Error 500

Csv parsers are a 'mare...

2010-02-17T15:18:00.002Z

..so don't write your own, and dont adapt a half written one from somewhere and get stuck in a nightmare of parsing strings, using regex and still end up with problems. Just use FileHelpers - seriously, this is a brilliant piece of magic, and deserves much praise! The FileHelpers are a free and easy to use .NET library to import/export data from fixed length or delimited records in files, strings or streams. Filehelpers site

Force IE8 to behave more like IE7

2009-10-06T07:00:00.007+01:00

Internet explorer 8 rewrote some behaviours in its new browser, meaning your page which you spent hours getting to behave correctly in the different versions of Firefox, the new player Chrome, Safari for the Mac users, Intenet Explorer 7 for the windows home users, Internet explorer 6 for the corporate machines who still haven't upgraded and the home users who for whatever reason run old windows versions, now breaks in new and unexpected ways.
Thankfully IE8 recognises a new HTTP HEader X-UA-Compatible, which tells it which browsers the web page has been tested against. You can specify the header as a meta tag within the page itself:
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=7" />
So you can opt in to standards behavior on your own schedule and as it makes sense to you, instead of being forced into a responsive mode when a new version of IE has different behavior on your current pages.
More info here at alistapart

IIS7 Breakages

2009-07-25T10:28:00.005+01:00

When switching from IIS 6 on a to IIS 7 you may run into one or more of the following problems.

1. Using a + (plus) in URLs may not work anymore. For DotNetNuke sites, this will certainly affect you.
Steps to fix: Back up applicationhost.config to documents folder
Open C:\windows\System32\inetsrv\config\applicationHost.config as admin
Find line <requestfiltering>
Change to <requestfiltering allowdoubleescaping="true">
Reference: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942076

2. File not found errors, or odd errors on your site where a previously working piece of code no longer works. Managed pipeline mode may be incorrect. You can change this under the basic settings of the application pool.
Steps to fix: Locate the application pool for the website - under IIS7 it should have its own app pool.
Change "Managed Pipeline Mode" from "Integrated" to "Classic". (Integrated is the default mode)

Use two versions of a DLL in one project

2009-07-14T17:07:00.008+01:00

I recently needed to include two versions of log4net in one project, both versions were called in by external components, Gentle.net and Nhiberbernate.
To do this you need to add both versions to the GAC.

The gacutil.exe that ships with .NET can be used to add or remove a shared assembly from the GAC.

To add a shared assembly, from the command line enter: gacutil.exe /i myassembly.dll
To remove a shared assembly, from the command line enter: gacutil.exe /u myassembly.dll

Then use a BindingRedirect in the web.config (or app.config)

<runtime>
<assemblybinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1">
<dependentassembly>
<assemblyidentity name="log4net" publickeytoken="b32731d11ce58905">
culture="neutral" />
<bindingredirect oldversion="1.2.0.30714" newversion="1.2.9.0">
</bindingredirect>
</assemblyidentity>
</dependentassembly>

The order of sections in the
web.config is important. If you put your configuration (including
log4net configuration) before the configuration for the component pulling in the newer version, then the logging will work.

Assemblies currently in the GAC are located in the Assembly folder in the Windows directory (usually: C:\WinNT\Assembly)

Show content to IE only.

2009-07-08T11:36:00.007+01:00

I had never realised the conditional comments often used to load CSS rules for Internet Explorer, and hide from other browsers, not only work with CSS, but any content on the page.
e.g:


<!--[if IE]>
<iframe src="iframeforIEonly.htm"></iframe>
<p>Paragraph for IE users only</p>
<![endif]-->

More information on conditional comments for CSS from quirksmode.

Google specific error 500

2009-07-07T17:06:00.007+01:00

A new unexplained challenge. Google Webmaster tools showed all pages of a site under my care with a "Network Unreachable" error. The site had recently undergone a transition from a single languge site to a multilingual site. Viewing the site in various browsers across varying platforms did not appear to cause any error, perhaps when google had crawled it, there had been a server problem, and it was unreachable only at that time.
Under careful watch, the problem persisted, and it turns out it came from a piece of code which attempted to detect a users language settings from the browser when the user first visited the website. The file had a reference to Browser Languages - and unfortunately, had assumed that a language, any language, reference would be returned (even if that language was not a language handled by the site) - and began its checks as to whether it should default to a predefined language or attempt to serve the site in the requested language from that point.
I would never have found this error without the URI Valet - a most useful tool, for checking your site server headers and allowing you to render the site as it would appear to google, or to a number of other bots and browsers. URI Valet is an invaluable tool for all internet marketers, site owners and developers - designed it so it is easy to understand and allows you to quickly determine if certain potential technical issues exist that could, or are, causing problems with your URL or domain name.