DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by mikeinmadison

Saving time with Ctrl-W

Wed, 12 Jan 2011 17:46:12 GMT

Describes how to map Ctrl-W to "Close File" in Visual Studio.

Getting started with NLog

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 19:08:53 GMT

Logging is one of those things that every web site an application needs. It's also one of those things that is easy to code in a short time. Because of this, developers often just write their own rather than use one of the existing logging frameworks. However, code makes bugs, and bugs increase development time. The usual reinvent-the-wheel syndrome with its usual side-effects kicks in. Up until now I've always written my own logging classes (guilty). Usually they just send emails for exceptions and sometimes they write a row to a table. That's about it - nothing fancy...

RPXNow MVC Project Template

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 12:39:32 GMT

RPXNow is a login solution that goes above and beyond just OpenID. It supports logging in via Google, Facebook, MySpace, AOL, Yahoo. the list goes on. And best of all, it has an extremely clean user interface - unlike most OpenID login forms.

ASP.NET MVC OpenID Project Template

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 12:11:18 GMT

A new Visual Studio template for using OpenID with ASP.NET MVC

if (IsPostBack) return;

Wed, 28 May 2008 05:29:17 GMT

I began using a single-line postback check a while ago, and I think it's better than using the usual block multi-line style. There are probably quite a few varying opinions about this, but my reasons for using the single-line (top) version include: 1. It's easier to type and more readable 2. There is no reverse logic 3. It saves a line or two of code 4. It's easier to comment out for debugging 5. The "Bunch of code" isn't needlessly tabbed in

DateTime.Round

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 08:44:14 GMT

I recently needed to group by minutes (or seconds, or hours, or days) in a LINQ to SQL expression, and I found that there isn't a round function built into the C# DateTime object. The following will round to the nearest second, minute, hour, or day. I stopped there because different months have different numbers of days (and I don't need to group by months.) but it is easy enough to add months and years to the code.

Creating a shared web site library in Visual Studio

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 22:43:15 GMT

There are many ways to create and consume code libraries for use in multiple web site projects within Visual Studio. One of the most popular options is to create a class library project and link to it from multiple web site solutions. A similar alternative is to place the binary dll files that are created when compiling a class library project into the bin directory of each web site solution you want to use it in, and reference it directly. While both of these methods work well (the first generally being the most practical) there are a few things that they cannot easily accomplish.

Getting started with VisualSVN

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 22:31:02 GMT

VisualSVN is simply a front-end for the command line Subversion functions, just like TortoiseSVN. The difference between the two is that TortoiseSVN is a "add-in" for Windows and VisualSVN is an add-in for Visual Studio.