Archives
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First draft of Charting Component Guide completed
Last night I finished up the first draft of the How-To-Select Guide for .NET Charting Components. Wow, that was a lot of work. I knew that there were a lot of charting vendors out there but didn't realize how much work it would take to compile a profile and review the products of each one. What's really scary is that for this edition of the Guide, we probably only included one-half to one-third of all the vendors out there. Some we included are open source and I was actually surprised at the quality of them. Others like Dundas, Telerik, Nevron, ComponentOne, Infragistics, etc. just blew me away with the breadth of charts they could create. Truly amazing.
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CodeHeads
I haven't even finished watching Billy Hollis' GrokTalk but I've gotta link to it. Not only does it provide a good dose of comic relief but it drives homes an important point. There are a number of interesting videos there actually. I just watched Jon Goodyear's talk on Master Pages, too.
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foO got jacked
Honestly, I found it pretty funny when I first read about it. But, I'd probably be pretty upset too if someone jacked a lot of hard work I had done and called it their own.
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DevCampus - status update
I figure there might actually be 1 or 2 readers of my blog that care how I'm coming on my website project 'DevCampus'. It's also good for me to write about my progress so I can evaluate where I'm at in my mind. Since the only time I really have to work on it is weeknights after work and weekends I was having to take a lot of time usually spent doing other things and work on the website instead. I soon realized that totally neglecting certain things couldn't continue so I've had to moderate my time spent on it. I've made really good progress on the admin tools and the behind-the-scenes stuff that only DevCampus authors/admins/helpers will ever see but still, stuff that had to be built. I've also been brainstorming as I go and have come up with some really cool ideas for the site. I'll discuss them more when the site is closer to being ready. Since I've taken on writing a couple of How-To-Select Guides for Xtras that's taken up a fair amount of "after hours" time, too. It doesn't help that this past weekend was spent driving down to SoCal and back for a wedding (but I gladly did so...I wanted to be there). Since about half of July will be taken up with vacation and other work it looks like I'll resume DevCampus work around mid-July. I'm hoping to launch the site before the end of the year though so, I've really gotta bust my hump. Once the first "beta" version of the site is ready - I'll invite (by invitation only) people to test drive it for me so if you'd be interested in doing something like that, ping me.
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What do you look for in O/R Mappers for .NET?
I figured I might as well write another feedback gathering post for O/R Mappers for .NET while I'm at it. Once the first draft of my .NET Charting Component guide goes off to the editor I'll start focusing on the O/R Mapper for .NET Guide. So - any experiences evaluating O/R Mappers for .NET and what features sold you on one in particular (if that was the case). I know that asking questions similar to "which O/R Mapper is best" often ignite religious debates in some comment threads so if you can please - keep from turning comments here into that. I'm looking for objective opinions and opinions backed with actual experience.
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What do you look for in .NET Charting Components?
As some of you might remember hearing, I'm writing a How-To-Select Guide on .NET Charting Components. My first draft deadline is approaching fast - this Wednesday actually. I've written most of the content but I thought maybe I could collect some valuble feedback here on my blog also since the primary readership is developers.
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Crappiest Job(s) ever
Since Rory started the whole thing (ya...ya...blame stuff on Rory...I can get used to doing that) I thought I'd chime in on the whole "crappy jobs" thing not only to let younger readers know that their lives aren't doomed if they're in a job like what I mention. Also - I'm on a mission to help Rory turn this into one of those chain-blog posting things. Just kidding. I hate those things. I'm ashamed that I'm even writing this right now. Chris did it too though, so I'll put the blame on him if Rory denies responsibility.
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GMail coming out of Beta?
I just noticed today that rather than the previously standard http://gmail.google.com/gmail I'm now being redirected to http://mail.google.com/mail/.
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Browser Keyboard shortcuts
Whenever I work with other technical people - whether they're developers or not - I'm sometimes surprised at home much they rely on the mouse. As most developers have already come to realize, mastering the keyboard allows you to work much faster. I'm not just talking about stuff like using the tab key to move through input controls on a form or web page, I'm talking about stuff that's helpful for things you do almost every time you open a web browser. It's been a long time since I learned these shortcuts (probably 5+ years) so I thought everybody knew them by now. For those that don't, here's a quick run-down of the more useful ones. As far as I'm aware, these work in both IE and Firefox:
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A CSS Headache: Message for the IE 7 team
To those working on IE 7 - could you make sure you fix the CSS rendering issue with this:
.class-name
{
border-color: Transparent;
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ASP.NET Hosting and Bad Hosts
As I keep progressing on development of DevCampus, occasionally I get sidetracked thinking about having to choose a hosting company. Right now a friend of mine has been gracious enough to loan me an IP address and some space on a server of his that's hosted by MaximumASP. However, I think (or I should say I hope) after DevCampus has been around for a while it's going to be chewing through a lot of bandwidth and become a burden to the other sites that might share the box with me. So, as I come across sites with the .aspx extension I check around to see if they mention who their host is.
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CodeZone
I don't know how many people that didn't attend TechEd last week heard about the launch of the CodeZone website. I registered on it and have been visiting about once a day and so far I like it. At first glance I thought maybe it was a new and improved "2.0" version of CodeWise but I was way off. It's much more than just a collection of what communities are out there. I like the design, too. If anyone that had a hand in designing it reads this, could you tell me if it was designed using asp.net 2.0 and Web Parts?
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How-To-Select Guides - A Great Idea
Some of you have probably seen some mentions recently of Xtras new How-To-Select Guides popping up here and there. Well, here's another one. I believe these guides are going to be really useful, to developers or anyone else that has to go figure out which components have the features they require for their software. I know I've had to do it on several occasions in my career. It seems like just as you've settled on which component you are going to go with, you buy it, ....and then discover a component that would have been better suited for the job. These guides should help keep that from happening to you. I can't think of anyone better suited to run something like this than a company like Xtras, either.
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Tuesday morning TechEd Keynote Video?
Does anyone know where a copy of Paul Flessner's tuesday morning keynote at TechEd 2005 can be found? I didn't catch the whole thing and wanted to see them unveil "The Finalizer" but I can't find a link to an archive or on-demand webcast of the presentation anywhere. Anybody know? I've checked all of the TechEd 2005 websites and it wasn't on any of them, either.
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Want to speed up your MSDN Downloads?
If you're an MSDN subscriber and have ever tried to download a huge set of files, I'm sure you know how long it can take when you're only getting about 25kbps speed from Microsoft's MSDN Subscriber Downloads. The problem is, you may be hitting a non-US mirror site. So, here's a way to speed things up a bit.
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SQL Bugger
This feels like a lame way to reach 100 posts but I'm kinda stumped at the moment and figured maybe someone that reads this will be enough of a SQL Wizard to help.
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Another article got published & DevCampus coming along
I guess this a two-subject post. Hopefully I'll start having more to blog about.