DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by UnicornNinja

Regurgitating a sitemap file as an html list

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 22:15:38 GMT

In my ongoing efforts to create a helper library for myself that consists of commonly used functions in my development efforts, I've decided to write a sitemap generator. The concept is simple, I just want the contents of my Web.sitemap file to produce a Sitemap.aspx page which will serve as the basic sitemap for a web site.

Alert - Don't register domains at Yahoo!

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 01:58:43 GMT

The renewal cost for domains registered at Yahoo! have gone up 251% to $34.95 (or higher!) per year after the initial registration.

Top 10 Things That Annoy Programmers

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 04:46:03 GMT

Programmers all have their personal pet peeves. Whether it's scope creep, Hungarian notation, or smelly coworkers, there are certain nuisances that we must put up with in our line of work. The following is a list of the top 10 things that annoy programmers, compiled from the results of my recent question on StackOverflow along with some of my own experiences as a programmer:

How to change RDP listening port in Windows 2003 server?

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:46:02 GMT

This article will brief you on the way to change the default Remote Desktop Connection port to other port. This feature is important to protect your server from unwanted attempt access. Please also note that the firewall should be configured to allow such connections...

Why do people choose to start a project with PHP? Ever.

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:57:49 GMT

I If you were going to create any type of serious program for the web, wouldn't it make more sense to use a more robust language like Java or a .NET language? Yet, very large, very successful web applications are built on PHP (Wikipedia, Digg, Facebook, the list goes on.). New and innovative web applications are constantly being developed in PHP. Entire web development companies code in nothing but PHP! WHY!?

Open Source ASP.NET 3.5 AJAX Portal - new and improved

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 22:46:03 GMT

A new release of Dropthings, open source ASP.NET 3.5 AJAX portal. Features many performance and scalability techniques and a new design. Showcases: - 10 ASP.NET Performance and Scalability Secrets. - Fast ASP.NET page rendering by deferred script loading. - Load large amount of Javascripts in batch and thus load AJAX sites a lot faster. - Fast Streaming AJAX proxy that solves double downloading problems and continuously streams content from external domain. - Making best use of cache for high performance website. - On-demand UI loading on AJAX websites.

Newspaper - a free theme for BlogEngine.NET

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 22:01:03 GMT

Newspaper is a free, lightweight, high-contrast, black&white theme for BlogEngine.NET. The name "Newspaper" comes from the fact that theme looks like real newspapers. You can see how does it looks like and download a free copy.

I am a LINQ-A-HOLIC

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:07:10 GMT

When you first start using LINQ you can quickly fall in love with it. Suddenly, everything looks LINQ-able. But don't thow away everything you know and love just for this new tool.

A jQuery Client Status Bar

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 01:46:03 GMT

Status bars are very useful in client applications to display well status information and having a reusable and easily callable and configured status component to display messages is extremely handy. Here's an implementation that uses jQuery plus a bit of CSS to make short work of displaying status content.

15 Tools to Help You Develop Faster Web Pages

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 00:16:14 GMT

Response times, availability, and stability are vital factors to bear in mind when creating and maintaining a web application. If you're concerned about your web pages' speed or want to make sure you're in tip-top shape before starting or launching a project, here's a few useful, free tools to help you create and sustain high-performance web applications.

Code based ASP.NET MVC GridView

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 20:31:05 GMT

Maarten Balliauw shows you how to build an ASP.NET MVC html helper extension method which generates a nice gridview-like control using pure code and MVC framework.

Referral or Affiliate Code tracking Module in ASP.NET

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 04:23:36 GMT

I recently had a need to track referral codes for ad campaigns as they came in through Google ad clicks. This same module can easily be used to handle affiliate codes as they come in. This module will be executed at each request, will check for a query variable, and store the value in a cookie. You can then retrieve the cookie where ever you need it in you app.

Unofficial google shell... awsome

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 00:16:04 GMT

Web base command shell for google. What else can I say?...

Exception handling best practices in ASP.NET web applications

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 20:31:08 GMT

Exception handling plays an important part of application management and user experience. If implemented correctly it can make maintenance easier and bring the user experience to a higher level. If not, it can be a disaster. The goal of this article is to provide an overview of what exception handling is from the user perspective and the perspective of people who maintain the application, and to show the best practices of how to implement useful error handling in ASP.NET web applications.

ASP.NET: Web Site versus Web Application Project

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 09:08:45 GMT

The differences between the two models have been pretty well covered, or at least so I thought...

Awesome web development and web design articles and sites in May 2008

Fri, 30 May 2008 23:31:12 GMT

This article shows a reviews of 16 great articles and sites I found in May 2008. There are articles about web development with ASP.NET, Ajax and jQuery. There are also a great web design resources, tools, plugins, BlogEngine.NET extensions and one great usability article.

Test with multiple IE Rendering Engines

Fri, 30 May 2008 04:01:03 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.

Using an XML file for your ASP.NET settings

Thu, 29 May 2008 04:00:22 GMT

In this post I'll demonstrate one simple way to use XML to retrieve, edit, and save settings for your ASP.NET application.

UFRAME: goodness of UpdatePanel and IFRAME combined

Tue, 27 May 2008 00:16:03 GMT

UFrame simulates the behavior of IFRAME on a DIV. Any page can be loaded inside a DIV and hyperlink navigation and form posts happen within the DIV. As a result, a regular page can start providing AJAX features without ever writing any AJAX code. ASP.NET MVC websites can now use UFrame instead of UpdatePanel.

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.

May 20th Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET AJAX, .NET, Visual Studio,Silverlight

Wed, 21 May 2008 17:31:08 GMT

Apologies for the sparseness of my posting the last few weeks - work and life have been busy here lately. Below is a new post in my link-listing series to help kick things up a little. Also check out my ASP.NET Tips, Tricks and Tutorials page and Silverlight Tutorials page for links to popular articles I've done myself in the past.

Building a Utility Library Without Going Overboard

Thu, 15 May 2008 05:24:03 GMT

If you were building a utility library, what would you include or exclude? The purpose of this post is to try and get some feedback on which functions you would include in such a library and which you would leave out. The last thing I want to do is create some bloated set of code filled with methods that are rarely used.

Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 Beta

Tue, 13 May 2008 01:46:04 GMT

public beta of upcoming .NET 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 releases is published

Creating great thumbnails in ASP.NET

Sat, 10 May 2008 10:01:03 GMT

The built in function for creating thumbnails in ASP.NET is extremely convenient and very simple to implement. The trouble is that it produces relatively poor quality results and excessively large file sizes. The thumbnails tend to look very muddy when using this route, but many times it's good enough for whatever your needs may be.

Why I'm a better software developer than you

Thu, 01 May 2008 01:46:03 GMT

What makes one developer better than another? Shouldn't we all be performing at the same level? Of course not, we're not sewing buttons on an assembly line. We're using every bit of our intelligence to create something that we can only being to understand.