Frederick County Home Page Refresh • Search Box Detail

The problem: About 18 months after launching Frederick County's new site, we were ready to update our home page. The "Message From..." feature had run its course, we wanted more a interactive meeting calendar, we wanted to feature more local events, we wanted to switch to more horizontal navigation, we were requested to include the County's vision statement on the home page, and we wanted to highlight our online services.

The solution: This redesigned home page achieves the goals listed above. To be fair, I should note that the majority of the layout ideas were born from the brain of the County Attorney's secretary. I added to them and turned them into reality. I used a W3C-compliant layout as a foundation for the three-column/header/footer design. Modularity was key to the redesign and each section functions on its own as either an include file or some sort of data-driven component. The Online Services list, for example, is actually a simple HTML include file. The news, calendar items, and calendar item pop-up balloon are all built with ASP.NET Repeater controls. The Google site search box is built with Google Custom Search. To assist users in getting directly to County agencies not hosted on our web server, like the multijurisdictional Northwestern Regional Adult Detention Center, I mixed some specific search results in with the jQuery autocomplete code for the search box. A C# function in the click handler for the search button then catches those specific searches and redirects the user to that agency's website.

Developed by me; © Frederick County

News and Calendar Updater

The problem: I need a simple way to quickly update news items that are displayed on our home page through ASP.NET Repeater and Calendar controls.

The solution: This C# web application offers me the ability to quickly insert, edit, and delete news and calendar items and update the associated RSS feeds from anywhere in the world. Access is controlled Forms authentication and an Active Directory membership provider. TextBoxes have a text limit and the numbers beside them actually count down to help avoid a SQL truncated string exception upon insert.

Developed by me; © Frederick County

Procurement Database Management • Sort and Edit Data Interface

The problem: IT secretary needed simple process to update data in IT procurement database.

The solution: This C# web application offers the secretary multiple ways to sort, view, and edit data in a paged GridView as well as a simple web form to submit new procurement data. I recently added the functionality to sort data by date or department; these controls can be toggled to invisible. Access to the application is controlled by a password encrypted with the SHA-1 standard.

Developed by me; © Frederick County

GetRegistrants

The problem: Fire & Rescue staff needed to perform administrative tasks related to students who had registered using the online class registration system which I built. The existing system of emailing me to close classes, drop students, and retrieve records of registrations was a drain on their productivity.

The solution: This C# web application started as a way to list registrants of classes, but it has grown quickly into a more comprehensive administration tool. It uses a databound drop-down menu to list classes. The "Choose" button displays information about the class along with the students registered (their information is redacted here). The delete button in each row allows Fire & Rescue staff to drop a student from a class. The "Close/Open" class opens and closes a class by switching the value of a bit column in the database. The value of this bit column determines what classes are displayed in the databound drop-down menu on the registration application. This way a class can be closed without its data being removed from the database. The "View All Registrants" button is a remnant of the application's initial functionality and simply displays the entire list of students in a GridView. The "Export to Excel" creates an Excel file of the GridView and prompts the user to accept a download.

To control access to the application, I use some generic ASP.NET login materials with an Active Directory membership provider. I have done this in other places, but I further limit the access to specific users within Active Directory by listing their usernames in an array and matching the input of the username field. If the username input does not match anything in the array, the login logic does not even begin. This is not pictured here.

Developed by me; © Frederick County

DeleteByDate

The problem: A coworker needed to delete all files older than a certain date from a few directories. He didn't want to have to inspect the directories and files individually, but he was also worried about accidentally deleting files with a batch script and not being able to recover them.

The solution: This C# console application asks the user for two elements of input: a directory and a date. After verifying the directory and date, it searches in the specified directory and all directories below that one and moves all files older than the user-defined threshold date to a folder at the root of the hard drive. Once there, the user can skim through the list, restore any important files, and then simply delete the folder. The application records its moves in a text file on the root of the drive. In case of a duplicate file, the application generates a random number and appends it to the end of the file name to avoid overwriting files.

Developed by me; © Frederick County

Cancellations Manager

The problem: Parks & Recreation programs run during and outside business hours; therefore, a program can be canceled before or after the normal work day for office staff. In these situations, the cancellations button on the Parks site was useless because there was no way for office staff to update the information from home.

The solution: This application updates a text file stored on the web server. When the page loads, the text of the file is loaded into the textbox. When the user clicks the "Submit" button, the application writes whatever text is in the box over the text in the text file. Another application, called Cancellations Info, displays that text in a label. You can see that in action by going to www.co.frederick.va.us/parks/ and clicking "Cancellations". To avoid a second set of logins for Cancellations Manager and to simplify administration, I used ASP.NET forms authentication with an Active Directory membership provider and added a reference to the Parks & Recreation organizational unit in the connection string so that any Active Directory user in Parks can log in, but all other users are rejected.

Developed by me; © Frederick County

Planning & Development Meeting Calendar

The problem: There are many committees within Frederick County's Planning & Development department. The department's existing calendar was unattractive and difficult to browse. Also, because the page had to be updated by a staff member with HTML coding skills, the calendar often displayed out-of-date information

The solution: I created this calendar application using ASP.Net Calendar and GridView controls. As the application renders the Calendar control, it queries a database and styles the cells depending on whether or not there is a meeting planned for that day. The GridView then displays all of that month's meetings as a table.

To simplify updates to the calendar, I created an updating page hosted internally on the County's intranet for the Planning staff. Now any member of the Planning staff can update the meetings calendar and the public can get a quick view of all meetings in any month.

Due to security concerns, C# and ASPX code are available only upon request.

Developed by me; © Frederick County

Frederick County Personal Property Tax Calculator • C# code-behind

The problem: Frederick County's Treasurer needed to offer taxpayers a way to estimate their personal property tax and to show how PPTRA (Personal Property Tax Relief Act) affects the bill.

The solution: I created this tax calculator that displays the current tax and relief rates and allows a user to enter any value to see the calculated taxpayer and PPTRA portions of the bill. This calculator takes into account three tiers of taxation: no tax under $1,000; full PPTRA up to $20,000; and PPTRA covering the first $20,000 of values greater than $20,000. This app also writes values to a text file for usage statistics.

I also used the System.Web.UI.DataVisualization.Charting namespace to create a version that graphically illustrates how tax dollars are spent with pie graphs. I am still awaiting confirmation of the percentages from the Treasurer, so this version is not yet released.

Developed by me; © Frederick County

Link Click Tracker

The problem: A coworker needed to be able to track clicks on a button. Google Analytics data are 24 hours old and are not easily accessible to everyone in the organization. This coworker just wanted to load up a file and see the number of clicks anytime without getting old information or waiting for me to log in and print a report for her.

The solution: I developed this little C# script that writes the time of each click to a text file that my coworker can simply load up in Notepad and read. As a bonus, I included the IP address in the data. This is not the actual production version of the script; this is a distillation of the functionality into a simple page so you will not have to read through tons of extra code.

Developed by me; © Frederick County