Need help with AJAX - asp.net

I am developing an ASP.NET based website.
In a Master Page, I have a UL list, which is used to display links (akin to left nav). As of now, upon click of each li, the user is taken to respective page.
The problem is, when user is redirected to another page, the master page is also getting reloaded, as a result of which, the clicked-link is not highlighted. (All the UL is in a query accordion control).
Hence, I plan to use AJAX - i.e. whenever a user clicks a link in an accordion control, the corresponding page contents should be loaded and displayed in a place holder, so that the link is highlighted and user is aware of the current page info.
Please advise me as to how to achieve this (either thru' ASP.NET AJAX or Javascript AJAX)
The code in master page is as below:
script type="text/javascript">
// well all the DOM is written in the page and all elements are available do:
$(document).ready(function() {
// for each <a> tag bind the event click and now do:
$("a").click(function() {
// 1st. remove all selected
$("a.selected").removeClass("selected");
// 2nd. assign selected to this clicked element only
$(this).addClass("selected");
// 3rd. let's return true so the <a> tag can jump to the href
return true;
});
});
<asp:SiteMapDataSource ID="SiteMapDataSource1" runat="server" />
Haemostasis Kits
">Coaliza Anti-Cardiolipin
">Coamatic Antithrombin
">Coamtic LR-Antithrombin
">Coatest APC Resistance
">Coatest APC Resistance V
">Coatest APC Resistance V S
">V-DEF Plasma
">Coaset Factor VII
">Coamatic Factor VIII
">Coatest SP FVIII
">Coatest SP4 FVIII
">Coatest Heparin
">Coatest LMW Heparin/Heparin
">Coamatic Heparin
">Coamatic Plasmin Inhibitor
">Coamatic Plasminogen
">Coamatic Protein C
">Coalisa Protein S Free
Calibrators & Controls
">Calibration Plasma LMW Heparin
">Coatest APC Res. Contr. Plasma Lev.1
">Coatest APC Res. Contr. Plasma Lev.2
">Control Plasma LMW Heparin
Test 1
Chromogenic Substrates
S-2222
Test 3
Bio Reagents
Antithrombin 10 IU
">Cardio-FABP
Test 4
To have a feel of page, please visit:
http://www.murandmur.in/test2/Products/products-exclusive.aspx
Thanks for help in advance!

The way I went about doing more-or-less the same thing is to build a web service (or page method), which gets the body HTML from the DB and returns it (as a simple text string). This takes care of the server-side.
On the client side, use jQuery (which you use anyway) to make ajax calls to the web service.
I used these two links as reference when I was starting out:
http://encosia.com/using-jquery-to-consume-aspnet-json-web-services/
http://dotnetslackers.com/articles/ajax/Using-jQuery-with-ASP-NET.aspx
Hope this points you in the right direction.

Related

ASP.Net popup for Chrome

I cannot seem to get Chrome to pop up an "alert" page. The alert page has code in it, so it can't really be a DIV or I would just do it that way. It worked for many years, but likely do to a Chrome update it will no longer function. Still works fine in IE11, though.
The following code is used to pop up an "alert" page when there is an alert that is queried from a Database. It has always worked until recently (15 years and running)
CODE:
ClientScript.RegisterStartupScript(GetType(Page), "Alarm", "<script language='javascript'>window.showModalDialog('Alarm.aspx?ID=" & AlarmID & "', null, 'dialogWidth=460px;dialogHeight=310px;status=no;resizable=yes');document.frmA.submit();</script>")
I've tried a few things like windows.open and creating a hidden button on the asp.net page and then using the click event. Nothing works. I do not see a blocked popup in Chrome and I have even went into settings and did the following:
Set Safe Browsing to "No Protection"
Set allow pop-ups and redirects on the server name (http://servername and http://localhost)
As noted, near all browsers quite much have clamped down on popup windows. this makes things more difficult for web developers.
There are two good approaches. one I don't fancy at all is using bootstrap dialogs, but they tend to "sort of work all on their own" kind of deal based on class settings for divs etc. - really hard to debug.
Since near all sites these days include jQuery for your js code, then I quite much hands down recommend you introduce jquery.UI. It has a whole slew of nice things such as date pickers etc. But it also has a rather nice dialog pop option. They just work, and when you code them up? They follow "normal" like code approaches.
it not quite clear if your message/dialog pops after say a button click (and post back), and the at the end of that process, you need/want some dialog message to display. But all in all, I would high recommend jQuery.UI for this dialog/message that you need.
jQuery.UI in most cases expects the content you want to "display/pop" exists in a simple div in the current existing page. However, it also works VERY well if you supply the dialog another existing web page. The only REAL big issue to keep in mind? That dialog page you pop cannot handle multiple post-backs. (so, some buttons, or ONE post back in that dialog is fine - but you ONLY get the ONE post-back.
So, if that page display allows some input, or some interaction and ONLY requires ONE post-back, then jQuery.UI is again great. If that pop page requires several buttons and several post-backs, then you are in for a world of pain and hurt - jQuery.UI dialogs (like most) cannot survive or handle multiple postbacks. Any post-back means the dialog closes (collapses). So in those cases, you have to adopt ajax calls (web methods) if you need/have/want that page to have more then one active post-back button or event.
So, you could have/place a script in even your master page, and little function code stub that your register script can call.
Or, I suppose you could inject the whole script, but the script would look like this:
So, the pop page actualy is SHOVED into a div. So we have a div that "holds" the page.
The jQuery.UI code script then looks like this:
<div id="poppagearea">
</div>
<script>
function showpage() {
var mydiv = $('#poppagearea');
mydiv.dialog({
autoOpen: false, modal: true, title: 'My cool other page', width: '30%',
position: { my: 'top', at: 'top+150' },
buttons: {
'ok': function () {
mydiv.dialog('close');
alert('user click ok');
},
'cancel': function () {
mydiv.dialog('close');
alert('user click cancel');
}
}
});
mydiv.load('Default.aspx');
// Open the dialog
mydiv.dialog('open');
}
So, in above, we loaded "default.aspx" into that dialog and thus displayed it on the page.
So, I would consider jQuery.UI - but it does mean adopting a new js library into your existing project.
The pop page does gray out the full page, and you do get a title bar, and your own ok, cancel button. The above thus looks like this:
So, it does a great job - but as noted, that page can only have one post-back, and it can't be a general working aspx page with lots of buttons and post backs - but it will render and display rather well.

