Archives
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Thailand: Irish missing people
If you are looking for Irish people missing in Thailand, let me know I will forward your request to the right person here
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Thailand: life is back again slowly
Even if a lot of shops or hotels are seriously damaged, life is back again in Kata, Phuket island.
My father in law, like many Irish men, is not a great swimmer, and the recent events have now stop him to approach any pool or sea.
My mother in law, Anita Whooley, who follow the events here for Ireland, was with the Irish ambassador in Krabi yesterday. The situation there is very serious and she had to see a lot of body bags.
I helped yesterday cleaning around a resort, and we had to stop quickly after one of the guy on my left discovered a body, under some debris. Hard and shocking, when you are not used to that.
Anyway as I said in this post title, life is back again, I was today enjoying my first swim with my wife in the Hilton pool since the events, and as many here, we will be at the beach tomorrow.
My thoughts are also for Leo, still looking for his wife, and for Barry Murphy, having his girlfriend missing, and there to help other tracing their relatives. -
Thailand report
First thanks to everybody for your warming comments. Yesterday I spent most of the day trying to help people in hospitals.
It's a difficult job to comfort people who are such in shock, surely when you are not a professional on the matter. Lot of stories to account for, some with happy endings, but most of the time unhappy news.
I think it's a terrible thing to have no knowledge about a missing relative. I spent some hours with Leo, from Belgium. He is absolutly sure his wife is still alive, he swear he saw her in an hotel room close to him. But today we still have no news from her. An Irish family has also been reunited after being separated fro hours, fearing the worst for each other. A Dutch old man living in Australia, escaped from his flooded room, but sadly has to let his wife drowned in the room. They were married for 33 years.
It seems also this morning that a lot of Europeans are missing, and probably more than you can hear on television. A lot of news have to come from the remote island around Phuket and this doesn't seems to be good news.
The life here anyway continue, and only the beaches showed the magnitude of the destruction.
My wife is actually at the City hall in Phuket, to keep a desk information for the missing Irish people, and I will join her later on. Hundreds of Irish are still missing.
I heard also that in north west of Phuket island, close to a national park, a lot of bodies are still there on th ground, eventually hanging in the trees.
Of course, I also give my sympathy for the locals, most of the dead being fishermen. -
Earthquake in Indonesia, just happened I am there :-(
Just a hello from Phuket in Thailand, exactly in Kata at the south of the Island. I am sure you heard about the disaster in Indonesia.
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Full Text Search in SQL 2005 - the teen age
I attended yesterday a webcast about Full Text Search in SQL 2005. Lord, things are moving pretty well for FTS.
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Codus
Codus is a comprehensive code generation tool for object-relational mapping. It takes an existing database and automatically generates all of the code for updating, deleting, inserting and selecting records. In addition, it creates web services for distributed programming, strongly-typed collections, and a full set of unit tests.
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Blogs Feed API
Matthew Cosier has working on an API to stream and interpret ATOM 3 and RSS 2 feeds.
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MSDN party last night
Clare and Rob were again the stars yesterday for the MSDN
partyevent in the Hilton. 50 attendees, and I hope 50 new INDA members :-)
Robert Burke is an excellent speaker and I am going to ask him to speak at a session for our user group Ireland .Net Developers Alliance.
And he kept a very nice surprise at the end when one of his slides about communities was with a big mention to Developers.ie and a screen grab of the site. Thanks again for that :-)
I should have the slides today and they will be on the site
It's funny to see through the blogs if people are still recovering from the night before. 10AM now and no sign of blogging from the two Microsoft chaps :-) -
B.Ag on Developers.ie
Excellent developers are part of Ireland .Net Developers Alliance.
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INDA Guerrilla Party - We need your participation :-)
INDA team has used some brain cells for the first Code Party in Ireland.
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First session, mission accomplished
Thanks to everybody for a great session yesterday with Eamon O'Tuathoile. A lot of people turned up, and the presentation by Eamon was as usual great.
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Hosting C#/VB.NET components in Microsoft SQL Server 2005
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Guerrilla .Net 2.0
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Upcoming session: Web Services Standards Stack and WSE 2.0
Just a reminder for Ireland .Net Developers Alliance session tonight. -
Contract needed
A good friend of mine is looking for a contract in Ireland.
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Another guest for our next INDA session
Fiach Reid the writer of the excellent book Network programming in .Net (published by Elsevier - Digital Press) will be present at our next INDA session this Monday.
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CodeZone or CodeZoneS
I was in Barcelona few weeks ago to meet others european community leaders (Connect event) and one exciting project: CodeZone.
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Dr Strangelove party: the pictures
Great pictures from the Dr Strangelove Microsoft party yesterday posted by the Nicephore Niepce of photography Rob !
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VB survey
If you have 2 minutes I suggest you use them to reply to this survey by Duncan Mackenzie.
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Using CLR Integration in SQL Server 2005
If you still have doubts about CLR integration in SQL 2005 read this article on MSDN.
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FreeTextBox 3.0 ReleaseCandidate ready
What's new
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MSDN social event tonight Great party :-)
Thanks to Clare and all the Microsoft people present there for a nice cinema event tonight. Good choice for the location, the sugar Club, and the movie.
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Google index double
In answer to the new MSN Search claim to get the most indexed pages, Google has announced that they almost double their index from 4 billion pages to 8 billion.
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Halo 2 party - I have 2 tickets for Developers.ie members :-)
UPDATE: competition closed !
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MSDN Day the pictures
Thanks to Robert Burke for posting some cool pictures from the MSDN day (well mostly inside the pub)
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Ireland .Net Developers Alliance - Important session on the 22 of November
This talk explores the state of the art of web services. We start with a tour of the major emerging WS-* web services standards – some of which are stable and some are still in flux. We examine how they are likely to be composed to build future service oriented architectures. Microsoft WSE 2.0 is an extension to .NET that provides a rich implementation of stable web service standards. It offers excellent support for web service security, policy, conversations, addressing and diverse transports. We cover what WSE 2.0 has to offer .NET developers and how to use it today in building flexible web services. -
Webcasts Windows Mobile Development
Looking to build applications for mobile devices like the Windows Powered Smartphone or the Pocket PC but don't know where to begin?
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Is Steve Ballmer an idiot :-))
No don't flame me I would not dare to say that, I swear :-)
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Welcome to Robert Burke
After all, things are getting better and better in Dublin Ireland.
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ASP.Net 2.0 Guerilla session
I launch a new idea and I hope it will works. I am going to put 10 members of Ireland .Net Developers Alliance user group in a room sometime in December for about 3 to 4 hours building a website (not to be released !) following a basic scenario.
What I want to get from that is a better idea on .Net 2.0. What we like and what we dislike. We will send our feedback to Microsoft Redmond, I will surely blog about this and see what answers we can get from there.
I am not sure if we can get a beta 2 (I can dream :-)) but I will try to include some SQL 2005 tests too.
So if you are interested (you need a laptop) and in Dublin let me know. Maybe some other user groups would like to do the same ? -
CSS and Firefox
If you want to know more about Firefox and CSS issues I recommend absolutely this site by Ove Klykken
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The adventures of the Channel 9 guy in Dublin MSDN day yesterday- hip !
I dedicate this story to a great man I met in Barcelona a couple of weeks ago Lenn Pryor (The REAL Channel 9 guy)
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Larry Osterman the third video
Here on Channel 9.
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How to prepare a perfect birthday
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MSDN Day - Great event
Thanks to Microsoft Ireland (and Clare !) for a brillant MSDN day.
Eric Rudder started by a speech where the main theme was innovation. I was seating at the front row and it's quite strange to think you face the 'maybe' future Bill Gates :-) -
Ireland .Net Developers Alliance is now INETA member :-)
Ireland .Net Developers Alliance last meeting was successful. I got the confirmation two hours before our meeting that we've been approved as a member of INETA. Thanks Christian and Benjamin. -
Firefox and CSS standards
So it's true that as a user, I like Firefox. As a developer it's another story.
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Firefox, IE and the legacy problems
To continue the debate on IE versus Firefox, Eduardo Shanahan has an interesting point of view, worth to read.
I agree when he said this: -
Larry Osterman - 20 years at Microsoft
Larry talk on Channel 9 about his 20 years working for Microsoft. Maybe I can also celebrate this month my 25th year in this computer world :-)
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MSDN social event in Dublin cinema for developers
Not sure it's really a geek's movie but it's a classic.
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IIS 6 compression
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MSDN day Dublin tomorrow
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Is it a new project from Microsoft Research ?
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Blogs.developers.ie
Thanks to the great contributors in blogs.developers.ie and forums.developers.ie
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Dublin Blogmap - wake up :-)
Cool ! One blogger only in Dublin. Tiernan I know where you live now
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Forum opened in Developers.ie
Good news the Forums are now open in Developers.ie.
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Full Text Query in SQL 2005
I don't have really the time to test SQL 2005, due alos to the lack of user interface, but I would like to ask some questions to all the beta testers.
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Internet Explorer wake up - good standards are not always easy to swallow :-)
My point on IE is also as a developer. I know what I am going to say will surely sound paradoxal (and you can call me crazy), but I love the wrong standard acceptance in IE.
Why? Because until recently, all my colleagues around me (they are not developers) were quite easily happy with the projects I developed for them, having 95% of users running well a site was quite ok, not perfect but ok in my world.
Indeed, I am not building any e-commerce site, so maybe it's different in this case.
But suddenly, all the folks in my company (and elsewhere) heard a lot of nice dudes screaming we have a better browser than IE, and it has all the standards compliances (CSS, XHTML, etc...) everybody should expect.
Of course I coud be delighted, but no and no. I am still the only developer in my company, and this make me overloaded with dozen of dozens of browsers tests forgotten in a dark corner of my laptop, some reminiscence of the prehistoric age of Netscape.
Now I am preaching against what I believe in but is it really necessary to walk backward ?
And my wrath against IE team too, who think that everything has been done in browser world, and they can sleep on their laurels.
No wake up, and show us you can surprise us. -
Internet Explorer wake up or die
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Ireland as one country :-)
To clarify one question asked, yes Ireland .Net Developers Alliance is open to all Ireland.
Unless one other .Net group xist around Belfast, you're welcome. What I wish is that you participate in our forthcoming sessions. -
Ireland .Net Developers Alliance - Register and have a chance to win an Xbox :-)
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Windows hosting in Ireland - a joke ?
I don't know for your respective countries, but here in Ireland the hosting situation is getting worst than ever :-(
Almost every single company offer now a so called Windows solution which is based on Windows 2003(Yeah cool), PHP, Perl and MySQL (Ugly and not cool !)
If you talk about support, this is a joke. After many valls, you discover that indeed they have 99 Linux guys and 1 dedicated Windows support person. -
SPV 500 please someone has an idea on how to get one ??
I am going to break a rule by asking for help not for some .Net code, but for a gift.
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Connect
I didn't blogged a lot recently. The main reason is my commitment to the community working on a usergroup built up.
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Dell X50v launched - not so fast
Only if you are living on a remote island would let you deaf to the noise created around the launch of the Dell X50v.
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ANNOUNCEMENT: Irish Developers meeting
I am please to announce the first Irish Developers meeting this Monday 18th of October at 5:30PM. -
Another bunch of cool and free controls !
I was looking at some components for one of my projects, and I discovered a greta site with some amazing free controls.
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Use your Gmail space as a 1Gb storage - Cool
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Regular Expressions can be a bit of fun too :-))
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Ahh ! Buying a new gadget can be tough....
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New book
I just received a new book by Apress Pro Visual Studio.Net. Interesting reading.
Everything you need to know about VS.Net 2003. Not too much code but more about using properly the IDE. -
Web Accessibility Toolbar
This is a cool toolbar for peole like me
fightingworking on web accessibility.
I really like the way to have a toolbar with everything I need grouped in one place. -
Cute assistant to convert your code
Now here we go with a new assistant to help you converting VB to C#
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Developers Ireland first online meeting - thumbs up !
Just to report that I organised today the first Developers Ireland meeting online, and everything went well.
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dScribe - What's up in the next version ?
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Community:Forums 2.0.1 released
A new version of Community:Server has been released.
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Make ASP.Net XHTML compliant, a solution
If you can't wait ASP.Net 2.0 to check the degree of XHTML compliance, you can use this solution provided on codeProject.
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The best version control :-)
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SlideMenu
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Irish Developers - Some great news
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Main feed parsing toooo slooow
I am writing some code for the Irish Developers site, and I try (for a short period) to include a capture of the main feed on my homepage.
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Community:Forums some clarification
My previous post/rant about Community:Forums got the expected reaction, and I entered in an intense and very interesting debate on IM with Rob Howard, one of Telligent founders.
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Community:Forums - how long this will be free ?
I am surely not going to make friends with this post, but my rant of the day going to Telligent.
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Irish Developers meeting the final dates
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dScribe the site
Thanks to all of you who donload dScribe. One question coming often is about having a website for dScribe to demo the product.
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First meeting - so hard to find a day !
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dScribe 1.50
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Thanks to PCPro UK.... and Microsoft !
Do you remember few years ago where it was common to buy a magazine with a CD containing all the latest updates and patches from Microsoft ?
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Irish Developers first meeting
I am please to announce a prelaunch meeting for the Irish Developers community.
The date has still to be confirmed, but it will be between the 9 and 24th of October. -
Another good resources site
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Encoding for export
Maybe this trick can help some developers who want to export a Dataset to Excel or Word. Well easy if you're in US without accent issue, but here in Ireland we have some nice accentuation in Irish.
