This solution is written in PHP, but it should be easily adapted to other languages.
The original .htaccess regex can cause problems with files like json-1.3.js. The solution is to only rewrite if there are exactly 10 digits at the end. (Because 10 digits covers all timestamps from 9/9/2001 to 11/20/2286.)
First, we use the following rewrite rule in .htaccess:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.*)\.[\d]{10}\.(css|js)$ $1.$2 [L]
Now, we write the following PHP function:
/**
* Given a file, i.e. /css/base.css, replaces it with a string containing the
* file's mtime, i.e. /css/base.1221534296.css.
*
* @param $file The file to be loaded. Must be an absolute path (i.e.
* starting with slash).
*/
function auto_version($file)
{
if(strpos($file, '/') !== 0 || !file_exists($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . $file))
return $file;
$mtime = filemtime($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . $file);
return preg_replace('{\\.([^./]+)$}', ".$mtime.\$1", $file);
}
Now, wherever you include your CSS, change it from this:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/base.css" type="text/css" />
To this:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php echo auto_version('/css/base.css'); ?>" type="text/css" />
This way, you never have to modify the link tag again, and the user will always see the latest CSS. The browser will be able to cache the CSS file, but when you make any changes to your CSS the browser will see this as a new URL, so it won't use the cached copy.
This can also work with images, favicons, and JavaScript. Basically anything that is not dynamically generated.
If you have a select element that looks like this:
<select id="ddlViewBy">
<option value="1">test1</option>
<option value="2" selected="selected">test2</option>
<option value="3">test3</option>
</select>
Running this code:
var e = document.getElementById("ddlViewBy");
var strUser = e.value;
Would make strUser be 2. If what you actually want is test2, then do this:
var e = document.getElementById("ddlViewBy");
var strUser = e.options[e.selectedIndex].text;
Which would make strUser be test2
Best Answer
JavaScript can read the DOM and render a fairly accurate representation of that using
canvas. I have been working on a script which converts HTML into a canvas image. Decided today to make an implementation of it into sending feedbacks like you described.The script allows you to create feedback forms which include a screenshot, created on the client's browser, along with the form. The screenshot is based on the DOM and as such may not be 100% accurate to the real representation as it does not make an actual screenshot, but builds the screenshot based on the information available on the page.
It does not require any rendering from the server, as the whole image is created on the client's browser. The HTML2Canvas script itself is still in a very experimental state, as it does not parse nearly as much of the CSS3 attributes I would want it to, nor does it have any support to load CORS images even if a proxy was available.
Still quite limited browser compatibility (not because more couldn't be supported, just haven't had time to make it more cross browser supported).
For more information, have a look at the examples here:
http://hertzen.com/experiments/jsfeedback/
edit The html2canvas script is now available separately here and some examples here.
edit 2 Another confirmation that Google uses a very similar method (in fact, based on the documentation, the only major difference is their async method of traversing/drawing) can be found in this presentation by Elliott Sprehn from the Google Feedback team: http://www.elliottsprehn.com/preso/fluentconf/