Archives

Archives / 2003

  • [dScribe] New article

    No Comments

    I just finished a first version of a new article for dScribe (CMS project).

    I am supposed to be in holidays( guess what does it means if you are married ;-))) but hey difficult to stay off a computer for 15 days, too much effort ;-)

    So I just started a new article about an important phase of the dScribe project, where you can create and edit the Sections of your project.

    Read more...

  • Book recommended for this Christmas

    1 Comment

    One book surely is the Da Vinci Code. Very good indeed, with all the conspiracies you can imagine, and all the mysteries around the Holy Grail.


    Great reading, remind me Michael Crichton in some way. Dan Brown has apparently signed for a movie version.

    I think about Gerard Depardieu for the French cop, and obviously Harrison Ford for the professor Langdon, but maybe it's too obvious.

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  • Methods for Active Directory Management

    1 Comment

    Here we provide several methods for managing your Active Directory database via ASP.Net code. We'll cover querying user information using System.DirectoryServices, changing user accounts, and group management.

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  • RDBMS Toolbox

    No Comments

    This is a great idea ! An ISO file which contains some free RDBMS (available for Linux or Windows) including of course MySQL but some other more exotic.

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  • Weblogs from a PocketPC?

    1 Comment

    My dream request for the end of this year would be to be able to blog from my XDA.

    Sadly it's still not possible like last year. I tried different things(PocketBlog, PocketRSS) nothing works really.

    Does somebody has a solution ? Internet Explorer version Windows Mobile 2003 doesn't seems to support well the stylesheets.

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  • Imagemap and CSS

    1 Comment

    The problem with Imagemap is not only about chopping images. Now a lot of graphic tools can do so.

    No the issue is also the case where your user don't have the possibility to see the images (screen readers for example) and you wnt to have the links visible and clickable.

    Read more...

  • About the new .Netweblogs features

    1 Comment

    Roy I agree totally with you. But the point here is that I don't want to compete with Microsoft blokes.

    Blogging for me has to be s    pontaneous, maybe a bit buggy, surely rough and sometime with a wrong grammar ;-) .

    Of course if you publish a piece of code, you have to be responsible for this and you have to be sure that you are not talking about something untested.

    But blogging is also a free expression of our own thoughts. And yes as you say Roy, .netWeblogs is not anymore a true independent community website.

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  • SQLLite

    1 Comment

    "SQLite is an embeddable SQL database engine which can perform upto two times faster than PostgreSQL and MySQL for many common operations. With a small memory footprint and support for databases upto 2 terabyte, its an ideal option for embedded and small to medium-scale deployments." Read More . . .

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  • Bitter message

    6 Comments

    An anonymous person(Is it you Charles ?) send me this note from Charles Carroll. I know that he is still upset by the lost of his community but there he show he don't forget easily.
    Not sure I will like to use the same word hijacking.

    Read more...

  • Community

    4 Comments

    Thanks to Scott for the update on .Text. One think I am not sure about, and maybe I am wrong on this.

    The fact to split Microsoft bloggers and non microsoft bloggers will create a wall between us.

    Why ? Because a lot of people now use a blog reader tool and will subscribe to one or other not both.

    My two cents of suggestion.:

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  • MyIE new version

    2 Comments

    MyIE is always for me what Internet Explorer should be and it's again getiing better with the latest release 0.9.11 with a fix that Microsoft should already have done about the IE spoof vulnerability.

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  • ToDoList new version

    No Comments

    Difficult to follow the releases for ToDo List, the tasks manager if you are like me a lonely developer with a huge amount of tasks to do for yesterday ;-)

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  • Are you under pressure ?

    8 Comments

    Just a kind of survey.

    Are you under pressure actually with your projects before Christmas ?

    I like to know if you share the same, but I have my tasks list increasing dangerously and going toward the red rapidly !

    Where this is coming from that we have to suffer from an important demand just before the Christmas holidays.
    It's like nothing has to happen next year, the world will end or the global warming will finally have its payload.

    Every year it's the same, deadlines are suddenly shortened, and whatever you say it has to be done before the 24th ;-)

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  • About the / question

    7 Comments

    I am still not convinced, and I am not the only one, by the answers I received on this post.

    Does somebody from Microsoft Asp.Net team has a better and clever idea on the origin of this issue ?

    I know this post sounds repetitive, but the users of the sites I develop are not all geniuses, and they can make mistakes
    ;-)

    Read more...

  • Popup Blocker

    1 Comment

    Everybody knows now more on the next Windows XP Service Pack 2 including a new version of Internet Explorer.

    The main new feature is the popup blocker. But do you know that this function will be disable by default, and turn on only at the first popup.

    Silly no ? I know a lot of users who will click on the No button, and again having their popups coming all the time.

    IMO It will make sense to do the opposite, no ?

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  • [dScribe] some thoughts

    No Comments

    Two things on dScribe. I am working on the next version, which will be more oriented on fixing the bugs. The main new function will be the Article type in the Content section.

    Indeed I had this type in the actual version but it was not properly implemented like the two other (Link and Headline).
    I surely need to write an explanation on how to use the Article type because it's obviously different from the other.

    I continue also to debug a max on all I can find, but here I seriously need your help if you use dScribe.

    Rick Ratayczak let me a note on the Bug tracker about missing the ProjectId field in some stored procedures. As I replied to him, I don't need this field in every sp. But yes maybe I missed one somewhere. I have more than 50 SPs now, so yes I do mistakes ;-)

    So my request is that people let me know about bugs, and be explicit (e.g. condition on how they find the bug and the page where this happens).

    The next update (Beta 1.1) will be for this Saturday.

    Soon it's Christmas as you know well so I will not be able to update more until January.

    My next steps will be to include all the form validators and start commenting the code ;-))

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  • Microsoft Ireland

    No Comments

    Proud to say that Microsoft Ireland did a great job this afternoon with a very nice lunch for their education partners.

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  • / trailer my two cents

    3 Comments

    About my post this morning. I received some nice comments and advices, but the problem is that nobody get it.

    I give as an example a link to a site I develop but this happens to every bleeping site ;-)

    Try this one and compare with the original and this one and again compare with the original.
    So you see by yourself !

    I know that I am surrounded by windows developers but believe me in web development it's really a BAD idea to let something like this happening.
    The only site who managed to retrieve this as a 404 error is ASPalliance. No idea how they did .

    It really seems for me to be a bug. And finally to answer to somebody, it appears that the whole <head> section is screwed.
    Classic example is when the page has a javascript declared in the head section.

    It seems trivial but think about my aunt Marge who never learn to type correctly a URL address ;-)

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  • Strange behavior with IE or .Net ?

    18 Comments

    I found a strange thing happening this morning on the relationship between external stylesheets and aspx pages.
    I am not sure how this thing occured but if I use a link using a slash at the end, no style sheet is apply at all:

    Read more...

  • Microsoft party tomorrow

    No Comments

    By the way surely no new post on my blog tomorrow. I am invited to a Microsoft party in Dublin tomorrow.

    I think it's going to be good and hope some fun too ;-)

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  • [dScribe] Update 1.02

    No Comments

    Following the launch of the Beta yesterday, I just fixed today some important bugs.

    I also did a full test from scratch: writing the content to the pages deployment (the example is in the database) on a current project I have SAFT (Safety Internet for Schools) and everything works fine.

    That's not mean the job is finish, not at all ;-)

    I would like to know if you find some other bugs in this new version Beta 1.02, so that I can continue to improve dScribe for the next version.

    Now I have great hopes to have a full version 1.0 ready for January, not bad for a project started mid-October).

    I am not a technical writer, so I try to improve my writing skills on the last articles by reading the recent articles posted by some gurus like Dino for example.
    Oh ! I forgot to mention that the next version will include a full Setup procedures and a clean demo installation.

    Some people asked me if I have a demo somewhere. Not yet but yes it's a good idea, and maybe sometime after the launch of the version 1.

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  • Unix and Windows culture

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    Joel has an interesting post on the differences between Unix and Windows programmers.
    He base his post on     Eric S. Raymond book called The Art of UNIX Programming .

    I agree with Joel on the monoculture aspect of some Unix programmer. It's true you can say the same about Windows too.
    But I am not sure that calling a valid business client Aunt Marge will help breaking the barriers ;-)

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  • URL spoofing flaw could be used in bank scams

    3 Comments

    This seems to be a serious flaw in IE, discovered by a graphic designer, and it's very simple to implement.

    Check this page to     have a demo on the effect in IE. So scary !

    So by typing     http://www.microsoft.com @zapthedingbat.com/security/ex01/vun2.htm Internet Explorer show only the first part before the @ and display in the address bar http://www.microsoft.com .

    Why? Note the special non printing character included before the @.

    Imagine a spammer who want to redirect some gullible users to a fictuous bank, something like asking account details !

    Easy, the scam can go very far as duplicating website. I think MSFT should release a very quick answer to this. Remind me the 'old' $Data flaw in IIS 4 few years ago.

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  • Conference XP

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    It's absolutly incredible what you can find in Microsoft Research !
    Those guys are like the Software branch of MIT ;-)
    For example, just this one:

    Read more...

  • Reinventing Email

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    The daily flood of e-mail messages is like a baby's cry — insistent but mysterious. You genuinely want to understand the meaning, but you can't always grasp the language.

    Read more...

  • Google battle

    1 Comment

    Google Battle measures which of two terms has a higher Google rating by searching for term1 OR term2 and then counting the hits of either in the returned top 10.

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  • Is Infinity countable ?

    1 Comment

    Mark has an interesting post on infinity:

    Imagine a hotel with an infinite number of rooms, numbered 1, 2, 3, and so on forever. All the rooms are full. A man comes in and asks the desk manager whether any rooms are available, and the desk manager replies, "All our rooms are full, but I’d be happy to accommodate you." How does he do it?

    Read more...

  • [dScribe] Front End control

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    I realised I forgot the front end control tool for dScribe yesterday in the different files required.

    Done now and you can download it here.
    The main change is on the selection from the database of the records matching a specific project and the current server.
    I do so using Principal to retrieve the domain name from the current context:

    Read more...

  • .Net Temporary files

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    My rant of the day ;-)

    Can we expect from .Net 2.0 (I hope it could be fix before !) a better management of the temporary files in .Net.

    I have to deal a lot of times in my development process with the so infamous General Network Error.
    And for my knowledge, it's sounds more like .Net says to me 'I don't know what to do, help, help ! No help so I just press the panic button !'.
    The cause of this error seems to be difficult to identify.
    I know about the Index Server problem, where you have to be careful to not indexing the .Net temporary files, but it seems that's not only the problem.

    Read more...

  • [dScribe] New version

    2 Comments

    Finally, better late than never, I have now completed (partially) the final steps for dScribe, the Content Management Project.

    So now the application is available as Beta 1.01. What can I say about the numerous changes from the alpha version?
    Well, everything is almost new, so difficult to find a starting point.

    I was asked by ny company to make dScribe multi-projects, thing done now, and believe me not so easy to achieve.
    I also now have the full CMS life cycle from the content to the full deployment.

    I included also a multitude of new tables, like the Servers to store the details on the different machines a web administrator can manage, basically at least 2 machines, test and production, but of course dScribe let you adding more servers if you want.

    Of course, I still have a huge amount of work to do, like to finish a setup page, or some admin tasks.

    I will also shortly publish a new article about Editing the Sections, follow by another one on the Deployment, follow by the Multiproject version.

    I have also to update some of the articles published to reflect the new features of this version.

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  • Design request for the next Visual Studio

    2 Comments

    When you work in Design mode in Visual Studio, and you want to do some images placement in a user control (.ASCX file), you can't see your images at all if they refer to a path like /images/myimage.gif.

    This sound logical but it's really annoying. The not-so-good solution will be to have absolute links, but no I want to keep my relative links.

    This unfortunatly make the Design mode useless for me. Most of the time, I prefer the HTML view, but at the end of a project, it's possible that I have to tidy up some graphic details.

    Of course it's not a bug, the main page will render correctly the control, but I would like to know if something is planned in the next VS version to solve this.

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  • What about other .Net languages ?

    2 Comments

    We are all gathering around C# and Vb.Net in this community, but what about other languages ?

    I would like to know more from developers who embrace Cobol.Net, Fortran.Net, Forth.Net, Eiffel.Net.

    Interesting to know which application they can develop and also their experience on .Net. Maybe it's a marketing stunt from Microsoft but I don't really believe it.

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  • Microsoft patent HTML applications

    2 Comments

    Can this new patent be an answer to some requests ? I'd like the idea to have some small applications running locally from the user's machine. I imagine the kind of applet I can run using .hta files.
    It sounds like an answer to the infamous Java applet ?
    The downside is surely the security loopholes.

    UPDATE: Scott Galloway comment that this has been there since a while and give a couple of example

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  • Excellent tip to parse some controls in a Datagrid

    1 Comment

    I think this is an excellent tip from Scott Hanselman so I just pass on ! This just works too with some other controls.


    Recently I needed to have a DataGrid that had multiple checkboxes to activate and deactivate something.  So, you could check a whole slew of checkboxes in a big grid, and depending on the NEW state of the checkbox (checked or not), cause an operation on a theorectical back end.

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  • AOP Add-in for VS

    No Comments

    Probably you've heard of Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) , it's a new programming technique that enables you to write code that is easy to understand, maintain, reuse and evolve.

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  • Miss World website gets 100 million hits on (IIS5)

    4 Comments

    "Microsoft has just released figures that show that the Miss World website www.missworld.tv is the largest website in the world receiving 100 million hits per day," they said.

    Microsoft was not immediately available for comment.

    In addition, the swimsuit competition and personality pictures both made Yahoo!'s most viewed slide shows, organisers said.

    Miss Ireland, Rosanna Davison, daughter of "Lady in Red" singer Chris de Burgh, was judged best in a swimsuit, while Miss Bolivia Helen Aponte Saucedo was named most personable.

    A picture of some of the girls in swimwear was also Yahoo!'s most emailed image.

    China is for the first time holding the Miss World beauty pageant, in southern Hainan province.

    And to celebrate the 1000th post, Miss World is Miss Ireland !! ;-)

    Wow ! You see Irish are not only good in pubs and riverdance, they can also have the most beautiful girl in the world !

    Come on ya good  thing ;-)

    Read more...

  • Microsoft Project Aura

    1 Comment

    We are interested to study emergent individual and group behaviors associated with the ability to digital tag objects and places. In our system, a user can associate text, threaded conversations, audio, images, video or other data with a specific tag. Users can review the tags they have encountered and annotated in a custom web portal. Optionally, they can opt to have their comments be posted onto newsgroups. This allows search engines to index and essentially publish the association to other users. Physical annotations can be shared with other users and be rated by the users’ reputation statistics.

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  • MSDN Managed Newsgroups

    2 Comments

    This is really a good idea ! Thanks for that ;-)

    From MSDN:

    MSDN Subscriptions includes newsgroup support for all Universal, Enterprise, Professional and Operating System Subscribers. MSDN Subscribers can post .NET product and technology questions in over 220 managed newsgroups and receive a response from either another professional in the community or from a Microsoft Support Professional within two business days. The Managed Newsgroups are constantly being reviewed by Microsoft Professionals for quality responses. To make life even easier, we are able to notify you, via e-mail, when a post has been made to your issue.

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  • Infragistics Offers .NET Developers First UIElement for Avalon Framework

    1 Comment

    Written by Infragistics at the request of Microsoft, UltraGrid for Avalon was showcased at the PDC. The technology demonstration is an example of what could be done in a very short period of time by leveraging the Avalon framework. The control was written from scratch in less than one month's time by two Infragistics developers who had no prior exposure to Avalon. This was made possible by the fact that the Avalon's framework and Infragistics' Presentation Layer Framework (PLF) are remarkably similar - both are based on UIElements and visual trees.

    To download the UltraGrid for Avalon Technology Demo visit: www.infragistics.com/presscenter/news/avalongrid.asp.

    Read more...

  • Few thoughts on debugging

    No Comments

    Maybe this will help somebody now or in the future.
    I was working on some dynamic dropdown lists (3 exactly) interacting together and some databinding.
    You know you choose a menu and the other ones populate in function of the first one.
    Easy? Yes and no.

    I had some bugs coming randomly about the fact my code was trying to select multiple elements in one of the dropdown.

    My point here is that whatever I could do, Try..Catch was not able to trap the error.

    Apparently the problem come because the dropdown is render by .Net only at  the end (HTMLTextwriter). So of course you have no idea which line in your code create the wrong statement.

    Annoying because I had no way to identify the issue.

    So my modest advice if this happens to you, transform your dropdown as listboxes object.

    You will be able to set the selectionmode as multiple and magically your code will work, exposing clearly then the faulty multi selection on one of your lists.

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  • About posting and code

    3 Comments

    Just to avoid the long posts (interesting anyway) and the long code listings (like some today ;-) , can we all be agree to use the Articles features we have on this blog ?

    I think , and it's just my opinion, the main feed should show only short posts, announcements, and eventually some links to a more explicit article.

    What do you think ?

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  • The XHTML Way

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    Introduction

    If you're starting a new Web project or enhancing an existing Web site, you face the same dilemma: Which version of HTML should I use? Many developers shy away from the latest Web standards because they think it's an either/or choice and aren't ready to commit 100% to the new standards. This article will give you the background you need to make an informed decision and show you how you can gradually transition to the latest Web standards by successfully combining     HTML 4 with the latest XHTML.

    By Vlad Alexander

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  • Irish .Net Bloggers

    2 Comments

    Just reading the post from Jan Tielens  about the Belgian .Net bloggers and this give me an idea.

    What's about an Irish .Net bloggers feed. I have some webspace somewhere so eventually I could easily setup a such thing.

    Read more...

  • Code Library

    3 Comments

    I use Code Library since few days now, and it's really a must-have tool for all developers, .Net or not

    Now I discovered that I can almost store anything in the SQL database, so I am actually starting to implement my browser favorites.

    Just because Code Library has an integrated browser, and a node system to let me organize better than ever my best pages.

    The fact that everything is in one place give me also a breeze, and I can now think about a backup of one database.

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  • Coco/R for C#

    No Comments

    I told you many times that C# is a very serious language ;-)

    Coco/R is a compiler generator which takes a compiler description in the form of an LL(1) attributed grammar and generates the scanner and the parser of the described parser. This paper describes Coco/R for C#. There are also implementations of Coco/R for Java, for C and Modula-2 as well as for Oberon. For other projects with C# refer to dotnet.jku.at.

    From:

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  • FreeImage 3.04

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    FreeImage is an Open Source library project for developers who would like to support popular graphics image formats like PNG, BMP, JPEG, TIFF and others as needed by today's multimedia applications. The library comes in two versions: a binary distribution that can be linked against any 32-bit C/C++ compiler and a source distribution. Workspace files for Microsoft Visual C++ 6 are provided, as well as makefiles for Linux.

    From january 2000 to july 2002, FreeImage was designed and mainly developed by Floris van den Berg. FreeImage is now maintained by Hervé Drolon.

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  • Visualize the Internet

    No Comments

    Opte is a cool project to map graphically a view of the Internet. The code source will be release soon.

    This project was created to make a visual representation of a space that is very much one-dimensional, a metaphysical universe. The data represented and collected here serves a multitude of purposes: Modeling the Internet, analyzing wasted IP space, IP space distribution, detecting the result of natural disasters, weather, war, and esthetics/art. This project is free and represents a lot of donated time, please enjoy.

    Read more...

  • Steve and Bill the moguls

    3 Comments

    On BBC 2 tonight at 9.50 (Ireland - UK time). Remind me this excellent novel 'War of the buttons', where at the end the kids, after a childish war, finally become friends. Hey you never know ;-)

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  • Design and Implementation Guidelines for Web Clients

    No Comments

    This page provides an overview of Design and Implementation Guidelines for Web Clients. This guide provides advice on how best to implement logic in the presentation layer of a distributed application. This guide is designed to accompany the User Interface Process Application Block; this application block provides a template implementation for user interface process components.

    Read more...

  • Project Hurricane

    2 Comments

    Corey Gouker, Mark Johnston and Dominic Hopton  launch Project Hurricane. Nice job ! You can also download the source if you want to setup an Hurricane community.

    Welcome to the Hurricane Developer Portal. Project Hurricane is an online community portal built using the .NET Framework. It is an easily deployable skinnable community aimed at students.

    Read more...

  • How to use a windows dialog in your webpage

    No Comments

    When you want to upload a file to the dnj site or the .text blog admin, a real Windows file open dialog pops. Quite cool and a piece of functionality I wanted for one of my own apps. Getting that done was, thanks to COM, easier than I had anticipated. So let me share this with you.

    Source Peter Gekko

    Peter mention also this excellent MSDN article to check all possibilities

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  • [CMS] dScribe it's coming

    3 Comments

    Just to thanks some readers who asked me on more dScribe update. Yes it's coming, just a little bit more patience.

    This will be the first Beta version, after a lot of code and improvements on the Alpha 2.

    The numbers of stored procedures has increase regardly to the new multi project aspect of this CMS.

    I still hope to publish something before the end of this week.

    Read more...

  • Apply for .NET Compact Framework 1.0 SP2 Beta

    1 Comment

    The Microsoft .NET Compact Framework product team is kicking off a beta program for .NET Compact Framework 1.0 SP2, and is inviting developers to participate. This invitation was posted at MSDN Newsgroups. If you are interested give it a shot...

    The Microsoft .NET Compact Framework Product Team would like to invite you to participate in their upcoming beta program for .NET Compact Framework 1.0 SP2. We are specifically looking for feedback as to whether existing application functionality is preserved when running against SP2 bits (no regressions).

    Our goal is to have a well targeted group of testers willing to actively participate and provide useful feedback to our development team. Please carefully consider your willingness and ability to test .NET Compact Framework 1.0 SP2. Your feedback will be critical to the success of our product. Regular and consistent participation throughout the program is expected.

    If you are interested in participating, please use this special Guest Account below to access a nomination survey on     http://www.BetaPlace.com.

    Guest Access Account
    Guest Beta ID:     netcfbeta

    You will only be contacted once your nomination has been processed.

    We look forward to hearing from you.
    The .NET Compact Framework Team

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  • A couple ASP.NET lessons learned

    No Comments

    I'm in the middle of the laborous process of writing an article (or, more likely, a series of articles) for my web site about ASP.NET Tips and Tricks.

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  • Pirates sell Microsoft's next Windows system LOL ;-))

    2 Comments

    JOHOR BAHRU, Malaysia (Reuters) - Malaysia's brazen software pirates are hawking the next version of Microsoft's Windows operating system years before it is supposed to be on sale.

    Underscoring the scale of U.S. companies' copyright problems in Asia, CDs containing software Microsoft has code named "Longhorn" are on sale for six ringgit (92 pence) in southern Malaysia. Microsoft's current version of Windows, XP, sells for upwards of $100 (58 pounds) in the United States.

    The software is an early version of Longhorn demonstrated and distributed at a conference for Microsoft programmers in Los Angeles in October, Microsoft Corporate Attorney Jonathan Selvasegaram told Reuters.

    "It's not a ready product," he said from Malaysia. "Even if it works for a while, I think it's very risky," to install on a home computer, he said.

    Chairman Bill Gates has said Longhorn, which is not expected to be released before 2005, would rank as Microsoft's largest software launch this decade.

    The software is on sale in the largest shopping complex in Johor Bahru, the Malaysian city bordering Singapore, alongside thousands of pirated programs, music CDs and DVDs.

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  • How to pass the popup blocker

    2 Comments

    Thanks to all the comments I received in this post. Of course  I give all my support to the popup blockers, but as I said, I would like to use a popup window in some specific cases, without bothering my users with some shortcuts like the Ctrl key.

    Well I finally found the solution, and it works pretty well. What I tested is to use in the Login page a link button instead of a normal button.

    In  the click event, after the user name and password is validated, I register a client side script to open the window.

    In Javascript, the trick here is to declare the window, not just open it.

    It seems that a Link button fire a slightly different Click event than a Button so it is not considered as a possible popup by Google, so that's why it works here.

    That I suppose is an explanation, but if you know better ;-)

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  • Popup control

    No Comments

    Well hat off to Tomas ! He did it again ;-)

    A brand new version of his popup control (1.2) is now available in CodeProject.

    Great job, with drag and drop trigger, and few bugs fixed. The only thing remember that this popup window never goes over a dropdown list (IE bug)

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  • Popup or not popup that is the question

    10 Comments

    I hate pop ups, so as surely many of you now, I installed the Google bar with the popup blocker.

    But one issue is coming now. I have some web projects where after a login page, I need to open the main window full screen without the menu bar or any decorations.

    I am puzzled now how I am going to fix my Javascript code because obviously my legitimate new window has been considered legitimately by Google bar as a popup !

    So what I am supposed to do now ? Very annoying, because of course I can click on Ctrl to open my new window, but what's about the users ? It make things complicated.

    Including the fact that this feature will be part of the next IE, and i believe activate by default. I would like to see a little bit of intelligence in the behavior of these pop up blockers. Like for example that if a window.open is called from the same site, it consider this as perfectly valid.
    I know a lot of webtools working with full opened windows, I wonder how they will fix this.

    Any ideas ?

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  • Next MSDN Webcasts

    2 Comments


    Power ASP.NET Programming
    December 1, 1:00 P.M. Pacific time
    SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services
    December 2, 11:00 A.M. Pacific time
    Visual Studio Tools for Office
    December 2, 1:00 P.M. Pacific time
    .NET Data Access Patterns and Best Practices
    December 3, 11:00 A.M. Pacific time
    p&p Live - Shadowfax Reference Application
    December 4, 11:00 A.M. Pacific time
    Understanding Win32 Support in the Pocket PC and Smartphone
    December 5, 1:00 P.M. Pacific time
    Architecture Evaluation: Methods and Experiences
    December 8, 11:00 A.M. Pacific time
    MSDN .NET Library, Powered by LogicLibrary Logidex
    December 9, 10:00 A.M. - 11:30 A.M. Pacific time
    Biztalk Server 2004
    December 9, 1:00 P.M. Pacific time
    Mobility/Smart Devices and Related Development Options
    December 10, 11:00 A.M. Pacific time
    patterns & practices Testing Framework
    December 11, 11:00 A.M. Pacific time

    Read more...

  • WYSIWYG Editor for ASP.net

    1 Comment

    Another one ! The list of these editor tools is impressive. This one is delivered with the source and an article.

    Two nice icons: one for insering emoticons, and another one for pasting code.
    Could be a good idea to have those two buttons in .Text.

    The article is useful aslo if you want to learn how to pass data from Javascript to your code behind.

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  • Microsoft Getting Into Moblogs?

    No Comments

    http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmob...es/default.mspx

    I was poking around the Windows Mobile website and found this little teaser:

    "Get Ready for Moblogs - Turn an ordinary blog into a moblog by including pictures from your Pocket PC or Smartphone. Check back here in December to learn how to create yours."

    For those unfamiliar with moblogs, here is an excerpt from     an article at Editor & Publisher that explains the concept pretty well: "A moblog is typically a photo blog where an individual or group of people post images taken with photo phones, plus accompanying text (or even audio). The moblog concept has caught on in a big way since first introduced in 2002. Many individuals maintain moblogs, and new moblogging services like TextAmerica.com make it super easy to have a moblog; to publish an image, you simply use your photo phone to e-mail it to TextAmerica.com ."

    I have no idea what this teaser on the Microsoft website means, but definitely look forward to finding out. Will they be releasing an app to make mobloging from Windows Mobile devices easier? Could they be starting a moblog hosting service? Or maybe it's just a step-by-step tutorial on how to moblog from Smartphone and Pocket PC devices... Let the speculation begin! What do you think they are going to announce?

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  • Next two versions of Microsoft's home-entertainment-hub version of Windows are already in the works

    No Comments

    According to sources briefed by the company, the "Symphony," or Media Center 2005, release is expected to enter beta testing in the first quarter of next year. ("Harmony" was the code name for Windows Media Center 2004, which Microsoft unveiled in late September.) Based on past shipping history, Microsoft will likely release the 2005 version at the end of calendar 2004.

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  • Accessibility validation

    1 Comment

    Scott I intended to comment directly on your post  but the Submit button didn't work. Strange.

    Anyway this is my two cents on accessibility validation:

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  • How to make a developer's brain busy ;-)

    13 Comments

    Well easy show him this picture, ask him to count the people before and after the shift,and yes I know it's very irritating.

    Believe me you will spend all the day scratching your head on the solution or turn mad (yourself and your colleagues too)

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  • Pie menus

    1 Comment

    Last week I explored, via a post from Julia, a tool which provide an innovative way to navigate through hierarchical menus without using a dropdown menu, nor a tree view, but a pie menu.

