Archives
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I Don't Feel Like I'm on a Diet
When I attend a technical conference, I usually do not see attendees exhibit great eating habits. Let's face it, the way computer professionals are typically displayed in the media is as nerds with junk food in one hand, soda in another. I don't mind the nerd stereotype, but I would like to defy the image that we can not control our eating. -
Managing Projects in Visual Studio 2005 & 2008
One of the first tasks I tried when I installed Visual Studio 2008 was to open a Visual Studio 2005 project. I was prompted with the following:
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Installation Notes For Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2
At the bottom of Scott Guthrie's blog announcement of Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2, he recommended the following:
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Tonight Will Be Fun
Just about an hour away before Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 is downloaded!
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Desert Code Camp 2007
Mark your calendars in the southwest that you are busy September 15th. Of course, all are invited to the next Desert Code Camp in Phoenix, AZ.
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SharePoint Big Secret
I am taking a class this week at [itt] on SharePoint 2007. My instructor is Miguel Wood from TekFocus. I must confess, it sure is fun to be "student" for a change.
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Purpose of Blog
I have recently decided to redo tags on my blog. This effort required me to go back in the archives and view some of my posts of old. As I viewed one post after another, I realized I have used the blog for various reasons. Here is a list of how I have "purposed" my blog:
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Disk Defragmenter in Vista
I am breaking one of my blog rules (which I will blog about later). I want to pose a question to the technical community: Does disk defragmenting in Vista have any better UI than below:
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Paper-Based Time Management
Each week my wife and I meet to discuss our calendars and to-do lists. She has commented lately that my newest form of time management has been the most successful to date. What is my latest technological innovation? I use a paper-based system.
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Hanselman Has Been Assimilated
Scott Hanselman has been assimilated! He joins the azure cult under the direction of the great Scott Guthrie.
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M-Audio MobilePre USB on Vista
I ran into some issues earlier today attempting to record audio with my MobilePre USB from M-Audio. After calling sound & audio guru Simon Allardice, I got the needed advice to get things working again.
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Executing MSI From Command Prompt
I could not install an upgrade from TechSmith for Camtasia Studio until I did so from the command prompt. I have observed this behavior since I have installed Vista. Double-clicking on the .msi file in windows explorer will start the process, but end abruptly with this nasty error message "Installation ended prematurely because of an error":
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Revision: Get the Value of a Control Without an Instance of the Control
On an earlier post, I provided code that would retrieve the value of a control from the HTTP post without the need for an instance of the control. With good feedback, I made some modifications as follows:
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Revision: Case-Insensitive String Equality
I made revisions to my method for comparing strings while ignoring case. This is in light of some good feedback I received. Here is the updated method:
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American Idol Returns Home
Jordin Sparks returns to Glendale, AZ tonight as part of the American Idols Live Tour. Her family lives just a few blocks from us in Glendale. Welcome home!
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To Compile or Not Compile
ASP.NET 2.0 allows developers to configure whether a page compiles or not. Consider the following page directive:
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Sales, Marketing, Assessments, and Me
Last week I had a chance to be at Coors Field in Denver to watch the Rockies play. Before the wicked rain storm, we were able to sit and enjoy a few good innings.
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Blog Fear
I have had many conversations at the office about the fear of writing a blog - especially when posting code samples. From the blog author's perspective, it is a good and noble deed to post his/her code discoveries to the world. However, despite good intentions, there is always the fear that someone in the cloud will find something wrong with the code, and potentially embarrass the would-be-poster-of-good-code.
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Utility Methods - Are They The Devil?
Awhile back I posted a blog on string comparisons. The number of comments on that blog also spawned debate at AZGroups. One of the intriguing manifestations of the debate was regarding the use of utility methods in general.
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2007 Worldwide Partner Conference in Denver, Colorado
Today I head back to Phoenix, AZ from the 2007 Worldwide Partner Conference in Denver, CO. I had many opportunities to get to know other individuals and organizations.
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How To: Create a Strongly-Typed Property For HttpContext.Items
HttpContext.Items is one of my favorite properties in ASP.NET. If I want to communicate a value from the HTTP pipeline to a page and then to a user control, this is my method for doing so. Because the Items property is an implementation of IDictionary, the key/value pair is not strongly-typed. If I am going to access a value often, I would like to make the call as simple as possible. Here is an example of a property I created that "wraps" HttpContext.Items around a key value, yet exposing the value as a string, not object:
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How To: "Upsert" Into AppSettings
ASP.NET 2.0 allows developers to update or insert values into web.config programmatically. This allows senior ASP.NET developers to create an administration or support page to modify values into web.config sections - without tampering with the web.config file directly.
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How To: Convert ASP.NET Trace Messages Into System.Diagnostics.Trace Messages
After reading a post from [danw], I decided to extend the discussion on Tracing in ASP.NET. Dan discussed in his blog how to capture System.Diagnostic.Trace messages in the ASP.NET trace reports via trace.axd. This blog post is to demonstrate how easy it is to do the opposite - send TraceContext message to System.Diagnostics.Trace listeners. In web.config, do the following:
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Motorola Q
I am now the proud owner of the Motorola Q (black). This is a nice phone!
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AJAX Without ASP.NET AJAX
On day nine of my "post a blog every day in July" mission, I want to share how to get AJAX behavior in ASP.NET without using AJAX Extensions 1.0. Keep in mind, I prefer to use AJAX Extensions! This blog is for those out there that need a sprinkle of AJAX on their site, but are not allowed (for whatever reason) to install AJAX Extensions.
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How To: Obtain Method Name Programmatically For Tracing
I am not a fan of hard-coding method names in exception or trace messages. Here is a utility method to allow access to method name at runtime:
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How To: Return Embedded Resource Content As String
Here is a utility method for returning any embedded resource content as a string:
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How To: Dynamically Load A Page For Processing
I have often desired the ability to dynamically load a page for processing, much like we do for .asxc controls with LoadControl(pathToASCX). For example, I may want to create a custom HTTP handler or module to dynamically load a page - while allowing me to programmatically change key properties before processing. Here is a method that accomplishes such a task:
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Getting the Friendly Control ID
Here is a simple utility method that will take a string argument such as
"ctl00$ContentPlaceHolder1$DropDownList1" and return "DropDownList1" -
Case Insensitive String Comparison
Here is a little utility method that takes two strings and determines equality while ignoring case. Thus "silverlight"=="SilverLight"=="SILVERLIGHT"==true.
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Accessing Server Controls From Client Script
In our AJAX QuickBuild event yesterday, Simon Allardice demonstrated for everyone how to access the value of a server control from client-side script. Let me share with you his tip/trick. It is quite simple. Here is the markup of a content page - notice the script tag:
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QuickBuild Event: Accelerated ASP.NET AJAX
Today is another instance of our highly successful "QuickBuild" event in Phoenix, AZ. A QuickBuild is a one day, intensive look at a given technology. At the end of the day, each attendee receives a DVD with videos and all the source code for each demo (and then some). We have sold out every time we offer one.
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How To: Get the Value of a Control Without an instance of the Control
On my quest to write one blog a day in July, here is my first post regarding how to get the value of a control without the control instance. This can be very helpful for HTTP pipeline development or when the value of the control is needed very early in the page lifecycle.