Web Marketing the easy way

What would you do if you could click a button and automatically have enough info to knock your competitor's links below yours?

By following some basic steps this can be easy to do.

The web us all about words. And it is also about providing information and entertainment to the masses.

As long as you can address these points and find out what your competitors are doing then you will get more business.

Tom Bizannes

Web Marketing faster and easier

Tom Bizannes
Web Marketing faster and easier

Excel having issues with dates importing CSV files

Have you ever had a csv file opened by excel and the dates are in MM/DD/YYY format when you want them in DD/MM/YYYY format?

After going nuts with setting regional settings etc, it seems there's a parameter off by default when you open a csv file with excel in VBA.

Here's what you need to do to open and read csv files with dates if youdo not want USA datye formats.

sMyFileBook = ThisWorkbook.Path & "\MyFile.csv"
Set wbMyFile = Workbooks.Open(Filename:=sMyFileBook, UpdateLinks:=False, ReadOnly:=True, local:=True)
Set wsMyFile = wbMyFile.ActiveSheet

Regards,
Tom Bizannes

Development Notebooks - why so hard?

It seems most notebooks come in only two flavours. HD and Full HD. and then there are netbooks.

HD doesn't have enough vertical pixels for viewing emails etc. So why does anyone use them?

So put hte question out there and got a few suggestions as follows:

Here are some of the responses:

I am running a ASUS G51J with 12GB RAM and FHD.

I'm using a Toshiba R700 with an I7 and a 256 solid state drive.  The fact they use both slots to give the 4GB so you have to chuck away 4GB to get 8GB is annoying.  At 1.1 kg it’s a great travel machine.

I've given up on trying to find a notebook with the resolution to develop and a size that's easy to fly with. So I use a Dell E4300 (13") and the docking station has a Dell U3011 (30" 2560x1600) monitor. I find the height of the monitor is great at 16x10 ratio. The U3011 is expensive but it makes a huge difference. It's like having the whole wall to work with. I'm also done with buying non-commercial grade hardware. I only get Dell Latitudes, no more Studios or XPS machines.

I have used a notebook with 1920 x 1200 screen res for about 5 years. You need to have good eyes since the text is pretty small (unless you change it to a larger DPI setting for text). I find it necessary for most of my work to have a higher res screen. My current laptop is an HP EliteBook 8530W with 8 GB RAM, and 7200 RPM HDD. It runs well for most tasks in development. I also hook it up to a second screen (1920 x 1200) via HDMI and it handles both screens at full res quite well.

As you can see, it was a mixed bag.

I need to carry the notebook so 17inches is too big.

At hte moment it's a choice between the ASUS g53W or the Apple Mac Book Pro.
The Sony one is nice but too expensive considering.
And hte dell xps15 is cheaper but .....not too sure.

Firefoxs addons for web development

Found a page listing 10 best firefox addons.

Some of these didn't deserve to be on that list.


There are a heap of them for checking the search ranking, and trying to find ones you've used can be hard like the one that helps you to clear your google cache so you see what others are seeing, plus a new one to get the mobile phone view.
Also one always needs a youtube downloader.

Here's three of mine:

1. Firebug - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firebug/
2. FireSizer - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firesizer/
3. MeasureIt - http://www.kevinfreitas.net/extensions/measureit/

If you have any other ones let me. Also one's for Internet Explorer or Chrome.
As you might figure, we use FireFox alot to figure out the css styles in web sites when changing them.

It's also useful to add your delicious and other link saving addons...

Tell us your favorites

Office developer conference

This was quite successful last
weekend. Will now go back and clue up on some other sharepoint & office techologies. One of the best sessions wasn't development related. Instead it was about presenting using powerpoint. Will post some more about that.

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Microsoft Sql Server - How big should your tempdb be?

For those who wonder how big their tempdb should be or maybe just wondering why their indexes stay fragmented after running some rebuild/reorganisation scripts.

The tempdb needs to be larger than the largest index.

There's also a technique called Instant data file initialization that helps the tempdb expand more rapidly.

So if you have any rules / examples about this let us know.

Microsoft Sql Server 2005 Performance Analysis

Note: This requires both Performance Monitor and Sql Profiler.
What this is essentially targeting is I/O Temp Db and Blocking/locking issues

Performance Monitor:
These are just aimed at the tempdb.....
Otherwise would have include some Physical Disk Counters as well.

As mentioned: Both this and the sql profiler need to be put on all the servers involved

SQL Server Transactions:Free Space in tempdb
SQL Server:Access Methods\Workfiles Created /Sec
SQL Server:Access Methods\Worktables Created /Sec
SQL Server:Access Methods\Mixed Page Allocations /Sec
SQL Server:General Statistics\Temp Tables Created /Sec
SQL Server:General Statistics\Temp Tables for destruction

Sql Profiler:
Database: Filter by database id = 2 (tempdb)
Data File Auto Grow
Log File Auto Grow

Errors and warnings:
Sort Warnings
ErrorLog
EventLog
Exception

Locks:
Deadlock
Deadlock Chain
Timeout
OLEDB:
OLEDB Errors

StoredProcedures:
SP:StmtCompleted
TSQL
SQL:BatchCompleted
SQL:StmtCompleted

Looking at DMVs won't work as there are too many loads overnight.

Tom Bizannes
http://www.macroview.com.au/

Excel Addin Support about code

When doing Add-ins for Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Outlook or other Office VBA, you often want to know what your client is running.

We add an about button to the ribbon or toolbar as follows:

Public Sub SystemVersion()

    MsgBox "Version " & g_sVersion & vbNewLine & vbNewLine & _
    ThisWorkbook.Path & "\" & ThisWorkbook.Name & vbNewLine & vbNewLine & _
    "Excel Version " & Application.Version & "." & Application.Build & vbNewLine & _
    "Running on " & Application.OperatingSystem & vbNewLine & vbNewLine & _
    "MacroView Business Technology" & vbNewLine & _
    "Solutions for SharePoint and Office" & vbNewLine & _
    "http://www.macroview.com.au", vbOKCancel, g_sSystemName
   
End Sub

As you can see, this shows the excel version, the build and the version of Windows as well as the location and the add-in version. It makes diagnosing what is wrong just that little bit easier.

Excel Chart Title Positioning in Excel 2010

Positioning the Chart Title by VBA code in Excel 2010.

There are two options:
xlChartElementPositionCustom
xlChartElementPositionAutomatic

So using code:
oChart.ChartTitle.Position = xlChartElementPositionAutomatic will make it centre at the top

One interesting chart add-in we did forced the user to enter the "Source" of the data which was placed in the chart title in small font. Just one of the things we have been asked to do for consistency in formatting Excel across an organization.

Setting up custom themes in Microsoft Word 2007

When creating new themes in Office 2007 be aware that by default these will be saved in the User templates location, not the Workgroups template location.
Workgroup Templates should be kept for your .dotx files or .dotm files.
Also, for consistency sake, you may want to push out theme changes to the User Templates location.

To find and change the user templates location:

• Open Microsoft Word 2007
• Click on the big button at the top left hand corner
• Click on the Word Options Button
• Select Advnaced at the left hand side and scroll down to the bottom
• Click on the File locations button
• Double click on user templates and change this location to your desired one.

As for editing the colors and fonts, that involves having a few colors to choose from.
Most of the colours in the templates are used for standardising charts, but you have to use Microsoft Word to set/change the template locations.
Once set, you can export the registry key so that can be rolled out if required.