    I did some search, and I found a complete page on Pie menus written by     Don Hopkins, who developed pie menus since 15 years.

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  • MobileRSS

    1 Comment

    If like me you like to read your RSS feeds on the move, this is a nice project:

    mobilerss brings RSS (RDF Site Summary) Feeds to mobile users.
    mobilerss enables you to view RSS News anywhere on any mobile device.
    Just Add your selection of RSS feeds and synchronize with your PDA.

    Read more...

  • Mozilla control

    1 Comment

    I tried to install Comparator, and getting errors, I discovered that I have to install Mozilla control.

    So just in case the link provided by Vasanth Dharmaraj is wrong. You have a better verion at this address:

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  • Win a Tablet PC !

    4 Comments

    From November 17 to December 17, 2003, Microsoft is giving away Tablet PCs and Microsoft Office OneNote™ 2003 in the Tablet PC Instant Win Game.

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  • NNTTP//RSS

    3 Comments

    Bridging the worlds of NNTP clients and RSS feeds, nntp//rss is an application that will enable you to use your existing favorite NNTP newsreader to read your information channels.

    Read more...

  • Letter to Santa Claus no sorry to Mr Microsoft

    2 Comments

    I report this story as it is, an yes it's so real and so freaky to know that it's happening in our real world.

    My wife report me that whatever you are doing Mr Microsoft, herself or people in her office are still clicking on any attachments they received by email.

    Please help me on the matter, I am a poor soul searching for holy land, and i find here i only a desert with no guardians.

    How can you make this e-world secure so that I will not spend my time explaining that you can't click on any .exe or .pif file without any consequences.

    I wish to preach in a paradise where you, Mr Microsoft , you will protect us (and my wife) against the devil (the nasty virus, trojan, worms, etc...)

    From a soul in pain ;-)

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  • ASP Insiders - Does the community need that ?

    9 Comments

    A lot of interesting comments are coming on the ASP Insiders story.

    I think Rob Howard gave a good idea about what is it. So I am still not convinced , like Frans Bouma, Scott Galloway  and others.

    But this morning, G Andrew Duthie (also member of ASP Insider and person I respect a lot by the way) come back, and strangely with a different approach than Rob Howard (also memeber of the cult) !!?

    I inserted my own modest comments in the comment:

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  • Update - Pop up control

    No Comments

    Nothing really new there, but Tomáš Petrícek has accepted my modest idea to include a drag and drop feature in his pop up application.

    Thanks Tomas for the great discussion we engaged through the forum and by emails ;-)

    So expect next week (I hope so) a new version of the     Pop Up control which received yesterday already another function, something to anchor a window.
    That's a great sense of community between developers !

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  • ASP Insiders - Do we need that ?

    19 Comments

    OK I am surely going to be flame on this one but hey it's just my small opinion,and I like to debate ;-)

    Do we really need another elite ?

    I know it's history in our modern world to have the elite and the plebe.

    Is .Net really need another group than MVPs ? The advantage is surely to be more Microsoft independent.
    I know for sure that MVPs are really nominated for their expertise and it's easy to see why.
    But ASP insiders !?!?

    Probably I miss the point but it looks for me like the nth secte having their meeting in a obscure chamber of a gothic castle.

    Some members (and no doubt in my mind  that you have great names here !) are already MVP so what is reallty the goal.

    Shouldn't we be more embracing a whole community, open our doors to every developer?
    For example Weblog.asp.net,Dotnetjunkies and the others are surely contributing to make .Net something everybody talk in town.
    Well as I repeat many times, I am open mind and I am also a listener.

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  • Dive Into Accessibility

    No Comments

    This book answers two questions. The first question is "Why should I make my web site more accessible?" If you do not have a web site, this book is not for you. The second question is "How can I make my web site more accessible?" If you are not convinced by the first answer, you will not be interested in the second.

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  • [CSS] Css hacks

    No Comments

    CSS hacks are clever tricks which take advantage of browser bugs to perform such magic as "hiding" CSS from specific browsers or kicking browsers that don't follow the specs into line. There is a long running occasional debate over whether or not these hacks should be used, covered on ToHackOrNotToHack. Please keep such discussions off this page. The attributes of a good CSS hack are described on GoodCSSHack.

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  • How to Save Web Accessibility from Itself

    No Comments

    As is now quite widely known among indie developers and virtually unknown everywhere else, websites are properly created in accordance with published accessibility standards. The chief source for those standards is the set of “recommendations” by the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Accessibility Initiative (the W3C WAI). These Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 1.0) were last officially updated in 1999.

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  • Crypto in .Net

    No Comments

    Everyday I learn something, and I like it ;-)

    Some valid point on the data encryption post:

    From     Wes

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  • Keep your data secure with AES

    3 Comments

    I just finish reading an article in the November issue of MSDN Magazine.
    This month is focus on security.

    Well I don't pretend to be a specialist, so I learned a lot from an article on encrypted data by James McCaffrey.

    I already used hashing method, what is called one-way encryption.

    I didn't know that you have also a two-way method, AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) based on a 256 bit key.
    To say the least, surely secure enough!

    James's article includes also a C# implementation. I think using it for the case I store user passwords, and I need an admin to be able to retrieve and decrypt a lost password.

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  • Popup control + drag and drop feature

    No Comments

    Tomáš Petrícek  did an incredible good job with his popup control.

    However It was frustrating to not having a drag and drop feature. I made some changes to the code, and because I respect the job he did I am going to suggest the modifications on the CodeProject forum.

    By the way I am sure he's already working on this, but if this can save him some time, I will be happy ;-)

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  • Projects in Whidbey

    5 Comments

    Like many I am playing with Whidbey. I was not at the PDC, so my adventure in Whidbeyland is more difficult for me.

    I don't get first the idea that when I install Whidbey, I have to chose a profile.

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  • Microsoft has teamed up with Moreover

    No Comments

    Microsoft is making strides is building a powerful rival to compete with Google. In an important step in that direction, Microsoft has teamed up with San Francisco-based Moreover Technologies to develop a continuously updating on the Web, according to the publisher of a newsletter about the search engine business.
    "Moreover already has the ability to go out there and spider the Web and pull back news content, and understand how to deal with it," said Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineWatch.com. Even though Microsoft is in the midst of creating its own Web crawler, which could do the same thing, partnering with "somebody like may help more quickly move to having the search service they want."

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  • Build a Flyout Search Control

    This article, written by Kathleen Dollard is based on a code for a windows project, but I think I should be able (or someone else) to adap this code for a web application.
    I think it's a great idea to have a Search Panel to show an Advanced Search.
    The thing is to get back the right values, this article show you how.

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  • Virtual PC 2004, cool but...

    No Comments

    ... I can't have my keyboard working with this damn thing.

    I am trying to install Windows XP with VS 2004, but something wrong happen, the keyboard is not recognized.
    As you must know, you have to press Enter key in one of the early screen installing XP, but there, not a clue why VS don't accept any entry from my keyboard.

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  • Website To Country Tool

    No Comments

    What is this good for? Maybe you want to know where your servers are physically located
    with your hosting company. Also, some search engines (such as Google) have the ability to
    filter search results based on their physical location. This could be used to determine why
    your site is showing in a certain country.

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  • Asynchronous Wait State Pattern in ASP.NET

    1 Comment

    Putting a browser UI on business applications makes them easily accessible to users in remote locations, but it presents some challenges for the developer. One of those challenges is how best to construct it for a long-running process.
      For example, when a user enters data into a Web Form and clicks the submit button, the page does not change and the UI is unresponsive until the server sends a new page to the browser. If the UI is unresponsive for more than a few seconds, users are inclined to press the submit button repeatedly. These multiple submissions can cause problems for the application, forcing the developer to write code to handle the repeats.
      A cleaner approach would be to keep the user informed about the server process with updated messages and a progress bar in the browser. In this column, you will learn how to create an asynchronous ASP.NET wait page that does exactly that. Let's begin by creating a page that initiates a long-running process. (The samples in     this article are written in C# unless otherwise noted.)

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  • Multilingual Web Site in .Net - A Tutorial

    2 Comments

    This is a Web Solution designed to teach all newcomers into the .Net field on how to incorporate Multi-language support into your Web Applications. You have to download the accompaning ZIP file.

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  • GAP - Global Attention Profile

    No Comments


    The map above shows what countries Google News is paying the most attention to today. Countries in deep red are experiencing the most attention, yielding more than 3.2% of the stories detected by GAP scrapers. As the red fades and blues deepen, countries are experiencing less and less media attention. Reload this page to see the media attention profile of another news media outlet. To examine detailed data per country, this data is also presented in a table.

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  • UltraGrid for Avalon – Technology Demo

    No Comments

    UltraGrid for Avalon is a functional grid control that supports hierarchical data, column sizing, multi-column sorting and ‘Outlook Group-by’. It was written by Infragistics, at the request of Microsoft, to showcase at the PDC what could be done in a very short period of time by leveraging the Avalon framework. The control was written from scratch in less than 1 month’s time by 2 Infragistic’s developers who had no prior exposure to Avalon. This was made possible by the fact that the Avalon’s framework and Infragistics’ Presentation Layer Framework (PLF) are remarkably similar - both are based on UIElements and visual trees. In fact the base class for all visual elements is called UIElement in both the Avalon Framework and our PLF. Since Infragistics has had over 3 years experience designing and building components based on UIElements we were uniquely positioned to leverage the power of Avalon.

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  • SP and DSQL

    7 Comments

    OK I think I am misunderstood. So I rewrite this post to be sure that my thoughts are not badly interpreted ;-)

    IMHO, I love the discussion about Stored Procedures against Dynamic SQL.
    Yes it's a good discussion, but if everybody start to copy and paste everybody's post and comment on top of that, that's going to be very messy to understand and follow the debate.
    James, I didn't started the Scrolling Grid thing, I was just trying to give alternative comments and solutions, when somebody was trying to explain that he has the only solution. Also scrolling grid is also a good technical debate. No subject is more and less interesting, depends about your interest ;-)

    But I think we (and I am also guilty for not doing it too often) use the feedback feature to discuss.

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  • Busy desk !

    5 Comments

    Roy and others published their desk picture recently. I think it's cool idea.

    This is mine today with a new laptop (Dell D800) freshly installed today.

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  • Matrisoft

    1 Comment

    Microsoft Matrix spoof . Just one picture, if somebody has the movie link, thanks ;-)

    Blue Pill or Redmond one ?

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  • Microsoft's search entry could restart browser war

    6 Comments

    Not sure this is good news or not, but it's sure that Microsoft with Longhorn will have a better desktop search engine, and surely it will give them some predominance. But as usual journalists see all the time devil in this company, and forget that Google can be also strong enough to provide their own browser.
    Well it's on the way with the launch recently of their desktop search bar.

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  • XForms

    2 Comments

    XForms recently reached the W3C's Candidate Recommendation status—and you need to know about it—because XForms isn't a form description language, it's a language for describing applications in a platform-independent way. Best of all, it integrates easily with technologies you already know, such as XHTML, XPath, SVG, and CSS. 
     
    If you want to know more about XForms, Devx has a great article on this new language.

    A question is about XAML: is it a Microsoft interpretation of XForm or something else ?!?
     

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  • Yahoo toolbar

    17 Comments

    After Google, you have now Yahoo with a tool called Companion. A new version is planned for this week with  like Google, a popup blocker.

    Read more...

  • Tablet PC 2004

    No Comments

    Gates confirmed at the Comdex that a new version of Tablet PC will be launched next year.

    Read more...

  • [Article] dScribe - Templates Editor

    No Comments

    I just finished another article for the project dScribe. This time I am talking about the Templates Editor.

    How to define the structure to accept our content, and also the requirements for the code.

    I have now a new version of dScribe in GotDotnet space. For the moment, because some readers asked me a Database with some examples, and because I don't have a lot of free time, I am going to publish the current database I use as a working base.

    You need to attach the database using SQL 2000 and Enterprise Manager to attach the dScribe database.

    As usual I need your comments, and your help to make this tool a successful adventure !

    Read more...

  • Datetime issue

    7 Comments

    UPDATE: Thanks for the comments, it gave me some directions. Well It's working now with this little test:

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  • Comment on comments :-(

    5 Comments

    Hey folks calm down.

    I accused in my recent posts ABSOLUTLY anybody. So it's your choice to think thet Robert is a genius, but please read carefully before jumping to some hazrdous conclusion.

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  • Scrollable Area the Dino method

    No Comments

    Finally I found the reference to the article Dino Esposito wrote recently.

    It's in the last issue of ASPNet.Pro (november). Sadly the article online named     Freeze the Header, Scroll the Grid
    require a subscription, so I hope that Dino will be authorize to publish it in MSDN soon.

    Without the permission to say more (copyright issues), it's about creating on the fly with a placeholder a table (the header) over the Datagrid.

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  • When option in Try...Catch

    No Comments

    Paul Vick explain how you can use the option When in a Try...Catch to execute some action when you have an exception (like logging the exception)

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  • Bye bye Insert key

    4 Comments

    Marc Miller report about the changes happening in the last Microsoft keyboard (The Wireless Optical Desktop Pro):

    Read more...

  • The Tweakomatic Util

    No Comments

    The Tweakomatic is a nifty new utility that writes scripts that allow you to retrieve and/or configure Windows and Internet Explorer settings. So what, you might ask. Well, think about it. Because these are WMI scripts, they can be used to configure settings on remote computers. Need to change something on a remote machine? Then haul out the Tweakomatic. And think about this: because the Tweakomatic writes scripts, you could do something like run these scripts as logon or logoff scripts. In other words, you could quickly, easily, and automatically configure settings on any or all the computers in your organization.

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  • dScribe - Template Editor

    1 Comment

    So if you have read my last article on dScribe Editing the Content, now I already started the next one regarding the Template Editor.

    This is really the core of the tool, and I created for this a kind of pseudo-language(very very basic !) to create the place holders for the content.

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  • TTW WYSIWYG Editors

    1 Comment

    TTW meaning 'Through The Web'. I was looking since a long time to do an exhaustive list of all Text Editors using a webpage.

    Not only with IE but Netscape too or others browsers.

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  • New security patch tonight

    No Comments

    I was thinking that patches were quite rare since few days. Maybe Microsoft guys were too busy with the PDC, but tonight the Patches episode 38785 is back again.

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  • New policy for patches and updates

    No Comments

    Industry sources anticipate the disclosure of multiple vulnerabilities in the Windows operating system. The company announced its shift to a monthly patching cycle as a part of a new security initiative unveiled at its Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans last month. Microsoft said it is introducing the new schedule to ease the burden on systems administrators struggling with the frequency of security updates.

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  • dScribe Editing Content - New Article

    No Comments

    Sorry folks if it's not Matrix related (sometime I really wonder if it's weblogs.matrix or .Net;-)) but I just finished a new article on dScribe.

    If you still don't know what the heck is dScribe or if you were living on Mars for the last three months     read more here.

    To give a sense of sitemap in my articles series, this is what I have already published and what still to be done to have a fully first beta version.

    This diagram represent the workflow and I use this as a pattern to be sure I am not losing the plot ;-) And the links send you to the named article

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  • Microsoft Clarifies Its Virtual PC Positioning

    No Comments

    Microsoft released to manufacturing Virtual PC 2004, one piece of the Connectix product line the Redmond software vendor acquired back in February. The extent to which Microsoft will support non-Windows operating systems with the product has been a source of confusion. It seems Microsoft will allow customers to run Linux, OS/2 and "almost any other" X86-based "guest" operating systems, but not support those non-Microsoft guests. At least that's our reading of Microsoft's latest attempt to explain what they're doing. But first and foremost,Microsoft is positioning Virtual PC as a way for its own customer base to migrate to the latest version of Windows.

    Read more...

  • Nuclear Weapons Lab Loses 12 Keys !

    No Comments

    Officials at a national nuclear weapons laboratory in California have lost a dozen keys to the facility, according to a report released yesterday by the Energy Department's inspector general.

    The problem is the cost for this lost: $1.7 Million to replace the others 100 000 in 526 buildings ! And of course who going to pay, guess.

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  • FormBuilder .Net

    1 Comment

    Great Idea ! A form builder using IE6, and making forms creation more easy.

    The only thing is the cost: $349 ! And I didn't found a link for a trial version.

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  • Windows Update 5 Prepped for XP SP2, New IE

    No Comments

    Microsoft has put pen to paper in outlining its vision for Windows Update. Even though version 4 is still in use by beta testers, Microsoft has drawn up its roadmap for the service's next generation, which includes SP2 for Windows XP and an updated release of Internet Explorer.

    Windows Update 5.0 is set to enter into testing before the end of this year and extends patching capabilities to the full monty of Microsoft products including Office, SQL Server, Exchange, as well as Windows.

    The update will be completed in time to coincide with the launch of Windows XP Service Pack 2, arguably the first major revision to Microsoft's flagship desktop operating system. Beta testers on the Windows Update roster were notified this week that they will test the new service pack.

    Service Pack 2 is slated to modify numerous security settings in Windows XP, such as enabling Internet Connection Firewall by default and disabling the Messenger service that has plagued users with unwanted spam. The automatic download of critical patches will be enabled to ensure users systems' are protected from the latest malicious code to spawn from the depths of the Internet.

    Windows will also receive a new version of Internet Explorer, expected to number 6.05. "SP2 will include an update to IE that adds pop-up blocking," a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to BetaNews. "The current plan is to include this in SP2, and we are taking customer feedback that will be considered for the final decision."

    Beyond IE, Microsoft said it was too soon to speculate on changes that Windows Update 5.0 would bring in the future.

    "Microsoft is continuously seeking feedback on how to make the tool even more valuable to its customers. Until we begin to get a clear sense of the feedback from testers and the testing process is further along, it is too early to say exactly what changes might be in store or when V5 might be ready for public release," said a spokesperson.

    However, the way Microsoft products will be serviced is set to drastically change. As previously reported by BetaNews, Microsoft is endeavoring to improve the patching process in Windows from start to finish. The Windows Installer Program 3.0 and Software Update Services 2.0 are also currently undergoing development and testing.

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  • dScribe installation

    1 Comment

    Thanks for the users of dScribe who noticed some problems with the SQL scripts.

    Also maybe because I was to excited to deliver something some of the procedures were the wrong ones.

    Come back to GotdotNet in few minutes and you should see the correct Scripts (named this time Scripts SQL 0.1)

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  • Browsers stats

    3 Comments

    It seems on few stats examples I checked regularly (blog, Scoilnet, etc...) that the browser repartition is not anymore like a block between Internet Explorer and Netscape.

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  • Toilet ringtones ;-)

    No Comments

    New York commuters were less concerned about cellphone-number portability than cellphone pot-ability Wednesday. Edward Gallard, 41, was on a train out of Grand Central, went into the bathroom to make a call, dropped his phone into the toilet, reached in to grab it and got stuck, Reuters reported.

    Rail workers couldn't help him, so they stopped the train and called in firefighters, who spent 90 minutes extricating the guy using their Jaws of Life equipment. Meanwhile, thousands of commuters were held up during the evening rush hour.

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  • New version of Royal TS 1.1

    2 Comments

    If someone else but me is using this tool, you might visit my site. Released version 1.1 a few days ago. Nothing really new only some minor improvements...

    Read more...

  • Gator change its skin

    1 Comment

    News.com is reporting that infamous spyware distributor, Gator, is changing its name to Claria in an attempt to better reflect its business. Well see if a Gator really can change its spots.

    Read more...

  • New Keyword in VB 2

    No Comments

    Just discovered that you have now Continue which allow you to close the current loop and jump into the next step.
    The keyword can be used with For, Do, and While loops. In nested loops of different types, the desired loop could be specified by a suffix-for example, Continue For.

    Read more...

  • No more projects files in Whidbey but...

    3 Comments

    Something different from previous approaches is that there's no special project file generated at the time of project creation in Whidbey. From now on, every file within the selected directories belongs to the project automatically. This approach simplifies adding new files, including references to the bin directory, and moving projects.

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  • Microsoft Research was also present at the PDC

    No Comments

    Online Astronomy collection

    Microsoft engineer Jim Gray showed an online astronomy collection he's developing with researchers at the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a project compiling a complete map of skies visible from the Northern Hemisphere.

    Read more...

  • Microsoft's search entry could restart browser war

    1 Comment

    The launch of a Microsoft search engine will take the battle for supremacy in the most vibrant sector in digital advertising away from the Web and onto users' desktops, say industry players writing for next week's NMA/Advertising.

    Sector-watchers agree that MSN's plan to ditch the partnership approach it has taken to search marketing, and to launch its own product, could provoke search giant Google to hit back by launching its own Web browser, reigniting the browser wars.

    Since Yahoo! bought Overture earlier this year, the market has been shaping up for a three-way struggle between Yahoo!/Overture, Google and MSN.

    Andrew Goodman, founder of search marketing Web site Traffick.com, said, 'MSN has advantages that other providers don't. It controls that browser, the operating system and office software. Search can be integrated to form a coherent package.

    'I foresee the launch of a Google browser within two years. Controlling the browser may be Google's only defence,' he added.

    At search marketing firm Decide Interactive, strategy director and co-founder Paul McCarney said a key question was whether Microsoft could convince users to accept search tools as part of its operating system and applications.

    Another factor, according to McCarney, is whether Google can take the search application to the desktop.

    Editor of Searchenginewatch.com, Danny Sullivan, said MSN would need to produce a 'better search' to beat Google and that it was a 'smart company with lots of money'.

    But he added, 'Against Microsoft is the incredible lead both Google and Yahoo! have.'

    Read more...

  • My wish for the PDC DVD

    1 Comment

    I don't know what I am going to find on the MSDN DVD PDC review.

    But I have a wish: videos !

    Everything is much more clever after watching some videos.

    Read more...

  • Being fired by Microsoft for one picture, is it true ?

    No Comments

    Apparently yes for Michael Hanscom.

    Working for Microsoft Printing division he dare to post this picture on his weblog and has been sacked after that !

    Is it really the truth or another conspiracy story. Or maybe Michael you like too much Apple that you should apply there for a job now. Come on Microsoft you  have already a Macintosh division ;-)

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  • Microsoft to bring DirectX 8 gaming to PDAs

    No Comments

    Microsoft plans to radically boost the multimedia performance of the next generation of PDAs and smartphones based on its software, if pronouncements made at this year's Professional Developers Conference (PDC) come to fruition.

    We're not just talking bigger screen sizes here. PDC coverage among specialist Pocket PC and smartphone sites has focused on the software giant's plan to raise the resolutions supported by Windows Mobile devices to 480 x 640 for Pocket PCs and 240 x 320 for smartphones.

    Source:     The Register

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  • Sliding Doors of CSS

    No Comments

    A rarely discussed advantage of CSS is the ability to layer background images, allowing them to slide over each other to create certain effects. CSS2’s current state requires a separate HTML element for each background image. In many cases, typical markup for common interface components has already provided several elements for our use.

    Read more...

  • LogicLibrary Launches New .NET Directory

    No Comments

    LOS ANGELES -- LogicLibrary, a maker of metadata software for UDDI Web services catalogs, has released what it calls the first asset discovery engine for developers using the Microsoft .NET framework to consolidate and integrate applications.

    Short for Universal Description, Discovery and Integration, UDDI is a Web-based distributed directory that enables businesses to list themselves on the Internet and discover each other, similar to a traditional phone book's yellow and white pages.

    The tools, called Logidex for .NET, enable software architects and developers using the Visual Studio .NET 2003 framework a way to quickly search a centralized library, or directory, of software development assets (SDAs) for building Web services applications in the .NET framework.

    The Pittsburgh-based company is also integrating its directory-searching tools with the current build of Microsoft's Visual Studio pre-beta "Whidbey" that is due to be unveiled to developers at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference here, which runs until Thursday.

    Call it a starter-kit catalog of descriptions about how Web services data should be interpreted between business partners. The Logidex search tools are now a tightly integrated SDA management tool for the Visual Studio .NET platform.

    As Web services are created, LogicLibrary's Logidex graphical search engine works with public and private UDDI directories to supply a more complete set of metadata for each registered Web service. From there, the Logidex engine provides a context that allows both internal developers and external partners to understand and assess the Web services available to them.

    As new Web services and other assets are developed, Logidex allows them to be mapped to the business' models so that the library of software assets continues to grow over time and stays current with the enterprise's business and technical frameworks, company officials explained.

    The idea is to help organizations more easily represent and consume the complex application and SDA relationships inherent in service-oriented applications -- or to essentially make sure the "catalog" of data from one application is interpreting it the way it was intended. To use the mail-order catalog analogy, the Logidex library search tools help ensure that a customer accessing a Web services public "catalog" -- or UDDI -- sees a "couch" that it is searching for.

    "These are out of the box assets that people can use immediately," said Greg Coticchia, president and CEO of LogicLibrary. Even if developers don't have time to start populating the catalog with their own assets, it is already populated with Microsoft patterns and practices, he said. Developers can search and find those without leaving their own development environment.

    In many enterprises that are conducing pilot tests of Web services for conducting business transactions in a Web environment automatically, the state of the art for handling the data being transferred are spreadsheets programs such as Excel or Lotus notes. But the spreadsheets are not scalable or usable. "You need a vehicle to share and update those," said Coticchia, which is what the Logidex library does.

    LogicLibrary also announced Tuesday the ability for Visual Studio .NET developers to scan a comprehensive list of Microsoft-defined .NET Framework software assets and perform model-based searches of the library on MSDN at http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/logidex.

    The pre-loaded .NET framework assets are directly from Microsoft's Platform Architectural Guidance (PAG) Group, include enterprise solution patterns, application blocks, and reference applications and architectures.

    Coticchia said developers would use Logidex's patent-pending graphical discovery engine to find the PAP that provides the .NET patterns and practices they need to see in order to collaborate on building Windows-based applications and XML Web services from within the Visual Studio .NET 2003 development environment.

    The Logidex UDDI search tools help enterprises to map relationships among Microsoft .NET Framework SDAs, their business process and technical models, and their applications, components, XML schemas, documentation and other key software and knowledge assets that span the application development lifecycle.

    MSDN users will have read-only access to the Logidex .NET Library via either Microsoft Internet Explorer or a Logidex add-in for Visual Studio .NET 2003, which is available for download here.

    The companies said discovered Microsoft .NET Framework assets can be downloaded from the Logidex .NET Library directly into a user's development environment. It is also offering 30-day trials of the hosted Logidex for .NET library that let developers add their own SDAs to the library and map them to the Microsoft patterns and practices.

    Coticchia said the data descriptions in the library have been submitted to the Object Management Group, a standards group working on interoperable terms such as the Reusable Asset Specification.

    Although LogicLibrary's announcement Tuesday is sort of a coming out party for the three-year-old company, it also works closely on Web services technology lines with companies such as IBM, Borland and IBM's Rational Software. It also collaborates with Sun Microsystems and offers Java versions of the Logidex tools.

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  • .Net Framework version for Itanium announced

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    Intel and Microsoft Tuesday announced a pre-release version of the Microsoft .NET Framework for Itanium 2 microarchitecture. The .NET Framework expands upon a previous set of tools available for Intel Itanium 2-based platforms running on 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows.

    The official set of Windows, Web and .NET-connected applications for Itanium 2-based systems include Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP 64-Bit Edition Version 2003 operating systems, Microsoft .NET Framework, Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003, Intel's IA-32 Execution Layer (IA-32 EL), Microsoft compiler tools and Intel's performance suite of compilers, analyzers and libraries.

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  • New Windows virus hits computers

    1 Comment

    The virus emerged at the weekend and is multiplying because so many versions of Windows are vulnerable.

    Many people are thought to be falling victim to it because one version poses as an update from anti-virus firms.

    It also tries to hide by using many different subject lines in both German and English and by changing the name of the payload holding the virus.

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  • Longhorn support only with Orcas ?!?

    1 Comment

    The Whidbey release of Visual Studio and the .NET Framework will represent a significant milestone in the Microsoft developer tools roadmap. Following the SQL Server Yukon and Visual Studio Whidbey wave of products, the next major platform update will be the Windows operating system release code name "Longhorn". The Whidbey release of Visual Studio and the .NET Framework will run on this landmark operating system release, as will applications built with Visual Studio Whidbey.

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  • Microsoft Developer Tools Roadmap 2004-2005

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    In February 2002, software developers and architects worldwide were introduced to Visual Studio .NET and the Microsoft .NET Framework. This landmark release, four years in the making, offered a unified development environment and programming model for constructing a range of software solutions. With the recent launch of Visual Studio .NET 2003, customers gained the benefits of enhanced tool and framework functionality, as well as increased performance, security and scalability for building enterprise-critical software.

