DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by alessandrokicks

ABMHO --A SYNTAX HIGHLIGHTER THAT RUNS ONLINE AND OFFLINE

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 14:01:33 GMT

The first stable release of Abmho is out. It is by no means the first or only syntax highlighter on the web. There are quite a few out there but the vast majority aren't usable. Abmho can mix languages within the same code snippet, allows you to style your code with live preview and many more features. Perhaps one of the most interesting feature is that it is a silverlight application that runs both on the web and optionally installable as an OOB application.

Binding data from the ViewModel to the Wpf menu control

Thu, 05 May 2011 06:51:20 GMT

Databinding the Menu Control in wpf to a viewmodel can require a little bit of effort. As a menu control can contain hierarchical data, you must think of a data model to represent your menu items upfront, so I've decided to write a little about it. But before we dive into the meat and potatoes, lets try the basics first..

GETTING THE MOST OUT OF THE WINFORMS PROPERTYGRID CONTROL IN WPF

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 15:48:22 GMT

The PropertyGrid control has been missing in WPF since it's release and sadly it's still missing! There have been various attempts by third parties to provide one and I cant speak for the commercial offerings but I find the ones in the open source space to be quite lacking and incomplete. Most projects I found on codeplex are still in beta! I really like the api exposed by the original PropertyGrid which I have been using for years now but it's a Winforms control. This presents some problems. The main issue for me with the Winforms version of the PropertyGrid is that it's not styleable. So it means that I'll have some inconsistency in my UI and it will stick out as shabby and odd.

9 Quotes that stayed with me as a developer

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 11:23:32 GMT

I find quotes inspiring, motivating or sometimes just thought provoking, so here's some of my favourites from over the years.

Custom popup and windows in WPF the MVVM way

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 07:15:59 GMT

In WPF, using the regular window control to launch child windows makes MVVM and separating a View concern from the ViewModel very difficult. The problem: The window control works nicely as a shell for your application, however, launching child windows is problematic because the window control cannot be defined in xaml unless as the root element. So, if you wanted to launch child windows inside a parent window, you lose the ability to declare these in xaml. This loss means you will not be able to bind to properties in your ViewModel from the view for the purpose of opening/closing a window. Instead you end up doing this imperatively in code..

Display and Editor Templated View Helpers in ASP.NET MVC

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 17:18:53 GMT

Templated view helpers simplifies your work greatly by allowing you to specify that rendering is required for display (read only view) or input via Display and Editor templated Helpers respectively without needing to explicitly specify what Html element to map the properties in our model to.

MARS - Multiple Active Result Sets support in SQL Server 2005 and abov

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 10:17:49 GMT

SQL Server 2005 onwards supports MARS - Multiple Active Result Sets. MARS enables you to reuse an existing connection to perform operations on SQL Server. This makes MARS a viable alternative to server-side cursors with significant performance boosts. As powerful that may seem it has it's drawbacks so care needs to be taken when using it.

.NET exceptions, error handling for the exceptional case

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 09:34:28 GMT

The tip of the day consists of in making sure to use a try/catch block to trap individual exception types such as SqlException which is specific whereas Exception is more general. For instance, imagine you are connecting to a database, it's quite common to experience a connection failure that you might not expect. So it makes sense to try to handle any unexpected connection failures.

Silverlight 4 XAML debug

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 12:54:40 GMT

Having Silverlight 5 tools installed we could use XAML debugging also in Silverlight 4 applications

Silverlight or Html5 - from A .NET developer perspective.

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 12:54:40 GMT

If you are already invested in .NET, then you have been honing a particular set of skills for the past decade. This puts you at a position where it is difficult to favor Html5 simply because you lose some agility and sometimes this may make all the difference.

Five Things that HTML5 Video Currently will not do, but Silverlight or

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 12:54:40 GMT

This article will cover 5 pieces of functionality that are not built-in currently into the HTML5 video specification that Silverlight and Flash can solve. This article covers potential workarounds and how HTML5 will handle these limitations in the future.

Search engine friendly URLs in ASP.NET MVC using dynamic routing and a

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 16:18:24 GMT

This post tells you how to make your ASP.NET MVC website support friendly URLs by using dynamic routing and a SQL-Server database to store the routes.

Migrate the Jetpack theme from Silverlight to WPF

Fri, 15 Oct 2010 23:37:29 GMT

There is a great theme named Jetpack available for Silverlight applications which can be found on the Tim Heuer web site. I was wondering if it can be used in WPF applications and the answer is yes ! Here are the modifications I had to do to make all this work.

Beginners introduction to Jiffycms open source HTML Editor

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 20:00:52 GMT

Jiffycms HTML Editor is a rich text open source HTML editor with commercial grade features and is a great alternative to many free or commercial editors available today. It has great designer support in VS.NET and simply works out of the box without any additional configurations or plumbing on your part.

Why you should not use the ADO.NET Entity Framework

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 03:01:12 GMT

Reasons to why the ADO.NET Entity Framework is not mature enough for real business application.

The Problems with NHibernate

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 00:46:02 GMT

The problems that exist for NHibernate to become better, and have better adoption rates.

Conserving Resources When Writing BLOB Values to SQL Server and Stream

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 20:28:09 GMT

Reading and writing blob data to/from your database can be a resource hog, because it normally involves holding the entire stream in memory..

ASP.NET Menu, Click instead of Hover

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 18:18:54 GMT

A way to make the ASP.NET Menu Control respond to clicks instead of the default behavior of responding to mouse hover using a javascript override.

Building and binding hierarchical data from the database to the ASP.NE

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 04:52:48 GMT

If we need to bind our navigations controls to hierarchical data we define manually ourselves in an xml file, this is easy as pie. However, things can get rather complicated or not so obvious when we need to generate this data from a database. First off...

Customizing the ChangePassword control and removing the required Curre

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 12:59:03 GMT

When using the ChangePassword control, to my big surprise, CurrentPassword Field is a required field that i cannot remove. This is also a field that I do not want asked for during the password change request(since my user has forgotten their password and are now going to provide their new pasword)...

Common Data Patterns with LINQ to SQL

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 14:46:20 GMT

These examples aim to show the simplest possible way to get started with the LINQ to SQL in common scenarios.

Semantically correct markup and the casual table. Can they co-exist ?

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 04:09:29 GMT

I am sure by now, everybody has been scorned upon for not using semantically correct markup. It's all over the web today. The message is clear, Web standards are important. Valid Xhtml is important but above all, SEMANTICALLY CORRECT MARKUP! What is Semantically correct markup ? First lets define semantics..

Reducing UpdatePanel bloat by utilizing UpdateMode="Conditional" and C

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 20:03:20 GMT

Just the other day, i was playing around with my DataControls nested inside an updatepanel. While this was working well, since everypostback was being done via an ajax callback, the amount of traffic going back and forth was simply way too bloated. It's easy not to notice at first, because everything is working as expected. however imagine a simple situation...

Using SQL Server 2005's OUTPUT to return generated identity with ADO.N

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 17:28:56 GMT

This article focuses especially on ADO.NET-side of handling the returned values from the SQL Server 2005's OUTPUT. It is a good alternative for the scope_identity() etc.

Failed to load viewstate ? Typical problem, with an obvious solution.

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 04:28:23 GMT

WebForms is an event based postback model and as such understanding viewstate is fundamental for the proper functioning of your applications. If your building dynamic controls at runtime, then this is for you