DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by Joel

A Serious Challenge for Open Source?

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:46:02 GMT

. . . what Mindscape has done is really quite impressive. To evaluate, accept, and incorporate feedback that quickly into the product and to have the installer ready that afternoon is impressive - for anyone.

A good coding font makes a difference. Envy Code R, better than ever!

Wed, 28 May 2008 04:46:12 GMT

Am I the only one who believes a great programming font can boost your productivity and increase your coding joy? Check out Damien Guard's superb new release of Envy Code R, my favorite coding font.

CSS Message Boxes for different message types

Fri, 23 May 2008 01:01:04 GMT

Can you believe this: Few days ago I went to my bank to check my credit score with the Credit Bureau. The bank official typed in my personal data and sent a request. Web application responded by displaying a yellow message box with an exclamation icon saying that data processing is still in progress. He checked several more times, but he didn't notice that at one moment the message changed to "Account available". But the message box hasn't changed. He continued to check a few more times and eventually he realized that the request was successful. I don't know what was in the minds of developers and designers who created this application, but it certainly wasn't the user. This poor bank official was really frustrated. I can't imagine what the rest of the application looks like.

Slick Button Maker Application

Thu, 22 May 2008 23:31:07 GMT

Do you have Web 2.0 button envy? Well envy no more, the Atalasoft Slick Button maker will make you one of those shiny buttons that will liven up any website. You'll be funded in no time. Free Application & Source Code

Capture Image Files to the Cloud using Amazon S3

Wed, 21 May 2008 06:16:10 GMT

Amazon has a very inexpensive storage platform called S3 that lets anyone who signs up store data in their cloud for incredibly cheap. Pennies per Gigabyte per Month. After creating your own AWS S3 account, you can use this application to retrieve documents from your own S3 bucket, and capture documents using a scanner directly into the same bucket. Application + Source Code included.

2 Easy Steps To Turn Your Blog Into An OpenID Gateway

Thu, 15 May 2008 22:01:14 GMT

Many of you probably have heard of OpenID, but have never had a chance to use it. However, I predict that most of you reading this will have used it by the end of the year. I can make this prediction with an almost 100% certainty because there is a growing movement behind it that has many big players actively buying developing and integrating their platforms with the OpenID protocol. To facilitate my prediction, of most of you using OpenID by the end of the year, I am going to give you 2 easy steps to turn your blog, or any website, in to a OpenID gateway. That will work for OpenID 1.0, 1.1, and 2.0 versions of the protocol.

Document Icon Generator

Tue, 13 May 2008 21:16:02 GMT

This command line tool generates a cool looking icon for a provided multipage TIFF image. The Document Icon Generator will take the first page of your TIFF and fold it's corner over. The page is then skewed slightly and a shadow is applied. The second page is skewed slightly and placed behind the first. This process repeats until you end up with a single PNG that looks like a stack of paper was loosely placed on your desk. [Application and Source Code included]

CSS sliding doors technique

Mon, 12 May 2008 22:01:04 GMT

This article will show you how to create fancy buttons using CSS sliding doors technique. It is much better to use this technique than to use image buttons because you can apply the style to any link and at the same time you don't have to create an image for each button.

Get Motivated - Motivational Poster Generator + Source

Thu, 08 May 2008 04:01:02 GMT

"I chose to focus on the typography and the color selection for the slogan. All of this is put together through one remote invoke to the aspx application on the server. On the server, there is a method called ReworkPage that takes an URL to an image, a slogan, and subtext. This method does all the work of building the image."

Monitor programs start/stop times with Process Logger 1.0 freeware

Sun, 08 Apr 2007 11:00:55 GMT

Monitor processes as they start and end on your computer, good for catching viruses, spyware, or just simple system diagnoses. This utility is written in C#