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  • Oracle Demonstrates Integration with .NET-Connected Technologies at the PDC 2003

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    REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., Oct. 28, 2003 - (http://www.oracle.com/tellmemore/?2505551)  Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL), the world¿s largest enterprise software company, today announced that it will demonstrate its integration with Microsoft .NET-connected technologies, including the Microsoft .NET Framework, at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in the Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles, CA, October 26-30, 2003, where it is also a sponsor. Attendees can meet with Oracle experts at a show-floor lounge, hosted by Oracle, to learn more about using the Oracle Database in a .NET-connected environment with Oracle Data Provider for .NET.

    "Our sponsorship at the Professional Developers Conference shows our ongoing commitment to the Microsoft development community," said Prem Kumar, vice president, Server Technologies Engineering, Oracle Corp. "It¿s a testament to the flexibility of Oracle¿s technology, our open standards, industry-leading technology and ability to work with a variety of platforms instead of locking developers into one language, one platform."

    In addition to working with .NET-connected technologies, Oracle technology supports both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the latest Windows operating system, Windows Server 2003.

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  • GDI Advance but goes backward :-(

    5 Comments

    Drew replied to my question on the future for GDI:

    You mean besides Avalon? I haven't heard about any advances in the GDI APIs. Everything is moving towards Avalon and vector graphics. It was explicitly pointed out that there are two graphics stacks in Longhorn. GDI for legacy apps and Avalon for Longhorn+ apps. As I understand it, so far, is the support for GDI is now essentially a thunking layer to Avalon. Legacy windows apps seem to run just fine (they showed Visicalc), but they look like complete strangers in the rich Avalon world.

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  • Portable Media Center by Microsoft

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     Microsoft Corp. said on Monday that it would develop software for a new portable media device to be released next year that will allow users to listen to music and watch movies on the road. Portable Media Center, Microsoft's answer to Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod digital music player, will be able to play MP3 files as well as audio and video content recorded in Microsoft's own digital format.

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  • Sober Email worm

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    A virus which poses as a security fix from an AV firm is the latest menace to assault Windows users.

    Sober typically spreads by email. The viral messages it generates have infectious attachment names such as typically anti_virusdoc.pif, check-patch.bat, playme.exe and variable English and German subject lines. A full list can be found in an     advisory from Finnish AV firm F-Secure.

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  • DJ Massachusetts, Microsoft Lock Horns On Open Source Gain

    2 Comments


    BOSTON (AP)--With more than $32 billion in sales last year, Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) doesn't usually worry about losing one customer. But this one may be different.

    In a memo sent last month, Massachusetts Administration and Finance Secretary Eric Kriss instructed the state's chief technology officer to adopt a policy of "open standards, open source" for all future spending on information technology.

    The directive likely wouldn't completely cut out Microsoft from the state's $80 million technology budget.

    But it may have been the clearest example yet of a state government taking sides -against Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft -in the most important struggle in the software industry.

    Microsoft's software generally uses "proprietary" code that the company closely guards. Its biggest threat is from "open source" operating systems led by Linux, whose core components are public, and which users are free to pass around and customize as they like.

    Governments are a huge market, accounting for about 10% of global information technology spending, according to research firm IDC. Federal, state and local governments in the United States spent $34 billion last year on huge systems to track everything from tax collection to fishing licenses.

    "I think they're correct to be concerned," said Ted Schadler, principal analyst at Forrester Research, adding that government switchovers could doubly hurt Microsoft by persuading big corporate customers that, if huge public bureaucracies can adopt platforms like Linux, so can large companies.

    Governments have also been among the most aggressive early adapters of Linux. IBM, a major Linux backer, says it has installed or is installing Linux for 175 public sector customers.

    "The momentum is unstoppable at this point," said Scott Handy, vice president of Linux strategy and market development at IBM. "The leading indicator as far as a customer set has been government."

    Many believe open source will prove cheaper to deploy and operate, and that it may be more secure; because the codes are public, flaws may be discovered more quickly. And some foreign governments seem eager not to be dependent on an American company.

    Federal agencies in France, China and Germany, as well as the city government of Munich, have opted for Linux. Britain, Brazil and Russia are also exploring it.

    "You scratch any one of these initiatives and you can't escape that it's Microsoft they're trying to displace," Schadler said.

    Microsoft's risk of losing the public sector market altogether is small, at least for now.

    The company's products are just too essential, and many open source alternatives too ineffective for many of the kinds of big database jobs governments require. Kriss said the state would still use Microsoft products when cost-effective open-source alternatives aren't available.

    Microsoft says it knows it won't win every contract, but it opposes any type of mandate preventing proprietary software from even being considered. It says that's bad for technology companies and bad for taxpayers, who may get stuck paying for inferior, more expensive products.

    "We do treat this issue very seriously here," said David Kaeffer, Microsoft's director of technology policy.

    Microsoft has fought open-source mandates with limited success. Proposals similar to Massachusetts', including ones in Oregon and Texas, have been shot down after complaints from Microsoft and other technology companies whose products could be shut out. Microsoft also aggressively lobbied the Defense Department to cut its use of open source software, according to a Washington Post report last year.

    The company has plenty of reason to worry.

    The Microsoft-led industry group Initiative for Software Choice has tracked 70 different open-source preference proposals in 24 countries. And despite Microsoft's lobbying, a Pentagon report concluded that open source was often cheaper and more secure, and that its use, if anything, should expand.

    Gerry Wethington, Missouri's chief information officer and president of the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, said many of his group's members are pushing hard to bring open standards to their states.

    Microsoft countered with an initiative in July that steeply discounts software for government users. It also agreed to make its secret source code available to some governments in order to assuage security concerns.

    Microsoft insists that it supports "open standards," which is often associated with "open source" but can also be a broader term meaning any way of making technology work together.

    Although some analysts say open-source products may offer stronger security and greater reliability, the argument that they make it easier for systems to talk to each other falls apart if many of those systems are already Microsoft.

    "Politically, there are only pros, but in terms of government employee productivity there are quite a few cons," said Schadler, the Forrester researcher.

    (END) Dow Jones Newswires

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  • VS.NET Tips & Tricks notes

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    This is a BoF session where attendees and presenters (from Canada, yay) share neat little things (some known, some obscure) about working in VS.NET.

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  • New Server Controls Provided by the ASP.NET Web Matrix

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    Recently, the second version of the ASP.NET Web Matrix was released to the public. The Web Matrix is a free .NET development tool provided by Microsoft® that allows you to build ASP.NET pages as well as XML Web services in either Microsoft Visual Basic® .NET, C# or J#. You can download the Web Matrix from the ASP.NET Web site.

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  • Royal TS 1.0

    5 Comments

    This is a replacement for the standard Terminal Services Snap-In with some additional features. Since Windows 2003 Server Edition's Terminal Services now provide a way to remote control the interactive session like in Windows XP, the Terminal Services Snap-In cannot connect to the servers console. Besides, if an administrator remotely controls the interactive console (e.g. with the Windows XP RDP Client you can connect to the server's console using the /console switch), he locks the real interactive session. This little app reads out all currently available sessions and warns you if currently someone else is connected to the console.

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  • LongHorn SDK

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    The OS isn't due for a couple of years, but Microsoft are already letting us have a look at how to work with the systems...

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  • What's going to happen next ... ?

    4 Comments

    Hey folks the PDC malaria is really everywhere. But  what's going to happen next ?

    What if this is just a gigantic souffle just good to finish flat as a nice pancake ;-)

    I'm not sure but I think Whidbey will not be release until some time. So how the developers will cope after seeing so many nice feaures, and suddenly have to get back to the reality.

    Will they abandon their job until the release of the so promising new version ? Will they sadly accept that it was just a dream, a glimpse on a bright future ?

    I imagine that some guys will probably try to mimic .Net 2.

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  • dScribe GUI

    1 Comment

    Well I am not at the PDC, and like the 99% of human beings on this planet, I have to do my load of work ;-)

    First of all, I received some nice comments on my post regarding some GUI issues.

    One thing I can say is that the question was about a general idea on making visible/invisible panels, not really on the buttons placement.

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  • Adomd.Net (Beta)

    1 Comment

    ADOMD.Net is a .NET object model, used for building client data access components, for accessing an XMLA 1.1 compliant data provider, such as that provided by the XMLA SDK.

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  • Producing XHTML with ASP.Net

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    In the meanwhile, I've recently seen two separate developments which should hopefully reduce the pain of supporting XHTML within ASP.NET. Firstly, a colleague pointed me at the following article on the ASP.NET forums, which is from a company who are producing XHTML Strict 1.0 replacements of the standard server controls (thanks, Kieran!).

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  • XDA II for the 1st of November

    1 Comment

    New features of the Xda II include:

    • an integrated 640x480 pixels digital camera and full multimedia messaging functionality
    • tri-band capability to enable seamless use worldwide
    • 128MB RAM Memory (up from 64MB)
    • Bluetooth capability
    • a faster processor (Intel Xscale technology based processor at 400 MHz) facilitating faster use and improved battery life
    • improved talk and standby time
    • stored picture caller identification - see who's calling
    • a removable battery enables power users to swap the battery whilst on the move
    • the latest Phone Edition of Windows MobileTM 2003 Software for Pocket PC
    • customer focussed packages for ease of use and understanding

    And the price seems to be cool 349 £ in UK. Not bad at all.

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  • Stripping (partially) HTML tags

    2 Comments

    Not being a regular expression guru is a sometime frustrating ;-)

    Well this time I think I figured out how to strip the tags from an HTML file, but keeping the <b> <i> !

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  • Texts on SQL

    2 Comments

    This is a small collection of texts about some features in SQL Server that people frequently ask about in the newsgroups about MS SQL Server. Rather than being a FAQ with many questions with short answers, these are in-depth articles on some of my favourite topics

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  • Web Deployment in Whidbey

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    Well I can really say that Scott really rocks !

    After my post on the deployment issue, I didn't expect such a clever and fast answer like that !

    Just a pity that I have to endure the same 'painful' process until the release of Whidbey ;-)

    Scott I like the idea that now (indeed in few months ;-( ) I will be able to do my deployment inside Visula using FTP.

    But I am quite happy at the moment to do so with Frontpage extensions, becuase I don't have to open the port 21 on my server, avoiding any security issues.

    Another (good ?!?) question is about Visual SourceSafe. What's happen with the checkin/checkout process and the new deployment tool ?

    To be honest, I don't use myself VSS (I am the only developer here), but I think about my colleagues who still use it.

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  • Multiple Monitors and Productivity - It's true

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    Paul Laudeman talk about productivity increas with multiple monitors with some screenshots.

    I am the same, I can't work now without at least two screens.
    Paul suggest more, 3 screens !!

    Well I am going to receive soon a brand new 20" flat screen, so I imagine I can make a good combination with my current 20" screen ... and my laptop screen !

    My dream will be to have one huge half circular screen, running from the left of my desk to the right. And maybe a full circle could be fun too if only I can have a 360 degrees revolving chair.

    And maybe I would have to call a mad surgeon to implement in my head few new pairs of eyes ;-)

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  • Web Deployment, question for the future

    6 Comments

    Because it's PDC time, I like to ask some questions about the future.

    Guys, in Whidbey can we expect a better Web deployment system ?

    I would like for example to be able to upload to my server a set of files, without deploying all my site.

    Actually I can use right click on the files I don't want to deploy and ask Exclude from the project, but this create some issues.

    I would like to have a FTP kind of features embedded in Visual Studio. I am sure it's not big deal to do so ;-)

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  • Request renewal...

    3 Comments

    It's about time to renew a request I posted few months ago.

    You never know, maybe with more and more .Net developers, somebody has the solution to this !

    Just for reminder, I am trying to develop a 'little' paint application with .Net and GDI+.

    Unfortunatly in a web application, it seems that System.Drawing is somehow limited.

    I can't figure out how to fill an irregular region. Briefly, I want to go further than the simple Draw-Me-A-Box example that you can see everywhere.

    Maybe with .Net 2.0 I can expect some new marvellous features in GDI+

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  • Full Text search behavior

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    Well not really .Net related but I discovered a strange behavior with SQL Full Text Search.

    It's the first time I index a table for Full Text search on a laptop.

    I spent few hours trying to populate a catalog.

    No hope until I plugged my laptop to the main, and it worked perfectly well !

    It seems like the SQL developers are trying to save our laptop batteries ;-)

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  • Some fun with Word

    1 Comment

    Not even Bill Gates can explain this one!!!!!!
    Try this
    Open a blank word document and type (or copy it):
    = rand (200,99)
    Press enter
    Wait 3 seconds...

    Look like an easter egg for me ;-))

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  • PDC material

    4 Comments

    I missed the latest episodes about the PDC.
    Does somebody know if as MSDN subscribers, we will be lucky enough to receive some material like CDs or demos ?

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  • Back from honeymoon ;-))

    2 Comments

    Hello everybody, I am just back from honeymoon.

    I surely missed a lot of things, so I will try to catch up with the news.

    Just one thing, Maldives are really the truely paradise on Earth ;-))

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  • Wedding Day ;-)

    17 Comments

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

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  • About the scrolling Datagrid

    7 Comments

    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.

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  • The Test...

    1 Comment

    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 :-))

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  • WebAdmin

    2 Comments

    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 !

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  • ADO.NET Tips & Tricks - Part I

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    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 !

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  • Chris Brumme has a competitor ;-)

    No Comments

    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 ;-)

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  • Smartscroller control for Datagrid

    No Comments

    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'.

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  • dScribe CMS project: the Status class

    No Comments

    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:

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  • Datagrid scrolling

    No Comments

    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.

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  • Debugger lost his process

    No Comments

    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.

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  • Cross Browser DHTML libraries

    1 Comment

    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.

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

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    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.

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

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    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."

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  • Microsoft Search

    1 Comment

    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.

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  • Website optimization

    No Comments

    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.

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  • The Onion article generator

    No Comments

    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 ?

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  • Is Sony will be the next computer revolution company ?

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    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.

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  • MSDN Search

    No Comments

    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

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  • Handling Errors in ASP.NET

    1 Comment

    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.

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  • dbXML - Native XML Database

    No Comments

    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
     

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  • Searching in MSDN

    3 Comments

    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.

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  • dScribe update

    No Comments

    Wow! My CMS project dScribe take a great shape today when I was able to see the front-end getting the content from my database ;-)

    For the moment I just have to declare this in the different sections of the test site     Scoilnet, and voila!

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  • The Unofficial blogs.gotdotnet.com main feed

    No Comments

    Well rather then complain about the lack of a main feed for http://blogs.gotdotnet.com/ I decided to code up a little app to create a feed.  The current feed only includes the blogs running BlogX so guys like Don Box are currently not included.  I'll write more about how I created the main feed as well as release the source for the feed creator in a later post.  For the time being point your aggregators over to http://www.emxtechnologies.com/gotdotnet-blogs/mainfeed.xml and let me know what you think!

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  • Code magazine

    2 Comments

    We are all saying good things about MSDN magazine, the last issue is sadly not the best IMHO.

    But I would like to give some kudos to the excellent Code, going on better and better every month.

    The last issue cover a large area, from first steps to develop on a Tablet PC to the complexity of .Net threads.

    Add to this that they have most of the best .Net writers like Dino Esposito and you finish with an excellent reading.

    BTW does somebody know if Dino has a blog ? It will be a fanatstic news.

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  • ASP.NET and xHTML Compliance

    3 Comments

    On this blog, you can find a rant about ASP.Net and the fact that it's not compliant with XHTML standards.

    I read the comments, but I didn't found a suitable positive answer to this issue, sadly most of them are negative views.

    The only one interesting is about this article “    Valid XHTML within .NET” and it's a good start for a solution.

    You can download the source here.

    Any comments ?

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  • Datareader HasRows but don't read back or forward

    10 Comments

    In my previous post I submit this 'little' annoyance I have with Datareader.

    Unfortunatly Matt and Dave your answer is wrong, I already tested with.Hasrows before, I should mention it in my post.

    Hasrows is a valid test but don't read any data.

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  • Bridging the gap between .NET and J2EE

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    In his article David Longworth talk about interoperability between J2EE and .Net.
    What I liked to read there is a sort of neutral point of view on the subject, putting Java and .Net on their real application and strength.

    For David .Net win certainly in the productivity area, where J2EE seems to be overcomplicated for many.

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  • Generics as Type Constructors

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    From Don Box:
     
    The CLR began its life with three fixed type constructors:
     
    • Array (T[])
    • Managed Pointer (T&)
    • Unmanaged Pointer (T*)
     
    Each of these type constructors acts as an operator on another type and allows you to construct new types without an explicit definition.
     
    For example, given this type:
     
    public struct Person { public string SSN; public double Age; }
     
    I can now ask the CLR to create new types by applying one or more type constructors:
     
    Console.WriteLine(Type.GetType("Person[]"));
    Console.WriteLine(Type.GetType("Person*"));
    Console.WriteLine(Type.GetType("Person&"));
    Console.WriteLine(Type.GetType("Person[][]"));
    Console.WriteLine(Type.GetType("Person[][]&"));
    Console.WriteLine(Type.GetType("Person[][][][]&"));
     
    The six types that are loaded by these statements have no a priori definition - rather, they are synthesized out of thin air by applying one or more operators to a "real" type.
     
    Generics in the CLR allow anyone to write a type constructor. For example, consider this generic type:
     
    public struct Named<T> {
      public T Value;
      pubic string Name;
    }
     
    Given this new "operator", I can do the following (note that GetType uses [] not <> for parameters):
     
    Console.WriteLine(Type.GetType("Named[Person]"));
    Console.WriteLine(Type.GetType("Named[Person][]"));
    Console.WriteLine(Type.GetType("Named[Person[]]"));
    Console.WriteLine(Type.GetType("Named[Named[Person]]"));
    Console.WriteLine(Type.GetType("Named[Named[Named[Person]]]"));
     
    which is roughly equivalent to this more direct version:
     
    Console.WriteLine(typeof(Named<Person>));
    Console.WriteLine(typeof(Named<Person>[]));
    Console.WriteLine(typeof(Named<Person[]>));
    Console.WriteLine(typeof(Named<Named<Person>>));
    Console.WriteLine(typeof(Named<Named<Named<Person>>>));
     
    As this example shows, Named<T> is yet another operator I can compose with other operators (both the built-in and user-defined type operators). 
     
    This compositional style of taking two or more abstractions that know nothing about one another and combining them to get higher-order functionality has really changed the way I look at designing object models. 

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  • Microsoft bloggers on the grill

    2 Comments

    Interesting thoughts from John Udell about the fact that you can find more interesting posts in the blogs than in MSDN .Reading this make me think that some growing conflicts are raising slowly in Microsoft. I hope it will not be the start of the end for some very good MS bloggers.

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  • Rollover navigation bar with 2 images

    3 Comments

    I promised yesterday to post my trick to create an easy navigation bar with only two images.
    When you have a basic navigation bar with multiple images, it can make the web page very heavy if you have to preload a lot of multiple images to  do a rollover with every image.
    In this example, I have 8 buttons, so that's means 16 images to have a rollover effect with mouse over and mouse out.
    So what you can do is to prepare your navigation bar with Photoshop or ImageReady or Paintshop Pro.
    You create the two bar states like this with an imagemap for each button:

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  • Autoupdate SQL Server

    3 Comments

    Paschal, why couldn't you manage this with a server with a DMZ server with a hole opened up to the inside with IPSec to keep it secure? I agree that the box can't be hit directly, but surely there is a reasonable way to accomplish this objective.

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  • Blogarithm

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    Wow! I just discovered a coool blog service called Blogarithm.

    The purpose there is to send you by email an alert everytime your favorites blogs are updated.

    Coool ;-)

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  • Fast rollovers, no preload needed

    1 Comment

    When using CSS rollovers with images, two, three, or more images must be loaded (and preloaded for best results) - one imgae for each state (normal, hover, active, visited etc). Putting all pictures into one image makes dynamic changes faster and requires no preload.

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  • Mini-Tabs Shapes

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    This is a really cool thing to inaugurate the new category I added to my blog.

    I really enjoy playing with CSS, and the amazing thing you can do with this.

    The proof ? This nice Mini shape tabs article published by Simplebits

    It's a method to implement little graphic shapes in your list-based navigation

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  • BBC News Styleguide

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    I think all bloogers (include me of course ;-)) should read this PDF document from the BBC, a good lesson in writing news.

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  • ASP.NET Side-by-Side Execution of .NET Framework 1.0 and 1.1

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    In ASP.NET, applications are said to be running side by side when they are installed on the same computer, but use different versions of the .NET Framework. The following topic describes how to configure ASP.NET applications for side-by-side execution and provides detailed steps to:

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  • .NET 18,000 mile checkup

    1 Comment

    A nice article summarizing some companies opinions about what's in .NET that they like 18 months after it's release (has it really been only that long ago :-)) and what they wish was "in the box".

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  • My experience with a Sysadmin

    3 Comments

    I don't like to talk about my personal relations with my colleagues, but here I have to deal with a very *stubborn* Sysadmin, who don't take seriously the recent threats coming from MSBlast or Sobig.

    I really don't understand this attitude, so because we are a small group, I decided to pass over him and do the different patches myself.

    So now things seems to be better, but what an experience to deal with that.

    I probably have to take some advice on 'How to deal with the Sysadmin without being rude' ;-)

    I also heard many times that virus are only for Windows, and we are all morons to not jumping on the Linux wagon.

    Well I think that people who develops such pesty things are only attracted by the mass effect.

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  • .Net couple

    2 Comments

    Scott post about his collaborative work on dotnetToolbox with his fiancee.

    What a lucky man, somebody who can probably understand what is it to be a developer ;-)

    Imagine the conversation at home, about Reflection, abstract classes or OOP.

    Please pass me the salt, thanks darling... Oh by the way darling how was your day with System.XML ?

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  • Spam strategy ;-)

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    Dave seems to have received the dumbest spam I ever seen (until the next one) ;-).

    Whatever we think about those spammers, they have a great sense of creativity !

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  • Blaster Form and windows Update

    9 Comments

    My two cents on this story with Blaster worm:

    Why, when I choose Windows Update from the start menu, and asked for the latest updates, the patch for Blaster worn doesn't come in the Critical Updates ?
    And it doesn't appear at all !

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  • WS-I Announces General Availability of the Basic Profile 1.0

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    BOSTON, Aug. 12, 2003 — Today, at XML Web Services One, the Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I) announced the general availability of the Basic Profile 1.0.  The Basic Profile 1.0, which has been formally approved by the WS-I member community, consists of implementation guidelines on how core Web services specifications should be used together to develop interoperable Web services.  The specifications covered by the Basic Profile include SOAP 1.1, WSDL 1.1, UDDI 2.0, XML 1.0 and XML Schema.

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  • Folder rights access

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    I have a good question there. I have a .Net hosted outside my network this time.

    what I have in my code is a small CMS to let some users uploading images in a specific folder of the website.

    What's baffle me is that after deploying the site to the hosting provider, I am unable to upload images to the specified folder.

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  • ASP Today is back!

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    Well the first article by alex Homer is a bit disappointing to say the least !

    It's more a brochure about what you have in Windows 2003. It should be a free article as as a starter for the new site.

    As many surely I was eagerly waiting for a 'bang' article not something that you can find almost everywhere for free.

    I was also expecting some new design to introduce the new site.

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  • A-list bloggers parody

    1 Comment

    Cool , here we go with Robert Scoble:

    I am nice, reasonable, normal smart type, not always given to the usual Blog Groupthink. I am not like all those other Bloggers. So why I am a Blogger? I am just gaming this meme. Link to friends. Link to more friends. Link to other friends. Link to these friends. Link to more friends. Link to my boss, he’s way way cool. Hey, didyah know, I used to work for Radio Userland. And I used to plan Tech Conferences, I know every Geek in the world! They all like me. Link to other friends. Link to Microsoft developers. NEC Tablet PC rocks. See this picture of Bill Gates holding one, here’s another picture. But I have a Toshiba Tablet PC at Microsoft, as the NEC Tablet PC is not on Microsoft’s approved list. Link to .NET developers. Link to friends. Link to other friends. I like Apple too. Link to other friends. Microsoft stories. Working at Microsoft is so very super cool. I love this place. Woz is my friend. Don Box is my friend. Chris Sells is my friend. Chris Pirillo is my friend. I am Dave Winer’s only friend. Name drop here, name drop there. Link to this Developer here, link to that Developer there. Blogs are like everything. So what if I don’t have that many readers? I want quality. Its all about quality. People who don’t read me, obviously aren’t quality material. Blogs are power. Link to friends. I am friends of all. And now look who I am having lunch with. I know lots of people, used to be Silicon Valley Geek Schmooze King, now I am playing the same game in Seattle. Name drop here, name drop there. Blogger Movie Night. Blogger Food Court Night. Blogger Shopping Spree. Blogger Wal-Mart Blueberry Slurpee run. Link to friends. Link to other friends. Career advice. Link to friends. Link to other friends. I love working at Microsoft. Come to the Professional Developers Conference. Link to friends. Link to other friends. If you are an important person, wanta do lunch? Link to friends. Name drop here, name drop there.

    Read other bloggers here

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  • Blogstreet

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    Blogstreet is another Blogs search engine. This one is interesting, because they have some nice features like a RSS Generator, to create RSS from non RSS blogs, a profile search, and a blogs top ranking system.

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  • Open your blog mind

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    The blogosphere itself may be free of geographic constraints, but the cultural and linguistic differences between countries are still present.

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  • HasRows logic flaw

    11 Comments

    Well maybe the title of this post is a bit strong. It's not really a flaw, but something occurs to me today using this new Datareader property.

    If you use Hasrows it doesn't mean that you have indeed read any data !

    I know it looks strange, but Hasrows is just there to check that some data are in your reader.

    What is the point to open a datareader, tell me that I have rows, and not reading the data ;-)

    Where is the logic of this ?

    So unless someone tell me I am a stupid man (and I am surely going to receive hundreds of comments with something like that ;-)) I stay with the 'old' version of my code which test and read the first record in the same time:

    If MyDataReader.Read then

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  • Meaning map

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    Meaning Map is a client-server software alternative to online message boards, and a whole new way of looking at political space. Because of its complexity, it has to run as a stand-alone client application on your computer (much like a web browser), instead of running directly in a web page. For now, the Meaning Map client is only available on Windows.

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  • Epitaph

    No Comments

    Fun comment from Addy on a previous post :

    Hey guess what - if you could see the source code it wouldn't help anyway because everyone knows that the world would be "sealed" :)

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  • VB.Net language design

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    MSDN has posted a transcript of the chat that I and other members of my team had a few weeks ago about VB.NET language design. It ended up being much more about future features than past decisions, but that's to be expected. It was a fun chat for us, and we hope to be able to do another one in the not-too-distant future!

    From     Paul

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  • Joke of the day :-)

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    A girl asks her boyfriend to come over Friday night and have dinner with her parents. This being a big event, the girl tells her boyfriend that after dinner, she would like to go out and “do it” for the first time.

    Well, the boy is ecstatic, but he has never done it before, so he takes a trip to the pharmacist to get some protection. The pharmacist helps the boy for about an hour. He tells the boy everything there is to know about protection and doing it.

    At the register, the pharmacist asks the boy how many he’d like to buy; a 3-pack, a 10-pack, or a family pack. The boy insists on the family pack because he says he expects to be “pretty busy.”

    That night, the boy shows up at the girl’s parent’s house and meets his girlfriend at the door “Oh I’m so excited for you to meet my parents, come on in.” The boy goes inside and is taken to the dinner table where the girl’s parents are seated.

    The boy quickly offers to say grace and bows his head. A minute passes, and the boy still deep in prayer with his head down.

    Ten minutes pass and still no movement from the boy.

    Finally, after 20 minutes with his head down, the girlfriend leans over and whispers to her boyfriend, “I had no idea you were so religious.”

    The boy turns and whispers back, “I had no idea your father was a pharmacist    .”

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  • VS Code Generator Shim

    1 Comment

    The VS Code Generator Shim is a generic custom tool for Visual Studio .NET 2002 and 2003 that enables code generators to be written easily and quickly in just about any .NET language and using familiar .NET Framework constructs. A standard custom tool designed for Visual Studio must use COM interoperability (when written in managed code) and register with the IDE to be fully operational, but the shim help eliminates these requirements entirely. You only need to create a class and expose a single method to write a code generator now. What's more, the code generator can be completely idependent of Visual Studio releases.

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  • New Abstract DAAB - Some details please

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    “This is a new version for the DAAB supporting a common base code which uses only ADO.NET interfaces in an abstract base class. Then simple providers sets the correct instances for each ADO.NET provider.

