Monthly Archives: September 2011

Restore bricked DROID 3 phone

If you bricked your Motorola DROID 3 phone while rooting it, installing some custom ROM or doing other fun stuff – don’t despair, there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

(Disclaimer: I am not responsible for anything that happens to your phone. But then again, if you’re reading this, something already has happened to it).

  1. Download the Motorola Stock Image (SBF) v5.6.890 HERE
  2. Download Motorola Flashing Utility (RSDLite) v5.5 HERE
  3. Extract the contents of the SBF file to a folder on your computer
  4. Install RSDLite
  5. Boot your DROID 3 into bootloader by holding both Vol+Vol- at the same time when powering on the phone
  6. Select “AP Fastboot” from boot menu by pressing Vol- repeatedly and then press Vol+ to select it
  7. Open RSDLite and browse for the XML in the folder where you extracted the SBF file
  8. Connect the phone to PC via USB, and when RSDLite  says  “Connected”, hit “Start
  9. Wait for the phone to finish flashing, and booting (it can reboot several times, let it be)

You’re done! Your phone is resurrected, feel free to root it, install custom ROMs and do other fun stuff again.

NOTE: You phone may require activation after the flash, just follow original Verizon activation steps (if you’re not prompted to activate your phone and still have no connection just dial *228 and follow the instructions).

CREDITS: Thanks chevycam94 for original SBF-ing instructions and files. As a matter of fact these instructions are pretty much exact copy of first 9 steps of his instruction on how to flash his custom ROM Steel Droid – check it out!

Pass NULL value to SSRS Report from ReportViewer

When working with ReportViewer ASP.NET control to display SSRS report on an ASPX page you can use ReportParameter class to create and pass parameters to the server, e.g.

aParamList.Add(New ReportParameter("MyParam", sValue, False))

Here aParamList is a Generic List of ReportParameter objects that you use in ReportViewer’s ServerReport.SetParameters method, "MyParam" is a parameter name and sValue is a string variable with value for the parameter. Third parameter – visibility, when set to False makes the parameter hidden.

All is well, but what if you need to pass NULL parameter? Unfortunately ReportParameter‘s constructor accepts only string type for it’s value parameter, so you cannot pass something like DBNull.Value or Nothing. Fortunately there’s an easy solution: Just set you string variable representing value to Nothing:

sValue = Nothing
aParamList.Add(New ReportParameter("MyParam", sValue, False))

Voila! Desired NULL is passed as a parameter value (on SSRS side parameter has to be set to accept NULL values).

Thanks Tincy for the original idea.

IE8: Display borders around empty cells

By default Internet Explorer 8 does not display blank cells in HTML tables (technically it does’t show borders around such cells) and visuals aren’t pretty. The solution below may not work for everybody, but I’d imagine will help in many cases:

Just set the table style to

border-collapse:collapse

Presto-chango! Missing borders now appear.

Prevent Cross Site Scripting thru hidden fields

ASP.NET protects you pretty good when user tries to post a malicious content thru an entry form. With @page directive “ValidateRequest=true” (which is true by default) if anybody attempts to enter something like <script type=”text/javascript”>…nasty stuff here…</script> the page will throw HttpRequestValidationException exception: A potentially dangerous value was detected from the client…

But this does not work for some form elements, for example framework variables such as __EVENTVALIDATION or __VIEWSTATE over which user or developer do not have direct control. A maliciously crafted POST request can insert JavaScript into those elements which then can execute in user’s browser. Yes the page may crash because of invalid data, but JavaScript is still echoed to the client and gets executed. In this case ASP.NET needs a little help. Continue reading →