Archives
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SQL 2000 security and impersonation
From Scott Guthrie
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SQL 2000 security
Interesting comment from Frans:
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SQL 2000 sp3 security best practices
I found interesting these new articles about SQL 2000 security (source Microsoft)
The figure shows security vulnerabilities in a simple multi-tier system -
TechEd in english please :-(
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 ?) :-)) -
Microsoft Outlines Vision for Application Development...
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Use an ASP.NET Application to Query an Indexing Service Catalog by Using Visual Basic .NET
Read more here : -
Updater application block
I think it's a new kid in the application blocks on MSDN.
Check it there
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Spyware grrr
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. -
Spyware
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. -
FeedDemon: warning
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. -
Smart Navigation
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. -
End of Free IE not the end of web standards
Good opinion writing from WASP (Web Standard Projects)
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Windows 2000 SP4
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 ;-)) -
More on Accessibility
From Jim: -
Search AddIn for VS.Net
Update: Only for VS 2002 for the moment :-(
This is a great idea from Codehound. The picture is explicit enough to understand the benefits of this add in ;-) -
Get Ready for Yukon
Great article from Roger Jennings about the Yukon migration. -
Visual Studio Posters
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. -
IBuySpy in Cobol !
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 ! -
How many screens have you on your desk ;-)
I have myself actually 5 screens(including 2 laptops) on my desk, 2 Pocket PC and the mobile, but this guy seems to beat everybody ;-) -
Adding Spelling and Grammar Checking Functions into VB.NET Applications
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.
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Another silly but funny quiz ;-)
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Google Toolbar 2
It seems for me that this is a new version of the so famous Google Toolbar.
The new things to noticed is: -
Microsoft Pocket PC 2003 upgrade for the iPAQ Pocket PC
See there the procedures, free upgrade for new buyers otherwise 29$ -
Languages in feeds
Comment from Tim Marman:
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To the German community
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 :-) -
Search Engine Optimization
A must read article on Webmonkey -
Babel blogging
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 ;-)) -
Special Olympics Opening Ceremony .... Bravo !
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.
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 ;-) -
Click here the comments
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: -
A flaw in Visual Studio
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 ? ;-) -
Blog tool to have in your favorites
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 . -
Accessibility - More on this ...
Paschal L had some comments on accessibility today. To those of us in government service this is a very important subject since Section 508 makes it mandatory to make all government web sites accessible to the disabled.
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New blog service (in Ireland)
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. -
Half of all e-mails are spam
Half of all e-mails are spam - "MessageLabs scanned about 134 million e-mails in May. It found that virtually one in every two e-mails was spam. This amounted to an increase of almost 40% compared to the figure in April." -
The Bad and the Ugly in usability and design
If you are interested, Design Not Found has a great review on how the big names deal with Usability and design (good and bad).
It's a very good source for ideas ! -
New : Usability category in my blog
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 . -
Writing Technical manuals
I get some good info for developer-centric documentation on Developer Shed.
I also enjoyed some of the other articles like Writing a User Manual and The Art of Software Development. -
Bill Gates entertainment god
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 -
Usability and Open Source Software
This is an interesting report from David M. Nichols and Michael B. Twidale, Department of Computer Science University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand.
They give a deep consideration on usability in Open Source Software.
I just like to publish this excerpt: -
Click here
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: -
Page ranking
UPDATE:
By Cyril: -
About www - Don't throw away your Google page rank
On my blog about useless of www, coacoacoa has a point with an article from James Shaw (Cover your ASP).
I just like to write here back his comment on Google ranking, becuse it might be interested for all folks around dealing with domain names.
Indeed think twice before throwing out the www. -
Ontrack
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WWW
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.Net and Office 11 speech
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 ;-) -
Ooops ! I did it again ;-)
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. -
Builder
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. -
What's new in Web Matrix ?
Ken McNamee wrote an article on the new Matrix Reloaded (not the movie ;-)) -
Blogs homepages
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 ;-) -
Crumbs
Frans send me this comment regarding the code for Breadcrumbs -
About Interfaces
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 ?'
;-) -
Demystifying the .NET Global Assembly Cache
Read the article there on CodeProject.
