DotNetKicks.com - published tipsandtricks stories

Dial Those Keyboard Shortcuts - An Old-school Method for Productivity

Mon, 28 May 2012 13:16:26 GMT

Stop using that mouse and become a keyboard ninja in one easy step.

Configuring WebClient Timeout and ConnectionLimit

Thu, 10 May 2012 13:56:19 GMT

It is great how simple the WebClient class is to use, but unfortunately it does not natively support configuring it's timeout or connection limit. Good news, both of these issues are very easy to fix by simply extending the WebClient class.

Concurrency, Performance, Arrays and when Dirty Writes are OK

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 21:41:42 GMT

This article will show how to increase the performance of a rather simple algorithm up to 80%, by showing how we can accept a loss in absolutely accuracy, and also taking advantage of how processors work.

Backing up SVN to Amazon S3 in Five Easy Steps

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 21:04:45 GMT

Learn how to backup your Subversion repos to Amazon S3 using a simple batch file to automate the process on a Windows Server.

How to help yourself when NuGet goes down

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 16:47:03 GMT

Today will be remembered as the day that NuGet.org went down and broke quite some builds. While many people would love to see the NuGet team wearing a pink sombrero, there is something to say about wearing it yourself if you did not manage to work around this. Let me explain.

IIS 500 errors leave clues in the log

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 20:00:50 GMT

How IIS logs can help troubleshoot 500 internal server errors.

Going Faster: Sexy numbers and full post-mortem

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 14:49:20 GMT

In a followup to my article on how not to suck at serving web content, I go over what we did to improve page performance at DotNetKicks and why it worked. Read the first post if you haven't already: http://blogs.dotnetkicks.com/dnk-jump-in/2011/12/21/going-faster-how-not-to-suck-at-serving-web-content/

Using Git with Subversion

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 14:57:38 GMT

Do you love Git? Are you working on a project that's using Subversion? Well, did you know that Git actually integrates quite nicely with Subversion right out of the box? I'll show you what you need to know to get started with Git and Subversion, and I'll show you the workflow I use for keeping my work in sync with everyone else on my team.

.Net's Sort Is Not Secure. Don't Use It. Here's a better one.

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 01:57:26 GMT

.Net's Array.Sort (up to at least version 4.0) has serious weaknesses

Going Faster: How not to suck at serving web content

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 18:25:30 GMT

We've noticed some performance issues here on the DNK site. Check out our findings and read about how we're going to fix it! These are problems anyone running a website can run into, do yourself a favor and learn from our mistakes.

Manage your dependencies with Rake and Nuget

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 15:14:31 GMT

Josh Bush shares with us a rake script that works with Nuget 1.6 to automatically fetch and update your project dependencies without the need for checking binary files into your source repositories. It even does away with the package version folders, leaving your working directory clean of old versions that are no longer used by your project. Best of all, it allows everything new about Nuget 1.6 to be handled through 1 config file, rather than several.

Return Multiple Values from Methods with Tuples -- Visual Studio Magaz

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 16:05:40 GMT

You have a method that returns multiple values. So you have to define a class, instantiate it, set the properties to the values, and return the resulting object, right? Well, no you don't -- at least in .NET Framework 4, which gives you a simpler way: Tuples.

Beyond YSlow - Squeeeezing out website network performance

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 17:06:44 GMT

How much improvement can be made on an already well-optimised site, I mean one that scores very well against existing performance yardsticks? How much faster can you go without spending dollars on a CDN? Turns out there are big gains to be made very quickly - and it costs just a tiny bit of development time.

FEDe: A Search engine for Front-End (HTML, CSS, Javascript & jQuery) W

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 20:32:34 GMT

It explains about FEDe A Search engine for Front-End (HTML, CSS, Javascript & jQuery) Web developers having special tabs for smashing network, stackoverflow, ..etc in search result.

Using Dropbox as a personal Git and Mercurial Storage area

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 17:08:27 GMT

Quick tutorial on how to use Dropbox as a shared folder for Git or Mercurial

Ruby Rake Files And Directories manipulation tasks

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 17:15:36 GMT

Collection of Ruby Rake code snippets for manipulating files and directories during continuous integration process

C#/.NET Little Wonders: The Complete Collection

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 13:46:58 GMT

I will be giving my C#/.NET Little Wonders presentation to the St. Louis .NET User Group this week (www.stlnet.org). In preparation, I wanted to repost the index of all the Little Wonders and Little Pitfalls posts and presentations so that they would be readily visible for anyone new to these series. I also linked in my C#/.NET Fundamentals presentation "Of Lambdas and Linq", a short primer for those just starting with LINQ and lambda expressions.

XElement - Getting OuterXML and InnerXML

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 09:20:10 GMT

Very usefull for developers needing to get either the outerxml or the innerxml of an xelement. Similar to the XmlDocument methods

How to get intellisense in standalone javascript files in VS 2010

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 05:59:11 GMT

When jQuery is used within an ASPX page or within a CSHTML page, intellisense works fine. If the same jQuery script is moved to a standalone javascript file, intellisense stops working. This is very frustrating for the developers. This post gives a tip of how to enable intellisense in standalone javascript files.

Stupid Powershell Tricks Part 1

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 12:10:13 GMT

A Stupid PowerShell Trick is any PowerShell element that has the potential to make your life or work easier. These are not full solutions to exact problems, but rather small techniques you can employ in various situations. The idea for the session came to me after going over some notes for previous PowerShell and StudioShell sessions. I found that the most frequent and at times energetic question from the audience was "What was that you just did there?"

Using the Subversion Revision Number in NAnt

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 01:19:46 GMT

Learn how to update the DLL build revision number automatically from Subversion using Nant.

Dot Net Tools

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 18:15:23 GMT

List of .Net tools & utilities

Minimalist Coding Guidelines

Sat, 06 Aug 2011 15:44:03 GMT

A nice write-up on generic coding standards that can be applied to any language by any programmer. There are years of experience (42, according to the author) poured into this piece, and it shows.

Detecting high memory consuming functions in .Net

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 19:57:27 GMT

This is a good article that describes how to identify memory intensive functions using the CLR profiler. The article explains the features of CLR profiler. It gives step by step instructions of how to use the CLR profiler. Then, with the help of code examples, the author identifies the method that is consuming the most memory. A very good read with lot of screenshots.

10 Steps To Become Better .NET Developer

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 23:07:27 GMT

This is a well loved article by Rinat Abdullin that will make all of us better devs.