DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by hatchling_nz

A Serious Challenge for Open Source?

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 23:46:02 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.

Free Visual Studio File Explorer Add-in

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 09:31:03 GMT

The Visual Studio File Explorer Add-in (sexy name we know, but hey, it's self documenting) is a free Tool Window add-in for VS 2008 that provides a Windows Explorer style file system view. It's particularly useful for performing routine file system tasks without the need to "context switch" away from Visual Studio, which can be time-consuming over the course of days and weeks. It is shell-enabled so extensions like TortoiseSVN work too.

Elegant Invariant Checking with C# 3

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 07:16:03 GMT

Leveraging expression trees and extension methods to build a fluent invariant checking API.

When to use LINQ?

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 04:16:03 GMT

Great, in-depth discussion of when it makes to sense to use LINQ in LightSpeed 2.0.

Introducing LINQ to LightSpeed

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 03:31:02 GMT

LightSpeed 2 incorporates LINQ (Language Integrated Query) support. LINQ to LightSpeed means that if you know LINQ, you can get these benefits without having to learn a new API. You can continue to write LINQ queries as if against LINQ to SQL or another LINQ provider, but you'll get database independence (effectively LightSpeed gives you LINQ to Oracle, LINQ to MySQL, LINQ to PostgreSQL and LINQ to SQLite as well as LINQ to SQL Server, all in the one box), advanced eager loading functionality (avoiding the so-called "n+1" problem which affects some LINQ implementations) and of course the blazingly fast LightSpeed query engine.

"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?

LightSpeed 2.0 Released

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 04:16:02 GMT

LightSpeed 2.0 has been released. It includes a full, round-tripping Visual Studio designer and support for LINQ!

Introducing MonoRail NHAML

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 19:16:10 GMT

HAML engine for Castle MonoRail project.

Using the unit of work-per-request pattern in ASP.NET MVC

Tue, 13 May 2008 08:01:03 GMT

Describe a simple, efficient and testable approach to implementing the unit of work-per-request (a.k.a session-per-request) pattern in Microsoft's new ASP.NET MVC framework.

Slice - Collection Slicing Extension Method

Tue, 13 May 2008 08:46:02 GMT

A recreation of Python collection slicing in .NET using extension methods.

LightSpeed 2.0 Gets Visual Studio Designer

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 08:46:02 GMT

First it was LINQ support, now LightSpeed 2 gets a complete Visual Studio design experience.

Using Ruby to generate LightSpeed models

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 23:16:02 GMT

The end of a 4 part series on creating a little ruby application to generate lightspeed models. It demonstrates usage and provides links to relevant information.

Mindscape ships the WPF Property Grid

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 10:31:02 GMT

The prolific Mindscape from Wellington (NZ) released another cool developer's tool: a property grid for WPF.

Internet Explorer 8 now passing Acid2

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 21:46:02 GMT

The IE8 team just announced some new news about IE8 - they just passed a major milestone which is to have IE8 render Acid2 when in IE8 standards mode. Includes link to official post and video.

Quake 2 .NET Port with Visual Studio 2008 (v9.0) and Managed C++

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 22:31:02 GMT

Vertigo Software's old Quake II .NET port updated to Visual Studio 2008 / New Managed Extensions for C++.

Introducing NHaml - An ASP.NET MVC View Engine

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 21:01:03 GMT

NHaml (pronounced enamel) is a pure .NET implementation of the popular Rails Haml view engine. From the Haml website: "Haml is a markup language that's used to cleanly and simply describe the XHTML of any web document, without the use of inline code. Haml functions as a replacement for inline page templating systems such as PHP, ERB, and ASP. However, Haml avoids the need for explicitly coding XHTML into the template, because it is actually an abstract description of the XHTML, with some code to generate dynamic content." In other words, NHaml is an external DSL for XHTML. It's primary qualities are it's simplicity, terseness, performance and that it outputs nicely formatted XHTML. Additionally, the NHaml view engine provides support for Rails style layouts and partials.

How to install ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 18:01:04 GMT

To install the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview you need to be carefull installing the requirements in thr right order. Here is how.

ASP.NET MVC Framework and December CTP of Extensions released

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 04:31:03 GMT

The ASP.NET MVC Framework is now available as part of the December CTP for the ASP.NET and ADO.NET 3.5 Extensions.

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 Framework Part 1

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 13:31:02 GMT

Scott Guthrie provides some great insight into the upcoming ASP.Net MVC framework.

LightSpeed 1.1 Released

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 22:31:06 GMT

A new version of the popular O/RM framework LightSpeed is up. The new release includes soft delete, polymorphic querying, validation improvements, performance enhancements and even better documentation and samples. And the framework library is still only 125KB.

Create elegant code with Action delegate and List.ForEach method

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 12:46:02 GMT

Small example of how to use Action delegate to perform some action on all elements of a collection.

Mindscape LightSpeed on ARCast.TV

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 22:31:02 GMT

LightSpeed is a domain modeling and O/R Mapping framework. This ARCast.TV show discusses the framework with Jeremy Boyd and John-Daniel Trask.

Utilities.NET 1.0 released

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:46:02 GMT

Utilities.NET is a collection of helper classes and components for quickly solving common .NET programming tasks.

Properly Using Custom Error Pages in ASP.NET

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 19:15:01 GMT

Earlier this week I started with a rant about ASP.NET and Search Engine Optimization and was really tired of my platform being dissed as a good platform for optimized sites. One of the complaints raised by the article was the way ASP.NET handles custom errors. The complaint centers around two status codes being generated, first a 302 or temporary redirect is sent. Then a 200 status code is sent for a successful request. This is actually the proper way to indicate the custom error page process and I will explain why.