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Symantec Firewall and .Net not really good friends :-(
OK I finally resolved the issue with Symantec Firewall. Well this surely could happens not only with .Net but surely with every code playing with the HTTP stream.
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Norton Firewall issues with .Net ?
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Irish developers list
So here we go, a new community is born Developers Ireland. I am sure now we can interact in a better and more professional way with Microsoft (big thanks to Clare for her help and support :-))
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IIS 7
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Irish developers
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MSDN2
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JPEG Image flaw security issue in Windows and a lot of software
Time to update to SP2. Anew flaw has been found, and this time it affect a lot of Windows software, because it's about JPEG processing.
Or is it a subtle way to push users updating their XP :-) -
Irish developers -things are moving well :-)
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.Net languages blog
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.NET on Lego Mindstorms
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How to, the ultimate tutorial list
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Microsoft mspx extension
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New Apple G5
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Apple keynote
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Ain't nobody in VB :-))
Surely a joke but Early Adopter report an idea by Microsoft to add Ain't to the language. LOL.
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A call for Irish developers
I had today an excellent meeting with Microsoft Ireland. Wow, those guys want really to shake up their efforts toward developers. They are listening, so it's time to move on and make things working.
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Danny Bot
Hilarious and not only for Irish :-)
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Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Internet Security : still problems :-(
Well I think Microsoft folks did a pretty good job with the Service Pack but I am disappointed by Internet Explorer security.
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Not sure about the last changes on the main feed
<thisismyopinionandyoudonthavetobeagree>
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Microsoft Book store
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Microsoft Irish bloggers ? Where ? Where ?
I am very disappointed by Microsoft Ireland. After all a lot of MS employees from all around the world are blogging now.
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RegExInator
A Visual Studio Add-In that supports easier development of RegEx statements, right within the Visual Studio IDE.
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Round corners control
Cool stuff presented by Scott Mitchell, a round corners web control. How many times I have to do some boxes like this !
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SQL 2005: CLR and downsize compatibility
I started in my spare time to play with the SQL 2005 bits. I also read some articles on CLR usage in SQL 2005.
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YukonXML
YukonXML is a new site dedicated to SQL 2005.
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Python for .Net
If you aree interested by Python and .Net check the new IronPython project.
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Image Map control
If you can't wait Asp.Net 2.0 for an image map control, you can download this one (shareware)
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.Text become Community Server :: Blogs
Scott Watermasysk join Telligent Systems, and .Text becomes Community Server :: Blogs.
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.Net success story
Always good to mention some godd case study.
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Redirect module
Reading Fritz Onion, I just discovered this nice module to help redirecting URLS using a config files.
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Unfounded fears of 70%
I think that ASP.Net 2.0 will help newbies to embark on the .Net boat. But it surely not going to reduce our time. IMHO it would be unprofessional to let .Net doing everything without any tune up.
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More web controls in ASP.Net 2.0
Very please to see that Microsoft has included more web controls in ASP.Net 2.0
Welcome to new members: -
Code inline or Code behind ?
Well this post is just my opinion, and I am sure this will not change Microsoft view on the subject.
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Migrating from ASP.NET 1.x to ASP.NET 2.0
I know it's in one year, and I still have a lot to do with the current version, but if you are interested or just curious, read this article on MSDN about the migration job required for the new version.
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Asp.Net HTML Templates
Found this template solution on Joel.Net. Interesting.
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And the culprit is ...
I was so happy yesterday to found a solution to the General Network Error.
However this morning, I still received few of them, so I decided to find the culprit.
And I got it, it's the Data Application Block I use in many cases. It's a great stuff to have an SQL helper, but it seems for me it's a bit buggy.
After replacing my code with a classic datareader, everything is ok now. Maybe the helper is too chatty :-) -
A good switch to help a developer being happy
Wahoo, I just finished to install my four brand new switches to replace the good but basic 3Com hubs.
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MSDN August content
Cool, surely the best MSDN package of the year (until SQL 2005 Beta)
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When too much security kill security
This story just happens to me. I host one project with a UK company (UK hosting).
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dScribe 1.42
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Microsoft Research tour in Channel 9
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New Ipod :-)
It's official now ! New Ipod has been launched by Apple.
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Visual Studio 2005 family: the differences
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MyIE2 is now Maxthon
I missed this news recently but my favourite browser change its name to Maxthon.
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New Sony Ericsson P910 announced
Bugger, just when I just bought a P900, a new one is there already at the door.
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PHP 5.0.0
Via TechGuru -
Living in a Startrek apartment :-)
This is so cool :-)
A company 24th Century Design (surely Janeway is the boss there) can create a full replica of the Enterprise, but as an apartment.
Way to go but for 1 million bucks (surely I can imagine our b0rg Gates invading the place) :-)
This is the bathroom (tactical alert) ! -
Polymorphism and real world application
I am looking for some nice articles on polymorphism using real world applications (Finances, Web app, Sales, etc...).
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SQL 2005 new book
I think it might be the first book on SQL 2005 .
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Managing a Music Collection Using Visual Basic Express and SQL Server Express
Cool article if you want to start playing with Visual express and SQL 2005 !
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Apple employees 'will blog in revolt'
For one time Microsoft lead the blogsphere, and Apple employees are unhappy.
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Murach's C#
It's nice to see that small editors are catching on the success of .Net and produce such great books.
Now the latest one I bought yesterday is called Murach's C#, written by Joel Murach edited by Mike Murach, published by Murach Editions :-)
If you pass this ego madness, you will find an excellent book, designed for learning C# in concise and clear examples.
I surely recommend this book for any beginners or intermediate developers.
I attended a C# training course for two days, and it's time now that those courses move from the usual factorial class example or the shape-triangle-circle-square class to explain polymorphism.
I found in Murach's book some more practical and almost real world projects.
Check their site to see all the others development books they have. -
Irish programmer lifts MSDN security crown
Congratulations ! You see Irish can be good in security (even Matt and Lorenzo if they use 1234 as a password ;-)))
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I still have one of those :-)
This is so freaking cool, NewTen to let you connecting a Newton to Mac OSX and install packages.
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[dScribe] Admin password
It seems that I forgot to mention the Admin password. It's 1234.
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[dScribe] Test with .Net 2.0
I am delighted to announce that I have dScribe running perfectly well with .Net 2.0 Beta. Maybe I am the first to have a CMS running under .Net 2.0 :-))
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dScribe 1.4A Release
I am happy to announce the immediate release of dScribe 1.4A.
This version passed the test from one of my colleagues who is not known for saying 'yes it's good' too fast, but hey there he was delighted by the progress on this new version. -
[dScribe] Screenshot
dScribe 1.4 will be release very soon now. I post this screenshot to show th progress I made on the UI.
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Roy has been made MVP :-)
Congrats to Roy Osherove . Well deserved !
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Sad news for PearPC
PearPC is the Apple emulator for Windows (and Linux).
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I3HTree
Another Tree view in ASP.Net but with a twist: the data are loaded only on request, when you expand a node.
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Are you sure it's not a new Boeing :-)
If you think your PC fan is noisy or you're plannaing a new Learjet simulator, check this. LOL
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SQL Express 2005 Beta 1, a release failure ?
I just wonder if SQL Express 2005 Beta 1 is not finally a big mistake, kind of failure in the Microsoft marketing world.
I read more and more blogs about the difficulty everybody experience with this tool.
After all, it's the MSDE replacement, but the lack of well formed documentation added to the lack of proper UI give a bad start to something surely promising.
Most of the posts I can see are complaining about basic facts (in my opinion they are right for that), and this should not be the case. -
.NET Framework 1.0 SP3 and 1.1 SP1 Technical Preview
Thanks to Rob Caron for this link on the ,Net SP1. Great resources page, and at last we can have the details of what changes we can expect.
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UploadDialog
Another nice control for ASP.Net !
UploadDialog (seems to be free to download), let you have the same Wondows ShellOpen dialog for your ASP.Net pages.
Also cross-browser, so you should having no problem to use it with Opera or Firefox. -
Where is SQL Server 2005 Beta 1 aka Yukon ??
OK like everybody I see a lot on SQL Server Express Beta 1. But where is the father, I mean SQL Server 2005 Beta 1 ?
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Lookout
If you're looking for a good search tool to use with Outlook, don't go too far, try Lookout (free tool).
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Office Space Wars :-)
I wonder if working for Microsoft is close to what you see in Office Space War !
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Visio Stencil and Template for UML 2.0
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What's so great about generics
Anders Hejlsberg talks about one of the biggest new feature in the next version of C#: generics.
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What to expect in .Net service pack 1
Finally if you follow this link, you will have some details on the SP1 content
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New iMac in September
This time it's official because for the first time in computer history a company admit publicly to be late in their promises:
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AutoPatcher
This is a great idea but licensing can be a problem as Larry Seltzer say in this post:
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.Net known bugs list
Regarding the .Net 1.1 service pack, maybe they fixed some of the bugs reported on this post (list provided by Stefano Demiliano).
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Managing the .Net version from IIS
I posted few days ago about some conflicts between .Net 1.1 and .Net 2.0 Beta when you try to debug from VS 2003 a standard application.
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Gif issue resolved :-)
A great thanks to Paul Nicholls who pointed me to the right solution. This is absolutely brilliant the way a community can work.
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Don't try to sell you Gmail invites
"According to Google's new policy, altered Monday, the Web search company prohibits Gmail subscribers from selling, trading or transferring the free e-mail accounts "for any unauthorized commercial purpose." It also bars people from setting up multiple accounts in violation of the policy." reports CNet.
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What are the changes in .Net 1.1 SP1 ?
I posted about this two days ago, but I still can't find any information regarding the content of .Net 1.1 SP1.
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Google personalized search beta
Jason Mauss mention the new Google search service. Well as usual with this kind of thing, I am always suspicious regarding the privacy policy.
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[dScribe] Work in progress
For those interested dScribe (Content Management System) is now very close to completion for a major release, the version 1.4.
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Some user controls
You can find on Piasi.org a lot of controls. Most of hem are indeed Javascript script embedded in a user control. None are really exceptional, maybe just the fact that they are server side controls, so you should be able to dynamically chnage their properties.
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Visual 2005 beta available on MSDN
Hey guys can you stop your download on MSDN, the time I can do mine (Just joking, but it's really busy now on MSDN :-)))
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Gifs issue with GDI
I received some comments on my issue with Gifs and GDI+.
I think I was not clear enough. What I am building is a kind of image gallery where users upload different images(Gif, JPEG). My comparison was about the difference before uploading and after ! -
MSN Search
The new Google-like search by Microsoft can be tried here.
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Code4fun new article
Ducan Mackenzie explain how to determine the difference between two dates.
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My gifs are too noisy
I need some help. I wrote some code to pull some images from a database and write them on a web page. Nothing special, the code is working well, except for one very annoying thing.
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.Net 1.1 Service Pack 1
I just installed the Service Pack 1 for .Net 1.1 (Beta). Great but does somebody know where I can find what have been done and improved on this upgrade.
Apparently the log I found in a temp folder seems to indicate that a lot of classes received a facelift. -
MSDN Product Feedback Center
Mark ask what do we think about the new MSDN Product Feedback Center.
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.Net 1.2
Ok now that the Microsoft .Net team got a short break after some good job in the past few months, can they answer this question.
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Visual Studio 2005 documentation
In case you look for the docs, go here.
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Betas are dangerous productivity animals
Well I don't want to be to tough there, but be careful with betas. History repeat itself, and I have this feeling that Beta 2 will add a lot of changes to Beta 1.
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Dynamic Search Conditions with T-SQL
Long article but great one by Erland Sommarskog on searching data with many criterias.
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Don't do this with .Net 2.0 Beta 1 !
Well hopefully this will help somebody to avoid the same mistake.
Like many others I rushed on the new VS 2005 Express Beta 1. I installed on a machine with a previous version of .Net 1.1.
Thankfully this is not my main production PC. I run then in a series of small troubles, but like a coming storm, it gets to a point where I was unable to start any debugging session with a VS 2003 project. -
SQL Express admin
Thanks to Scott Guthrie to clarify this:
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SQL Express wish
OK so SQL Express is on my machine, with already a SQL 2000 already installed. Now comes the surprise: no more snap-in to manage my databases ?!?
I tried to register SQL Express 2005 (which comes as an instance Yourmachine\SQLEXPRESS) using Enterprise manager. A message come to say that I need SQL workbench to manage my data. -
Reflector new version
I can't see the changes but anyway here we go with my favourite tool Reflector 4.0.9.0
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Starck works with Microsoft
New optical mouse announced by Microsft and designed by Starck (exist in red or blue):
You can preorder them on Amazon. Noiw if Microsoft start to works with guru designers like Philippe Starck, what is left to Apple ? -
VS 2005 express and SQL 2005 Express
God, it's fever day :-) So many posts to announce the Messiah, no sorry Visual Studio Express 2005 !
OK I admit I couldn't resist, I downloaded it and installed the package. -
Apple lost the plot
So the WWDC was full of promises (new Ipod, new Imac G5, etc...).