    If somebody wants to add a new provider NUnit test cases are provided so you can reuse them to test you provider.    ”

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  • PDC - the comments

    No Comments

    One problem: there can only be one PDC. Why? Because the PDC only happens when Microsoft is going to unveil a big new platform. Or, in the case of this year's PDC, three new platforms (new VS, new SQL, new Windows).

    Also, what makes the PDC the PDC? Microsoft employee participation. Do you realize that every Microsoft employee has to justify attending to their boss (and their boss has to pick up the cost?)

    Turns out we're not expecting to make a profit on the PDC, even with Microsoft paying for employees to attend.

    For a Microsoft employee, it's already hard to justify going to a conference like this. If you add in a 19-hour flight somewhere, it'll be even more difficult. And, there can only be one PDC, not a series. So, no matter where we put it, people are gonna gripe about having to fly 19 hours to come to it (if it's in Europe, Asia, for instance, would have to fly, and most of America). If it's in Asia, then everyone else won't come. It's a real hard problem.

    When I planned the VBITS conferences we held them all over the world, but the ones in San Francisco were always better than the rest (and demonstratably so). Why? Most of the world's Microsoft developers live within a five hour flight of San Francisco. Our European and Asian conferences were always about 1/5th the attendance, and not as good technical content.

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  • You Just Can't Kill Visual Basic

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    To add more fuel to the debate Julia initiated regarding the language of choice, I found this article very enlightning:
    Pundits are still predicting an uncertain future for VB, showing a complete misunderstanding of the issues that make a programming language popular and ignoring the very spirit of VB itself. 
    Source: Devx

    The title of the second page is more aggressive: Will C# Replace VB?
     

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  • PDC location

    4 Comments

    Pascal, not even being in America would have to spend a small fortune to attend.  Now, neither of us wouldn't have much of a problem with this if we could somehow purchase the DVDs of the confs, and get whatever code/software is released to the developers.  Heck, I'd pay around $500 bucks for that.

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  • Your Guide to Looking Busy at Work

    No Comments

    The computer has irreversibly changed the workplace. E-mail has replaced memos, Winamp has replaced the portable FM radio and stupid Far Side desktop wallpapers have replaced stupid Far Side wall calendars.

    With all these changes, we often overlook the single greatest boon that computers have brough to the employed masses: the ability to look busy.

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  • SCO Announces Intellectual Property License for Linux

    1 Comment

    LINDON, Utah, Aug. 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The SCO Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: SCOX - News), the owner and licensor of the core UNIX® operating system source code, today announced the availability of the SCO Intellectual Property License for Linux®. The run-time license permits the use of SCO's intellectual property, in binary form only, as contained in Linux distributions. By purchasing a SCO Intellectual Property License, customers avoid infringement of SCO's intellectual property rights in Linux 2.4 and Linux 2.5 kernels. Because the SCO license authorizes run-time use only, customers also comply with the General Public License, under which Linux is distributed.
    SCO announced in July that it had registered the copyrights to its software releases of UNIX System V and UnixWare® with the U.S. Copyright office and that it would offer licenses to cure the SCO IP infringement issues for Linux operating systems. Beginning this week, SCO will start meeting with commercial Linux customers to present the details of this right to use SCO intellectual property binary licensing program.

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  • Synonyms search in Google

    2 Comments

    As Google Weblog reports, there is a new operator in Google Search Engine, in which you can search for synonyms of a key word while you are searching for the main key word. Adding a "~" to your key word, will make Google to search for synonyms of the key word as well as itself. I tried its Farsi edition, but it wasn't available. I think only English edition got this feature for the moment. What's more, you can look for synonyms of a word, using the method Waxy discusses here. Google is a dictionary now! And a complete report by Microdoc News.

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  • The .NET Language Paradigm

    2 Comments

    This is really the most stupid article recently published on the Code Project.

    Is it because it's holidays time and they can't find any good stuff ?

    Rai Umair is surely a good developer, no doubt about that, but his article has a wrong summary and a wrong title:

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  • Blogging in the Sun

    No Comments

    Have you ever try to use your laptop outdoors with a blazing Sun ?

    Well for me look like a dark screen experience :-)

    That's why I didn't blogged too much this week end.

    The choice was having a tan, or stay in the shadows to dotnetblog !

    Guess what I choosed :-)

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  • Why Edit and continue is a GOOD thing

    2 Comments

    Frans for one time I disagree with you, not on everything but Web projects.

    If like me, you embed some HTML in your code, it's nice to be able to change a badly formed tag or a single hexadecimal color value without the pain to stop the Debugger and restart again.

    Try to consider the amount of wasting time just doing Start and Stop debugging.

    I agree with you that the developer has to think.

    I watched this morning the Whidbey demo on video, and I like the idea that the IDE will show me the line where the error come, edit and continue.

    So many times, exception of you own logical errors, errors messages thrown by .Net could be very obscure, and often not related to the exact problem.

    As an example, I remember yesterday that my code, working smoothly on my development machine, constantly beak on my production server.

    The error messages, the trace didn't give me enough information on the real problem.

    And finally I discovered that it was a stupid thing regarding the rights access on a folder.

    Rather than giving me the exact issue, VS was just saying something else (don't remember exactly what was the message !).

    With Edit and Continue, I would surely impove my productivity, testing different options to solve my issue.

    For the Web development, we are, as developers, pushed more and more to embed some templates elements in the code behind.

    Fine, but if I test something, and I just want to try a new value, with E&C I don't waste time.
    And if I am not happy back to the start.

    I am a VB developer, but I write also some code in C#, and I am sad that MS don't implement this feature in every language.

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  • live demo of Whidbey on the web


    How can you have something better than a good demo of Whidbey before the week-end.

    OK the video quality and sound are not top, but it give you a good idea, and it's now so exciting !

    I like the bug that you have almost at the end of the demo. Well they didn't used Edit 'Cut' and contyinue at least on this video.

    Hey     Roy, cheaper than PDC isn't it ? :-)

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  • Quiz V 2

    1 Comment


    I know that some people (Isaac for example) are waiting for the admin part of my Quiz tool.

    It's quite complex to build the management page, because I built the Quiz using a single table, so I had to simulate some Master Details data using some nested Datalists.
    And believe me, it's tough challenge to keep everything between each postback !

    So I am very close to finish it. Some debugging, some UI changes, and I hope to release it very soon :-)

    For the moment, just some pictures !


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  • Sitemap and Links checks

    No Comments

    How amazing is Office 2003 !

    I just discover today that Visio 2003 is better and better.
    It's not anymore only for organisation charts and technical drawings.

    It's also a fantastic Sitemap  tool. It is very handy to have a nice dynamic sitemap of a website.

    Try it, it worth it !
    It's so easy, the wizard ask you for a URL, and voila !

    On the image below, you can see haow it works remarkably well.
    For example I detected some missing images (the Red Cross :-)) in a deep level that I will not be able to see using VS.

    Right click on any node and you can again continue the links or change some setup.



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  • Internet Freedom... not everywhere :-(

    No Comments

    No comment...

    I don't know whats going on in my ISP, Pars Online. But as far as I can see, I can't keep my contract with them anymore and will change my ISP within next month. Now, why Internet.com is my new forecast of being blocked? Simply,     SearchEngineWatch.com, part of Internet.com, The Internet & IT Network, has been blocked and I can't read a very very good article about Google. Hmmm, you think what should I do?

    Source: Tech Guru - Ali Parvaresh

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  • Bob Hope

    No Comments

    Off topic but Bob Hope passed away. I heard one of his quote on the radio this morning.

    Something like this:

    " I had 6 brothers . That's how I learned to dance, waiting for the bathroom "

    Very funny :-))

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  • Good news from Microsoft

    No Comments

    Microsoft is boosting its research budget 8%, to $6.8 billion, and will increase that spending "every year that we can" according to CEO Steve Ballmer. Total Microsoft employment could rise as much as 5,000 this year.

    It's surely good news and it has probably something to do with the latest announcements (LongHorn, Whidbey, Yukon, etc...)

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  • Xbox Videos now available for Plus! Sync & Go for Pocket PC users

    No Comments


    Catch up on the latest Xbox game trailers while on the go with your Pocket PC. By popular demand, the folks over at Xbox TV have created a content channel for Microsoft Plus! Sync and Go for Pocket PC. Now you can get new game trailers downloaded weekly to your Pocket PC for a fun diversion (aside from USA Today, NPR, NBC Nightly News, Today Show, MSNBC Hourly Updates etc. etc. etc.)

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  • Blogging some figures

    No Comments

    Reality check: Jupiter Research has published some interesting figures on blogging. Somewhere between 2.4 and 2.9 million active blogs exist, but they remain a tiny slice of web life. Only 2% of web users have created a blog, and only an estimated 4% read them (which is a good reminder to bloggers and media people to always explain the word weblog and blog and not assume your audience has any idea whatsoever of what you're talking about :^) ...). Blogging is split fairly evenly between genders, but more men than women read them (a 60/40 split). Nearly 3/4ths (73%) of blog readers have been online for 5 years or more, suggesting (to me) they are either fairly young or the more techie crowd that first jumped online.

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  • Assembly hell

    2 Comments


    I hate being negative on .Net, but there I feel I have to a little bit.

    I experience something since few days regarding the assemblies.

    Randomly on different web projects , I have the same annoying error returned by .Net regarding something wrong in machine.config.

    It's always reported as a problem with the Freetext assembly I use, but I really believe that this is not really the cause of the problem.

    It's really annoying, because this not happens all the time.
    After some investigations, it seems that for an unknown reason, some temporary files, like some dll, are locked by the framework in the .Net temporary project folder.

    The different things I test are:

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  • Great job Scott with the new .Text !

    No Comments


    Kudos Scott, the editor is superb and open wide on my screen !

    I didn't tried yet, but is this editor works from a PocketPC ? I know for sure the last one not.

    It's cool to blog on the move !

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  • cool User Controls

    No Comments


    I think I mentioned him before, but Andy Smith (Metabuilders) has really cool user controls.

    The last one DualList is really useful.

    The one I prefer the most is the Default button one. When you have multiple submit button on a page, this really rocks !

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  • Windows and laptops

    5 Comments


    This is going to be my rant about Windows(whatever the version) and laptops.
    Have you ever used a laptop as a desktop replacement ?

    I mean as a developer, trying to work decently with VS .Net, SQL 2000 and other MS tools ?

    If yes have you a good relationship between your laptop and Windows ?

    Because me not :-(

    I am not talking about again a crash with an hard drive, I experienced this.
    But I am talking about the constant little annoyances I experience every day when I develop on my laptop.

    And now I suspect it has nothing to do with the laptop, but more to the fact that Windows has never really be prototyped on a laptop.

    SQL crash more and more, the .Net worker process hangs randomly the CPU at 100%, etc.. etc...

    It seems really now that a laptop is good only to open one document in Word, Excel, and that's it.

    Whatever the processor speed, the memory you add, everything can transform the nice advantage to be mobile in a nightmare.

    Look at SQL for example. I experienced few days ago a General Network error madness randomly without any good explanations.
    Some people suggested that I looked at the SQL logs. Well aprt the cabalistic and very enigmatic messages, I discovered that a huge list of errors appears with a full line of hyphens.
    Yes, you read well, not a single explanation, but just plain hyphens.
    I tried the same project with the same logic on a desktop, and yes it works perfectly.
    So I tonight I reinstall SQL, but it's really hurting to spend so much money on a laptop and having everything working so badly or so slow.

    I am working often from home, and I can't afford the time to synchronize everything valuable from my desktop PC to my laptop.

    So if someone from MS read this entry, please make us happy, write a real laptop OS, you know a little bit like you did for the Pocket PC, something really for mobility.

    Read more...

  • Quiz version 2

    3 Comments


    Requested by a quite surprising number of people, my little Quiz application had some success.
    You can have a look at the way it works on the website Scoilnet (go to the Primary kids section to see it in action)
    I decided to publish a more complete version, with this time an Admin tool to manage all the Quiz database.

    I build this tool around a single table in a SQL database, but it's very easy to change to any Access or MySQL database.

    I could certainly obtained a better realtionships model using few tables, but I would like to keep it simple and easy to move from one project to another.

    That's why I used an old trick (remember Dbase III ?), and simply use concatenated strings to store multiple records in one field.

    I reckon that it was a difficult story to write a decent user interface to manage the different fields and the data.

    I will publish an article in my blog tomorrow, and also the full project with a zip file.

    Of course, if you need more explanations, or if you have some interesting ideas on the subject, feel free to comment.

    Read more...

  • How to cover an IE windowed control...

    No Comments


    Finally Joe King share a good trick for every developers, including myself, who fought with this annoyning IE behaviour.

    If you try to have a DHTML layer over a dropdown list for example, the dropdown controls come always on the top.

    Very frustrating with dynamic menus ! I used to push my dropdown controls further down in the page, but if you need a cleaner solution than just hiding the control on a mouseover event, read the full solution on     Dotnetjunkies.

    Read more...

  • Bootvis – Windows XP Boot and Resume Analysis Tool

    3 Comments


    Bootvis is a tool for easily enabling capture and graphical display of boot and resume performance trace data in Windows XP.  Bootvis by itself will not change a system's boot or resume performance.  Bootvis is intended as an aid to allow designers and manufacturers to characterize their system's performance during Windows startup in order to identify areas for further investigation and opportunities for performance improvement. 

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  • FreeText Editor new version

    No Comments



    FreeText editor is an outstanding development and free ! Try it it's really a must have. Hats off !

    The latest version (1.6.2) include everything I could dream to have for my CMS project, an Insert Table button and a Word Clean function to remove all nasty tags from .doc documents.

    Read more...

  • Last Microsoft case study: a lesson in corporate Marketing

    1 Comment

    To develop the Frontpath platform, Bradbury enlisted the aid of Cursivecode, a Seattle-based company that specializes in Internet and wireless solutions. Andi Rusu, a partner at Cursivecode, explains that developing the wine menu application in Linux proved to be “interesting.” “We had experience programming with Unix,” says Rusu, “so we didn’t have coding issues. At the same time, we were flying by the seat of our pants. Because Linux is very unpredictable, we knew the individual elements were working, but couldn’t really predict how they would act in concert when we fired up the device. It was a complete guessing game.”

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  • Our Heroes... retired

    No Comments

    Hilarious

    From the New York Times (7/13/2003), "Gilles Barbier's life-size installation 'Nursing Home,' in 'The American Effect' at the Whitney Museum, depicts naturally aged versions of Mr. Fantastic, Superman, Catwoman and others."

    Hey where is Bill, he's a super-hero isn't it ? ;-))

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  • PDC overpriced

    2 Comments

    I read the comment posted after Roy's blog.

    I agreed with Roy, this is really a joke !

    And I like the comment from Martin saying that it's only 1695 $ for a pre early registration instead of 2000$.

    What a discounted price ;-)

    And Martin is also right saying that you have to add the cost of the flight and the hotel. So we are talking about 4 000 $ for a conference on something which will become obsolete in two months.
    And don't forget the medias, who attend almost everything they want for free.

    It's like TechEd, I wished I could be there, but how I can justify the cost. Yes surely it's much better than the PDC, but when I said to my boss it was in Spain, he didn't believe I wanted to be there for serious work ;-))

    In Ireland, the situation is very simple, nothing happens from MSFT !

    I know for sure thy use PR people to filled recently the only conference they organized this year... for free !

    Apparently nobody wanted to join, the initial price was 300 euros, and fortunatly for them, not for me, my company paid.
    Even the food didn't worth the money (sandwiches !!)

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  • Bye Bye debugger

    No Comments

    I don't know for you but I just discover that I use less and less the Debugging functions in VB.Net.

    No I am not a genius, I still make mistakes, write syntax errors or mispell a property.

    The fact is that I structure more and more my code, applying a lot of N-tier architecture in my projects.

    So I can trace now easily the bug, and thankfully, mos of the time, it's just a syntax error.

    I also reduce the time wasted I used to have with the simple thing of launching a debugging session, search for something wrong and stop, to restart again.
    It's incredible how much time the debugger take to launch, looks some time more like a diesel than a formula one.
    I have just some good hope on the new 'Edit and Run' features in .Net 2.0

    I can achieve to forget about debugging by adding more granularity. Not that I am really an expert in OOP, I don't really do enough on this subject, but using some data helpers like the MS Data Aplication Block seem to be a very productive idea.

    Sure, maybe because my projects are 90% databse related, and not about some complex and obscure mathematical abstraction :-)

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  • Don started a new book today

    No Comments

    Here's the first sentence:
     
    Software lives at the boundary between objective and subjective reality.
     
    More to follow.

    From Don


    WoWW!
    What a start, surely the next Pulitzer for such a beautiful sentence ;-))

    Read more...

  • Paul Vick is blogging !

    No Comments

    That's make me happy to see a VB guru blogging, and more if it's Paul.

    Well he started well his introduction in the so called 'fratricide' war between VB and C# ;-)

    And I am agree with the comment he had on this subject. I use too C# and VB, looking more at the type of project I need to build.

    And yes, what's about the other #languages ? I didn't see too much Eiffel or Cobol bloggers in the house ;-)

    Read more...

  • Dscribe - User Management

    No Comments

    OK folks, I just finished my second instalment about Dscribe the Content Management system project I started few days ago.

    This time it's about User Management.

    I am already now working on the Content Status in the workflow, will I hope to publish very soon.

    Please report any bugs or comments. I'll appreciate the feedback

    Read more...

  • Hash Password Decryption

    No Comments

    Does somebody know which method I can use to decrypt an HashPassword cryptd with

    FormsAuthentication.HashPasswordForStoringInConfigFile(MyPassword. "SHA1")

    I know obviously the security issues but if I am an Admin and I want to manage some Users password, how I am suppose to do ?

    Read more...

  • Datalist EditItem ListBox issues

    1 Comment

    In the CMS project I am actually building, I have a Datalist with some CRUD manage inline.

    I use an EditItem template, and some controls. One of the control is a Listbox.

    Sadly, I was not able from my code to read correctly the values of the ListBox on a DataList Update event.

    I casted the Listbox like that:

    Dim MyList as Listbox=ctype(MyDatalist.Controls.item(e.Item.ItemIndex).FindControl("MyListBox"), ListBox)

    Nothing works.

    The only way I found is to come back to an 'old' classic Request.Form like that:

    Dim MyList as string = Request.Form(6)

    Why 6 ? Because it's the actual index in my controls list.

    I know, you can say why not using Request.Form("MyListBox")

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  • (In) Visibility

    No Comments

    Scenario: A Datalist (or Datagrid), an EditItemTemplate, some textboxes control.
    Imagine you want to have an hidden Textbox control now.

    Don't use visible=false, if you want to get the text from the control

    Instead do something like:

    Read more...

  • CMS -type of content

    No Comments

    In dScribe project, I will have three type of manageable content:


    - Dynamic content: quite easy, coming straight from the database into different placeholders.

    Read more...

  • Dscribe project - User Management

    No Comments


    In our series on a CMS tool, the next story will be publish very soon, and I will talk about User management.

    I will also start the Workflow status, important flag in a dScribe.

    So please if you need any further explanation, or just want to comment, welcome !

    Read more...

  • Pump up the volume ;-)

    No Comments

    A car stereo that can kill you? Cool

    Troy Irving and his Dodge Caravan, which has 72 daisy-chained Ample Audio 1500 DX amps Back when we were in high school, "bass-offs" -- contests where teenagers with pumped up car stereo sound systems would compete to see whose car could reach the loudest volume -- were a really big deal. And apparently they still are, but now they're called dB (as in decibel) drag racing, at least according to this article from Popular Science. The dB drag racer pictured at left has a Dodge Caravan with a 130,000 watt car stereo system with 72 amplifiers and nine subwoofers and needs 36 batteries for power. At maximum volume it can produce sounds loud enough to kill a person. Putting this in the "Portable Audio" category might be a stretch, as the car is so heavy that it can't actually be driven.

    From Popular Science -- Troy Irving's 18-year-old Dodge Caravan has a heck of a sound system: 72 amplifiers -- you got it, 72 -- and 36 big 16-volt batteries to put out the 130,000 watts of power needed to rumble his nine 15-inch subwoofers.

    Read more...

  • Blogs have legal protection -- at least in the US

    1 Comment


     "The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last Tuesday that Web loggers, website operators and e-mail list editors can't be held responsible for libel for information they republish, extending crucial First Amendment protections to do-it-yourself online publishers. Online free speech advocates praised the decision as a victory. The ruling effectively differentiates conventional news media, which can be sued relatively easily for libel, from certain forms of online communication such as moderated e-mail lists. One implication is that DIY publishers like bloggers cannot be sued as easily. "One-way news publications have editors and fact-checkers, and they're not just selling information -- they're selling reliability," said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "But on blogs or e-mail lists, people aren't necessarily selling anything, they're just engaging in speech. That freedom of speech wouldn't exist if you were held liable for every piece of information you cut, paste and forward."

    Source: Wired

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  • Data Access Application Blocks are great

    No Comments

    The Application Blocks are absolutly essentials tools to implement in your applications.

    I found the Data Block very useful in my CMS project.

    I am going to look now at the other Application Blocks to see how they can be useful for my projects.

    Read more...

  • Official start for Dscribe ... now !

    No Comments

    Ok folks, here we go I launch my project dScribe now.

    At the bottom of the article, you will find the links to the different files required for this CMS project.

    I wish good luck to this new initiative ;-)

    To introduce dScribe, I will just repeat here the introduction of my first story (please don't flame me for some mispellings, I am not a technical writer ;-)).

    Read more...

  • dScribe project

    1 Comment

    Sorry for the delay, but I still have to catch up with some important business issues !

    Anyway the first article on the CMS project dScribe is on the way.

    I hope to publish it tonight, if everything goes well.
    Otherwise, you will have to be patient until tomorrow.

    Of course, this is a kind of new experience, the idea is that the project going on, I will be happy to take in consideration the different opinions I will receive.

    I know already I will probably frustate some C# gurus, but knowing I can do it in C#, I feel really more comfortable to do so in VB. Anyway at the end of this experience, I will seriously consider the tranlation in C#.

    And what's about Cobol# ?. No I am just kidding :-)

    Just a note on something totally different, my fight against spyware and other trojans.
    Well I am not sure to win the war but surely a decisive battle after installing ZoneAlarm, and also the new google toolbar v2, with the popups blocker.

    Read more...

  • Build a CMS -- Project dScribe

    3 Comments

    Today is a big event for me. I decide to launch a new initiative on my blog.
    I hope it will work as planned ;-)

    OK, here we go.

    For my project Scoilnet, using my personal experience on CMS(Content Management System just in case you still don't know;-)), I was confronted with many options.

    Because I still don't believe (don't flame me ;-)) in the big CMS tools for medium websites, I decided after a long brainstorming session (with myself, easier to make decisions) to jump in the DIY CMS on my own.

    Don't misunderstand the project. I am not going to compete with Vignette or other big cheeses  !

    Well it's not really a premiere for me, but in .Net, surely yes.

    I studied and read a lot of books, websites, of course and analyzed all the aspects of the project.

    Because so many marvelous things around us were created by some talented folks, I decided to follow their footsteps, and to develop my solution based on the excellent book Building a Content Management System written by Stephen R.G. Fraser.

    As I said already this is an excellent reading. Because I am also more comfortable with VB, I had to rewrite a lot of things from C#.

    I say rewrite because I am not interested by just 'copy and paste', I really want to do my own stuff.

    So this CMS is loosely based on the book content.

    The other different thing is that I like the concept of N-tier architecture, and for that I included in my project the Data Access Application Block from Microsoft.

    I will have the presentation layer and the business rules separated from the data layer

    Using this, it's surely more job, but much more readable code at the end of the day.

    So now, this is working smoothly, and I am now at the moment where everything start to be clear in my mind about what I can achieve with the tool.

    Rather than just publishing a big zip file with all the codes, I want to innovate and I am going to publish dScribe (Ok OK not great name but I like to name things) brick by brick.

    I'm going to start talking about the Workflow, followed by the Content creation, and so on.

    I have no clue about the number of stories I will have at the end, but it's surely an exciting project (for me! And I hope for you too).

    Of course, feel free to comment and if you have some ideas or resources to improve dScribe, let me know.

    So the first part in a couple of hours, about building a nice expandable menu for the Workflow part.

    Read more...

  • SQL 2000 security

    2 Comments

    Comment from Frans:

    "Rather than use SQL authentication when connecting from ASP.NET to SQL Server, you should use native windows authentication -- but lock down access not to the identity of the calling user, but rather to that of the ASP.NET worker process identity of the running application. That way you can restrict access to only allow the application access to the data (not the end users using it). You also do not have to worry about the SQL authentication usernames/passwords ever being compromised and access in these scenarios -- since no username/password is ever stored in an unencrypted way"
    That's wrong, sorry. If I have 2 machines, one being the IIS server and the other one being the sqlserver machine, the ASP.NET account is LOCAL to the IIS server. I can't use that account to access the sqlserver instance and do things there. I then have to add the SAME user to the sqlserver machine as well with the SAME password, also as local account.

    -> 2 times the same user and it 'works' because they have the same credentials, but they are different users.

    On the DOTNET-CLR mailing list we had a lengthy discussion about this a month or so ago and we all concluded that it wasn't possible to do this how MS tells us to do it. On 1 box, it's no problem (sqlserver and IIS on one machine). There is however a problem with the contradiction between the advice from MS not to run your sqlserver/iis boxes in a domain / as a PDC/BDC, so you use local defined accounts on the IIS box, not domain users, and the fact that it is impossible to access box B from box A when you are logged in on A as a local user (ASPNET) of A which is not known on B.

    Read more...

  • Programmer blues

    No Comments

    What a night. I was just working like a dog on some coding for my stuff.

    After some few hours of long coding, I finally obtain the most beautiful...
    BLANK screen.

    Doh ! Well at last, my code seems to work and it's one of my most complex one to obtain a white page.

    I know I should be shame of myself, and now I face some more long hours of debugging this.

    But I believe that it's the common thing for everybody there. Whatever happened, I prefer to laugh about it.
    I should probably wrote less code, and think more about debugging, but ... whatever.

    The blues is gone, I'm back now

    Read more...

  • TechEd in english please :-(

    4 Comments

    Hey Ralf nice to see your experience in TechEd.... in german :-((

    Also I say that because I know that you are writing for your country but in case you don't know that, TechEd is an international event.

    Are you going to speak only in german in Barcelona ( How do you say tortilla in german ?) :-))

    Read more...

  • Spyware grrr

    11 Comments


    OK after spending a good part of my Sunday evening on chasing spyware on my PC, I think I finally won the battle.

    Apparently one serious spyware is totalvelocity.memorymeter.

    This tool pretend to install a memory check in your systray, but indeed open a huge door to all abuse.

    I could sometime suddenly have until 15 popups windows coming from nowhere.

    Of course I never downloaded this crap, and I want also to reply to some comments about my previous rant about FeedDemon.

    I think some people misread me by saying that I don't like Feeddemon.

    That's not true, the problem is not the software, the issue I have is about the feeds this tool provide by default.
    Totalvelocity and may other spyware can move on the net by any kind of http stream, and if I am right, FeedDemon use a browser layer to show some feeds.

    Read more...

  • Spyware

    2 Comments

    Since I installed FeedDemon I have now to fight against spyware.

    I already found with Ad_Aware from Lavasoft 70 kind of spyware :-(.

    But I still have something launching some stupid ads automatically.

    So I tried too BOHCaptor to detect strange objects in IE, still the same.

    Now it's the turn of Spybot. Grrrr !

    I wor with Windows 2003 which is supposed to be the champion in blocking everything :-((.

    It's amazing the number of bots which going straight away to the registry ! If somebody know a way to block the registry access or give some alert, I will be an happy man.

    By the way check this page for more info on the different     anti spyware.

    Microsoft should also fight against the spyware in the same strength than with the spammers.

    Read more...

  • FeedDemon: warning

    No Comments


    Folks like everybody I enjoy FeedDemon, but be careful, it's an open door to some web spam.

    I am struggling now with some spyware coming from nowhere since I used FeedDemon.

    I don't think it's really the tools, but surely one of the feed included with it.

    So unless you have spyware blocking software, or a personal firewall be cautious.

    Read more...

  • Smart Navigation

    3 Comments


    It's true that the Smart Navigation option proposed by MS is not really reliable.

    I just discovered the matter this afternoon where this feature crashed very quickly on a single page.

    If I understand well, the idea behind is to use some hidden Iframe to freeze some portions of the page.

    So my message to the .Net team is:

    Can you make something similar to SmartNavigations tested and working for .Net 2 ?

