Brenton House

Flex your Architect Muscle! Enter the Iron Architect contest

If you are registered for TechEd 2006, you can enter the Iron Architect contest and win a free Architect certification (valued at $10,000).

http://blogs.msdn.com/ironarchitect/archive/2006/04/28/586211.aspx

Creating nested types dynamically using the TypeResolve event

Thottam Sriram has an interesting article that talks about creating type dynamically using the TypeResolve event and ILGenerator.

Mohammed Adenwala points to Introduction to Windows Workflow article

[via Nothing but .NET Blog]

Introducing Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation: An Early Look

[Cool Tool] Position is Everything - Pagemaker

[via Dave Massy’s Weblog]

Position is Everything has a cool tool, Pagemaker, for generating css columned web pages with hacks to work on most browsers.  It is an online app where you fill out the options you want and it generates the html and css for you!

Features:

• Source Ordered Layout (Content First).
• Substantial x-browser support in one design.
• 100% page height design (except MAC IE 5.x, which is fluid height instead). Fluid height version soon.
• No images used to make layout (unless you add your own 3D effects).
• Fully customizable by user from online form (makes the css for you).
• Heavily commented css and source code to explain design.
• User can select from various Doctypes to use.
• On line Tooltips to explain the form.
• Uses source code ideas from Paul O'Brien, Big John, and loads of others, plus lots of ideas of my own!
• Allows multiple header and footer rows.
• Centered/Left Aligned fix-width design (fluid width design may come later), user sets the widths of all columns.
• Top and Bottom margins (shows background color) now possible within the 100% height.
• It's FREE.

Using ToolStrip to Create a Custom Title Bar

[via Windows Forms Documentation Updates Blog]

Jay Allen talks about using the ToolStrip to create a custom title bar when you have a custom form that you want to hide the default title bar and use your own.

Mark Gabbara posts about enumerating the WCF bindings listed in configuration

Mark Gabbara answers these WCF questions with the following scenarios:

1.     Enumerate all of the bindings available to my app

2.     Enumerate all of the configured bindings available to my app

3.     Enumerate all of the configured endpoints exposed by a service

4.     Enumerate all of the configured client endpoints available to my app

Moving a Type from one assembly to another (TypeForwardTo Attribute)

[via Irena Kennedy’s Blog]

<snip>

Do you remember the old TreatAs registry setting for COM classes?  If you want a quick refresher, check out http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/com/html/1d7a1677-738a-4258-9afc-e77bd0dcf40f.asp.

 

Well, TypeForwardedTo attribute is kind of like that… You use the TypeForwardedToAttribute attribute to move a type from one assembly to another without disrupting callers that compiled against the old assembly.  This allows you to reorganize your libraries without breaking compatibility with applications using them.

 

Bill Bozeman has a good explanation of it with a code sample at http://www.bozemanblog.com/PermaLink,guid,2e6d7675-eb43-438f-8b93-9155ca1712fa.aspx.

 

To summarize the steps, here is what you need to do:

1. Create a new assembly
2. Move the class from the old assembly to the new.  Make sure to keep same namespace.
3. Remove the class from the old assembly.
4. In the old assembly, add a reference to the new assembly.
5. Add [assembly: TypeForwardedTo(typeof(YourClassName))] to the old assembly
6. Recompile and redeploy both assemblies

 

References: 

http://notgartner.com/posts/2955.aspx

http://www.bozemanblog.com/PermaLink,guid,2e6d7675-eb43-438f-8b93-9155ca1712fa.aspx

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.runtime.compilerservices.typeforwardedtoattribute.aspx

 

</snip>

Kirk Allen Evans talks about Dynamically Invoking a Web Service

Kirk has a post that talks about different ways of dynamically invoking a web service. 

