DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by CarlJ

How To: Expand a Virtual PC Disk with VhdResizer and DiskPart

Sun, 10 May 2009 03:32:30 GMT

Learn how to expand an existing Virtual PC hard drive using the free VhdResizer and DiskPart

What's the difference between CONST and READONLY in .Net?

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 17:01:16 GMT

Ever sit around talking to your co-workers about random things, when all of a sudden you ask "What's the difference between const and readonly in .Net?". If so, you are not alone. If not, well, you're just weird.

Microsoft is giving you a Second Shot

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 04:49:42 GMT

The good folks over at Microsoft are again offering their Second Shot for free. If you register and take a Microsoft exam between October 15, 2008 and December 31 and pass, you get 25% off your next exam. If you fail, you can take the exam again for free.

Farewell Design Patterns Series

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 14:37:47 GMT

The post is the summary of a design patterns series with links to all the pattern posts of the series.

Best ASP.NET Twitterers

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 07:04:08 GMT

A list of twitter feeds every ASP.NET developer should subscribe to.

How to Apply Multiple Themes to a ASP.Net site

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 02:14:27 GMT

Ever wanted to apply multiple themes to your ASP.Net site, either page by page or by group (parent/child pages), and be able to easily change them without modifying any code? Here's a simple way to do just that using the sitemap file.

Microsoft's Cwalina : Exceptions are for "Exceptional Events"

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 06:20:51 GMT

Critical Baseline Knowledge...

Fixing Firefox's 'NS_ERROR_NOT_AVAILABLE' Error When Using PageMethods

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 06:16:43 GMT

Ever come across the "NS_ERROR_NOT_AVAILABLE" error message in Firefox when trying to use PageMethods, and couldn't figure it out? If so, I might have the solution for you.

Adding (or Inserting) Subheader Rows into a Gridview

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 00:47:29 GMT

Ever come across a situation where you needed to manually add (or insert) rows to a Gridview, but weren't quite sure how to do it? A few weeks ago I came across this exact problem, where I needed to create sub headers based on the category for each row. Here's how I did it.

Free App Du Jour: ASPhere 1.3.0

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 07:23:24 GMT

Are you sick and tired of manually editing web.config files? If so, then let me introduce you to ASPhere, a free time saving, must have web.config file editor.

Adding CSS Colors to Visual Studio 2005

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 12:50:50 GMT

One of my biggest pet peeves about Visual Studio, is that it displays a lot of HTML formatting errors as errors, instead of warnings, and one of the most common HTML errors that Visual Studio 2005 likes to display is the invalid color values, such as "AliceBlue", "Bisque", "CornflowerBlue", "Chartreuse" and "Linen" to name a few. Here's a quick and dirty way to solve this problem.

Roy Osherove - Every Code You Break

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 05:46:23 GMT

Here's a video of Roy Osherove singing a parody of Police's "Every Breath You Take" at TechEd 07 Barcelona.

Selecting Random Records With SQL

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 06:46:02 GMT

Have you ever wanted to be able to SELECT a random record or records from a database table, but was unsure how to do it with SQL, instead of through code? Fortunately there is a way to do it in SQL Server (and MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, DB2, SQLite, and yes, even your favourite, MS Access), and I'll show you how.

Ten Tips for Securing Your Blog

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 01:48:40 GMT

Ten brief tips for new and even intermediate bloggers to help secure their sites against spamdexing and malicious attacks.

The Unofficial Motto for TDD

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 03:29:23 GMT

Overheard on the ALT.NET Yahoo! news group: Scott Bellware coins an instant quotable on why we write unit tests.

15+ FREE Visual Studio Add-ins - Part 2

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 22:31:02 GMT

15+ Free Visual Studio Add-Ins (Part 1) was such a hit, that I've decided to use the feedback (and Google) to create Part 2 of the list. If I'm missing a FREE must have add-in, I'd love to hear about it.

Re-throwing an exception in .NET; the right way.

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 06:46:02 GMT

This is one of those "Yeah I've always seen people use it differently but I don't know why!" questions. Re-throwing exceptions can be misused, although it may not cause any harm to your application - there are multiple ways of re-throwing an exception, most likely for the purpose of bubbling it up to a higher level. Note to Java developers: It is different in your world.

Dynamically Applying Themes To Your ASP.Net Site With A Sitemap

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 10:31:04 GMT

Ever run across a web site that used multiple themes, either page by page, or by some sort of grouping, such as the old divx.com site, and wondered how to do it in your own ASP.Net site? If so, then what I'm about to show you might be of interest. If not, read on anyway's.

Getting started with Virtual Earth Mashups: showing current weather.

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 03:46:02 GMT

In this article we'll see how easy it is to use Virtual Earth SDK to produce a simple mashup, using web services that provide information in JSON format. We'll use data retrieved from a JSON web service to show weather icons and up-to-date weather information on a specific area selected on the map.

Clustering Virtual Earth 6. Performance, throttling and PNG icons

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 10:23:31 GMT

This weekend I upgraded the code in the clustering example to Version 6 of Virtual Earth. This means we now utilise the bulk add shapes method and the bounds for a birdseye scene. Additionally I added some throttling logic for ajax webservices and showed how to provide legacy support for PNG icons in IE6. Read the article here: http://www.viawindowslive.com/Articles/VirtualEarth/ClusteringPinsinVirtualEarth6.aspx

Add Row Highlighting to your GridView

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 09:13:20 GMT

I'm going to show you a quick and easy way that hopefully will help liven up your plain old GridView.

Remove generated JavaScript from your pages

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 06:31:03 GMT

One of the things that have always seemed a little weird to me is that ASP.NET auto-generates JavaScript and injects it in the rendered HTML. The JavaScript is needed to handle validation, postbacks, callbacks etc. but why does it have to write the same static functions when it could just as well be placed in a referenced .js file? If all the static functions where placed in an external .js file, it would be downloaded once instead of every time a page loads.

XNA Toolkit - New Collection of XNA Tools by Nick G

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 02:46:02 GMT

Nick Gravelyn has just released a small set of tools for the XNA Framework, he has called this tool set "XNA Toolkit". At the moment there are only two tools included in the set but it is a good start.

21+ FREE Regular Expression Tools & Resources (for .Net Developers)

Sun, 21 Oct 2007 18:31:02 GMT

A list (and review) of 21+ FREE Regular Expression tools and resources, mostly for .Net developers.

MVP Pattern tutorial

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 02:01:03 GMT

An example of how MVP pattern could be used