    I am sure that a lot of developers who work on Intranet projects could appreciate to not having every button click on a page doing another refresh.

    My Intranet users complain now a lot about this, and I am not going to develop for them a windows forms software for them, I really enjoy to use the browser for my gui.

    Read more...

  • Windows 2000 SP4

    2 Comments

    Hey I wonder what MS did in Service Pack 3 after viewing the list of bugs fixed in this Service Pack.

    You need a free full day to review all the bugs they fixed.

    What's going to be with the SP5 !

    For the moment I installed it successfully on my laptop, but what's about servers ? I just don't want to be the guinea pig there, too risky after reading the list  ;-))

    Read more...

  • Visual Studio Posters

    No Comments


    If you are like me, on MSDN subscription, you probably missed the posters that regular users would find in their Visual Studio box.

    Click here to download them on MSDN.

    Read more...

  • IBuySpy in Cobol !

    No Comments


    Hey dude, that's really cool, the famous IBuySpy portal in Cobol, with the sources too ;-)

    My two cents on Cobol (please don't flame me ;-)): What an ugly looking language, everything in cap, and quite difficult to understand !

    I used to do some stuff in Cobol in... 1979, and see it embedded with .Net, good fun !

    Read more...

  • Adding Spelling and Grammar Checking Functions into VB.NET Applications

    No Comments

    Many applications can be enhanced by including spelling and grammar checking capabilities. Users will greatly appreciate these features and in addition, applications will appear more professional as they mimic popular programs like MS Word. This article will demonstrate how to add these functions to a Visual Basic.NET Windows Form project. It's quite easy to do, and only requires that the client application have Microsoft Word installed. The code in this article has been successfully tested with Microsoft Word 97, 2000, XP and 2003 Beta 2.

    Read more...

  • To the German community

    No Comments

    Ralf, ok that you had a German audience, but this is a world community service, and as I said before, English is (unfortunatly or not) a common language denominator.

    So I suggest that for your specific audience, you open a blog in a German weblog space.

    Otherwise share what you have to say in a language that everybody can understand :-)

    Read more...

  • Babel blogging

    1 Comment


    Sorry for the lack of blogs recently, very busy at the moment.

    Just to say that if everybody on this blog start to talk in their own languages, I think we going to have a new Babel's tower very soon.

    Imagine Indian, French, English and .....     German ;-))

    Read more...

  • Special Olympics Opening Ceremony .... Bravo !

    4 Comments

    I know it's not .Net related, but I was really moved by the Special Olympics Opening Ceremony yesterday in Dublin.

    Fantastic is a very weak word for what I saw.
    A lot of folks here in Ireland as usual criticised our lack of organisation but hey there it was absolutly awesome.

    U2 lead singer Bono brought Nelson Mandela out onto the Croke Park stage to the delight of the crowd

    What a sight to see Bono from U2 singing about the man he has such love : Nelson Mandela himself here in Croke Park Dublin.
    Surreal !

    And I have to mention the athletes from all around the world, who just want to say to everybody, we are just like you we like to party ;-)

    Read more...

  • Click here the comments

    1 Comment


    When you talk about usability, an obvious and long debate (still not closed) come on the old Click here link.

    Do you consider this indication as an obsolete and space wasting on an already cluttered page ?

    Or do you think we still need to think about first time users of Internet and hyperlinks are not so intuitive ?

    For more information you can also read some thoughts on the subjects like:

    Read more...

  • A flaw in Visual Studio

    2 Comments


    It's surely not a big deal, but I found annoying the way VS open a project from the web if you ask this option.

    I like it a lot, because it let me change something quickly if something goes wrong.

    But I would like to see VS requesting my username and password BEFORE showing the list of files in the web project and not AFTER.

    In terms of security, it's not really nice that you can browse the web folder, seeing every files.
    Of course you can't open anything, but for an ecommerce I suppose it's not really a good practice.

    Someone from Microsoft listening the song of my request ? ;-)

    Read more...

  • Blog tool to have in your favorites

    2 Comments


    I am a big fan of blogs, as you must know now, but I was curious to know who could talk about my little world in their own blog world.

    And I found it, the tool of the tool !

    You just enter your url in the box, and the button Get Link cosmos open to you a brand new universe.

    It's exactly the trick I used for my previous post to discover Jim Meeker, who is part of my little universe now ;-)

    BTW I tried with Julia , Roy and Sam urls (sorry for the short time impersonation !) and the number of results is impressive.

    The service is free but you can also create a watchlist for 10$, so you can receive an alert by email on everything new about you .

    Read more...

  • New blog service (in Ireland)

    2 Comments


    O2 in Ireland has launch a new blog service, phoneblogging, using a product Foneblog.

    It's for me the first commercial phoneblogging product out there.

    You can trial it for free for a month, then it's €2.50/monthly.

    You can MMS or SMS your blog entries in.

    Read more...

  • New : Usability category in my blog

    1 Comment


    I just like Usability subjects, Information Architecture and Design.

    I feel some time that they are orphans in many projects, and neglected.

    I consider IMHO that developers must open their eyes, and look around:
    yes it's a real world around thme with a lot of users who like a better GUI, or a much more evoluted dialog between the product and the consumer.

    Roy has also some great thoughts on the matter, and I invite my fellow developers to consult the Usability category I included in my blog space, with a list of my favorites weblogs and websites.

    Feel free to give me more links if you know some. I will include them with a great pleasure.

    So many time, I heard people finding boring the simple task of writing a documentation, and honestly it's happen to me too ;-), but it's more fun than you can imagine, and at the end you will see an happy user face .

    Read more...

  • Bill Gates entertainment god

    2 Comments


    A nice article in the last issue of Wired about Bill. I particularly like the start of the story.

    It's surely weird, but it give me the feeling that the journalist is entering Starship Enterprise rather than a common neighbourhood house ;-)

    Well I remember that sometime ago somebody represent Bill as a B0rg. I prefer myself to say welcome to Captain 'T' Bill Gates pad ;-)

    By Jeffrey M. O'Brien

    Read more...

  • Click here

    1 Comment


    When you talk about usability, an obvious and long debate (still not closed) come on the old Click here link.

    Do you consider this indication as an obsolete and space wasting on an already cluttered page ?

    Or do you think we still need to think about first time users of Internet and hyperlinks are not so intuitive ?

    For more information you can also read some thoughts on the subjects like:

    Read more...

  • .Net and Office 11 speech

    No Comments


    Tomorrow no blogging, I am going to a Microsoft Ireland conference on  how to write .Net applications for Office 2003.

    A kind of break for me after few very busy months ;-)

    Read more...

  • Ooops ! I did it again ;-)

    3 Comments


    Another site almost finished ! Well almost because I still have a lot of Content Management stuff to plumb behind .

    A kind of portal for people who want to visit Kilkenny, searching for a B&B, a restaurant, an event, well everything !

    And of course, all in .Net. Yahooo.

    You have no idea how much I like to not dealing almost anymore with Javascript.

    The link soon.

    Read more...

  • Builder

    No Comments


    No real publicity there, that's not my intention.

    But I really like     Builder.com , they have great short and sharp articles about almost everything.

    Read more...

  • Blogs homepages

    No Comments


    Nothing very crucial but did you noticed that when you save in your favorites most of the blogs homepage, indeed you save the current day of the page.

    frustrating, because if you come back on the particular blog few weeks after, it give the feeling that nothing new happen on the blog, which still show you where you finish to read the page.

    Of course nothing like that on     weblogs.asp.net ;-)

    Read more...

  • About Interfaces

    2 Comments


    Roy your story remind me a recent meeting I had with a graphic designer.

    She was not please that in some screen boxes in a website the link button I implemented were on the right or in some cases centered, and not on the left.

    I just asked her this simple question:

    'Are you left handed ?'

    ;-)

    Read more...

  • Coloring code

    1 Comment


    Sorry if in my previous post some of my comment goes down the code.
    It's the first time I use a color editor and the blog editor in same time, and believe me it's like a big spaghetti bowl at the end !

    If somebody know another good color coding tool online, let me know ;-)

    Read more...

  • Breadcrumb

    2 Comments

    This is a useful trick to write a breadcrumb in any web page, like:

    Home Page > Breadcrumbs : About Us

    I wrote this code in few minutes so feel free to comment if you see some improvements to be done !

    You need to write this code behind in an ascx file as a control

    Read more...

  • Reflection

    No Comments


    After my last blog on Reflection article I received this comment:

    Read more...

  • Good article on Reflection

    No Comments


    On CodeProject you can find a good article on a practical usage of Reflection

    The author demonstrate how to implement an update and add function in a single code, making the form 'intelligent'.

    Read more...

  • Breadcrumbs

    No Comments


    I am still looking for some breadcrumbs code, so I finally decided to do it myself.

    I will publish the code tomorrow morning.

    Read more...

  • Welcome to the real world

    No Comments

    ... First, for Julia's group in Burlington Vermont where I did a presentation on "Architecture and Design for .NET", I was struck by the modest scale of the applications being built there. No 100-person IT departments: In fact, it seemed that many of the members were the entire IT department in their organization! And these weren't just mom & pop operations, but real industrial / distribution / retailing businesses. Mixed in with were a few CS types, including at least one university CS professor, but the feeling I came away with was of people who needed to get a lot done with very little in the way of resources. They were as excited about SharePoint as they were about VS.NET because it was that much more functionality they could leverage. ...

    Keith Pleas

    It's not really a surprise, well for us in Europe surely not ! Most of the companies now ask here to do almost everything linked to ICT, and rare are now teams with dedicated tasks, at least in standard enterprises, I mean not the software companies.

    I am the witness of that, being working myself as a programmer, IT manager, database administrator, content editor, designer, etc....
    And believe me, the total of my salary is not the addition of these roles ;-)

    And also the issue is that all software companies are always proud to announce everywhere that they need less IT people because their product help to create faster applications.

    A friend of mine, who's a real IT senior type of guy, was just made redundant by a so called big financial company.

    They just say to him that they don't need anymore a permanent employee for the daily tasks, everything being setup and running perfectly without him !

    Read more...

  • How to start with N-tier architecture

    7 Comments


    If you are a newbie with N-Tier achitecture, .Net and visual Studio, it's quite a challenge to find a good example on the subject.

    You should try NTierGen. The tool is a bit expensive, but you have eventually a trial version, just limited to three tables.

    The idea to generate the full N-Tier architecture from a wizard is good, including the fact that you can modify the code produced.

    This is a really amazing tool, and you should be able to see the sources and look at the way you can build an N-Tier architecture. Of course, I suggest to buy it ;-)

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  • SQL book

    2 Comments


    I received few days a bunch of good books. The one I want to mention is a must-have on your shelve.

    If you are working with SQL 2000,     SQL 2000 Fast answers is a clever book in the vein of 'How to...' type of books.

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  • Dynamic queries or stored procedures

    No Comments


    Just reading Frans blog about stored procedures and the future for them.
    I agree with Frans that views are really powerful.

    I like stored procedures because they can be easily updated outside your code.
    It's happen many times for me to have to add a field to a database, and if I have to modify a code already in production, I would have certainly to go through some issues.

    When you modify your code, it could be hazardous, and sometime a complex query can be difficult to understand when it's embedded in a class.

    Stored procedures are easy guys for that.

    For the future I expect that Microsoft will not go too much in the 'lazy' proprietary way of doing everything with .Net.
    I enjoy Transact-Sql and the way that I can almost change from SQL Server to Oracle without breaking too much things.

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  • Irish user group

    2 Comments


    In Ireland, where we suppose to be at the edge for technology, it's a pity that we can't have a right .Net user group.

    I am jealous about what's happen in US, where  apparently you can find one user group meeting at every corner of the country.

    I already talked about that few months ago, but I still search for something equivalent to INETA here in Dublin.

    You can find a lot about Java, Linux or even ColdFusion, but the only thing we have here for .Net is Irish Dev group. And sorry for saying this but they sucks.

    They are managed by some PR people who have more consciousness about the image of their client MSFT indeed.

    I have nothing against that, but IMHO it's not the right approach to build a community.

    Julie , I know that you are the INETA specialist in this weblog, is something can be done here ?

    UPDATE: Scott comment is interesting

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  • World record for a weblog ;-)

    No Comments


    By jove, the record for the most incredibly long but interesting technical weblog goes to Chris Brumme.

    His last entry:  6356 words !

    (No, I didn't count them Word did it for me ;-)

    This guy is amazing. If you invite him for a party, ask him to tell you a story.

    Astounding.
    Hey Chris have you never think about being a story teller in another life ;-))

    Apparently he know his talent. I found his self comment on his own blog length very funny.

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  • AspToday is back

    2 Comments


    Just let you know that the good ol'website ASPToday is back.

    For the moment it's only old articles, but they promised some new stuff soon.

    Sad that they didn't improved the design and usability.

    They are probably one of the last communist website in the world, regarding their massive use of the red. They should ask some tips from Marcie  ;-)

    Imagine the site in pink !

    Anyway good luck to them

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  • Scoilnet part 2

    No Comments


    Thanks to all the nice comments I received on Scoilnet .

    To look backward my experience on this project has been so interesting.

    Indeed, I used 100% of .Net in Scoilnet (and 20000 liters of sweat ;-)). For me it was also a way to be familiar with .Net.

    I like the idea to write some snippets on some obscure programming stuff, like reflection or other not so funny things.

    But I am a real person living in a real world.

    And there bringing everything I knew about coding and implementing this with .Net was really a tough challenge.

    But I certainly have no regrets at all, because it's so cool to see things making sense when they are linking together.

    On the coding, I also have to thanks .Net for the huge amount of Javascript headache it removed from my brain.

    It was like a constant painkiller, everything working so smoothly.

    Well almost, because now I enter in the grey zone of testing the site, and it's a little bit like the twilight zone.

    I have to check for different browsers, different platforms, analyze the first stats to see what people are using, trace all errors, etc...

    Well I say to myself, another challenge, and surely not the last one.

    I am also working now on a parallel project for kids about science in schools. It's quite exciting, because it will involve a lot of dynamic rendering, inclusion of videos and bright colors ! Yes I like bright colors ;-)

    To come back to Scoilnet, I have also the task now to do a stronger code, cleaning all the garbage I collected these past few weeks.

    I think also about a data layer, but I am not sure about that, because I am stuck to MS Sql, and I don't think I will move soon to another database provider.

    Another task to be implemented is an accessible version, and it's not really easy. I read a lot on the subject, but a lot of contradictions and misunderstanding surround the subject.

    And finally I hope to have the site running full throttle around September.

    Hey it's only in 3 months ;-)

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  • Scoilnet Live !!!

    4 Comments


    After one full year of discussions, meetings, and more meetings, and IMHO a very short period of development, 3 months, my new baby Scoilnet  is finally ready. Well it has been a long year but I think it worth it.

    This first release need certainly some more job, but we're getting there.

    I can just say it's really fully Scoil .NET !

    Yahooo !! ;-)

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  • TechEd Keynote

    1 Comment

    "...A couple other things on SQL Server: Our developer edition used to sell at $499. We're lowering the price to $49, announcing basically today, and that will be embedded -- (applause) -- thank you -- that will be embedded and picked up, we think, by other tools vendors. Borland has already announced that they'll be picking it up and shipping it with their C# development environment...."

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  • Weather

    No Comments


    For those who didn't saw this, I have the weather (Dublin) on my blog page.

    Well it's not just a gadget, it's quite useful for me if I want to decide go fishing or stay coding some .Net delicatessen ;-)

    Weird, I can look by the window, but I am working in the basement of the university building and the only light I can see is the one on the ceiling ;-)

    Why bother, after all it's raining almost all the time since Easter (see by yourself on my page ;-))

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  • Reflector New version

    No Comments


    New Version 3.0.5.0. The popup window turned into a docking window. Also keeps the decompiler open while browsing. Available at Programming.NET.
    [    Lutz Roeder]

    Cool, just hope now to have this as an add-in !

    This tool really save my job few days when my hard drive crashed.

    By the way, it seems that the problem came from the fact that the motor on the hard drive stopped to function :-(

    But thanks Reflector help me to decompile my assemblies, and with few exceptions, I didn't have too much code to rewrite.

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  • Disable autocompletion

    No Comments


    Sometime things can be very simple.

    If you write some HTML and don't need VStudio to autocomplete your tags, just exclude the file before editing.

    You should still be able to edit the file but without autocompletion.

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  • SQL Blog


    Just for info I blog now also on SQL Blog for talk about guess  ... ;-)

    I will have there all sort of T-SQL scripts and Stored procedures.

    Thanks Salman for the space.


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  • Pass an Event from one control to another

    No Comments


    Just a little trick but it will help some developers I presume ;-)

    I have 2 controls A and B on a webpage.

    I raise an  event in control A (like a Dropdown list change for example), and I want to send a sign to the control B that something new happened from the control A.

    Don't bother to write something in one of the controls, just write something like that in your code on the main page (Example in VB for a dropdownlist SelectIndexchanged)

    'Declare the controls A and B

    Protected WithEvents ControlA_ID as MyNameSpace.ControlA
    Protected WithEvents ControlB_ID as MyNameSpace.ControlB

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  • Debate on IE

    2 Comments


    Wow, IE create certainly those days a lot of discussion !

    See the friendly battle of arguments between Dan and Dave in one of my previous post.

    It's look like the story of David (Mozilla) against Goliath (Explorer).

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  • Popup and .Net (Update)

    3 Comments


    Regarding my post on my issue with client side scripting and .Net, Jesse help me a lot on the subject. I still have to test his answer but this is what he suggest:

    a better handler in the popup would look like this:

    void MySubmitButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
    // Do Some Processing

    Page.RegisterStartupScript("__close", String.Format("<script>window.opener.{0}({1},{2}); window.close();</script>", Request["Handler"], Request["ControlID"], someValue));
    }

    So, what happens is a user clicks a button in your popup (for example, a "Save" button). You do some processing on the data, like saving it to a database. After you have done this, you send a javascript to the browser that fires calls a function on the parent window, and then closes the popup. The function on the parent window is responsible for making sure that the page refreshes. There are a million ways to do this. You could just use DOM with DHTML to update the page automatically, without a refresh. Or, you could use the __doPostBack function to initiate a postback event. Or, you could do something like "window.location = window.location". To simulate a page refresh. Personally, I like using DHTML to dynamically update the page best, but some times that is not an option and firing a custom __doPostBack event is best for those cases.

    The only comment I would like to add is that I don't have any button in the popup window. I have no idea if and when the user will close the window, so I will probably include the code on a on load event (Javascript).
    I will try this code and let you know if it's working. I'm sure it is, coming from Jesse, it surely is ;-)
    Any comments?

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  • IE

    8 Comments


    Just my two cents on the frenzy blogs I read about Internet Explorer and his future.
    I read that people start to think about using other browsers.

    I think some people have a short memory.
    Do you remember all the hard time to have a simple web page working for a lot of users just two years ago ?

    The time where you have to deal with different browsers, Javascript or some obscure bugs in Netscape or IE 4.

    I am personally happy with IE 6. It can be improve, but it does exactly what they say on the tin and it seem to be use by the whole Internet community.

    I am not ready to come back again to the time where you have to test every single HTML code to be compliant with Netscape 3 or IE3.
    I like having .Net doing the browser test for me, and maybe it's not perfect, but it works even on a Macintosh !

    And for those who talk about Mozilla, how many versions should be there before having no more crash on my PC?

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  • CMS


    If you are interested you can read the comments I received on my post about CMS, static or dynamic.

    The debate now seem to go on the caching options.
    I just commented about the difficulty to cache partially some elements of a page.

    Maybe I am wrong so feel free to comment.

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  • Code Recovery

    1 Comment


    Commenting my post about my unfortunate crash, Drew write:

    I feel your pain. My HD crashed two weeks ago, on my first day in a two week trip to Japan. Ouch! My most recent backup was spotty. I have some demos and other projects that are not "production," nonetheless I put some significant hours into just before I left. Gone. Stupid me.

    I didn't obsfucate any of the assemblies, so I'm going to try some decompilers. The word is they can produce some pretty clean code from .NET assemblies.

    Does somebody know more about these tools. Am I able to retrieve something useful from the assembly ?

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  • Crash

    2 Comments


    I didn't blogged too much recently. It was a bad day for me, my hard drive crash, and of course no recent backup.

    So I have now all my projects running on my servers, but I ma unable to touch them, I don't have anymore the code behind.

    The only thing I can do is updating the HTML pages, if I want to update some code, I would have surely to rewrite a lot of code.

    I decided to send and pay for a data recovery. The company's name can't be more explicit, The Computer hospital !

    Cross fingers that everything will be back on track, surely I need the code.

    I am surely going to investigate the new save functions in Windows 2003 !

    I know it's probably stupid but I regret a little bit (just a little) the time of ASP where everything were deployed and not just the half of it. OK, I know, it's not good to have the sources files on a production server, but now I have few orphans installed !



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  • Frontpage extensions: change the name !

    2 Comments



    I'm going to use my blog to launch a request to Microsoft.

    Many times I want to deploy somewhere a site, IT people are puzzled by Frontpage server extensions.

    "Why do you need this if yoou don't use Frontpage ?" and all the time you wasted some valuable time to explain why you need them.

    Because Microsoft is very good on choosing names ;-), can you please rename Frontpage server extensions to something else, I don't know for example Web extensions.

    If some MS gurus read this blog can pass the message, thanks


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  • Dotnetweblogs in Visual Studio

    No Comments




    Another approach to the blog reader dilemna is... Visual studio ;-)

    You can easily customize the start page to include any dynamic content you want and why not Dotnetweblogs.

    The start page is indeed a combination of XML and XSL, and it's quite easy to create a custom page with tabs, filtered content.

    You have also the choice between a Feed tag to dynamically read the content if the server is online, or Data to read a static content.
    For the Feed option, the content is cached so if the server is offline, you still have the cache.



    What better than that, if you are using Visual Studio.

    If you want to give a try read this     excellent article on MSDN. 


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  • Free Textbox Editor

    1 Comment



    I just received a new version of Free Textbox editor.

    For those who want an alternative (for free) to the excellent     RichText Editor, this one now is a real competitor.

    If you are happy enough with the tool, you can also donate ;-)

    A free ASP.NET control written in C# implementing MSHTML in Internet Explorer. It can be validated using standard ASP.NET validators and has many options for customization.

    The code can be download     here, and the source code here

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  • Be productive

    2 Comments

    Roy wrote a good long post about productivity.

    I say that his post should have the title : Be curious.

    A developer must be curious, look everything that could increase his knowledge.

    Excerpt from Roy:

     Even a Tabbed browser instead of good ol' IE makes it easier to find information while removing lots of clutter from your desktop.     AvantBrowser is a good free one.

    On this I disagree. This is huge debate, but developers should work with a default browser, without any gizmos or fancy toolbars.
    We must consider working in generic mode, and you can't guess what the final user has on their computers, neither their type of computers.

    I had the recent experience to code a website fullscreen for 800*600 screen, and the client complain that he couldn't see the full page.
    Everything was fine on my side, and I discover that he installed a toolbar under the normal one with google search and other fancy tools.

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  • Windows 2003 security

    3 Comments


    I can just say that Windows 2003 Securities are top !

    I know I shouldn't use it as my development platform, it's a server OS after all, but believe me it rocks.

    I use it on my old Pentium III 500Mhz, and it seems to be faster than winXP.

    The point is that absolutly everything is locked, so it's a kind of cat and mouse game between me and Windows to remove some restricted access, like in Internet Explorer.

    You really have to go deeper in IE settings if you want something working like a normal browser.
    For example, I couldn't make my DHTML menus working properly.
    I didn't realise that it was not my code to be wrong, but scripting is disable by default in Windows2003 !

    OK I am aware about security risks, but why going so far in the details. Can you really use Javascript to wipe out a client hard drive ?

    Anyway, I am not complaining at all, it's quite a real good platform, strong and I hope not see too many patches until few months ;-)

    And the simple fact to have .Net and the new IIS 6.0 installed de facto is absolutly perfect.
    By the way, I just start to play with IIS 6.0 and MS mad a good job on the settings.
    I think I will do something with the config file, because it could be handy to manage the sites remotely.

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  • Hosting in UK

    No Comments



    Thanks to Robert to help for hosting, and Frans (well I don't really understand dutch ;-)).
    Victor give me apparently the solution and I will try them.

    Hostinguk.net seems to be for me the first UK company to clearly talk about .Net 1.1 on their frontpage, that's good news.

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  • Hosting

    3 Comments


    This is my Sunday rant against some hosting companies.

    I don't know what's going on in US, but here in Europe, it's a disaster.

    I absolutly needed a hosting company for a small .Net project.
    I can't host this project on my own servers.

    I was quite happy until now with my actual hosting company for ASP (no name here, that's not the point) but now it's a nightmare to have them running .Net.

    Nothing is working as planned, I don't think they really setup their server properly.
    I discovered that they just copy the ASP .Net client folder (1.0 and 1.1!!) in the root of the web application, and that's all. That's what they call .Net ready to use :-(

    I don't know who's responsible there, the hosting companies or Microsoft.

    But I think Microsoft should encourage their partners to embrace .Net, giving them some training on how to deal with this.

    MS have to convince not only the developers, but also all the community.

    What are you doing with a .Net webapplication if you cna't host it ?

    Nothing is the same between ASP and .Net, and they still don't understand the differences.

    And I don't talk about an isolated case, I heard already a lot of cases where developers have to abandoned .Net and go back to ASP for their projects if they don't host their site.
    I am sure I can find a lot of good hosting companies in US, but I need to keep this project close to Europe.

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  • Xmen Community

    2 Comments


    So now we have our community growing:

    Marcie the Datagridgirl
    Roy the Regex Boy
    Don the SVG Guru aka Barcode man
    Scott the Weblogger
    Sam the Interop bloke

    Who's next ;-)

    Tell me if I missed one of our 'mutants' !

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  • Barcodes

    No Comments


    Don  glad to see that Barcodes with .Net can be a subject for your presentation ;-)

    By the way I am going to start now doing your recommendations with SVG, and I will let you know if my barcode reader recognise the printout

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  • Microsoft Action Pack

    7 Comments


    Get the latest Microsoft    ® software, marketing tools, resources, and information when you subscribe to the new Microsoft Action Pack Subscription for only U.S.$299 (CDN$469). You'll save a bundle on Microsoft software that you can use to run your own business, plus get the marketing tools and resources that you need to grow your knowledge, hone your skills, and help drive up your sales and service revenue.

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  • Rich text editor for all browsers

    6 Comments


    Christopher talk about java applets to  make a rich text editor for different browsers.

    That's a valid point. Why in .Net, we don't have the equivalent of applets ?
    I see something for IE, but I would prefer a universal solution.

    I imagine all the benefits I can have, not only for an editor, but to run some small .Net windows project through a browser.

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  • VS.Net Editor flaws

    No Comments


    Frans Bouma mention the issues with the HTML editor in VS.Net.

    But I can also add that I have also some issue with the code editor.
    It happens quite often, that the indentation stop working for no reason, most of the time in loops, and I have to force the indentation.

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  • Matrix...

    No Comments


    Just to say that I received a cool invitation by email to see Matrix next Friday in Dublin as a private projection.... with Microsoft Ireland ;-)

    I don't have the email just there but they made a very good job about the graphics on this invitation.

    Pretty cool...

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  • Coding performances

    No Comments

    Jesse replied to my post:

    You can cache at the control level. If you are using ascx files, the directive works the same as the page caching directive. If you are using custom/composite controls, then you have to do some footwork to cache the results, but the Cache object is both powerful and easy to use, so you can give whatever granularity you want without much difficulty.

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  • Managing business rules exception

    No Comments


    How do you manage business rules exception?

    I am curious to see how other developers or architects deal with some case scenario, where like the project I am working on, everything works fine except that now you have a rule specific for one feature.

    I try to explain by an example.

    I have a class to populate three dropdownlist from a database, following some established rules.

    The dropdown are linked together working in cascade.

    Everything's ok but for one case, I have to change the way that the first dropdown bind to the database.

    So actually, I rely on a flag to switch between the rule and the exception, but I'm really sure that some other aproach should be possible.


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  • Mass Mailing without timeout issues

    No Comments


    I am a big fan of ASPNetemail, because of the fact I can send 10000 emails without any timeout issues.

    See there the details and the code.

    Interesting too, they have a pretty good Javascript progress bar.

    The mails are sent using a Thread, and I am sure it's possible to adapt this code to the native framework emails functions.

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  • Problem to read Sam Gentile stories

    No Comments


    I have difficulties to read Sam Gentile's blog.

    I am not sure why, but the right column (with all the links) come all the time over the story in the middle !?!?

