A recent paper by Keith R. Bisset and his team at Virginia Tech offers an exciting new software engine for modeling epidemics. Named “Indemics” (Interactive Epidemic Simulation), the software enables public health policy analysts and epidemiologists to analyze the spread of diseases throughout the population. While a noteworthy accomplishment in and of itself, the software could also be used for interactive simulation of a marketing campaigns for a national brand.
Continue reading
The OpenXML DocX format in Microsoft Word offers a new, accessible format for manipulating documents. Whereas the previous “doc” format was proprietary, the new “docx” format directly exposes XML source files, enabling developers to generate dynamic Word documents, or directly edit their content. This brings opportunity for exciting tools such as text replacement algorithms and native mail-merge. Along with the opportunities, however, come several challenges and caveats that need to be handled in development.
Continue reading
When developing forms for the web, there are two methods to make a form element non-editable – using either the “readonly” or “disabled” attributes. Each method has its benefits and drawbacks, however there is a workaround available to combine the best of both worlds.
Continue reading
Since the first personal computer, both consumers and business users have been complaining about slow speed. A large part of the reason that processing power has regularly doubled every two years, is that the current speed always seems inadequate. It’s not that users’ requirements have been increasing significantly – it’s that due to anti-virus software, poorly written drivers, and unoptimized software, the status quo will always remain “too slow.”
Continue reading
Occasionally, it is necessary to integrate a software package that just isn’t working, and no support is available. For instance, the version might be so old that the development company no longer support it, yet the software is still a critical part of the client’s IT infrastructure. Without the source code, and only a cryptic error message or random failure for guidance, how do we solve the problem?
Continue reading
ASP.NET, PHP, and most web platforms offer a variety of techniques for data encryption, ranging from simple hashing to fully reversible encryption algorithms. Developers will need to choose the algorithm that offers the most security possible, while sacrificing the least amount of capability.
Continue reading
SpamAssassin, the most popular open-source spam fighting software, is used by email server administrators to reduce spam and improve user productivity. One of the features of SpamAssassin is dynamic lookups of domain names to see if they are on a DNS blocklist maintained by web authorities.
Continue reading
Windows Forms’ most versatile control is arguably the PictureBox. By overriding the OnPaint method, the PictureBox can be used to recreate the functionality of most other controls. One challenge, however, is using the PictureBox for animations or graphics applications that require a quick frame rate. Below are a few methods for pulling the maximum possible FPS from the C# PictureBox control.
Continue reading
When developing web applications with wide tables, it’s often difficult to scroll horizontally and see which row corresponds to which data. This is why most apps limit the width of any table to the width of the page. Still, at times it is necessary to show a large amount of data in a tabular format. This JavaScript scriplet will help add highlight functionality to any HTML table.
Continue reading
ASP.NET is Microsoft’s flagship web development framework. Released together with the .Net framework in the early part of the twenty first century, it’s goal was to revolutionize web development and create a more structured and effective way of web development. Far from reaching its goals, the framework has turned into a bloated caricature of itself, unable to adapt to the times and requirements of modern software.
Continue reading
