Archives

Archives / 2003 / September
  • Wedding Day ;-)

    Folks it's my wedding tomorrow, so I would not be able to do any .Net blogging for at least 2 weeks.

  • About the scrolling Datagrid

    Recently I published a nice trick about scrolling the content of a Datagrid and keeping the header visible all the time.

    I am working on one improvement, replacing the htc file by a normal Javascripts script.

    This take some good shape now, and I should be able to publish this code soon.
    Another thing about the tip, is that it doesn't work with SmartNavigation.
    Maybe it will without the htc, I don't know. The other annoyance is the tables look pretty ugly if you don't have any records to show.

  • The Test...

    I did the test like many other, and I'm also surprised, I am part of only 10% of the population, as a Composer  ;-)

    Mom, I knew I was special :-))

  • WebAdmin

    Microsoft all the time amaze me ! They have a very cool utility in MSDN which blowed my mind.

    I couldn't easily admnister some databases locally from my desk because of some firewall setup I put in place.

    I read a blog (sorry I don't remember which one) about a  tool from MS to remotely manage any databases (SQL 2000 or MSDE).

    I couldn't believe it so I tried it and it rocks !

  • ADO.NET Tips & Tricks - Part I

    I don't know if you see this list of tips & tricks from Tim Sneath but it's really good:

    I wait for the second part Tim ;-)

    My comment on this will be about using ordinal with a Datareader. Fine if you don't change the Database structure. But if you are in an early stage the fields definition can change easily, so I prefer to use the fields name rather than their index.
    I like the tbl.Select one, something I never think using it, but I surely will now !

  • Chris Brumme has a competitor ;-)

    Yes it's true, check the blogs from Greg Fee, it's all about security issues, and it's quite damn long and deep post.

    Chris your record for the longest post is going to be a thing of the past.

    Hope for blogs.gotdotnet that they have a good bandwith ;-)

  • Smartscroller control for Datagrid

    Another thing I suggest to do with your Datagrid is to keep the scrolling position after every postback.
    A lot of solutions exist but I found this one very 'clean'.

  • dScribe CMS project: the Status class

    In a good CMS you need to have a good idea about the life of your content through the different steps.

    This is done with a Status attached to the piece of content. So to do so in dScribe, I wrote this class, and I can easily manage from any part of my code the Status properties.

    I am also thinking about Enums for a next version but this one (in VB) works well:

  • Datagrid scrolling

    Update:

    Forget the alternate colors issue in my previous post, it was easy to fix, just change the alternate style in the datagrid by using a color instead of a stylesheet:


    For the Javascript code it should be ok, the only thing is to attach the code to a client side event.

  • Debugger lost his process

    It's happen a couple of times recently. The debugger refused to start, unable to find the process attached to my web project, obviously aspnet_wp.exe.

    Just as an advice for beginners, if you are sure that the Debugging mode was working fro you before, rather than trying to change every settings, just quit your project and ... restart your PC ;-)

    It's often the simplest thing to do, and of course if it's happen again use the Help button on the Error box next time to investigate further your issue.

    I still searching the origin of this (bad) behavior. Not sure about the source, maybe the aspnet process.

  • Cross Browser DHTML libraries

    When you write websites, you are always looking at the same problems, like having your site working with different browsers.
    .Net is good for the job from a server side perspective only.

    I used different libraries for my client side scripts, and recently I found the solutions offered by
    Cross Browser very powerful and up to date.

  • You may have raised a geek family if...

    You may have raised a geek family if… your OLAP DBA wife mistakenly calls a multidenominational church, a multi-dimensional church, and your kids (girls ages 14 and 8) are laughing just as hard as you are over her slip of the tongue.

  • Patch for 'critical' IE vulnerability doesn't work: Experts

    A patch released by Microsoft to fix a critical security vulnerability in Internet Explorer does not work, according to security experts.
    The "object type" vulnerability was discovered by eEye Digital Security around four months ago. A patch was released on 20 August -- and then re-released on 28 August, because under some circumstances it caused problems for some non-default operating system installations -- and looks due for yet another re-release because it simply doesn't fix the vulnerability it is supposed to.

    The vulnerability can be exploited by crafting a malicious HTML file that, when viewed by an Internet Explorer browser, extracts and executes malicious code.