    Scott maybe a problem with the template

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  • Coding performances

    1 Comment


    Indexed positions are always going to be faster than string comparisons, not matter what the context of the collection is. Still, even faster would be to use protected members of your class, which ASP.NET will automatically set if you are using usercontrol or web forms. The style code isn't going to make much difference either way, but I would recommend setting the actual property (ie. BackColor instead), since the webcontrols support down level rendering when you use these properties.

    If you are so concerned about performance that you need to be wondering about the impact of things like this, you might want to take a look at output caching or just bypass web controls all together and directly output HTML using the Render method instead.

    From     Jesse Ezell

    First thanks for your comment. I will do as you say for the controls properties.
    For output caching, that's another story.
    the site I build is portal with a lot of things going on on each page.

    I tried different options for caching, but it doesn't work very well.
    I need a level of granularity for each object, and apparently I can't have on a same page very different cache functions.
    Render HTML controls directly yes this is an option which I keep for when I will have time.

    My post was also about finding something to help on performance checking.
    It's not just tracing, but it's more about what the .Net community think about using a method rather than another.

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  • Writing is hard

    Roy posted earlier something about the difficulty to write an article. It's so true.
    I post here the comment I found very interesting that he received from     randy
    I would like also to know how you can do your daily job and doing some coding that you probably do for the fun. Where is the time ? ;-)

    Get your ideas down on paper first, then let them sit for a period of time before you come back to them (could be a day, could be weeks in some cases). If the ideas don't seem solid, do a little more work and let them sit again. If they still seem valid, proceed by starting an outline to lay out the structure of your article. Depending on your comfort level with writing, it may need to be a detailed outline. If the article involves code though, have the code ready before you move past the outline. As things go in software development, sometimes the end result isn't exactly what you had imagined when you started.

    Once you start writing, force yourself to complete it in sections that correlate to the original outline. Then review them as they are finished to ensure that you're comfortable. Lather, rinse, repeat.

    Once you have the article completely written, review it several times in the same manner that you reviewed the individual sections.

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  • Pocket PC Samsung i700 available

    No Comments


    i700 is one of the most amazing Pocket PCs (not only phones) of all times: it features GSM/GPRS, integrated camera, superfast XScale processor and SDIO slot to feature Wi-Fi and other input output cards.

    [Source:     msmobiles]

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  • 2000 GB Hard Drive !

    No Comments


    Those who need a lot of storage space: a 2,000 GB FireWire external hard drive from Googie. Mainly aimed at the video editing and desktop publishing markets, and those with insanely huge MP3 collections.

    Read more...

  • The Matrix Phone

    1 Comment

    Don’t let the apparent bulkiness fool you—this phone is stocked with enough features to make even Neo smile. The screen is a 65,000 TFT LCD that boasts a very decent size (128×160 pixels). A feature not commonly seen on phones, but a must for the Matrix is included—GPS location.

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  • Kaena

    No Comments



    No this is not a new .Net tool, but a movie coming soon.

    If like me, you are big fan of Final Fantasy, Kaena  looks really cool.

    And for one time, made by a french company ;-)

    You have the trailer on their site.


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  • Microsoft Research site

    No Comments


    Roy give the link to Microsoft Research.
    I spent sometime recently on this website, just curious to know what they work on.

    Well it's not really top defence or MediaLab stuff.

    Add the fact that some web pages are built by the researchers themselves, sometime looking like dead ghost place.

    I posted recently something about Project 7.

    Does somebody know more about that ?

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  • Unsollicited maillist subscription

    No Comments



    I would tend to agree with you that the proper way of going about things would've been a one-time email to the old list subscribers pointing them to where they could subscribe to the new list(s).

    Whether or not the intent was pure, automatically subscribing people to a new list was, IMO, wrong both from the standpoint of netiquette, as well as from the standpoint of the rules of the Yahoo groups.

    I know Scott from other venues, and I'm sure he meant well, but I do think the transition from old lists to new should have been handled differently.

    from     G. Andrew Duthie

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  • Being Digital

    No Comments

    I was writing earlier about the tech situation in Ireland getting not bright at the moment.

    And tonight, as a pure coincidence, I just finish reading an article in the Irish Times from a journalist name     Karlin Lillington.

    First time that I read clearly mentioned on an Irish newspapers the weblog address of a journalist !

    Her blog is really interesting, full of personal and professional comments, and it's quite an exciting experience, from a journmalistic point of view, it give some flesh and blood to a paper character.
    To come back to my story, she wrote about the new adaptation of the digital media firms in Ireland.
    To be sure to respect her article, I will just repeat some parts.

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  • MS confirms WinXP rightclick issue

    No Comments

    Microsoft says in the note that when you right click a folder using Windows Explorer, the CPU usage flies up to 100% when the shortcut menu is displayed.

    That means any file copy operation "may appear to stop responding", "network connection speed may significantly decrease", and streaming operations, like listening to music, can become distorted. I suppose its disappointing to see that a fix is in fact disabling (native) features but we can only hope this is solved in SP2 or a patch. Read more for the workaround.

    View:     Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - 819101
    View: Explorer 100% utilization in Windows XP (26 April 2003)
    News source:     The Inquirer and neowin

    It's happen to me so many times that at the end I was thinking this is normal.
    Happy if this could be fixe soon.

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  • Wristphone

    1 Comment

    The first production run of that new wristwatch cellphone from NTT DoCoMo, the Wristomo I-mode, sold out in 20 minutes when it went on sale in Japan on Wednesday.

    [Source:     Gizmodo - The Register]


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  • Cellphone yes but with remote control

    No Comments


    NEC's new cellphone doubles as remote control for a television or VCR, it's the perfect thing for those who can't be bothered to get up and find the real remote. The N504iS has a 1.9-inch color LCD screen, a built-in digital camera, and is only available in Japan.

    [Source:     Gizmodo]

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  • Bookshelf

    No Comments


    Roy mentioned in his last blog a list of books he has on his bookshelf.

    I will certainly order som of them missing in my library.

    Bu Roy add this one on the VB.Net section:

    Visual Basic .Net core language Little Black book

    It's an excellent reference book

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  • Yukon

    No Comments


    I read carefully the .Net Magazine article on Yukon, thanks Randy.

    If this is coming to life like that, most of the new things are for me exciting stuff.

    I like:
    - XML as native data storage.
    - Intellisense in stored procedures with the future VS release.
    That's pretty cool but I hope it could be also for T-SQL
    - SQL Server Workbench
    - VB and C# integration. globally it's a good idea. I am just a bit afraid about debugging.
    I wonder how it will going debugging my application and the data layer !
    - multiple results set on a single connection
    - Varchar(max) if it's true this is a great new ! At last no more 8k limit
    - Automatic notifications are a very good idea
    - Recursives functions. This is excellent
    - Try catch is a good combination to use with Transactions, if as I said below, it's ANSI SQL-3 standard.
    - Reporting services as long as it's simple to use as in Access.

    I dislike:
    - XML format for big databases, how about performances ?
    - Integration of .Net in SQL Server will make the product too much platform dependent.
    With T-SQL it's not big deal to copy stored procedures, with few changes, to Oracle for example on Unix or Windows. What's about a stored procedure written in C#?
    I have no problem to develop muy middle tier in .Net, but I like a kind of independancy with the data layer. A mismatch will not benefit Yukon.

    Other features need to be seen. Is Array parameters can be a door to crosstables ?
    I didn't read anything new about Cube or OLAP.

    In conclusion I admit that I have more 'I like it' than 'I dislike it'.
    That's not so bad at all and this new release seems promising.

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  • Pivot 2

    1 Comment


    In regard to my last Pivot blog, Scott Prugh replied:

    Yes. It is a shame that TSQL doesn't have crosstab. I'm hoping for support like this in Yukon(plus a lot of over cool TSQL enhancements).

    I don't know the specifics about what you are trying to solve but.....

    Anyways, if you are doing a lot of sophisticated analysis, you may want to look at OLAP services. You can build a cube that allows you to pivot on dimensions in your data.

    My answer is that OLAP services are too much complicated for something simple as Pivot. I hope too that Yukon will integrate some nicer features and break the limitations of SQL server 2000. This last one suppose to be much more powerful than Access !

    It seems also that for some functions, Visual foxpro is also better than SQL Server.

    So Microsoft, please no more parade with the fastest SQL engine in the world, with a lot of stats on how we can deal with zillions of records in 0.2548 microseconds.
    No, just now some simple nice new features.

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  • Pivot

    1 Comment


    OK now I sorted out my problem with pivoting tables.

    Thanks Access, no thanks to SQL Server :-((

    It's a pity that you can do a so nice SQL Transform and Pivot function with Access and not be able to do it natively in T-SQL !

    Other problem, and I reckon it was my first time on the matter, if you have to deal with stats, and I mean huge stats, it would be nicer to have a bigger number of columns, whatever the tool, Access, SQL or Excel.

    By the way, if somebody know a spreadsheet application able to accept 3000 columns and 10000 rows, please let me know.

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  • Coool man ;-)

    No Comments


    Some joker from New Zealand got busted at an Australian tech trade show for selling scented faceplates for Nokia phones that smell like pot smoke and have an image of marijuana leaf emblazoned on the front. He didn't do anything illegal, just offended the sensibilities of the Premier of New South Wales, and so the faceplates got the boot:

    [Robert] Punch quickly switched to pushing the more politically correct chocolate and strawberry scented phone covers, but said the marijuana cover was "a stayer". He also said he had brought his phone covers through customs without attracting any interest from the drug-sniffing dogs on patrol.
    What we can't understand is why anyone would want their cellphone to smell like anything.

    [Source: Gizmodo]

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  • Office has its limits

    No Comments


    A distinction that Microsoft is making between professional and standard versions of Office 2003 means that many customers will not get all the features they've been expecting, including broad support for web services and an opportunity to unlock their data from proprietary Microsoft file formats.

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  • Sham'e'rock Valley

    No Comments


    Ireland tops the list of countries which are perceived by European technology executives to have the most potential to be the Silicon Valley capital of Europe, according to a survey.
    Well to achieve this believe me, we are at the start of a very long road.

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  • Software Architecture and Bill Gates

    No Comments

    As I pointed out in yesterday's post, I'm very curious about Bill's role contribution to the software development process at Microsoft.  While reading some blogs last night, I ran across Rob Howard's recap of an ASP.NET design review meeting with Bill. 

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  • Ride the platform wave: .NET 1.1

    1 Comment



    Robert, your article is good, but what are you doing to people that everywhere you write something you trigger so much passion ;-))

    Read one of the comments below your article:

    Why are you so angry?
    Side by side execution is very nice when we are talking about assemblies running under one platform.
    But when it comes to the platform itself being subject to this SxS, then it's a nightmare:
    How do I know that the platform I'm writing my code under has been installed in the target machin(s)?
    This means I have to include with every program I package an installation of the framework my program runs under.
    Microsoft wants ultimately to base the operating system itself on the .NET platform.
    As such, it MUST be upgradeable, i.e. backward-compatible. Otherwise, side-by-side hell is more serious a problem than dll hell, imagine the multiplicity of "frameworks" splintering everywhere.
    This is what I understood from what has been said so far about the matter.
    If I'm wrong, that does not make me stupid or ignorant, as your angry, and unacceptably rude, language implies.
    I think of other people on the TechRepublic or Builder.com sites as peers.
    Peers help each other reach a better understanding, not (ab)use them to vent their anger.
    I want to hear from you an anlysis why it's a good thing to have SxS EVEN for platforms,
    and I want you to relinquish any use of irrelevant remarks about any member's understanding or the lack thereof.

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  • Pivot nightmare

    No Comments


    I am quite busy actually on this b*** school census. It's a questionnaire that schools filled and sent back to us about a lot of things on ICT and their usage.

    On the paper it's not so bad, divided in 6 parts from A to G,and about 60 questions per section, sometime more.

    After some database coding, I have now the really painful task to export this database to be analyze by SPSS.

    Well I don't know anything about this tool, not being myself a statistician, but apparently the version we have (10 I think) don't allow too much table manipulation.

    Unfortunatly I absolutluy need to pivot my data, and it's truely slow boring and... painful !

    The first idea is that our guy in charge of the stats ask first to have a huge unique table with evrything in it.
    No way to do that,as I said to him, SQL or Access have some limitations on the numbers of fields.

    Strangely, SPSS seems to be able to accept a very large number of columns(I don't remember exactly how much).

    So actually I am going to create 6 tables multiply by 3 types of schools. Well,a bit more than that because I ran out of memory very quickly when I create the Pivot table in Access, and export this to Excel.

    So I divided again in small data chunks, something like 4 to 6 parts each section, and I am going to merge that in Excel.

    I said before that I ran out of memory and I have actually 768 Mb on my machine ! It's amazing now how much you need to manipuilate some big database.

    It's a bit annoying that Access provide only an export to Excel from a pivot table.
    I know I can write a Transform in the Querydef, but I would like to see Access give me automatically the SQL statement when I switch from Pivot view to Sql view.
    Actually Access give me back my initial select statement :-(

    OK now time to go back to finish this before I transform myself as a mad pivoting chair !

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  • .Net Framework 1.1

    No Comments

    Assemblies originating from the Internet zone—for example, Microsoft Windows® Forms controls embedded in an Internet-based Web page or Windows Forms assemblies hosted on an Internet Web server and loaded either through the Web browser or programmatically using the System.Reflection.Assembly.LoadFrom() method—now receive sufficient permission to execute in a semi-trusted manner. Default security policy has been changed so that assemblies assigned by the common language runtime (CLR) to the Internet zone code group now receive the constrained permissions associated with the Internet permission set. In the .NET Framework 1.0 Service Pack 1 and Service Pack 2, such applications received the permissions associated with the Nothing permission set and could not execute.

    Somebody know some examples on how to embed Windows Forms controls in a Web page ?
    I'm wonder if this works like a Java applet.

    Update:
    I received some nice comments on this subject. I didn't know that it was there on the 1.0.

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  • PS2

    No Comments


    New version of the PS2 in Japan.
    This is the official new ad targeted for the teenagers ;-)

    La nouvelle version de la PS2 cible les ados japonais (DR) - 15.4 ko

    This version can read now DVD-RW,so you can read now your own movies.

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  • Dell XPS

    No Comments

    The Dimension XPS is built around Intel's new 875P chipset. Our version came equipped with the fastest Pentium 4 currently available, 1GB of dual-channel, 400-MHz DDR memory, and SATA support courtesy of a Promise FastTrack S150 TX2 controller. Dell also gave us an early treat by enabling a RAID 0 setup using a pair of 120GB Seagate Barracuda SATA V drives. Dell says it'll begin offering SATA RAID options with the Dimension XPS within a month or so of launch.

    Specs: Pentium 4 3-GHz (800-MHz FSB); 1GB 400-MHz DDR; 2X 120GB SATA 7,200-rpm (RAID 0); Sound Blaster Audigy 2; 128MB Radeon 9800 Pro; DVD+RW; CD recorder.

    Source: Techtv

    Dell XPS Gaming PC

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  • Cardboard PC

    lupopcbox.jpgFrom Japanese company Lupo, the PCBox, a computer case made of cardboard that you can fold and put together yourself. Just be careful to make sure it doesn't overheat
    and catch fire.

    Read on Gizmodo

    Read more...

  • Electronic Paper

    No Comments


    "In a step toward electronic newspapers and wearable computer screens, scientists have created an ultra-thin screen that can be bent, twisted and even rolled up and still display crisp text. The material, only as thick as three human hairs, displays black text on a whitish-gray background with a resolution similar to that of a typical laptop computer screen. The screen is so flexible it can be rolled into a cylinder about a half-inch (1 centimeter) wide without losing its image quality."

    Source:     PocketPCThoughts

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  • VPC

    No Comments

    How about the butterflies you get in your stomach as you watch the OS installation format our virtual hard disk.

    It's so freaky, yet it's so beautiful.

    Works great. I've now got to install VS 2003 on this VPC.

    Read on ScotG

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  • Access

    No Comments

    Amazingly  enough, all versions of Access prior to Access 2003 have no "Import XML" option!. Really. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. It seems someone at MSFT just overlooked it , since it is such a legitimate feature. Access 2003 ,on the other hand, handles this import easily, with no problems. It was a breeze to do and saved me the hours of coding a custom transformation and import tool (Not to mention more hours to come when the requirements or XML schema would change and so on..)

    Roy Osehrove

    Well Roy I think this is totally normal for a product which has is last real new version from 2000. XML at this time was not critical in business.

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  • .Net Framework 1.1

    1 Comment

    Assemblies originating from the Internet zone—for example, Microsoft Windows® Forms controls embedded in an Internet-based Web page or Windows Forms assemblies hosted on an Internet Web server and loaded either through the Web browser or programmatically using the System.Reflection.Assembly.LoadFrom() method—now receive sufficient permission to execute in a semi-trusted manner. Default security policy has been changed so that assemblies assigned by the common language runtime (CLR) to the Internet zone code group now receive the constrained permissions associated with the Internet permission set. In the .NET Framework 1.0 Service Pack 1 and Service Pack 2, such applications received the permissions associated with the Nothing permission set and could not execute.

    Somebody know some examples on how to embed Windows Forms controls in a Web page ?
    I'm wonder if this works like a Java applet.

    Read more...

  • Yukon

    No Comments


    I have spoken with folks who have seen 'Yukon' first-hand. This is one kick-ass product, quite simply nothing like it before. There are two features that'll redefine the database market - 'Reporting Services' (demise of Crystal Reports ?) and the embedding of CLR in the database engine (but no mention of using MC++). The latter feature will finally put to rest Oracle boasts on TPC scores.

    Posted By S.B. Chatterjee

    Good point! I hope this Reporting Services will solve my actual nightmare with pivot tables.
    Olap analysis just sucks, too complex to use for a simple pivot function. So I deal actually with Access,and this is not the top.

    Read more...

  • New eBook Helps Administrators and Programmers Secure IIS

    No Comments

    The book is written in 16 chapters that cover threats to Web server security, IIS information services, server farms, Windows platform architecture, ASP.NET architecture, secure scripting, TCP/IP vulnerabilities, transaction-processing security, safety assurance for program code, ISAPI hardening, authentication, Trojan horses and root kits, certificates and encryption, publishing points, and baseline security proofs.

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  • Windows authentication

    1 Comment


    Scoilnet is now on the testing phase, but I have an issue with my testing platform.

    I removed anonymous logon on IIS, and ask to use only Windows authentication.

    I created a bunch of users (Windows 2000 OS). Everything fine for I could say 98 - 99% of the users.

    But some have troubles to pass the logon box. I checked their settings, they all use IE 4+ with basic settings.

    The only thing is that some connect by a proxy server. So I wonder if the reason why they can't have access is because of that.

    Anybody have a clue ?

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  • Hyperlinks - Friend of Foe?

    No Comments

    By designing these links to be more descriptive, the user will not have to guess: "Browse Used Cars", "Browse Used Trucks and SUV's",  "Browse New Cars", "Browse New Trucks and SUV's", "Find a lender", "Find automobiles in your price range", "View price list of all models".   These tell the user exactly what she can expect to find in the next page.  ...

    Dana Coffey


    I agree Dana, but I also say that with some long links like that, how do you manage real estate on currently screen size people use?

    It seems to be actually an average of 800*600 pixels screen size all around the place.

    That's why I use short links, but you are probably right saying that they should be more descriptive.
    Another thing also difficult is about underlining links.

    It's ok if you don't have too much of them on the page, but otherwise it looks very clutter to have these links underlined all over.

    I don't have a clue on the right solution, but for the moment I use a different color for the links, and underline them only on mouse over event.


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  • ValidateRequest feature

    No Comments

    I must say that I completely disagree.  Microsoft's job is to make their software as secure as possible right out of the box.  They did an incredible job with Windows Server 2003 in this area and .NET 1.1 is part of that effort.  I was bitten by this change on 3 websites, but it's pretty simple to add an attribute to the web.config and fix it.  I think they did the right thing.

    Eric

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  • Safari

    1 Comment


    Thanks to Sijin Joseph  to provide this info about Safari. I think it's a very good idea.

    Just want to add that it's sad that O'Reilly don't provide a real free trial registration. You must give your credit card number before having access to the 14 day trial period.

    I would like to know more about this service, by trying it. I still like real books, but I think this is a good online reference and accessible when you don't have the book in your hand. How many times I have to carry my books all along !

    I'll be glad to see if the books pages are a little bit longer onscreen than the preview version seems to show.

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  • Windows 2003 Server launch in Ireland

    No Comments


    I was this afternoon at the launch of Windows 2003 and VS Net 2003 in Dublin.

    My feedback on this:

    I like the venue (unfortunately I didn't won an Xbox or a PocketPC !), but I found the format of the presentations a bit messy.

    To explain a little bit more, I would say that as usual, Microsoft said we are the best, we made mistakes in the past, but now believe us, nothing can't be better.
    Better than what? The next release maybe Windows 2005 or Windows 2010.

    I think this kind of approach start for me to be outdated. I am in this business since 1979, and guys, believe me, I was at so many company meetings, where the
    speaker said we have the best product, nothing can be better than this.
    And few months after, again the same speech.

    The focus was mainly on security aspect of Windows 2003, and after that session, if you don't know that Windows 2003 is hyper secure, you must be deaf!

    The Microsoft speaker (I don't remember his name) tried to convince everybody that Windows 2003 has really 600 new features. Yes ok, but why spending so much time on a long and quite boring enumeration of all of them, every time back to a kind of comparison table with the previous version?

    Something new for me is they have videos about some companies in Ireland, having already setup Windows 2003 Server, and all in the same coice saying that Microsoft did a very good job on all aspect, and of course security.

    Quite surprising, when you know the product is suppose to be new with not really a huge base and some missing service packs.

    How can they be so sure about windows 2003 without any experience on it? I have usually some doubts on this kind of testimony,

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  • Cool gadget

    3 Comments


    We are all carrying most a time a very useful thing, I mean a watch. So a german company Laks has just launched
    a watch with a plus, memory !!

    From 32 Mb to 128 Mb connected by USB. Cool ;-)

    Read more...

  • Fragmented disk

    No Comments


    I develop my projects on a brand new high specs laptop that I have since one month.

    Finding it now very slow, I checked it with Norton Speed Disk, and guess what, 72 % of fragmented data !!

    For me this is a record. It seems that most of the fragmented files are MSDN or Visula cache stuff.

    I wonder what I am going to discover on my production server ;-)

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  • Cookies... Eat me

    No Comments

    Response.Cookies("MyCookie").Expires = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-30)

    Great, it works but not immediatly. So I suggest that you write again the cookie with empty values to really empty the cookie before it disappear.

    I had to do that because the clipboard function I use is a panel visible or not.

    So if I delete the cookie, and the user make visible the clipboard very quickly, the cookies values are still there. Emptied it solved the problem, well for me.


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  • Mmmm ... Cookies

    No Comments


    To be honest, I didn't used really cookies on a project since a very long time, but in Scoilnet, the education portal I am building for the Irish government,
    here we go, I need it.
    I had to implement a neat feature to let users, mostly teachers, keeping in a 'clipboard' some resources(HTML documents) for a certain period of time.
    And indeed retrieve the content of their clipboard when they need it, today or in 10 days. Add to these requirements that they don't login to access the site, and., correct me if I am wrong, cookies ready to cook !

    I remember vaguely that cookies implementation before was a piece of cake (sorry I couldn't missed this one;-)), so because .Net rocks, it would be easy.
    Not so easy, indeed. It took me few hours to figure out how to make this working properly.

    I discovered that when you write some values to a cookie, you need to check if the cookie exist to avoid an exception error.

    Great, but when you write something like if request.cookies("Mycookie") is nothing then... you enter in a mysterious world.

    To be more explicit, you have with .Net 2 types of cookies, the session one, and the persistent one. The first disappear when the user do the same, and the second stay on the user disk. The difference is just a tiny property Expires. If you pass to this an expiration date, it's persistent, otherwise not.

    The problem, is when you do a test to check that the cookie is there, .Net for a reason which elude me, create the cookie, but with a null expiration date.

    Yes you just guessed it, it's a session cookie. And now everything you can write in your cookie after that are not written to the disk, believe me I spend sometime to discover this.

    In some scenario, it could be worse, if you use a watch in VS.Net, you create again this fugitive cookie.
    The incoming (Request) cookie carries an Expires date of DateTime.MinValue, regardless of the date attached to the cookie on the client system.

    Read this clever article on CodeProject to know more about this problem and a solution.

    So my little solution is this one, I admit unclean, but unfortunatly not too much time. I am sure someone has a better explanation, but cookies and .Net are not the best ingredients for a good recipe.

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  • GeoBlog

    No Comments


    Hey Christophe, this Geoblog stuff is pretty cool.

    I just wonder what's going to happen in case of success. It could be a little bit messy all this blogs popup from everywhere.

    But it's really a feature to learn about the real world linked to the superficial world of Internet !

    I like this idea of global Cafe du Commerce, with everybody talking about everything.

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  • En attendant Bill

    No Comments


    Julie replied to my comment on Bill blog:

    So Paschal. If you refer to Bill Gates as God, then who are you referring to here as Jesus?

    Nice one Julie. Of course I can say Scott for opening our can of blogs, but it was more something like Jeez !

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  • Web deployment

    No Comments


    My project Scoilnet start now to be big, and I am confronted now with deployment issues.

    I setup the firewall to let only port 80 connections accepted, so obviously I can't use any FTP upload.

    I would like now to deploy only certain files and not as I am doing now, all the project.

    I found the deployment with VS very handy, but is it possible to copy only certain files ?

    I know already I can exclude from my project the files I don't want to copy, but now that seems impossible regarding the size of the solution.

    Any idea about an add-in to do that ?

    Read more...

  • Imagine Cup 2

    2 Comments

    Ok, now onto my second day at Microsoft. BTW, this was on Saturday. This was the day of the US Finals judging for the Imagine Cup 2003.

    Read more...

  • Interesting !

    No Comments


    For whoever read my last blog about a new feature in .Net 1.1, this is now to behave like a 'serious' issue.

    I was reading     Brad Adams and  give this comment:

    NB: Interesting exception thrown when I tried to enter the "< NOSPAM >" in the e-mail address for this message. Remove the spaces between the angle brackets and the NOSPAM word to see the effect!

    Obviously I tried it and it give me the same exception message that I mentioned.

    Imagine this happens to our gurus ;-) More seriously is somebody from the .Net team can give a better alternative than the one proposed.

    I repeat I like this feature, but I dislike the way it was implemented.

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  • Validation request in .Net 1.1


    I think this can be useful for everybody who can have this problem with .Net 1.1.

    I break a little project I run on one of my servers, just by installing .Net 1.1 instead of the 1.0, because this happened.

    I generated a database of usernames and password to provide an access for a vote section in this project.

    What I didn't know with .Net 1.1, is that the team added a new feature about request validation.

    So now if your user submit some specific characters like the one which can be interpreted as script functions, and submit the form, you might finish with a superb new error message like this :

    A potentially dangerous Request.form value was detected from the client.

    I am not complaining about this, I think it's a great security feature.

    Unfortunatly my password list contains some characters interpreted as tags part like < or >.

    However, the solution provided to this issue don't make me fully happy.

    What you can do is to disable this new feature by adding this in your Page directive line:

     <%@ Page validateRequest="false"  % >

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  • ASP.NET hosting

    1 Comment


    Fabrice I can help, I have my own hosting platform. Well the only restriction could be the traffic ;-)

    By the way, I think I read some time ago in this very blog space, that someone know another free hosting solution.

    I can't find anymore the details but I will let you know if I find it again.

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  • Breadcrumbs code

    No Comments


    I am looking for an easy to implement breadcrumbs code for my project Scoilnet (VB if possible, C# is ok).

    I already code one but not totally happy with it, too much links hard-coded.

    What is also the best ? Having the links in a database, an xml file, or static links.

    I would like to have something like:

    Home / My Level 1 / My Level 2

    Thanks for any help !

    Read more...

  • Back button and .Net

    7 Comments


    I have a good question here and I need some help. No idea if this is possible.

    Imagine this scenario: you go from a web page A to a page B by a click.
    OK. now I have on the page B some buttons to trigger some decorations changes on the page B, like having the text in three columns, the font size, etc...

    But of course, because of the server-side effect, the history include these changes.

    So now this is the challenge. How can I use the Back button of the browser and back automatically to the A page and not to the cache version of the modified page B.

    I can't think about disable viewstate because I need it to maintain some infos on the page.
    Maybe the cache ?!?

    My two cents on that will be probably to use the Javascript function History(), but not totally sure about that.
    I am sure that this is a task a lot of people would like to be solve.

