help.net

I just received a new version of Free Textbox editor.

For those who want an alternative (for free) to the excellent RichText Editor, this one now is a real competitor.

If you are happy enough with the tool, you can also donate ;-)

A free ASP.NET control written in C# implementing MSHTML in Internet Explorer. It can be validated using standard ASP.NET validators and has many options for customization.

The code can be download here, and the source code here

Roy wrote a good long post about productivity.

I say that his post should have the title : Be curious.

A developer must be curious, look everything that could increase his knowledge.

Excerpt from Roy:

 Even a Tabbed browser instead of good ol' IE makes it easier to find information while removing lots of clutter from your desktop. AvantBrowser is a good free one.

On this I disagree. This is huge debate, but developers should work with a default browser, without any gizmos or fancy toolbars.
We must consider working in generic mode, and you can't guess what the final user has on their computers, neither their type of computers.

I had the recent experience to code a website fullscreen for 800*600 screen, and the client complain that he couldn't see the full page.
Everything was fine on my side, and I discover that he installed a toolbar under the normal one with google search and other fancy tools.

I can just say that Windows 2003 Securities are top !

I know I shouldn't use it as my development platform, it's a server OS after all, but believe me it rocks.

I use it on my old Pentium III 500Mhz, and it seems to be faster than winXP.

The point is that absolutly everything is locked, so it's a kind of cat and mouse game between me and Windows to remove some restricted access, like in Internet Explorer.

You really have to go deeper in IE settings if you want something working like a normal browser.
For example, I couldn't make my DHTML menus working properly.
I didn't realise that it was not my code to be wrong, but scripting is disable by default in Windows2003 !

OK I am aware about security risks, but why going so far in the details. Can you really use Javascript to wipe out a client hard drive ?

Anyway, I am not complaining at all, it's quite a real good platform, strong and I hope not see too many patches until few months ;-)

And the simple fact to have .Net and the new IIS 6.0 installed de facto is absolutly perfect.
By the way, I just start to play with IIS 6.0 and MS mad a good job on the settings.
I think I will do something with the config file, because it could be handy to manage the sites remotely.

Thanks to Robert to help for hosting, and Frans (well I don't really understand dutch ;-)).
Victor give me apparently the solution and I will try them.

Hostinguk.net seems to be for me the first UK company to clearly talk about .Net 1.1 on their frontpage, that's good news.

Windows 2003 Support Centre

So what do you think your win os doing when you are going fishing ? ;-)

Watch this :

This is my Sunday rant against some hosting companies.

I don't know what's going on in US, but here in Europe, it's a disaster.

I absolutly needed a hosting company for a small .Net project.
I can't host this project on my own servers.

I was quite happy until now with my actual hosting company for ASP (no name here, that's not the point) but now it's a nightmare to have them running .Net.

Nothing is working as planned, I don't think they really setup their server properly.
I discovered that they just copy the ASP .Net client folder (1.0 and 1.1!!) in the root of the web application, and that's all. That's what they call .Net ready to use :-(

I don't know who's responsible there, the hosting companies or Microsoft.

But I think Microsoft should encourage their partners to embrace .Net, giving them some training on how to deal with this.

MS have to convince not only the developers, but also all the community.

What are you doing with a .Net webapplication if you cna't host it ?

Nothing is the same between ASP and .Net, and they still don't understand the differences.

And I don't talk about an isolated case, I heard already a lot of cases where developers have to abandoned .Net and go back to ASP for their projects if they don't host their site.
I am sure I can find a lot of good hosting companies in US, but I need to keep this project close to Europe.

So now we have our community growing:

Marcie the Datagridgirl
Roy the Regex Boy
Don the SVG Guru aka Barcode man
Scott the Weblogger
Sam the Interop bloke

UPDATE:
Jeff The Speedy bloggerman

Who's next ;-)

Tell me if I missed one of our 'mutants' !