Since 2005

WebHalla ™ FAQ

What is WebHalla ™?

WebHalla ™ is a Content Management System (CMS) developed by Johan van Soest and designed to run on Microsoft Windows ASP.Net" servers. WebHalla ™ does not require a database thus limiting requirements on the hosting system.

The base of WebHalla ™ is a customizable skeleton. This skeleton is an ASP program that can parse several data files into one resulting page and generates the menu's. All code generated is cross browser compatible. You can use the following browsers:

Browser	Version from
	7.0 or better The Internet Explorer browser has been cancelled by Microsoft per 15-6-2022. This stops a superior but proprietary non W3C compatible Document Object Model (DOM) for web-pages. The functionality of the IE DOM has been implemented by the extra bulky query.js libraries for the chrome(ium) browsers.
	Netscape 8.0.1 or better Sadly the Netscape browsers are cancelled by AOL.
	Firefox 4.0 or better
	Chrome 32.0 or better
	Microsoft Edge for Windows
	Brave privacy browser.

WebHalla ™ features

• A skeleton gathering information from:
  • several content files
  • a menu file
  • copyright information
  • privacy information
  • cookie information
  resulting in a generated web page
• Dynamic Metatag and javascript inclusion
• A Guestbook and dynamic guestbook form with input validation.
• A dynamic Response form with input validation. It automatically sends a " thank you" mail to validate the e-mail address.
• A multi-level hotlist to support a knowledge-base and store handy information.
• Safer as it is SQL-injection free
• Variable substitution, Webhalla ™ can replace tokens with for example predefined date formats
• Auto resizing to use the total available screen surface. This way there is no white space on both sides of the content and the web-site will fit on mobile devices.
• Text flows perfectly when fonts are resized in the browser for better readability.
• CSS style sheet can be overruled in segments
• W3C Extended logging (date time c-ip cs-username s-ip s-port cs-method cs-uri-stem cs-uri-query sc-status cs(User-Agent))
• Bing maps
• Cookie use and Privacy description.
• For the news feeds from public internet servers ( server-based Mashup page) the feed type can now be specified per feed. Select between ATOM (rfc4287) and RSS. The ATOM parser now supports feed and channel tags.
• Windows 8 Start Screen pinning.
• The hotlist now supports "Expand all" and "Collapse all" to ease searching through the hotlist themes. The hotlist is redesigned so it is better suited for touch screens.
• Improved progress bar and status messages for the mashup pages.
• Improved menu bar (tiles) for touch screens.
• Authenticated Twitter integration, list the latest tweets on the web-site
• More progress indication when loading RSS/Atom feeds and the knowledge base.
• In version 0.1.d.0 the ICT-Hotlist functionality is redesigned:
  • backwards compatible. Old content can be converted in small steps.
  • faster rendering thus reducing loading times.
  • better integration with modern media such as Twitter, blogs and fora.
  • easier to print a single topic.
  • improved maintainability.
  • creation and last modified timestamps shown per topic.
• In version 0.1.d.1 the ICT-Hotlist Find functionality is introduced. Search the ICT-knowledge base using characters, numbers and spaces. (literal and case insensitive)

Find function with explanation tooltip in the new ICT-Hotlist control panel and search results highlighted (Click to enlarge)

