How to send HTTP post requests and HTTP get requests using jQuery

This was a proof of concept to try out jQuery’s ajax features. Asynchronus Javascript And XML is a way for avoiding unnecessary refresh of the entire web page. When used properly, it can enhance user experience for your website, especially when you have lots of images on your page which does not change often across different pages.

This proof of concept was based on jQuery version 1.7.1.

Code segments for rendering html 4.0 pages

Very often, I find myself creating HTMl pages from scratch. Those could have been situations when I want to try out some javascripts or write some php proof of concepts.

Although there are many frameworks around, I still prefer the pristine way of rendering HTML pages as I can be certain that there will not be conflicting javascripts or php scripts when I need to try something out.

In this post, I put together pieces of HTML codes that I find myself using often. This will make HTML development more convenient as I do not have to wade through the many search results from google to look for them.

How to make your customer helpline less frustrating – insights from experiencing a really bad one

I was at a cash deposit machine with my mum to deposit cash to pay for my dad’s taxi rental. After accepting our cash notes, the machine was not able to record our deposit details nor return back our notes. After printing a receipt that indicate the error and showing a number for us to call, the screen was reverted back to its home screen, ready to service the next customer.

Luckily my mum brought her mobile phone, there are no phones anywhere near the machine for customers to call to the helpline. Dialing 11 numbers got me to connected to an answering machine. There were a few questions that I had to struggle to interpret (due to the nearby noisy market) and some options that I had to select (or not select) in order to get to a human-friendly human.

How to monitor a folder for new files from your C# application

Suppose that you need to write a C# application to run in an environment where there are many batch applications running and creating files as their output.

Your application is one of them and is required to process files produced by others. How are you going to know from your C# application when these files are ready?

In this post, I document the use of a .Net facility that can help you achieve that.

Code generator for list of countries

There was a second need for me to display a list of countries for my users to select. While the first required insertion of names of the countries into the database, the second required the list of countries to be populated as an array of data objects via Java.

Although the text list of countries from Pedro Posada is useful in both instances, it only fulfills part of what I need. In addition to the names, I need to include additional boiler plate coding to convert the text list of countries into usable forms for the two different programming requirements.

And since the list is more than a 100 items long, it will be more efficient to get the computer to generate the list of countries with the necessary boiler plate coding.

Some resources that I reference(d) for producing things on the web

A good colleague of mine had asked me whether I could recommend him some learning resources in the area of web production. Yes, there are wonderful resources that I came across in my pursuit to put up useful things to people in the least frustrating way.

This post is for good people like him who want to learn more about producing things on the web.

How to save and load objects to and from file in C#

Persistency is almost always a requirement for applications that are meant for serious usage. Perhaps we want the data that our C# program had harvested or generated to be available everytime it runs. Or for that load of data that we are unable to send to a server to be remembered, so that we can try sending at a later time.

Because most of the data that is held by a C# application at runtime is in the form of objects, it is convenient to be able to save and load objects to file directly. Such capability is dubbed object serialization, and like many other programming languages, C# has the facilities to perform object serialization for developers.

How to interact with applications via command line in C#

As with most programming languages, C# has the facilities to start other applications via command line. Such facilities may not be of much interest to the ardent C# programmer, who will want to fulfill every business logic with purely C# codes in his/her program. However, there are times when it is necessary to interface with applications that other people had already built for us.