Patrick Steele's .NET Blog

MasterPages and Nils Gruson

Thanks Nils! I was having problems with a MasterPage layout and could not figure out what was going on. VS.NET kept telling me "Could not match '...' with any ContentPlaceHolder". Despite the fact that there was indeed a ContentPlaceHolder with the proper ID. I gave up and Googled. Although blogger Nils Gruson has but one blog post, it was exactly what I was looking for!

It seems that Microsoft is aware of the problem (it was reported back in Beta 1). As noted in Nils post, just use a regular HTML table for now.

Hiding VS.NET 2005 Options?

About two years ago, I blogged about that stupid (IMHO) setting for VS.NET 2003 that would hide "advanced" members from intellisense in VB.NET. In VS.NET 2005, this option is not only off by default, but the checkbox is disabled. Nice.

But wait! I was trying to install a VS.NET 2005 add-in today and couldn't find a particular option in VS.NET 2005. I went through all of the options listed (the list seemed a little "light") and could not find what I was looking for.

Then I noticed that little checkbox at the bottom of the dialog: Show All Settings. Why in the world would that be turned off?!! Who decides when an option for configuring VS2005 doesn't need to be shown? And if I'm looking for an option, how do I know I need to turn on that little setting? I'm probably blowing this out of proportion but I think these little options to "hide" or "not show" everything that is available is counter-intuitive.

Needless to say, I checked the box and my list of options suddenly became much larger and I found the option I was looking for. I just hate that I had to waste five or ten minutes blindly clicking around trying to see something that wasn't even there!

New article on COM Interop

My latest article on COM Interop is up at 15seconds.com. COM Interop Exposed - Part 2 shows what you need to do in your .NET objects so that your events are exposed to your COM clients. I start with a history of how events work in COM, and then show how to use interfaces and attributes for easier integration with your existing COM clients.

Great talk by Miguel Castro

Last night's talk on Webserver controls by Miguel Castro at GANG was awesome. I've read and enjoyed his articles in CODE magazine, but if you have the chance to see him give a talk you really should take it. He's a great presenter and kept the audience involved during the whole presentation. Thanks Miguel!

Upcoming Events

My talk at the Ann Arbor Dot Net Developers group went well last week. And there's more stuff happening this week.

GANG - The Michigan Great Lakes Area .NET Users Group is proud to have Miguel A. Castro presenting this Wednesday, March 15th. Miguel will be doing "Hitting the Ground Running with Custom Webcontrols – Parts 1 and 2". Should be a great presentation. And don't forget -- free pizza and pop!

Mobile Application Development - New Horizons is sponsoring a free "Developer Care" training event this Friday, March 17th. The topic is "Mobile Application Development". Come and see how to use your current developer skills to target various mobile devices such as Pocket PC, Mobile Phones and embedded systems. Lunch is provided at the event.

NUnit Presentation Tonight