DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by pjacobs

How NOT To Design a UI - The dotnetkicks Example

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:42:35 GMT

With the advent of ajax and jquery flooding the internet, web developers are providing professional and polished web designs like never before. For example, when I search with google I type begin typing my query and google responds with other popular search terms and giving me feedback as I type.

Use a BindingListCollectionView from a BindingList from a List<T>

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:25:35 GMT

Let's say you have a WPF application with a DataGrid on it. You also have a strongly typed list of objects - I.E. List<Person> which you would normally bind to your grid. You might have been under the misconception that you can't convert the List<Person> to a BindingListCollectionView. I have searched google for answers and ran across people saying you can't do that. It is possible and I will show you how to make it happen.

WPF C1DataGrid how to tab or shift tab

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:33:55 GMT

I am working on a WPF project at work and we purchased a couple components from a couple of different component vendors. One of them is ComponentOne and we have used the C1DataGrid in several places. Recently a bug was submitted that said they could not tab or shift tab through the grid and have it select the next or previous row automatically when the beginning or end of the row is hit.

Visual Studio Team System DeploymentItem Attribute

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:20:56 GMT

Subversion is awesome I am a big fan of source control and subversion is my favorite. I used it for several years before being forced into using TFS on my current project. Subversion is great because it really doesn't get in your way. You hardly notice the code is under source control.

Regional Conflicts

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:55:29 GMT

We have all come to love our IDE features and take them from granted nowadays. Features like intellisense, code-complete, refactoring and code organization and of course the use of Regions. The #region and #endregion keywords basically provide the ability to hide code and collapse it into a short word or phrase provided at the beginning of the block with the IDE showing a plus sign to expand and collapse the region. Eg: #region Public Methods #endregion

Var Wars - Abuse of the CSharp var

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 15:04:49 GMT

CSharp 3.0 introduced the var keyword for declaring variables without having to explicitly specify the type. This was done for using anonymous types returned from LINQ queries. Now, I am seeing many developers use it all over their code and think its a good thing.

Generate c# Enums From Your SQL Database

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 03:01:40 GMT

Many developers like to stick their data inside the database and load their combo boxes and other application data from it. There are lots of reasons for doing so such as localizing your data or maybe you can't write to the local file system for whatever reason. In my case the local file system was untouchable.

Comparison of Linq to Sql and Orasis Generated Data Access Code

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 04:46:08 GMT

This is a very good and fair comparison. What does not show here is the difference in performance which I suspect LinQ to SQL must be slower.

Flexible WPF ToolTips via Markup Extensions

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 22:46:29 GMT

Presents a way to display a feature-rich ToolTip in WPF through a single line of XAML.

ReSharper 4.5 complains about my private fields.

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 22:46:03 GMT

Learn how to change naming style rules in R#.

Content Stealing Jerks

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 22:01:02 GMT

I've grown somewhat accustomed to seeing my articles regurgitated on some random blogger's site and passed off as their own. Usually I just send content stealing jerk (CSJ for future reference) an e-mail asking that they provide some sort of link back to my original article and leave it at that. Sometimes they comply, oftentimes they don't. In the end, life goes on. After all, it's not like I'm going to press charges over it.

Generic Repository

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 18:16:08 GMT

The purpose behind the repository pattern is to provide a layer of abstraction between your domain and data layer. For smaller projects, this typically isn't needed. However, larger projects can really benefit from a broker that specifically handles the back and forth between the two layers. With repositories your domain objects aren't burdened with infrastructure details and can therefore better focus on domain-specific behavior.

Top 100 Blogs for Developers

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 01:46:02 GMT

Jurgen Appelo outlines 100 blogs developers should be paying attention to.

Getting rid of strings (3): take your app settings to the next level

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 02:31:02 GMT

In the first article of this series I talked about the problems with strings in code. This article will show you how you can use lambda expressions and expression trees as another tool to avoid strings

TimeZone vs. TimeZoneInfo in .Net

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:31:04 GMT

Understanding the TimeZoneInfo classin .Net 3.5 and how it compares to the standard TimeZone class.

Fast Serialization

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 04:01:03 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.

Creating a binding factory for Ninject

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 07:01:14 GMT

A quick primer on setting up a Ninject factory so that you can easily start using it in your next project.

Lutz Reflector now owned by Red Gate

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 01:01:05 GMT

Lutz Reflector, the free .NET disassembler every developer developer should have, has been purchased by Red Gate software. Red Gate has stated they will continue to provide the tool for free.

Persistence Ignorance and DDD with RepositoryBase

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 00:46:32 GMT

This post goes into developing a sample that uses the repository base implemented in my previous post, RepositoryBase. The post also shows how you can leverage RepositoryBase and achieve a degree of Persistence Ignorance by implementing two separate persistence layers using Linq to SQL and NHibernate and transparently swapping one out for the other without affecting your domain or tests.

Ayende's Localization Solution using NHibernate

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 05:05:30 GMT

using NHibernate 1.2 you can globalize / localize your software externally with little change to your code. This is a very elegant solution because you won't have to provide culture all over your stored procs and the like.

WebService Documentation: Using a custom Site Map

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 11:34:09 GMT

How to use a custom SiteMapProvider to build a menu of WebMethods in a WebService.

Implementing a Repository and Specificaiton pattern using Linq

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 20:31:03 GMT

In my previous post I put down some thoughts on the Repository and Specification patterns and in the end said that with the introduction of Linq and the growing popularity of ORM frameworks and their support for Linq, it's time to look back at these two patterns and see how we can leverage Linq to simplify the patterns and make them infrastructure agnostic.

Linq Expressions, The Specification Pattern and Repositories - Part 1

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 12:16:06 GMT

In this upcoming series of articles I break down the use of Linq Expressions to provide a flexible, queryable repoository interface. The key to the functionality is the expression parsing and deferred execution capacity of Linq. I chose Linq to NHibernate but any other Linq provider would require zero change to the specifications and only very minor changes to the repository implementation.

URL Rewriting Extension For BlogEngine

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 14:01:37 GMT

Get control over your URLs with this BlogEngine extension.

Generic types and IDisposable, the "using" trick

Wed, 21 May 2008 16:46:03 GMT

This is another one in the series "heck, I never thought of that"... Like most of these articles, if you already knew this trick, ignore me...