How to Get Browser Name and Version via JavaScript
Today I ran into a strange issue where Firefox version 28 and below rendered style widths different than Firefox 29 and above. Firefox 29 and above appear to have fixed the issue and render sizes to match Chrome/IE8+/Opera/Safari. Unfortunately, as old as Firefox 28 is, our client's legal review team is stuck on that version as IT refuses to let them upgrade. As such, we needed to add a kludge fix to the site to add a style to fix the issue for those running older Firefox versions. JQuery removed the version support from version 1.9 so here's a handy script that will allow you to detect the browser and version without any extra dependencies.
How to Reset Sitecore 7.1 & Sitecore 7.5 Forgotten/Lost Admin Password
In working on implementing a Sitecore site into an existing code base inherited from another vendor, I discovered that the admin password had been modified and the vendor would not share it. Not being able to login to the admin section of Sitecore was not ideal to say the least. After scouring the web, most articles contained instructions on how to reset the password, but almost all of them applied to Sitecore 6 and below. For Sitecore 7 and above, most articles were not applicable as they introduced the PasswordSalt field into the database which Sitecore uses to hash the password. If you've run into a similar situation, or you've forgotten or lost your admin account password, getting access back to everything is pretty simple. Load SQL Management (or your favorite SQL editor) and execute this query against your Core database:
How to Import Multiple VCF contacts into iCloud
One of my users recently came to me with an interesting problem this week. She had left her old job but had left all her contacts on her work account. Once the account was deleted, all the addresses were wiped out as well. By sheer luck, her iPad had a copy of the contacts since she never connected it to a new network which prevented any type of sync. We managed to export the contacts off the iPad to VCF cards but were now left with the tedious task of importing them all into iCloud for her to use on her phone. I tried dragging and dropping all the VCF cards into the browser but iCloud displayed 300+ errors saying the card could not be imported, without specifying which ones were a problem. The import would error out after clicking OK at around 300 times and not actually import a single one. I remembered that the format of the cards is simple text and you can easily merge the files into one big file to import.
Mac Outlook 2011 Reply All Includes My E-mail (with solution)
I've started a new job and was assigned a Macbook for my daily work. I've found equivalents for most of my applications. Personally, I find the native Mac apps are just extremely underpowered for my computing needs. I hate Mail especially, and even more so how all the apps are split out into separate apps. Luckily I have Office for Mac. Not so luckily, Outlook Mac 2011 is not as well designed as Outlook for Windows in so many ways. One of the bugs I ran into was the "Reply All" bug where your e-mail is included in the CC field. It's rather annoying having to choose from having to manually delete your address or having an extra e-mail to delete from your inbox. The fix turned out to be rather simple for me. It turns out that Outlook for Mac isn't very smart. It doesn't seem to be able to tell which address you're sending the e-mail from even though it's doing the sending. When my account was initially setup, the company set it up with one of their subsidiary domains which was incorrect. Rather than creating a new inbox, they simply created an alias for the domain but never updated my configuration. To fix the issue, do the following:
Photography Blog is Now Live
It's been a while since I've updated this blog but I'll be adding more posts about thoughts and technology soon. On an unrelated note, I've gotten heavily into photography and am becoming quite proud of the art I've created. With the amount of photos I've taken, I've decided to split the photography into its own blog that's more suited for showcasing the work. The wolf picture above is one of the latest pictures I've taken and there's plenty more that you can see at http://gregv.photography.
How to Capture Google Analytics Before Redirect
Up until today, everyone I know has struggled to capture a Google Analytics event on redirect links. We've all had to come up with hacks and workarounds to ensure that the initial landing page is tracked. Today I finally figured out a solution that works. Google analytics now offers a callback event which lets you fire the redirect (or any custom functionality after the main tracking event fires. The snippet to add after the Google analytics tracking code setup is below: