DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by jamesewelch

Free Data Structures and Algorithms book

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 03:43:02 GMT

This book written by Granville Barnett and Luca Del Tongo is part of an effort to provide all developers with a core understanding of algorithms that operate on various common, and uncommon data structures. Data Structures and Algorithms: Annotated Reference with Examples is completely free!

Top 10 Things That Annoy Programmers

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:46:03 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:

New ASP.NET MVC Videos and Tutorials

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 20:01:02 GMT

15 new ASP.NET MVC videos were just published at the http://www.ASP.net/mvc website. The first 10 videos are basic tutorials on the ASP.NET MVC framework. If you haven't had a chance to play with ASP.NET MVC yet, these tutorials are a great introduction. The second set of 5 videos is part of an ongoing video series: ASP.NET MVC Pair Programming. In these videos, I pair with a prominent community expert to build an entire ASP.NET MVC application from start to finish (because of time constraints - a very, very simple application). The goal is to emphasize the process of building a web application instead of the product.

ASP.NET MVC Tip #35 - Use the NHaml View Engine

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 11:01:08 GMT

In this tip, I explain how you can use the NHaml view engine as the view engine for an ASP.NET MVC application. I demonstrate how to create NHaml views that display both static content and database records. I also discuss how you can use master pages and user controls with the NHaml view engine.

ASP.NET gets no Respect

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 13:16:11 GMT

Poor ASP.NET! Is it really that bad? I say No!

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.

Over 60 Free Controls from DevExpress

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:16:02 GMT

Once you register, you will be forwarded an Email with your login credentials to our product download portal. With this information in hand, you will be able to download and install all the controls and tools listed above free of charge. The applications you create with these controls can be distributed royalty free (see the EULA that accompanies the products for more information). Note that the installation you download will include evaluation versions of our entire product line. You can install these trials if you wish during the setup process. Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 are fully supported.

The Work-at-Home Developer's Guide to Happiness

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 18:31:02 GMT

As a long time work-at-home developer, I've come to realize over the years how important it is to have the right work routine and balance to remain happy in both your professional and personal life. I've worked from my home 100% of the time for the last 6-7 years and had often worked from my home in spurts before that. Without question, it requires the right mindset and dedication. There's an upside as well as a downside to working from home, but with the right routine you can be successful at it.

A sneak peak at ASP.NET AJAX 4.0's client-side templating

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 12:31:15 GMT

Hot on the heels of the recent ASP.NET AJAX roadmap, Bertrand and team have released a limited preview of the new AJAX functionality coming in ASP.NET 4.0. Dave is giving a sneak peak about it

Egoless Programming - Developing Without the Attitude

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 23:46:24 GMT

One of the most common threads that all programmers share is that of an ego. Some are much worse than others and some have found a way to control or manipulate their ego into a great benefit. Beyond skill-sets and other programming-specific talents I believe the greatest room for personal improvement in programmers as a whole is that of the ego.

The Future of ASP.NET AJAX

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:46:16 GMT

My analysis of the ASP.NET Team's tentative road map for ASP.NET AJAX v.Next and beyond, followed by a few additional recommendations.

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

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 14:46:03 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.

subsonic 2 1 released

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 20:46:02 GMT

the title says it all

Being Smart Does Not a Good Developer Make

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 15:31:08 GMT

Not every programmer needs to be a crazy mathematical genius who knows every algorithm and data structure known to man (although I think Steve Yegge would argue differently).

How to perform an aggregate query using SubSonic 2.1's SqlQuery

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 17:01:06 GMT

One of the new features is the addition of the SqlQuery class and it's ability to perform aggregate queries (along with many other features). Shows example of SQL syntax versus SubSonic's SqlQuery aggregate coding to perform SQL queries.