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Visual Studio 2005 Beta will be there this week
Yes I can confirm it will be available for MSDN subscribers this week. This is extracted from an email sent today by Microsoft Ireland:
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Apple eye of the Tiger
Some aggressive banners for the new MacOS X Tiger at Apple WWDC (click to enlarge)
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Visual Studio 2005 Beta Ready to Roll
Microsoft is including Visual Studio Team System technology in the first beta of Visual Studio 2005, to be released at TechEd Europe.
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Web browser flaw prompts warning
The loophole is being exploited to open a backdoor on a PC that could let criminals take control of a machine.
The threat of infection is so high because the code created to exploit the loophole has somehow been placed on many popular websites.
Experts say the list of compromised sites involves banks, auction and price comparison firms and is growing fast.
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Shocking patent
-
Windows CE and Windows Embedded Lab Tour
Great ! Mike Hall give a tour of the Windows CE lab.
-
Root and Virtual: path tip
Well I think I figured out a very simple way to make my paths working in my virtual directory and in the root of the live server.
The problem as I mentioned this morning, was about URL rewriting. -
Reflector new version
Download here the latest one : 4.0.8.0
-
Internet Explorer not so much good news ?
Apparently Dave Massy changed my mood about IE. Now after one step forward, ten other backward.
-
Resistance is futile....
I don't know if it's kind of a joke but the borg world is coming to us
-
My world is virtual
OK I figured out yesterday how to make my URL rewriting working. Strangely, I just had to keep my original Form tag to have everything working properly.
Now another puzzling question. As many develoipers I write my code locally and I mange a lot of different web applications.
So my world is made of virtual directory.
Of course, this is great only locally, because when I deploy to my servers, everything back to the root for most of the stuff.
I know everything about relative and absolute paths, root (~). The question is how to code one good way my paths to be sure that nothing break when I move from my virtual world to my real world ?
By the way sadly some tags cannot be transformed as server side tags. An important one is the <Link tag to embed a stylesheet.
Other curious thing: if you use URL rewriting, the ~ root trick don't work anymore and it's easy to understand why :-) -
URL rewriting, help required
I need some help here. For a web application I needed to use URL rewriting to create some nice easy to remember addresses.
Everything's fine except for some controls. I have on this page a Search textbox, so the user can enter a text and I send him to a search results page.
Very trivial, but with URL rewriting, according to this excellent article, you need to override the form tag to make things working properly.
So I used the assembly provided with the article, and actually only the method GET works. The POST method don't fire any events and send me back a 405 error. -
SQL 2005 and VS 2005 in Dublin today... not great :-(
Kind of time wasted this afternoon with a Microsoft presentation of Visual Studio 2005 and SQL 2005.
-
Shadow effect for your windows
A useless but useful gadget software to add a shadow effect to Windows.
It's really cool to see at last the windows in some sort of 3D effect. The menus can also have a shadow and transparency. -
Why You Should Dump Internet Explorer
Daniel Miessler post is surely controversial but I think he has some valid points.
-
Firefox 0.9
In my opinion, the Microsoft Internet Explorer team had opened the pandora box by asking their users to comment on the future of IE.
They surely going to be busy for the next1020 years :-)
Anyway today I decided to have atry with Firefox 0.9 and see if it's really the best browser in the world. -
Data Access Application Block 3.0.9.2 (Abstract Factory Implementation - RC1 for 3.1.0.0)
This version include now an abastract factory, so worth to check !
-
VBParser Beta 1
When I started this blog a year ago, one of the things that I mentioned that I was working on in my spare time was a scanner and parser for the Visual Basic language. It's kind of been on the back burner, behind things like VB 2005 and the book, but it's finally gotten complete enough to release! I created a GotDotNet workspace for the code, and there's a binary release there as well.
-
Whidbey debate: Is the page an application ?
Alister post this comment regarding the conversation I reported on Widbey concerns:
To add my two cents, maybe in Orcas the page will be the Application and the UI will be generated from the page. It means that in this case we go full circle, back to a proprietary system, where the UI (Windows, HTML, XHTML, etc...) doesn't matter. -
James Joyce celebrating Bloomsday by Google
Nice one :-) Thanks Google for this. 100 years James Joyce and Ulysses Celebration today !
-
Free font site
I just discovered another nice font site, DaFont where you can download tons of nice fonts.
-
Alister Jones ask to Microsoft: Is Whidbey over complicated ?
This is surely the most exciting and deep debate I ever read on Whidbey. Alister really you got the right angle. The critics are positive, and I fully share your comments.
It's so well written that I decided to keep your questions and answers by Bertrand Le Roy as an article on this blog.
The only difference I have with you, is that I played a bit with a Whidbey preview, and yes I share the same feelings (and some pain). -
Weather application for Pocket PC
I saw before some cool weather software for Pocket PC but this one is from far the best one !
-
Multithreading with the .NET Framework
Excellent article on multithreading posted by Informit.
-
Visual Basic Power Pack
The Visual Basic Power Pack consists of seven custom controls written in Visual Basic .NET 2003. The controls provide enhanced user interface elements and enable you to create more interesting and more colorful client based applications.
-
Web Screen Fonts
Don't forget also these ones. Very useful for web buttons and menus !
-
Monospaced Bitmap Programming Fonts
Nice !
-
OT: www.thejohncleese.com
Basiiillll ! My hero John Cleese, alias Q, alias Basil is online. I wait now for Sybil and Manueeel :-))
-
XForms 1.1 Requirements
XForms is an XML application that represents the next generation of forms for the Web. This document specifies the requirements for XForms 1.1.
-
Cookie handling
Gidion mention a nice feature found on Firefox 0.9RC cookie handling.
-
Array initializer
Or when coding become an art LOL :-)
-
ASP.Net 2.0 a third language ?
Just few thoughts for the day after reading some excellent articles in the latest MSDN magazine regarding ASP.Net 2.0
-
MSDN Developer Day in Dublin
-
Brief about Triggers in SQl Server2000
-
Web imitates football
-
Web Accessibility in Mind
-
Poor Contingency Design Can Cost You
Interesting post by D.Keith Robinson on designing for errors page.
-
Web Forms 2.0 - notes and comments
I forgot also to mention this page which is a constructive critic of the Web form 2.0 draft
-
WebForms 2.0
Ian Hickson extends the HTML 4.01 Forms specification to allow Web authors to easily add validation requirements to form fields.
-
OT - Ray Charles die
It's a very sad news. Another great legend passed away today.
-
Windows Media Player 10 Technical Beta review
ExtremeTech review the new WMP 10.
-
Mozilla Firefox 0.9 Release Candidate
download here
-
Questions about Longhorn, part 3: Avalon's enterprise mission
-
ReSharper: C# Refactoring Tool
When the Java world come to the .Net world, they produce something superb as Reshaper.
-
Turn your PC into a Mac
Excellent compilation of ideas found on Engadget if you want to give an Aqua-Mac look to your Windows desktop, or would I say a Longhorn style ?
-
Capturing Output from ASP.Net Pages
Another marvel from Rick Strahl, some different ways to capture what an asp.net page output.
-
Understanding ASP.NET View State
Everything you need to know about Viewstate by Scott Mitchell on MSDN
-
Pocket C# compiler
Great news ! You can now compile C# directly on your Pocket PC. I have to try this :-)
-
iPAQ h6310 First Look
First picture and (short) review of the new HP Pocket PC.
To be honest, I am not so impressed, maybe the quadraband but the 64Mb of Ram is a bit short for a model like that.
The good news is the external attachment keyboard provided in the box. -
Questions about Longhorn
Well the title should be indeed Questions about WinFS. This is the subject Jon Udell focus on in a series of articles.
-
Blogjet new version
I really enjoy Blogjet. And now a new version with some nice new stuff :
-
ASP.Net Forums 2
Just in case you missed it, ASP.Net Forums 2 is now in RC 2.
-
An idea for .Text
I think it could be a good idea to have on the .Text admin tool a way to easily jump to an old post in the case I want to edit it.
-
Color coding in HTML
Cool ! This one works for different languages
-
Freeze header and columns
Finally a nice solution to freeze headers and columns in a datagrid.
Well Irwansyah don't use the standard Datagrid but create on the fly a Datatable with different embedded DIVS.
The only thing that seems to be check is the Onresize Javascript event which seems to be a bit slow, because the code redesign the size of the table dynamically.
It would be nice to see what expert like Dino or Marcie think about this approach. -
Windows XP SP2 delayed till September ?
According to German Site Heisse, Richard Kaplan (Marketing manager of Microsoft) told at a Winxp sp2 session that SP2 could be expected in September. Internal documentation talks about q3 2004.
-
Graphics Server .NET 2.0 Beta
Get your free beta version today.
-
99 Bottles of Beer
That's really not what you think, apost on the joy of drinking :-)
This is really cool, one program in 621 languages and variations ! -
The role of the Software Architect
-
TechEd: Hands On Lab Manuals
Thanks to Barry Gervin for this list of pdf's for each topic from TechEd.
-
Generics In-Depth
Not sure it's new, but I recommend this article by J. Ambrose Little on generics.
-
Seven tricks that Web users don't know
I fully share Carolyn Synder thoughts in this article. A lot of users don't have all the knowledge developers can have and usability should improve (don't worry I am part of this crowd :-))
-
Datetime format and Sql
Last week, I posted something about Datetime format and SQL, something to help SQL understand any international date format.
Well Jerry Pisk is right, his method is shorter. Use Mydate.ToString("yyyyMMdd"). Short and efficient.
Now just a note to Jerry: no need to use a bossy tone to explain something ! We all learn every day :-) -
The gentle sounds of a dying drive
Hitachi has put on a page the noises you can hear from a crashing hard drive.
Very stressful and some are not recommended as ringtones :-) -
The "native" .NET language?
Paul Vick reply to the question “isn't C# the language that's most 'native' to the .NET environment?”
-
Microsoft Indexing Service and search servers
Two weeks ago, I posted something about the book below (don't search for it, it's not released)
-
Pool application in IIS 6
I have difficulties to tweak the pool application in IIS 6. I try to improve the performances of my different websites.
Most of the time, when I get a lot of requests, the worker process stall with a CPU use of 98%.
So I was quite confident that setting a pool with a CPU monitoring could sove the problem.
Nope, it's worst becuase if I activate this feature, I end up with a lot of Service Unavailable from IIS.
By the way, does somebody knows how to create a custom error page for this kind of behavior ? It's not managed by IIS as a typical 500 server error, so I am not sure how to handle this. -
DB Designer: design your Database
Thanks to Stefano Demiliani for this info on DBDesigner, a free tool to help designing a database.
-
New wave of blog spam :-((
Another new wave of blog spam has just started Be aware
grrrr :-( -
Game Framework for the .NET Compact Framework
Reusable framework for creating games using the .NET Compact Framework
-
Tip on Datetime and SQL
A lot of non-US developers have troubles with date andling and SQL Server.
-
Hosting a Windows Control in a Web Form
I am still thinking about a useful application for this, but maybe in an Intranet for some specific controls.
-
Pocket PC Can we have this ?
Like many people I know, I love my PocketPC, but a big annoyance is the battery.
-
Windows 98 on Pocket PC
Absolutely useless, but this folk did a great job by getting Windows 98 on a Pocket PC.
-
Highlighting in forms
Nice Javascript and CSS highlighting effect applied on textbox.
I have to try that :-) -
VS 2005 last preview - Download problems
I try to download the latest technology preview but no success. From 2 machines and the same issue, a message saying that "An internal error occur -cannot open the file on the server".
-
CSS2 Intellisense for Visual Studio .Net
Thanks Scott for the link !
Read this article and download the required metadata file to bring CSS2 to VS.Net. -
Disability Rights Commision report on web accessibility
The official report published by the Disability Rights Commission following their investigation into web accessibility has been published here.
-
Memory
I believe we are going to see a lot of those nice small games since developers start to migrate from VB6 to VB.Net.
-
Mouseover on a Datagrid
Nice trick by Albert Pascual. A new Datagrid control inheriting from the standard one with a Javascript code to highlight a row in a grid on mouse over event.
-
Visual Studio 2005 Team System
Good news in the FAQ, you can read this:
-
New Visual Studio 2005 community preview
Great news, surely the same than the TechEd one.
-
dScribe - some news
In case some people wonder what's happen with dScribe, be sure I didn't abandoned the project,on the contrary !
-
Sony Vaio U the way to go for Tablet PC ?
A lot of discussion around about the future of Tablet PC. Does Microsoft lost the plot with this new operating system ?
Is the Tablet PC an expensive new gizmo for some rich people ?
I don't know all the answers but I believe Sony got some. Have a look at the new Sony Vaio U, full PC running Windows XP without compromise, touch screen and a weight of 550 grams ! -
West Wind articles
By the way I invite everybody to have a look at the impressive series of articles published by Rick Strahl.
A lot of things to learn ! -
Creating a generic Message Display Page for ASP.Net
Excellent article by Rick Strahl. It's always a good idea to have a constant way of showng error messages on a website.
-
PlayerPal
Use PlayerPal to remote control Windows Media Player 9 audio from any web browser on your home network or the Internet. You can keep all your music on a central PC and play it from anywhere!
-
Yukon Beta 2 is coming soon
Well if I believe Kamal Hathi and I have no reasons why not.
Something interesting in his post: -
Home Style+ for Office 2003
I discovered this cool post by Jian Shuo Wang about Home Style+ to create a cartoon picture from a photograph.
-
Web-Based SQL Server Enterprise Manager
An alternative to Microsft Web SQL admin:
-
Stop fooling the community
OK after reading Roy's post, it's my time now :-)
-
The Rubik's robot is Irish :-)
Remember few days ago about this bloke who create a robot equipped with a camera to solve the Rubik's cube.
