Greene Village

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Greene Village
New Stuff

Running XAMPP and Apache with IIS
External Searchbox in an ASP.Net Form
Expression Web DWT with "Includes"
ASP.Net Master Pages with User Controls

RGBA - Color with Transparency
HSLA - Color with Transparency

Projects

My project list is now at Webbish Designer. Yes, I finally got around to making a new site for my web design and development shop. I started out thinking that Greene Village would fulfill that role, but I've gone in new directions with WordPress, Dreamweaver, and other tools, so it was time to make a fresh site to match.

Greene Village remains my ASP.Net sandbox and article site, so I'm keeping it in that role.

About

I enjoy making websites that are standards-compliant and beautiful. I've been a Web Developer since 1996, mostly in an IIS/ASP.Net/SQL server environment in academic libraries. I "retired" in late 2008, and continue to work on my own projects and do freelance web development.

This site has a place for some of my favorite web development tools, where I can comment, post tutorials, and try new things.

I live in lovely Maryville, TN, with my family, the world's best dog and a cat who rules.



Running XAMPP and Apache with IIS on the same Windows PC is easier than you might think. Just configure IIS or Apache to listen to a different port. Assign the one you are currently using most to port 80, and the other to port 8080 or the available port number of your choice. I've had both servers running simultaneously for several months without any problems.

See Running XAMPP and Apache with IIS for simple instructions on how to do this. If you're a Microsoft developer who needs to work more confidently in a LAMP environment, or vice versa, having your own development server is a low-stress way to expand your skills.
 

ASP.Net Master Pages now merge my layout elements with each content page. Can you see the difference? No? Good! I just switched from Dynamic Web Templates to Master Pages. The transition was painless. For details about managing common, but frequently-changed content, see Expression Web DWT with Includes and ASP.Net Master Pages with User Controls. 
 

Cleaning up Word to HTML conversions is time consuming. Regular expressions can make it faster and easier. In Regular Expressions to Clean Word I explain methods I use and some handy "regexes." If you're repelled by code, there's one regular expression you should know that can remove all Word styles and attributes from every paragraph tag in a document. It's explained in the article, and you can skip the rest if you want to.