Software Salariman

Many web sites have forms that move the keyboard cursor into an input field. For example, view your favourite search engine page and note that the cursor is in the search field. Enter a query, press RETURN, wait for the results, move the cursor out of the search field by hitting the TAB key, click on a link (don't open a new tab or window) then return to the search page. You should find that the cursor is back in the search field. If you usually just use the keyboard instead of the mouse, you have to hit TAB to move the cursor out of that field before you can scroll the page up or down. Some web sites have a search field in every page, so it is even more annoying to hit the TAB key in every page. (Why do I even persist in using these web sites?)

Web pages that display this behaviour usually use Javascript's focus() function. If you view the source code of such pages, you should see something like this: document. … .focus().

There's several solutions to this annoyance in Firefox.

The most general method is to disable Javascript by unchecking the Tools / Options / Content / Enable Javascript option, rather like using a sledgehammer to kill an ant.

If you just want to stop web pages from using the focus() method for the text fields (the INPUT tag), you can modify Firefox's security policy by editing your user.js preferences file:

user_pref("capability.policy.default.HTMLInputElement.focus", "noAccess");

Note: The policy named default is applied for all sites.

If you only want to stop certain sites from using the focus() method, create a new policy and specify when it should be applied, for instance:

user_pref("capability.policy.policynames", "noinputfocus");
user_pref("capability.policy.noinputfocus.sites", "<site list>");
user_pref("capability.policy.noinputfocus.HTMLInputElement.focus", "noAccess");

In this example, the noinputfocus policy is applied to the list of sites specified in noinputfocus.sites property.

28-Jan-2008: You have to restart Firefox before your policy is applied.

Labels: Annoyances, Firefox, Javascript, Web

link posted by Kam-Hung Soh @ 9:48 AM   0 comments
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After using the text to HTML convertor for a bit, I found it useful and easy to add the following features:

• Convert ampersand (&) into an HTML entity.
• Convert whitespace to  .
• Add <pre> tags at the start and end of the output.

Labels: Javascript

link posted by Kam-Hung Soh @ 1:46 PM   0 comments
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When entering bugs in our local bug reporting system, I forget to enter reserved HTML characters such as < (less-than) and > (greater-than) as character codes &lt; and &gt;. When I submit my bugs, our server swallows up these reserved characters and my bug reports look rather silly (mind you, a lot of bugs are silly to start with). A similar problem happens when I write a blog with code fragments containing these characters or if I want my source code to be indented nicely. So, here's a simple Javascript Web page to handle these conversions.

The nice bit of code (IMHO) is using string.slice() in the regular expression to replace tabs with a user-specified number of space characters: sIn.replace(/\t/g, '        '.slice(0,iTabSpace)).

Labels: Javascript

link posted by Kam-Hung Soh @ 11:14 AM   0 comments
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Here's a simple regular expression search and replace in Javascript (for JScript, replace alert with WScript.Echo). I wrote it as a test for another script to modify a configuration file.

var s1 = "Hello World"
var s2 = s1.replace(/Hello/, "Goodbye")
alert(s1 + "," + s2)
var s3 = s1.replace(/(Hello)/, "$1 Googly")
alert(s1 + "," + s3)

If you run this script in a Web page, you should see the first alert dialog containing "Hello World,Goodbye World" and a second alert dialog containing "Hello World,Hello Googly World".

In this example, the parentheses (()) enclose a match pattern and the dollar ($) symbol represents the matched string (i.e. $1 is the first matched string, $2 is the second matched string, etc.).

