Andreas Eide

ASP.NET localizer

2004-08-18T19:59:00Z

We are looking at how to best localize the static content of a packed ASP.NET app. The current idea is to use resource files and satellite assemblies to localize the texts in the web pages.

Most examples seem to use one big resource file for the app and manually create an ID for text strings in the resx file. Then this is wired together. Either explicitly in code by calling rm.GetString(ID) or by creating a property on the control for specifying the ID and using a framework class or inherited control that read from the resource manger.
This all seems a bit tedious.

We have looked at a tool called ASP.NET Localizer (http://www.winformreports.co.uk/features_loc.htm). It has a control you can drop onto the form. It then stores all texts and other translatable properties of the built in web controls in the resx file created for the ASP.NET page. If you change the language in the designer, it creates a new resx file for that language and stores all properties you translate in the appropriate resx file. At runtime it reads the properties for the controls from the resx file. Seems pretty cool. Thoughts?

NNUG meeting lastTuesday

2004-06-03T20:56:00Z

Long time no see!

We had a user group meeting on Tuesday with 70 people and 3 excellent sessions. We had to start one hour earlier than usual to fit in everyting. The sessions were

Inge Stubdal talked about his impressions from TechEd with a strong focus on Burton.I can't wait!
Reidar Husmo talkedabout the experiences in creating the official Norway site based on ASP.NET, Content Management Server and more
Jon Jaren went deep into SQL Server and how you can tune and montor .NET apps running on SQL Server.

Another great meeting!

Edit and continue with ASP.NET

2004-02-21T23:15:00Z

Many developers don’t realize that they can do edit and continue (EnC) when developing ASP.NET applications with Visual Studio .NET 2003. And it doesn't matter if you are using Visual Basic .NET or C#. It's pretty close to EnC anyway. And it gets even better in Whidbey.

How? By using attach / detach in Visual Studio 2003.

Say you are deep down debugging a web app and an error occurs on your postback. Now, to fix the bug you don’t have to stop the debugger, you simply go to the debug menu and select Detach all. You can now edit the code, build, and select Debug -> Processes. Check the ‘Show system processes’ checkbox, select the ASP.NET worker process (aspnet_wp.exe) and attach.

You can now hit refresh in the browser and voila, you are back in business without having to start all over again. Note that you don’t have to start out by debugging. I often prefer to start without debugging and attach when I need to.

This gets better in Whidbey since you don’t have to compile the code-behind to a DLL. You don’t even have to detach / attach. With Whidbey, simply

Start out by debugging
Edit the code
Save the file
Hit refresh

Nice, or what?

At the NNUG/MSDN event I have demoed the return of Edit & Continue in Visual Basic .NET Whidbey. Someone in the audience even said they would not move to .NET before this feature is back (talking to him offline revealed that he was already using .NET).

For me this is mostly an issue with Windows Forms development where you may be deep in an application debugging. Fixing the bug and coming back to the place where the error occurred may take a significant amount of time. Windows Forms apps are not the fastest to start up ;-) and getting back to the same place and state can take a long time.

Since C# probably will not get EnC, maybe VB.NET will be the language of choice for Windows Forms development? Having done some Office integration lately and now working with VB.NET in Whidbey has put VB.NET in a new perspective for me.

MSDN/NNUG tour hit Oslo today

2004-02-17T21:15:00Z

The combined NNUG / MSDN tour hit Oslo today and it was a blast! The headline was Yukon, Whidbey & Indigo! “-What is HOT? What is NOT?”.

400 people got to hear three speakers from the user group (Trond Brande, Arne Jørgensen and myself) in addition to Stein Møllerhaug from security company Syamantec and two people representing Accenture talking about the AltInn project which is probably the largest .NET project in Norway today. I didn’t get to see all sessions but the feedback from the people I talked to was very good.

My own session on Whidbey was great fun. A few hickups but that must be expected using Alpha code! I tried to position where Whidbey stands today, focused on Windows Forms and ASP.NET and did several demos. My presentation (in Norwegian) is available on the download area of the user group (requires registration).

