Jeff Key : Development

Win friends and influence your team

jeffreykey — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 15:43:00 GMT

Do you know where your data is? If you've been involved with software at any point in the past two decades, chances are it's in a database. It would seem silly to put data, especially frequently changing data, into code.

How about those business rules? Business rule engines haven't been around as long as databases, but times are a-changin'. Imagine a world where the folks that come up with the rules can enter them, test them and even deploy them without having the development team so much as lift a finger. Costs are signifigantly lowered, deadlines are met, everyone gets bonuses and is promoted to figurehead VP positions.

Interested? Please stop by and check out our webcast next week:

Rules for Enterprise Agility: Webcast, March 15th, 11am CT
IT architects, application developers, business analysts and process owners will learn about best practices for rules-oriented architecture and application development, and how business rule engines can provide substantial benefits in consistent decision making, increased revenue and decreased operating costs.
Featured speakers include industry analyst and veteran application development expert Dr. Adrian Bowles, and Larry Buettner, CIO of Wheels, Inc. and a member of ComputerWorld’s 2006 list of Premier 100 IT Leaders.More information: http://www.inrule.com/Event_Info.aspx

Snippet Compiler update

jeffreykey — Sun, 29 Jan 2006 17:20:00 GMT

I've uploaded a minor update to Snippet Compiler. I also put up an Add-Ins page with the following samples:

Web References
Folder Browser
Settings ToolBar
Snippet Repository

Required reading

jeffreykey — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 04:17:00 GMT

You'll probably have a few extra minutes on your hands while waiting for VS Express to download. Do yourself another favor and check out the breaking changes in .NET Framework 2.0 [BradA]. The list is pretty small, considering the breadth of the framework, but you'll probably find a favorite in there.

Grab an extra copy for your back pocket/purse

jeffreykey — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 03:43:00 GMT

It's old news that the Visual Studio Express Editions are out, and free for a year. You, with your fancy MSDN subscription, probably looked right over this good bit of news. I don't know how many times I've needed VS while away from my computer, but didn't have the time to download the 3+ gig image and install it.

Do yourself a favor and grab the CD images right now, burn them to disc and throw them in your bag. Each image includes:

C# or VB or J# or C++ or "Web"
SQL Server Express
.NET Framework 2.0
MSDN Express

Good stuff.

Yes, it does mean everything

jeffreykey — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 06:08:00 GMT

While doing my first ASP.NET 2.0 "publish" tonight I was presented with the following dialog box:

Assuming that apps delete as few items as possible, I assumed that "existing files" meant files that matched those that were being copied. I was wrong. It does indeed delete everything.

I've salvaged most of the site from local copies, but most of the images that I've posted to the blog (that aren't app-related) were lost. Nothing drastic, but it is kind of funny that the one thing I've never backed up was lost.

Moral of the story: Don't be a dope.

MessageDialog

jeffreykey — Wed, 02 Mar 2005 02:30:00 GMT

This has been sitting on my hard drive for a while, so I threw it up on the website.

ReSharper Appreciation Day

jeffreykey — Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:40:00 GMT

Honestly, every day is ReSharper Appreciation Day, but I appreciate it most when I can't use it. I feel physically ill. I'm not kidding. I can't think of a single product that's ever made me so productive[1]. Trying to get anything done without it is like running backward through mud with my hands tied behind my back while balancing a school bus on my nose. Awful.

I get giddy like a schoolgirl with a new dolly when I get to share the my joy with someone that hasn't used it yet. Even people that usually have the "just give me VS and leave me alone" attitude (including me) love it. It's so many things to so many people. It's everything to me.

ReSharper is so great that the Delfonics wrote a record for it. Dy-no-mite!

[1] I do mean product, not technology. .NET still holds the extra-special place in my heart

Favorite Windows Forms 2.0 Feature of the Day: Improved ListView

jeffreykey — Fri, 28 Jan 2005 06:49:00 GMT

So much has been released about everything .NET 2.0 in the past year and a half that stumbling upon something new is the exception, not the rule. Such was the case for a me and some new ListView features, both available only to XP and 2003: Grouping and Tiles. If you've ever used Windows Explorer you probably know what these are, but I'm going to include a screen shot anyway because it's more fun to see them in action in a .NET app. Easy!

