Part 1

You might ask why use threads or even why do I need something like that for a web application, well we know that nowadays the users have better computers that can handle more process, but we cannot count on that and have to consider that a big process can freezes the user’s interface, which for sure will frustrate them. So that’s exactly when threads become hand when you have a task that might take a long time to finish and doing that it could freezes the user’s interface. So what you need is somehow put this long process in another thread, which will not interfere with the thread that is taking care of the user’s interface.

Part 2

On the “default.aspx” page:

<table>
  <tr>
    <td colspan=”2″ style=”text-align: center”>
      <input onclick=”Stop();” type=”button” value=”Stop”/>
    </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>
      <textarea cols=”50″ name=”textarea1″ rows=”20″></textarea>
    </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td style=”text-align: center”>
<input onclick=”BigLoop1();” type=”button” value=”Big loop 1″/>
<input onclick=”ExecsetTimeout1();” type=”button” value=”setTimeout 1″/>
<input onclick=”ExecsetInterval1();” type=”button” value=”setInterval 1″/>
    </td>
  </tr>
</table>

On the “How-to-Simulate-Threads-in-JavaScript.js” file:

// Big Loop
function BigLoop1()
{
  document.form1.textarea1.value = “”;
  for (var I = 0; I < 10000; I++)
    document.form1.textarea1.value += Text;
}

// Global Variables
var IdsetTimeout1 = null;
var IdInterval1 = null;
var Text = “a”;

// setTimeout
function ExecsetTimeout1()
{
  IdsetTimeout1 = setTimeout(ExecsetTimeout3, 100);
}

function ExecsetTimeout3()
{
  document.form1.textarea1.value += Text;
  ExecsetTimeout1();
}

// setInterval
function ExecsetInterval1()
{
  clearInterval(IdInterval1);
  IdInterval1 = setInterval(ExecsetInterval3, 100);
}

function ExecsetInterval3()
{
  document.form1.textarea1.value += Text;
}

// Clear the timers.
function Stop()
{
  clearTimeout(IdsetTimeout1);
  clearInterval(IdInterval1);
}

References:

http://www.elated.com/articles/javascript-timers-with-settimeout-and-setinterval/

To download the code, click here -> How to Simulate threads in JavaScript

Author: Luciano Sampaio

I know that a lot of developers think it’s really convenient to create global variables because it’s “THERE” you can always access it. But the problem is, they are created in the moment your code is loaded and it doesn’t matter whether you use it or not it will stays in the memory until your page is closed, in other words you’re wasting resources that could have been used for other things, on the other hand local variables are created when the scope (method) they belong is invoked and assigned to be destroyed by the garbage collector right after its execution. As your application grows and become more complex you have to consider all these small details.

Creating global variables

// Right way to declare a global variable.

var AppName = “MyCoolApp”;

// It works but it’s not a good practice to declare like this.

Version = 1;

Accessing global variables

function CallingGlobal()

{

   // Global.

   alert(AppName + ” “ + Version); // Result -> MyCoolApp 1

   Version = 2;

   alert(AppName + ” “ + Version); // Result -> MyCoolApp 2

}

Accessing global and local variables

function CallingLocal()

{

   // Local.

   var Version = 3;

   alert(Version); // Result -> 3

   // Global.

   alert(AppName + ” “ + window.Version); // Result -> MyCoolApp 2

}

I suggest to do like this:

function CallingMethods()

{

   alert(GetAppName() + ” “ + GetVersion());

}

function GetAppName()

{

   return “MyCoolApp”;

}

function GetVersion()

{

   return 1;

}

I don’t know if it’s the BEST way to do it, but at least you can see it’s more organized having functions to retrieve values, so if you think I’m wrong, send me a comment.

To download the code, click here -> Global and Local Variables in JavaScript

Author: Luciano Sampaio

Part 1

Part 2

That’s all you needed to do and know, thank you very much. I hope you have enjoyed.
To download the code, click here -> Handling Exceptions in JavaScript
Author: Luciano Sampaio

On the next tutorials I’ll be talking a lot of about JavaScript, so I thought it would be a good idea to show how we can debug JavaScript in Visual Studio. Because in my personal opinion debugging is the best thing you can do in order to find errors in your application. It’s really easy and this video won’t be longer than 5 minutes.

Let’s start:

We are going to use the solution that we created for the first video tutorial, we need to add a new website and give the name as Debugging-JavaScript-in-Visual-Studio, we also need to add a new item which is a JavaScript file and give the same name as Debugging-JavaScript-in-Visual-Studio.

On the Default.aspx page we need to add the JavaScript file:

<script language=”javascript” type=”text/javascript”
src=”Debugging-JavaScript-in-Visual-Studio.js”> </script>
     

On the body tag:

<body onload=”CallSomeMethod()”>

On the JavaScript file:

function CallSomeMethod()
{   
  var a = 10;  
  // b is undefined;   
  c = a + b;
}
     

This will generate an error, let’s pretend we don’t know that, so then, you can say that you can notice the error, you don’t need to debug, but imagine a bigger or more complex application, in this situation can be hard to find an error, so debug is the best option you have.

If we run the application now and try to debug you will see that nothing is going to happen, instead of that the browser pops up the error message.

So, don’t you think it would be awesome if we have the feature to debug JavaScript, actually we have, and all we need to do is enable it.

1- Open the Internet Explorer;

2- Go to Tools;

3- Click on Internet Options;

4- On the Tabs on the top, go to Advanced;

5- On the Browsing section, uncheck the two options that say “disable script debugging” (Internet Explorer) and (Others);

Now if we run the application again you can see the Visual Studio is able to debug our JavaScript code, show the variables values, in the same way it does for any other normal ASP.NET application.

That’s all you needed to do and know, thank you very much. I hope you have enjoyed.

To download the code, click here -> Debugging JavaScript in Visual Studio.NET

Author: Luciano Sampaio

Hello everyone, this is my first video tutorial and if I do everything right I hope is not going to be the last, but for this I beg you that after watching this movie, please give me a feedback, you can write anything, that you didn’t like, it was terrible, or maybe that you liked, so before we can start, let me introduce myself, my name is Luciano Sampaio, I’m from Brazil, I’m the Lead Developer of Apollo Media and in charge now to bring not only to my co-workers, but also to you or anyone that is interest to, some video tutorials about the most common tasks you’ll probably find on your days job, I believe I’ll be making at least 3 of these tutorials every week.

Part 1

Part 2 

For the very first tutorial, I’ll talk about something very basic but that has a big importance for the company I work for, which is how can we make multilingual websites for our clients without the need to spend too much time, but always with high quality patterns on our minds, and now you can ask “why should I bother creating a website for more than one language”. Well first you have to think, who is your website’s target? Is it only your city? Your country? Or the whole world? Because like Canada which I assume everybody knows is an official Bi-lingual country, so people can either speak English or French. That’s why I decided to create this tutorial which is supposed to show you some of the options you might have to accomplish this task, but it does not mean is always the only or better way to do it. So like my friend Darius likes to say “Knowledge is power”, use it at your own risk.

Microsoft has created on the .NET Framework 2.0 two wonderful features, which are called “Localization” and “Globalization”; they exist on Web and Windows applications with the same concept with only a few differences related to the steps on how to add to your applications. This tutorial will only cover how to work with them on Web applications. We are not going to do anything fence, but if you just like me are a visual person, in other words, you rather see than read, I’m going to show you exactly what are the steps you have to do to make your website support more than one language.

To download the code, click here -> Localization-Globalization in ASP.NET

Author: Luciano Sampaio