Roughly in January I started to think about my new pages, because quite a lot of years have gone since my last contribution on any of my websites. Perhaps, some one knows me as a creator of Czech website that is dedicated to cycling Tour de France. I created this website in 1999 and closed in 2006. The site was programmed in pure HTML at the beginning, later in ASP and in PHP in the end. Television shows'fans can know me in conjunction with website about Due South TV show. The site is both in Czech and English.
When I decided to take a professional career of web programmer at the end of 2005, I didn’t know anything about .NET C# that time. But, a slight knowledge of Java came in handy. At company I currently work in, I began to work in ASP language until I migrated to pure .NET C# in 2007. Since then I felt in love with .NET and I wouldn’t change it in comparison with PHP. Perhaps, the main reason is that I use .NET for writing Windows and even Windows Mobile applications for my HTC Touch Pro. Moreover, there is a direct support with Silverlight, because in case of Flash it’s sometimes a horror, though I still consider the Flash as more powerful tool for web animations.
When I was deciding at the end of January what will be the main topic of my new website, I definitely told myself that it must be a blog. Then, I was thinking whether to create a blog on some existing site like MSDN or Wordpress, etc., but I finally decided to use my own solution that keeps me with a possibility of doing various customizations or implementing other web extensions. After registering the domain and webhosting I came to another crossroad. Should I write my web from scratch or use publicly available solution? My only requirement at the beginning was to have a blog and ability to create a simple page. The best choice became the stable BlogEngine.NET instead of writing my own application. The main reason was time.
BlogEngine.NET is quite easy tool, but I was missing the ability to write Multilingual posts or to have two blog instances within one application (one in English and one in Czech). So, I decided to browse through the BlogEngine.NET and find the best way how to extend it for Multilanguage support. Prerequisites, I had to take in mind, were to keep a number of changes and impact as low as possible. But as you may see I did it! BlogEngine.NET is quite readable and thanks to generics there weren’t required so much changes. The biggest changes are in SQL and XML providers. I’m going to post about technical aspect soon.
Concerning the design of the blog, I’ve chosen the simple and lightweight variant, because I don’t present any product but information. So, the pages must be well-arranged and readable in every browser. I did tests in IE7, IE8, Firefox 3, Google Chrome, but even Opera Mobile and Iris Browser (the new magical browser for Windows Mobile that passed Acid3 with 100pts). The minor problem has occurred in Opera Mobile where I detected lower font size of header title and subtitle.
I think that’s all for now 