Archive for April, 2009

Introducing Rapid Development Group

Monday, April 20th, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Introducing Rapid Development Group

GRAND RAPIDS, MI. – April 20 – In today’s market, companies are rethinking entrenched processes — from product development to sales and marketing — all in an effort to deliver high-quality results at lower cost. A team of experienced web developers from Grand Rapids, MI have responded to this demand for cost-effectiveness by forming Rapid Development Group.

Rapid Development Group is a lightweight and nimble web development team focused on high-quality implementations of complex web sites and web applications. Rapid Development Group has broad knowledge and experience with a wide assortment of web technologies and specializes in the following areas:

Content Management Systems
Rapid Development Group has developed sites using a variety of prominent CMS platforms including Drupal, Plone, Django, Interwoven TeamSite, and Ektron CMS400.

Custom Web Applications
The web is no longer just a vehicle for read-only content. Users expect to be able to interact with pages in advanced ways, and Rapid Development Group helps deliver on this expectation. Rapid Development Group builds web applications as complex as customer-relationship management systems (CRM), or as simple as cost calculation tools to highlight product or service advantages. Rapid Development Group is expert in languages such as JavaScript, PHP and C#, and frameworks including ASP.NET and jQuery.

Optimized Relational Databases
Rapid Development Group is proficient in designing, implementing, and optimizing MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server databases along with complementary technologies such as SQL Server Reporting Services.

Clean, Search-Friendly Design Implementations
Some jobs don’t call for a fully database-driven site architecture. This doesn’t remove the need for experts. Even if the content of a site never changes, it’s important to get the implementation right. When clients hand off a design concept for implementation, Rapid Development Group starts asking the hard questions. How should this design react to changing window sizes? Mobile devices? Screen readers? Rapid Development Group will ensure that the code is clean and bullet-proof, so that the message isn’t lost in the least forgiving of mediums.

Rapid Development Group provides fixed-bid estimates for web development projects, and also is available on an hourly consulting basis. Visit them at http://rapiddg.com or call 1-866-582-7555.

Interview Contact: Brett Chaffer
Telephone: 866-582-7555
info@rapiddg.com

http://rapiddg.com

Rapid Development Group
6631 Avonlea Ct. SE
Suite 100
Grand Rapids, MI 49546 

http://rapiddg.com

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Dynamically Adding JavaScript Files

Monday, April 13th, 2009

I recently discovered an interesting feature of JavaScript. Perhaps this is obvious to some. But JavaScript can dynamically add JavaScript tags, and then utilize them. A hang up of JavaScript has always been the inability to specify dependencies within a single JavaScript file. But this doesn’t need to be a problem. JavaScript can print out new JavaScript tags, dynamically if necessary, fulfilling any requirements or dependencies. A great way to avoid JS errors. Using jQuery:

// Dynamically adding js files
//
$("head")
  .append("http://www.rapiddg.com/scripts/test.js");

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Sharing JavaScript and ASP Across Domains

Monday, April 13th, 2009

Recently I was confronted with an interesting challenge. A set of at least three different sites, on different domains, different hosts wanted to share the same database. Each of the sites had very different site set ups and frameworks. Some were ASP some were using other languages. Another requirement or request was that each site get the information via one or two lines of code, and be able to manipulate the look of the information displayed. The most difficult requirement however is this… each site needs to move from site to site, holding session information as though it is the same site. Choosing options on one site needs to transfer to other sites should you go there.
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MS SQL Server CE And VS 2005 Tools Installation

Monday, April 13th, 2009

If you have had the unfortunate opportunity of receiving the following error when trying to install VS Tools 2005 for Sql Server CE, and are frustrated beyond belief, I may be able to help you…. “The upgrade patch cannot be installed by the Windows Installer service because the program to be upgraded may be missing, or the upgrade patch may update a different version of the program. Verify that the program to be upgraded exists on your computer and that you have the correct upgrade patch.” Quickly… here is the solution.

  • Get your visual studio 2005 install disk.  (Disk number 2)
  • Browse the Disk and go to the WCU directory.
  • Select and install the file named sqlmobile30devtoolsenu.msi
  • Now proceed with the installation of the SQL CE 3.1 VS Tools (SSCE31VSTools-ENU.exe)

You should now be back in business.   The big problem here is that I find myself needing to do this from time to time.  For some reason I lose the ability to interact with SQL CE within Visual Studio.  My Datasets break, and I can’t compile my code.

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Browser JavaScript Speed Comparisons

Monday, April 13th, 2009

I’ve recently been working on a .NET web application that is very rich and thick on the front end.  The functionality of a large site is contained on just 4 pages.  I am of course using jQuery as my primary tool for implementing the various aspects that require the use of JavaScript.  A big part of doing any site is making sure it is compatible in all browsers.  Mainly IE and Firefox.  While IE has always been incredibly frustrating when it comes to matters of CSS and JavaScript I have discovered a whole new area of frustration.  That is JavaScript performance.  A rich application requires a lot of JavaScript to be executed, and unfortunately things just don’t work well in IE.  In fact the lack of performance is causing cascading issues throughout the application. 
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Sorting a List of Objects on Multiple Properties (C#)

Monday, April 13th, 2009

There seem to be a few posts out there on how to accomplish the task of sorting a list of objects on more than one property.  My reason for posting this solution is it seems many of the options presented are really more complicated than they need to be.  In fact sorting on two properties can be done with just one line of code using the conditional operator.
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