I have used AngularJS for a while and to me this seems to be the best MVC javascript framework. Today I wanted to implement a search which uses an input and a hash query string like in google. The input value and url have to be synced like:

index.html#?term=something

To do this we have to inject $location into our angular control. See the Angular Guide about $location. Then we have to observe both the $scope.term (which is bound to the input value) and $location.search().

For a while ago I needed to provide an alternative solution when Silverlight isn’t installed. I searched  for javascript code for this and found this:

• A blog post about that: Piotr Puszkiewicz’s Silverlight Blog. Determining if Silverlight is installed using Javascript.
• A more advanced javascript function which can even determine the version of the Silerlight can be pulled from Silverlight.js library.

I didn’t need to determine the version of Silverlight, so I wrote a simplified js function (but it works in all browsers): [sourcecode language=“javascript”] var isSilverlightInstalled = function() { var installed = false; try { installed = !!navigator.plugins[“Silverlight Plug-In”] || !!(window.ActiveXObject && new ActiveXObject(‘AgControl.AgControl’)); } catch (e) {} return installed; };[/sourcecode] This function first checks if a Silverlight plugin is installed in almost all web browsers except IE, then if it is not it tries to create an ActiveXObject (IE) for Silverlight. If an error occurs, the function returns false and indicates that Silverlight is not available.

Just a quick tip today. If you are looking after masked inputs like the old ASP.NET Ajax Control Toolkit MaskedEdit, you can try jQuery plugin called Masked Input from DigitalBush or even better jquery.inputmask.