Community Blogs

30,055 participants contributed to the "A LIST APART" survey of people who are building the web (developers, designers, etc.). Topics covered include things like, education, compensation, experience, age, ethnicity, vacation days, etc. My favorite statistic, 13.8% of us have had a blog or personal site/blog for over a decade. What stood out to you? Read More...

Help me spend my gift cards wisely and you can keep what I buy. You pick them out. I buy them. I read them. I mail them to you--free of charge. The rules are: The book(s) must be available from http://borders.com The book can be technical, fiction, audio, non-fiction, sci-fi, whatever, but it needs to be something I haven't read or don't already own. I will buy the most interesting recommendations first until my gift cards are spent, so sell me on why I should pick your recommendation. No reference books. Movies are okay, but picking a good movie that I haven't seen or don't own will be tough. If I pick your book, I'll email you to get your shipping info.  After I read your book, I'll send it to you or someone else...

In my TechNet Flash this morning I see this section: Download the New Microsoft Web Platform Installer The Microsoft Web Platform Installer lets you create a Web platform on your server. The Microsoft Web Platform is a reliable, high-performance Web stack that is capable of hosting both ASP.NET and PHP applications on a single server, and can scale to run the largest sites on the Web. Question #1: "What is the Microsoft Web Platform?" Question #2: "Why does it need an installer?" Question #3: "How is it different that what I currently use to host my websites?" So I did some reading... Answer #1: The "Microsoft Web Platform" is nothing more than the collection of Microsoft products that might typically...

I frequently use the RSSToolkit to consume and display RSS feeds from other blogs.  Recently, I've noticed problems with the RSSToolkit not being able to display feed from some external sources.  In particular, I've been having trouble consuming feeds from external blogs like Blogspot and Feedburner.  The symptoms appeared over the past month or two and included the disappearance of consumed blogs and new blog posts. After some digging, I found this entry on Obishan's blog that gave me a clue. Using Web-Sniffer , I was able to verify that if no UserAgent was provided for the request, the request was redirected (302).  This redirection seems to the source of my problems with the RSSToolkit and I'm not the only...

Recently, I blogged about my favorite file upload technique for web applications --the free flash/JavaScript-based SWFUpload . While this library is not the perfect solution for all circumstances, it certainly provides a very nice user experience and is worth seeing if it matches your project's requirements. I have a project I'm working on that needs a graceful file upload process. The environment is compatible with the flash/JavaScript requirements so I made myself a .NET control for the library. The control contains all the necessary JavaScript and you can set the properties (allowed file types, file size, etc.) just like a normal control so you don't have to mess with any of the scripting. The features of this control include...

I love multiple monitors. I made everyone at work start using multiple monitors last year. At first they were afraid...they were petrified...but now they don't like working at home if they only have one monitor. If you're looking to justify multiple monitors in your organization, here's a report outlining some productivity research regarding monitor size, aspect ratio, and multiple displays. Okay, so don't be surprised that display company (NEC) found that larger and more displays improves productivity, but it would appear there is a limit to productivity gains. What's your optimal layout? Check out the report and see for yourself: Productivity Research: A comparison of Single and Dual Traditional Aspect Displays with a Widescreen...

I recently happened upon this intriguing little API that provides a nice interface for displaying events on a timeline. It was pretty easy to get my head around it and it's pretty easy to setup and use. It's got a Google Maps-like scrolling interface that is very intuitive. If you're not sure what a timeline looks like, you might want to jump straight to an example before continuing. I've don't really like the standard options for browsing a blogs history which typically looks like this: January (10) February (5) March (11) ... Kind of boring, right? So, as a proof of concept, I created a little test project to see what an RSS feed would look like in a timeline. Here's what it looks like for a busy RSS feed like Techmeme...

Apparently not much. According to the product pricing page , all you need is "Any other developer tool". Here is the full eligibility statement found at the bottom of this page : Upgrade Pricing Eligibility To qualify for upgrade pricing, you must be a licensed user of one of the following products: An earlier version of Microsoft Visual Studio Any other developer tool The free Visual Web Developer 2008 Express edition binds you to a license and is a developer tool. Hmmm...seems to qualify. Can anyone confirm/debunk this assumption? How about Dreamweaver or my dusty copy of FrontPage 97? Any Netscape Composer 4.0 users still out there? Read More...

Recently, Joe Stagner created some videos and talked about 4 upload scenarios that provide an AJAX-like file upload experience. I've used or looked at all of those options at least once or twice in the past, but they were never quite what I wanted. I wanted something sleek and sexy. Something that really popped. The file upload tool that is my new best friend is SWFUpload . SWFUpload is a JavaScript/Flash library that degrades to a plain old upload control if there are compatibility problem. It's truly a thing of beauty. The SWFUpload online demos really don't do it justice as far as demonstrating how pretty you can make it look with a little CSS. Not that I'm the world's greatest designer, but here's an action screen...

This MS Word Document flyer sums it up, but it looks like Verio is providing free web hosting for members of Microsoft User Groups through January 2010. These are regional groups that regularly meet and are a great resource if you have one near you. The hosting plan is a little limited (100mb disk space + 20mb SQL), but for the price of $FREE it's more than generous. To get signed up, find yourself a User Group to join and attend the next meeting. At the meeting ask for the form, fill it out, and send it to your User Group leader. Read More...