-
Using MapQuest Maps in your ASP.NET Application
Eric Neff posted about the way to link MapQuest and .Net
-
Metatags dictionary
Keep this page in your favorites if you want to know everything about Metatags !
-
Add a File Repository to .Text 0.95
Miguel Jimenez has written a nice add-in for .Text 0.95 to upload files and attach thme to a post.
-
Real World Microsoft Indexing Service and Search Servers
The title of this post is indeed the title of a book I realy want to have.
I was checking Apress about a possible relese date, and I found a link to the book website. -
Survey Says Firms Choose .NET Over J2EE
Good news !
-
Programming The Tablet PC—Get Up To Speed Quickly
Nice article by Larry O'Brien to setup Visual Studio for programming with Tablet PC.
-
Lorem ipsum for web designers
http://www.lorem-ipsum.info/generator2
delivers randomly generated filler text for typographers and web designers in various languages and charsets (Chinese, Greek, Hindi, Cyrillic, L33tspeak, Esperanto etc.) besides the traditional Lorem Ipsum dummy copy. -
my first .Text blog opened
I just installed for a small project a multiple blogs engine based on .Text.
-
Smart Device Framework v1.1 Released
Windows Mobile Team writes "OpenNETCF.org has just released version 1.1 of their Smart Device Framework which is a free and open source collection of a ton of useful things that didn't make it into the .NET Compact Framework. My favorite addition to this release is their SmartList control which lets you give your app the same filtering capabilities as Smartphone's built-in contact list." -
Web Camera wrapper
If you are interested, Ido Samuelson has released a WebCamera class written in C#.
-
MSDN Magazine 2003 Cd-Rom
All the content of MSDN Magazine 2003 for free (exclude postage *)
-
CubeSolver
This is really the definitive gadget. Lego Mindstorms robot that solves the Rubik's cube :-)
-
Tablet PC, a flop ?
Robert Scoble comment about an article by Mary Jo Foley, Trouble in Tablet Land.
-
VB Team Blog :-)
Great news guys, welcome !
-
Code Library for .Net and MySQL
The CodeLib 7.7 is an application that helps you to easily find and use the code snippets. As a result, you can build a programs faster. Support Code Snippet, File, Note, Web, Picture save. 5 in 1 Utility. Req. MySQL & ODBC Driver
-
Reflector update
New version 4.0.2.0
-
Multiple blogs with .Text
Finally my issue with the setup of .Text in a multiple blog configuration has been solved :-)
-
My new phone like .Net
I just adore my new Sony Ericsson P900. It's a great phone, not cheap but so much in a small box.
-
General Network Error: Update
Well the title of this post should be really No Update ! Indeed I received a huge list of replies and comments about this 'random' error.
<rant>The conclusion at this time is that almost everybody can face at least one time th error, but nobody is able to provide a solution</rant> -
.Text multiblog installation problems
I am looking for some help in the installation of a multiblog using .Text 0.95.
-
Notepad2 in Context menu
Following some advice by Roy Osherove I installed Notepad2.
-
Wifi radar for Pocket PC
Cool free application to scan Wifi hotspots around your Pocket PC.
-
The Naked Chef blog
I am not sure that in US people know him but here in UK - Ireland, he's really a famous TV chef.
-
Job in Germany
I received this job request in my mailbox this morning, so maybe this can have some interest for some reader:
-
Gmail review
If you want to know more about the new Google email service, read this review by ExtremeTech.
-
Page 23
Douglas from StopDesign posted an interesting and fun idea:
-
Thinktecture is online
Finally Ingo Rammer's, Christian Weyer's, Christian Nagel's and Ralf Westphal's opened the curtain on Thinktecture.
The site is nice, but it's a bit early to see what they want to achieve. It's looking like a mix up of commercial venture with some community blogging.
Not sure if this is right, but I am interested to see how they are going to sell their services and in the same time give the material their clients paid for ?
Well, anyway good luck guys. -
Blogjet new version
Blogjet the excellent blogging tool is coming back as a new version, followed by a new site.
-
Viewstate decoder
Stefano Demiliani and Sebastian Weber posted about 2 tools to decode the Viewstate generated in ASP.Net.
-
Videos blogs
I really like all the frenzyness introduced by Channel 9 about videoblogging. I am just not sure I have the time to see all of them.
-
Free XDN membership for .NET Bloggers
Looks like a cool offer...:-)
-
XHTML template
Shawn Morton seems to know well XHTML. He proved it on the different projects he achieved successfully.
Anyway, back to the subject, Shawn created a Dreamweaver template (surely not a problem to adapt for Visual Studio) to help apprehending all basic aspects of XHTML. -
FileUploadProgressBar in ASP.NET
Excellent how-to-do article to show hot to build a progress bar for .Net web page using threading in C#.
-
#develop Beta 1
-
Clutter ?
-
New screensaver :-)
Well at least you need an USB port for this aquarium :-)
-
Reflector 4 now support Whidbey
Great job from Lutz Roeder. Reflector 4.0 include some good stuff and I would like to mention two good news:
-
iTunes 4.5 is out
Good news, the latest version of iTunes for Windows is getting better.
Excellent player, it also can compete well against WMP. I noticed that Apple introduced a COM support, so it could be nice to see what we can do with this.
Maybe starting by having a neat function to blog what we listen now. The import of WMA is a boost for this software, particularly if you have an Ipod. -
Bookmark Tracker
Like a lot of people, I stop using th favorites in IE because after 100 stored links, it's really messy and difficult to manage.
Searching (I think I can say googling) on the web for a solution, I found yesterday a nice online tool Bookmark Tracker.
I can now share my links with my office and my home PCs. Cool :-) -
New book: Build your own ASP.Net using C# & VB.Net
A new book by Zak Ruvalcaba, published by Sitepoint has just been released. The aim of this book is to focus on building web applications using .Net and HTML. Beginners, but also intermediates developers and web designers can learn a lot from this reading.
Learn how to create the basic, dynamic, and advanced ASP.NET pages in C# and VB.Net.Packed with tips, tricks, and workarounds, this book covers every aspect of developing a Web application for the enterprise using ASP.NET.
Written by a web expert, it shows readers how to create the basic, dynamic, and advanced ASP.NET pages in Microsoft's .Netprogramming languages, and explains how to interact with the database using ADO.NET.
The author reviews the fundamentals on Object Oriented Programming with clever and easy to use examples. He also explains how to create web forms and web controls.
The author covers every aspect of developing a Web application including building an e-commerce site or reinforcing the security. -
TodoList viewer
If you use the excellent ToDoList (currently version 3.5), and if you have a Pocket PC, you might be interested by ToDoList viewer 1.3, a very good idea to have a preview of your tasks on your mobile device (note: read only)
-
Microsoft Security feed
Microsoft Security Bulletins are available now in RSS. Subscribed !
-
Flash and Indian music :-)
Believe me very addictive flash music clip, and so funny :-)
-
Computer chronicles
On Internet Archive, you can find an interesting section related to Computer chronicles.
The one I was curious about today is the famous interview made in April 1999 with Bill Gates. A lot of preminition there, including the 'hand held computers'. -
Another bucket of really good articles
Check Akadia if you want more .Net articles and code samples. Some are quite impressive.
You can also find stuff on Oracle, SQL Server and Windows.
The one I am reading currently is the SQL Server 2000 Survival guide. Cover almost everything on the administration side.
Filtering and sorting in ADO.Net is also a good example of a technical article. Very complete. -
Developer PowerToys
The Developer PowerToys site is a "work in progress" directory of cool utilities and tools developed by Microsoft and the community that are meant to improve developer productivity. Currently, on this site, you will find the original list of Powertoys projects on the right, categorized feeds from the Powertoys Blog, and a blog created for discussion about the future of this site. Ideally this site will transition into a place where people can post, rate, and share their cool extensions to the Visual Studio platform.
-
WordNet CE
I always have a passion for all sort of dictionaries, and having one in my Pocket PC is a must.
So I am delighted with the release of WordNet CE, a dictionary and thesaurus for Pocket PC, based on a Princeton Univeristy project, avaliable for desktops.
This version has been developed with compact framework.
And good news, it's a freeware (some donations to the author will be of course appreciated)
You need a good storage space for the data, about 40 Mb !
Download here
You need also Wordnet 2.0.
-
Data Structures for VB programmers
Interesting PDF file to understand .NET stuff like basic types, arrays, collections and regular expressions.
-
.Text installation issues
I posted this question already in .Text forums, but I didn't received any answer. So I try now to see if someone in this community has a solution for this.
I setup a blog for a small project using .Text 95.
The configuration I'm using is the Multiple Blogs of the form
But right now my problem is with the user's login.
For example, when I tried to log in my blog:
(http://blog.kilkenny.com/blog/myblog/admin/ or http://blog.kilkenny.com/blog/myblog/admin/default.aspx)
Then that i've input my username and password, the blog go back to the login page with the following URL:
(http://blog.kilkenny.com/blog/myblog/Login.aspx?ReturnUrl=/blog/myblog/admin/default.aspx)
Its never permit to me to administering my blog. I don't have a way to view the admin pages.
I'm sure that is not an incorrect username/password problem because when i do that, the message dottext print is: "That's not it!"
Does anybody know about this? Scott suggest to check the cookies but I still have the same problem. Locally the project works well.
Thanks -
Developer Security training
I just received some goodies relating to the Longhorn preview day presentation in Dublin.
-
Cleartype tuner
Cleartype tuner is an online wizard released by Microsoft to help tuning the Cleartype settings.
Really useful. -
Testing VisualBlogger
Well done Robert with the tool. But I would call this version an alpha rather than a beta.
-
VisualBlogger 2004 is out !
Finally I can have my hands on the Beta version of VisualBlogger 2004.
Great job Robert. Now time for testing. -
VB.Net to C#
I know a ton of good utilities to convert C# to Vb but I think this is the first attempt to convert VB.Net to C#
-
Paul Vick interview
Read on DevSource the interview of the man behind Vb.Net.
-
Longhorn is here ... almost :-)
Well at least in Thailand for some gullible customers who bought this CD, complete with jacket and serial number !
-
More on Ipod agent
This stuff is quite incredible, and written in .Net 1.1. Almost transform my Ipod as PDA, at least for the content !
-
RSS feeds on your Ipod
Yes it's possible. Check this post from Engadget to see how.
-
Code generator for Application Settings/Preferences
CM_ConfigBuilder generates and compiles the required files to manage your application's settings/preferences and to store/retrieve them in XML format
-
Stress utility for SQL Server 2000
Alberto Venditti posted on codeproject a simple but powerful little application to stress test SQL 2000 databases.
-
Yahoo sense of humor
Try searching for "what is my destiny"... :-)
-
New Language Features in C# 2.0, Part 2
The first part of this series introduced three new C# language features: anonymous methods, iterators, and partial types. In this second part, we'll tackle the last and most exciting new feature, Generics.
-
Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 Resource Kit
Whether you manage a single Web server or many, the prescriptive, task-based, and scenario-based guidance in this book will help you effectively plan, deploy, operate, and troubleshoot your IIS 6.0 solution.
-
One of the really sucky things about working for a small company...
Scott Galloway post about the fact he can't go to conferences because he works in a small company.
-
Window Capture
To finish the series on the so excellent job done by fish (he merit an MVP if he don't have it already), a tool to capture any region or windows on your screen.
-
CodeLib for Visual Studio
:-) Great stuff this CodeLib. now you have also an add-in for Visual Studio !
So cool -
Reusing code
I am now at a point of having so many websites running .Net that now I spend most of my coding time reusing some snippets I wrote few months ago.
I wish Orcas or another futuristic .Net will understand my thoughts and copy and paste automatically the code for me. -
Pocket PC Karaoke
PocketCDG v2 is a karaoke software for pocket pc. It could read .cdg files !
All Thousands of which are freely available on the net. -
Extending Visual Studio
Microsoft UK has compiled a list of third-party solutions to extend Visual Studio.
-
Generate SQL Insert statements for your SQL Server 2000 Database
If you are searchng for an easy way to script your SQL database for deployment, check this tool published on CodeProject.
-
W3C Advances DOM Level 3 Core
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has approved Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Core as an official W3C recommendation, which means that developers will be able to deploy scripting for programs that can interoperate with different browsers. "The DOM Level 3 specification covers a lot of ground. Only parts of the spec are relevant to browser technologies," Brendan Eich, chief architect at the Mozilla Foundation, told internetnews.com . "Among the relevant parts, Load and Save will help us gain ground on Web services capabilities that Mozilla wants to build into the browser, and we're actively looking into implementing this Load and Save part of the spec into Mozilla."
DOM Level 3 is the final evolution of the DOM process that began seven years ago at the W3C. Philippe Le Hegaret, DOM Activity Lead for W3C, said now that the DOM Working Group has completed its original mission, other groups will continue to extend the DOM platform for more specific use, such as the SVG Working Group.
DOM Level 3 extends XML support to version 1.1 and other components of the XML Information Set specification, bringing DOM in line with XML Schema 1.0 and SOAP 1.2 W3C Recommendations. The new recommendation also makes full use of XML namespaces, which enables easier manipulation of WSDL descriptions. The full story ...
Library to Generate Excel XML Workbooks in .NET
Great stuff !
