Vijay Kodali's Blog

Asp.Net Security ebook

2011-12-30T01:05:00Z

If you want to read one book about Asp.Net security, read OWASP Top 10 for .NET developer by Troy Hunt

There’s a harsh reality web application developers need to face up to; we don’t do security very well. A report from WhiteHat Security last year reported “83% of websites have had a high, critical or urgent issue”. That is, quite simply, a staggeringly high number and it’s only once you start to delve into to depths of web security that you begin to understand just how easy it is to inadvertently produce vulnerable code.

Visual Studio 2010 running very slow?

2011-01-24T20:25:00Z

Here is couple of things to check to improve performance of visual studio 2010

If you are using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate and Windows7: Disable Intellitrace (Tools ->Options->Intellitrace)

If you are using Windows XP, Visual Studio 2010 runs faster when the Windows Automation API 3.0 is installed

Applications that use Windows Automation APIs can significantly decrease Microsoft Visual Studio IntelliSense performance if Windows Automation API 3.0 is not installed. For example, the Windows pen and touch services can significantly decrease Visual Studio IntelliSense performance if Windows Automation API 3.0 is not installed. This update is available as a stand-alone download for 32-bit editions of Windows XP and for Windows Server 2003. The Windows Automation API is a component of the platform update for Windows Vista and of the platform update for Windows Server 2008.

Logo for HTML5

2011-01-18T17:46:00Z

The World Wide Web Consortium (WC3) today introduced a new logo for HTML5, which it hopes will help promote the emerging Web standard.

What’s HTML5?
HTML5 is the next major revision of the HTML standard for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. HTML5 adds new elements for things like sections of a document and articles, and figures and captions for figures.

Why HTML5?
Web Developers are commonly asked to create applications which stream videos, display fluid animations, play music etc. In many cases if one wanted to achieve all of these things you had to leverage on a number of different technologies like Flash, Silverlight, etc. This requirement to learn new languages and plug-in can increase the development time. HTML5 changes this – with support for high-quality animation, video and audio embedding as well as many other types of rich content.
There are a few exciting new elements in HTML 5:

<canvas> - an element to give you a drawing space in JavaScript on your Web pages. It can let you add images or graphs to tool tips or just create dyanmic graphs on your Web pages, built on the fly.
<video> - add video to your Web pages with this simple tag.
<audio> - add sound to your Web pages with this simple tag.

Here's a full list of new HTML5 features http://webdesign.about.com/od/html5/a/html_5_whats_new.htm

Browser support for HTML5:

Each browser has its own rules and characteristics and each one is adopting HTML5 at its own rate. Here is a good browser compatibility chart for HTML5 (From http://www.focus.com/images/view/11905/ )

Another comparsion: http://www.findmebyip.com/litmus/

HTML5 Support in Visual Studio 2010:

Install this tool from Microsoft Gallery for HTML 5 Intellisense

http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/d771cbc8-d60a-40b0-a1d8-f19fc393127d

Alert user when their session is about to expire

2010-05-21T14:07:00Z

Note: Cross posted from Vijay Kodali's Blog.
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Here is a quick and dirty trick to alert users on session timeout. This is not a perfect solution. But it will give reader an idea to work on...

Some facts before we start:

Session doesn't end

When the user closes his browser
When the user navigates away from your page
When user connection lost.

Session ends, when the server hasn't gotten a request from the user in a specific time (Session timeout value)....Permalink

Asp.net session on browser close

2010-04-30T01:40:37Z

Note: Cross posted from Vijay Kodali's Blog.
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How to capture logoff time when user closes browser?

How to end user session when browser closed?

These are some of the frequently asked questions in asp.net forums.

In this post I'll show you how to do this when you're building an ASP.NET web application.

Before we start, one fact:

There is no full-proof technique to catch the browser close event for 100% of time. The trouble lies in the stateless nature of HTTP. The Web server is out of the picture as soon as it finishes sending the page content to the client. After that, all you can rely on is a client side script. Unfortunately, there is no reliable client side event for browser close.

Solution:

The first thing you need to do is create the web service. I've added web service and named it AsynchronousSave.asmx.

Make this web service accessible from Script, by setting class qualified with the ScriptServiceAttribute attribute...

Add a method (SaveLogOffTime) marked with [WebMethod] attribute. This method simply accepts UserId as a string variable and writes that value and logoff time to text file. But you can pass as many variables as required. You can then use this information for many purposes.

To end user session, you can just call Session.Abandon() in the above web method.

To enable web service to be called from page’s client side code, add script manager to page. Here i am adding to SessionTest.aspx page

When the user closes the browser, onbeforeunload event fires on the client side. Our final step is adding a java script function to that event, which makes web service calls. The code is simple but effective

My Code

HTML:( SessionTest.aspx )

C#:( SessionTest.aspx.cs )

That’s’ it. Run the application and after browser close, open the text file to see the log off time.

The above code works well in IE 7/8. If you have any questions, leave a comment.

Free Certification Exams for Visual Studio 2010

2010-03-18T16:42:00Z

Get promotional codes from here

http://blogs.msdn.com/gerryo/archive/2010/03/17/register-for-visual-studio-2010-beta-exams.aspx You don’t have to pay anything to take these exams. These are 100% free. If you pass the exam, you earn the certification just the same as if you took it in a non-beta environment. From Gerry O'Brien’s blog...

2) Is this a real exam? – Yes it is. Even though the questions are not scored at the time you take the exam, they are real questions and the exam is real. If you pass the exam, you earn the certification just the same as if you took it in a non-beta environment. This means you don’t get a pass/fail or score immediately following the exam, but you do get notified 8 to 10 weeks later because we move slow in getting the final scoring in place.

4) What is the main difference between a beta and non-beta exam, besides cost? – The beta exam will show you questions that have not been through a final QA check. You are that final QA check. Non-beta exams expose you to 40 or 45 questions and you have a total of two hours to complete it. The beta exam could expose you to as many as 125 to 150 questions and take up to four hours.

Following exams are for Asp.Net developers

Visual Studio 2008 short cuts

2010-03-04T22:26:00Z

Note: Cross posted from Vijay Kodali's Blog.
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I know there are many posts dedicated to this topic. For example, Sara Ford posted about 290 shortcuts on her blog. Check Zain Naboulsi blog for VS 2010 tips.

But it’s almost impossible to use all of them on daily basis. And further most of them are really not that useful. Here are 10 of my favorite Visual Studio keyboard shortcuts, ones I use most.. Permalink

Auto save Asp.net form values Asynchronously

2009-12-10T05:14:00Z

Note: Cross posted from Vijay Kodali's Blog.
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In this article, I will explain how to save Asp.Net page values asynchronously (aka Gmail style of saving mail drafts).

Introduction:

In the past, Web applications were known for having less usable, less responsive user interfaces. AJAX changed all of that. The application can work asynchronously and the user doesn't have to sit and wait for pages to refresh. : ...