June 2004 - Posts

Managed Shell Extensions
30 June 04 08:53 AM | despos | 3 comment(s)

Shell extensions with .NET Framework are definitely possible. Maybe a bit boring. See a (working) example here from TheServerSide.NET.

 

Raw Data vs. Smart Data
18 June 04 05:32 PM | despos | 1 comment(s)
Great article from Rocky Lhotka on DataTable in ADO.NET 2.0. But not just that. Rocky puts things into their perspective. And help you grab the big picture.
XWall what?
16 June 04 05:59 PM | despos | with no comments

Do you know more about a product named XWall? It is a sort of smart firewall sold as an add-on for ISA Server. It's interesting because it allows to build an authentication/authorization layer around Web services in a non-intrusive way. (No code required; no change to Web services)

Are you aware of uses in a SOA/.NET enterprise scenario? Can you share similar experiences?

Popup Windows
15 June 04 04:27 PM | despos | 33 comment(s)

I presume we all hate popup windows, especially when popup windows carry advertising banners. However, popups are just a development resource, perfectly legal, not worse than others, perfectly functional. As long as yuo fill it with useful information.

What do you think of modal(ess) popups? Are you using popups in your Web apps? To do what? How frequently. Share your experience.

No Beta Yet
15 June 04 04:24 PM | despos | with no comments

Commenting a previous post, Andy pointed out a questionable expression I use in my latest article for the ASP.NET DevCenter.

Speaking of ASP.NET Whidbey I state that a beta is available NOW. This is false. Period. A beta is due out in the next few weeks, presumably in July. My hope is that MS delivers it to eagerly waiting devs at TechED Europe. As of today, the latest available build I'm aware of is the Community Tech Preview May 04.

Why did I use the word beta in the article? Because I assumed that the article wouldn't go online for quite some time until July. When the beta should be available.

However, I think the delta between CTPs and the official Beta 1 is pretty slim. My estimation is for a 5% of changes. Plus documentation and a bit of speed.

Ready for ASP.NET 2.0? Do it, Then
10 June 04 11:48 AM | despos | 3 comment(s)

Just back home after a couple of days of training/consulting on how to prepare existing apps to Whidbey. If only  I had read this from Kent Sharkey's blog: <g>

No, I'm no planning a vacation -- this is for those who are planning on upgrading to Whidbey (aka Visual Studio 2005, aka ASP.NET 2.0, etc.)

Rearchitecting your Web applications for ASP.NET 2.0

PS: I'm planning a vacation, instead! It's for the week before European TechED. Yeah, so I can look sunburnt and relaxed on the stage while speaking about new wonders in ADO.NET 2.0 and how to design a threat model for secure Web apps.

 

 

CompactFormatter
10 June 04 11:36 AM | despos | 2 comment(s)

I believe I've found this free component mentioned somewhere in the blogsphere. CompactFormatter is a serializer that compacts the array of bytes that form the streamlined version of a component. It can be an interesting fit to solve the problem of DataSet serialization in remoting scenarios.

In 2.0, the new RemotingFormat property fixes that even better; but that's just .NET 2.0.

Source.axd Reloaded
10 June 04 11:31 AM | despos | 4 comment(s)

It looks like there are a lot of people needing, or just wanting, to access the source code of ASPX files over the local host. The real reason I asked for that has to do with an upcoming aspnetPRO article, where I originally planned to show just that example. I do realize now that I need to think of another example to provide something hopefully useful to most people :-)

Speaking of HTTP handlers (which incidentally is the unsaid topic of that article), I'm more and more pleased with the number of small things you can do with them. And like to congratulate Scott Mitchell for his MSDN article that is already mentioned in the first draft of the article. (Thanks Scott for your post.)

In particular, I love the trick that Scott discusses to add more cross-link protection to images you show off your site.

PS: Instead of just implementing source.axd to show the ASPX source, what if I modify that to show the C# or VB code that ASP.NET creates in debug mode? Any better thoughts? Vote ends today.

 

 

Get the best out of bad job interviews
07 June 04 11:10 AM | despos | 1 comment(s)
This is a pretty interesting thread on job interviews. From Roy Osherove.
Source.axd
07 June 04 11:02 AM | despos | 6 comment(s)

How useful is for you being able to access a readonly copy of the ASPX source via Web? Something like this:

http://localhost/App/SOURCE.AXD/page.aspx 

Of course only through localhost :-)

 

 

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