Blog | Nick Ali

How to Fix Internet Explorer + iFrame + PNG Transparency Issue

Working on a client site, we ran into issues with Internet Explorer, iFrames, and transparent PNGs. For the site, we are using an iFrame to load content when the user clicks on a button. On the fly, with javascript, a bit of code gets generated like:

Code snippel from fooFrame.html:

#bazImage {
color: white;
font-size: 16px;
font-weight: bold;
padding: 25px 30px 0px 18px;
font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
background: url(images/bazImage.png) no-repeat;
width: 256px;
height: 107px;
}

The background image is bazImage.png, a transparent PNG. This worked fine in Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, but all the transparent pixels turned up as white in IE. My first thought was we needed to apply a PNG fix.

But that didn’t help.

Not so surprisingly, Internet Explorer handles transparency differently than other browsers. Elements have an allowTransparency attribute that defaults to false, so embedded iFrames won’t be transparent. Simply set it to true.

One final step, set ‘background-color: transparent;’ in the body element.

Web Development

WordPress + Headway Themes: Remove RSS Feed Links

Currently, this site is running WordPress MultiSite + Headway Themes. The main site is information I think other folks on the intertubes might find helpful. My Stream is generally junk that I find interesting. So, there is not one big RSS feed for the site. Don’t want the main site feed to get polluted by the stream feed.

I don’t know how many folks actually use auto RSS browser discovery, so I wanted to get rid of the RSS links that Headway makes automatically and replace it with a general RSS page that can be reached when the user clicks on the RSS icon.

So, lets see how Headway Themes adds feeds to the HTML. Towards the bottom of wp-content/themes/headway-version/library/core/head.php, you have Headway code being added to the standard WordPress header hook:

add_action('wp_head', 'headway_head_extras', 9);

Slightly higher up in head.php, the headway_head_extras function is defined and set as a hook itself:

function headway_head_extras(){
?>


<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" href="<?php echo headway_rss() ?>" title="<?php echo get_bloginfo('name')?>" />
<link rel="pingback" href="<?php bloginfo('pingback_url') ?>" />
<?php
do_action('headway_head_extras');
}

Its important to notice that this bit of code has the feed and pingback URL. We do want to keep the pingback URL, so we’ll need to handle that.

To stop headway_head_extras from being called in general by the WordPress header, I did the following:

function my_headway_head_extras(){
?>


<link rel="pingback" href="<?php bloginfo('pingback_url') ?>" />
<?php
}

remove_action('wp_head', 'headway_head_extras', 9);
add_action('wp_head', 'my_headway_head_extras', 9);

Yes, I really should come up with a better function name than my_headway_head_extras, but thats not the point.

I first define my own function that includes the pingback URL. Then I stop the headway_head_extras function from being called by the WordPress header. And finally, I add my pingback function to the WordPress header instead.

I stuck the above code in wp-content/themes/headway-version/custom/custom_functions.php. The main RSS feed and comment RSS feeds disappeared as expected. But there was no change to the Stream site. I decided to put the code in wp-content/themes/headway-version/custom/sites/subsiteidentifier/custom_functions.php and it worked.

This may not be Headway Themes way of doing this, and might not be maintainable through upgrades, so try at your own risk. But I would imagine the custom_functions.php should be copied over as the theme gets upgraded, so it shouldn’t be an issue.

Web Development, Wordpress

Clear Cache Manually in CMS Made Simple: string(103) “Smarty error: [in template:20 line 3] [plugin] unknown tag

As a continuation of a project to move a CMS Made Simple site from one webhost to another, I ran into some caching issues.

Having successfully moved the CMS Made Simple files and database over, and editing the configuration file to use the right path and DB credentials, I went to the homepage. I was unceremoniously presented with:

string(103) “Smarty error: [in template:20 line 3]: [plugin] unknown tag – ‘title’ (core.load_plugins.php, line 124)” string(106) “Smarty error: [in template:20 line 4]: [plugin] unknown tag – ‘metadata’ (core.load_plugins.php, line 124)” string(108) “Smarty error: [in template:20 line 5]: [plugin] unknown tag – ‘stylesheet’ (core.load_plugins.php, line 124)” string(110) “Smarty error: [in template:20 line 6]: [plugin] unknown tag – ‘cms_selflink’ (core.load_plugins.php, line 124)” string(106) “Smarty error: [in template:20 line 43]: [plugin] unknown tag – ‘content’ (core.load_plugins.php, line 124)”

Nice.