• WebHalla's W3C logging is ready for the new internet standard IPv6 as is shown highlighted.
  #Software: WebHalla Content management system
  #Version: 0.1.d.1
  #CopyRight: (C)Copyright 2005-2014 J.P.G. van Soest http://www.vansoest.it
  #Date: 2014-01-20 22:39:49
  #Fields: date time c-ip cs-username s-ip s-port cs-method cs-uri-stem cs-uri-query sc-status cs(User-Agent)
  2014-01-20 22:43:56 fe80::d11c:d956:739d:7eb0%18 - fe80::d11c:d956:739d:7eb0%18 80 GET /tuonome/v1/nl/default.asp?file=CopyRightInformation.whc - 200
  Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+7.0;+Windows+NT+6.1;+WOW64;+Trident/7.0;+SLCC2;+.NET+CLR+2.0.50727;+.NET+CLR+3.5.30729;+.NET+CLR+3.0.30729;+Media+Center+PC+6.0;+.NET4.0C;+InfoPath.3;+.NET4.0E;+BRI/2)
  2014-01-20 22:44:04 fe80::d11c:d956:739d:7eb0%18 - fe80::d11c:d956:739d:7eb0%18 80 GET /tuonome/v1/nl/default.asp?file=Hardware.whc - 200 Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+7.0;+Windows+NT+6.1;+WOW64;+Trident/7.0;+SLCC2;+.NET+CLR+2.0.50727;+.NET+CLR+3.5.30729;+.NET+CLR+3.0.30729;+Media+Center+PC+6.0;+.NET4.0C;+InfoPath.3;+.NET4.0E;+BRI/2)
  2014-01-20 22:46:05 fe80::d11c:d956:739d:7eb0%18 - fe80::d11c:d956:739d:7eb0%18 80 GET /tuonome/v1/nl/default.asp?file=Hotlist.whc - 200 Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+7.0;+Windows+NT+6.1;+WOW64;+Trident/7.0;+SLCC2;+.NET+CLR+2.0.50727;+.NET+CLR+3.5.30729;+.NET+CLR+3.0.30729;+Media+Center+PC+6.0;+.NET4.0C;+InfoPath.3;+.NET4.0E;+BRI/2)
  2014-01-20 22:46:15 fe80::d11c:d956:739d:7eb0%18 - fe80::d11c:d956:739d:7eb0%18 80 GET /tuonome/v1/nl/default.asp? - 200 Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+7.0;+Windows+NT+6.1;+WOW64;+Trident/7.0;+SLCC2;+.NET+CLR+2.0.50727;+.NET+CLR+3.5.30729;+.NET+CLR+3.0.30729;+Media+Center+PC+6.0;+.NET4.0C;+InfoPath.3;+.NET4.0E;+BRI/2)
  
• In version 0.1.d.2 caching of twitter tweets is introduced. Twitter stops responding if it gets to much requests. Every language has its own independent cache to support language based tweet accounts. Cached data is retained for 5 minutes.
• Version 0.1.d.3 introduces a new ICT - HotList control panel on the right side of the browser containing the navigation controls.
• As of version 0.1.d.4 introducing improved support for mobile devices.
  WebHalla ™ has always been optimised to render websites on all platforms using all the screen estate available. With this version a new feature is introduced. Upon detection of a mobile device the menu will be hidden by default and an industry standard style "Show Menu" button is shown. Upon clicking this button the menu will reveal itself. After a selection has been made the new page is loaded, shown and the menu is hidden again to show as much information as possible on the smaller screens.

Screen shot of mobile device (Company-issued Nokia E52 (240x320)) vistiting website with menu collapsed and menu icon.

Screen shot of mobile device (Company-issued Nokia E52 (240x320)) vistiting website with menu expanded and menu icon removed. Horizontal scrolling shows the entire webpage.

• Upgraded the Bing Maps AJAX control to version 7 so this also works on mobile devices.
• Microsoft stops the support on Windows server 2003 so vanSoest.it and the WebHalla ™ framework have been upgraded from Windows 2003 (IIS 6.0) server to Windows server 2008 r2 (IIS 7.5). WebHalla ™ runs without any errors, no need to change anything. Great programming Johan!
• Open Data message rotator component designed and implemented for version 0.1.d.6. Latest Air Quality as Open Data provided with the consent of
• Better Mobile device detection implemented for version 0.1.d.7 based on the unlicensed (free) browser detection scripts of Chad Smith.
• For version 0.1.d.8 improved and unique meta tag values and titles of the hotlist topics. Small changes to the topics required, so it changed the last update date. Also reduction of roundtrip times based on the inclusion of more javascripts in the source.
• WebHalla ™ was tested on the Technical Preview for Insiders of Windows 10 new browser Edge formerly known as "Project Spartan". No problems detected.
• Viewport detection introduced in version 0.1.d.9. Objects such as images can now be defined as resizeable with the class tag "Resizable". Whilst loading the web-page or upon resize of the web-page WebHalla ™ will scale the object to the width of the (mobile)device to be even more responsive. Also improved error reporting and introduced time-outs in case open data Aireas server is not available.
• Upgraded WebHalla ™ to the new AiREAS Open Data version 1. WebHalla ™ now implements the new and improved AiREAS API version 1, Johan has helped to define.
• Adding interactivity by introducing the Hotlist voting in sprint 0.1.e.0. You can now vote on an ICT-Hotlist article. It is possible to vote between 1 and 5 balls where 5 is the best. The visitor can also leave an optional comment or question. When a question is entered, an e-mail address can be supplied to get a response. An automatic confirmation will be send to the visitor as well as the webmaster. A movie of the voting process can be seen below.
  
