One of the areas we’ve been working on this year is providing more ways for our users to visually present their data. In our release of Caspio Bridge 6.7, we’ve introduced a new Calendar DataPage that gives you the ability to display your information on the web using monthly and weekly calendars. This feature is great for any database where the date field is a vital component; such as events, schedules, due dates, appointments, etc.
Just like Caspio’s Search and Report DataPage, the Calendar DataPage provides powerful data search, retrieval, and formatting capabilities. Additionally, there are a number of conveniences you have when deciding how users can view and navigate through your information.
Depending on your preference, the display settings can be customized to show today’s date, a specific month, or a certain week. More dynamic displays are also available.
The Calendar DataPage also lets you set the number of days relative to the day that your calendar will show. For example, you can set up calendar options that automatically show you any events happening a week from now, 30 days back, or one year ago from today. This way, if you want to automatically show a specific period, you don’t have to navigate the calendar by hand.
You can even set your calendars to automatically jump to the earliest piece of information requested from your database (the first matching record) or the latest one (the last matching record). This option is particularly convenient when using a form to search your database.
Once entering an optional search, users will be taken to the right place and can start navigating the data, instead of being taken to a calendar containing today’s date, which may not have any information.
The Calendar DataPage option has been automatically added to the opening DataPage screen of your Caspio Bridge account. To lessen the learning curve for both new and existing users, the Calendars DataPage was designed to be similar to the other DataPages in Caspio Bridge. I encourage you to give the Calendar DataPage a try to see how easy yet flexible it is.
Don’t hesitate to contact our Support team with any questions or feedback. Refer to our online help for more detailed information.
And of course, feel free to leave a comment below.
Why was “Section 508 compliance” built into the recent Caspio Bridge 6.6 update? Imagine surfing the web with your eyes closed. All of a sudden, those little things you take for granted — like quickly scanning a table for information, making judgments based on color-coded status updates, or filling out a CAPTCHA-protected form — are no longer available to you.
You don’t have to be blind to be affected. Research from the University of Maryland estimates that 8% of men and up to 2% of women are colorblind. And there are others who need high-contrast color schemes in order to read anything at all.
Web accessibility is not only important to building a broader audience for your website. Governments around the world have adopted accessibility standards for their websites to allow for greater inclusion and help prevent discrimination based on an individual’s disabilities.
In the United States, the government standard is disclosed in Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which was strengthened in 1998 through the Workforce Reinvestment Act.
The United States government has provided a number of web accessibility guidelines that illustrate ways to comply with Section 508 (Penn State University has compiled a summarized version that links to technical details).
How are Caspio Bridge applications 508-compliant?
Following the appropriate guidelines, we’ve added backend platform features that allow your deployed DataPages to automatically be 508-compliant.
In most cases, there aren’t any visual differences in the DataPage, but the underlying behind the scenes HTML code changes make Caspio DataPages easier to navigate using a screen reader and keyboard commands.
Just released in Caspio Bridge 6.6:
Images, including buttons, have alternative text. This way, if people can’t see the image, they still have a written description of what is there.
Forms now use label tags to identify form fields. These tags tell browsers what text goes with what form fields.
Tables can now use table header tags. Screen readers will read information back to the user in the proper groupings, announcing what the information is before it is read. To maintain backward compatibility with some applications using custom JavaScript, we’ve made the use of table header tags optional.
Styles have been tested when zoomed and in high-contrast modes. Now, Caspio Bridge DataPages can be seen more easily by people who need larger magnification or bolder color differences.
CAPTCHAs are notoriously difficult for the visually impaired to enter. We’ve had an audio version of a CAPTCHA for a number of releases, and provided an automated way for mainstream browsers to find the right plugin if the one wasn’t already installed. For 508 compliance, we added an optional direct download link for an audio plugin that can be used to read the CAPTCHAs.
Many people who are blind or visually impaired use WebbIE, which was first published in 2001. It has a number of features that make navigation easier for people using screen readers and uses a large high-contrast display for people who have difficulty seeing traditionally-formatted web pages. Here is a sample of a web form with 508-compliant CAPTCHA and the corresponding WebbIE screen:
You can see how the text would be read back to a blind visitor and how links and form elements would be announced. To enter the CAPTCHA, the user would hit the down arrow key until “Link: Listen and type what you hear” would be read. He or she would hit <Enter> and the audio for the CAPTCHA would be read. The audio played contains some distortion and static to prevent a machine from breaking your CAPTCHA security.
