Windows 8, 32 bit Install

Installed Windows 8 32 bit on a solid state drive in my Pentium 4 desktop. There were a few issues I ran into with the install, mainly because the system doesn't have a DVD player. What I had to do is put the drive in my laptop and install it there, and then put the drive back in the desktop. It worked but wouldn't recognize my desktop's USB network adapter, an old Linksys WUSB54G! So I put the drive back in my laptop where the internal network adapter worked just fine and I connected to my home network. Then I plugged in the Linksysadapter and Windows detected it and downloaded and installed the driver. I put the drive back in my desktop and I'm up and running and connected to the Internet! Once the Linksys was working I was also able to get an Alfa AWUS036H and a Netgear WNDA3100 running! When I connected each adapter, Windows 8 detected and installed the new device!

jQuery - DataTables Server-side Sorting

I couldn't use the server-side sorting ability of DataTables and needed to implement my own. Here's how I did it:

First - turn off DataTables sorting by setting bSort to false.

2 - Add a hidden Div for the menu for my sorting:

<div id="tabmenu" style="visibility: hidden; display: none; position: absolute; z-index: 6" class="popTableMenu">
 <table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
   <tr>
     <td>
       <a id="fpopSortDn" href="#" onclick="return inSort('asc')">Sort down</a>
       <a id="fpopSortUp" href="#" onclick="return inSort('desc')">Sort up</a>    
     </td>
   </tr>
 </table>
</div>

3 - Modify the column heading, adding "onmouseover" and "onclick" events:

<th style="height:26px;" class="heading" onmouseover="inMenuHide()" onclick="inMenuShow(this, '${fieldName}');" ><s:property value="fieldLabel"/></th>

4 - Add the JavaScript to handle the mouse events:

<script type="text/javascript"<
var tSort;

function inSort(direct){
 inMenuHide();
 showLoading();
 var mID = $('#${tablename}viewID').val();
 var mAct = $('#${tablename}listActionName').val();
 $('div#divBody').load('/InForm${namespace}/'+mAct+'.action?rpp=' + $('#resPerPage').val() + '&sortBy=' + tSort + '&sortOrder=' + direct + '&viewID=' + mID + '&search=' + $('#${tablename}fastSearch').val());
 return false;
}

function inMenuShow(cell, field){
 tSort = field;
 var offset = $(cell).offset();
 var cH = $(cell).height();
 var pT = offset.top + cH;
 $("#tabmenu").offset({ top: pT, left: offset.left });
 $('#tabmenu').css("visibility","visible");
 $("#tabmenu").show("fast");
}

function inMenuHide(){
 $("#tabmenu").offset({ top: 0, left: 0 });
 $("#tabmenu").hide();
 $('#tabmenu').css("visibility","hidden");
}
</script>

Clicking on a column heading will call "inMenuShow" so that the sort memu, the hidden Div, displays below the column:

Clicking on an item in the sort menu wil call the "inSort" method. This method calls my struts action and populates the table container, "divBody", with the returned page. The page that's returned ids the sorted table.

Java - Missing User When Querying Active Directory

In an application that I'm working on I'm using the "DirContext" to query Active Directory for users and permissions. A new user wasn't showing up in the query results. It turned out that since I was filtering my search on the City and he was set up without having an entry for City he wouldn't be returned in the search.

jQuery - Append an Image and Handle the Click Event

In a web application that I developed I was asked to modify the contents of on input tag when a buttom was clicked. Since the application was designed to use the same JSP page for all table edits I didn't want to create a custom JSP page for this table. So I added the button using jQuery.

Here is the JSP for the page:

<jsp:include page="../genBase/recordEdit.jsp" />
<script>
$(document).ready(function(){ 
$('#dispurlLinkToFile').after(' <img title="Generate URL location" id="imgUrlLinkToFile" style="border-top-color: currentColor; border-right-color: currentColor; border-bottom-color: currentColor; border-left-color: currentColor; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-bottom-style: none; border-left-style: none;" alt="Generate URL location" src="../images/max1t.gif"/>');
$('#imgUrlLinkToFile').click(function() {
 $('#dispurlLinkToFile').val('https://ABC.XYZ.org/ProposalDev/Proposals/'+$('#dispinternalRefNum').val().replace(/-/g,"_")+'.zip');});
});
</script>

Here's what the page is doing:
The global edit page, "recordEdit.jsp", is loaded.
The jQuery script, "$('#dispurlLinkToFile').after", is adding an icon after the input field with the id of "dispurlLinkToFile". The image tag is assigned an id of "imgUrlLinkToFile".
The jQuery script for the "imgUrlLinkToFile" click function takes the vale from the tag with the id "dispinternalRefNum", replaces "-" with "_", which gets added to "https://ABC.XYZ.org/ProposalDev/Proposals/" and written to "dispurlLinkToFile".
So we go from our original:

To the same with or image added:

Then when the button is clicked the field is populated:

SharePoint 2010 - External List Authentication

Another thing that constantly gets me - whenever you set up an secure store application and do not set it up as a group type (individual is the default) you will get the "Click here to authenticate" link on the list in SharePoint!

SQL - Table Changes and Views

One of the things that I still get hung up on is the need to update table views when I add or delete columns. The most common thing that happens is a "field not found" type of error. Then yesterday I was working in SharePoint designer and received an error that said "View or function 'XXX.dbo.vwXXX' has more column names specified than columns defined". Doing an ALTER view is SQL manager solved the problem.

jQuery - Posting Large Forms

I had a grid table that I was submitting that stopped submitting once the table grew. I'm using the jQuery "load" function to submit the form and return the results. It turns out that if you use the jQuery "serialize" function to serialize a form then jQuery will do a GET. Use the jQuery "serializeArray" function so that jQuery does a POST!