    Any idea?

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  • Thanks guys...

    4 Comments


    Hey man, when are you going to leave me alone with your bazaar rhetoric and realise that you not offend me at all, but certainly a lot of people there who want just to read .Net stories and subjects related to technology and nothing else.

    Glad to see that you understand finally that your stuff has to be store in the backyard, not anymore posted on the front door !

    So thanks now to stop using my name everytime you start ranting, saying something like 'sorry if what follow going to offend Paschal'!

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  • Irrational behavior

    1 Comment


    Tim you are perfectly right. I am fed up that people launch freely on th e web some rants about some patriotic thoughts.

    Just talking for myself, I am not a patriot of any country. I am not for the war, I am not against either, but I have enough of people who can critics me easily because I have a french name.

    I am not living in france for this reason: too much patriots over there and too much politics !

    Developer is my only flag ;-)

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  • Mono news

    No Comments


    If you have interest in Mono project, this is quite some good news.

    the Mono project has now a community for developers who want to run .Net with Linux:

    GotMono

    It seems also that their next goal is to make Sharpdevelop Editor running under Linux ! good luck to them

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  • Stripping out HTML tags

    1 Comment


    This blog is amazing to find solutions. I enjoy to be part of this community.

    Well another idea on removing HTML tags from Christian     Dehaeseleer:

    " If your HTML is not "simple" then RegEx will not work... (what if your HTML contains "<" etc.).

    Another option is to parse your HTML as XML with SgmlReader (available on GotDotNet) and then treat the XML as you wish (for instance using a default XSL Template will remove all tags...)     "

    Hey folks, what do you think about this versus using Regex.

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  • Stripping out HTML tags

    No Comments


    Thanks Phil for your suggestion, I will try this:


    Here's how I do it (the variable 'HTML' is a String containing the HTML code):

    Dim regEx As New Regex("<[^>]+>")
    Dim Text As String = regEx.Replace(HTML, "")

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  • An Aging Workforce Needs Accessible Technology

    No Comments


    I am starting this week my implementation of Accessibility in Scoilnet project.

    I read this excellent study on     Only 4 gurus , which prove that it's not only an issue for disability but for a growing part of the population.
    By the way Only 4 gurus is a really nice site, so keep it in your favorites :-)

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  • An Aging Workforce Needs Accessible Technology

    No Comments


    I am starting this week my implementation of Accessibility in Scoilnet project.

    I read this excellent study on     Only 4 gurus , which prove that it's not only an issue for disability but for a growing part of the population.
    By the way Only 4 gurus is a really nice site, so keep it in your favorites :-)

    Read more...

  • Transcriber 1.51 for Pocket PC

    No Comments


    Microsoft Transcriber is an award winning application that uses proprietary Transcriber technology to bring you unprecedented recognition accuracy and ease of use to your Pocket PC. Transcriber lets you take down a phone number, take notes and more, just as easily as writing on a piece of paper.

    You can download the new version here

    Read more...

  • Transcriber 1.51 for Pocket PC

    No Comments


    Microsoft Transcriber is an award winning application that uses proprietary Transcriber technology to bring you unprecedented recognition accuracy and ease of use to your Pocket PC. Transcriber lets you take down a phone number, take notes and more, just as easily as writing on a piece of paper.

    You can download the new version here

    Read more...

  • Web Controls

    No Comments

    I would like to share a list of real useful third party webcontrols.

    Why? Because there are so many controls on the market actually and it's hard to find the best one.

    What I would like to see is not an exhaustive list of controls but more what developers use, and sort this list by true ratings based on your experience.

    So if it's working well, I will organise a list like Fabrice did for the tools.

    I would like to start by two types of controls I use a lot.

    - Menu Control
      - ASP.Net menus     Coalesys
    I like this one, the only issue I have is that it's quite hard to setup.

    - Text Editor 
    Rich Text box     RichTextbox
    Probably the most complete and easy to use

    Read more...

  • Stripping out HTML tags

    3 Comments


    Is somebody know the best way to remove HTML tags from a parsed document ?

    I tried Regs expression but not so conclusive.

    Read more...

  • Rollover user control

    No Comments


    Another good article from Chris Garrett about reusable rollover javascript function and images.
    The only thing missing is a preload images function, but this shouldn't be a problem to implement.

    Read more...

  • MSDN and VS 2003

    No Comments


    I have now VS 2003 installed. Slow download but cool installation, and it's really worth it !

    Something not clear by the way. Do I need to download the 3 MSDN CD images,
    or can I use my actual MSDN Cds plus the April 2003 shipment ?

    Read more...

  • Split() function in SQL 2000

    5 Comments

    Few days ago, I finish a small .Net project, where I have to manage a survey for schools with dozens of dozens of web controls like textboxes, checkboxes, radiobuttons, etc...

    The performance of the application was quite good, but saving data in SQL appear to be a disaster.

    Very slow, so obviously a lot of Timeout errors. I tried everything, like increasing the running time for my application, or doing some code optimisation. Not really successful.

    So I came to the idea of doing the most of the job on the SQL side. What I did is to send an all 'blob' of information to a stored procedure, including questions id and answers, and asked to SQL to split the data in a suitable way and store it.

    Well the only problem is that in SQL you don't have any Split() function like in VB.

    So I wrote my own function and it works so well, that I would like to share the function.

    Notice: you have to create this as a User Defined function and not as a normal stored procedure.

    CREATE FUNCTION Piece ( @CharacterExpression VARCHAR(8000), @Delimiter CHAR(1), @Position INTEGER)

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  • Aspnetweblog and .Netweblog future

    No Comments


    I just finish to read the mail from Scott about the future of this community.

    I agreed with Paul Gielens about creating groups. I find that as the opposite of the idea of a community.

    I like the randomness of the different posts, meanwhile some posts are really out of .Net topic.

    If we put people in categories, it's for me like going back to a kind of discussion forum where you enter in a thread only if you find the thread.

    Doing like that, I believe that gurus will communicate only for gurus, and the same for web developers.

    Since I have this blog opened, I learn a lot from everybody.

    For me the most important thing missing is a Search function through all the 3500 posts.
    A large amount of code is already there, and it's quite hard to find it. Or a link to an article deeply buried in some guy's blog.

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  • No comment

    No Comments

    No don't expect me to comment the crap from Robert

    We have in french a word for this junk : lamentable !

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  • Help With London's Congestion Charging

    No Comments

    This software is very useful when you commute in London.

    In an attempt to reduce traffic congestion, the city of London recently began charging commuters a special tax whenever they drive into the downtown area. If you deliberately venture into the downtown zone, the so-called "    Congestion Charge" can be paid via SMS. But, how can you be sure just where the "free" and "taxed" roadways are?
    Now the latest versio of Tube map software from Visual IT let you know the details by a clear map of the city centre.

    Read more...

  • HP, Dell developing Microsoft Smartphones

    Read on Pocketpcthoughts

    "Both Dell and Hewlett Packard appear to be making forays into the Microsoft Smartphone arena. A report said that both companies have asked a number of Taiwanese manufacturers to give them quotes for phones, said Digitimes. Those include HTC – which makes the Orange slow booter, Mitac, Compal, Asustek, Quanta and Inventec, the newspaper claimed. But it's unclear whether these companies would accept quotations to make Smartphones, given the low price tag on these devices."

    Read more...

  • Third party WebControls list

    No Comments

    I would like to share a list of real useful third party webcontrols.

    Why? Because there are so many controls on the market actually and it's hard to find the best one.

    What I would like to see is not an exhaustive list of controls but more what developers use, and sort this list by true ratings based on your experience.

    So if it's working well, I will organise a list like Fabrice did for the tools.

    I would like to start by two types of controls I use a lot.

    - Menu Control
      - ASP.Net menus     Coalesys
    I like this one, the only issue I have is that it's quite hard to setup.

    - Text Editor 
    Rich Text box     RichTextbox
    Probably the most complete and easy to use

    Read more...

  • Viewstate(2)

    1 Comment

    "After postback, the values will be there still, unless ViewState is explicitly disabled by the user. This is the way all the .NET WebControls work (try setting the text of a control in onload when !IsPostBack and notice how it will retain its value for the lifetime of the page, even though you never explicitly set it again).

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  • Cell phones mark 30th birthday

    No Comments


    First call was April 30, 1973, on a Manhattan street corner

    Read from     Knoxnews.com

    This is cool but what's amazed me in this story is that apparently Martin Cooper is still working on some innovative products, and he's 74 !

    Well done Martin, I would like to be so healthy at this age, but not sure to live so long ;-)

    Read more...

  • Viewstate

    1 Comment

    Your answer is in the first part of your post. You create a public property which gets and sets the value inside of the viewstate:

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  • Just so you know

    3 Comments



    Robert wrote:
     In case you haven't seen the news yet, we've begun a significant incursion into Baghdad. It is 10:12PM MST, 9:12AM in Baghdad Time. We have now taken over the Ministry of [Dis]-Information, and at least one presidential palace. Check out MSNBC for more info. Just thought I'd give you guys a heads-up.

    Hey man I didn't know you were there. The WE is a bit too much no ? This is not a painting-ball game :-((.
    Very sad to read some bullshit like that !




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  • New watch but with 256 Mb of memory

    No Comments

    Allied Data’s retail division TORNADO continues expanding its product portfolio. Tornado will soon introduce its latest ultra portable solution: the Tornado USB Memory Watch (UMW). The Tornado UMW is a stylish designed wristwatch with built-in memory capacity.

    The Tornado USB Memory Watch (UMW) is the easy way to store, transfer and carry your personal files. The Tornado UMW is a portable storage device built into a stylish designed wristwatch. This portable device can store personal computer data files, image files e.g. photo, video- and audio files without using floppy discs or CDs. Whether you're at home, at work, or on the road, the Tornado UMW gives you instant access to your files.

    The Tornado UMW is available as a men’s watch and comes out in 3 different versions: with 64, 128 or 256 MB memory. The Tornado UMW is safe in use because documents can be stored in public or secure data sectors with password-protection. With the USB cable, the Tornado UMW can be plugged directly in every industry-standard USB 1.1 port that is built into desktop PCs including Apple Mac, notebooks or PDA. The Tornado UMW supports Windows CE, 98SE, 2000, ME, XP, Linux 2.4 or higher, Mac OS 8.6 or higher.

    Read more...

  • Dropdown list

    No Comments

    I discover what appears to be a bug with the dropdownlist control.

    I create a dropdown list containig items and grouped bys sections like this :



    Of course using a server side control. Everything fine, but the problems are in the code.

    The control is bind with some data. Each of the subtitle contains a null value, and the Topic items contains their own id.
    I use an event on the onchange of the select control. when the event is fired, I use the selectedindex property to detect if I select a subtitle (just there for decoration), or a topic.

    For the Topic, no problem, everything is ok, but for the subtitle, what I wanted is to select the next Topic automatically after the subtitle.
    For example, if I select Energy I want to go tot the Topic 1, or if I choose the line over Energy, I jump to Topic1.

    Piece of cake? Not exactly because whatever I tried so far, the selectedindex of my elements were back with a value of 0 or 1, if I didn't choose a Topic.
    Pushing further my tests, I discover what seem to be the origin of the problem.
    If you don't have any value in a item in a dropdownlist, the selectedindex is always the first element matching the search.
    I don't remember this kind of behavior before with ASP and Javascript.

    For me selectedindex should return an integer, whatever the value of the item.

    So for me the solution was to include some dummy unique values for each of the Subtitles in my dropdown control, and using indexof, to make the difference between different items.

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  • Project update

    No Comments


    The development of the project Scoilnet, portal for Irish Education, is going well.

    We're going to have a user testing phase next week, mostly schools.

    So the pressure is on me actually !

    I still have a couple of pages to finish before Friday, so it's going to be tough.

    Something give me some headache today, and I found another way to do it, but it's apity I couldn't figure out how to do it the proper way.
    My issue was to pass a value between two controls in the same event cycle.

    I tried to use a viewstate but apparently it didn't worked, couldn't read the value from the second control.
    I read somewhere tht I could use Saveviewstate method but didn't found the right syntax.

    It works now by doing something totally different: affecting the value needed inside the second control before passing the result to the next page using http context and server transfer.

    But I am still opened to any suggestion !


     

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  • Important question...well maybe for some like me about Wrox

    2 Comments

    Ok folks have a look at AspToday  (site linked to Wrox).

    Apparently the homw page is still there but nothing work anymore behind, dead, absolutly dead :-(
    Few days ago I was still able to login but now it's really gone !

    So my question now is :

    What's going to happen to the HUGE resources library that this site have since more than 3 years ?

    CSharptoday is worst, nothing at all, no more homepage, site close !

    Any idea about their content, because I was a register user, who paid for their resources and now what can I do if I want to access to some resource from their site ??

    The money is not an issue there, but if they are close for good shouldn't be able to publish their site as an open public resource ?

    Read more...

  • Boy, am I glad to see you!

    2 Comments

    Welcome Dana.

    I enjoyed your site aspforblondes ;-)

    Very refreshing. Like this last one:

    Today I heard birds chirping outside my window at sunrise... BIRDS Y`LL!!! The birdies are back and it was in the 60`s yesterday (F) !!!!!!! Spring is on the way - I can jsut FEEL it! I`m still working hard although I LOATHE being locked in this windowless offie all day with nobody to talk to. Y`all send me some email or something!

    By the way, we need to have more girls in our .Net world. I am totally agree with Christopher Frazier when he say:

    Amen! More smart females, please! Blonde or not...whateva.

    I add to that that we need to have more funny names for our .net or asp websites.

    Man , girls are so good for that, aspforblondes, datagridgirl.

    Do you know some more like this? Imagine Aspfortruckers, Aspfordiscodude, AspforIwishIwasrich, Aspforpensioneers !

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  • Grand Slam Sunday !

    1 Comment



    I am a huge rugby fan, but a very small guy ;-)

    And a supporter of the Irish team, so Sunday is the big day for the green jersey against the English.

    I wish that we can win this time. Please mister we never have the grand slam since ... 1948.

    Go on Brian O'Driscoll, you're one of the best captain Ireland had never have !



    So Sunday will be also a good celebration day, because whatever the result of the match, as usual everything will finish in a pub.

    Read more...

  • Dropdown menu

    No Comments

    As Pascal discovered the hard way, Internet Explorer always stacks something like a SELECT drop-down list on top of a normal HTML element, regardless of what z-index you use for each of them.

    Read more...

  • Macromedia Flash Player 6 for Pocket PC 2002

    No Comments


    Macromedia Flash Player 6 for Pocket PC 2002 enables developers and publishers to quickly and easily deploy Macromedia Flash MX content and Rich Internet Applications for Pocket PC 2002 devices. Developers can deploy standalone Macromedia Flash applications using the Macromedia Flash Player 6 for Pocket PC.

    This release includes the Pocket PC 2002 Content Developers Guide, Interface Design Policy Kit, as well as a set of optimized Macromedia Flash MX UI components for Pocket PC. Macromedia Flash Player 6 for Pocket PC 2002 is part of the Macromedia Mobile and Devices initiative to make PDA's, phones, televisions, and other consumer electronics accessible to Macromedia Flash developers and publishers.

    Read more...

  • A thing that puzzles me...

    2 Comments


    I know it's probably easy but I can't figure out the solution.

    I have a dropdown menu that running smoothly. the problem I have is that below the dropdown menu, done with a bunch of <DIV>, I also have a dropdown list.

    As everybody know, there is an issue with IE 4+ where the dropdownlist is always sitting on top of a DIV , whatever the z-index you choose.

    Obviously that's not the effect I want to achieve !.

    Coalesys apparently seems to have solved the problem, I tried it works, but for some other reasons, I don't want use their solution. I rather prefer to build mine.

    I know that I can use a simple trick: hide the dropdownlist when I activate the menu, but Coalesys control don't do that and I wonder how they achieve that.


    Read more...

  • SQL Query - update

    1 Comment

    I am still fighting, since two days now with this bloody stats that I suppose to give next monday.

    Any help on that ?

    The only I found for the moment is to use a link that Marcie send on a mailing list recently, SQLDudes.

    Apparently a dead site, because they're talking about SQL 7 but with an interesting way of doing a pivot table.

    The other idea I work on is to follow Marcie thoughts (what can we do without our Datagrid girl ;-)) and write some datatable, like master-details kind of stuff.

    Whatever the solution, I swear I will give the solution to the whole world !

    Read more...

  • H2200

    No Comments

    Some Pics for the news upcoming h2200 with a 400Mhz Xscale processor, 64MB of ROM.

    This device will have as well SD SDIO (we expect this for long time and a update for the other device should be on soon), TFT Screen but a really low power removable battery with 900 mAh lithium ion for the BT users.

    Read more...

  • Ineta Europe

    No Comments

    I am not the official voice of INETA. Just an involved user group leader (oh, and a programmer) I'm just here doin' my own thing.

    Don't be so modest. Everybody, including myself, thanks you for the great value of your contributions in different mailing lists or others.

    For Ineta, I will have a look again, but I am a bit concerned, especially if I look at the recent Microsoft Developer conference, where I knew that they couldn't fill the room, so they invited a lot of people for free to make them coming.

    Roughly 70 people showed up, and I'm sure that half of them were not developer at all.

    And it seems that Irish Dev group was behind this event which the quality of the sessions was very poor.

    It was looking more like a marketing exercise where speakers repeat most of the time, buy my product, I promised to do everything with it, but please I beg you to buy it ;-)

    Read more...

  • Ineta

    1 Comment

    I just have a look at Ineta website, thanks Julia and Roy. Not sure so maybe it's a dumb question, but is Ineta already there in Europe or is it only US based for the moment ?

    Because the situation here in Ireland is that nothing really exist.

    Well not exactly since a bloke created Irish Developers some time ago.

    But I know well the guy behind this, ( I interviewed him two years ago for a job) and he's certainly not the most qualified to talk about .Net (nothing personal, I just know what I am talking about).

    No idea if he has some support from Microsoft, but this looks like more a PR operation for me. Sodo you know something serious here in Ireland, or do I need to wait if Ineta coming there ?

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  • New free HTML Text editor

    No Comments

    Well it's new for me, and it looks great, just tested tonight.

    Delivered as a GNU initiative,     YNetEditor is very to install.

    Some bugs but some really cool functions. I like the table tool, but I also like the drag and drop applied to text or images.

    Good job

    Have a look yourself !

    Read more...

  • Girl Power

    No Comments

    Marcie so Julia and yourself should keep the pink for your blogs, and boys go on we need to go on some blue ;-))

    Anyway I hope that this blog site will be soon totally pink !

    Read more...

  • Compact flash and other memory recovery

    No Comments

    I am not used to make publicity for companies but there I make an exception with flash-card-recovery.

    I have a compact flash 64 Mb and for an unknown reason appeared suddenly empty on my PocketPC. So unable to fix myself the problem, I was really annoyed, thinking that this type of memory is reliable.

    So I did a usual tour on the web, and I said to myself why not trying this company, with all the fears that it could be another opportunistic bunch of guys in their garage building another bad website to attract gullible customers.

    Of course on my compact flash I stored all my precious password and different servers access, without any recent backup. I am sure that everybody has been facing this problem once. And more important, some precious holidays pictures !

    So after paying something like 60 pounds sterling, and after waiting only 6 days, my precious memory card came back today attached with a CD, and good surprise, everything has been restored, well as clusters folders, but I am happy, all the data I need is there.

    Conclusion: never trust anything in memory technology, including the so-known reliable one !

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  • New email worm pretends to have spy images

    No Comments

    A new e-mail worm has surfaced that purports to show screensavers of U.S. spy satellite pictures of Iraq or animations that are either patriotic or that mock President Bush.

    The worm, dubbed Ganda-A, spreads by sending itself to e-mail addresses on an infected machine and tries to disable anti-virus and other security software and infect certain files on the hard disk, according to Sophos.

    Read more...

  • Al Gore joins Apple's board

    No Comments

    In a statement, CEO Steve Jobs noted that Gore is an avid Mac user who edits his own videos using Final Cut Pro. However, Gore's support of the Mac has not been unwavering, with the politician having said three years ago that he had switched from a Mac to a PC. Gore was chosen as a director at a meeting of Apple's board earlier Wednesday.

    Read more...

  • Being googled

    No Comments

    Interesting article on Herald Tribune website  with a critical point of view on Google:

    ...
    But the fact that Google won't say exactly how it does it raises some eyebrows. After all, the order in which a search engine presents its results largely determines where Internet users will look. Chances are that you click on the first links that are displayed and rarely if ever get down to the last page of results. The ability to direct where millions of people go on the Web puts a lot of power in Google's hands.

    Google's director of corporate communications, David Krane, demurs.

    "Google itself doesn't possess any power," Krane said by telephone from Mountain View, California. "We built a system that's totally automatic, so humans aren't intervening. We just have a knowledge of the Web. It's a very democratic system: What the Web determines should be the first one, two, three, four or 50th result is the result that we return to the user. Google says that the fairest way to determine who ranks at the top for a particular search query is to let the Web determine that as a whole."

    But Daniel Brandt, a Google critic who runs www.google-watch.org, complains that Google's method "doesn't work very well on sites that are atypical," particularly large sites that are generated from databases, where key information tends to be on a deep page, not the site's home page. Brandt's main Web site, www.namebase.org, has 104,000 pages of publicly available information on famous individuals, he said, but is undervalued by Google's search algorithm.

    "The problem with Google," Brandt said by phone from San Antonio, Texas, "is that they don't want to fix anything unless they can fix it by algorithm" - that is, automatically.

    Krane, the Google spokesman, acknowledged that Google's Web search, which uses a crawler nicknamed Google-bot, isn't perfect. But neither is any other, he said.
    ...

    The most intriguing and interesting part is this one:

    ...
    Another potential problem is privacy. Google deposits cookies on your computer that keep track of the search terms you've been looking for. What's more, this month Google bought Pyra Networks, the company behind blogger.com, which makes it easy to create blogs - a kind of Web journal - and post them on the Internet. The acquisition could make more personal information available to Google.

    Krane said Google's interest in blogs was simply to broaden its information base for Web searches. There is no evidence that Google has improperly used either its virtual monopoly over Web searching or the personal information it gathers. But there is potential for mischief - or worse.

    "Google is collecting a lot of information," said Brandt, the Google critic, "and they are not being required to say what their plans are for how long they keep this information or who they give it to. They are probably collecting this information for profiling purposes, to increase their advertising possibilities. As far as I know, they aren't using personal profiles for ad targeting yet. But I think that's right around the corner."

    Krane said, "We do not have plans to do this."

    Google has issued a statement on its use of cookies and the personal information they contain, saying, "Google does not share nonaggregate user information with third parties and we treat the integrity and security of user information seriously."

    Google uses the data to assess the quality of its searches, Krane said. Is the user satisfied with the first link that is provided? If not, do the search results need tweaking?

    Everyone should be aware that under the USA Patriot Act of 2001, anything you enter into a search engine can be obtained by the government merely by telling a judge "that the spying could lead to information that is 'relevant' to a criminal investigation," according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. There is no requirement for probable cause, and "the person spied on does not have to be the target of the investigation," the foundation said.

    Krane said he could not comment because "this involves something that is beyond Google business." But complying with the law is "certainly something that we do," he added.

    So, in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's words, "Be careful what you put in that Google search."
    ...

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  • Wrox

    No Comments

    Today I found this note on top of C# Today site:

    The addition of new content has currently been suspended, we apologise for any inconvenience that this may cause.

    Read more...

  • Suchen mit Google ganz einfach

    No Comments

    No offence Ralf but can you write your blogs in English.
    Well because if everybody speak here their own language, it's going to be dotnetBabel ;-)

    And I really want to read your blogs, they are surely interesting.

    Read more...

  • Internet Explorer with Office 11

    No Comments

    After OneNote, I am more please by IE after installing Office 11.

    I didn't see anybody write on this, but IE has now a Thesaurus and Dictionary button !

    and on top of that a translation link, great !

    This translation works pretty well for most of languages, including chinese !

    If only I could find a way to link that with some of my web projects, that will be fantastic. But I believe this service is probably working as Web Service with some Soap behind the scene, so it should be possible to use it somehow.

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  • OneNote feelings

    2 Comments

    I just played with OneNote beta, and I admit it's probably a great tool.

    But I'm not so excited as before install it. It's surely a personal feeling, but I don't find the point to use this tool.
    The only reason I see is to have a Tablet PC otherwise with a laptop and a mouse it's quite akward.

    It's weird but I had the same feeling ,well, a long time ago, when I tried one of the first ever Macintosh produced on this planet with MacWrite and MacPaint ;-)

    You know this kind of sensation to probably use something great but without knowing what to do with it !

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  • Dog's dinner boosts broadband ;-)

    No Comments

    A businessman in Derbyshire has come up with a low-tech solution to a hi-tech problem.
    David Taylor has used dog food cans to connect his home through the airwaves to the internet.

    Read more...

  • Quiz source available online

    2 Comments

    Ok
     
    So I finally published online the Quiz I developed for my current project Scoilnet, a portal for Irish schools.
     
    You can download it at this link http://www.classoffers.net/quiz.zip
     
    If you have difficulties with that let me know. Unfortunatly no much comments in my code ;-)

    I included all files required for a simple Quiz. You will find also a screengrab of the data and their format.
    I used an old trick to store them, rather than using some relationships between tables, but feel free to do so if you think it's better.

    The questions and answers are stored all in a field with a separator, here $$$.

    The final question must have 9999 as an ID to ensure that the Quiz stop at the end and give the final comments, themselves stored in Questions and answers.

    Feel free to ask if you need more help
     

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  • Quiz

    2 Comments

    I don't know if you search for a Quiz application, but I just sent the source to Robert Swiger who was searching for one through the excellent Aspnet maillist.

    So feel free to ask me if you are interested by such a little thing ;-)

    For the moment the code is not commented at all (lack of time ;-)) but if it's of some interest I will do

    Read more...

  • Webcam from a Pocket PC

    No Comments

    WebcamPda is really good.

    No fancy design, because it suppose to work from a Pocket PC, Palm or mobile phone with Internet access.

    It just list a huge collection of webcams around the world

    Read more...

  • My first story

    No Comments

    Well today, I will write my first story in this blog, and a first for me, writing an article on .Net !
    It's about strategy on how you can store in a database long forms with a lot of textboxes, checkboxes, and radiobuttons controls.

    This is coming from a real experience, where the basic model I built was not working at all, being very very slow, difficult to maintain.

    So I think this should be interesting for many of us (maybe not for the gurus ;-)).

    I will let you know when it's ready.

    Read more...

  • Control check the revenge ;-))

    No Comments

    UPDATED: read the end of the blog ;-)
    I start on a bad day today, with a nasty bug I can't figure out what's wrong.
     
    I loop through a series of controls using Typeof to populate a form with different values from the database.
    The control (D2) is embedded in another control D. This code is from my mainpage where I populate the forms.
    PageD2ctl is declared as a Panel, child of D2.

    The problem is that when the control is a Radiobutton, and I am sure it is(just checked in debug mode), my code enter correctly in the test, but it's going also in the Checkbox test, like suddenly my Radiobutton is now typed as a Checkbox.

    I spent sometime on that, but absolutly no clue about what's going on. I tried everything, transforming my nice ElseIf in If then loop, nothing at all.
     
    If anyone has an idea ?
     
     Dim MyCtl2 As Control
                        For Each MyCtl2 In PageD2ctl.controls
     
                            If Not (TypeOf MyCtl2 Is LiteralControl) Then
                                If MyCtl2.ID = dtr("id_q") Then
                                    If TypeOf MyCtl2 Is TextBox Then
                                        Dim ThisTextbox As TextBox = CType(PageD2ctl.findcontrol(dtr("id_q")), TextBox)
                                        ThisTextbox.Text = dtr("answer")
                                    Elseif TypeOf MyCtl2 Is RadioButton Then
                                        Dim ThisRadiobox As RadioButton = CType(PageD2ctl.findcontrol(dtr("id_q")), RadioButton)
                                        If LCase(dtr("answer")) = "true" Then
                                            ThisRadiobox.Checked = True
                                        End If
                                   
    '-- and there after succesfully finish the previous test if it's a radiobutton the code enter in the Checkbox one !

                                    ElseIf TypeOf MyCtl2 Is CheckBox Then
     
                                        Dim ThisCheckbox As CheckBox = CType(PageD2ctl.findcontrol(dtr("id_q")), CheckBox)
                                        If LCase(dtr("answer")) = "true" Then
                                            ThisCheckbox.Checked = True
                                        End If
                                    End if

                             End If
                           End if
                        Next
    UPDATE:
    I found this solution that I share now:

    This confirms (for me) that something going wrong there with the Controls. RadioButton inherits from Checkbox.
    Why this choice ?

