Web Development

Need to Display Weather Content Set - Please Help

17-Jan-07 15:07

It sounds to me like what would be happening is that when you send the login information through the form, it is switching to https. an example might be:

<br />
<form action="https://mysite.com/nowsecure.php" ><br />
<input value="This is the text that will be sent securely to the server" type="text" /><br />
</form><br />

Brad
Australian

- Christian Graus on "Best books for VBscript"

A big thick one, so you can whack yourself on the head with it.

mtrappett17-Jan-07 6:32

mtrappett

17-Jan-07 6:32

Please Help!!

I have a project to create the pages to support displaying the weather on a Web site. I have been provided with the images, icons, and so on for all the weather conditions such as "Rain", "Winds", "Lightning", "Cloudy Day", "Sunny Day". This also includes the map images for UK map, separate regional maps. I have also been given the JavaScript data objects that I need to use to dynamically display all the information.

I need to include a Weather Summary, National Summary, and Regional Forecast. I also have to use a Cookie to store the current user's location.

What would be the best approach to handling this type of project such as displaying the different graphics for cities when the user clicks on the map of the UK? The programming language is classic ASP/VBScript, and JavaScript. I was wondering about AJAX but ASP does not support it. This seems to be a VERY dynamic kind of project. The user will be allowed to click on any regions on the map of the UK which will cause that particular area to be displayed. Cloud, Sun or whatever icon will be displayed for that new image that will be displayed. These weather icons will be dynamically based on the weather data. It seems that there will be many layers that each will change for each selection by the user. How do you start with such a seemingly complex requirement? Do you need to use some kind of "form post" process? Do you need a whole bunch of pages for each city do some kind of replacement? If so, how do you keep track on it all?

I have been given the "static" starter HTML pages for the Summaries, and 5-Day forecast, etc., that have been layed out with divs and CSS positioning, no tables.

These are some example Web sites of how my pages should look:

www.ntlworld.com/weather
www.gm.tv/index.cfm?articleid=2932
www.itv.com/page.asp?PartID=46

Any help of how to go about this would be really helpful.
Thanks again,
Smile | :)

Mark.

Re: Need to Display Weather Content Set - Please Help

Bradml17-Jan-07 15:03

Re: Need to Display Weather Content Set - Please Help

17-Jan-07 15:03

What do you mean "ASP does not support Ajax"??? Please do me a favour and Google "Ajax"

Brad
Australian

- Christian Graus on "Best books for VBscript"

A big thick one, so you can whack yourself on the head with it.

mtrappett18-Jan-07 5:36

mtrappett

18-Jan-07 5:36

Hi Brad,

Thank you for the reply. I have been studying AJAX for an MS in IT and all the Web sites, books, professors, and other sources have only ever produced examples in PHP, and ASP.NET, not classic ASP or VBScript. If you caould please point me to any examples for widgets created in good old ASP I will be more than happy to purchase the book and cheerfully hit myself on the head with it! Laugh | :laugh:

I have Googled many times, and ASP and AJAX just don't seem to mix. I can't force the Company to upgrade to .NET.

Thanks again for taking the time to reply.

Respectfully,
Mark.

Re: Need to Display Weather Content Set - Please Help

Bradml18-Jan-07 13:47

Preload embedded ActiveX Control

18-Jan-07 13:47

Ok to understand that ASP (and any Server side language for that) is fully compatible with Ajax you need to understand the client server relationsship. This is something you normally would write an article on so I will be brief in my description.

Basically whatever happens on the clien tis unrelated to the server. What Ajax does is allow you to share what's happening on the client with the server, but without have to refreshes the page. This also means that the server can give the client the information it needs to without refreshing.

Mozilla has a very good article on the foundations of Ajax. I imagine that writing Ajax for classic ASP would be similiar to PHP (although I must say that I do not know the language [If you can call it that] well).

Have your clients considered PHP?

Brad
Australian

- Christian Graus on "Best books for VBscript"

A big thick one, so you can whack yourself on the head with it.

chuchichäschtli17-Jan-07 2:34

chuchichäschtli

17-Jan-07 2:34

Hello

I am currently writing an asp.net webapp that uses a .NET UserControl embedded through object tag. Now the dll of the control is quite big and the first time I open the page it always takes a while until the control is being displayed because it has to download the control first.

Now my question is: Is there a way to preload the control DLL into IE download cache (JavaScript...?)?

Regards
Alexander

unique visitor counter

Eric Georgiades17-Jan-07 2:18

17-Jan-07 2:18

I'm making a part of a website, and i need a method in which i can uniquely identify people visiting.

now this is unlike most counters, i need to be able to specify/characterize a user a well as possible.

most counters just use IP address, which is very inefficient (users with dynamically assigned IP count numerous times)
or others use cookies, again not good since many don't use/support/enable cookies. (and/or can remove them)
PHP sessions, but they are geared for a time-online-basis

i want to uniquely identify a host connecting to a specific site, and i am currently using a combination of cookies and ip address and other characteristics i can get from the host (like browser).

can anyone suggest what would be the best method in uniquely identifying a host?

