DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by ASPrunner

Monorail Vs Rails Isn't a Meaningful Question

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 14:01:02 GMT

There are reasons for either of the three choices, but we technologists often fail to actually make a choice as much as we choose not to choose for not being even aware of our choices. How do you know that you're using the best, most productive tools?

DotNetKicks Beta 1 Available For Download

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 17:46:02 GMT

I have just tagged and uploaded SVN revision 132 as DotNetKicks Beta 1. Enjoy!

Using LINQ to XML (and how to build a custom RSS Feed Reader with it)

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 11:01:02 GMT

Describes how to use LINQ to XML. Shows an example application (RSS Feed reader) built by using LINQ to XML.

Attempting to Demystify Behavior Driven Development

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 11:46:02 GMT

After receiving several emails and reading Roy Osherove's post on Behave#, I wanted to give more incite and answer some questions that were asked about Behave# and BDD in general.

Announcing MbUnitForms!

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 10:16:02 GMT

I've ported NUnitForms to run against the increasingly popular unit testing framework, MbUnit.

LINQ to SQL Pipeline

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 11:01:02 GMT

C# Principal Architect Matt Warren and Lead PM Luca Bolognese detail the pipeline that hastens your LINQ queries to execution. Matt did most of the design and implementation of this code. His explanations are vivid and useful. The drawings are well organized, well executed, and clearly explained. Matt and Luca have worked together for years, and they make an excellent team.

Reflection performance put in perspective

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 08:01:02 GMT

The web framework I built over the last few years, ProMesh.NET, relies on reflection for a lot of the features it offers. Often though, I am asked if the heave use of reflection doesn't have a significant impact on performance. My answer usually is: YES, but it doesn't matter. Now you probably think that I don't care about performance or that I've had too much too drink. None of the above. I'll explain:

The Null Object Pattern

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 07:16:02 GMT

An alternative way to alleviate yourself from checking for null each time you work with a potentially missing object.

Inversion of Control and Dependency Injection with Castle Windsor III

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 14:46:02 GMT

Third article of a 4 parts series about IoC and DI with Castle Windsor Container. This article tackles configuration properties, includes, type converters, decorators and configuration conditional statements. Any feedback, questions, ratings are welcome and will be answered as soon as possible.

Free refactoring tool for ASP.Net and Visual Studio - Must See!

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 11:01:02 GMT

Developer Express released a free version of their refactoring tools for ASP.Net. There are also links to a funny screencast and to an article with many screenshots in the blog entry.

Repeater control and separator

Wed, 30 May 2007 05:16:06 GMT

Repeater control extention allowing for flexible use of SeparatorTemplate. For example you can specify to show the separator for only every third item etc.

Silverlight Links - The Silverlight Launch Pad is Ready for Launch

Wed, 30 May 2007 17:01:01 GMT

Here are all the Silverlight resources that I know about, in a nice somewhat organized collection for easy review. My intention is for this to be something of a Silverlight launch pad. Feel free to share these Silverlight links, and please mention any others you know of in the comments section.

Silverlight and Friends: Read all about it

Wed, 30 May 2007 17:46:01 GMT

Silverlight, Windows Presentation Foundation, XAML, and Expression Blend are all best friends. And like any super hero team, they work best when they work together. I've been wanting to learn more about the fab four, so I've put together this collection of reference material for our consideration. I'll update as I discover more...

Microsoft Popfly Links - The Microsoft Popfly Launch Pad

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 18:31:01 GMT

A good collection of Microsoft Popfly links.

Microsoft Popfly - Who is Digging You?

Thu, 31 May 2007 11:46:01 GMT

"My first Popfly application: Who is Digging You? Lets you see, literally, who is digging you on Digg.com. It works best when the Digg user has set up a profile picture otherwise you get the "anonymous coward" picture. :)"

Microsoft Popfly Cheat Sheet

Wed, 30 May 2007 15:31:01 GMT

"I've been using Popfly for just a short while now, and while I do enjoy the drag and drop visual design surface, it doesn't lend itself to text lists very well. Sometimes I just want a text list of all my possibilities in one place. This "Cheat Sheet" covers the top 50 official Popfly blocks, and not any end user created blocks. There's almost another 50 of those as well."

Sierpinski Triangle - An Introduction into Silverlight by Example

Thu, 31 May 2007 13:16:01 GMT

I've put together a beginner's introduction into Silverlight on CodeProject.com. The article covers how to use Silverlight to create the famous Sierpinki Triangle fractal. It's really meant to help someone who wants to create their first Silverlight experience, but then again maybe that's you?

Debugging C# 3.0 Part1

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:16:01 GMT

C# 3.0 introduces many new constructs and opens entirely new ways of thinking and developing you code. In this article I will talk about the new debugging features that make it easy to see the running code and better understand it.

Optimize HTTP requests and web service calls

Tue, 29 May 2007 20:06:24 GMT

Speed it up from web.config

Any Interest in Building Test Driven Community?

Wed, 30 May 2007 18:31:01 GMT

I'd like to gauge the interest in building a free, online community dedicated to discussing and learning test driven development.

EntitySpaces 2007 Released

Wed, 30 May 2007 06:31:01 GMT

The EntitySpaces 2007 (ES2007) Architecture for the Microsoft .NET Framework was released to production on May 28th, 2007. The EntitySpaces team would like to thank both our customers and those evaluating EntitySpaces for working hand in hand with us on the ES2007 release. The first ES2007 beta was posted on March 4th and thus began the customer feedback / defect reporting cycle with new versions following quickly as advancements were made. You have truly helped us to make EntitySpaces 2007 a very solid offering for those developing for the Microsoft .NET Framework. We are particularly pleased with some of the mobile development that is beginning to take root. We strive hard through our forums to hear you and allow you to shape the architecture you have invested in. We also work very hard to provide high quality support on our forums and to make ourselves available to our customers. ES2007 is a major advancement over it's predecessor (1.5.3) released on December 30th, 2006, these are just some of the new features.

LOLCODE

Tue, 29 May 2007 12:16:18 GMT

If cats could code, this would be their language.

Why to avoid FULL OUTER JOINS -- and what to use instead

Thu, 31 May 2007 11:01:01 GMT

Using FULL OUTER JOINS results in sloppy, inefficient SQL, with no true structure and NULLS in potentially every column in the results. Here's some better ways to write your SELECT if you think you might need to use a FULL OUTER JOIN.

Introduction to WPF Animations

Tue, 29 May 2007 10:52:39 GMT

WPF is a new framework that has many advanced capabilities. Animations are one of those capabilities, where an object can be animated via rotating, stretching, scaling, moving it across the screen, changing its color, etc. This article will show some of the basic animations.

7 simple steps to ajax-enable your ASP GridView

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 13:16:01 GMT

I recently used the AJAX.NET framework in a project and I was impressed with how easy it was to implement and how much it improved the usability of our pages. Our project had quite a few advanced search pages where users can enter in a number of different filters and then hit the search button (usually iteratively - filter/search; filter/search; etc...). Before the Ajax framework and Ajax Control Toolkit were applied to the pages, each time the user would tweak a filter or request a different column sort, the complete page would refresh. After adding Ajax to the pages, just the GridView is re-rendered giving the user the much nicer web 2.0 user experience. Anyway, here are the steps I followed for adding these features to our project ...