Having never worked with a CMS Made Simple site before, this was really not helpful. My first assumption was that it was a caching issue. But I didn’t have the admin login information, so I couldn’t go into the backend and delete the cache. I would have to delete the cache manually.

When uploading the site, I noticed that there was a tmp directory. I imagined thats where the cache files would be located. Turns out I was right.

Deleting the contents of the tmp/cache and tmp/templates_c got rid of the nasty error and you can see the contents of those directories being refreshed once you hit the site.

CMS Made Simple, Web Development

CMS Made Simple MySQL Error: #1044 – Access denied for user ‘foo’@'%’ to database ‘bar’

Today, I was helping to move a CMS Made Simple site from one webhost to another. It seemed easy enough. I was provided a database dump and copy of the files. It should have been just a matter of importing the database dump with phpmyadmin, scping the files to the new host, editing the config.php, clearing the cache, and refreshing the browser. Right, right? Of course not.

The export of the original tables from MySQL were pretty standard: drop the table if it exists, recreate it, lock it, populate it, unlock it:

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `cms_additional_htmlblob_users`;
CREATE TABLE `cms_additional_htmlblob_users` (
`additional_htmlblob_users_id` INT(11) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
`user_id` INT(11) DEFAULT NULL,
`htmlblob_id` INT(11) DEFAULT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`additional_htmlblob_users_id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

--
-- Dumping data for table `cms_additional_htmlblob_users`
--

LOCK TABLES `cms_additional_htmlblob_users` WRITE;
/*!40000 ALTER TABLE `cms_additional_htmlblob_users` DISABLE KEYS */;
INSERT INTO `cms_additional_htmlblob_users` (`additional_htmlblob_users_id`, `user_id`, `htmlblob_id`) VALUES (6,1,5),(15,1,1);
/*!40000 ALTER TABLE `cms_additional_htmlblob_users` ENABLE KEYS */;
UNLOCK TABLES;

At the new webhost, in phpmyadmin, when importing the SQL, I kept getting the following error:

LOCK TABLES `cms_additional_htmlblob_users` WRITE ;
MySQL said:
#1044 - Access denied FOR USER 'foo'@'%' TO DATABASE 'bar'

How can I not have the permission to lock tables? So I wanted to figure out if this lock really was the problem. Opening up the original SQL dump in Notepad++, I wanted to find the LOCK TABLES lines and remove them, and the corresponding UNLOCK TABLES. Now, there are way too many tables, so removing the LOCK TABLES by hand is a serious PITA.

Good thing Notepad++ supports regular expression in search. Use this to find all the LOCK TABLES:

LOCK\sTABLES\s`([a-zA-Z0-9_\-\.]+)`\sWRITE;

and replace with nothing. You can find UNLOCK TABLES; directly and remove them.

Turns out after doing that, the SQL imported just fine. So that meant the stupid webhost didn’t allow LOCK TABLES access for the user. Why would you not let users lock their own tables? Plain retarded. There was nothing really wrong with the SQL, just a retarded host.

Thankfully the client got wise and moved to a better host where we had no such problems.

CMS Made Simple, Coding

ASP.net MVC: The controller for path /favicon.ico does not implement IController

One of Run Level Media‘s project involves migrating a Windows application over Terminal Services, to the web. A previous programmer had started building the web app in C#, ASP.NET MVC 2. We decided to upgrade for the sake of maintainability and wanting to use some of the newer features in MVC 3 (like Razor).

After upgrading and trying to debug code, I kept running into the following error on every page load:

It was true that the favicon.ico was missing, but we didn’t want to make a temporary one. We just needed requests for dot files to the root directory to be ignored.

