DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by justinbezanson

Why I Am No Longer Supporting IE6

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 08:46:03 GMT

In the recent relaunch of this site, I created a new custom skin for Subtext. Since this is just a personal site, I threw things together fairly quickly, testing along the way with Firefox3 and IE7. Once I was getting closer to complete, I took a look at my new site in all the usual browsers, including IE6. Ugh, it looked terrible. I gave it some thought and made some decisions about supporting IE6. I'm not going to support it. Not on this site and not on others that I have a say in. I'm not talking about leaving my site unusable for IE6 users - they just won't get as good of an experience. I'm not alone with this decision. Read on to see why I am no longer supporting IE6.

The little 'gotcha' in LINQ to XML

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:42:39 GMT

So when my query kept returning 0 elements I started to get frustrated. Why wasn't it working?

Unit testing, your greatest maintenance tool

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 00:20:10 GMT

There are many times I wish real life could be maintained like a software program. In true SlashDot form I am going to try an make my case for Unit Testing with a car analogy (mind you probably a bad one). To me writing software without writing unit tests is like me working on my car...

Exception Handling The Right Way

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:59:48 GMT

Exception handling can be an extremely powerful tool for debugging.if it is done right. If you drop the ball on this it can make you want to run home crying to your Mommy.

Object Oriented Programming Is Your Foundation

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 15:50:09 GMT

Object Oriented Programming is going to be the foundation of everything we talk about from here on out. OOP provides huge power and flexibility later on down the line when we discuss techniques to help in the maintainability of our code. As a side note, you will find that I tote maintainability as a hugely important factor. To me, maintenence is the biggest comsumption of development resources whether it be through bug fixes or adding new features. Anything that can make code easier to maintain long term is, in my book, worth exploring.

2 tried and true ways to frustrate and discourage your developers

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:06:10 GMT

I have been reading a lot about what makes a developer want to stay or leave their current jobs or clients on some development blogs as of late. There are two things that stuck out to me, probably because they hit home with me, that can really frustrate and discourage a developer.

Advanced tableless forms

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 13:41:54 GMT

I am always looking for easy ways to use less tables in my markup. When designing a website I always aim for no tables but in a web application I may cheat from time to time. Some time ago, thanks to an article on quirksmode, I began creating tableless forms. This trick was great for simple forms but I kept using tables for really complicated forms.

Understanding scope in object oriented JavaScript

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 14:55:36 GMT

When you think of the keyword this you probably assume it refers to the current instance of the class. This is true for most object oriented languages like C# and Java. So, knowing this you would probably assume the same would be true of JavaScript and it's this keyword. This is, however, not the case. Like a lot of things about writing object oriented code in JavaScript, this behaves differently in some situations. this does not always refer to the class instance depending on how you use it.

Empty try blocks

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 11:01:02 GMT

The article explains why you might see functions that do nothing in the "try" block.

SqlDateTime.TryParse, almost

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:55:32 GMT

I talked about an issue I ran into between DateTime.MinValue and SqlDateTime.MinValue in a previous post. One other point I noticed while researching the topic was that, unlike almost all other types, SqlDateTime doesn't have a TryParse method.

Stored procedures are better than dynamic sql

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 15:32:17 GMT

There are many arguments to whether stored procedures or dynamic sql is best when developing applications. I don't think there is a cut and dry "best". As with most things in programming, it boils down to what is best in your current situation.

JavaScript defining and using custom events

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 15:29:36 GMT

Simply, a custom event is something that happens that you feel is important enough to define actions to execute when this something happens. Clear as mud? I think I confused even myself. A custom event is just like a native event (onclick, onload, etc) except you define what it is and when it should fire.

Programming Is All About Passion

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:31:02 GMT

Passion! Passion! Passion!

CSS Message Box collection

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 03:31:05 GMT

a collection of some simple CSS styles you can apply to your message boxes

Integrate PayPal Checkout Button with ASP.NET 2.0

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:01:02 GMT

I recently posted a solution to the eternal PayPal / ASP.NET form submission problem using Jeremy Schneider's custom GhostForm class. Since then, several people have made mention of a problem of a problem that I came across myself when coding this, namely getting your project to recognize the reference to the new custom form class.

C# DateTime.MinValue is not the same as SqlDateTime.MinValue

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 23:01:02 GMT

Working with non-nullable types in C# can be a bit of a pain. For instance when I have a date as a string and need to parse it into a DateTime what should the value be if the parse fails? I can't use null because DateTime is not a nullable type.

13 Tips to Comment Your Code

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 01:31:02 GMT

Following are 13 tips on how to comment your source code so that it is easier to understand and maintain over time.

There's some darkness in your silver light.

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 17:16:05 GMT

Rob voices his complaints about Silverlight 2.0 from the perspective of a developer of WPF and Flash applications.

Creating screenshot with C#

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 18:01:02 GMT

Simple way how to create screenshots in Winforms applications for error-logging purposes.

IE8, Microsoft and the Reverse Fanboys

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 23:16:02 GMT

As the beta test of IE8 recently became available we are quickly approaching the release of another version of Internet Explorer. Much frustration has been expressed about the issues (or supposed issues ) in this beta. Some of this concern is definitely understandable, however, I think some of the negativity is present just because IE is a Microsoft product.

New drop of ASP.NET MVC Framework now available

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 23:16:03 GMT

Jeff Palermo announces the new release of the ASP.NET MVC Framework

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 Download

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 21:01:11 GMT

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 Download

How Super Mario Bros Made Me a Better Software Engineer

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 17:16:05 GMT

Playing NES video games does have some advantages!

How Rockstars nest Repeater controls in ASP.Net

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:02:04 GMT

A couple of days ago while I was busy coding I ran into problem where I needed to nest Repeaters. There were a number of articles I found but they all dealt with nested Repeater controls using a DataSet as the data source but I needed to use a custom collection (List<T>).

Welcome from DotNetKicks

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 09:47:15 GMT

I just wanted to say a hello to the users coming over from dot net kicks. It is always good to talk with fellow .Net coders. This is the first time I have made it to the front page (original post) and wanted to mention a thank you to dot net kicks for the great content that it pumps out. I always find good stuff each day that helps me become a better developer. I hope that this is just the first of many articles that I can contribute to a great community. If you liek this blog please consider signing up for the RSS feed.