SRTR.org and section 508

I started a new project for www.srtr.org moving toward new HTML5 and section 508 website. First of all, I'm going through 508-standards documents and some PowerPoint presentations presented by hrsa.gov. Went to Internet trying to find some interesting sites which talk about benefits of section 508. Found some of them. Here they are:

http://www.ada.gov/websites2.htm

http://www.usweb.com/internet-marketing-firm/XCO/benefits_of_section_508_compliance.htm

My first step is reading of all papers and talking to editors and writers

Border around div

Border around div
It's a quite popular technique. Many developers use the technique involved table structure. I think, this tip can be very useful too.

HTML-code
<div class ="newsDiv">
<h2> NEWS</h2>
<div class ="newstext">
<p>A <a href="test.asp">HTML version</a> of the SAMPLE is now available.
For smartphone users, you can use a mobile website, <a href="http://www.test.org">http://www.test.org.org</a>, to view SAMPLE.</p>
</div>
</div>

CSS-code to achieve the
.newsDiv
{
border: 1px #C0C0C0 solid;
margin-bottom: 15px;
}
.newstext
{
padding-left: 10px;
}

jQuery Mobile and IE

Today I learned that my mobile site does not work in IE because IE does not support AJAX calls through jQuery Mobile. I went on Internet searching for answer. This time I was not lucky. Internet community did not bring any good news. It looks like many developers have the same problem. I found a code snippet which did not work at all. It should be added after jquery is loaded and before jQuery Mobile is added. Here it is :
<script type="text/javascript">

//run this script after jQuery loads, but before jQuery Mobile loads

//customize jQuery Mobile to let IE7+ in (Mobile IE)

$(document).bind("mobileinit", function(){
$.extend( $.mobile , {

//extend gradeA qualifier to include IE7+
gradeA: function(){
//IE version check by James Padolsey, modified by jdalton - from http://gist.github.com/527683
var ie = (function() {
var v = 3, div = document.createElement('div'), a = div.all || [];
while (div.innerHTML = '', a[0]);
return v > 4 ? v : !v;
}());
//must either support media queries or be IE7+
return $.support.mediaquery || (ie && ie >= 7);
}
});
});
</script>
My coworkers and I agree to leave mobile version as it is. It looks like it works for most mobile devices, bit it does not work only for desktop IE. I think, jQuery Mobile really meant to be for MOBILE!

Redirect to a mobile site

It's quite useful piece of code-behind, which redirects to a mobile version of the site.

Please use and modify for your needs. This routine is being written in VB.NET

Protected Sub Page_Load(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Load
Dim strUserAgent As String
Dim flag As String
flag = "0"
strUserAgent = Request.UserAgent.ToString().ToLower()
If (strUserAgent.Contains("iphone")) Then flag = "1"
If (strUserAgent.Contains("blackberry")) Then flag = "1"
If (strUserAgent.Contains("mobile")) Then flag = "1"
If (strUserAgent.Contains("windows ce")) Then flag = "1"
If (strUserAgent.Contains("opera mini")) Then flag = "1"
If (strUserAgent.Contains("palm")) Then flag = "1"
If (strUserAgent.Contains("android")) Then flag = "1"

If (strUserAgent.Length <> 0) Then
If (Request.Browser.IsMobileDevice = "True" And flag = "1") Then
Response.Redirect("http://www.test1.org")
End If
End If
End Sub

First Mobile Web site

It took 2 weeks to finish my first mobile website. It was quite interesting journey. First of all, jQuery Mobile is a new Javascript library and I was interested to implement it for new mobile site.

I discovered that current version of jQueryMobile does fully support with AJAX extensions all mobile platforms except Blackberry 5.

I had a problem with iPhone view. There is a quite good fix, which must be place in a head of the page to bring a picture to the stable condition on all mobile platforms:
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">

jQueryMobile

Yesterday my coworker dowloaded the latest version of jQuery Mobile, and I received my new project. I have to update mobile site for www.usrds.org. Therefore I started to play around new Javascript library. By the end of the second day I created one page-application which will serve as a menu for the full site.

For resources I used:

• jQuery Mobile Tutorials


• 10 Handy jQuery Mobile Tips
• jQuery Mobile Development
  

Excel 2010 and SharePoint

Today I had to solve a problem existing in SharePoint 2010. Many of my users cannot download Excel files from SharePoint by double-clicking. It's a quite unusual because they are able to do the same thing with Word and Powerpoint files. Researching the problem, I found that we're not alone. Some users complain about the same thing, especially if file was saved in Excel 2010 format. I found out that in my case it only applies to Excel 2010 files. Querying the Web I found several solutions which I presented to my SharePoint administrator. He changed configuration in a minute, and my users became happy. Now everything work as should work.

About resources I presented:

http://neelb.wordpress.com/2011/09/20/unable-to-process-the-request-when-opening-an-excel-document-in-sharepoint-2010/

http://horsik.wordpress.com/2011/04/05/excel-services-is-unable-to-process-the-request-wait-a-few-minutes-and-try-performing-this-operation-again-%E2%80%9D/

http://blog.armgasys.com/?p=133