How to prevent web.config inheritance in ASP.NET child virtual directo

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 19:10:21 GMT

If you add a new ASP.NET web site as a virtual directory/application under an existing ASP.NET web site, then you'll probably be having some problems with web.config inheritance. Even if the sub-webapp is physically separate, just being in a virtual directory located within another webapp will result in many of the settings being inherited and messing up your sub-webapp.

ASP.NET MVC: Securing Your Controller Actions

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 19:31:02 GMT

Many people on the forums want to know how to best protect Actions on their Controller using Forms Authentication. The MVC Team has done a nice job introducing Filters (using Attributes) to this latest drop of MVC, and in this post I'll show you how to create a filter that can handle security.

Agile Programming Training (Cartoon, Humor)

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 06:01:02 GMT

Dilbert on Agile programming. The pointy-hair boss commands Dilbert's team to start using Agile programming. In the boss's description, he states that Agile programming means "no more planning and no more documentation." The boss goes on saying that the programmers can "start writing code and complaining."

Free charting for ASP.NET

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 16:31:02 GMT

Open Flash Chart is an open source flash control that can display charts on a web page. The latest release contains an ASP.NET libary.

ASP.NET Rich Text Editor Control

Thu, 15 Nov 2007 03:46:02 GMT

Kannan Sundararajan, Microsoft, has written a Rich Text Editor control using ASP.NET and JavaScript and shared it under the MS-PL license on CodePlex. It has a very rich feature set and Kannan hopes to enhance it further in the future. Features: * Clipboard support: You can copy and paste content from other programs like Microsoft Word, Internet Explorer, Visual Studio into the RichTextEditor and it will persist the formatting. If you copy code from Visual Studio it will preserve the code coloring scheme. * Context sensitive Toolbar: The ToolBar buttons will reflect the properties of that content automatically when you select it or navigate through it using the mouse or keyboard . * Code Block: It allows you to format text as code blocks. Simple select the text and format it by clicking the "Code Block" ToolBar button. * Emoticons: You can express yourself better by adding emoticons to your rich text. * HtmlView: If you would like to have more control over the look and feel of your text then you can edit it in HtmlView as well. * Text in multiple languages: The control currently supports several languages. * Browser support: The control works well in two of the most widely used browsers Internet Explorer and Firefox.

How To Unit Test - Using SubSonic

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 01:33:27 GMT

Scenario In this post I'm going to create a simple application to insert customers into our database via a console application and also have a list of customers printed out to the console. Similar to the previous post. The application will be separated into three parts. SubSonic will be used for all the database access, a middle layer will be the 'glue' and perform validation on the input (this could be business rules) and will sit on top of subsonic classes. This will then be accessible from the console application (but it shouldn't take much to change this to a WinForm/WebForm application). I know it's simple (and a bit uninteresting) but I just want to demonstrate the concepts more than anything else.

Microsoft: Should we allow .NET EXEs to run off a network shares?

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 15:46:07 GMT

By default .NET applications (EXEs) that are launched from a remote file system (eg \\server\bin\SomeApp.exe), will not be considered trusted and typically will fail (unless specifically designed to run with low trust). This is in direct contrast with unmanaged applications which always give full trust to launched programs, regardless of location. The .NET runtime team is considering changing this behavior so that managed applications act just like unmanaged one in this respect. We believe that it will not decrease security, but there is risk and effort required for any change and would like feedback on its likely usefulness to customers.

DotNetKicks "Kick It" plugin for Windows Live Writer

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 08:46:02 GMT

I want a DotNetKicks "kick it" image+link on some posts, but not all - and there is no automated way to do that. So I created an "Insert Kick It Counter..." plugin for Windows Live Writer to insert a placeholder, and a Wordpress plugin to insert the image+link when the placeholder is found. Hopefully somebody else will find it useful also!

Software Development Essential Practices

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 11:01:05 GMT

A list of (essential) practices for software development, and tools to help you implement those practices.

DotNetKicks: Searchable and a new build server

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:01:03 GMT

We have recently added a new search feature and a build server to DotNetKicks.com.