Archives
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GUI 101 - Group Boxes
Often, it's the little things that matter. In any application, small changes to the user interface can have a major impact on the readability and usability of a form. Fonts, element spacing, order of elements, colors, etc., all come into play. A skillful designer can make a few tweaks to a crappy interface and make it a delight to use. It's easy to be seduced by the siren songs of AJAX, Silverlight, gradient backgrounds, etc., but simply grouping controls logically can be much more effective in providing a good user experience and…it won't make your web application run like a sick dog.
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Stupid Chart Tricks
The new free Chart Control from Microsoft is awesome (for download details see my original post here). But if you can avoid being dazzled by the plethora of charting features, you may realize it can be used for other tasks.
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Installing XP SP3 "Access Denied"
I like helping people but I do not like doing support. It's not really my thing. However, when I get a call from my father… I provide support.
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Custom Annotate Your Charts
A few posts back, I described the new Microsoft Chart Controls for the .Net Framework: Chart Demo. While playing with the controls a bit over the holidays, I was pleasantly surprised to find you can hook into the paint events while the chart is being rendered.
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Microsoft Chart Controls for the .Net Framework
I haven't been impressed by any new technology in a long time…until I downloaded and tried out the new Microsoft Chart Controls for the .Net Framework. It contains charts for both Forms and Asp.Net applications. It was easy to put this chart in an Asp.Net page:
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Free Tools that I Use
Here are tools I use on a regular basis. They have attributes I find essential:
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Summing Columns in a GridView
Level: Beginner.
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Nested Generic Lists? Cool!
While answering a question on the Asp.Net forums, I was pleasantly surprised to find nested Generic Lists are possible. They seem much easier than multidimensional arrays.
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Converting Strings to Enums
Enums are great. They provide additional type safety and make code more readable.