DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by gsbell

Microsoft Releases SQL Server 2008

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 19:16:02 GMT

Customers and partners worldwide confirm mission-critical applications, enterprise-class data warehousing support.

Forgot that connection string?

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 04:16:03 GMT

Provides connection strings to many databases by many methods. An essential reference.

Project anti-pattern: Many projects in a Visual Studio Solution File

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:46:06 GMT

I've been hearing from several colleagues about how their Visual Studio solution files have many (i.e. more than 10, and usually more than 30 -- in one case, more than 100!). So far, none of them have been able to give me any good explanation for why this is and most of them hate it but they can't change it because their architect/lead/whatever won't let them. I'm hoping that by getting the discussion going on this in the greater community, we can try to discourage everyone from having lots of projects in a solution.

Web developers. You suck.

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 17:46:05 GMT

Well, JavaScript developers, specifically. In order to aid in development of my own websites, I enabled JavaScript debugging in Internet Explorer a few weeks back. To my horror, I have quickly experienced what seems to be complete disregard for serving syntactically correct JavaScript on the open internet. No, I'm not just talking about a few niche websites, run by amateur programmers. I am talking about industry-leading nerd-friendly powerhouse websites that should know better.

Jump between braces in Visual Studio.

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 17:01:09 GMT

Move fast between open and close braces. No more scrolling to find beginning of that illusive if statement.

Blog Engine.NET1.4 Upgrade Guide

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 08:01:04 GMT

The upgrade process is fairly easy but there are a few things to be aware of. more....

Visual Studio Power Toys Are Back! : Visual Studio Hacks

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 17:46:10 GMT

The missing power toys have been found and are now on MSDN Code Gallery.

Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 22:16:05 GMT

Internal email from Bill Gates detailing his difficulties with Microsoft.com, Windows Update, and more.

Speed up Firefox when using Development Server

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 18:31:02 GMT

Using Firefox on Vista to view websites hosted by the Visual Studio Development Server can be unbearably slow. Pages take aeons (i.e. several seconds) to load while viewing the same site under IE does not suffer from this issue. Here's how to solve the problem.

IE Sends Mozilla a New Cake for Firefox 3

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 15:31:02 GMT

Sean from Microsoft came by just a few minutes ago to drop off a cake for the Internet Explorer team. As people may recall, the IE team sent Mozilla a cake after Firefox 2 shipped and it seems that they wanted to continue the tradition.

What a developer needs from their manager

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:16:03 GMT

I've a read a lot of articles talking about what it takes to be a good development manager. There are also articles about what makes a good developer. I thought it would be a good idea to describe what a developer needs from their manager.

"Velocity" project - memcached by Microsoft?

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 00:31:07 GMT

Is the Velocity project by Microsoft simply a me-too framework or are they creating real value for developers on the Windows platform?

Give Your ASP.NET Applications Velocity

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 07:16:03 GMT

Scaling ASP.NET Application just got easier with a new technology that Microsoft has just released that they have dubbed codename "Velocity". This product is still in the early stages of development, but it is meant as a direct competitor against memcache.

Test Driven Development Naming Conventions and Guidelines

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 09:31:12 GMT

New TDD and experienced TDD developers will find this list of naming conventions and guidelines useful.

Sysinternals, now easier to get than ever

Sat, 31 May 2008 14:01:07 GMT

The sysinternals team has placed all their tools on a network share... on the internet. Now you can copy and run any of their tools from the command line. Anywhere. With no installs, website googling, unzipping or anything. \\live.sysinternals.com\tools\

Alt.NET Podcast Launched!

Tue, 13 May 2008 23:01:04 GMT

The Alt.NET Podcast has a new podcast. The premier episode is a conversation with David Laribee, Jeremy D. Miller, and Chad Myers about continuously improving yourself, your code, and your team. Give it a listen!

Day-to-day with Subversion

Wed, 07 May 2008 14:46:03 GMT

A good post that highlights some of the functionality of Subversion

Free Tool - Extract Hard Coded Strings to Resource Files

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:16:02 GMT

A Microsoft tool - Resource Refactoring Tool. This tool provides developers an easy way to extract hard coded strings from the code to resource files.

.NET Developers: Recommend Your Favorite Open-Source Projects

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 21:31:02 GMT

VSLive speaker Jeffrey McManus is asking .NET developers for help with recommendations on their favorite open source tools.

How to: Use strings in a secure manner with SecureString class

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 17:01:02 GMT

The classic System.String type doesn't provide enough security for storing sensitive data like passwords, credit card numbers or personal information. If a String object contains sensitive information, there is a risk the information could be revealed after it is used because your application cannot delete the data from computer memory. Starting with the .NET Framework 2.0 the SecureString class is available. It was designed to provide encryption for sensitive data and other useful functions.

Google AdSense Advertising - eeech...

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 17:46:02 GMT

Rick Strahl has a great post questioning how much fraud Google actually lets through with AdSense.

How DotNetKicks posts are being ripped off for other sites!

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 15:01:02 GMT

How posts from DotNetKicks are being copy-and-pasted wholesale into other sites. Is your hard work blogging just being stolen for other companies traffic?

Book Review: LINQ in Action

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 16:31:02 GMT

Rick Strahl reviews "LINQ in Action". He sounds pretty pleased with the book.

UI design patterns library

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 15:46:02 GMT

Very cool site which shows give you ideas about visual presentation for misc elements of user interface

Why Microsoft Will Win, and Dominate the Web.

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 16:31:02 GMT

Is Silverlight a Flash killer? No. Is it intended to be? Nope. It's much more than that. Will you still see flash animations on sites? Absolutely. But, will you see real applications on the web, built in "AJAX"/Flash? Nope, they will be built using Silverlight. Dare I say, you might someday see Flash running on top of Silverlight! Why not?