DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by r3zim

New in .NET 4: Don't Forget to Dispose() your SmtpClient Instances

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 01:30:00 GMT

It seems the System.Net.Mail.SmptClient class has gotten a bit of a facelift in .NET 4.

Smarten up your UI with Task Dialogs

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 18:45:01 GMT

Put your message boxes on steroids. Take advantage of the new-look dialogs in Windows Vista and Windows 7 in your applications and smarten up your UI.

Free .NET Profilers and Some Paid Ones Too

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 12:00:00 GMT

Profiling is an important part of your software development process and allows you to determine improvements in your applications. In simple words, it is tuning your application to increase its performance. Here are some free and paid .NET profilers to do the job for you

Strive for Functional Cohesion

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 15:30:04 GMT

Today, I came across a random class at the bottom of a file (you do have one class per file, don't you?). This class had one static, readonly member on it, which was a regular expression used to determine whether or not an address was a post office box.

Check Uncheck all CheckBoxes in an ASP.NET GridView using jQuery

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:15:04 GMT

Kewl code that shows how to Check Uncheck all CheckBoxes in an ASP.NET GridView using jQuery

Implementing a simple genetic algorithm

Fri, 01 May 2009 17:01:02 GMT

In this blog post I'll give a quick introduction to what genetic algorithms are and what they can be used for. We'll implement a genetic algorithm that attempts to guess an RGB color by evolving upon a random set of initial guesses, until it at some point evolves into the correct RGB value.

Creating Visual Studio Templates from your Web Projects

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 04:16:03 GMT

Visual Studio has the nice capability to create project templates from existing projects and with a little bit of work it's real easy to create a project environment that's ready to roll without having to dig for related components first. This applies to Web projects more than anything for me as I have a fair bit of generic utility code that is project specific and needs to be added to just about all projects. Templates make this real quick and easy. Here's how.

Cleaning Up Your C# Closet, Making Messy C# Code More Readable

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 03:01:05 GMT

Struggling with an existing code base and want to tidy things up? This article gives some great tips on how to do this along with a real world example. The end result is much more readable code that is easier to maintain.

Not doing TDD is worst than doing it wrong in the beggining.

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 19:16:02 GMT

Check this out, and make a learn from it.

Getting rid of strings (2): use lambda expressions

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:31:02 GMT

In the first article of this series I talked about the problems with strings in code. This article will show you how you can use lambda expressions and expression trees as another tool to avoid strings

Nice VS 2008 Code Editing Improvements

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 16:16:02 GMT

Good improvements to take notice of when utilizing VS 2008

7 tricks to simplify your programs with LINQ

Mon, 19 May 2008 15:31:03 GMT

Ever since I learned about LINQ, I keep discovering new ways to use it to improve my code. Every trick makes my code a little bit faster to write, and a little bit easier to read. This posting summarizes some of the tricks that I came across. I will show you how to use LINQ to: initialize an array, iterate over multiple arrays in a single loop, generate a random sequence, ...

11 More Visual Studio Shortcuts You Should Know

Tue, 06 May 2008 19:16:02 GMT

Following our First Visual Studio Shortcuts post here is another batch of shortcuts.

Being a "nice" programmer

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 10:16:02 GMT

Being a C# developer by trade, I naturally spend a lot of my working life programming computers. Whilst I by no-means profess to be a "guru" of any kind, I do notice that there is one aspect of software development that is often neglected from discussion, and most programmers will hopefully agree with me as I explain.

Do You Really Want to Be a Development Team Leader?

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 15:31:02 GMT

Ask any up and coming developer what they would like to do in the next year or so and you'll invariably hear, "I'd like to become a Development Team Leader". Hopefully most will have actually considered the change of role and be looking for new challenges and ways to contribute more to their chosen profession. However, for some this is an automatic response to a question that is particularly difficult to answer in an industry with no clear career path. For others it's simply a way to move up the pay scale.

Empty try blocks

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 17:01:02 GMT

The article explains why you might see functions that do nothing in the "try" block.

The static Keyword

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 21:31:05 GMT

We all use the static keyword, but do we really know what the possibilities are?

Stop creating custom delegate types!

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 01:16:03 GMT

If you declare even a single delegate type in your code (and you're using .NET 3.5), stop and make sure there isn't already an Action or Func delegate that works for you.

JavaScript ForEach Equivalent

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 06:29:28 GMT

One thing with the For Loop in JavaScript is it doesn't seem to be very well documented that you can use it to do an equivalent of a ForEach loop. Here's a short example of doing the ForEach loop equivalent in JavaScript using the "in" keyword.

I Repeat: Do Not Listen to Your Users

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 03:01:03 GMT

Listening to users is a tricky thing. Users often don't know what they want, and even if they did, the communication is likely to get garbled somewhere between them and you.

Sound of one man testing

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 17:16:02 GMT

Recently I was chatting with a friend of mine and he asked if a single developer could be successful following TDD on a team that does not follow TDD. My simple answer was YES, they can. But there are a few things you must consider.....

Top 10 Best Practices for Production ASP.NET Applications

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 03:01:02 GMT

A list of some things to pay attention to when dealing with production ASP.NET applications.

The Most Useful VS Feature No One Seems To Use

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 00:46:02 GMT

Speed up your debugging time by using the Exceptions dialog box.

Build Providers: Strongly typed page urls in ASP.NET

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 03:46:02 GMT

A look at using a build provider to generate IntelliSense for pages within your project.

Custom Controls Design Time Support Part 2: More Design Time Attribute

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 14:16:02 GMT

Custom Controls Design Time Support Part 2: More Design Time Attribute