BigBlueButton Update & Nefsis


So after a month or two encouraging my users to make use of our BigBlueButton implementation for virtual boardrooms, it looks like we’ll be slowly moving away from it in favor of Nefsis.

Logo's for Nefis and BigBlueButton

BBB was working well for general use such as brown bag sessions and impromptu meetings, however I’ve recently had a use-case pop up of remote collaboration between two offices, with some requirements that BBB just can’t meet (yet?).

Specifically the things that have prompted me to look elsewhere:

  • Lack of remote control support
  • Incomplete document sharing support (file formats)
  • Poor full-screen document sharing, desktop sharing
  • Poor user reception (Not a shortcoming on BBB in my opinion, just hard to please personnel with emotional attachment to brand names)

I found Nefsis during my last go-round at finding a web conferencing solution, and was very impressed by the trial I was involved in. After some more inspection and user showcasing, we found Nefsis operated better than Webex, with a more user friendly and discoverable interface.

One of the best features about Nefsis is the full support for almost any document type. What they appear to do is convert it on the fly to either a set of slides, or perhaps even a PDF. This gives us the ability to share Office documents, Wordperfect, AutoCAD DWG files and many more. One of the primary uses is discussion-led mark-up so having all these formats available is key.
Overall I’m disappointed we had to go for a paid (and expensive) solution, and by the fact that good solutions aren’t being utilized simply due to name recognition.  Perhaps I have to find a better way to introduce this type of software.

Safari Books Online

I’veSafari books online logo recently gained access to a Safari Books Online subscription through work, and am really enjoying the service. http://my.safaribooksonline.com/

There’s two subscription models:

  • Full access
    • You have access to every book available in the library, which is tens of thousands
  • 10-slot bookshelf
    • You have preview access to every book, with the ability to fill up a 10-slot bookshelf for full content. Once a book is placed on the bookshelf, it must remain there for at least a month.

It’s the 10-slot bookshelf that I have been using.

Working out pricing, depending on how fast you read books it’s really not any cheaper than just purchasing the paper copies of the books you want from Amazon, at least in the first year.

However, taking into account new revisions and releases due to new technology (ASP 3.5, 4.0 etc) you’d quickly fill up a physical bookshelf with out-dated information. With this service you can move forward on professional development, satisfy curiosity in certain subjects, or simply use it for reference material.

Plus, other features such as video walkthroughs, commentary, and mobile access are useful too.

I especially appreciate the mobile access, since I car-pool and have about 40 minutes per day to read uninterrupted.

Example bookshelf

Overall I’d recommend it as long as you plan on reading and utilizing many books through the service. If you’re only making your way through a couple books a year, it’s really going to be overkill.

 

If anyone reading this has any book recommendations, please leave a comment!

Expand page height based on iframe source

Since I’m using Mindtouch Core as an intranet site for my company, I have decided to encourage its further use by collecting the various tools and custom sites I have built into one area. Rather than require personnel to have bookmarks to a variety of different tools, I have created a links page within our Wiki, and sub-pages with iframes to each of the internal tools.

Toolbox display of links

 

The problem is, each iframe within a Wiki page needs it’s height set, and if I statically set it, sooner or later its going to be too big or too small. I want the height of the iframe to scale dynamically with the height of the content in the iframe.
This normally isn’t an issue, however the Wiki and source of the iframe are considered cross-domain; they’re on separate servers at separate paths. Most javascript solutions won’t work with this type of setup.

Luckily I found someone who does have a resolution. Full credit goes to John and his post here from 2006.

I will document how I got this to work within a Mindtouch wiki page, as that was the primary source of my problems with this code.

 

First, you’ll need to create a file with the following code:

<html>
  <head>
    <title>Resizing Page</title>
    <script type="text/javascript">
      /**
       * This iframe gets load by the first iframe. This one
       * will communicate with the main page telling it to
       * resize the iframe that has content in it. It will
       * get the height from the URL that was used to
       * link to this page, e.g. iframe-resize.html?height=456
       */
      function onLoad() {
        var params = window.location.search.substring( 1 ).split( '&' );
        var height;
        for( var i = 0, l = params.length; i < l; ++i ) {
          var parts = params[i].split( '=' );
          switch( parts[0] ) {
          case 'height':
            height = parseInt( parts[1] );
            break;
          }
        }
        if( typeof( height ) == 'number' ) {
          window.top.updateIFrame( height );
        }
      }
 
    window.onload = onLoad;
    </script>
  </head>
  <body>
    <p>Resizing IFrame...</p>
  </body>
</html>

Then, transfer this file to the filesystem of your wiki. I placed mine in /var/www/dekiwiki/config.