How to create a Word document Form-letter-like functionality in a web application
Jason Haley show here how to create a Word document from a Web application
Skype conference
Just my 2 cents on Skype.
It's really an incredible tool, easy to setup and it works !New Visual Studio 2005 Developer center
Great news. To learn more about the next Visual Studio click here
New Language Features in C# 2.0
Interesting article by Matthew MacDonald about all the goodies we can expect in C# 2.0
First part of a two part seriesCatalog now
A C# software on GotdotNet to catalog any local files or CDs.
BaseHref
I discovered this morning a conflict between the HTML tag BaseHref and ~.
Masterpages
I found another way of doing the equivalent of Whidbey Masterpages.
New Microsoft mice
Google and Lego
When you think about Google, it's hard to imagine them at the start. Today I hope they have better hardware than this. Get a room :-)
Templates
If you are looking at templates for your aspx pages, check this excellent article by Joe Agster published by devX.
It's like having the ASP.Net 2.0 master pages in the current version.
Should be ok to adapt to the future version anyway.Channel 9
It's open and it's cool. I would describe the thing as an animated moblog.
The design is fresh and cheerful except the Microsoft walls in the video background :-)
Microsoft it's a colorful world outside, no more dulls offices !
My first thoughts:Paul Vick new book
if you want to read some pages of Paul's new book click here.
You can also buy it here.A simple VB.NET stress utility for SQL Server 2000
Alberto Venditti propose some code to test our SQL databases.
Great stuff.Creating a Popup Date Picker
Conrad Jalali has an interesting way of passing a value from a date picker to a textbox control avoiding a postback.
Google Local, new service ?
I was looking this morning for the Buffalo web site (wireless), and I was surprised that Google returns with what seems for me a new service, Google local. Done apparently in partnership with MapQuest, full local details and geographical position.
Microsoft® Windows® CE 5.0 Technology Preview
Finally ready for download here.
Button link flaw
From Neil's blog, another scary story about link spoofing with IE (and Opera apparently)
Gmail review
Read here if you want to know more about Gmail, screenshots included.
So what's the best April fool today :-)
Time to check and double chek every source we read today.
I invite all the bloggers to pay attention to the signature on the bottom of each new post.Microsoft it's time to patch .Net
<rant>
SQL Server Needs Revision
I can't be more agree with Jim Rapoza on Eweek.
General Network Error, so now what can i do now ?
OK I worked a lot on this stupid General Network Error. I follow the advices given by a lot of people.
Skype
Is somebody tried the new Kazaa adventure Skype, Voice over IP ?
Just curious to see if it's really working well.Wallpaper for Visual Studio .NET
Useless but fun, adding your kids (or wife) picture in the background of Visual Studio.Net
Exploiting .NET's Advanced Deployment Features
Tony Arslan shows how to use VS .NET's custom deployment feature to create configuration files on the target machine during installation.
Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition
First screenshots. Most notable thing, the ability to manage different screens size (square or not)
Service Pack 6 for Visual Studio 6
Microsoft Monday released a sixth service pack for Visual Studio 6.0 to fix known issues with Visual Basic 6.0, Visual C++ 6.0 and Visual Source Safe 6.0.
Mpx pictures from MDC
The new devices from Motorola are so cool. The slide below contains for me the mot exciting news, .Net compact Framework embedded !
And the full support of Microsoft tools, present and future. Very cool.
If you want to know more about MotoPro, check this series of slides from the MPC.What's New in System.Xml for Visual Studio 2005 and the .NET Framework 2.0 Release
Everything you need to know on the next version of System.Xml.
Message to
This is adressed to the bloke who have time to spent this morning flooding my mailbox with the same stupid comment (around 60 times !)
Windows CE 5.0 Beta
Available here for the 1st of April (hope it's not a joke :-))
Secure Password Generator
Via Aaron Weiker a web page to generate a secure password everytime you need one.
Data Application v2 ?
Scott Galloway mention something about a DAL v2.
Yes agree with him it's strange because I was sure v2 was there before Christmas.
Anyway this version is dated from 22 of March 2004 so maybe some bugs fixed !?Xbox price drop
The cut, which had been widely expected by analysts, brings the cost of the machine down to $149.99.
Booktalk
I discovered an interesting new service with the last Technorati revamp, Booktalk.
If you prepare an elaborated hoax for April's Fool...
... check this before :-)
SourceGrid - Open Source C# Grid Control
Interesting project by Davide Icardi on Codeproject
New Microsoft XNA site
[dScribe] A new version .. soon :-)
Polling
OK Andrew Seven has been kind to put me on the right track for the DAL and General Network Error issues.
He recommend to use more Dataset than Datareader and yes he's right because you don't have to think closing your connections with Dataset.Issue Tracker Starter Kit
A new Starter Kit from Asp.Net !
Sitemesh.NET
After reading the excellent but short article on ASPToday about AOP (Aspect Oriented Programming) in ASP.Net (written by Ann Jose) I found this interesting resource Sitemesh.
Microsoft Architect Forum - Notes and resources
You can find the slides at www.thearchitectexchange.com <file://www.thearchitectexchange.com> under the "Architect Forum Tour" tab.
DAL rest in peace
I wrote some posts regarding the General Network error and I am still not sure to find a right answer to this important issue.
ASP Today is back
Well this is probably the third time in one year ASP Today announced a comeback but it seems to be ok this time.
Just my opinion but I am not sure the mustard color they use is good taste, but at least it's not plain red anymore (Wrox used to be the latest communist site on this planet :-))Microsoft Campus tour
Dylan Green embark on a long journey throught the Microsoft Campus.
In 60 pictures and if your recognize some lots you can eventually comment.Below the building where the Exhange team works.Scoble office
Hey Robert, nice mess and not a single window, a bit depressive no :-)
FreeTextBox 2 be careful, not so cool !
I am a big fan of FreeTextBox and I was excited about the new version 2.
Well it's not because it's free that we can't be critic. And here it's a HUGE disappointment.
First the upgrade from the previous version to the new one is a disaster.Why you can't use Bluetooth in planes ;-)
What's wrong in this picture :-)
Fun picture from Stefano (or how to enter a CD in a floppy drive :-)):
Changes to Functionality in Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2
This document focuses on the changes in Windows XP Service Pack 2 and its implications for developers.
Examples and details are provided for several of the technologies that are experiencing the biggest changes.Microsoft Architect Forum in Dublin
If you are in Dublin or Ireland, you might be interested by the next forum organized by Microsoft.
Portable Media Center by iRiver
iRiver is really going to be the iPod competitor regarding the design of their products.
Go Beyond the limits of ASP.NET Form
One of the most common hitches that ASP developers encounter when they first approach ASP.NET is that managed Web applications must be written according to a single-form interface model. In the single form interface model each page always posts to itself by default using the POST HTTP method. The HTTP method and the target frame of the post can be programmatically adjusted using ad hoc form properties—
MethodandTarget. The final destination of the postback can't be changed in any way. You can correlate the terminologies a single-form interface to the single-document interface (SDI) and multiple-form interface to the multiple-document interface (MDI) in client server.Following is the description found on MSDN regarding the limitation.
CassiniEx
Based on Cassini Personal Web Server, a Shared Source License project from Microsoft Corporation.
CodeProject green mascot :-)
Thanks to CodeProject for this nice thought :-)
Adobe Launches Public Beta of New XML/PDF Form Design Software
Adobe Designer 6.0 (formerly Adobe Forms Designer) is a new "point-and-click graphical XML form design tool for designing and deploying intelligent forms in Adobe PDF or HTML".
FreeTextBox 2 or HTMLArea ?
Bloggidity.com ask the question. I know well FreeTextBox you can so I checked HTMLArea and yes it has some good point over the first one.
First it's open to different languages, so not only .Net but PHP for example. It's also full compliant with XHTML.
I discover also something cool, the fact that you can use plugins to improve the tool. One of them (see the demo here) is really something I missed in FreeTextBox (and others).
It's call Full Body and let you edit your HTML code with the Body tag, not without like others.New .Net site
ASPNETWorld is a new site dedicated to guess ... .Net of course ?
Clever design.SQL Yukon 2005 ?
I don't know but some guys here announced that Yukon will be SQL 2005 and release next year. Same for Whidbey.
What I don't get there is the so called press release is totally invisible from Microsoft website.
So where is the truth ? real info or guess ?EasyFTP
Dan the author of ToDoList (excellent tool), is now back with a new version of EasyFTP 1.1
Handy if you need a quick FTP access.CHM Reader
If like me, you use your Pocket PC to store your different Help files to have a quick access to a .Net reference for example, you can download this nice (free) utility: CHM Reader
Universal DAL
David L. Penton will show at the Plano Dot.Net Users group (http://www.pdnug.net/) something I really want to have my hands on, an universal DAL (SQL, Oracle, Access, etc...)
The news was posted only in a mail list so I post it back here in case you're interested:What Steve Ballmer think about the Ipod :-))
Simplified DVD labeling
Looking for a way to label your multitude of CDs and DVDs neatly and efficiently? HP has come up with an elegant answer: Use the same laser that already burned the data to make a label on the flip side of the disc. Microsoft Offers Another Chance To Get Whidbey Preview
According Paul Litwin, Conference Chair, Microsoft ASP.NET Connections, "Attendees can use this version, newer than the one distributed at last year's PDC, to see for themselves what’s coming in the next release of Visual Studio .NET."
The show will take place in Orlando, FL from April 18-21, 2004 and will feature keynote addresses by members of Microsoft's .NET team.
Sessions will be given by various Microsoft MVPs, Regional Directors, and other development community leaders on Whidbey-related topics that include Web Forms, programming ASP.NET, data/XML/app design, Web services, reporting, security, Windows Forms, remoting, and general design and architecture. Source: 15Seconds.com
Note: It could be interesting to know which release it's going to be.An Evaluation of Stored Procedures for the .NET Developer
Nice article by Christa Carpentiere on MSDN.
I am sure Frans Bouma will comment on this one :-))Personalization in ASP.Net 1.1
Dino (what a writer !) has a great article on personalization in the last MSDN magazine (March edition)
It's really good and let you build something looking like the future personalization in .Net 2.0 but immediatly available for the current .Net version.DefaultButton
Darrell Norton just released a new version of his DefaultButton.
New Service Pack for Office
Download here
Selecting multiple rows in a datagrid
Prashant Nayak show in Codeprohject how to select easily and highlight multiple rows in a datagrid.
Portscan how to fight back ?
Anybody has an idea how to fight back against the assholes who use a porstcan ?
X1 Search
I think X1 is going on the right way for what is going to be the big next digital revolution, searching information.
This time, this tool is dedicated for searching in your emails, and to retrieve any file on your hard disk. For the last feature, it's incrediby fast, if you compare to the Windows search equivalent.Amazon.com Syndicated Content
Amazon has RSS feeds now ! cool.
Default button - Cross browser solution
Thanks to Darrell for this great idea.
I use Andy (Metabuilders) ethod but this one works also for earlier browsers.Unhandled errors
I don't know for you guys but I still have issues with unhandled errors in web projects. The most infamous one is the General Network Error.
It's really annoying because I can't catch this error, so it not looking good to have this on a user page.
More this error come totally random. The only thing I know it's seem to be totally dependant with the network between the SQL box and the web server.
It's quite incredible, but it seems that Google returns a huge lot of various posts, messages of developers who have the same issue.squishyTREE
From Mark searching for a free Tree view control, and he found it :-)
FreeTextbox 2.0 !
Great news FreeTextbox is coming in a brand new version 2.0. Yahooo!
There we go with the new features:Where is .Net 1.2 ?
I found sad that a lot of hotfixes are provided by Microsoft only if you request them... by phone !!
I am sure if I count the number of patches available around I can create a .Net 1.2 easily.
So this is a call to the .Net team to create a clear update to fix all the things done by hotfixes. It would also make the patches more official.
It's going to be a while before Whidbey, so I supose it makes sense to have something before.
XHTML compliance could be one of this, maybe I can dream but Request Validation feature turned off by defaultNew design for Codeguru
Codeguru has a new design, quite nice and of course a lot of articles.
New technology
Not really geeky but good fun :-))
A new technology to change a printing image on a billboard with the weather dry or not :-))Locking a database design, is it really possible ?
I wish I could see some improvements in the future version of SQL Server and .Net about their dependances.
I try to explain. In SQL Server if something happen to one of your database, whatever the catching error system you implement, you finish all the time by broken your beloved .Net application.Kafka-soft world
Funny post from Paul. Welcome to Kafka land :-)
Background compilation
Paul Vick started a thread to provide a better understanding on a bug Roy mentioned earlier.
Very interesting, the first part is about background compilation.Official: Broadband will be for every school in Ireland
This is great news for Ireland and Education (and also good one for my agency).
The Government announced yesterday the agreement to provide Broadband access for all Irish schools !
The but on this story is the blur surrounding the applications around this. The thing I am sure enough is that the site Scoilnet I developed will surely be upgraded to include more 'heavy' content like videos or live conferences.
The other good thing is the project to provide each school with a website (imagine something like 4000 .Net websites!).
But I am a bit concern about the OS schools will implement. The person here in charge of the project (and of course not an IT :-( ) seem to push too quickly on a sort of Linux platform.
Help Microsoft ! I don't want to be a Linux developer :-))
I disagree in the sense that no really technical analysis has been done on the feasibility and the support of such a project like that. We talk here about 4200 schools !