    Instead of using an Elseif structure, I write a Select..Case structure like this (Myctl is the control to test):

    select case lcase(Myctl.gettype.tostring)
    case "system.web.ui.webcontrols.textbox"
    .. Mycode
    case "system.web.ui.webcontrols.radiobutton"
    .. MyCode
    case "system.web.ui.webcontrols.checkbox"
    .. Mycode
    end select

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  • .Net future enhancements

    No Comments

    In answer to Slavomir blog, I accept that things are fixed for the version 2.

    But I regret that only MVPs were listened.
    Not that I have any doubt about their greatest Value, but I am worrying about the direction .Net going to take.

    Are we going to have more difficult and obscure classes and other strong features, or are we going to have a more 'friendly' model.

    I'm not a rookie, but I find some daily tasks difficult to achieve in .Net.Like as I said in my previous post, I enjoy every minute the painful process of looking at the controls arborescence to find the right item or value, for some basic tasks like finding a web control value.

    It's not obviously(well to my humble knowledge) a standard approach in every classes.

    Does anybody know an equivalent link of the     C# changes for VB ?

    So can we talk about .Net 3.0 ;-))

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  • .Net 2.0 request list

    No Comments

    Is it too early or can we start to build a list of important requirements for .Net 2 ?

    Not only bugs to be fixed (be positive ;-)) but improvements in VS.Net, language, etc...

    One of my first request will be to simplify, not sure how ;-), the hierarchical acces from the page throught the controls.
    It's quite hard to find a particular value in debugging, so much childs and keys !

    Another one will be Edit and continue in debug mode but Scott confirmed that it will be there.

    More GDI+ also , with (I just dream) access to the same facilities I have in a Windows application replicated for my Web application.

    An idea could be a kind of '.Net applet' like you have a Java applet embedded in IE. doing this, we should be able to develop some funky applications, why not windows games in a web page ;-)

    Read more...

  • Nasty bug !

    I start on a bad day today, with a nasty bug I can't figure out what's wrong.
     
    I loop through a series of controls using Typeof to populate a form with different values from the database.
    The control (D2) is embedded in another control D. This code is from my mainpage where I populate the forms.
    PageD2ctl is declared as a Panel, child of D2.

    The problem is that when the control is a Radiobutton, and I am sure it is(just checked in debug mode), my code enter correctly in the test, but it's going also in the Checkbox test, like suddenly my Radiobutton is now typed as a Checkbox.

    I spent sometime on that, but absolutly no clue about what's going on. I tried everything, transforming my nice ElseIf in If then loop, nothing at all.
     
    If anyone has an idea ?
     
     Dim MyCtl2 As Control
                        For Each MyCtl2 In PageD2ctl.controls
     
                            If Not (TypeOf MyCtl2 Is LiteralControl) Then
                                If MyCtl2.ID = dtr("id_q") Then
                                    If TypeOf MyCtl2 Is TextBox Then
                                        Dim ThisTextbox As TextBox = CType(PageD2ctl.findcontrol(dtr("id_q")), TextBox)
                                        ThisTextbox.Text = dtr("answer")
                                    Elseif TypeOf MyCtl2 Is RadioButton Then
                                        Dim ThisRadiobox As RadioButton = CType(PageD2ctl.findcontrol(dtr("id_q")), RadioButton)
                                        If LCase(dtr("answer")) = "true" Then
                                            ThisRadiobox.Checked = True
                                        End If
                                   
    '-- and there after succesfully finish the previous test if it's a radiobutton the code enter in the Checkbox one !

                                    ElseIf TypeOf MyCtl2 Is CheckBox Then
     
                                        Dim ThisCheckbox As CheckBox = CType(PageD2ctl.findcontrol(dtr("id_q")), CheckBox)
                                        If LCase(dtr("answer")) = "true" Then
                                            ThisCheckbox.Checked = True
                                        End If
                                    End if

                             End If
                           End if
                        Next
    UPDATE:
    I found this solution that I share now:

    This confirms (for me) that something wrong there with the Controls.

    Instead of using an Elseif structure, I write a Select..Case structure like this (Myctl is the ontrol to test):

    select case lcase(Myctl.gettype.tostring)
    case "system.web.ui.webcontrols.textbox"
    .. Mycode
    case "system.web.ui.webcontrols.radiobutton"
    .. MyCode
    case "system.web.ui.webcontrols.checkbox"
    .. Mycode
    end select

    Read more...

  • Database Challenge

    1 Comment

    I have to do some coding for Scoilnet this week-end, but I have to complete another database challenge for another project.

    Ok , basics elements first:

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  • I am a green

    No Comments

    I am not sure how to take this one, I don't feel really being an ecowarrior, maybe hippie a little bit man ;-)

    Read more...

  • Even more USB-powered gadgets

    No Comments

    Read from Gizmodo :-))))

    The USB-powered gadgets keep coming! To add to the USB toothbrush and USB hot cup, there's now a USB heating pad (to keep you warm at night) and a USB mini hot-plate that keeps your drink warm while you're working hard! Actually, given how cold it's been here in New York lately, that heating pad sounds pretty good right about now.

    Read - USB heating pad
    Read - USB hot-plate
    Read USB Toothbrush

    It's look like it was created by some mad big boss who wants to chain his developers to their computers ;-)
    Soon the USB waterbed ;-))

    Read more...

  • New Ipaq ? and new Microsoft Wireless Information Server ?

    No Comments

    Read on a forum :

    I was recently at a show with an organization called Angelbeat. It is a group that works closely with HP, Cisco, Microsoft and others. One of the HP representatives shared there is a new device being released in the June/July timeframe with the following features:

    * It will be the 2200 Series
    * Integrated Compact Flash and SDIO slot (Finally!)
    * 400MHz XScale Processor
    * 16-bit Color with Transreflective TFT
    * Built in Bluetooth
    * Slightly larger than 1900 series from a thickness and screen but not by much (it was very light)
    * Base model will come with 64MB Ram and a higher model will come with 128MB Ram, I did not get a chance to ask about ROM
    * There is a replaceable battery
    * It will offer both Landscape and Standard view without a soft reset!
    * Black grips on the side for a very secure hold
    * They did not integrate 802.11 because an SDIO card is due in June/July that will provide this functionality
    * It will run on the new Microsoft operating system (this is the reason for the release date in June/July)
    * It will not fit existing accessories
    * A future model will have a keyboard that slides from the back and automatically changes the view to Landscape (it was described as coming from the right side of the iPaq)
    * A phone option should be available “in the future”
    * It will be between $300-$400 but expect it just under $400
    * I held it and it is beautiful
    * Don't ask for pictures, none where taken


    Other comments worth mentioning:

    The GSM/GPRS sleeve is expected to be release the end of this month on the AT&T network.

    The new release of Office (Office 11) will completely change the look of Outlook. The preview pane will be on the side instead of the bottom was the most noticeable.

    The Microsoft Wireless Information Server will be integrated into the Exchange Server. This will increase the number of companies that will have access to wireless technology and will decrease the infrastructure needed to support the environment. The current code name for this project is Titanium.

    Read more...

  • Fieldset

    No Comments

    It's good some time to have a break and look backwards your old projects.

    It helped me reducing quite some numbers of <asp:panel> I was using just to have a nice border around other controls or to give a better structure to my page.

    If you workon an Intranet project with IE, you can use a <Fieldset> tag that do perfectly the job without any server roundtrip.

    Plus the possibility to include a <Legend> tag inside to write the Title of the box over the border 'a la' Windows ;-)

    Read more...

  • Folder Permissions

    No Comments

    I create dynamically some folders in my application. When I deploy the site, I can't copy the folder permissions, like the basic Read attributes for an Internet guest.

    It's ok for me because I have access to the host server, but I imagine for people hosting remotely.

    Maybe someone know something about that ? I already tried some folder attribute code but it doesn't work.

    It should be part of VS.Net, because when you deploy your code, you apparently must be an administrator.

    Read more...

  • WebConfig

    No Comments

    I read some tips about the best way to keep Webconfig wherever you deploy your application.

    Well I just find another one (It's new for me). What I do is after a first copy of my application to my Production server, everytime I need to update the site I exclude Webconfig from the project, copy and include again WebConfig.

    It's not rocket science, but it do the job, and I apply also this to other static files, which I don't need to change.

    Read more...

  • Chandler

    No Comments

    Chandler is an Open Source Project to have a free open PIM.

    I wonder how they going to react to Office 2003. It's surely not for now, but it's probably there in few months.

    Extract from their homepage:

    Our product (code-named "Chandler" after the great detective novelist Raymond Chandler,) is a Personal Information Manager (PIM) intended for use in everyday information and communication tasks, such as composing and reading email, managing an appointment calendar and keeping a contact list. Because of the ease with which Chandler users can share information with others, Chandler might be called the first Interpersonal Information Manager. (The term PIM was first used in conjunction with the product Lotus Agenda in the 1980's. Chandler is the spiritual descendant of Agenda (and has a common designer in Mitch Kapor.)

    Read more...

  • Another Gaffe from Bush ;-)

    No Comments

    Editor: Bush Cited Report That Doesn't Exist

    Washington - There was only one problem with President George W. Bush's claim Thursday that the nation's top economists forecast substantial economic growth if Congress passed the president's tax cut: The forecast with that conclusion doesn't exist.

    Read more on Newsday.Com

    Read more...

  • Chef 'suicide' after critics' attack

    No Comments

    Bernard Loiseau was found dead at his country home, a hunting rifle by his side.

    His death came a week after the renowned GaultMillau restaurant guide cut its rating for his Cote d'Or restaurant in Burgundy.

    Read more...

  • Blogs and Timezone

    No Comments

    Scott so far so well again great blogging site.

    Just anote about the Dotnetweblogs homepage. I like this idea to have a resume on the last blogs.

    But timezone differences create for me some 'conjugal' dysfunctions ;-)

    Indeed I have to stay late in the night if I don't want to miss some great blogs from some great blokes, and I know someone not happy with that ;-).

    In the morning, the same, I lost all my favourite readings.

    Yes I know I can click on all the names and check everything, but I'm bit slow on the morning.

    Scott, can I suggest that on the left columns, after the names and the total of blogs, we can have between brackets or something, the number of blogs sent last 24 hours or 48 hours.

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  • MSDN March delivery : new tool ?

    2 Comments

    I just received by mail the MSDN shipment list for March.

    Do you know what is this tool (in bold) ?

    Disc 0003.2 SQL Server 2000 Web Services Toolkit,
    Web Services Enhancements v1.0
    for Microsoft .NET (English),     SQL Server 2000 Notification Services 2.0 (English,
    French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Traditional
    Chinese)

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  • Some thoughts about Index Server

    No Comments

    I am currently working one the Search function for my project Scoilnet.

    This site is entirely built with controls, and the content from a database.

    I'm quite stuck on something, and more I scratch my poor head, less I find a solution.

    I have the choice for the search function between using a Full Text in my SQL stuff, or using Index Server, like the oldest version of the project.

    Sadly I don't have really the choice with .Net, because of the way that controls are 'virtually' built on request and not physically present like HTML files.

    It's quite a surprise for me to see that apparently nobody notice this side effect of controls. If I have an .aspx page, I can indeed wrap an ADO layer to use specific Index Server functions. But what's about content embedded in controls.

    The Content Management System I developped use the database obviously but create static controls and page to build the portal.

    I do that to avoid overload the data server with many requests. But of course I can't transform my pages in html, I want to keep the flexibility and programming aspect of .Net.

    So for the moment, unless someone bring me some ideas, I work with Full Text and I search directly in the database, with the implication that every piece of content has to be store.

    And finally what is the future of Index Server, knowing this kind of limitations ?

    Read more...

  • Snow in Jerusalem

    1 Comment

    Roy, here in Ireland I didn't see any snowflake since 2 years ;0)

    By the way, which camera you use, the quality is excellent !

    Read more...

  • Exclusive : The Matrix Phone ;-)

    No Comments

    Samsung Electronics and Warner Bros. Consumer Products will soon divulge the specific details regarding their unprecedented global partnership with Warner Bros. Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures' blockbuster Matrix franchise.

    Read more...

  • Timeout issue

    No Comments

    Problem: I have a collection of multipage containing dozens of controls like checkboxes, textboxes, and radiobuttons.
    I reckon a total of more than 500 !

    I have a Save button sending the content of one page to my database. The point is that I do some generic code to loop through the controls collection, and save to the database through a stored procedure.

    I wanted to have a Save ALL button. The loop is almost the same embedded in a page loop.

    I experienced here some random timeout, indeed depending on the network traffic (it's an Intranet application shared by 6 users).

    So my question is : what strategy should I use to to save everything ?

    I was thinking about transactions, but I hav the feeling that the problem must reside with the For each...loop.

    On top of that, the trace mode show me some huge differences between two servers, one running at 1 Ghz, the other one at 2 Ghz. It's really one to two !

    If you have some suggestions, let me know.

    Read more...

  • AOL on Pocket PC :-(

    9 Comments

    I received this email:

    Beta Testers:

    Does your PDA run the Pocket PC 2002 operating system? Does it also have a modem or other means of connecting to the Internet?

    If so, you're invited to participate in a special beta test of AOL and AIM software designed especially for your PDA. You can apply to join in this test by going to AOL Keyword: ANYWHERE BETA and selecting the "AOL for Pocket PC 2000 Beta Test Application" link.

    Spaces for this test are limited, so please apply to participate as soon as possible. Accepted applicants will receive further instructions on how to access this beta software and participate.

    All the best,
    AOL Anywhere Beta Team

    Read more...

  • The winner is .... .Net ;-))

    1 Comment

    Hehe I found this very distracting:

    Imagine you type two words in the search boxes and you'll see which one has the most results in Goolge.

    Try for yourself !

    Googlefight

    Sorry I couldn't resist to try .Net and Java. I know it's an easy trick but it worked !

    Read more...

  • Flash goes IMode

    No Comments

    Read on Infosync:

    Japanese mobile phone operator     NTT DoCoMo and U.S. software maker Macromedia today announced that the two companies have reached an agreement to jointly deliver Macromedia Flash technology to i-mode, DoCoMo's proprietary 2G/3G mobile Internet platform, in Japan. The technology will be embedded into the new i-mode handsets, starting with the 505i series, which is scheduled for release later this year. Citing penetration rates of 98 per cent on the desktop, Macromedia hopes to further bolster its presence on mobile platforms through the new agreement.

    Read more...

  • Tabs behavior

    No Comments

    Just wonder how this is possible to happen with the Microsoft WebControls
    I have this code to generate some Tabs.

    For each Subdir in dir.getdirectories
    Dim Tab as new Microsoft.web.ui.Webcontrols.Tab()
    Tab.Text = Subdir.Name
    MyTabstrip.Items.add(Tab)

    'Place where I add my controls and events

    next

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  • Most stupid application of the week ;-)

    No Comments

    Hey man they really want to put everything on a mobile, now your CEO goes on shareholders meeting with his mobile !
    What a strange idea to have a Powerpoint presentation a a tiny screen like that ! ;-)

    Read more...

  • Unsollicited subscription :-(

    2 Comments

    I received an email (see below) nicely saying that I am part of a Yahoo maillist about SQL SERVER.

    Maybe it's interesting, I don't know, but the story is I never request any subscription there.

    I like to subscribe TO what I want and not be forced. I wonder how this guy (Scott Cate) can use my email without any permissions. I was sure that ASPFriends list was close.

    That means that someone get their database. I know I can unsubscribe but this is just annoying.

    Does someone else received this email ?

    Read more...

  • OneNote

    No Comments

    In my previous post, if you read it, a guy from bink.nu  was able to download some part of Office 2003 Beta 2.

    What caught my eye, is this little new application that I would surely install before anything.

    There is a screenshot of     OneNote .

    Just curious, look like a kind of personal blogger, isn't it ? Put a little bit of connectivity and here we go, MicroBlog ;-)

    Read more...

  • Microsoft acquires Virtual PC from Connectix

    No Comments

    Microsoft on Wednesday announced that it had acquired Connectix's Virtual PC products, including Virtual PC for Mac, Virtual PC for Windows and Virtual Server. Microsoft also hired many of the Connectix employees that worked on the products to continue development.

    "What this means for Mac users is that Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit (MacBU) will be responsible for supporting and shipping all current versions of Virtual PC and development for all future versions of the product," Tim McDonough, director of marketing and business development for the Macintosh Business Unit, told MacCentral.

    SOURCE:     Infoworld

    Read more...

  • Flash Consortium

    No Comments

    I found this wiki and the actions of this group very interesting.

    Rather than creating a camp strategy of Flash pros and cons, they reckon that Flash should be promoted for what it was designed for, not for intrusive popups and ads.

    They provide also some solutions to turn off Flash

    Extract:

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  • Bookmarklets

    No Comments

    Bookmarklets are simple little programs that you can integrate into your browser to make your coding, debugging and researching lives a whole lot easier. Best of all, they're easy to use and modify for your own use.

    Find the lists there on     yourhtmlsource

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  • Browser Stats 3

    No Comments

    That's it, I found a logical explanation for this amazing 10% of users who turn off Javascript.

    Read more...

  • Browser stats 2

    No Comments

    I can also title that future of IE7.

    I found on this     stats page a new version IE 9 !

    And in the same page one fella using Netscape 2. Seriously Stats are really moveable from one side to another, but globally Netscape is really almost dead and IE is really the actual winner.

    I you have some nostalgia about the good ol'time     check this page from May 1996.

    This page has also a good list of exotic browsers, probably dead since ages like Vicbrowser, IBM Webexplorer(I didn't know Big Blue has a browser !).

    I am still searching more details on the number of users who TURNED OFF Javascript, and I will let you know when I find something.

    Read more...

  • Browser Statistics

    No Comments

    I just finished to read an article from Alex Homer on ASPtoday about browsers, caching and different things.

    I was quite curious about his assumption that less and less IE 4 is used. He mention an internal Wrox statistics, but as many, I like to have my own opinion forged on different sources.

    So I started to search through this irreplaceable Google, and I found different links.

    One which look reliable is W3schools, and it appears that Alex is right. IE 4 goes from 4% one year ago to a mere 1% now.

    According to this table IE6 jump from 23% to 52% and IE5 goes down as expected from 64% to 39%.

    Netscape 4 from 4% to 1%, but no mention of Netscape 6 or 7 !

    Maybe they are part of what they call the 0.5 % level ;-)

    Another good surprise is on the Screen resolution. It's true that stats are not perfect, but it's a good news to know that finally users move a 800*600 screen size to a more useful 1024*768 (well for the developers !).

    Sadly, I know some people in my entourage still resisting the jump. When you build an Intranet, it's areally a great comfort ! I am myself working on a Dell Laptop at 1600*1200 and my eyesight is still ok !
    I am probably part of the Other and Unknown 5% in their stats !
    Well this is quite big for me, it's almost the size of a political party ;-)

    Good news also to see that 640*480 size represent now only 2%.

    But I keep the BIGGEST surprise for the end : Javascript turned OFF by 10 % ! Yes 10%, that's huge !
    If it's really true, that's mean I'm going to do more server side job, but whatever .Net need a bit of client side.

    It would be interesting to have some crosstable stats, like who use IE 6 and turned off Javascript, just for the fun ;-)

    Just to finish I like to repeat one of their quotes :

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  • Scoilnet update

    No Comments

    This is another good day for Scoilnet, and now this is how the School Primary Page look today.

    Quite cool ! We have integrated the idea of some funky colors.

    Others pages are visually not so fun

    Read more...

  • Use Word's spell checker from .net

    No Comments

    I was looking for a component like this and this is better. The only problem is that I have to install Word on the server.
    Not sure if it's a good idea.

    Here is a simple wrapper object that shows you how to late bind to Microsoft Word's spell checker from .net.

    Read more...

  • Google Dance

    No Comments

    Read this article if you want to know more about Google monthly update, where for few days, because of the server indexation, the Search Results might be innacurate:

    Read more...

  • Why Java is Better than .Net

    No Comments

    Another article to keep .Net developers under pressure !

    Carlos Perez with this series not going to make new friends ;-)

    Apparently it's a growing list and he's actuallly at 82 items ! Guys I would like to see something like that about Java, just for the balance !

    I know that on his post on the left stand a superb Java.Blog icon ! I was looking for troubles there.

    Read more...

  • Microsoft "Media2Go" Another 'useless' idea ?

    No Comments

    Maybe you see this new gadget released by Microsoft. Well it looks like a prototype for me.

    I enjoyed reading the MS press release, especially where they say :
    "Or take your entire collection of photos and home videos with you to show the grandparents on your next visit".

    I don't know for you, but my grandmother has still no clue about a computer, and continue to struggle with a TV Remote ;-)

    And it a bit bulky so when they say "Enjoy your media at home, on the road, or while visiting friends and family. ", LOL, especially for the road bit, I wonder how you can watch videos and drive in the same time, and it's good for an MP3 player, I saw smaller devices recently !

    Read more...

  • Smart Navigation

    12 Comments

    I used to work with Smart Navigation for a while but I removed it after experiencing problems with that.
    The number of posts I read about that confirm this idea.

    Read more...

  • Tokyo Professor Working on Invisibility ;-)

    No Comments



    Is he 'The Invisible Man' by H.G. Wells? It looks like as if three men walking behind are seen through the body of graduate student Kazutoshi Obana during a demonstration of optical camouflage technology at the Tokyo University in Tokyo Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2003. The demonstration conducted by Faculty of Engineering Prof. Susumu Tachi is an early stage of his research that will eventually enable camouflaged objects virtually transparent by wearing an optical device. This photo was taken through a viewfinder that provides a combined image of moving images taken behind Obana and him wearing a luminous jacket that makes a transparent effect. The technology can be useful for various professions such as surgeons who wish their own fingers and surgical tools won't block the view of affected parts and pilots who wish cockpit floors were transparent for landings. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)

    Source :     Yahoo

    PS: I need that when I forget my deadline to hide from my boss !

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  • Vote architecture issues

    No Comments

    This is second a call for help on a voting architecture. I really need on that, especially from people who worked with large databases and security issues.

    I have to implement a vote for best logo system in a new project.

    Basic information I can give is:

    More than 400 000 users should be 'technically' able to vote.
    And this is not a view of my mind, it should be indeed slightly more.

    I have to identify users, but I can't take their names, because most of them will be kids.
    So the only data we can use is their school.

    I have already a database storing all shools details. They are referenced by a unique number.
    The problem is also that kids are unlikely to know this number.

    So I can use eventually  a narrowing path, to ask, for example the county where they live, the town where they live, and eventually the suburbs where is their school, and eventualy let them pick a school from a list.

    This idea should work but I found that very 'heavy' for a simple vote system.

    An other approach would be to let them enter their school name, and using something like Soundex (Thanks by the way Fabrice !), doing phonetical search to find their school.
    The problem here are multiple:
    First  a School name is use many times in different counties, so I must ask at least their county name.
    Also on the security level, does somebody know implications I should consider, like SQL injection or other bad hammer queries.

    An other issue I have is to avoid kids (obviously they like playing !) clicking many times on the submit button. I don't have the physical hardware architecture to handle millions of records !

    I was thinking about sessions. The issue here is that they vote from school, many kids can use the same computer ! So I don't know how to solve that!

    For the multiple entries issue, I suggested to limit the number of allowed votes per school.
    Well if you have any suggestions on that you're welcome !

    Read more...

  • First picture of Scoilnet !

    1 Comment

    Scoilnet, the Irish portal for education,is now soon entering debugging and test mode, but I am very proud to release a first picture of one page, the one for the primary kids.

    I developped this site entirely in VB.Net, with SQL 2000 in the back-end.
    I can't say it was an easy task every day, but it really worth it.

    Read more...

  • Vote architecture issues

    No Comments

    This is a call for help on a voting architecture.

    I have to implement a vote for best logo system in a new project.

    Basic information I can give is:

    More than 400 000 users should be 'technically' able to vote.
    And this is not a view of my mind, it should be indeed slightly more.

    I have to identify users, but I can't take their names, because most of them will be kids.
    So the only data we can use is their school.

    I have already a database storing all shools details. They are referenced by a unique number.
    The problem is also that kids are unlikely to know this number.

    So I can use eventually  a narrowing path, to ask, for example the county where they live, the town where they live, and eventually the suburbs where is their school, and eventualy let them pick a school from a list.

    This idea should work but I found that very 'heavy' for a simple vote system.

    An other approach would be to let them enter their school name, and using something like Soundex (Thanks by the way Fabrice !), doing phonetical search to find their school.
    The problem here are multiple:
    First  a School name is use many times in different counties, so I must ask at least their county name.
    Also on the security level, does somebody know implications I should consider, like SQL injection or other bad hammer queries.

    An other issue I have is to avoid kids (obviously they like playing !) clicking many times on the submit button. I don't have the physical hardware architecture to handle millions of records !

    I was thinking about sessions. The issue here is that they vote from school, many kids can use the same computer ! So I don't know how to solve that!

    For the multiple entries issue, I suggested to limit the number of allowed votes per school.
    Well if you have any suggestions on that you're welcome !

    Read more...

  • IRC project

    No Comments

    If you have sometime (not my case unfortunatly) you can contribute to this open-source project to create an IRC based on .Net.

    Read more...

  • Thesaurus

    No Comments

    Nothing to do with .Net but I use that every day, and it's really cool.

    Read more...

  • aspnet_wp process issue

    1 Comment

    On one of my project, our Intranet website, I have a strange behaviour with aspnet_wp.exe.

    Apparently without any reasons, everytime I launch a debugging session, this process is deadlock, with a 99 percent of CPU usage.

    Read more...

  • Phonetic entry

    2 Comments

    I have to do something I never did before for my project Scoilnet.

    Read more...

  • Security continued

    No Comments

    Also don't forget users at the end who never or rarely update their systems.

    This is really for me an open door for any good hacker, who want to test any security hole.
    I take for example the last crisis with SQL Hammer.

    I don't know if somehow it's possible to know some stats about sysadmin who really update and patch regularly their systems.

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  • Focus on my Survey project

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    Yesterday evening, I had some long debugging time because of a nasty Javascript function I was asking to add on on of my forms.
    I wanted to do some total of few textboxes where users entered numbers, and display the result just below.
    I did the server code for that, no problem at all using on Text Change event.

    The problem is this is a part of a long questionnaire, and everytime the Server did a Postback, the form 'jump' back to the top of the page.
    So because I knew the problem and how to fix it, I decided to include some Javascript to set the focus to the right box after my Postback.

    This worked well, yes and no. It took me some time to understand that I have to put my client side function at the end of the form and not at the top using  Page.RegisterStartupScript method.

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  • Books Review

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    Alex send me this email this morning and I think It could be useful for everybody.

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  • Controls Validation

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    And for the controls validation, I would like to start a new User Control.

    The goal is to create RANGE validation control, like:

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  • An MP3 player with FM transmission !

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    Good MP3 Player with a FM Tuner, so no need anymore to have some cables to hear your music in your car or on your Hifi. Sad the hard drive a bit small compare to the Ipod or other Creative Jukebox
    Cool !

    Samsung will soon introduce the new YP-900GT with a 10GB hard drive, FM Tuner and Encoders that will offer 10 hrs of playback time with a rechargeable battery.

    Available in March     !

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  • Validation Control

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    Today I was busy on a 'small' project which has links with a National Schools Census, well for use of technology in irish schools.

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  • Article template

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    OK now my article system works well after some long hours of debugging.

    Alex Lowe, please push those guys in Microsoft to let us Edit and Continue in debugging mode.

    So now my article divide properly across the screen in 3 columns automatically.

    I am not totally satisfied with thi first version because the columns are not properly justified vertically.

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  • Painting application

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    Now I am looking forward in the next tasks I have to deal with Scoilnet and one seem to me too hard to finsih, a painting tool for kids.

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  • Scoilnet project

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    Today I just want to explain what is my actual project Scoilnet.

    What I am working is a portal for education in Ireland . I am part of a government body attached to the Education Department, and this site is running since 1998.

    The problem is that this site has never since been redesigned and it look actually terrible.

    From a huge 1 million pages hit (4 years ago Scoilnet had a Golden web award) to a little close to nothing today.

    So my job now is to create a new Scoilnet including top of the art in technologies. I choose ASP.Net because I am myself an old ASP fan, and .Net seem to me the best approach for this task.

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  • My first message to the blog world

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    Hello Welcome to my first blog entry

    Thanks Scott for this opportunity. My writing will focus on .Net obviously, but more on a personal experience with the beast (well  now that I almost tamed it I can call it my pet).

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