For instance, in DotNetNuke when you search for something in the site it will return a list of links to what it finds. What it won’t do is display something friendly like “No Search Results Found” if it doesn’t find anything. Dumb and not very user friendly.

I did find what I thought would be the solution at ecktwo, but it didn’t work in Firefox due to the

document.getElementById("search").innerHTML

which doesn’t work in Firefox within a table, which is what the Search Results are generated using the ASP.NET grid view. So, I thought I’d take a stab at building something that worked for both IE and Firefox.

Make a copy of your admin\Search\SearchResults.ascx file and then open the file in notepad. Apply the following code that I’ve highlighted in red:

<%@ Control Language=”vb” AutoEventWireup=”false” Explicit=”True” Inherits=”DotNetNuke.Modules.SearchResults.SearchResults” CodeFile=”SearchResults.ascx.vb” %>

<asp:Datagrid id=”dgResults” runat=”server” AutoGenerateColumns=”False” AllowPaging=”True” BorderStyle=”None”
PagerStyle-CssClass=”NormalBold” ShowHeader=”False” CellPadding=”4″ GridLines=”None”>
<Columns>
<asp:TemplateColumn>
<ItemTemplate>
<asp:Label id=lblNo runat=”server” Text=’<%# DataBinder.Eval(Container, “ItemIndex”) + 1 %>’ CssClass=”SubHead”>
</asp:Label>
</ItemTemplate>
</asp:TemplateColumn>
<asp:TemplateColumn>
<ItemTemplate>
<asp:HyperLink id=”lnkTitle” runat=”server” Name=”result” CssClass=”SubHead” NavigateUrl=’<%# FormatURL(DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem,”TabId”),
DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem,”Guid”)) %>’ Text=’<%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, “Title”) %>’>
</asp:HyperLink>&nbsp;-
<asp:Label id=”lblRelevance” runat=”server” CssClass=”Normal” Text=’<%# FormatRelevance(DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, “Relevance”)) %>’ >
</asp:Label><BR>
<asp:Label id=”lblSummary” runat=”server” CssClass=”Normal” Text=’<%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, “Description”) + “<br>” %>’ Visible=”<%# ShowDescription() %>”>
</asp:Label>
<asp:HyperLink id=”lnkLink” runat=”server” CssClass=”CommandButton” NavigateUrl=’<%# FormatURL(DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem,”TabId”),
DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem,”Guid”)) %>’ Text=’<%# FormatURL(DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem,”TabId”),
DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem,”Guid”)) %>’>
</asp:HyperLink>&nbsp;-
<asp:Label id=”lblPubDate” runat=”server” CssClass=”Normal” Text=’<%# FormatDate(DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, “PubDate”)) %>’>
</asp:Label>
</ItemTemplate>
</asp:TemplateColumn>
</Columns>
<PagerStyle CssClass=”NormalBold” Mode=”NumericPages”></PagerStyle>
</asp:Datagrid>

<div id=”NoResults”>
<h3 class=”red” style=”text-align:center”>No Search Results Found</h3>
</div>
<script language =”Javascript”>
var search;
search = document.getElementsByName(“result”);

if (search.length == 0) {
document.getElementById(“NoResults”).style.display=’block’;
}
else {
document.getElementById(“NoResults”).style.display=’none’;
}
</script>

Be sure to add the Name=”result” snippet to the asp:Hyperlink in the code above. It’s easy to miss.

Save that and you should now have a spiffy new message displayed when no results are found. Use whatever CSS you want to style the message.

The previous version I used to check IE6 used a Virtual PC and was a memory hog. This method worked perfectly and much faster and lets you test all the way back to Internet Explorer 3 (if you so desire).

The paid selection of 2,700 titles looks even better. Again, the Avengers are featured heavily, but they also have hard to find titles like the Christopher Priest run on Black Panther, the 1950 Marvel Boy,  and Tales of Suspense. The initial selection is quite smart, with lots of complete mini-series runs, Manga versions of the Marvel heroes and books targeted toward younger readers (the Franklin Richard series, Power Pack) and teens (NYX, New Mutants, X-23, Jubilee). There’s even a nice selection of vintage titles (Marvel Team-Up, Man-Thing, Ghost Rider) for the older fans as well.

The online, Flash based reader was pleasantly surprising and fun to use. Not only can you choose from single and two-page options, the reader offers a Smart Panel feature that works quite well. Clicking the page/panel of the issue zooms in on half or third of the page and allows a good, close reading view. The issues, panels and pages all load quickly and seamlessly, which is a good thing. The reading experience is what hold many back from reading online or on the computer, but Marvel’s Flash reader makes the experience an  easy and pleasant one.

Using the Firefox User Agent Switcher, I impersonated an iPhone and the site continued to work well. If you’ve got an iPhone, browse the site and try to read one of the free comics and post a comment. Phone browsing and reading is the one unique feature that could cause the service to explode in popularity.

