DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by pennyfx

Json.NET 3.5 Beta 1 - Big performance gains, Compact Framework support

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 16:46:04 GMT

New in this beta release of Json.NET 3.5 are big performance improvements (400%), Compact Framework support and lots more.

Lutz Roeder's Weblog: The Future of .NET Reflector

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 15:16:02 GMT

After more than eight years of working on .NET Reflector, I have decided it is time to move on and explore some new opportunities. I have reached an agreement to have Red Gate Software continue the development of .NET Reflector. Red Gate has a lot of experience creating tools for both .NET and SQL Server. They have the resources necessary to work on new features, and Reflector fits nicely with other .NET tools the company offers. Red Gate will continue to provide the free community version and is looking for your feedback and ideas for future versions.

Silverlight Particle Generator

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 17:31:02 GMT

Cool particle effects live demo done with Silverlight. Sources are available, too!

Setting up Moonlight on Ubuntu

Sat, 01 Mar 2008 03:17:47 GMT

This article shows you how to get the Moonlight (Silverlight for Linux) plugin running on Ubuntu..

Microsoft: stay above the Trolls

Sat, 01 Mar 2008 01:04:06 GMT

You can't deny this one is true. Happy Friday!

Draggable Window Sample in Silverlight

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 22:55:55 GMT

Create a cool window in Silverlight that can be dragged around in the browser. For eye candy, an alpha-blended background PNG image is used to cast the shadows and make the 'see-through glass' effect on the LCD screen.

Image slider control in Silverlight 1.1

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:46:02 GMT

Image Slider in Silverlight 1.1 with load on demand support. All that with available source code and tutorial.

ScottGu: First Look at Using Expression Blend with Silverlight 2

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 18:16:02 GMT

In this first set of Silverlight tutorials I didn't use a visual design tool to build the UI, and instead focused on showing the underlying XAML UI markup (which I think helps to explain the core programming concepts better). Now that we've finished covering the basics - let's explore some of the tools we can use to be even more productive.

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.

Windows Vista Controls for .NET version 1.3 released

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 17:31:02 GMT

The Windows Vista Controls for .NET 2.0 library is an open-source project which was started in January 2007 and has been released on CodePlex, undergoing several updates and changes. Its latest 1.3 release includes several native Vista common controls which can be included in any WinForms application and includes other features like DWM thumbnails, DWM glass and Task Dialogs.

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.

Mono, a look forward

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 19:01:09 GMT

A brief look at where Mono is and where's it going.

What I Learned About MVC On Day One

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 07:46:02 GMT

I am really blown back about how fast and easy MVC is to develop with. I know the guys at Microsoft do a good job with their .NET coding, but I am really impressed by the forethought they put in to MVC. It builds on top of the standard ASP.NET package, but does it in such a way that makes it lean on top of the already feature-rich (read bloated) ASP.NET Page object. It really doesn't feel like I have all that baggage anymore.

Do try...catch blocks hurt runtime performance?

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 23:31:02 GMT

This posts looks at the real runtime cost of writing a try...catch block in a .Net language. Drawing on his knowledge of .Net internals, the author looks at how such structures are represented in a compiled .Net assembly and what happens at runtime, so the performance characteristics can be understood.

Exploring the Code for the New .NET 3.5 Classes

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 17:31:02 GMT

I often use the free and awesome decompiler Reflector to peer into the source code of Microsoft's .NET Framework. It's an indispensable tool. However, I had a little difficulty viewing the underlying source code for some of the new .NET 3.5 classes. In particular, for a recent article I was interested in looking at what was happening underneath the covers when the DataPager control was rendered. The DataPager is a new control in ASP.NET 3.5 used to render a paging interface for the ListView control (also new to 3.5).

