DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by jiltedcitizen

10 Laps around Silverlight 5 (Part 6 of 10)

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 14:55:32 GMT

In Part 6 of this SilverlightShow series, Michael Crump discusses several new operating system integration features in Silverlight 5 including: P/Invoke, Multiple Windows and Unrestricted File System Access in Full Trust.

Open Source ASP.NET Ajax Polls (for Umbraco and any ASP.NET 4.0 Web Ap

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 14:56:32 GMT

MAP Teams has just released open source Polls Widget for Umbraco 4.7 and any ASP.NET 4.0 Web Application Site. The new things: 1. Mustache/Nustache Templating engine for the server side and client side. 2. Umbraco package automation using Ruby Rake.

Build business apps in .NET-not HTML or JavaScript

Sat, 12 Nov 2011 03:20:28 GMT

WPF is dead. Silverlight is dead. You should be moving to HTML/JS already. Hold on a second! A great argument for .Net.

31 Days of Mango

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 13:00:41 GMT

A great new series on Windows Phone development, specifically focused on Mango (7.5). Jeff Blankenburg will be writing a new article for 31 straight days.

OWASP Top 10 for .NET developers part 7: Insecure Cryptographic Storag

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 07:23:21 GMT

In the 7th part of the series on addressing the OWASP Top 10 within ASP.NET, we look at how cryptographic storage can be implemented securely. The post looks at how poorly implemented hashing can be easily broken with rainbow tables then moves onto secure hash algorithms, proper use of salts and the implementation of symmetric encryption.

grok-posh: interactive .net

Thu, 05 May 2011 18:00:27 GMT

This post is part of my grok-posh series describing why developers should learn PowerShell. A PowerShell console is basically an doorway into the entire realm that is .NET, COM, and WMI. As I say in my talks - you can think of PowerShell as an interactive way to discover, obtain, and manipulate objects.

Rounded Corners and Shadows

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 19:56:36 GMT

Well, it looks like we've finally arrived at a place where at least all of the latest versions of main stream browsers support rounded corners and box shadows. The two CSS properties that make this possible are box-shadow and box-radius. Both of these CSS Properties now supported in all the major browsers as shown in this chart from QuirksMode:

Things I really like about Telerik's JustCode

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 13:49:59 GMT

Review of JustCode by JVP

The Big View Engine Comparison - Razor vs. Spark vs. NHaml vs. WebForm

Thu, 04 Nov 2010 15:57:31 GMT

One of the cool things about ASP.NET MVC (and other MVC web frameworks) is its capability to change the default view engine with a Microsoft or a 3rd-party one. In this post I'm going through the basic operations we do with our views and show you how to get them done with the default web forms view engine, Razor, Spark and NHaml.

Technical Debt Is Like Your Friend, The Mafia Bookie

Wed, 06 Oct 2010 14:15:52 GMT

You've known the guy for years. he's your friend and you've never had any troubles in spite of his job. Then one day, you're hard up for some money to pay rent or get a car repair done. Fortunately your friend is there to help. In spite of your misgivings about taking money from him, he assures you that it's just a friendly loan between people that have known each other for years. It has nothing to do with his professional life, he says. In fact, it was such a small amount of money that he may not even ask you to repay it. You can relax knowing that it's not a big deal and you took care of your needs.

Working with WCF: Part Six - Fault Contracts

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 15:41:15 GMT

What is and why do we need a Fault Contract? Well, if the days of ASMX based web services there was no built-in way to report exceptions back to the client. For the most part, the only way a client found out something was wrong was that the call to the web service timed out. There was no other explanation. This was a tremendous source of frustration for client developers, and also prompted many a developer and architect to pull their hair out over the prospect of reporting some sort of exception information back to the client. A lot of developers, myself included, broke out the duct tape, chewing gum and bailing wire and attempted to build some sort of notification mechanism that would not leave the clients hanging (no pun intended). These solutions ranged from complicated to outrageously complicated. All met with limited success. WCF introduced the concept of a Fault Contract.

So long Microsoft, and Thanks for all the SPLA!

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 15:57:18 GMT

I would like to take a moment and thank Microsoft for driving away developers. The .NET framework is an awesome application stack, ASP.NET was incredible when it first came out and ease of administration on SQL Server is near perfect. But like all good technology from Microsoft, it is quickly ruined by MBAs hoping to squeeze out another record-breaking quarter on Wall Street.