For this to be a success, Marvel needs to constantly add books. That 2,700 needs to double by the end of the year and continue at that pace. They’ve stated that only books older than 6 months will appear on the site. That’s not a bad decision, as it allows them to maintain regular sales and hopefully entice new readers with the digital version. I would release the new digital books every Wednesday, just like regular comics. Get the new readers used to reading new books on that day and you’ve got a better chance of getting them in the local shops to pick up the printed books.

Performance at the moment is spotty (at least on my end). Response times were slow and I experienced a few MySQL connection issues when browsing the free selection. It’s most likely due to the new launch and things should speed up and clear up in a week or so.

Marvel’s new digital comics subscription service is one I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on.

ScribeFire (formerly Performancing)

This falls into the category of extensions that seem pointless. What we have here is a browser-based tool for writing blog posts. But don’t most blogs already have a browser-based editor that works just fine?

Perhaps there’s a blogging system out there that needs this kind of helper app, but we’re not familiar with it. Until we come upon such a beast, we’d rather skip the overhead of an extension and stick to our blogging software’s built-in editor.

Don’t get us wrong, ScribeFire is a nice piece of software. We just don’t see a need for it at this time. If you do happen to be using blogging software without a decent editor, ScribeFire would be a fine addition to your extension toolbox.

Yes, WordPress and other blog engines have build in editors, if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be very useful, now would they? I think they’re missing the point with ScribeFire. The nice think about this extension is I can post to my blog without having to go there. I can keep all my tabs open in Firefox, click back and forth between them, copy and paste, and all the while, the ScribeFire window stays in place below. It makes it terribly easy to reference what you’re writing about. If I used the WordPress editor, I would have to click back and forth between tabs or have multiple windows open to do the same thing.

Sorry ComputerWorld, but you missed the mark on that one.

When clicked, the link would present the SAVE or OPEN dialog. Selecting open would open a small QuickTime window, with no content. Saving the file and then opening it produced the same results. After watching one or two non-HD trailers, I had to find a solution and here it is.

If you are presented with a SAVE/OPEN dialog box when clicking a .qtl QuickTime HD link, simply save the .qtl and change the extension to .TXT. Open the resulting text file and you should see the direct link to the HD trailer. Open up QuickTime. Select File -> Open URL (CTRL + U) and paste in the URL and you’re ready to go. Welcome back HD QuickTime goodness.

For instance, the following link:
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/movies/hdtrailers/columbia/spiderman3final/720/?
http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mo/spiderman3final_720.qtl

Links to this, when saved:
http://playlist.yahoo.com/makeplaylist.dll?sid=35419655&sdm=web&pt=rd

I understand where he’s coming from, really, I do. I’ve complained here (and at my old job) that things would be so much easier if Firefox were the default browser, instead of IE.

But, the reality of the situation is in most cases the switch cannot be made. I try to make everything I develop work just as well on Firefox as it does in IE, but not every developer follows those rules. Universities and businesses all use outside applications. Portal systems, ticket systems, Exchange servers. Many of those systems simply do not work well with Firefox.

Firefox doesn’t display all the functionality of MS Exchange when using it online. Firefox doesn’t support Window’s domain authentication (it send passwords in unencrypted text). Many web portals (especially academic ones) do not pass information correctly in Firefox.

That leaves the question, where does the responsibility lie. Should Firefox develop future versions with support for those features in mind or should application and software developers ensure Firefox support with future releases? There’s no easy answer, which means there is no easy solution. However, with Firefox (and other browsers) gaining users every day, it’s a question which will continue to come up.

If there are a few sites that you search regularly, you can add them right into Firefox and access them directly from the address bar.

For example, to search wikipedia, in the address bar, I’ll type w Spider-Man and Firefox will search wikipedia and pull up the results. Just right-click any search box on any site and select “Add a Keyword for this Search.” When the Add Bookmark window pops up, just enter in the Site Name and the Keyword you want to use to when searching.

You can download (right-click and “save as”) the 10-15 Quick Searches I have setup and import them into Firefox. You’ll be ready to go in no time. The ones I use the most, I have set to one or two letters. Simply type CTRL + L to access the address bar and enter your terms and off you go.

Here are the ones I use frequently:

When you accidentally (or maybe not) close a tab, just use the following keyboard combination Ctrl-Shift-T (Cmd-Shift-T for Mac users) to reopen the last Tab you closed.

Awesome.

It comes in handy at work, where we constantly enter text into our development tool (Zentrack). My only complaint is that it only checked Text Areas and not all input fields…

Well, to fix that, just type about:config in the URL area of a Firefox window and then change the following value:

• layout.spellcheckDefault = 2 turns on Firefox 2′s spell-checking in input fields as well as text areas.

Check out Lifehacker for more great Firefox 2.0 tweaks.