Tag parameters only come through on new tab

I'm using Google Analytics via Google Tag Manager. I'm on Chrome and checking tags using Google Tag Assistant.
I've noticed that for many, if not most of the events I have tagged, the parameters will not pass through unless the link or key webpage they are clicking on opens in a new tab.
In HttpFox the result is a NS_BINDING_ERROR or something along those lines.
For example, if you visit this site, you can see there are two means of navigating to the "submit report" page - the CTA on the top right and in the main nav. I'd like to understand how the CTA performs compared to the main nav so have set up events, but the event only fires if I open the links in new tabs.
What does this error mean and what should I do about it?
To get rid of the ns binding error, have the onclick return false - Documentation Here.
In regards to the event not getting passed, I'm seeing in httpfox that the tid (on the event) is UA-34035531-[1-6]. That doesn't look quite right. How are you setting the account id?

How can I create a custom StumbleUpon button?

StumbleUpon publishes a Widget script, and documents how to use it to insert a stumbleUpon button (they call it a badge), into a website.
You can generate the markup for a button with their online tool. It looks like this:
<!-- Place this tag where you want the su badge to render -->
<su:badge layout="2" location="http://example.com"></su:badge>
<!-- Place this snippet wherever appropriate -->
<script type="text/javascript">
(function() {
var li = document.createElement('script');
li.type = 'text/javascript';
li.async = true;
li.src = 'https://platform.stumbleupon.com/1/widgets.js';
var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(li, s);
})();
</script>
That script element is just a way to delay-load the widgets.js thing. Just from looking at it, I suppose that it works by scanning the document for the <su:badge> elements and replacing them with iframes. The iframes themselves then get their source content from stumbleupon, at a URL like this: http://badge.stumbleupon.com/badge/embed/4/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fexample.com .
The iframe renders visually like this:
The stumbleupon button is the 2nd one. I show the other ones for comparison.
As you can see, the StumbleUpon rendering looks different than all the other guys. SU makes their button look like a "badge" while every other social share widget looks like...uh.... a button.
I'm trying to make the Stumbleupon widget look like a button. I'm pretty sure this is possible. For example, mashable does it (example). Here's what it looks like:
As you can see, the stumbleupon button looks like a button. It's not a badge. Mashable is not using the su:badge thing - they have rendered their own <a> tag, and styled it.
The visual rendering is not a problem; I can figure out how to make a span look like a button, no problem. The problem happens when I click the tag or span. It appears to me that, with the iframe-thing that StumbleUpon uses, it invokes this URL to submit a page for sharing:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/badge/?url=http%3A//example.com/whatever HTTP/1.1
The iframe uses javascript's window.open to request that, and restricts the resizing and so on. This is how it works on mashable. The resulting window looks like this:
This is also what the mashable page does, though it does not use the iframe. The Mashable page contains javascript that just opens the "stumbleupon submit" window directly from within the main mashable page.
But when I try the same thing from my page, the little fixed window gets a 302 redirect from StumbleUpon, and then another 302, which eventually points it to
http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit/visitor
...which does not allow sharing of the link.
This has been a long story, but:
does anyone have any insight as to how I can convince StumbleUpon to let me share a link or URL, from a button that is not contained within an iframe?
What is mashable's secret?
ok here's what I found.
The 302's that eventually pointed me to /submit/visitor happen when both of the following are true:
the user is not logged in
the article has not been stumbled in stumbleupon previously
When that happens, stumbleupon invites you (the user) to login. It won't take you just to the "submit url" page.
If the user is not logged in, but the article HAS been submitted previously, then it takes you to the submit window without a 302. Eventually you will be asked to login, if you proceed with the submission. But the first view of the stumbleupn website in this case gives you a visual indication that you are submitting something.
If the user is logged in, and the article has not been submitted previously, then you get taken right to the submit page.
So I was doing nothing wrong. I just needed to login the first time. This is just an artifact of the user experience offered by StumbleUpon. In my opinion it's sort of strange. It's surprising and therefore wrong. But that's just my opinion.

