cfgrid or ext grid change column align

If you are using Coldfusion MX 8 cfgrid or the excelent Ext library and
you want to change the aligment for the column then a simple way
to do that is:

Add an style block like

 .x-grid-col-0 {text-align:center}
 .x-grid-col-1 {text-align:left}
 .x-grid-col-2 {text-align:right}

And that's all just remember to change  .x-grid-col-n change the n for the column you want to modify.

Clean Up your Coldfusion application

Currently I'm working in some tools to clean
your code, whether it is VB, ASP or Coldfusion.

Mostly simple tools, but for now if you are a
ColdFusion Developer I want to recommend a nice
application called CF Project Cleaner
This tools lends you a hand so you can
get rid of unused files. The tool is not perfect. But it is always handy
to review your code.

MAN for .NET

Microsoft recently published the MTPS Content Service

In brief, the MTPS Content Services are a set of
web services for exposing the content in
Microsoft/TechNet Publishing System (MTPS).


And Craig Andera, has develop a swift nice tool
called msdnman that you use from the command line to
get information from the MSDN

Also I recommend you to see this cool video of a Human LCD that Hugo sent me

Comparison Tool for Windows

If you need a good and FREE comparison tool
I recommend WinMerge

Input Line Too Long

I was trying to compile a C++ Project in Visual Studio
and this project has a post-build step that executes
some batch statements.

And succendly from one day to the other the project failed
and the only message I had was
The input line is too long


After some googling I found that this error is displayed
when the command line in the command prompt
exceeds the maximum number of characters.
(Something quite obvious jeje)

The bottom line was that recenlty I had installed
some software and my PATH variable became TOO long
I fixed it by creating a new environment variable
called EXTRA_PATH where I put some references to
Some big paths and then changed my PATH variable
replacing all those long variables for %EXTRA_PATH%.

And problem solved!

VB6 References Explorer

I recently found this decent tool called VB6 Reference Explorer.
It even comes with source code.

This tool will show a list of the references for a set of projects in your path.




Here at Artinsoft, some colleagues have develop
some tools that perform even more exhaustive
project analisys like CreateObject dependencies
and others. Maybe I'll post something about those
tools in the future

VB6 Printer Object and PrintForm migration

If you ever had any problems while migrating from VB6 Printer Object or the PrintForm functionality
we have goods news for you the Microsoft Visual Basic 2005 Power Pack 2.0.
Our version of the Visual Basic Companion already provides and extended migration of the Printer Object,
and we're now updating it to use this new implementation. This Printer Compatibility Library makes it a
breeze to migrate Printer Functionality.

This is the description of the PowerPack:

"The new Line and Shape controls included in this version of the Visual Basic 2005 Power Packs are
a set of three graphical controls that enable you to draw lines, ovals, and rectangles on forms and
containers at design time making it much easier to enhance the look of your user interface.
These new shape controls also provide events such as click and double-click allowing developers
to respond and interact with end users.

The Printer Compatibility Library allows projects that used the Printer and Printers Collection in Visual Basic 6.0
 to be upgraded without having to re-write your printing logic. By simply adding a reference to the library, declaring a
Printer and making a few minor syntax changes, your project will be able to print using the Printers collection
and Printer object as it did in Visual Basic 6.0. This version adds a new Write method to the Printer object which
allows you to print text without a forced carriage return similar to the semicolon syntax used by Print method in Visual Basic 6.0.

The PrintForm component is designed to bring back the ability to easily print a Windows Form.
With this the new PrintForm component you can once again layout the Windows Form exactly as
you want it and allow your users to print the form as a quick report."

You can download the PowerPack from here

NOTE: there's is another link that only includes the Printer Library but MS recommends to download the PowerPack
because minor upgrades and fixes will be done on the PowerPack distribution

 

IE7 Print shrink to fit problem

IE7 has an interesting bug...
Someone decided to change the printing default
to "Shrink to Fit".This is supposed to be good
because it will make printing of web pages better
but it affects several applications develop for
IE, for example if you are using the Web Access
to your Exchange server, or if you have an application
that prints on a page that is not a letter size page


Well a guy from a forum found an excellent solution.

The only problem is that he refers a hot fix,
but if you have problems with that hotfix, then
do the following:

1. Go to windowsupdate.microsoft.com

2. Make sure you have the following updates:

** Security Update for Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP (KB938127)
** Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP (KB937143)

And then run the following in the command prompt:

reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\MAIN\FeatureControl\FEATURE_STF_Scale_Min" /v iexplore.exe /t REG_DWORD /d 100 /f

Remove unused references VB6

As part of the VB Companion Development group, my day to day includes
migrating several project from different clients, to develop custom mappings
and custom functionality for their migration needs or to add new features
for the next VB Companion version.

A long part of the initialization in the migration process consists of the load and
analysis of the COM references indicated in the .VBP project file.