Read also this Microsoft KB
HOW TO: Install an Assembly into the Global Assembly Cache in Visual Studio .NET -
Coloring code
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 ;-) -
Breadcrumb
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 -
Reflection
After my last blog on Reflection article I received this comment: -
Good article on Reflection
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'. -
Breadcrumbs
I am still looking for some breadcrumbs code, so I finally decided to do it myself.
I will publish the code tomorrow morning. -
Tools
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Companies get into weblog act
Fun article on Boston.com :
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If you look for an open source Forum
Today, I have to implement a forum for my project Scoilnet.
I could go to the commercial choice, but I tried many products and I recommend the recent Riverside Internet Forums.
Easy to install, and because of the source code, you should be able to adapt the project to your needs. -
Do your own OS ;-)
OK you don't like Windows, you don't like Mac OS/X, Linux or anybody ;-)
So look this tutorial on how to start doing your own OS ! -
Welcome to the real world
... 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 ! -
MSDN August
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Pocket PC 2003 Screenshots
If you can't wait what seems to be 23rd of June for the release of PocketPC 2003, see the screenshots there. -
Reflector update
Lutz seem to be proactive actually ! Another version of Reflector 3.1.0.0 -
NTier comment
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How to start with N-tier architecture
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 ;-) -
Accessibility
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Windows 2000 SP4 soon
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For Julia or for the pizza
Just received this by email. Good luck Julia, it's a pity I can't make it, just too much miles but the pizza seem very tempting, not only Julia speech ;-)
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MKB Articles on Index Server with .Net
2 articles if you want to implement Index Server query with ASP.Net:
- The first from an ASPx page.
- The second from a control (ASCX) -
CLR guru on holidays ;-)
It seems that Chris Brumme is on holidays. I think he deserve to get them after such prolific blogs !
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SQL book
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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The Mini Mizer
Just for the fun build your own Lego man
Cool if you need an alias ;-) -
PocketFeed
If you are like me, having your PocketPC on the road and you want to read your favorites feeds, Pocket Feed is absolutly great. -
Dynamic queries or stored procedures
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. -
Build a 737 cockpit in your garage ;-)
Hey Roy, I found the geek of the geek.
He's building a full 737 cockpit in his garage ;-) -
Macro Madness
This is the latest article from Duncan in his column Coding4fun.
It's a good introduction on how to write macros for VS. -
Forms drawing with Tablet PC
A company named Leszynski just released an interesting add in tool for VS .Net 2003 to help developers drawing directluy the forms they need in VS.Net.
Click here if you want to download the preview version. -
COM+ 1.5 Architecture
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.NET Framework Class Browser
A useful link : NET Framework Class Browser -
My next project Scispy
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Irish user group
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 -
World record for a weblog ;-)
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. -
AspToday is back
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 -
Scoilnet part 2
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 ;-) -
Scoilnet Live !!!
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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Geek definition
In bed, just finished a bowl of popcorn, watching old episodes of X-Files and coding. What more could a man ask for? Just uploaded new home page for the weblogs http://www.dotnetjunkies.com/weblog/ and various other site wide controls.
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TechEd pictures
From Scott:
I still haven't posted any pics yet to this blog, but you can checkout a sample album over on Donny's blog: TechEd 2003
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TechEd Keynote
"...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
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 ;-)) -
Reflector New version
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. -
Disable autocompletion
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. -
Datagrid Girl signature ;-)
Look on the bottom of this receipt, it's Datagrid girl signing the bill ;-)
Marcie thanks to sign the bill for me ;-)
No more seriously, it's from a funny site where some folk show how you can sign with any scribble on a receipt nobody really care ;-)
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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. -
Pass an Event from one control to another
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 -
New MSDN TV
My MSDN TV spot just went live.I had forgotten how hard it is to do pre-recorded talks. Hopefully the next one will be easier.
- Don Box -
Wrox is alive ;-)
Finally I received this morning to tell me that Wrox.com is open again, and P2P is back again.
I wish the team good luck. -
Code Project
New Code Project logo specific for TechEd Dallas. Cool ;-)) -
More on F#
Curious about F# ? Read this article -
Everything you want to know about Web.config
A very detailed article about all web.Config attributes. Very complete (in french) -
IIS 6.0 Resource Kit
See for yourself here -
Exchange 2003 RC1 released
Register:
http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/evaluation/ti/rc1.asp
