DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by deason

.NET Database Migration Tool Roundup

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 14:46:17 GMT

A overview of all the available DB Migration tools available on the .NET platform

Saving time and effort with advanced Monorail features

Mon, 26 May 2008 17:39:54 GMT

In the third part of the Castle tutorial, we look into the features of Monorail that allow us to save a lot of time and effort when developing web applications. We explore advanced Monorail concepts that help us delegate error processing and authentication to the framework and reuse templates. We also look into how Monorail integrates nicely with ActiveRecord to automatically load and modify database objects based on HTML forms.

RikMigrations 0.2 Released

Tue, 13 May 2008 08:13:48 GMT

New release of .NET database migrations library.

Using AjaxRepeater Control, ASP.NET AJAX

Tue, 13 May 2008 14:01:11 GMT

Recently after reading blog post Ajax Templates by Nikhil Kothari I really liked the idea, the source code is great, and the control is huge help for AJAX development. In this blog post I want to share what I learned after investigating sample more carefully, and in what scenarios I feel this control is doing it's job quite well.

TimeSpanPicker released under BSD

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 12:55:35 GMT

A BSD licensed Windows Forms control for editing TimeSpan values.

A C# fluent repeater

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 05:01:03 GMT

A fully-featured fluent class used for repeating method calls, handle exceptions, callbacks and more... Just plug-and-play and start repeating stuff!

Ajax Templates

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 06:35:40 GMT

A prototype for an Ajax templating solution, combined with an Ajax-friendly server-side solution based on asp.net server controls.

FormatWith 2.0 - String formatting with named variables

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 13:31:02 GMT

An improved version of the string FormatWith extension method. It now has the ability to also work with named variables, e.g. "{UserName} last logged in at {LastLoginDate}".FormatWith(user)

RikMigrations - There was movement at the station

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 01:33:35 GMT

Development is ramping up on .NET database migrations using RikMigrations. The project was posted here a few months back but now has 3 new developers and seems to be moving again.

AJAX-style Asynchronous Progress Dialog for WinForms

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 15:30:11 GMT

A base class for adding a rich asynchronous progress animation to any Form. My company develops a lot of rich-client applications and we have forever wanted a nice "slick" way to indicate to the user when activity is occuring in the background. Rarely do we know how long an operation will take (web services, remoting calls etc) so we always use to just stick a little barber pole type animation in the top-right corner of the main application window. This was never a perfect solution though because we still had to do all the nasty "locking" of the Control/Form to make sure they couldn't queue up another action. Moreover, setting Enabled = False on many WinForms controls can look quite ugly and inconsistent especially if the Form has got a variety of different controls. In recent years AJAX on the web has actually pioneered some interesting GUI concepts. I've always liked it when web sites pop-up with a central window that turns the background slightly darker and then ask you for some input. Then you type that input in and press an OK button and then you get a nice little barber pole animation to indicate it has gone off back to the server and is waiting for a reply for the next step (if any). That's basically what this project is about. Bringing that "cool" AJAX-style asynchronous indication behaviour to WinForms.

YUI Style Glowing Buttons with the AjaxControlToolkit GlowButtonExtend

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 21:01:02 GMT

YUI Style Glowing Buttons with the AjaxControlToolkit GlowButtonExtend

TDD Proven Effective! Or is it?

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 21:46:02 GMT

So when Phil Haack announced that Research Supports the Effectiveness of TDD I was more than a little interested in seeing what the linked report actually contained.

New BlogEngine Theme - ThemeEngine.LayoutGala

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 16:31:02 GMT

Another experiment in BlogEngine dynamic theming.

New* .NET 3.5 Feature: AddIn Framework ( Part 1 of 3 )

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 23:16:02 GMT

Introduction to the addin framework in .NET 3.5

T4 Overview and Examples

Sun, 23 Dec 2007 18:00:34 GMT

T4 (Text Template Transformation Toolkit) is a free template-based code generation engine from Microsoft. It integrates into Visual Studio and allows you to use ASP.NET-like template syntax to generate C#, configuration or any other text files. This articles provides an overview of T4, compares it to some of the existing alternatives and includes links to ready-to-use T4 template examples.

RikMigrations - Starting from an existing database

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 01:54:48 GMT

Shows how to generate .NET migrations from existing databases using RikMigrations.

DotNetKicks button extension for Blogengine.NET

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 12:46:02 GMT

An extension for Blogengine.NET which allows you to easily add a DotNetKicks button to posts.

Microsoft Live Labs - Volta

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 18:01:03 GMT

The Volta technology preview is a developer toolset that enables you to build multi-tier web applications by applying familiar techniques and patterns. First, design and build your application as a .NET client application, then assign the portions of the application to run on the server and the client tiers late in the development process. The compiler creates cross-browser JavaScript for the client tier, web services for the server tier, and communication, serialization, synchronization, security, and other boilerplate code to tie the tiers together.

ASP.NET MVC Preview: Using The MVC UI Helpers

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 04:31:02 GMT

Rob Conery goes over the new UI Helpers in the asp.net MVC framework.

AjaxDataControls GridView Part One

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 21:01:04 GMT

Shows the very basic features of AjaxDataControls GridView Functionalities.

SQLite for RikMigrations

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 00:58:03 GMT

SQLite support has been added to RikMigrations, the migrations framework for .NET. The SQLite provider has some limitations inherited from SQLite itself, but basic operations work fine.

De-crapify your code base with AOP using PostSharp

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 06:01:02 GMT

How to remove all the code thats irrelevant to what your trying to do, to make your code base easier to grok.

Announcing RikMigrations

Thu, 22 Nov 2007 13:31:02 GMT

A new open source database migrations framework for .NET. Brings Ruby-on-Rails style migrations to .NET but without being part of a huge project - just migrations!

Anti-Aliased Rounded Corners with the NiftyCornersExtender Control

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 15:46:02 GMT

Getting rid of those rough edges of RoundedCornerExtender-control

URL Rewriter for ASP.NET, IIS 7.0, or Mono

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 02:04:43 GMT

Managed Fusion Url Rewriter is a powerful URL manipulation engine based on the Apache mod_rewrite extention. It is designed specifically for ASP.NET and runs on Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) and Mono XPS Server and is fully supported in IIS 7.0. Managed Fusion Url Rewriter gives you the freedom to go beyond the standard URL schemes and develop your own scheme.