MaskedInput class's Transform property that I described in depth in a few preceding blog posts presented us with an interesting design dilemma. At first it seemed like it should be a typical enumeration property, with one value for each Transform type. However, since the architecture allowed new Transform types to be added in a number of different ways (see the previous blog posts), the enum turned out to be too stifling. For that reason, we opted for a string instead. However, we still want...

Read More

In the previous post I explained how you can customize the behaviour of MaskedInput’s Transforms. That should probably cover all your needs. However, MaskedInput’s architecture does allow for one more way to customize transforms. You can actually build in your own. As you can see from the MaskedInput_Transforms.js file attached in the previous post, all the built-in transforms are contained in a global JavaScript object named ComponentArt_MaskedInput_Transforms, indexed by Transform ...

Read More

In this blog post I will assume that you understand how MaskedInput Transforms function. It was explained in the previous blog post . Here is the list of currently implemented transforms: CreditCard_VisaMasterCard - Visa or MasterCard credit card number. CreditCard_AmEx - American Express credit card number. Telephone_NorthAmerica - North American telephone number. ZipCode - American ZIP code. PostalCode - Canadian postal code. PostalCode_Australia - Australian postal code. EmailAddress - e-mail...

Read More

The format of the masked input is fully defined by the "Transform" it uses. A Transform is a client-side JavaScript object containing just three functions: validate – A function that takes a look at what the user just typed into the masked input box, and returns a boolean value: true if text is valid, false if it isn't. For example, if the transform is used to accept a Visa card number, and the user types in "4506/00020002-0002", this function returns true. (It just...

Read More

Short Story: This will not work: < ComponentArt : NumberInput runat = "server" ID = "MyNumberInput" /> < input type = "button" value = "+" onclick = "MyNumberInput.increaseValue();" /> < input type = "button" value = "-" onclick = "MyNumberInput.decreaseValue();" /> This is how to correct it: < ComponentArt : NumberInput runat = "server" ID = "MyNumberInput" /> < input t...

Read More

Myth: You can't have a string literal stretch across two lines of text in JavaScript. Fact: You can have multiline string literals in JavaScript in all browsers. Multiline (or is it "multi-line"?) strings are a fringe feature of programming languages. They are very rarely needed, so a lot of languages don't support them at all (VB.NET). And even when a language does support them (C#), most programmers are not even aware of that. How often have you seen something like this in re...

Read More

" If you set a default style for the td tag in your stylesheet, like this, td {font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; color: #333333;} then this will be used in your tab strip, no matter what style you create for the tab items " Questions like this are quite common in forums and support calls. An obvious way to avoid this conflict is to not have a default style for TD tags. However, this is not always practical - default TD style definitions are quite common, somet...

Read More

Much buzz has already been created around new client-side localization features introduced with ASP.NET AJAX Beta 2. Most of it has focused on localized resources, which can now easily be retrieved from the server by client scripts. This makes sense - resources are arguably the most important aspect of localization. But not from a web control developer's point of view. When developing web controls, we deal with little actual content - for the most part, we are providing form for our customer...

Read More

I recently read a post in [Bertrand Le Roy's blog] titled [A nice and compact way to coerce to Boolean in JavaScript] . Having used JavaScript extensively for the past few years, I knew from the title what the post would be about - the lovely double negation: !!somevariable - the shortest way to say "parse boolean" in JavaScript. While the trick was not new to me, the blog post did give me the idea to share a couple of similar tips: Type Conversions A compact way to convert to inte...

Read More