DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by photoz

What Gives? Microsofts Code Generation Tool

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 01:31:12 GMT

In a world of Microsoft and third party applications, out comes t4. t4 is a code generation tool that can compete with CodeSmith, but its FREE and built right into Visual Studio. It has been years since the first edition with very little publication of the actual application. t4 is a free code generation engine from Microsoft that underpins the Domain Specific Languages and Software Factory toolkits.

How to Use Visual Studio jQuery IntelliSense Supported Through Hotfix

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 03:46:02 GMT

Jeff King, Program Manager for Visual Studio Web Tools blogged VS2008 SP1 Hotfix to Support "-vsdoc.js" IntelliSense Doc Files on Friday. The HotFix (VS2008 SP1 only) allows Visual Studio to find "-vsdoc.js" files that have commenting for IntelliSense in the same folder as a script file linked to from your document. In this post I am going to show you how to get IntelliSense working once the HotFix is installed in both a normal aspx page as well as ASP.NET MasterPage.

Using Active Directory to authenticate users to your ASP.NET Web Site

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 08:16:02 GMT

ASP.NET membership provides the ability to authenticate users to your web application using forms based authentication against a database of users or directory services. This article explains the steps required to provide authentication against Active Directory, either for new sites with no authentication, or for existing sites using database authentication.

Best of the web - my pick for October 2008

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 15:01:02 GMT

There were a lot of high quality articles dawned in my Google Reader last month. Chris Spooner (Blog.SpoonGraphics) posted two awesome tutorials on how to create a modern blog design. Angie and Robert Bowen (Arbenitng) launched Social Media Directory for Designers. Dave Ward (Encosia) shared & of his favorite jQuery plugins for use with ASAP.NET. I published Handycons, free hand-drawn social media icon set, and I'm working on Handycons II.

Downloadable Hotfix: False C# compilation errors for ASP.NET code-behi

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 14:16:11 GMT

In SP1 for Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Web Developer 2008, C# introduced a new feature to provide 'live' reporting of compilation errors. Unfortunately, the introduction of this functionality also introduced a bug where in certain cases, false C# compilation errors appear in the Error List for ASP.NET Website projects. The C# team just published a downloadable hotfix that addresses the issues.

89 Ways for You to Become the Coolest Developer in the World

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 13:31:08 GMT

You can learn how to improve your programming skills, work better and enjoy it from this collection of advice from experienced developers.

The Excitement that is C# 4.0

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 12:01:02 GMT

I just got back from the "Future of C#" talk at PDC by Anders Hejlsberg. This was a truly inspiring talk for a geek like me. C# is evolving into a much more dynamic language. I have always been a believer of strong typing. except when I'm not. and I have been wishing for something more dynamic (such as Duck Typing). In C# 4.0, we will be seeing some significant dynamic features.

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 CTP

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:31:13 GMT

"Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0 are the next generation development tools and platform for Windows Vista, the 2007 Office System, and the Web."

Zip Compressing ASP.NET Session and Cache State

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 15:31:15 GMT

Scott Hanselman discusses a recent podcast with the team from StackOverflow where it was mentioned that they compress the Cache or Session data in ASP.NET, enabling them to store about 5-10x more data.

Essential Visual Studio Tips & Tricks that Every Developer Should Know

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 23:01:02 GMT

In this blog entry, Stephen Walther lists the essential tips and tricks that every developer who uses Visual Studio 2008 should know. The list is kept brief. The list focuses on only those tips and tricks that can be used on a daily basis. Almost all of these tips and tricks are just as useful regardless of whether you are building an ASP.NET Web Forms or ASP.NET MVC application.

7 of my favorite jQuery plugins for use with ASP.NET

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 14:46:04 GMT

Seven of my favorite jQuery plugins to use with ASP.NET and ASP.NET AJAX, based on my own successes and failures using them over the past year and a half.

Why you REALLY need to think about your interfaces

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 20:46:02 GMT

When you write your interfaces in C#, you might be casting them in stone. You REALLY need to think about how you write your interfaces. Avoid interfaces with concrete parameters such as Dictionary<> and List<> and prefer interfaces such as IDictionary<> and IList<>. Here is why!

Simulate a Windows Service Using ASP.NET to Run Scheduled Jobs

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 23:46:02 GMT

Back in 2005 Omar Al Zabir (Co-founder and CTO of PageFlakes) posted an article on the CodeProject web site Simulate a Windows Service using ASP.NET to run scheduled jobs that many of you have probably seen. If you liked the idea at the time but didn't do anything with it, you may want to take another look now. In the comments, dselkirk provided an alternative that really cleans things up that Erichero then improved upon slightly and converted to C#.

StyleCop was just released!

Sat, 13 Sep 2008 12:31:02 GMT

StyleCop was just released! A tool that does all the styling for you in VS 2008 and 2005. It helps you adhere to styling guidelines and standards of your Code. It is a Great tool.

MSDN Social Bookmarks

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 20:46:02 GMT

MSDN Social Bookmarks was released today. This is a candid look at what it's all about and why you should consider using it.

Creating Custom Configuration Sections fo

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:46:15 GMT

A short screencast on how to Creating Custom Configuration Sections for you App.config/Web.config

Testing with Team Foundation Server

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:46:18 GMT

A short screencast reviewing how to test with Team Foundation Server

Great Design Pattern Resources

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 09:31:02 GMT

Some common patterns include the Singleton, Facade, Adaptor and Decorator. There are many, many patterns and below are some great resources to learn about them.

Completely Scripting a SQL Server Database

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:16:02 GMT

A guide on how to easily script out an entire database (schema and data) using the Database Publishing Wizard. A tool that you may not know you have access to. And if you have Visual Studio 2008, you already have installed!

Getting Starting with StructureMap -- Simple Setup Scenarios (v2.5)

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:31:11 GMT

A short screencast on getting starting with StructureMap -- Simple Setup Scenarios (v2.5)

High Quality Image Resizing with .NET

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 19:16:02 GMT

Even though you just shrinks images, the quality of produced images is usually worse than the quality of original images. Learn how to use interpolation to resize images with a better quality.

Fast Serialization

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:01:03 GMT

We use ALOT of serialization in the current system I work with. Serializing/deserializing 100,000,000 objects in a day is pretty common. For a long time we knew that the binary formatter was fat and slow but never rationalized writing something custom as we were always fast enough. Unfortunately our data throughput has raised 400% in the last year (when you start with gigs and gigs of messages this is a huge gain) and our little three or four year old dual xeon 2.2 has turned into the little engine that could during peaks lately so we finally bit the big one and threw something together quickly.

ASP.NET Dynamic Data - Simple 5 Table Northwind Example

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 03:31:09 GMT

Excellent summary of what you can do with Dynamic Data - a huge timesaver for most common CRUD-style sites