Detecting if JavaScript is enabled in a browser

A project I am currently working on has just had an accessibility review performed by cFit and one of their suggestions was to cut down dependency on JavaScript or at least tell the users that the website requires it.

In ASP.Net you have a great feature to detect the "browser capabilities" and determine if it's a mobile browser, supports javascript etc.

Unfortunately this will only tell you IF the browser CAN support it and not if it is currently turned ON or OFF. As a result all versions of IE and Mozilla will always return YES to javascript even though the user may have turned JavaScript off.

When looking for a solution there were a number of options such as getting the browser to redirect using javascript on the page load and if the redirect works then you know its enabled etc.

As I only want to display a warning to the user to enable javascript I went for a low tech solution. Simply putting

<noscript>To use this site you must have Javascript enabled, please enable javascript to continue...</noscript>

In the master page will show a warning to non-javascript enabled users and nothing to everyone else.

Using Nike sport iPod Nano accessory with any trainers

I was looking into getting this accessory for an iPod nano that wirelessly transmits from your running shoe to your iPod nano which is small enough to bring on runs with you.

Apple Store Nike + iPod Sport Kit

I like the idea of being able to track my running progress with a Nano. I was not impressed with having to switch to Nike running shoes from my Asics to use it. There is a notch that's cut into Nike's new shoes for the transmitter to fit into. Since the Sport Kit transmitter is just an accelerometer there is an easy way to attach it to shoe laces instead.

I have seen some home made Velcro versions of sticking the transmitter into your laces but I wouldn't fancy its chances of staying in there during a long run when marathon training. After a bit of searching there is a product to do this called Shoe Pouch

 

Microsoft Posts 2 major vista patches for download but not via windows update

Two major Vista fix packs are now available for download which I can highly recommend downloading. The 2nd of these fixes a "insufficient resources" bug which I have encountered MANY times and nearly made me go back to XP where you can not copy large files from a network share regardless of the amount of free space you have. Extremely annoying for copying video files and Virtual Machine Hard disks. After installing these patches things started working as expected again.

There are a number of other fixes that are essential for laptop users to do with hibernation. Full details below, why these are not being available via windows update are beyond me, I checked a number of times on "update tuesday" just gone and no sign.


938194 Vista Compatibility and Reliability Pack
This update resolves a number of individual issues which may be affecting some computers running Windows Vista. These issues have been reported by customers using the Error Reporting service, product support, or other means. Installing this update will improve the reliability and hardware compatibility of Windows Vista in a variety of scenarios. Some examples of the improvements contained in this update are:
* Improved reliability and compatibility of Vista when used with newer graphics cards in several specific scenarios and configurations.
* Improved reliability when working with external displays on a laptop.
* Increased compatibility with many video drivers.
* Improved visual appearance of games with high intensity graphics.
* Improved quality of playback for HD-DVD and Blue-Ray disks on large monitors.
* Improved reliability for Internet Explorer when some third party toolbars are installed on Vista.
* Improved Vista reliability in networking configuration scenarios.
* Improved the reliability of Windows Calendar in Vista.
* Improved reliability of systems that were upgraded from XP to Vista.
* Increased compatibility with many printer drivers.
* Increased reliability and performance of Vista when entering sleep and resuming from sleep.



938979 Vista Performance and Reliability Pack
This update resolves a number of individual issues which may be affecting some computers running Windows Vista. These issues have been reported by customers using the Error Reporting service, product support, or other means. Installing this update will improve the performance and responsiveness for some scenarios and improves reliability of Windows Vista in a variety of scenarios. Some examples of the improvements contained in this update are:

* Improves performance in resuming back to the desktop from the Photo and Windows Energy screensaver.
* Resolves an issue where some secured web pages using advanced security technologies may not get displayed in Internet Explorer on Windows Vista.
* Resolves an issue where a shared printer may not get installed if the printer is connected to a Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 system and User Access Control is disabled on the Vista client.
* Resolves an issue where creating AVI files on Vista may get corrupted.
* Improves the performance in calculating the ‘estimated time remaining' when copying/moving large files.
* Improves performance in bringing up Login Screen after resuming from Hibernate.
* Resolves an issue where synchronization of offline files to a server can get corrupted.
* Resolves a compatibility issue with RAW images created by Canon EOS 1D/1DS Digital SLR Camera which can lead to data loss. This only affects RAW images created by these two specific camera models.
* Resolves an issue where a computer can lose its default Gateway address when resuming from sleep mode.
* Improves the performance when copying or moving entire directories containing large amounts of data or files.
* Improves the performance of Vista's Memory Manager in specific customer scenarios and prevents some issues which may lead to memory corruption.


This graph gives an idea about the performance improvements available from TechPowerUp.com ...