Ericos Georgiades

Bradml17-Jan-07 4:29

17-Jan-07 4:29

User names and passwords?

Brad
Australian

- Christian Graus on "Best books for VBscript"

A big thick one, so you can whack yourself on the head with it.

Bradml17-Jan-07 4:30

17-Jan-07 4:30

credit card numbers?

Brad
Australian

- Christian Graus on "Best books for VBscript"

A big thick one, so you can whack yourself on the head with it.

Eric Georgiades17-Jan-07 5:04

17-Jan-07 5:04

it's more like a visit once kinda site.
and i dont want to have user interaction ..

but hey, if you're willing to give your credit card number as an id, then i'm gonna need that id :p

Ericos Georgiades

Bradml17-Jan-07 5:10

17-Jan-07 5:10

But in all serious-ness the web is far too diverse to have a bullet proof system of identifying users. Maybe if there was an international online tagging system this could be introduced, but other then that you can't ever be sure of the user's identity.

(although all that being said, some of the old Pentium 3's had a unique tag in them that you could use to identify a user, it was discontinued, but atleast you would be able to make sure no old people trick you)

Brad
Australian

- Christian Graus on "Best books for VBscript"

A big thick one, so you can whack yourself on the head with it.

Eric Georgiades17-Jan-07 7:16

17-Jan-07 7:16

yeah i was pretty sure i would get a responce in the manners of "it's impossible" :P

yet what would you think is the "best" method? i.e. one that can identify the highest % of users (assuming they dont change much on their system?)

i.e. dial-up users can change ip, yet certain other characteristics stay the same
i.e. nat users shouldn't counted as 1 ip (how do i get past nat users?)
i.e. aliens don't use IPv4, IPv6, CLNS or even IPX.. (did i miss one?)

Ericos Georgiades

Bradml17-Jan-07 15:00

17-Jan-07 15:00

The only real characteristics you can count on is the IP. everything else is changeable (although cookies will take care of the vast majority of dial up customers). Nat users are always going to be a problem, I am afraid that there is no full proof way around this, and finally if you have made contact with aliens, and they are using your site, then why do you care how many of them there are?

Brad
Australian

- Christian Graus on "Best books for VBscript"

A big thick one, so you can whack yourself on the head with it.

Eric Georgiades17-Jan-07 21:24

17-Jan-07 21:24

so i'm better off with just ip hunting and cookies when available then..

thanx for you time Brad

Ericos Georgiades

David Domingues26-Jan-07 6:24

David Domingues

26-Jan-07 6:24

any other data than IP would be a security lick...
you could for example send the CPU id... but would it be ethical to recover it from you client? I don't think so...

Contact me! Please feel free to visit my site

Eric Georgiades26-Jan-07 6:33

26-Jan-07 6:33

i mean an automated method, like retrieving the host IP address

unless i'm missing something and common browsers also send computer id

Ericos Georgiades

JScript ASP Get PC Date Sometimes Fails

David Domingues26-Jan-07 8:54

David Domingues

26-Jan-07 8:54

Regarding to the law of many country, personal data is protected and cannot be transmited via automated procedures without the consent of the owners. The fact that you transmit private data through the internet by any automated mean should take the law in consideration prior to the definition of the solution to adopt.
Tecnically, you can do it, legally it is forbidden in many countries.

Contact me! Please feel free to visit my site

Ken4217-Jan-07 2:15

Ken42

17-Jan-07 2:15

We have a function we use to get the user's PC date and time and store it with a record. The reason is that the website is used globally, so our server date and time is not friendly to the user.

The following code does not always work for the same users on the same day. Does anyone know what could cause it to fail so often for the same user? When it does fail, we default to the server date and time instead. I have no errors being generated by it. A factor can be that the Internet connection is not always good.

function Init()
{
var oControlCookie = new Cookie("t", "", 24, "/");
var now = new Date();
oControlCookie.st = escape((now.getMonth()+1) + "/" + now.getDate() + "/" + now.getFullYear() + " " + now.getHours() + ":" + (now.getMinutes()<10?"0":"") + now.getMinutes() + ":" + (now.getSeconds()<10?"0":"") + now.getSeconds());
oControlCookie.Store();
}

Guffa17-Jan-07 9:37

Guffa

17-Jan-07 9:37

What happens when it does "not work"?

---
Year happy = new Year(2007);

Ken4218-Jan-07 3:18

Ken42

18-Jan-07 3:18

It defaults to the server date.

I have not duplicated the problem, but it has happened to users from different countries, and for the same user on the same day, it has worked and then not worked.

Guffa18-Jan-07 7:12

Guffa

18-Jan-07 7:12

Ken42 wrote:
It defaults to the server date.

No, when I said "what happens", I meant "what happens", not "what do you do instead".

---
Year happy = new Year(2007);

Ken4219-Jan-07 4:00

Ken42

19-Jan-07 4:00

I don't know. The users have not complained of any error messages or problems and we don't get any errors on the server. The website goes on without interruption as far as we know. I have not been able to duplicate the problem.

I was checking to see if anyone else had ever had a problem with getting PC dates.

If not, I may have to add some logging to the function which will slow down the user's navigation, but may be a necessity.