red-headed-scripting-language stepchild of Java.

The ideal candidate should have a mastery of MS T-SQL. MS T-SQL is the Microsoft version of the T-SQL language. This is the language that all of our applications and servers use to speak to our databases. Without an in-depth understanding of SQL and the related MS-SQL server technologies, you would have a very shy application, and nobody likes the shy kid, so stop being such a shy loser and get some SQL, son. That will get you all the fly honeys.

An understanding of any of following technologies are things that would really make you stand out among the thousands of qualified applicants whose resumes are flooding my office. (Ok, not really, I need some help here and good help is hard to find.) If you know any one that is looking, or if you are looking yourself, and feel you have what it takes, please send us your Resume and include a cover letter explaining why Load should consider choosing YOU to join our team.

In case you're curious, here is a list of things we've got "on the board" and are currently working on today:

E-Mail Servers
Web Analytics
DNS
Encryption / Security
Spam Blocking Methodologies
Bayes Filtering
LDAP Protocol
Web Services
Windows Services
Adobe Plugins
Office / Outlook Express Plugins ( yes belive it or not they use different technology )
ASP 3.0 ( the old one in vbscript )
Team Foundation Services
Flash ActionScript

Well, lets hope I get better at this so you don't have to suffer through my posts any more.

-Adam