Only one more stop on the tour, Stavanger on Thursday.

MVP - me too!

2004-02-14T21:59:00Z

I checked Christian Nagel's web log, a fellow Regional Director, INETA Europe buddy and good friend and saw that he had been recognized as an MVP on his birthday. Congratulations Christian, and happy birthday!

Then I checked my e-email and found that I had also been recognized as an MVP for ASP.NET! Time to update the Affiliations section!

Andreas

The future is here now

2004-01-27T11:27:00Z

At the last user group meeting in December we had Longhorn, Indigo, Avalon and Whidbey on the menu. This generated a lot of interest and we in the Norwegian .NET User Group (NNUG) and Microsoft MSDN is co-arranging a tour where you can learn more about the future with Yukon, Indigo and Whidbey. We are going to Bergen, Oslo, Stavanger and Trondheim. I will be presenting Whidbey in Bergen on Thursday.

Dates:

Bergen January 29.
Trondheim February 11.
Oslo February 17
Stavanger February 19

More info http://www.microsoft.com/norge/microsoftdagene/default.aspx

European Architecht Tour – coming to town

2004-01-12T23:43:00Z

On Thursday Arvindra Sehmi, Clemens Vasters and others are coming to Oslo on their EMEA Architect Tour. If you are in Oslo, and haven’t signed up yet you can do so here. I am working to squeeze in room for attending this, they were very good on the tour last year!

PDC user group meeting today – sold out!

2003-12-02T12:17:00Z

We have had a lot of interest for the PDC user group meeting today. So much in fact that we do not have room for everyone even though we use Microsoft Norway’s new premises with a bigger auditorium. Good with so much interest, too bad that we don’t have room for everyone.

Sessions today: Keynote, Indigo, Avalon and ASP.NET Whidbey (that’s me).

And of course last minute laptop problems; Virus on my freshly installed XP image, and the colors don’t project properly. Andreas B from MS comes to the rescue; I can borrow his machine. Thanks!

Versioning issues with winforms controls hosted in IE

2003-11-28T12:07:00Z

A client has a third-party application written for version 1.0 of the runtime. This is a web application using windows forms controls in the browser.

Now, we have built an app using version 1.1 of the runtime for this client.

It turns out that the third-party controls hosted in IE does not work properly on version 1.0 of the runtime. If we install 1.1 on the client machines the existing app breaks. But we need the new runtime for our app!

To me part of the side-by-side story is that you can install a new version of the runtime side-by-side with older versions. Existing applications built on earlier version will not break. You can make applications run on older versions of the runtime by specifying the required runtime in the config file.

According to the MSDN doc, IE will always host using the latest version of the runtime:

All managed controls hosted by Internet Explorer use the latest version of the common language runtime installed on the computer. This means that in some instances the control may not run against the version it was built with if several version of the runtime are installed on the computer.

And here:

COM applications hosted by an extensible host, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Microsoft Office cannot control which version of the runtime is loaded.

We have found that we can actually specify the required runtime for IE. We created an iexplore.exe.config file specifying 1.0 as the required runtime. That makes IE host using 1.0! Not the perfect solution but it works in our case.

The first big app we built on .NET for a client also used controls hosted in IE and we found that it worked well once we worked around the security issues and getting the control to communicate with IE. Using windows forms controls in the browser sort of gives you the best of both web and windows. I talked to people from this client at the last user group meeting and the app has been working without problems since it was deployed. Always nice to hear!

Post-PDC user group meeting

2003-11-25T21:30:00Z

Our user group, the Norwegian .NET User Group, will have a meeting on Tuesday focusing the news presented at the PDC. We will have one keynote and then three sessions digging into Indigo, Avalon and ASP.NET. All sessions presented by people from the user group. I will present the session on ASP.NET 2.0.

I am really looking forward to this meeting. One day after announcing the meeting, more than 50 people have signed up!.

Check out the details at http://www.nnug.no/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabid=100 (in Norwegian).