On the site that you want to appear inside the iframe, you need to add a few things. In the HEAD section:

<script type="text/javascript">
      /**
       * This function will update the URL on the inner iframe,
       * i.e. the iframe within an iframe.
       */
      function resizeThisFrame() {
        var iframe = document.getElementById( 'inneriframe' );
        var wrapper = document.getElementById( 'container' );
        var height = Math.max( document.body.offsetHeight, document.body.scrollHeight );
        iframe.src = 'http://yourwiki/config/iframetest-resize.html?height='+height;
      }
    </script>

In the above code, you must make sure your iframe ID matches, and the wrapper ID (I’m using a div tagged as ‘container’. Also, the last line should point to the file you put in the wiki filesystem.

Then, in the BODY tag, add:

  <body onload="resizeThisFrame()">

And then finally somewhere inside this source page, add a hidden iframe that matches the ID in the javascript above:

      <iframe id="inneriframe" width="10" height="10"></iframe>

Now, all that remains is to put an iframe on your wiki page, and then somewhere on the wiki page, paste the following in the WYSIWYG editor:

{{    <script type="text/javascript">"
      function updateIFrame( height ) {
        var iframe = document.getElementById( 'projectsite' );
        iframe.setAttribute( 'height', height );
      }"
    </script>}}

The ID in that javascript should match the iframe ID on your wiki page.

That’s all you need; now the iframe in the wiki page should dynamically expand with the contents!

Hide file revisions on Mindtouch page

I’ve currently got a Mindtouch Wiki set up in my company, and a recent request came in to be able to hide file revisions for individual pages. After a bit of searching through the Mindtouch developer site and forums, I found the CSS code necessary to hide the “+” icon to expand the list of file revisions.
To apply this, first create a new template, from your templates section: http://yourwiki/template:

In your new page, switch to source view, and paste this in:

 

<style type="text/css">/*<![CDATA[*/
#attachTable .group {
display: none !important;
}
.groupparent .col1 a {
display: none !important;
}
 /*]]>*/
 </style>

 

Now you can simply call that template from the toolbar on the page you wish to hide file revisions:

CKEditor toolbar with Templates shown

 

Here’s the difference:


Ajax AutoCompleteExtender with MSSQL datasource

I’m building a form and wanted to use the autocompleteextender control of the Ajax Toolkit. Having limited skills with ASP.net and C#, I began by looking for examples online. However, nothing I found and tried seemed to be working. I finally found a simple example here that helped me get on my way.

I’ve reproduced my code below as a self-reference, and to hopefully help someone else avoid troubles with this control.

 

Default.aspx

<!-- Need to have the toolkitscript manager in your page -->
<asp:ToolkitScriptManager ID="ToolkitScriptManager1" runat="server" EnablePageMethods="true" >
</asp:ToolkitScriptManager>
 
<!-- Textbox that the autocomplete will target -->
<asp:TextBox ID="CEMPNAMETextBox" runat="server" Text='<%# Bind("CEMPNAME") %>' />
 
<!-- AutocompleteControl -->
<asp:AutoCompleteExtender ID="AutoCompleteExtender1" runat="server"
                            TargetControlID="CEMPNAMETextBox"
                            MinimumPrefixLength="2"
                            CompletionSetCount="5" 
                            ServiceMethod="GetCompletionList" 
                            UseContextKey="True" />

TargetControlID – the ID of the textbox that we’ve chosen to use
ServiceMethod – name of the method as defined in your codebehind file

Default.aspx.cs (C#)

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Data;
using System.Data.SqlClient;
using System.Configuration;
 
namespace ITIventory
{
    public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page
    {
            // AUTO COMPLETE SECTION
            [System.Web.Services.WebMethodAttribute(), System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptMethodAttribute()]
            public static string[] GetCompletionList(string prefixText, int count, string contextKey)
            {
                List ListCempName = new List(); // List Object
                try
                {
                    // Open the connection (can re-use connection string as defined in web.config)
                    SqlConnection SqlCon = new SqlConnection(System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["ITInventoryConnectionString"].ConnectionString);
                    SqlCon.Open();
 
                    // Create a Command
                    SqlCommand SqlComm = new SqlCommand();
                    SqlComm.Connection = SqlCon;
 
                    // Add a employee name SQl Parameter
                    SqlComm.Parameters.Add("@cempname", SqlDbType.VarChar).Value = prefixText; // retrievable throught prefixText parameter
 
                    // Query for get country name from database
                    SqlComm.CommandType = CommandType.Text;
                    SqlComm.CommandText = "SELECT cempname FROM BMEMP WHERE (BMEMP.LISTERM = 'false') AND (BMEMP.cempname LIKE ''+@cempname+'%') ";
 
                    // Read the data and add in List object.
                    SqlDataReader SqlDr = SqlComm.ExecuteReader();
 
                    if (SqlDr != null)
                    {
                        while (SqlDr.Read())
                        {
                            ListCempName.Add(SqlDr["cempname"].ToString());
                        }
                    }
                }
                catch (Exception ex)
                {
                    throw new Exception(ex.Message);
                }
                return ListCempName.ToArray();
            }
       }
}