At Caspio, we’re proud to support more broadly accessible web applications, and based on our 508 compliance efforts, we’ve gained approval to be included in the United States government Buy Accessible Products and Services Directory.
To learn more about Caspio’s Section 508-compliant web applications, request a demo or contact our Government Services Division at 650-691-0900 ext. 741.
Caspio Bridge provides you with a number of capabilities and services to create location-based applications. These include:
Search by Distance
Map Integration
Automatic Geocoding
With the Search by Distance feature, your search forms can be used to find records based on proximity to a location. For example, your search form could take an address and find all hospitals within 10 miles of that particular address. Creating such search forms is easily accomplished through the Search and Report wizard, provided that the Search by Distance feature is enabled in your account.
When you request Search by Distance, a geocoded database of all U.S. ZIP codes will also be uploaded into your account to utilize as you wish in your location-based applications.
We also have a step-by-step map mashup tutorial and live instructor-led training sessions for integrating your address-centric databases and applications with Google or Yahoo! maps. Using Caspio’s map integration, your search results and record details can easily be plotted on a map.
Additionally, Caspio has the capability to geocode large sets of data either as a batch or in real time. When activated, our geocoding service automatically adds latitude and longitude to your address-centric tables.
To request Distance Search or geocoding services, please contact Caspio Support or your account manager.
Tracking where your data and users are coming from has many benefits and can be easily implemented using the AutoValues feature in Caspio Bridge 6.5.
See How It Works:
Why Track User IP Addresses?
As mentioned in the video, capturing user IP addresses in the database is useful for tracking multiple submissions, preventing malicious activities, and auditing data or users.
Documenting the user IP addresses with each submission can pinpoint double entries when multiple submissions are made by the same user. This might be especially important if the app is for online sweepstakes, surveys, or polls.
In addition to Caspio’s built-in security features such as web user authentication and SSL protection, tracking user IP addresses can provide an extra level of awareness, allowing you to trace where all entries originated from. You can even take it a step further and deter malicious users from accessing your app by displaying a warning message explaining that their IP address is being tracked.
Auditing data or users by user IP is another convenient way to add extra functionality to your applications. For example, have you ever wondered if your competitors are accessing your information? If you know their IP range, you can easily identify them if they ever try to register through your apps.
Why Track Site URLs?
If your application is deployed on multiple websites, tracking the site URL will allow you to pinpoint exactly from which site the information was submitted. This would be highly useful if you are using affiliate or cost per action marketing. Knowing which affiliate generated the lead helps you track the success of that affiliate and award payments accordingly.
By tracking the URL, you can also capture parameters that are being passed from a page that links to the location of the hosted application. This can be helpful to track parameters from widely-distributed online advertisements or links.
Have a question about the AutoValues feature? Contact our support team at http://caspio.com/support.
Leave a comment below and share how IP address and site URL tracking has helped you improve your web forms.
If you have data that has the potential to be monetized and you want to bring the largest possible audience to it, you may want to make it visible to major search engines such as Yahoo, Google and Bing. Caspio has developed a groundbreaking SEO deployment model that enables database-stored information to be published and crawled by search engines, allowing you to generate free organic traffic to your website.
In the past, custom hand-crafted code was required to make databases search-engine-friendly. Caspio’s simple point-and-click tools eliminate these complexities. All it takes is a few Caspio DataPages to provide a list of thousands of records for search engines to index. Like all other features of Caspio Bridge, special coding or programming knowledge is not required. All you need is a Caspio Bridge Professional package or higher and access to your web server.
The SEO deployment technology is unique to Caspio and not available on any other cloud platform.
Comments (0) 
Click here to view an interactive demo.
Why was “Section 508 compliance” built into the recent Caspio Bridge 6.6 update? Imagine surfing the web with your eyes closed. All of a sudden, those little things you take for granted — like quickly scanning a table for information, making judgments based on color-coded status updates, or filling out a 
