parsing...

Awhile ago I wrote a contact import which basically imports a .csv of customer contact information in which a customer can easily import all their contacts to the application. The problem is that we accept all US telephone numbers with up to a 5 digit extension. On the back end we parse out everything that is not a number. So the number ranges from 7-15 digits when it is finally stripped down to what we need. Now the problem with doing it this way is that some cases become indistinguishable. Since we allow phone numbers without area codes we could potentially run in cases like 123-1234 ext.555 and 123-123-4555 when stripped down there is no way to tell which has an area code and which has an extension because they become:1231234555 and 1231234555 on the back-end. The potential fix for this would be requiring and x in front of extension numbers so it will be easier to parse out. The problem with this is that it requires more work on their end which kinda defeats the purpose of what we are doing in the first place. Right now it is not that big of a problem because we haven't encountered this case, but in the future we will need to handle this properly.

more testing...

Since first introducing the newest part of the app, it has been through many changes and overhauls. Our app will soon be based around our new idea which is exciting for me. A while back I also created some new buttons to go with the style overhaul we've been doing, this was a perfect time to implement it. And hopefully once the new feature is fully implemented we will be able to use them with the rest of the app.

Along with anything new comes testing, Today I will be putting the newest part of the app through some rigorous testing, which I kind of enjoy. Figuring out new ways to break it, even though I'm the one who's gonna have to go in and fix em. I've also learned that testing the old parts of the app are equally important. Sometimes when we introduce new things, it affects things we think are unrelated in some way.

I have also started a campaign to make the commercial I helped shoot go viral(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziSG7TF7Q3c). I stumbled across some sites that seem to be super helpful in achieving this. I have looked tubemogul and hey!spread, but haven't had a chance to really dig into them. Hopefully I'll have some free time to dig up some more information, but thats few and far between.

followup....

In regards to grid printing issue, I tested and tested and tested and tested and determined it to be a problem with the style sheet we applied to it. Since we were grabbing this control from another page, all the style attributes were comming with it. In order to change this, I had to move the current style to the parent page of the original control. This gave me the control I wanted without any style, so I then went and rewrote the style sheet to something that was printable and waa-laa, all fixed.

I of course also dabbled my feet in DNN, a little as always. I havent been able to display a demonstration flash video I created from a power point for awhile not. I thought it was an issue with IIS and allowing it to display the correct MIME type on the server, but when I added .swf and .flv files to it, it still would not display my file correctly. I ended up finding a free flash module and added it to the page and it worked without a problem. I havent been able to pass it all the parameters I would like too though. I wish the first_screen parameter would work just because it looks nicer, but it's really not that big of a deal and the video displays fine now which is good.

I have been putting a ton of time into developing our first phone application for the android platform. Getting that going was alot of work but I'm really enjoying learning it. For now, I just want a simple RSS feed reader, I think this would be good for customers to get their updates from. I eventually want to make a widget from it so they can put it on their home screens but that wont be til later. Other ideas I have are contact import/export and calendar sync. The Google documentation is terrific also, A huge help. I wish I had something so robust for our component art control but I guess not every company can be as kick-ass as google.

new features...

This past week we introduced a new feature to the app that will end up being probably one of most significant features the app has to offer. Since its so new, we also have found it to be very buggy. So lately I have been doing alot testing/changing code. A current problem Im dealing with is with a thrid party control we use. The control outputs what is to be a sort of 'grid-like' object to the page. Now we are trying to print this object out, but It is not completley printing the whole object. It seems like if you 7+ items in our object, the grid will fail to print correctly, but will display fine on the page. Now I have also had 7+items and it printed correctly. So this leads me to believe that it might be actually be the way the output to print is being handled that is the problem. this one has had me stumped for alot longer than I expected though

Back Into the app...

Since I last wrote I have gotten back into the application(finally). But of course, Im always dabbling my feet in DNN a couple times a week. The next problem I am facing with DNN is implementing a instructional video after a user completes a form. The easiest way to do is using the forms module, we use for basically all the forms on our site. After the user completes filling out the recquired fields, the page posts to the server and returns a dynamic page. With the forms module I am able to manipulate what will be displayed to the user when the page is returned. So my plan is to return a link that will open up a javascript "lightbox" type of control giving the user a one-time access to the video. Not that its that big of a security issue, but this should keep out people from accessing the video without filling out the recquired fields on the form first.
I gave a quick go at this with my spare time the other day and the lightbox control isnt displaying correctly. I have a hunch that DNN and the script I am using wont play well together. Since DNN doesnt play well with anything really.
Besides that, we deployed our newest application update to our staging server the other day. I of course tested crap out of it...I am very successful at breaking it in ways no one would have thought of. The more I find though, the better our app becomes and the less chance we have to deal with an angry customer wondering why his product isnt working. Its also good because I make notes of things I would like to do when we get spare time and me and my partner can sort through them later and give them priorities. All in all I think we had a really good release with no really devastating bugs to deal with.

Onto Skins...

I have finally finished the module I have been working on COMPLETELY...for now at least. I still get to work even more with DNN!! YAY! /sarcasm. Im actually looking forward to this a little bit because the design of our portal is finally gonna match how I designed the app, which will be kinda cool. But knowing DNN its gonna be a pain in the ass to get this going completely. I started building the site and more importantly the skin. Its already proving to be a pain. Something I could do in one day with HTML/CSS/Javascript takes me weeks to do in DotnetNuke!! I have edited skins and containers before. but never built one from scratch. We will see how this goes, but after this. I think I have touched on all areas of DNN, ughhh.....

Created my first module in DNN...

Now that we are able to submit information, We need a place to store that information. We had been using a forms module that would allow for us to run a Stored Procedure is MSSQL, but it turns out that there was a vulnerability in the module leaving it open for attack. I contacted the the third party that makes the module and informed them of this. Unfortunatley this created more work for me. I now had to get DNN installed on VS locally, get it running with IIS, and create the new module to communicate with the database. After scowering the internet, going through many lines of code debugging, and bringing the server down multiple times, I have finally got the module working, DNN running locally, and running in IIS. It has taken alot of time and effort but Im glad I finally got it working, and now I have a better grasp of DNN and I should have no problem in the future creating modules. Although I am looking into how to upload an already compiled module to the site, right now it only allows pre-compiled modules but im sure there is some way to to do it.