Usability Videos

Came across a nice google video on web site usability . This is done by a site called webmarketingresource.net. Its very short but points out some important points of making any site simple and dummy proof .

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=644080857245788545&q=web+usability

HTTP Only cookies ? I thought cookies were for everyone specially for Applet :)

Another broken .NET 2.0 which falls in "not my problem" category . So IE 6 SP1 supports a new property for cookies called "HttpOnly". Appearantly this was designed to prevent cross site scripting. So if any cookie is set on server side as 'HTTP Only' , you can not access this cookie via Javascript. Fair enough!. In turns out that you can access this cookie in activeX control but not in applet ( In SUN JVM - It took me a while to figure this out... Thanks Fiddler) .. and to add a twist, ASP.NET 2.0 by default sets the ASP.NET_SessionId cookie ( the cookie to identify ASP.NET session) as HTTPOnly.

So if your application relies on ASp.NET_SessionID and also usages Applet and your code use to work in 1.0 framework, You should revisit because there is a good chance that it is broken in Net.2.0


Here are some other blogs which were helpful in troubleshooting my issue

http://blogs.msdn.com/jorman/archive/2006/03/05/544119.aspx

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/917412

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/workshop/author/dhtml/httponly_cookies.asp

.NET 2.0 Directory Delete () and App domain reset

Directory.Delete() in .Net 2.0 forces the AppDomain to recycle. Initially we all thought it must be a bug and Micrsoft will soon provide a HF or Service Pack :) to my surprise ( and millions others) one of the MS blogger claims its a FEATURE!!!!!... I can see the good intention behind putting such hidden feature but I wish they should have at least considers putting some exclusive restrictions !!!!! It sounds very half cooked idea...


Those of you not aware of this interesting feature - Here is a detailed version

in .NET 2.0 ( ASp.NET) if you call directory.delete() and if that directory is below your "Virtual Directory" - This call will restart your application !!!!!!!!!!. After the usual research, it turned out that this is a feature of .NET 20 ? According to MS, the idea is to prevent the stale contents in your virtual directory... Which makes some sense if you are using the ASP.NET which does implicit caching and if you have static content you want to make sure they are up to date. But what about for the people who don't use ASP.NET standard page caching( such as me) or what about people who creates temporary directories solely for the purpose of destroying it later and certainly not by restarting application ???


Here are some other blogs on this interesting issue

http://weblogs.asp.net/owscott/archive/2006/02/21/438678.aspx


http://aspadvice.com/blogs/joteke/archive/2006/02/22/15299.aspx