DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by bentracy

Rounded Corner Rendering in newer Browsers

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 13:15:00 GMT

Rounded corners in HTML have been an elusive target. It's been done a million times over, but most of the approaches from manually creating images to using automated JavaScript to using complex CSS layouts with dependent images are a pain to work with. CSS 3.0 offers some relief by providing native support for rounded corners, but you can take advantage of this functionality today in some browsers that already support this functionality via browser specfic extensions.

Subsonic 3 released

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:45:05 GMT

Just read Rob Conery's Blog and saw that Subsonic 3 is now available for download. For those unfamiliar with Subsonic it really is the ONLY no BS ORM out there, in fact it is so easy to get up and running that it is easy to forget that you ever set it up in the first place. The whole Subsonic ethic is to remove the hoops that other ORM's have you jump through and essentially to get you home earlier.

5 Useful Visual Studio C# Snippets

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 03:31:02 GMT

The title says it all. Save yourself sometime by using these snippets.

This Day In History: Gates Gets Creamed in 1998

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 21:06:03 GMT

In 1998, while in Europe, Godin got Bill Gates with a cream pie...right in the face. Gates, who was in the middle of trying to lighten up Microsoft's image, didn't even press charges. Classy Bill.

Oxite: OpenSource CMS from Microsoft Built on ASP.NET MVC

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 17:16:18 GMT

Simone Chiaretta writes about the recent announcement by Microsoft Evangelist, Jeff Sandquist, about Oxite which is an open source CMS built by Microsoft as a showcase and sample for ASP.NET MVC.

Microsoft kills Linq to SQL

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 14:01:13 GMT

Ayende (aka Oren) expresses disbelief at Microsoft's decision to effectively kill off LINQ to SQL.

Measure String Size In Pixels (C#)

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 01:16:03 GMT

Sometimes we need to know the width of a given string in pixels, do you know how to compute it? Before writing some long code, please notice that the .NET framework class library provides such a method...

Mono 2.0 Released

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 02:01:15 GMT

The Mono Project has released version 2.0 of Mono, enabling developers to run their .Net 2.0 applications on Linux and OSX.

Turn postcard photo into a stunning comment form using CSS

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 16:16:02 GMT

Comment forms allow visitors to leave their impressions about the content. Although the content is a king, general impression isn't negligible at all. Each element in a design can contribute to a better user experience. This applies to comment forms as well. This tutorial will teach you how to make a stunning comment form using an old postcard photo.

Create PDF with C#

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:01:02 GMT

Create PDF with C# on the fly

Your Software Can't Heal Itself

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 20:46:03 GMT

Stop pretending that you can guess how a 100k line application is going to fail, and stop putting in tons of code to account for failures that you don't know are going to happen. How come we often ignore YAGNI in the face of writing robust software?

Captcha the Flag

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 21:31:15 GMT

Jeff Blankenburg shows what Microsoft has up its sleeve for a new generation of CAPTCHA.

55 Free High Quality Icon Sets

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:01:02 GMT

A lot of freebie icons. Another great article from Smashing Magazine

The 20 most kicked "top-10 stories" for Developers

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 20:46:04 GMT

A compilation of the 20 stories dealing with top-10 links or advices that were kicked most in 2008

How Do You Exit Your .Net Application?

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 21:31:09 GMT

The question in the title does not refer to the actions you take when you are about to exit your application, issues like logging, closing file handles, freeing unmanaged resources and so on. It does literally refer to the exit action itself...

Flash Component for .NET

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 23:01:03 GMT

Sometime ago I had a task: to create a flash projector (something like Zinc or mProjector) with C#. This program should convert input SWF files and other resources into single EXE file that should work in semitransparent or window mode. Optionally, flash.ocx / flash9.ocx can be included into final exe file. After surfing over Internet, I've found this interesting product. I hope we will create a good flash projector with it :)

How to create web application user interface that looks like Outlook

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:01:02 GMT

How many times have you heard form a client that they want "outlook-like" web user interface for their application? Me, probably a hundred of times. In this article I'll explain how to create a web application user interface that looks like Outlook. You can see the live demo and download source code with images.

IE Sends Mozilla a New Cake for Firefox 3

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:31:02 GMT

Sean from Microsoft came by just a few minutes ago to drop off a cake for the Internet Explorer team. As people may recall, the IE team sent Mozilla a cake after Firefox 2 shipped and it seems that they wanted to continue the tradition.

Which kind of cast should you use in C#?

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 23:01:04 GMT

C# offers two casting operators: the prefix-cast and the as-cast. Although the two operators compile to different op-codes in the CLR, the practical difference between them is in how they handle failed casts. Prefix-cast throws an exception on cast failure, while as-cast returns null. It's easier to implement correct error handling when you use prefix cast, because it doesn't require manual checks for null values that can cause problems in distant parts of your program. Prefix-cast should be the default cast operator on your fingertips, that you use for everyday situations - reserve as-cast for special cases where performance matters.

Sending SMTP Email Asynchronously

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 22:16:09 GMT

Sending email using the Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP) can be a slow process, particularly when sending large numbers of messages using, for example, a bulk email tool. This process can be accelerated with considered use of asynchronous sending.

Test with multiple IE Rendering Engines

Fri, 30 May 2008 02:01:03 GMT

IETester is a free WebBrowser that allows you to have the rendering and javascript engines of IE8 beta 1, IE7 IE 6 and IE5.5 on Vista and XP, as well as the installed IE in the same process.

ThinDoc: AJAX PDF Viewer

Tue, 27 May 2008 22:16:08 GMT

This is a cool AJAX-based PDF viewer that includes a Bookmarklet to make PDFs on the web open in it.

10 Visual Studio Shortcuts You Must Know

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 18:31:02 GMT

A great list of 10 Visual Studio Shortcuts any software developer must know and use.

This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, People

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 20:46:13 GMT

A brief discussion of the Rob Conery TDD backlash, and what it says about open-source on .NET, and the community at large.

C# DateTime.MinValue is not the same as SqlDateTime.MinValue

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 05:01:02 GMT

Working with non-nullable types in C# can be a bit of a pain. For instance when I have a date as a string and need to parse it into a DateTime what should the value be if the parse fails? I can't use null because DateTime is not a nullable type.