Sometimes I have notice that there are several references that are never used.
Removing these references will provide a great save in time because the migration will
not have to incur in any time for TypeLib and TypeInfo extraction.

I look for a tool that let me get rid of the VB6 unused referencences but I found none.
So I decided to create one myself. And I created the VB6 Project References Cleaner Addin

The concept of the tool is simple, someone from a group posted the idea I just implemented.
The addin goes thru all the references and one by one tries to remove it.
And then compiles the project. It the project compiles,then the reference was not neccesary.
If you mark the remove option the tool will remove the references for you.

This tool will NOT SAVE the project file. You decide if you what to save it.

I'm attaching the source code and the dll. To used it just take the VB6References.dll and run:

  regsvr32 VB6References.dll

After that the tool will appear in the Addins menu in VB6 SOURCE CODE and BINARIES

 

 

 

VB6 API calls to .NET

Every SERIOUS VB6 application, ended up requiring
that you import some functionality from the windows API or another DLL.
However if you were looking for a .NET equivalent and
google did not take you to the right page,
there is a document (a little old I might say) called
Microsoft Win32 to Microsoft .NET Framework API Map

I remember a couple of other pages that were even more complete,
but right know I can only remember http://pinvoke.net that gives some info about APIs

2008 is the final warning to move VB6 applications to .NET

Rob Helm, director of research at Directions on Microsoft, recently answered the question "Do the new releases of the Microsoft platform have an impact on the issue of upgrading applications from Visual Basic 6 to Visual Basic .NET?" with the quote that is the title of this post.

He said that the new platform updates really do not have an impact and that you should not wait any longer to move. He emphasized that after the end of support date for VB6 the support will only be through a special support contract with Microsoft that typically is "very onerous" and increasing every year.

Additionally, Rob Helm mentioned something that I had not noticed. Did you know the name of Visual Basic .NET is now officially only "Visual Basic"? Definetely another sign pointing at the future!

Coldfusion8 html cfgrid problem

We had a problem with a cfgrid
Coldfusion8 introduces an HTML cfgrid that is AWESOME!!!
It is something you should use.
It is based in the also excellent library Ext But recently we were extruglying with it because when we tried to capture exceptions in the update functions nothing happened and it was terrible because a real life application NEEDS exception handling. My code was something like this:
First file was places.cfc

<cfcomponent output="false">





<cffunction name="getData" access="remote" output="false">

<cfargument name="page">

<cfargument name="pageSize">

<cfargument name="gridsortcolumn">

<cfargument name="gridsortdirection">

<cfquery name="team" datasource="cfdocexamples"> 

SELECT Emp_ID, FirstName, EMail 

FROM Employees

<cfif gridsortcolumn neq "" or gridsortdirection neq ""> 

order by #gridsortcolumn# #gridsortdirection#

</cfif> 

</cfquery> 

<cfreturn QueryConvertForGrid(team, page, pageSize)>

</cffunction>



<cffunction name="editData" access="remote" output="false">

<cfargument name="gridaction">

<cfargument name="gridrow">

<cfargument name="gridchanged">



<cfif isStruct(gridrow) and isStruct(gridchanged)>

<cfif gridaction eq "U">

<cfset colname=structkeylist(gridchanged)>

<cfset value=structfind(gridchanged,#colname#)>

<cfquery name="team" datasource="cfdocexamples"> 

update employees set aaa<cfoutput>#colname#</cfoutput> = 

'<cfoutput>#value#</cfoutput>'

where Emp_ID = <cfoutput>#gridrow.Emp_ID#</cfoutput>

</cfquery>

<cfelse>

<cfquery name="team" datasource="cfdocexamples"> 

delete from employees where emp_id = <cfoutput>#gridrow.Emp_ID#

</cfoutput>

</cfquery> 

</cfif>

</cfif>

</cffunction>



</cfcomponent>

 

and the second file was grid2.cfm:

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

<head>

<script type="text/javascript">

function errorhandler(id,message) {

alert("Error while updating\n Error code: "+id+"\n Message: "+message);

}

</script>

</head>



<body>

<cfform name="form01">

<cfgrid format="html" name="grid01" pagesize=11 

stripeRows=true stripeRowColor="gray"

bind="cfc:places.getData({cfgridpage},{cfgridpagesize},

{cfgridsortcolumn},{cfgridsortdirection})" 

onerror="errorhandler"

delete="yes" selectmode="edit"

onchange="cfc:places.editData({cfgridaction},{cfgridrow},{cfgridchanged})">

<cfgridcolumn name="Emp_ID" display=true header="Employee ID"/>

<cfgridcolumn name="FirstName" display=true header="Name"/> 

<cfgridcolumn name="Email" display=true header="Email"/> 

</cfgrid>

</cfform>

</body>

</html>

And the problem where was it!!
It was not in any of those files it was in the application.cfm There was an onError handler. So it was commented out and everything work perfect! Well I just like to write down these little details so I don't make this silly things twice. I hope this can be of any help