DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by boki

ASP.NET MVC P5 released on Codeplex

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 10:16:12 GMT

Keeping on with the 6 weeks release plan, the ASP.NET MVC team quietly release P5 of ASP.NET MVC on Codeplex.

The WPF ah-ha Moment

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:31:04 GMT

In nearly every bit of WPF training material or weblog there is some reference to the "ah-ha" moment. The point at which all the new concepts you've been learning gel into a cohesive unit. For me, that moment was one or two months after I started developing WPF in earnest (by which I mean for users other than myself). The task was to display two different indicators of a business metric, a green up arrow and a red down arrow.

Domain Objects Pattern

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 04:37:20 GMT

Defines and describes the benefits of the use of Data Transfer Objects (DTOs).

.NET Memory Management

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 19:20:18 GMT

Garbage Collection sure is great, isn't it? We don't have to keep track of all the memory we've allocated and we don't need to release that memory when it's no longer needed. Because that is after all what the Garbage Collector does for us, without us having to worry about it. This is actually a widespread misconception among many .NET developers. It's true that Garbage Collection makes memory management a lot easier, but we simply can't rely on it all the time. There are most certainly some things you must always keep in mind when it comes to memory management in .NET.

Create apple.com-like breadcrumb using simple CSS

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 08:01:02 GMT

Janko shows an extremely simple and nicely polished way to create graphical breadcrumbs like on apple.com.

12 Unit Testing Tips for Software Engineers

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 17:01:18 GMT

"In this post we look at a dozen unit testing tips that software engineers can apply, regardless of their programming language or environment."

Onion Architecture in Praxis

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 21:23:26 GMT

Jeffrey Palermo has coined the pattern onion architecture, so what is it? Actually it is "just" my default architecture, and has been for some time now. The ideas behind are not new, and it is related to other principles and patterns. Never the less I really like having a name for it, so we have a common understanding of it.

.NET 3.5 SP1 Get*CustomModifiers bugs

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:46:03 GMT

Oren Eini describes new bugs in .NET 3.5 SP1 with ParameterInfo.GetRequiredCustomModifiers and ParameterInfo.GetOptionalCustomModifiers

XNA, Meet WPF

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:31:02 GMT

The new D3DImage in WPF opens up worlds for WPF. Direct3D content rendered with WPF...it doesn't get any better! The downside is it seems (correct me if I'm wrong) that Microsoft was only targeting unmanaged Direct3D. Yes there is Managed DirectX, but it seems as if MDX is no longer being maintained and it's not so obvious how to get a D3D surface pointer from the API. It really seems MDX has been left in the dust in favor for XNA, which is a very intuitive D3D wrapper. XNA further exacerbates the issue with XNA and WPF.

Managed C++ and IDisposable

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 14:01:10 GMT

Quick fix for IDisposable compiler error

A Practical Review of ASP.NET MVC

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 03:31:02 GMT

My big project for the summer has been the creation of a content management system for my job. Due to deployment restrictions, I was forced to use the .NET platform for development. After hearing rumors of .NET running Rails via IronRuby, I jumped at the chance to write a Rails application that could be deployed to IIS on Windows. However, after getting a prototype running, I discovered that this would be infeasible for the time table I was looking at. IronRuby simply would not be ready on time. My second choice, then, was the new ASP.NET MVC framework.

Authorization policies in WCF: from tokens to claim sets

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 15:36:50 GMT

This post describes the process that begins with the authentication of a token and ends with a collection of claim sets, available at the AuthorizationContext.

Should my unit tests access the database?

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 19:50:44 GMT

Why you should abstract away the data access to improve testability - and why that doesn't mean you should NOT test your code's interaction with the database.

Abstract Factory Design Pattern

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 18:08:40 GMT

The abstract factory pattern is a design pattern that allows for the creation of groups of related objects without the requirement of specifying the exact concrete classes that will be used. One of a number of factory classes generates the object sets.

SubSonic v2.1 Controller and Utilities

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 22:16:02 GMT

Recently, SubSonic v2.1 was released and we upgraded the code we've previously published to support this new version.

Visitor Pattern

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 17:35:05 GMT

The post explain the use of the visitor design pattern and how to implement it in C#

Memento Pattern

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 11:11:57 GMT

The post describe the memento design pattern and shows how to use it in C# code

Partitioning an ASP.NET MVC application into separate "Areas"

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 21:31:10 GMT

A missing feature of ASP.NET MVC: separating controllers in different areas and namespaces.

Plastic, the .NET version control system, reaches 2.5

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 09:13:32 GMT

Plastic SCM, the .NET version control system, has just released version 2.5! Plastic implements features like merge tracking, good branching and has great GUI (.NET written). It is one of the biggest applications to run on Mono (both the UI and the server run on Mono/Linux). The GUI is one good example of what can be achieved with WinForms on Linux. Downloads are available for free for OSS

UI Decisions: How and Why

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 21:16:54 GMT

Hear from Ted Neward, Kate Gregory and David Kelly about responding to customer feedback, how to choose from the available UI technologies and how to enable the Vista experience in your applications.

Phil Haack: Unit Test Boundaries

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:31:09 GMT

One principle to follow when writing a unit test is that a unit test should ideally not cross boundaries.

Is Managed Code Slower Than Unmanaged Code?

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 08:46:02 GMT

Ask anyone the question above and they will say that managed is slower than unmanaged code. Are they right? No they are not. The problem is that when most people think of .NET they think of other frameworks with a runtime, like Java or Visual Basic; or they may even think about interpreters. They do not think about applications, or what they do; they do not think about limiting factors like network or disk access; in short, they do not think.

Update to: Microsoft cracking down on community extensions

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:31:02 GMT

The original story (http://www.dotnetkicks.com/csharp/Microsoft_cracking_down_on_community_extensions) got quite a bit of traffic from here. There've been some clarifications and updates from Microsoft and the StyleCop team that, I think, make their position clear and reasonable -- also, the original how-to that had been taken down "at Microsoft's request" is back up. A lot of people kicked the original story, so I hope you'll all take the opportunity to read Microsoft's responses and give them fair consideration.

Building Reliable Silverlight Apps With Model-View Separation

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:17:19 GMT

When people start developing RIA's in environments such as Silverlight they often write asynchronous communication callbacks in an unstructured manner, putting them wherever is convenient - often in a instance members of user interface components. Several problems almost invariably occur as applications become more complex that force the development of an architecture that decouples communication event handlers from the user interface: a straightforward answer is to create a model layer that's responsible for notifying interested user interface components about data updates.

Brad Abrams - Program Manager .NET Framework On Silverlight And .Net

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 11:07:11 GMT

Brad Abrams, Program Manager on the .NET Framework team at Microsoft discusses Silverlight and the .NET Framework.