Php has become again part of my programming life when SCS starts integrating with this powerful scripting language. Installation and configuration of this scripting language is straight forward, especially if you are using it in the context of LAMP stack or even in Windows and Apache. And now, Microsoft had supported this language and had it available for windows web developer with ease of installation and configuration via the use of Web Matrix. It is a nice tool that would install applications with just few clicks of your mouse.

I had a working Php environment on my IIS 7, which I had, configured manually using FastCGI module and it did work like a chimp. I guess I am the kind of developer that normally would like to see where the installed files go and what are the options I can make out of it. On the other I also had Web Matrix installed in my box which I had use to setup a component of Sql Server to support PHP. And I haven’t had an issue with it.

On top of all these software installed on my IIS was the Phalanger which now SCS uses for making “Php a first class .net citizen.” And I remember that these setup had occurs before I actually receive the notice from Microsoft that Windows 7 SP1 is now available for my Toshiba box. And it’s worth mentioning that Phalanger install would put an entry on your machine.config file for this PhpNet section. But there is also a way to manually configure Phalanger but that is out of the log.
I didn’t notice any weird issue on Php and Asp.net on my IIS together until I was again assigned to work on a Php web application which needs to use the latest Php 5.3 and not Phalanger for handler the request.

On a usual way I created a web app on IIS 7.5 manually, creating a handler for .php on that particular site using FastCGI Module and pointing it to php-cgi.exe. And I thought I had it all figured out together but something was wrong. IIS could not run the app and is reporting an invalid configuration. It can’t even read the web config for an entry of Default document.
So I had to fire up Web Matrix and try to install Php FastCGI but it would just report that, it is not supported in my system. I also noticed that the Web Matrix had installed bunch of other software including IIS Express for the Web Matrix. But after all those install Php still is not working, and no Php manager showing on IIS even after installing it. I did try IIS reset and a full pc reboot but of no use.

What had worked out for me was to setup Php handler on the root of IIS web applications. I did the same configuration of creating a FastCGI module but instead of making it specific to the web site I had now to configure it on a global setting.
I know that Php FastCGI could would on a specific web site and not only via global setting. I believe that for Php FastCGI not working on my box is an isolated case which I would really like to understand why it is so. If time permits I would do the same setup on a clean box and hope to prove what I know works and clear out this issue I had with IIS.
 

On one of the site that I recently setup uses flash image on the intro page. Luckily we have support for flash object via the SCS Slideshow feature where you can set an image of a flash object to be a part of your slide show.

In SCS Slideshow you can make both an image and flash be played together at a time on the slide.

Anyways, the issue was on of the menu which contains a submenu was hidden behind the flash object. No matter how big the z-index i am putting on the div which contains my menu it still wont go on top of the flash.

So with a click on google I come across with adobe's solution on this issue. The fix is to add a param with name set to wmode and value of transparent and embed tag would also need the wmode=transparent property.

<param  name="wmode"  value="transparent">

And since SCS uses article for all its content including Slideshow frames, that would mean we can have an easy access to set this items without even publishing page back to the server.

So using the Article Management page i simply went to the article which has the flash object, switch to source view and add those values. Saved and it works.

The comple how to is found here.

Here is a goodnews for everyone who loves consuming services via restful api. SyrinxCS (aka SCS) had just implemented a support for web services api.

What makes this implementation however is that instead of creating proxy classes for you client, you simply had to write jquery and jquery.tmpl type of code. The jQuery ui-widget is the latest feature of SCS which I believe would make this web app a one of its kind.

The code below will retrieve a list of artiles in an scs web site.

<ul id="out" class="scs-ui scs-articles"
    data-options='{"id": "FrontPageHeadlines", "details":
    "basicDetails", "template": "ArtTemplate1", "expireIn": "1 Days"}'>
</ul>
<script id="out-pager-page" type="text/x-jquery-tmpl">
  <li id="i${index}" class="page-selector">${index}</li>
</script>

 The data-options is what makes this code possible. Here we are asking the webservice to provide us with all articles under the FrontPageHeadlines category with a basic  details of information (that is Title, PrimaryImage, the author and summary of the article.) The expireIn param controls the caching of the result.

A simple implementation of this is found in this link: http://lins.syrinx.ph/LocalExample4.htm If you view its source you would find how simply it is build. And here is another link using a pagination for longer data list: http://lins.syrinx.ph/localexample5.htm

Below is the one liner code that initialize the scs service:

<script>
 $(document).ready(function () {
  $(".scs-ui").scsSetupUI({ serviceUrl: "http://lins.syrinx.ph" });
});
</script>

There is much to say on this feature. I am not sure with you but in my expeirence the very limiting capability of an IFrame is frustrating. For example there are times you would like to reuse your site's content to a new site, and sure one issue I always get into is the formatting and layout that I would like on my new site.

Now with scs jquery-ui widget i can have it on an html and since the data is right off on my page my css would then take over.

To prove that is feature is super easy to implement, we have setup a demo site using a set of html template. The html is requesting from lins.syrinx.ph for the data. It simply host those content. Killer huh!

Demo site using html tempates: http://test1.syrinxcs.com