Thankfully I know that Microsoft are on the ranks for this project, and I hope we can have at the end the same infrastructure they were able to build in Northern Ireland.VS.Php - Php integration for Visual Studio .Net 2003
From Jcx.Software
Is this the oldest Microsoft web site ?
I am not sure if this is for real or a good fake, but if it's true Microsoft changed a lot since :-)
Nemerle new language for .Net
Nemerle is a new hybrid (functional, object-oriented and imperative) programming language for the .NET platform.
I told you this blog is good :-)
Like Roy I did also the test:
Terabytes disks are at the door
Bill Gates was right when he predicted the arrival of Terabyte in our daily vocabulary. But it seems that some companies are moving faster than expected.Multi projects and deployment
If I have to define a wish list wish for the next release Whidbey I would like surely to add this.
I have a web project A deployed on a production server. After few months of good services, the site needed some new features and improvements.
So I deployed another project A on another development server B to implement and test the changes.
The difficulty here is the site A in production must continue its life cycle with daily updates.
So I am stuck here by the fact that I can't have on my development machine twice the same project using the same name, for two different servers.
Of course I can change the name on the server B, but when I would like to put it in production, I will have a lot of issues with page inheritance because they refer to B and not A.
On my development PC, obviously my local IIS don't let me having twice the same nameA big thanks !
Just to say thank you to all the people who give me some help and support this week end regarding the mess I had with some SYN flood attack.
The registry tweak worked fine. So now the site is working well again, but a big but here, the attacker still continue is dirty job.
Thankfully the Firewall block well everything, but it's quite amazing that nothing can be done against such assholes.Somebody has an idea to block SYN flood attack ??
I am really angry against the blokes who launched a SYN flood attack on one of my servers three weeks ago.
The problem is this continue again and again. I am so tired and fed up to play cat and mouse with spoof IPs.
The firewall resist well, blocking the attack and sending me back an alert by email.
But sadly, I can't make the site performing at his best. It seems that blocking is not enough, and the site is so slooow when the attacker come back.Xen On Track to Debut as 'X Omega'
At the same time, Microsoft's Research division is making the new language available to product teams inside the company for possible use or inclusion in forthcoming products.
Polyphonic C#
Polyphonic C# extends the C# programming language with new asynchronous concurrency abstractions, based on the join calculus. The language presents a simple and powerful model of concurrency which is applicable both to multithreaded applications running on a single machine and to the orchestration of asynchronous, event-based applications communicating over a wide area network.
A new small tiny PC
Vulcan announce a new small PC the Flipstart. And the brain behind Vulcan is only the cofounder of Microsoft Paul Allen.
So should be a serious stuff.
- Windows XP 1Ghz
- 30Gb hard drive, USB2, Wifi, Camera 1.3Mpixels !Icons get older too :-)
Couldn't resist to post this KB. Now the problem I need to try to see the effect. So what's next a tomb icon for 5000 users. LOL :-)
10 Things Developers Currently Do w/ SQL That They Shouldn't
Doug Seven talk about the mistakes to avoid with SQL Server like login with sa in a connection string.
Good fun with Q
Just have some good fun with this compilation of KB articles. Some are really amazing.
Computer Glitch Identifies Anonymous Amazon Reviewers
The glitch, reported Saturday by The New York Times, replaced pseudonyms with reviewers' real names, laying bare a culture of self-promotion and potential for revenge among authors and users of Amazon.
I wonder if some .Net writers self promoted their books too LOL:-)Create a Site Search Engine in ASP.NET
Another good stuff found in Developer Fusion, great site by the way.
This time written by Stevan Rodrigues and to show how to build a Search engine in your .Net project.Make your Classic ASP code work like in ASP.NET
Christian Calderon developed an interesting tool to provide some of the .Net events to classic ASP scripts.
Useful Color tools
A nice collection of online tools if like me you have to play with colors, or you just want to avoid some bad choices:
Devdays what Devdays ?
Just my two cents on Roy post about Devdays in Israel.
What I can say is the situation is probably one of the worst in Europe, maybe in the western world. We suppose to be the cutting edge country for hi-tech, we have an impressive Microsoft mini-campus, I am part of a growing developer community, and yes to my knowledge we still not have a DevDays or some kind of PDC.
The only thing eventually we got this year is a Longhorn preview with some weird stuff in the goodies bag. A Visual Studio 60 days trial version, some brochure about .Net career opportunities, and ... yes yes a Twix (in case we could be starving after the lunch) :-))
At least Roy you get a book, not bad isn't itDebug JavaScript in ASP.NET Apps
If you build your client scripts using Page.RegisterStartupScript, it's quite difficult to debug startup Javascript code.
Here you will find a solution using the debugger keyword in Javascript and Visual Studio.Net.INETA 2 years today
Read this great post from Bill Evjen about the second INETA birthday today.
Happy birthday :-)
Extract:Very young developers
Interesting poll found on CodeProject.
Martian Spirit :-)
Writing YABE (Yet Another Blog Engine) in ASP.NET 2.0
John Lam relate his experience on building a blog engine with ASP.Net 2.0. Brave man, because it's surely an adventure to play with alpha bits.
By the way John, do you have any place where we can see YABE ?A Journey of a Thousand Miles
Summary: Chris Sells begins his "Longhorn" Solitaire project at the ground floor, exploring the initial decisions developers will make when building new applications targeting Longhorn. (12 printed pages)
FreeTextbox 2 soon
It seems that some bloggers are aware about a soon to be release version 2 of the popular FreeTextBox.
The main changes seems to be the compatibility with different platforms and browsers( Mac, Windows, Linux, Mozilla, Opera, Netscape and of course Internet Explorer).
Revjon if you read this post, can you give us more details ?
By the way I just noticed that a version 1.6.5 is ready for download and it's dated 8th of February.TodoList 3.03
TodoList gets better and better. Check the last version. Cool !
Gush
Thanks to Stefano Demiliani for this link to Gush. Instant Messenger, aggregator, all in one, customizable and open source.
SMTP/POP3/Imap4/Webmail freeware
Lumisoft has developed a fully-featured Webmail C# app with sources and free.
Via ScottError catch in Whidbey
I forgot yesterday t mention the cool way you can catch an error exception in Whidbey at debugging time.
You indicate which error you want to stop on, and when you debug, Whidbey stops and show you the line where you have the issue with a nice bubble and soem advices on how to fix the error.
Neat but one question. Does this system can apply to any errors ? I think about the type of errors like Internal Network Connection (mostly linked to SQL connections and the pool).
Can we will have a way to extend the list to some new errors ?Treemap demo
I just received this from Pat Piccolo:
Passing parameters to an ASP.NET page running in an IFRAME
I am building a content management intranet for my company. The website is based on DotNetNuke, and uses the excellent FreeTextBox control in order to enter HTML into the articles. One of the best features of FreeTextBox is that you can easily add your own buttons and functionality to the control. For instance, the built-in function for adding images didn't meet my needs. My images are stored in SQL server, and require a custom 'src' property in order to retrieve the image. No problem - I added a new button to the control, and built a small aspx page that opens in a modal (popup) window. The popup window allows the user to choose an image to insert, or upload a new image to be inserted. But that's where my problems began.
The Problem
If you've never tried to run an aspx page in a modal window before, then I've probably already lost your attention. But if you have, then you've most likely run into a rather odd problem. Just opening and running an aspx page in a modal window works fine, but if you need to do anything that causes a postback, a funny thing happens. The page opens up in a new window. Worse yet, the new window that opens doesn't have any of the data that you just submitted. The whole thing is a total wash. And javascript isn't terribly helpful. What to do?
I am not sure comments like this ..
.. make things moving in the right direction:
Microsoft Security Bulletin MS04-007
I did some search (not too difficult) on my previous post and yes a patch has been launched today. But not yet on automatic update. check the Start menu on your PC and ask for windows Update
Windows Critical Flaw admitted by Microsoft
From BBC website. I am not sure but it seems to be new flaw.
Longhorn Preview: just few thoughts, nothing seriously damaging :-)
The preview day is always an expected event, especially when it's a first one I participated, because I don't remember Microsoft having other preview before.
First detail for the Microsoft team, we are talking about Dublin, so understand mental traffic, and total grid locks.
So please next time, can you try a start at Am rather than 8:Am. Not everybody live on Stillorgan road.
OK, now back to the main story, the conference. 5 parts, Longhorn overview (David Chappell), Avalon (Lester Madden), WinFS (Hans Verbeeck), Indigo(Clemens Vasters) and Whidbey (Nigel Watling).
I don't know if it was the time, but everybody was so silent. No loud 'Developers, developers, developers', no clapping, just a religious silence.
I can tell that Clemens Vasters had the most difficult part Indigo, with no demo, and just after lunch, the right time for a nap. By the way, very interesting piece of technology which will be made available before Longhorn, something for next year.
Just few thoughts on what I saw today. But before of course this is just my opinion and maybe I am wrong.
Avalon presentation give me this idea of deja vu, and after few demos I got it. It was seeing Logo meeting XML. No I am not joking. For the youngsters, Logo is this brilliant language created in the 70s/80s, using the concept of turtle to draw anything. XAML has this notion embedded in it, of course using more an XML approach, but the attributes, the coordinates, etc.. are stuff already done in the past.
The thing I don't get with Longhorn is that as developers, we can create a lot of nice things, but only for Longhorn users. for the other OS, we have to provide a downgraded version, so no fancy rotated animated button.
If I am right, Longhorn is not a server, so how we will deploy a navigator form for other platforms ? The answer this morning was not expected, create 2 versions of your application. Not sure I like that.40 today ;-)
Well I am not going to post too much about this non-event but believe me it's still strange those kind of round numbers, when your birthday come.
Every decade make you closer to a dinosaur than a cheetah, but hey what can we do to stop the clock?
Next post will be on the Longorn Preview day in Dublin with some thoughts. One I can already post in this note is this.
I saw some nice graphics showing the evolution of storage and the quantity of information we're dealing with today.
The point related to my post is the date. Having now 1970 out of the graph make me feel older. 1980 was the first entry just on the left corner and I suspect will disappear soon.Longhorn and Whidbey in Dublin tomorrow
I'm joining the crowd tomorrow to see the first Irish official presentation of Longhorn and Whidbey tomorrow in Dublin (By the way it's kind of funny that it will be also my 40th birthday ;-)).
Well Duncan and other Irish bloggers, maybe we can meet somwhere in UCD tomorrow ?
Let me know. And for the birthday cake, I like chocolate ones ;-)ViewState Optimizer
Thanks to Colt Kwong for this link to Flesk.Uploader.
By the way have a look to their other tools. One seems to be a good idea to avoid bloated pages with viewstate.;-)
XML critical patches
Rory and the pool
Interesting discussion going on with last Rory post. Make me also that Rory since few posts sounds more serious in his writings.
What's up Rory some brainwash after .Net rocks ?Close() or Dispose()...
Interesting post from Jim Blizzard.Still the debate continue but yes agree MSDN docs are the reference.
Lesson from the incident
OK I know we all have to check our posts before posting, no problem with that.
But without Scott help I was unable to delete the bloody post.
So I think it's bit scary to see that .Text is on the shoulders of one man, and what a great man :-)
No more seriously it should be a good idea Scott to have a kind of offline management tool for .Text, something we can use as a Window application.
IMHO I think our blogs management would make thing more secure and easier, if something like I did happen again and you're not free to fix it or maybe in Hawaii for some long holidays you deserve surely.htmlArea - Turn any text area into a WYSIWYG editor
Price: FREE! *
• Version 2.03 - IE 5.5+ for Windows only (changelog)
• Version 3.0 (beta) - IE 5.5+ (Windows)/Mozilla 1.3 (all OS) cross platform functionality.
* Go ahead and use it free in any web form you like. See the license agreement for the minimal restrictions.Update on my previous post
Hey guys just calm down ! Don't bombard me with hundred of mails !
I am not a bot and I can make mistakes like everybody isn't it Robert ;-))Apologies ;-)))
Sorry about that, but I screwed the main feed using an html keyword in my last post, and for some unknown reason, the online .Text editor has transformed this keyword
TreeMap.Net
MS Research has been working on an interesting thing: .NET components that display hierarchical data as a set of nested boxes.
For questions or comments, go to the microsoft.public.research.netscan.discussion newsgroup.
It seems that this tool was used first to do a newsgroups survey and analyze their importance in cyberspace.
The site C2i give an example on how to use TreeMap to show the space files are using on an hard drive.Powerful New T-SQL Syntax Gives SQL Server a Programmability Boost
T-SQL in Yukon is still there, the proof an excellent article on MSDN.
Cookies or cookieless ?
I just have a look at some stats on one of my project and I discovered that more than 53 % of the users of this website are still blocking cookies.
I'm surprised because I was quite sure that the cookies was now accepted by most of the Internet users. I am not sure where this coming from, if it's the type of users (teachers, schools, parents, kids) but it's a bit strange.
Thankfully I don't use any registration process on the site, but sadly I lost for these users the ability to track their session time on the site. For example the stats software is unable to give me an accurate number of new vistors versus returning visitors.
The solution I know will be to switch in cookieless mode, but I don't like really the ugly Url I have with this option.
Anybody there who had the same issue with cookies ?Undocumented stored procedures
Thanks to Manuj Bahl for this:
Scoilnet up again
OK I think I identified the IP responsible for making my server down today.