  
  New ICT-Hotlist voting movie.
  The voting program uses the AJAX technology to communicate the voting information from the browser for processing on the IIS web-server, the result is returned to the browser in the same session. The picture below is an excerpt from the design/requirement document for WebHalla ™ version 0.1.e.0.
  
  New WebHalla ™ ICT-Hotlist voting Visio design.
  You also might have noticed the new "To Top" arrow, enabling you to quickly jump back to the top of the page.
  
• Upgraded to Bing maps version 8 that also supports HTML 5.
• To run a secure https web site (rating A), a migration to Windows server 2012 r2 (IIS 8.5) at Aruba Business's green Rating 4/Tier IV datacenter was required. WebHalla ™ runs without any errors, no need to change anything. Again great programming Johan!
  
  Aruba Business Rating 4/Tier IV green datacenter 1 in Arezzo Italy
• Updated the Open Source ASPTwitter library by Tim Acheson to support the new 280 character Tweet limit. The code changes are contributed to the Open Source community. Read more
• New Updated the language switch option for WebHalla ™ 0.1.e.1. WebHalla ™ will now open the same page in another language instead of opening the website start page.
• New For WebHalla ™ 0.1.e.2. WebHalla ™ can use the Open Data message rotator component to show actual OpenWeatherMap Weather data. At design time it is possible to select between the Open Data from Aireas or OpenWeatherMap. The latter requires an unique API key and supports multiple languages.
• New For WebHalla ™ sprint 0.1.e.3: OpenWeatherMap Weather data is cached to limit the number of requests and provide more reliability when the OpenWeatherMap server is down for maintenance. Every language has it's own cache and the cache is only rewritten when the server is available and provides a valid response. The cache time-out can be specified.
• New For WebHalla ™ sprint 0.1.e.4: OpenWeatherMap Weather data (JSON) provides Wind chill data as of December 20th 2019. This weather parameter accounts for the human perception of weather; it lets you know how the temperature 'feels'. Wind Chill, Sun set and Sun rise have been added to the OpenWeatherData library and are displayed with the WebHallaCMS framework.
• New For WebHalla ™ sprint 0.1.e.5: Clarified privacy rights on the Topic voting system and changed the document meta data tags in the Hotlist articles. Also updated the privacy statement for CCPA/CPRA legislation.
• New For WebHalla ™ sprint 0.1.e.6: Added the sharing is Caring QR-code generator to ease sharing of a web page using mobile devices. Also added privacy/security improvements in response and login forms because online spell checkers for FireFox, Chrome and Edge send all data in input fields to their cloud (USA) based spelling services and are likely not GDPR proof on the personal data forms can contain. Just add "spellcheck='false'" to the input tags.
• New Support for Windows Server 2012 ran out so a migration to Windows server 2022 (IIS 10) by Aruba Business in it's green Rating 4/Tier IV datacenter was required. WebHalla ™ runs without any errors, no need to change anything. Again great programming Johan!
• For WebHalla ™ sprint 0.1.e.7: Minor adjustments, better error handling with more visitor friendly messages. Some optimizations for mobile devices for example the Login is moved to the footer in every language. Introduced the Clickjacking protection header "X-Frame-Options=SAMEORIGIN". Completely dropping X/Twitter integration.
  As long as Microsoft 365 does not offer a public facing SharePoint, WebHalla ™ will remain in use.
• Interim fix: After showcasing Microsoft Bing Maps for many years on this website, Free Bing Maps is being replaced by Azure Maps with a paid subscription model. Dropped Bing Maps and replacing it with Open Street Map and the LeafletJS Open source JavaScript Library.
• Fixed the Resizable script. Object.style.width requires a unit such as px or em. Now "px" is added to the screen width whereby JavaScript changes the variable implicit from integer to string.

Current Version

Will WebHalla ™ be released under Open Source?

Where can I download WebHalla ™?

Why is it named WebHalla ™?

Thank you.