    Speaking to ZDNet Australia by phone from the U.S., Marc Maiffret, eEye's "chief hacking officer", said the vulnerability is particularly critical because it doesn't take a lot of effort to take advantage of. "It's pretty serious just because it's so easy to exploit... it doesn't require someone to know how to write buffer overflow exploits or anything like that."

    Maiffret says Microsoft should have done a better job to begin with. "How do you take four months to fix something this simple and then not fix it correctly?" he asked. "It seems like they are taking security seriously... [but] at the same time I don't think they're really investing."

    Read more...

  • Microsoft Search

    Brian talk about the new Search in MSDN.

    I already posted something about this, and yes it doesn't work.

    I received a lot of comments from fellow developers who use ... Google to search through MSDN :-(

    So I suggest that MSDN include the Google search box instead of their search engine !

    My previous post was also more about the overall structure of MSDN which now is more like a gigantic puzzle but the parts are not glue properly together.

  • Website optimization

    I found this free service useful to test the speed of a site, and a series of advices to optimize a page.

    Of course this is not fully complete, because they have some commercial services, but it's a good start for speeding your pages.

  • The Onion article generator

    Just because it's a rainy Sunday and this world need to cheer it up a bit, I found this little application from Jeremy Keith very funny.

    It's a kind of Find of Replace function but applied to any website you choose.

    So you can transform a CNN article in an Onion type news.

    Try yourself ;-)

    I wonder if Jeremy use regular expressions in his generator ?

  • Is Sony will be the next computer revolution company ?

    It's surely not .Net related, well for today but for tomorrow Sony is surely working on something totally new regarding the way we can conceive a computer.

    They already presented the Vaio EQ at the 2002 Sony DreamWorld Show but this year the lucky visitors of the famous expo can see the results of Sony research.



    Imagine an hexagonal panel without any keyboard.
    Imagine having a nice dinner conversation about how much you would like to go on holidays next summer in Australia.

    The Vaio will be able to record automatically the surrounding voices and images, filter the keywords.

  • MSDN Search

    Thanks guys for the comments I received on MSDN. Yes I also use Google but my point is that the site is totally disorganised and it's a pity that we have to use Google to find something useful.

    It's really looking for me like if every project team in Microsoft upload their own content with no real webmaster to control the overall structure.

    OK surely I am too critic, but MSDN should be in my view a Resources center structured like e.g. the excellent 123Aspx from DaveWanta.

    Maybe the idea of an organisation by product is not really working in the case of .Net. Something by theme will work for us much better. As I say this is just some ideas.

    Anyway Microsoft listen, the proof is the comment from
    Kent Sharkey

  • Handling Errors in ASP.NET

    Very nice hack from Fritz Onion posted by Craig.

    I was searching for something like that since a long time.  

    The other day, I was working through some code, adding error handling. We use the Enterprise Instrumentation Framework to do this (oddly only available via MSDN Subscriber download at the Universal level). When I got into the ASP.NET web pages I’d written, I had a bit of a problem. I didn’t really want to add try/catch blocks around every single method in the page’s base class – that would be a little redundant, and would mean that I’d have to change code in a bunch of places if I decided to change the style of errors I was reporting.

  • dbXML - Native XML Database

    dbXML is a Native XML Database. It is capable of storing and indexing collections of XML documents in both native and mapped forms for highly efficient querying, transformation, and retrieval. In addition to these capabilities, the server may also be extended to provide business logic in the form of scripts, classes and triggers.

    The version 2.0 is in Beta phase but you can apply to be a Beta tester on their site
     

  • Searching in MSDN

    I would like to know your actual experience with MSDN.

    Mine is a bad one, the site is worst and worst everyday.

    Searching something or looking for new stuff is not really a pleasant time.

    The navigation system is also so slow, and inconsistent where you have a dropdown submenu on the top level, and deeper a tree view !

    Sorry for the rant, but  MSDN suppose to be an helpful resources center, and there is like searching a needle in a haystack :-(
    This site need really a huge clean up !

    So if somebody from Microsoft read this please do something. Unlike many colleagues, I don't have the luxury to have a fast backbone Internet access, and like everybody not a huge amount of time to understand how to write a search sentence compatible with the MSDN rules.