So because I hate this kind of practice, I make this trace route available for this communty. I know Microsoft folks are reading this blog, so if this can be helpful in their battle against those assholes, yes It will be after all a good day for everybody ;-)
It seems to take origin from Turkey, but it could be a fake ip, I don't know. This IP is coming a lot of time in my logs and yes I am quite confident this is the one (note the pingpong trap at the end of the route).
So I blocked this list of IPs and hope it will be ok for now.
Tracing route to 194.125.233.179 over a maximum of 30 hopsYukon
What's about Yukon available for MSDN subscribers ?
I would like to have my hands on Yukon like many others. I can play with Whidbey Longhorn but what's about Yukon ?Scoilnet down :-(
After checking my logs, I decide to close Scoilnet for the day. Sad because I feel useless against such denial attack.
I am not sure if it's related to the Mydoom story (well I didn't know I was famous as Microsoft or SCO;-)), but the imbeciles behind this forced me to shutdown the site for today.
The log entries increased by a factor 3 in less than an hour so unfortunatly it doesn't let me other choices.
Bastards :-((Solitaire patented ? ;-)
LOL. Thomas Warfield who like and develop a solitaire game has received a letter from a lawyer claiming that a patent exist on ... Solitaire ;-)))
Are we going mad ? Are we going to patent everything, the air we breathe, the footpath I'm walking on every morning, the melody I just created in my shower ! Crazy world.Folder permissions in Windows 2003
Is there something special in the security approach in Windows 2003 ?
I have really a painful experience with this OS on one server with folder permissions. What I want to do is a really basic thing, an upload folder where users can upload their images.
Works fine on my laptop with WinXP, but there, not a chance. I really tried everything, including giving full control permissions to Everyone on this folder.
I know it's not the best practice, but I can't figure out why it's still not working. The only thing I have 'special' is that the website itself is not under wwwroot, like I usually do in production sites.
Any idea ?Portable geek gym
Phillip Torrone's has a great way to make jogging a fun geek experience ;-)
Dispose and close or close without dispose
I just finished reading the comments on Rory's last post. And well I can admit I am confused.
The comments posted there make me think that nothing is absolute in the way you can deal with .Net coding. That sounds strange.Hosting Windows Forms Designers
Tim Dawson show in this article how you can use in your Windows application the same designer than VS use. If you are interested in building an IDE.
Good overview of the designer architecture.15 part webcast on VB.Net !
That's surely good stuff from MSDN:
Join Dr. Joe Hummel on Tuesday, February 3rd at 1PM Pacific Time as he begins a 15-part webcast series on software development with Visual Basic .NET.Reflector is now obfuscated
Reflector (3.4.6.0) is now obfuscated using Brent Rector's Demeanor. As a side effect the file is now a bit smaller.
UK Postcodes
This web service takes a UK Postcode as input parameter and queries PAF database in a matter of second and then returns you the FULL UK postal address that meets the Royal Mail standard. A Fully functioned Windows application front-end has been written to consume this service. download is available on request
Longhorn Developer FAQ
If you want to have some answers on Longhorn and all the concepts around this OS, check the MSDN Longhorn FAQ.
IDEA#.Net is coming
A new IDE is coming for C#, and it's a major one from Java world IDEA.
This is a post to resume more and less the news from Luke Hutteman I got via Scott Galloway:Forgotten Password Wizard Prompts You to Insert a Disk into Drive C
I didn't know it was already April fool in Microsoft ;-))
New MSDN Center
Linker missing in .Net ?
I think this is a great rant against the .Net runtime, so I like to post Joel's note as it is, because I share the same feeling. It's true that for Web applications, we have no problem.
But why we can't build ourselves a light embedded version of the runtime in our Windows projects, having only the libraries we need ? Joel give a good 'real world' example. I still have users with Windows 98, and I still have the pain to check that they have the right framework.Internet Explorer File Download Extension Spoofing
http-equiv has identified a vulnerability in Internet Explorer, allowing malicious web sites to spoof the file extension of downloadable files.
The problem is that Internet Explorer can be tricked into opening a file, with a different application than indicated by the file extension. This can be done by embedding a CLSID in the file name. This could be exploited to trick users into opening "trusted" file types which are in fact malicious files.
Secunia has created an online test:
http://secunia.com/Internet_Explorer_File_Download_Extension_Spoofing_Test/
This has been reported to affect Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.
NOTE: Prior versions may also be affected.
Source: SecuniaFree Search Engine Optimization Center
Very handy online tools !
Blogjet new version
BlogJet 1.0.0.13 Release Notes January 27, 2004 FEATURES * Added plain Blogger and MetaWeblog APIs. BUG FIXES * Proxy error fixed. * Inserting lj-cut on image error message removed. * F1 shortcut now works properly. --- BlogJet 1.0.0.12 Release Notes January 27, 2004 FEATURES * Voice attachments. Wow! * Blogware weblogs support. * lj-cut tags for LiveJournal/DeadJournal. * Custom path for image uploading. * Paste Special: normal, plain text or HTML code. * Shortcuts for Save, Open, View Blog Page, etc. * ESC key closes Recent Posts window. CHANGES * Menu: Post renamed to Post As Draft. * Menu: View Blog Page, Change Account, and Preferences moved to Tools menu. BUG FIXES * Fixed minimizing to notification area on startup. * Fixed various issues with categories in .Text accounts. * Receiving of MovableType/TypePad categories corrected. * MetaWeblog API (and .Text) problems fixed. * Fixed lots of bugs with Account Wizard. * Fixed problems with connection when using "http://" in host name. * New Post button now sets focus to Title. * Other fixes. KNOWN ISSUES * Progress indicator for history is temporarily disabled. * There is no help available.
Download BlogJet 1.0.0.13 BETA
CAPTCHA - completely automated public Turing test
Via Scott Galloway:
.Net known bugs list
An interesting idea via Stefano Demiliano. A list of .Net bugs.
I post it back here for the Microsoft crowd in case they want to comment ;-)ISA Server 2004 Beta
ISA Server 2004 is Microsoft's next-generation application-layer firewall, virtual private network, and Web cache solution, delivering new levels of security, simplified management, and performance.
See what's ahead in ISA Server 2004 Rich Custom Error Handling with ASP.NET
Eli Robillard has a great article on MSDN about Error Handling.
IT guy for sale on Ebay ;-)
LOL, some folk put himself on auction on Ebay !
Roy maybe you should try this way ;-)Caching, why it have to be so complicated ?
Well I have a subject where I have a lot to learn, and it's caching. For the moment I don't really get it. I tried to use some cache functions in some of my projects, but I failed almost all the time.
I can't really find a clever article on all the different options, and it seems that the Cache class in .Net is overcomplicated. I discovered that for example timespan is more important than I could imagine, and it's really hard to tune up precisely the different parameters to have something really working and universal. I mean working well with the different browsers, different platforms, etc...
Last time I used the server cache, it was working well for a week, and suddenly I had to deal with a lot of Internal errors, you know the so infamous error you can't catch.
I removed the cache and now it's working very well. Of course the performances are surely not the same, but I can't afford any crash on a live website.
Unless somebody has a great web link on the subject, I give up on this for the moment.XY coordinates after clicking a button
Just in case someone interested by this tip.
I have on a page a server image button linked to a click event. This button has indeed two different functions, one to go back to the homepage, the other to go to another page.
For different reasons, I didn't want to use an image map to make the distinction between my two embedded actions.
The trick I used is quite simple but works well, and should work also with more than 2 buttons.
In the server click event I just test the coordinates using Request.Form("Nameofmybutton.x") for the horizontal position and Request.Form("Nameofmybutton.y") for the vertical positionASP.NET configuration files
Very good article to keep in your favorites about web.config and machine.config details.
MSN Toolbar
In case you still don't know, Microsoft has just launched the first weapon on the search engines with MSN toolbar. Sure Google seems to be the target, and it sounds like history repeat itself. Remember Netscape ?
The thing I can say is that it seems for me more like a marketing tool to attract new MSN customers( fair enough, after all MS is not really a charity organisation) but it's really too much compare to Google.Secure an ASP 3.0 page with .Net, yes you can !
I was looking last week for a solution to secure ASP 3 pages using .Net forms authentication.
The reason can be simply because you don't want or can't change your existing code.
So Andrew Seven provided a great solution to bridge ASP 3 with .Net authentication and it works very well !
Thanks a lot Andrew for the great help.
Follow the story here.
Download the zip solution hereNew Visual Basic homepage
Mozie
Looking to compare a web page in Internet Explorer and Mozilla.
Well now you have Mozie !.Text search
Thanks to Scott to provide this very useful blog search engine.
Really cool ;-)Is it true
LOL ;-)
Via StefanoSoft launch today
I finally have a soft launch for different projects today. Interesting period of time now where I am going to chase the bug, and check the browser compatibilities of my new babies ;-)
And all in .Net !
Apart a bad DNS issue this morning everything is going well and smoothly. The three first site are part of a common project with RTE (Irish television) and are launched as a pilot.
The idea is to implement learning videos and in the future some form of digital tv and interactivity.Another rich text editor
The list of rich text editor start now to be long.
And now you have this commercial product CuteEditor 2.1 (done with .Net).
Some interesting ideas in thisroduct like:OS bootable from CD: a Windows solution
From Stefano Demiliani :
Authentication question
I'm stuck with an old project where I want to implement a login page using authentication from a web config.
The problem I can't solve is the fact that the pages are ASP 3 pages and not ASPX.
Obviously my form authentication works well with a .aspx page, no problem.
I can't unfortunatly cut and paste my ASP code in a new webform, too many pages and use of some objects.
Somebody has an idea how to implement easily form authentication with .ASP pages ?Use your PocketPC as a desktop PC
Synosphere is currently developing the Blue Dock, a docking station to allow a handheld to function as a desktop computer.
X# Is Alive and Kicking
Mary Jo Foley confirmed what I (and others) suspected last week:
[dScribe] Project status
I am late on publishing something about dScribe, but I still work on the next release.
Stay tuned !Another web project
How can I say thanks to .Net to make me more productive ? ;-)
With ASP, maybe one or two sites per year, not more, and surely with less functions.
I just released another website SAFT. It's part of a European project about Internet Safety, and it's the Ireland version.
So now in less than one year, I published 7 websites, small or big, using .Net and a good amount of SQL databases.
5 more are on their way, so the next couple of months will surely be a very busy period.
SAFT is built using my own ContentManagement System, dScribe. The idea is that I am going to implement dScribe as much as possible in every project I have.
So if I add some new features to dScribe, all projects will have them.Interesting shortcut
From Stefano Demiliani
Microsoft Linux champion ??
LOL ;-)))
A lot of new MVPs around the place today
It seems today that a good bunch of good guys have been awarded MVP by Microsoft.
Only one word Coool ;-)How to Use a GDI+ Application in NetCOBOL for .NET
If someone told me few years ago I could done this with Cobol, I will have a laugh ;-)
ASP.Net Client Side Focus Helper
Helper class that generates and registers a client side script which sets focus to a control during the loading of the page.
FlashMovie WebControl
RonVecchi posted on CodeProject a nice control to add a flash movie.
Chocolate mobile for Valentine's day
Like me you don't know what to offer to your beloved wife for Valentine's day.
This is an idea, and yes you surely be able to eat the chocolates not the mobile ;-)Events + Web = hell
This title is there to reflect the hell I live when you push the boundaries of event management, web and a little bit of client-side scripting.
I will launch in few days a new website about science in Irish schools for Secondary pupils, ScienceUnleashed.
Check yourself if you want to have a look, but be aware the site is still in debugging mode, and I can say it's hard, very hard to debug a web application with so many things happening on a screen.
I curse actually the Postback system, and I wish Whidbey improve the system.
An example. I build a dynamic Quiz working well alone. But I also have a popup control triggering a Postback, so I have to redraw the Quiz after the window show up, otherwise my Quiz controls will be empty.
But I have 4 different states for the Quiz, so every time a postback happen, I have to test which state I am before redrawing the Quiz. Pain in the ass!
Also reading the values from a form is basic stuff, but because you can have another event somewhere on the page I have to store (State bag) each value of my form. Pain in the ass!
And I have at least 10 cases happening like that !
I don't want to be too negative, the overall .Net experience is good for me, but I dream about some future improvements in a .Net web application like:
- Truly multithread events including Postback. Doing so, each event will have his own execution without the necessity to worry about refreshing the page.
- Better implementation (well surely in VB) of the events themselves. I would like to see something like a button click from my code. Maybe I am wrong but I couldn't find something simple to fire a button through my code.
- Less bloated viewstate. The source of the default page on my site look like the Champollion tablet, overloaded with strange hieroglyphs.Blogjet works now with .Text
Dmitry Chestnykh after I asked him for some modifications has finally be able to make Blogjet working with .Text.
So now you can use it for your .Text blog and the categories have also been fixed.MyIE2 update
Just be notified by MyIE that a new update is ready 0.9.13.
If you don't know what is MyIE, well it's Internet Explorer boosted !Google conspiracy
I like all the conspiracy stories. It's usually good fun.
Now Jim is coming up with his explanation on the recent algorithms changes Google made on their search engine.
A combination of patent issues IPO and shareholders.
Good theory, well documented, surely could be a great plot for a movie (well not so sure about this one ;-).About Windows Services for Unix and .Net Web Services
Christophe Lauer asked me more details about the web services access for any Unix application using WSFU 3.5.
