July 2003 - Posts

• re: Master Pages.

  My earlier post about this cool new tech in .Net "Whidbey" generated some good comments ( okay, 2 comments but they both were great.). From chadb ( no linky ) I suppose you've seen this? http://www.asp.net/ControlGallery/ControlDetail.aspx?control=385&tabindex=2 Nope I had not so thanks for that link. From Mark Wilson-Thomas ( also no linky ) If you want to check out a simple master pages style implementation on today's framework, check out this sample by paul tallett: http://www.gotdotnet.com/Community/UserSamples/Details.aspx?SampleGuid=27157AEF-7A64-466A-98F6-D93AF78C1547 I had seen this one but had not had time to look into further and then promptly forgot about this. Thanks guys and for you three that read this mess I write, I'll post some more about them when I have time. Posted Jul 31 2003, 07:13 PM by jtucker with 1 comment(s)

• SqlJunkies...

  Spread the word.. Donny Mack says: For those of you who don't know, yes we're in the process of starting a new site named SqlJunkies - We are a couple months out but we wanted to get our blogs going ASAP for there is a lack of them in our community. So here we go: http://sqljunkies.com/WebLog/. We're running the same build of Blogs as DNJ so there are some overlaps because we haven't had time to do our UI and our LOGO isn't finished, but hey we're up and going so don't complain :-) Posted Jul 31 2003, 07:04 PM by jtucker with no comments Filed under: System.Net

• no lie, i was gonna write something like this.. [ot]

  honest. But Anil said it better. Many years of sucking Posted Jul 30 2003, 05:04 PM by jtucker with no comments Filed under: System.Random

• Master Pages.

  Kevin says... Microsoft posted some great info about upcoming releases of the .NET Framework and VS.NET. Some of the questions that the article raises for me:Kevin Dente I'm surprised no one has made mention of the Master Pages item from the roadmap? Check it: Second, Whidbey will include features that ensure consistency and code reuse across pages within a Web site. The introduction of Master Pages will enable developers to quickly share layout across multiple pages by designing templates that specify the location of controls, menu bars, headers, and footers. Similar to visual inheritance in Windows Forms, Master Pages allow other pages on a Web site to inherit from a Master Page, automatically acquiring its look and feel. When a developer wishes to change the layout of all the pages, they need only make updates to the Master Page. This is going to be a great addition to every ASP.Net developers arsenal. Couple that with the new theming and skins that will be in Whidbey and I'm drooling over my keyboard. Now let's dig a little deeper into some of the other cool things that have jumped out at me. ObjectSpaces will hopefully just plain rock my box. I'm eagerly awaiting this feature, along with the new ADO.Net classes that allow me to isolate the code from the data. ObjectSpaces + New abstracted data classes, awesome. I've already have several inhouse projects targeted for this stuff. Posted Jul 29 2003, 04:02 PM by jtucker with 3 comment(s) Filed under: System.Net

• Blog-a-thon

  For those of you that maybe doing the Blog-A-Thon this coming week. milbertus has whipped this little app for you: Since my wife is going to be participating in the Blogathon next weekend, she needed a way to be reminded that she needs to post every 30 minutes. I came up with RepeatingTimer. RepeatingTimer displays a window and/or plays a sound at set intervals after a given starting time. For example, to use this for the Blogathon next weekend, you'd set the start time to 9:00AM EST, and the interval to 30 minutes. Once you set the alert options properly, it will then notify you when it's time to post a new entry. Check out the post here: [Ramblings of a Code Monkey] Posted Jul 21 2003, 10:35 AM by jtucker with no comments

• By way of [Holovaty.com] At work, we recently launched a new standalone weather site, 6newslawrence.com/weather. Photoshop guru and illustrator extraordinaire Dan Cox did the beautiful design work, including the Lawrence-skyline panorama that changes based on the weather forecast; I coded the site into HTML/CSS and did the backend. It's proof (we hope) that relatively complex layouts are possible using CSS techniques that are well-supported right now. Aside from Netscape 4 (which, we decided, wasn't worth supporting), to my knowledge, it renders properly in modern versions of IE, Netscape, Mozilla/Firebird, Opera, Safari and Konqueror. Do let me know if you find rendering errors in your browser. Stuff like this makes me want to learn design stuff. This whole page was done in CSS, no tables, etc, etc. It just looks sweet. [Listening to: sole - i don't rap in bumper stickers - 02 - (2:49)] Posted Jul 15 2003, 05:14 PM by jtucker with 2 comment(s)

• I've come to terms with it...

  * pardon this post, it's just a stream of consciousness* This is the final weekend of a fairly large project I'm working on. So I've been slammed for the past week with changes, bugs, etc. I've not had less then a 13 hour day for the last week. So bloggin' has been out and I'm really afraid to open SharpReader after not doing it for a week ( lets say in 3 days I was upto 1,300 posts ). But all this I've come to a revelation. My life has been ASP before .Net and I was quite good at it ( toot, toot my own horn ). But ASP.Net and the fw definitely have changed the way I code and the way I approach a problem. Try/Catch/Finally is my new best friend. Datagird Items:     use the DataKeys always when doing inline updates     if your gonna use hidden columns: use bound columns; set visible to false; set to readonly. Then you'll be able to do something like: e.Items.Cells(2).Text without worries and with out having to worry about LiteralControls and stuff.. I understand that I'm not the only one that has felt the way about, I just don't want to get all zealot about it, but I've felt very productive this past week. [Listening to: Fell So Hard - The Sun - Promo Only Modern Rock Radio J (2:09)] Posted Jul 13 2003, 03:00 PM by jtucker with no comments

• SharpReader support for <source> is way cool...

  Very Cool.. [Listening to: Meant To Live (Remix) - Switchfoot - Promo Only Modern Rock Radio J (3:17)] Posted Jul 08 2003, 09:36 AM by jtucker with no comments

• SharpReader Integration Edition..

  Luke has updated sharpreader adding, what I think will be a cool feature, searching feedster from within the application. Get it while it's hot. SharpReader 0.9.2 has been released. Changes since 0.9.1.3 are: Feedster integration (Search text-box in toolbar) Technorati integration (Popup-menu or Ctrl-T on Feed or Item) Generate OPML according to spec (added a <head> section) Added support for <source> Added support for <slash:comments> Bugfixes: Closing a maximized window to the systray used to lose the form's size when restored Deleting a feed did not previously update the read/unread counts of the containing category Ctrl-B (BlogThis) without first selecting an item used to throw a NullReferenceException Get it at sharpreader.net. Posted Jul 08 2003, 07:31 AM by jtucker with no comments

• Major Geek

  I got a 44.18146% - Major Geek ranking. I was very surprised that there were no blogging questions in the test though, yet Linux was mentioned a few times. I agree that the test was biased towards the Sci-Fi geek. But to be honest how much of a difference is there between a Sci-Fi geek and a comp geek? 30.76923% - Total Geek http://www.innergeek.us/geek.html Although no geek test should be considered complete without the following questions: 1a. Do you read blogs daily? 1b. Hourly? 1a. Do you post daily? 1c. Hourly? Posted Jul 07 2003, 06:50 PM by jtucker with 1 comment(s)