Most Global.asax have route definitions like this:

routes.MapRoute(
"Default",
"{controller}/{action}/{id}",
new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = "" }
);

There are really two problems here. First, the controller looks for something to handle favicon.ico. More than likely, you don’t have a function to deal with favicon.ico (why should you). Second, the HttpException should be caught and dealt with. Either log it or provide a more helpful message. Otherwise you’ll see ‘HttpException was unhandled by user code’ errors.

To fix the controller, try this:

routes.MapRoute(
"Default",
"{controller}/{action}/{id}",
new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = "" },
new { controller = @"[^\.]*" }
);

new { controller = @”[^\.]*” } means ignore anything that matches that regex.

asp.net/mvc, Microsoft, Web Development

ASP.net MVC: Expecting element ‘root’ from namespace ”.. Encountered ‘None’ with name ”, namespace ”.

ASP.net MVC Expecting element 'root' from namespace ''.. Encountered 'None' with name '', namespace ''.

While walking through an ASP.net MVC3 app, I noticed that Ajax calls resulted in nothing happening. Debugging in Visual Studio, I noticed a SerializationException at the following code:

public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext) {
....
object o = new DataContractJsonSerializer(RootType)
.ReadObject(filterContext.HttpContext.Request.InputStream);
}

The JSON response from the Ajax was supposed to be read here, but it was failing. It was a runtime exception, “SerializationException was unhandled by user code.” Turns out InputStream wasn’t being read from the beginning of the stream, so the JSON couldn’t be deserialized properly.

Resetting the position in the current stream to the beginning should make it readable again:

public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext) {
....
//move current position in the stream back to the beginning
filterContext.HttpContext.Request.InputStream.Position = 0;
object o = new DataContractJsonSerializer(RootType)
.ReadObject(filterContext.HttpContext.Request.InputStream);
}

asp.net/mvc, Microsoft

Nick Cast Episode 17: Little Schezuan & Pinkberry

Chinese for dinner at Little Schezuan, frozen yogurt at Pinkberry for dessert.

Video Podcast

SQL Server: A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server

I spent pretty much all today wiping a desktop, and installing Windows 7, Visual Studio, and SQL Server Express 2010 on it. Talk about some form of hell.

The WIndows 7 install went fine, The Visual Studio install went fine. The SQL Server Express install went fine. Thought I was in heaven.

Yeah, right.

So I fire up SQL Server Management Studio and this is what I see:

Makes sense, I hit the Connect button. After about 5 seconds, I see get an error:

A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: Named Pipes Provider, error: 40 – Could not open a connection to SQL Server) (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 2)
For help, click: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink?ProdName=Microsoft+SQL+Server&EvtSrc=MSSQLServer&EvtID=2&LinkId=20476

Of course the information is correct, I’m on my local box, how can you not connect to it? Bah.

Turns out, I got the server name wrong. It should be either <MACHINENAME>\SQLEXPRESS or .\SQLEXPRESS.

Then it all works like magic.

Microsoft

PHP: money_format and setLocale in Mac OS X vs Ubuntu

I had started working on a PHP project on my Macbook, which is running OS X Snow Leopard. With MAMP installed, I started plugging away. One of the requirements of the project was to display prices. Most users of the site would be in the US, so it was determined the currency should show up like $123.45.

On the Mac,

setlocale(LC_MONETARY, 'en_US');

worked perfectly fine.

To get the application ready, we decided to try it out on a test environment running Ubuntu 9.10 (don’t ask why its running Ubuntu 9.10).

Oddly, currency showed up like 123.45, without the dollar sign.

We thought maybe the ‘en_US’ locale wasn’t installed on the machine. To check, we did:

testme@meg:~$ locale -a
C
en_AG
en_AU.utf8
.
.
.
en_US.utf8
en_ZA.utf8
en_ZW.utf8
POSIX

Oops, in Ubuntu, its ‘en_US.utf8′. Doing a

setlocale(LC_MONETARY, 'en_US.utf8');

now allows money_format to work properly.

Coding, Web Development

Nick Cast Episode 16: Valentine’s Day

Steak, grilled zucchini and mushrooms, plus chocolate covered strawberries for Valentine’s Day.

Video Podcast