Nant & Visual Studio 2008

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 23:41:00 GMT

Having a problem with your nant script after upgrading a solution? I sure was. Palermo shows how to get it working again. Also, see Tim Barcz's followup: http://www.timbarcz.com/blog/2007/12/05/NantSetupForVisualStudio2008AndNet35.aspx

LINQ and Stored Procedures

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 20:02:46 GMT

Just starting off with LINQ, I've already found a strange behavior. In my SP, I have to select some blank columns, that used to exist in the table. Now, they're only there to stop old apps from crashing: Select '' as inst from footable This made Linq return only a cryptic error message: System.FormatException: String must be exactly one character long. at System.Data.Linq.DBConvert.ChangeType(Object obj, Type type) But when I replaced the '' in the SP with a ' ' (that is, added a blank space) - everything works. So it looks as if Linq is trying to type every column in the result, and if it's empty, it dies. Oh, and if you have a variable named @@foo in your script - I don't know why it was called @@foo, it just was - Linq will not be able to run it! It presumes that all variables are named @foo, which probably is the correct SQL, by the way. But - the error message, again, is not so helpful: The procedure expects the parameter "foo", which was not provided.

Reflecting on reflection

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 20:00:30 GMT

Some weeks ago I was working on a project where we receive some ten or twenty different message types from a server, and they all need to be handled when they arrive. Of course, we want to use event driven programming to make this happen on the fly, instead of polling all the time. All of the messages have the header in common, so we already made a abstract parent class called Message, and when it came to handling all the different messages, we wanted to write as little code as possible. So we added an abstract method called HandleResponse to the code. So the idea was to identify the incoming message type and invoke the HandleResponse using reflection on the object that we had identified this as. To do this, we made a little xml file that contains the message code (A-Z) along with the name and reference to the class linked to the message type. When the program starts, it reads the xml into a dictionary, so we can look up the key (message code) and get the class reference in return. XDocument descriptorsXml = XDocument.Load( @".\Data\MessageDescriptors.xml"); var descQuery = from desc in descriptorsXml.Descendants("Message") select new MessageDescriptor { Code = desc.Element("Code").Value, Name = desc.Element("Name").Value, ObjectType = desc.Element("ObjectType").Value.ToType() , IsServerMessage = Convert.ToBoolean( desc.Element("IsServerMessage").Value ) }; foreach (MessageDescriptor m in descQuery) { descriptors.Add(m.Code, m); } Then, we have a MessageHandlingFactory that simply gets objects in from a queue, identifies the type, and invokes the HandleResponse. If the object isn't recognized (could be a new message type, or could be that the programmer forgot to insert the description in the XML file), the MessageHandlingFactory can either throw an exception, or better yet, return a string with message that tells the user what went wrong. If everything goes as planned, it returns a string with the identified typename. object theType = Activator.CreateInstance(t, SessionID); EventInfo eInfo = t.GetEvent("OnWriteEvent"); Message.WriteEventHandler theHandler = new Message.WriteEventHandler(OnWriteEventHandler); eInfo.AddEventHandler(theType, theHandler); theType.GetType().GetMethod("HandleResponse").Invoke(theType, new object[] { message }); return "MessageHandler: " + messageType; That's all, folks! Update February 13, 2008: The code has now been tested in a very high throughput environment, and it performs

The DotNetKicks Effect - Enjoy While it Lasts

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 01:46:05 GMT

DotNetKicks is great source of .NET related information but is it going to survive the shortcomings of "digg" concept?

Building a Virtual Keyboard in WPF

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 14:31:02 GMT

The challenge - build alternative on-screen keyboard to appear on each textbox, marked to use such keyboard. The reason - custom editor, ability to use touch screen input, etc Realization: WPF, two windows, a little hooking, attached properties, custom commands and gestures.

Life At Microsoft - The Truth Revealed

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 03:16:02 GMT

People often stop me in the streets to ask "Hey Tina, what's life "really" like at Microsoft? Sometimes I can't even walk outside my house without somebody standing there with a giant neon sign that blinks "What is life "really" like at Microsoft"?

LinqToSimpleDB Preview

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 04:46:02 GMT

nice article on implementing a linq provider to Amazons simpledb

LINQ Farm Seed: Using the Expression Tree Visualizer

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 19:46:02 GMT

The Visual Studio 2008 CSharp samples include several valuable tools that LINQ developers can use to help expedite the development process. One of the is the Expression Tree Visualizer. This tool works in both Visual Studio Express and the other versions of Visual Studio that support C# development.

GoDaddy Denies My Using ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 22:46:02 GMT

I have a domain that I was going to use for a little while as I attempt to sell my home. I registered it with GoDaddy knowing they have .NET support. However...

ParallelMap function using ParallelFX

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 01:01:02 GMT

Reimplementing the ParallelMap function from a previous post, but this time using ParallelFX