He also mentions a tool called Web Service Studio.  This GotDotNet tool is very nice for testing Web Services but they have removed (or never posted) the source for it.  The last release was back in 2003 and their have been several bugs found, especially when trying to use it with .NET 2.0 stuff.  I hope whoever at Microsoft wrote and released this will come out with a newer version or just release the source code for it and let the community do it…

Updated 101 Samples using Visual Studio 2005 Now Available

[via Dan Fernandez’s Blog]

Lots of good stuff you can download from here.

Base Class Libraries

• Changing ACL (Access Control Lists) on files
• Console Enhancements including buffer control, simple animations and colors
• Downloading files using FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
• Network Programming including PING, UDP, and TCP network statistics
• Using the new Stopwatch class to measure time
• Compressing and decompressing files in the GZip format
• Retrieving Drive Information
• Using Generic Collections
• Creating Regular Expressions to parse text 
• Building a tracing infrastructure to track errors and application performance
• Controlling cache policies with the new System.Net.Cache namespace
• Creating a process viewer
• Creating a Windows service manager
• Using the data protection API
• Encrypting and decrypting data
• Using platform invoke to access legacy or unmanaged code from within managed code  
• Building in support for localization
• Using the NGEN utility
• Using the new SecureString class
• Using new socket class methods
• Using serial ports with the new Port class
• Working with the file system
• Working with threads to manage multiple tasks simultaneously
• Building a simple web server with HTTPListener 

Data Access Samples

• Asynchronous Queries
• Attaching a database with your application
• Creating and using User Defined Types with SQL Server 2005
• DataReader vs. DataSet comparision
• DataSet and DataTable Enhancements
• Performing Batch Updates and Data Paging
• Performing Bulk Updates
• Reading and Writing Images from a Database  
• Using Factory Classes
• Using Managed Stored Procedures and User Defined Functions with SQL Server 2005
• Using Multiple Active Result Sets with SQL Server 2005
• Using Notifications with SQL Server 2005
• Using the XML data type with SQL Server 2005
• XPath and XSLT Transformations Enhancements

Web Development Samples

• Using SQLCacheDependency for caching
• DataBinding using the ObjectDataSource, SqlDataSource, and XmlDataSource objects
• Create a Master/Details view using the DataGridView and DetailsView controls
• Basic Master Pages, Nested Master Pages, and Browser-specific Master Pages
• Using the new membership controls including the LoginStatus, LoginName,
• LoginView, CreateUserWizard controls 
• Using the Menu and SiteMapPath controls
• Using Profiles to store user properties
• Using the Membership and Roles API for custom roles
• Using the TreeView control dynamically and responding to TreeView events
• Creating a custom portal 

Visual Studio Tools for Office

• Creating custom menus in Outlook
• Creating smart tags in documents
• Creating custom toolbars
• Data islands and caching
• Integrating Windows forms into Outlook
• Using bookmarks in Word
• Using managed controls in Excel
• Using VBA and VSTO together 
• Working with charts in Excel
• Working with contacts and tasks in Outlook
• Working with InfoPath 2003
• Working with named ranges in Excel
• Working with the In Box
• Working with XML in Excel
• Working with XML in Word
• Using the List object 

Tablet PC

• Utilizing the back of pen erase feature
• Creating a content enabled form
• Working with drawing attributes
• Enabling gestures 
• An ink-enabled text box
• Creating power aware applications
• Simple text recognition
• Speech recognition 

Compact Framework Samples

• Creating a setup CAB
• Creating a data-centric application
• Creating a data-centric application (part 2)
• Using the date/time picker feature in the month calendar
• Document list
• Embedded resources
• Handling the screen orientation
• Handling the hardware button screen orientation
• Help and notifications
• Registry sample
• Creating a SQL CE result set
• Using Microsoft Message Queue (MSMQ)
• Web browser sample 

Copy Text from MessageBox

[via secretGeek]

Hit Ctrl-C, and the following will be copied to your clipboard:

---------------------------
How to Copy from a messagebox
---------------------------
This messagebox contains a long message which
we don't want to retype. Typing is for idiots.

An amazing thing Atli taught me is that you
can use Ctrl-C to copy a message from a
messagebox.
How undiscoverable is that??
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------