Favorite C# 2.0 feature of the day: Anonymous Methods

jeffreykey — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 03:02:00 GMT

I haven't done anything particularly interesting with anonymous methods yet, but the simple fact that they reduce clutter in Windows Forms makes me one happy camper. Consider the following bit of code, something which you've probably seen a thousand times:

And now, the same thing (effectively) using an anonymous method:

You can define all of your event handlers inline in a single method, if you choose, and forward any calls to appropriately named methods.

Writing requirements and specifications for class libraries

jeffreykey — Wed, 26 Jan 2005 16:16:00 GMT

Does anyone have a favorite book, paper, blogger, whatever on these topics? We have experience writing these things at the application level and that's what most literature focuses on. We've going at it for a while but would like a fresh perspective that really focuses on things at a more granular level.

Thanks!

Favorite Visual Studio 2005 (documentation) feature of the day

jeffreykey — Wed, 26 Jan 2005 00:06:00 GMT

I spend a lot of time in the MSDN docs, and something that's always frustrated me is that you/re always returned to the top of a page when you press the back arrow.

No more! This is great news.

Escaping the VS 2005 Standard November CTP cycle of death

jeffreykey — Tue, 25 Jan 2005 01:36:00 GMT

Seems like that VS 2005 Standard November CTP gets in a funky state once a day and refuses to load. Immediately after launching I get the error below.

To fix this, launch the VS Command Line and run "devenv /resetsettings".

Favorite Visual Studio 2005 feature of the day

jeffreykey — Sat, 22 Jan 2005 04:34:00 GMT

I've had a lousy week, so I thought I'd spend a bit of time in VS 2005 to boost my spirits[1]. I haven't done much in it since the early CTPs, and things have come a long way. I'm incredibly happy to see that a number of improvements center around simple time-savers. One of the first ones I ran into was this:

Context menus on controls in the designer list all of their ancestors.

Can I get a "heck yea"?

Clicking on ancestor controls can be a real pain sometimes. The property browser's dropdown is helpful, but you need to have good names, otherwise you need to figure out if you're looking for "groupBox8" or "groupBox12". The context menu below is for a TextBox in groupBox3, which is in Panel2 of bottomSplitter and so on.

[1] To cap it off, I had a rather lengthy widom teeth pulling session today and the painkillers they gave me are only killing the pain. What's up with that?

Accessibility Domains and you

jeffreykey — Sat, 15 Jan 2005 18:54:00 GMT

Sometimes I forget nested type accessibility rules (can containing classes access private members of the nested types?). I recently stumbled upon a nice reference:

C# Language Specs: 3.5.2 Accessibility domains

Included is a great little example at the bottom that serves as a nice quick reference:

In the example
public class A
{
 public static int X;
 internal static int Y;
 private static int Z;
}
internal class B
{
 public static int X;
 internal static int Y;
 private static int Z;
 
 public class C
 {
 public static int X;
 internal static int Y;
 private static int Z;
 }

 private class D
 {
 public static int X;
 internal static int Y;
 private static int Z;
 }
}
the classes and members have the following accessibility domains:

The accessibility domain of A and A.X is unlimited.
The accessibility domain of A.Y, B, B.X, B.Y, B.C, B.C.X, and B.C.Y is the program text of the containing program.
The accessibility domain of A.Z is the program text of A.
The accessibility domain of B.Z and B.D is the program text of B, including the program text of B.C and B.D.
The accessibility domain of B.D.X and B.D.Y is the program text of B, including the program text of B.C and B.D.
The accessibility domain of B.D.Z is the program text of B.D.

Deprecated HTML

jeffreykey — Tue, 30 Nov 2004 00:12:00 GMT

It's been a while since I've done much HTML work, but I had no idea that I'd missed the boat. Apparently a good chunk of HTML elements and attributes have been deprecated.

This is fine by me, as I'm taking a few minutes to learn hard-core CSS (goodbye, tables!), but the few of you that don't need to support Navigator 2.x anymore may want to check out the following link.

Good riddance, width attribute when used in an hr, pre, td or th tag!

Deprecated HTML tags and alternatives