Performance issue with ASP.NET page with many (hundreds of) CollapsiblePanelExtenders

I'm maintaining an ASP.NET site where users can log on to register some set of data (for statistical purposes). One user registers data for a set of units, and for each of these units a set of forms are to be filled out (with a handful of fields in each form, but that doesn't matter here). One scenario is that a user has 12 units, and in each of these units there is 25 forms to be filled, meaning a total of 300 forms.
The ASP.NET page for registering these data is made the following way: each form is in a panel that can be collapsed using an AjaxControlToolkit CollapsiblePanelExtender, and all forms in a unit is inside another panel that also can be collapsed. The result is that you have a tree view-like structure with the units on the top, and under each unit you can expand a set of forms, and further each form can be expanded to fill data (the page is loaded with all panels collapsed by default).
The page is generated completely dynamically (as forms can be added in a database), and for generating the CollapsiblePanelExtenders I have the following code:
private CollapsiblePanelExtender GenerateCollapsiblePanelExtender(string id, Panel headerPanel, Panel contentPanel)
{
CollapsiblePanelExtender collapsiblePanel = new CollapsiblePanelExtender();
collapsiblePanel.ID = id + ID_COLLAPSIBLE_PANEL_POSTFIX;
collapsiblePanel.TargetControlID = contentPanel.ID;
collapsiblePanel.CollapseControlID = headerPanel.ID;
collapsiblePanel.ExpandControlID = headerPanel.ID;
collapsiblePanel.Collapsed = true;
collapsiblePanel.BehaviorID = collapsiblePanel.ID + ID_BEHAVIOUR_POSTFIX;
return collapsiblePanel;
}
With one user having 12 units each with 25 forms, this means a total of 312 CollapsiblePanelExtenders. As I said, they are all set to be collapsed by default, but here's the problem:
When the page loads, they all appear to be expanded, and then the browser "starts collapsing them". This however takes a very long time (in Firefox I even get a warning about an unresponsive script, IE and Chrome only takes forever but without the warning). When all the "collapsing" is complete it works smooth to open and close single panels, but users have complained about the extremely slow initial loading.
So my question is simple: is there a way to optimize this so that the loading goes smoother? Is it for instance possible to only load the header panels in each CollapsiblePanelExtender initially, and then load the content panel asynchronously in some way?
One final clarification:
I know I could simply change the design of the page to only include one unit and thus reducing size of the contents drastically, but I hope to avoid this (users prefer the way with everything in one page). It would also mean a rather large change to the logic of the page (yes, I know - it's a poor code base at that point)
After asking some more around other places, I finally managed to solve this issue. The solution was to skip the CollapsiblePanelExtenders altogether, and instead use jQuery to handle the collapsing/extending.
In my structure, all header panels use the css class HeaderPanel, and all content panels use the css class ContentPanel (all of these are hidden by default). I can then use the following script to handle all the collapse/expand logic:
<script language="javascript">
$(document).ready(function() {
$("div.HeaderPanel").toggle(
function() {
$(this).next("div.ContentPanel").show("slow");
},
function() {
$(this).next("div.ContentPanel").hide("slow");
});
});
</script>
The solution was really quite simple, and it works like a charm! The collapsing/extending is soo much smoother and nicer than what it looked like when I used the CollapsiblePanelExtenders, and the page loads really fast as well :)

creating help for asp.net website

My requirement is to have database based help system for asp.net website, as shown in the image below. i have searched web but could not find even remotely related solution.
DNN Help System http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/6720/dnnhelpimage20091125.jpg
You could assign each help item a unique ID (perhaps GUID to make it easier to generate by the developer enabling help for that item).
Clicking on the link opens a dialog, tooltip, new window, whatever. Just have the UI load the help text by ID from the database.
To make this easier to implement in the UI, there are a few ways. Perhaps you can create a jQuery client-side behavior.
your HTML would look something like:
<span class="help" id="#{unique-id-here}">Admin</admin>
and you could have jQuery on DOM load:
$(function() {
var help = $(".help");
help.prepend("<img src=\"path/to/images/help.png\" />");
help.click(function() {
//do something with this.id; open a popup, a title bar, whatever.
}
});
We did it on our site by doing the following:
We have a HelpTopics database with a HelpTopicId and HelpTopicText
We create an aspx page that displays the HelpTopicText based on the HelptopicId passed in the querystring.
We set up a css class for the A tag that displays the link to the help with the question mark image.
We created a UserControl named TitleandHelp that contained a link to the page mentioned in step 2 and the style for the link set to step 3 above: The usercontrol has a public rpoperty for the title and one for the topicID (We called it HelpContext).
We add the usercontrol to the aspx page where appropriate
<uc2:titleandhelp ID="titleandhelp1" runat="server" HelpContext="4" PageTitle="Forgot Password" />
it may sound like a lot of work, but really it only takes a half hour or so to do all of the setup. The rest of the work lies in populating the table and dragging the usercontrol onto the pages where appropriate.

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