Justin Cooney

Web Development Tips and Examples

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about

I am a Senior Applications Programmer / Analyst with years of experience developing enterprise solutions using the Microsoft technology stack including C#, VB.NET, ASP.NET, AJAX, IIS and SQL Server. I specialize in Web application development with a focus on building secure systems, integrating applications, and designing robust database structures.

  • Internet Explorer Friendly Error Messages: Not So Friendly After All

    If you are a programmer trying to debug an application, then the last thing you want to see is a so-called Friendly Error Message rather than what actually happened.

    I personally don’t think that this has any benefit even to non-programmers since they still just see a confusing warning such as a HTTP 500 error code along with a generic explanation that something terrible has happened. As you can probably imagine, this is fairly confusing to everyone involved, but especially to a programmer trying to find out what is going wrong. On the plus side, it does encourage some security by hiding the open display of an application’s error codes. But relying on a n IE obfustication setting probably won’t stop any hacker interested in learning more about your system.

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  • Total Solar Eclipse Set to Happen Tuesday November 13 2012

    A total eclipse of the sun will take place starting at about 3:35 EST on Tuesday November 13 and is expected to last four minutes. This is set to be the only total eclipse of the sun that will happen in 2012 so it is worthwhile checking out. The last similar total solar eclipse happened on July 11 2010. If you are interested in watching, then the most dramatic view of the eclipse will be in the Earth’s southern hemisphere.

    Unfortunately solar eclipses are quite localized, so the eclipse will not be visible in North America, except for online live-streams. Check out the link below for the livestream of the event from the SLOOH Space Camera.

    Interesting Links

  • Using a Batch File to Start an Access Application Hosted on a Local Area Network

    Microsoft Access
    Microsoft Access

    If you are creating MS Access applications, then you will probably want to set up custom workgroups and give your users the ability to log into your application as a workgroup user that has various levels of access. You will also want to host the Access application centrally on your LAN to avoid problems with multiple instances of the database existing.

    The easiest way set up your application is by creating a custom .MDW (workgroup security) file and hosting this together with your main .MDB database file on your local area network for your users to access. Then in order for your users to be able to launch the application and log in from their desktop machines, you can create a simple batch file for them to click on.

    For example, if you had your Access files on a network path such as:

    \\MyNetwork\AccessApps\

    Let’s assume your users are running MS Access 2002 on a Windows XP machine. This means that on their local machines, the default path to the MS Access executable would be:

    C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10\MSACCESS.EXE

    This path above will of course vary based on the version of MS Access and the version of Windows that your users are running.

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