I still can't find any other info than the one published by MS Pass.Xen is it the new name for X# ?
Many times in 2003 we heard about X# the next generation language combining XML and OOP.
We heard also that Microsoft abandoned the project. A internal video showing a presentation of X# has been released on a weblog and promptly the blogger was asked by MS to delete it.
Now Microsoft Watch come with some news about Xen a new language MS Research works on.
Reading the news (see below) it's looks for me that XEN is a perfect match with X#.
So what's up with Microsoft ? After all maybe it's just another project but the idea of combining XML, OOP and relational database model is very interesting.
IMHO, it must be a serious project regarding the number of documents you can find on Xen, mostly university articles. Just click on this Google link and you can see that the number of documents is quite impressive.
So vapor language or not ? Maybe just a nother C# Api ?Use HTC within Mozilla!
This comment to my moan about this is VERY cool:
Website Watcher
We have now a good bunch of aggregators to monitor our favourites feeds.
But what's about websites. I tested this afternoon an excellent shareware call Website Watcher.
And it does exactly what it say on the tin.
You can bookmark all your websites urls, news sites, blogs, etc... You click the update button one time.
After that you can specify an autowatch, sort of update timer, and this tool will monitor for you any changes in the fifferent sites you have bookmarked.
Cool! And I like the highlight feature they include in the software to show you in yellow background on the page where the changes happened.
If I continue like that, I am going to ask to my wife a budget for buying sharewares.Computer nostalgia
OK it's not .Net but just a bit of blues to see all this old machines on the web.
Fun also to see that you can still find bits and parts for almost any kind of computer ancestor.
I got the blues to see this picture. Surely a collector now. It was my first attemopt at computing.
Remember the Kim ;-)Windows nostalgia ;-)
For nostalgic only Windows 1.03 installation pictures.
I forgot that you need 10 floppies. Ah the good ol' 5" 1/4 !No new build for Longhorn developer previews seminars in Europe
The Longhorn developer previews seminars to be held in Europe coming months will be based on the PDC build 4051.
Post with Blogjet
For the folks blogging in weblogs.asp.net (surely the same for all .Text bloggers), now it's working well with Blogjet.
I post this using this tool, and it's really good.
I still like using the .Text web editor, but this is cool.
To have this working, in the config screen in Blogjet you must chose:Blogjet
UPDATE: Scott Watermasysk and Dmitry Chestnykh from Blogjet contacted me and they work on making this tool compatible with .Text and obviously our favourite .Net blog. Cool ;-)
I was able to login using metablogapi but no succes on posting. Always an error about an unrecognized method blogger2.newpost.Windows Services for Unix 3.5 are for free now
Microsoft Windows Services for UNIX 3.5 (SFU 3.5), formerly retailing for $99.95 US, is now a free download.
Version 3.5 of the software promises greatly improved cross-platform interoperability, as well as beefed up administrative and managerial functionality.
On top of the cross-platform bells and whistles, SFU 3.5 also allows UNIX applications to be made accessible through .NET Web services.IIS 5 Isolation mode
A couple of weeks ago I had some trouble with windows 2003/IIS 6. Finally I got my asp.net application which uses a COM component to work under windows 2003. I tried everything, I even gave my Network Service account administrator rights and even that didn't work. Until I found the IIS 5 Isolation mode option in the IIS manager. So if you're having problems getting a asp.net application to work under IIS 6 and getting desperate, try the IIS 5 Isolation mode. You can find it this way: Right click on Websites in the IIS Manager, choose Service and check the IIS 5 Isolation mode checkbox.
From: Jonne Kats
Via: Tech GuruGoogle more and more features...
Google has added more search by number features:
Sandbar
SandBar is a powerful toolbar and menu library for Windows Forms on the .NET framework. It boasts a comprehensive range of features that you would come to expect from a modern UI library and is designed to make your application look and feel like either Office XP or Office 2003 without writing a single line of code.
Some scripts
Paul Whitrow has an interesting blog where he share some cool javascript scripts and others functions.
Bindows
Bindows™ is a Graphical User Interface Toolkit for writing rich client side web applications with the look, feel and behavior of modern Windows™ applications. Bindows applications are lightweight applications with zero footprint which means no installation required.
Widgets
Stedy is a site to visit if you search for some DHTML code.
They almost simulate a full window application in a web browserSticky draggable windows
Brendan Tompkins come with a cool idea. He has a nice code to create some kind of popup windows with <DIV> tags and draggable.
In the comments somebody mention also Stedy which is also good.My 6th PC
I just installed my last PC (number 6) in my office and well it's an Apple G5 dual processor with 1 GB Ram.
My office looks like a kind of mad laboratory with such so many screens ;-)
But hey it's cool to be a geek. I am going to use the new G5 as a design machine but also to maintain a good bunch of small webistes we have here running on a Solaris server.
I made the decision few weeks ago when I had to chose something running Unix, well Apache to be exact to test some new projects.
Between a PC/Linux box and an Apple you know now what I chose.
So far the G5 is a winner regarding the design, the flat screen (look like a frame you want to have on your wall to replace the huge TV box sitting at home)Your Webness
Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web and director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), will be made a Knight Commander, Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth. This was announced earlier today by Buckingham Palace as part of the 2004 New Year's Honours list.
Weblogs Awards
I found this funny link where you can nominate a weblog in different categories.
Web Design References
Only a university can have the time to do such a job !
Database Cache Invalidation in ASP.NET "Whidbey"
Excellent article on MSDN Belgium
Mounting ISO images in a virtual CD-ROM drive
A few days ago I needed to install software from ISO images. There were two possibilies: burning the ISO images to a CD-ROM or using a virtual CD-ROM drive that can mount ISO images. My preference went out to the latter, so I decided to Google for it. And apparently Microsoft has an unsupported "Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel for Windows XP". The reason why it's unsupported became clear after downloading the product. It contains no setup (only instructions) and the interface is quite basic. But the software did its job very well.
Microsoft Download Music Service for 2004 ?
In an interview with Betanews, Lisa Gurry, MSN Group Product Manager, mention the idea that Microsoft will launch a music service this year:
"
MSN will roll out a music download service in 2004. We have no further details to share at this time on our download music service; however, MSN Music currently enables people to discover their own world of music online.
MSN Music currently employs unique SoundsLike technology and expertise from the MSN Music groups, so people can find and listen to their favorite music, discover and purchase music all online with complete artist biographies, discographies, music recommendations, promotional downloads, album previews, Billboard Charts and news all at their fingertips.
MSN Music delivers the best way to discover new music through its impressive breadth and depth of music content. The service offers more than 20 music styles, each with a variety of subcategories, resulting in a broad range of music content and preprogrammed listening stations for all tastes. Using this unique music-matching technology, MSN Music provides a huge variety of music and delivers the following key benefits and features.
MSN also offers MSN Radio Plus; this $29.99 per year subscription service allows unlimited access to 250 commercial free streaming radio stations with improved audio quality and utilizes the "SoundsLike" technology.Google Web APIs Beta 2
Scoble meet the IE team
Robert Scoble wants to be the relay between users/developers and the IE team.
Internet Explorer 6.05
In Longhorn Internet Explorer is looking good. Unfortunatly it's not available yet for Windows XP/2003.
ASP.Net 1.1 Update
Dino talk about a nice fix to have <TH> instead of <TD> in the header of a Datagrid.
Well done, but this is already in a rollup package announced in June. The difficulty is the fact that you can have the update only by calling the technical support.
Scott Galloway relay this too. "Incidentally, the hotfix package can only be obtained by calling support...why they can't just make the thing downloadable from ASP.NET is beyond me...Rob Howard - any particular reason? "Domain name issue with .Net
In a project I need to know the name of the machine where the code run.
Everything ok on different servers (MyServerName for example) , exception of a new one I just finished to setup (Windows 2003).Kodak abandoning film cameras
Well, you knew this was going to happen sooner or later: Except for disposable cameras, Kodak is going to stop selling traditional film cameras in Western Europe and North America. They're going to focus instead on digital cameras. They will keep making 35mm film, and they're going to continue selling reloadable film cameras in the rest of the world.
EmptyDatagrid control
Matt Hawley has been nice (and surely busy !) to send me his nice control EmptyDatagrid. I tested it and so far it works well and solve the problem.
How to be a geek without showing it ?
Simple. Get one of these incredible vests.
You can have all your favourite digital devices with you all the time, and now they just announced a new version with solar panels embedded in the shoulders.
So now you can charge your devices when you move. cool ;-)XBox 2 gets a codename
Well If this article is right, the new Xbox 2 is code name Xenon and should be there in 2006.
Seems that it will be a BIG year for Microsoft with Longhorn and others ;-)Strings Undocumented
This is an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at strings in the Common Language Runtime and the .NET Framework. This study provides detailed information of the implementation of strings, describes efficient and inefficient ways of using strings.
ASP Migration Assistant
The ASP to .Net migration tools seems to have been updated to a Beta status.
Empty Datagrid
I received an interesting comment from Jan Tielens about how to display an empty datagrid:
Empty Datagrid...
What to display if a Datagrid is empty ?
The question sounds obvious, nothing, but if your Datagrid has a fixed size, I think it's a bad idea to have a nice page with an empty space in the middle.
What are your favorite option?
- Display a fake grey or pale dtagrid to simulate a disabled datagrid ?
- Just a message to say that no data are present at the moment ?
- Something else ?
The first choice seems for me the one to go, but the difficulty come when you don't know the column details.Breakout game
It's so rare to see some .Net game articles and this one is a pearl, well no, a breakout
ASP.Net 2 Themes
Thiru Thangarathinam shows how easy it is to customize a .NET Web application's visual appearance at the site, page, or control level using ASP.NET 2.0 Themes
An improvement to RegisterClientScriptBlock
Chris Maunder on CodeProject found a new way to register your Javascript blocks, using a base class page.
Yet another forum
Well indeed it's the name of a new forum software open source and written in C#.
Handwriting
If like me you don't have a Tablet PC but you like to use your own handwriting, Fontifier is a new easy to use service to transform your own writing into fonts.
Interesting controls
I found this website with a good bunch of free controls via David and I think the list speak for itself.
I like also the mixed use between client side and server side.
The proof that you don't have to be a commercial company to provide an excellent job ;-)
Check Excentricsworld for more info.Comics and CSS
Check this new comics site PV Comics. They make a good use of advanced CSS techniques.
Windows Media Extender
Bill Gates announced at the CES the Windows Media Extender with some prototypes.
But something I am not sure if it's a good news is that you can only connect your extender to a Windows Media Center box.
Does it means you can't have access to your media stored on a Windows XP edition ?
If yes, no advantage, very disappointing because some products exists already like Homepod for example which let me have access to my PC (Windows XP).What programmer are you ;-))
For Dubliners and Irish Longhorn Preview
Just funny that this happens the same day as my birthday (40 !)
Future iPod ?
Aggregator
Robert **strongly** suggest that I use an aggregator to read only the posts I want.
The problem is that I like using a browser because I can find one in any computer I use (thankfully I don't have to work only on Windows;-))
I don't have to install any software and I am perfectly happy with this solution.
Anyway I tried few aggregators to use on one machine, but I still can't make my mind on a good one.
Anybody knows about some review or some kind of tests (like SharpReader, RSS Bandit, NewsGator)Make it short please ;-)
Please Sara and others from MS, can I suggest that you use the Article features of .Text ?
We lost so much from the main feed !Blogging and mobility
Finally I can blog from my XDA ! Very cool, thanks Frank for the links and the application.
Now I wish I could have access to my .Text admin tool from the browser. I really missed this feature.
I like the idea to blog on the move, so geeky
First issue, the login button is not clickable on a Pocket PC. I think because the button is a link with a CSS on top. Not sure that IE Pocket PC like CSS.
So if Scott or someone can have the fantastic idea to propose a Pocket PC version of weblogs.asp.net, it could be so damn cool ;-)Apple 2004 start like a very bad souffle :-(
Not really impressed by the Apple CEO keynote.
OK the new Ipod mini is cool, but I was expecting something better this year.
And a VERY loooong and booooring demo of GarageBand, something so NOT new !
I was connecting a midi keyboard to an Apple II and a C64 so long time ago.
Does it means that Apple has less and less interest in computers ?Microsoft and Apple: strange relationships like cat and ... mouse ?
I am watching actually the live broadcast of Jobs keynote, and some surprises already.
Window XP Service Pack 2 review
Via Scoble, if you want to know what's up in the next Service Pack.
Understanding Open Source
Everything you need to know about Open Source, the myths, the financial spects, etc...
Very interesting and complete lawyer view on the subject.The Apple of the year
I know we are talking about .Net here, but I am always excited every year at the same date awaiting like many the annual Steve Jobs keynote.
Yes I am still an Apple big fan, since ... 1978 (Apple II) !
And yes I believe this kind of excitment and madness surrounding the San Francisco MacWorld Expo is good for our business.
I would like to see Bill Gates doing the same. You should have a look at the number of mac rumors sites, it's really good fun.
And as usual, Steve will surprise everybody by something totally unexpected, last big one was the Ipod. Today everybody talk about a mini Ipod, others about a kind of Apple Tivo box.
I also like the fact that Apple is still there (Macintosh is now almost 20 years old), still shaking the industry by an innovative approach. Sure they don't create a mass market all the time but the Ipod is surely a success.
So now only few hours to wait and see what Steve Jobs has in his hat this year ;-)