When your WinForms UserControl drives you nuts - Roland Weigelt

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 18:18:48 GMT

An Old but good article on Winform user control issues. Making public properties non browsable, having default values, etc.

Driving Your Career Series Transcripts

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 12:33:55 GMT

Sit shotgun with Brian Prince in "Driving Your Career" - a 32-week screencast series that explores the new skills developers need to thrive. Brian will tackle relevant topics including quick learning techniques, how to manage your career, how to build consensus, and the always-tricky task of talking to humans. Brian will share his expertise of being a manager, a consultant, and many other roles over his career, to help you succeed in yours.

Implementing the Notification Pattern using DataAnnotation Validator

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 13:55:09 GMT

Some weeks ago a friend of mine told me about System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations. It's a relatively new addition to the framework, mainly Asp.net related (mh, was it Mvc or Asp.net Dynamic Data? I'm sure he told me, but I can't remember). Although I'm more focussed on client side development (WinForms + WPF), what he told me made me curious enough to spend some time with it in order to investigate whether the DataAnnotation framework could be reused for validation in a desktop app.

A List of Essential Tools for a new Computer

Sat, 27 Mar 2010 14:45:00 GMT

I've just received my new computer and decided it was a great time to share my favorite tools that I carry with me to every computer I use. These tools save me time and make me happier. I hope they'll make you happier too!

Working with WCF: Pt 2 - Your First Host and A Bit About Configuration

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 14:00:06 GMT

So now you have a service, congratulations! What are you going to do with it. Some people like to say of WCF that you have ". a multitude of hosting options" but in reality you have two; host it in IIS or create your own host.

A Visual Look At The LINQ SelectMany Operator

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:00:00 GMT

An inside look at how SelectMany works, along with visuals to help you more easily understand it.

PlantUML Editor: A fast and simple UML editor using WPF

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 14:45:00 GMT

A WPF client to design UML diagrams at the speed of coding. Forget all mouse based designers. This is the future of UML diagram design.

Learn to Code ASP.NET MVC 2 : Introduction to ASP.NET MVC 2

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:17:43 GMT

This coding exercise is designed to give you an introduction to ASP.NET MVC 2. In this exercise, developers will create their first database-driven ASP.NET MVC 2 application within Visual Studio, primarily using code generation built in to Visual Studio. Developers performing this exercise should be familiar with ASP.NET development and Visual Studio, but no previous experience with ASP.NET MVC is required.

Optimize LINQ to SQL with PLINQO Futures

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 16:30:07 GMT

PLINQO future queries are a way to defer query execution until it is needed. The difference between standard IQueryable deferred queries and future queries is that the future queries are batched up and executed in a single round trip to the database.

.NET Projects: Generating Documentation with Sandcastle

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 23:15:02 GMT

This is a walkthrough in automating Sandcastle to generate API documentation during an automated build process.

Integration Testing Your ASP.NET MVC Application

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 07:15:00 GMT

Unit tests are great for proving the correctness of a single component. But how can you prove that you whole ASP.NET MVC application hangs together properly - including its view templates, configuration settings, and database schema? Integration tests cover what unit tests can't - Steven Sanderson shows one way to approach it with ASP.NET MVC.

Pimp My Debugger - DebuggerDisplay Attribute

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 12:46:10 GMT

The other day I was reading some friends code, and I saw that he used a DebuggerDisplay attribute. It allows you to create a custom view of your objects in the Visual studio debugger. This attribute is very straight forward, but very powerful in the amount of time it can save you when debugging your application. I'll show you a cookie cutter example, but you can use your imagination as to how to use this particular attribute.

Back to Basics: Generics

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 21:01:12 GMT

Introduction There are language features that are nothing more than syntactical sugar. For example, C#'s coalesce operator (??) is a short-handed and specialized if-else. Object initializers make it easier to set properties on a newly created objects. Some features though go beyond mere convenience and add real value. I know it seems like we constantly have to learn new things, while at the same time actually produce code to pay our bills. It can be hard to pick and choose what to learn and what can wait. Let me be straight up though: if you haven't mastered generics yet, you're starting to fall dangerously behind.