Do you read any blogs that just seem to have too many posts to read? Perhaps you are only interested in reading certain posts. With Yahoo! Pipes you can easily create a custom web page and RSS feed to handle your filtering requests.

1- Go to Yahoo! Pipes. Get an account if you don't have one.
2- Select CREATE A PIPE.
3- On the left side, drag a FETCH FEED module from the Sources onto the grid canvas.
4- Add the URL of the RSS Feed for the Blog you are interested in filtering. For this example, I will be using the financial blog The Big Picture.
5- Expand the Operators section and drag a FILTER module onto the grid canvas.
6- Drag a PIPE to connect the FETCH FEED to the FILTER.
7- Create your FILTER rule. For this example, I am going to PERMIT ALL items that follow the Rule: item.category CONTAINS "Psychology/Sediment".
8- Drag a PIPE from the bottom of the FILTER to PIPE OUTPUT.
9- Save the PIPE.
10- Run the PIPE. Now you will see a page displaying just posts in the Psychology/Sediment category. This page will also have its own RSS feed.
11- At this point, you can optional publish the PIPE to allow other users access.



DEMO: pipes.yahoo.com/digitalcolony/bigpicturepsychology

Labels: RSS, Yahoo

I was over on Google Finance looking up a stock ticker during trading hours and I noticed the equity price was being updated not only on the page, but also on the HTML page Title. How did they do it? With a single line of Javascript.

document.title = "This is the new page title.";

What if the page is inside a frameset? In that case just add parent to the front.

parent.document.title = "This is the new page title.";

This sample code by itself is rather dull, but with a timer it could be used to create a cool effect like an updating stock ticker.

Labels: HTML, Javascript

If you've had the W3C Validator curse your ASP.NET 2.0 code for not being XHTML, it may not be your fault. The ASP.NET engines sees the W3C validator as down-level browser and renders non-XHTML compliant code. Your code is most likely fine. The problem is with ASP.NET.

Getting ASP.NET to Play Nice with the W3C

1- Select ADD New Item to your Project or Website.
2- At the bottom of the list of choices is a Browser file. Select that and name it W3C.browser.
3- Visual Studio will ask if it can create an App_Browsers folder. Give your blessing and proceed.
3- Visit iDunno.org and copy the .browser text linked from that post and paste it onto your newly created W3C.browser file.
4- Upload the new folder and file.
5- Now retest with the W3C.

Your page should now validate. If it fails, it is most likely your fault and no longer the fault of the ASP.NET engine.

Labels: SEO, W3C, XHTML

When you want to set the default SelectedDate on an ASP.NET Calendar Control use DateTime.Today not DateTime.Now.

calReleaseDate.SelectedDate = DateTime.Today;

Labels: Calendar