DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by mt256

Googleman - Quite possibly the best WPF application ever

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 07:01:03 GMT

Googleman is a fun and pointless application for launching Google.com in the style of the Batman 60s TV show, complete with spinning Google logo and sound effects. Now when a friend or co-worker says "To Google!" you can open your favourite search engine in style. Googleman uses WPF and is written using the MVP pattern.

10 reasons why SQL Server 2008 is going to rock

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 22:01:12 GMT

Just like its predecessor, SQL Server 2008 is taking its sweet time to actually ship. However, unlike its predecessor, it won't just be a "worthwhile upgrade". It will kick ass. Here are the top 10 reasons why.

Keep your .config clean with external config files

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 22:01:19 GMT

The web.config (or app.config for non-web applications) file is the central place to configure your web application, starting from connection strings, over application settings to ASP.NET specific topics like caching, authentication & authorization, sessions as well as HTTP handlers and modules. Normally the web.config starts as a neat little pet you can easily manage. But as soon as your project grows mature, web.config turns out to be a huge beast. This article shows you a way to tame the beast.

Webforms is dead. Long live MVC!

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 22:46:02 GMT

WebForms are now legacy. Enjoy your MVC koolaid!

Why asp.net MVC is so awesome.

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 12:16:03 GMT

The number one reason why asp.net MVC is the best thing ever.

Link to Everything: A List of LINQ Providers

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 04:01:03 GMT

I've recently updated the list of LINQ Providers found on my Links to LINQ page, accessible from the News section on the left of my blog. I'm sure there are other providers available. Feel free to write me or append a comment if you want to add to this list.

10 ASP.NET Performance and Scalability Secrets

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 23:31:02 GMT

ASP.NET 2.0 has many secrets, when revealed, can give you big performance and scalability boost. For instance, there are secret bottlenecks in Membership and Profile provider which can be solved easily to make authentication and authorization faster. Furthermore, ASP.NET Http pipeline can be tweaked to avoid executing unnecessary code that gets hit on each and every request...

Essential Graphic Design Tools for .NET Developers

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 22:46:07 GMT

Use Paint.NET, BluePrint CSS Framework, and the ASP.NET 2.0 CSS Friendly Adapters to quickly chalk up an ASP-Driven user interface.

5 Reasons why SubSonic is Better than Sliced Bread

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 00:16:02 GMT

Toast your bread before you put gravy on it. Use SubSonic in your applications.

SubSonic - Migrate Me

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 10:01:02 GMT

Rob demonstrates the early code samples for a GREAT upcoming feature in SubSonic - MIGRATIONS.

Open source .NET libraries you should be already using

Fri, 27 Jul 2007 19:46:03 GMT

As we know, there are many good, enterprise level, open source libraries, frameworks and projects implemented in Java. Most of them are being ported into different platforms like .NET and PHP, so developers are migrating to the these platforms with their familiar tools. For example, i have been using Ant, JUnit, Log4J, iText and many mores when i was developing in Java, but now i am still using Log4Net and Nunit in my current

Visual Studio 2008, Hands on Labs Released

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 03:16:02 GMT

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 was released to the web for download today. The releases are available both as regular installs and as VPC images. If you choose the regular installation, you should run this script to "ensure that the installation of .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 2 will not affect the development of ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 applications."

15 Visual Studio .NET Add-Ins you won't live without

Sat, 23 Jun 2007 12:16:01 GMT

From the console compiler to the powerful Visual Studio IDE, .NET is just about coding as much as the tools. For that matter, here's a list of 15 indispensable VS.NET add-ins.

New RSS Toolkit Released

Wed, 20 Jun 2007 09:16:01 GMT

The RSS Toolkit version 2.0 was released on Monday.

Programmatically resolving ~ URL's to the Virtual Root

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 08:31:02 GMT

The base WebControl class exposes a method named ResolveURL(). This method accepts a url such as "~/Customers/Profile.aspx" and returns the real url, starting from your site's virtual root.

Tip: Put Connection Strings in Their Own Configuration File

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 17:31:02 GMT

This post explain how to split the connection string out into a new configuration file, user.config. Doing this should make day to day development easier for our development team by reducing the number of merge conflicts in web.config.

Creating a simple paypal shop

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 19:47:26 GMT

Simple and clean paypal enabled ASP.NET shopping cart.