Labels: Javascript, Programming

link posted by Kam-Hung Soh @ 4:33 PM   0 comments
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Here's a quickie JScript program to launch a set of applications in Windows. I wrote it because I didn't want to always start these applications when I logged in to my workstation (which is what happens to programs in the Windows Startup folder). Save the text in a *.js file in your desktop, edit the list of applications, then click on the icon to run it.

var apps = new Array()
apps[0] = '"C:\\Program Files\\Bozinis\\2xExplorer\\2xExplorer.exe"'
apps[1] = '"C:\\Program Files\\Mozilla Firefox\\firefox.exe"'
apps[2] = '"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\Office\\EXCEL.EXE"'
apps[3] = '"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\Office\\OUTLOOK.EXE"'

function runApps() {
  var wshell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.shell")
  for (var i = 0; i < apps.length; ++i) {
    var appPath = apps[i]
    wshell.Run(appPath, 1, false) // Don't wait for command to finish
  }
  wshell = null
}

runApps()

JScript and Windows notes

If your application file paths have white spaces, you need to delimit them by double quotes so that the Windows shell can find them. The outer-most single quotes tell JScript the start and end of a string. Backslashes in Windows paths need to be escaped by another backslash.

Labels: Javascript, Programming

link posted by Kam-Hung Soh @ 10:30 AM   2 comments
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Inspired by this Kuro5hin article, I hacked up a slightly nicer JScript implementation to read database tables and generate HTML tables in a browser using DOM functions such as insertRow() and insertCell().

Try it out

If you want to try it out, first create an Excel workbook called Test.xls with a page named DataTest. In DataTest, create one column with a heading StringValue and another column with a heading NumericValue. Enter some test data in those columns, then save the file.

Next, copy the HTML code at the end of this article, change the DSN path appropriately and save it in a file.

Finally, load the HTML file in IE6. When you select the Test button, the data in your workbook should be displayed in the browser.

Notes

If you start Excel and the user interface doesn't initialize properly, the cause is usually the Excel automation server not exiting. Just start Windows Task Manager, and kill the errant Excel.exe process in the Processes tab.

I chose Excel instead of Access as the database because it is easier to test simple programs without having to create a table design.

Sample JScript and HTML to read database

<html>
  <head>
    <title>DBTest for IE6</title>
    <script type="text/javascript">
      function readDb(tableId) {
        var conn = new ActiveXObject("ADODB.Connection")
        var dsn = "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;"
        dsn += "Data Source=C:\\CVS_STUFF\\HTML\\Database\\Test.xls;"
        dsn += 'Extended Properties="Excel 8.0;HDR=Yes;IMEX=1"'
        conn.Open(dsn)

        var rs = new ActiveXObject("ADODB.Recordset")
        rs.Open("[DataTest$]", conn)

        var outputTable = document.getElementById(tableId)
        if (!outputTable) {
          alert("Cannot find " + tableId)
          return
        }

        if (!rs.bof) {
          var rowIndex = 1
          rs.MoveFirst()
          while (!rs.eof) {
            var row = outputTable.insertRow(rowIndex)

            var c1 = row.insertCell(0)
            var data1 = rs.Fields('StringValue').value
            var text1 = document.createTextNode(data1)
            c1.appendChild(text1)

            var c2 = row.insertCell(1)
            var data2 = rs.Fields('NumericValue').value
            var text2 = document.createTextNode(data2)
            c2.appendChild(text2)

            ++rowIndex
            rs.MoveNext()
          }
        }

        rs.Close()
        conn.Close()
      }

    </script>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>DBTest for IE6</h1>
    <form action="javascript:readDb('testOut')">
      <input type="submit" value="Test"/>
    </form>

    <table id="testOut">
      <tr><th>StringValue</th><th>NumericValue</th></tr>
    </table>

  </body>
</html>

Labels: Internet Explorer, Javascript, Programming

link posted by Kam-Hung Soh @ 1:52 PM   0 comments
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Tags in DHTML pages quickly get cluttered with numerous on-some-event="fn(id)" attributes, making it nightmarish to maintain hand-coded pages. Instead bind elements and behaviours (events and functions) separately from tags. Microsoft introduced behaviours for Internet Explorer 5.5 for special effects in a page but their implementation uses non-standard additions (unsurprisingly) to CSS. Ben Nolan wrote a browser independent behaviour library and Lambda-the-ultimate forum has a discussion. Using CSS selectors to specify elements allows multiple HTML elements to have the same behaviour and multiple behaviours to be mapped to one HTML element (as long as the events don't overlap). Très cool indeed!

Labels: Javascript, Web

link posted by Kam-Hung Soh @ 11:45 AM   0 comments
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