PayPal buttons in ASP.net 2.0

Getting a simple PayPal Buy It Now button working in an ASP.net 2.0 site was trickier than I thought. Because the entirety of an ASP.net 2.0 'page' essentially becomes the content within a HTML form tag ( <form>), the PayPal Buy It Now, with it's own HTML form conflicts.

Just placing the PayPal code within a basic ASP.net page, then clicking the PayPal 'Buy Now' button would refresh the current page. I was chasing popup blocking and cross-domain issues for a few minutes before I realized the page was just posting back to itself.

Ended up using the 'IFrames' solution described at
PayPal Button (Pay Pal Button ) SOLUTIONS!!!! - ASP.NET Forums
just cause I could bang it out in about an hour tonight. Maybe will look at the devloper kits in the future.

Also added in the hyperlink as a backup (if a customer does block pop-ups, or some other strict security setting in the future)

Also, the post to paypal didn't work when debugging locally. The page would open, but none of the post parameters were going across. Figured it was a local browser setting, and it worked when running from the live host, so I didn't dig any further on that one.

International Project Management Day

Attending IIL's International Project Management Day webcast. (on a 10 min break) The topic is 'sustainability'. They are taking Sustainability in a broader view of creating projects that survive the pm, team, etc. as well are sustainable in an environmental, employee and business sense. I'm glad they are not hyper-focusing on the 'environment' as some of the recent PM Network magazine issues have. (The environment is dead! Long live the environment!)

Bonnie Nixon, Hewlett Packard, had a interesting quote as she took on her role on a project as to 'make herself dispensible'.

Word-Bitmap Converter

A tool I wrote eons ago (around 2002-2003 ish) has been listed at softpedia - Word Bitmap Converter.

Back before Office 2007, when a print screen was pasted into Word, it would store it as a bitmap, and the file size could increase dramatically. The Word Bitmap Converter went through the document, and converted each image to a jpeg, typically at limited or no noticable lower quality.

TechNet Script Center

Received an email today about Microsoft Script Center, and the evolution of what used to be called the 'Community-Submitted scripts'. The new TechNet Script Center allows you to upload scripts directly under your profile (Windows Live/Passport), draft and publish scripts (not unlike this blog), get ratings, and host a discussion board for each script.

In the bad old days, believe it or not, the method to submit scripts was to email them with the script in the body of the email to a Microsoft address. While it seemed low-tech, they were actually extremely reliable and pretty quick turning submissions around.

Like it a lot as a way to share some generic code snippets/modules, things that don't justify setting up a whole project with source control such as CodePlex.

Be sure to keep an eye on my TechNet Script Center Contributions. I'm posting a few that have been useful historically.

Word 2007/MOSS Metadata Integration

Word 2007/MOSS Metadata Integration

Looked up some sites on how to pull data into a Word template from a MOSS List. Scarily examples with a ton of code embedded either in the doc or through a seperate .net app. Finally found a modestly stable technique that involved linking to the SharePoint list through an Access db, and then using that Access db as a source of a Mail Merge in Word. Not bad - unidirectional and has a few moving parts.

Then, this technique: Word 2007/MOSS Metadata Integration, uses a document library with columns, similar to setting up a list, then the columns can be used in a Word 2007 document with bidirectional updating.

Challenge I've ran into so far is versioning of the template, not seeing an easy way yet to update the template used on existing documents if columns are ever modified, added or deleted.

IE8 Developer tools tutorials

Some of these were a bit elementary – but were really compelling in showing how they could be done in IE8.

IEBlog - Check Out the New Developer Tools Tutorials

Cub Scout site using Google Sites

Just [re]launched the web site for my son's Cub Scout pack, using Google Sites:

The Cub Scout Pack 22 web site is fairly modest containing information about the pack, rosters, and events that change year-over-year, and some more frequently updated items like the calendar.

Google sites made it really easy. I use Microsoft SharePoint Server at work, and have setup small business or non-profits sites in the past either with custom work on on content management systems (CMS) such as phpWebSite and DotNetNuke. Usually with the idea (based in reality or otherwise) that non-technical people would maintain the site, focusing on content, and not infrastructure. Google sites is probably my first experience where I really see that being possible. (I could see a SharePoint Server also, but I haven't yet came across a hosted solution that is really economical without a bunch of limitations)

The Google branding is extremely unobtrusive - the persistent search box uses Google search as one might expect, and a few legalese links at the bottom of the page. The price - $0.00. If we choose to spring for a domain name, i would feel completely comfortable pointing it to that host (something that in years past, hosting companies would hit you over the head with their logo next to yours)

To create a google site from an existing google account, you simply create the site, enter the title and a few site-wide settings and you are almost immediately editing your first page. The title bar and 'sidebar' (for links to the pages) are fixed, but very customizable. Images are added while editing a page, then can be edited from the page, or from a central 'attachments' link on the site.