DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by rstrahl

WPF Localization Guidance Paper Posted on CodePlex

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:46:21 GMT

I'm happy to announce that my WPF Localization paper went live a couple of days ago on CodePlex. This document provides an overview of localization in .NET in general as well as specifically to WPF. It covers localization with the rigid LocBaml approach, as well as using Resx resources for binding using markup extensions and attached properties respectively.

WPF Bindings and CurrentCulture Formatting

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:00:00 GMT

WPF doesn't apply the CurrentCulture to bindings by default, which is a little... unexpected to say the least. As it turns out there's an easy solution to this problem, but it does require using code to apply the culture specifically in every document.

How do ASP.NET Application_ Events Work

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 06:03:41 GMT

Most of us have used ASP.NET global.asax Application_ EventName handlers, but do you know how it is that these events are actually fired automatically by ASP.NET even when you add additional events by name? In this post my curiosity got away from me and I took a look under the covers to see what ASP.NET is doing to hook up these method to HttpModule events.

11 keystrokes that made my jQuery selector run 10x faster

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 21:15:00 GMT

An in-depth analysis of the performance concerns when using a popular jQuery selector and a couple ways to dramatically speed it up, including benchmarks.

Creating a quick and dirty jQuery contentEditable Plugin

Tue, 26 May 2009 06:57:42 GMT

Inline editing content is a feature that's novel and highly useful at the same time. I've been using it in a number of admin interfaces to provide very easy and quick text updates to existing content. There are a number of ways to accomplish this but in this post I'll discuss a contentEditable jQuery plugin that makes any content inline editable using the DOM's contentEditable attribute that maintains text formatting in the editable text.

jQuery Sortable Plug-in and unwanted Clicks

Wed, 13 May 2009 02:57:21 GMT

The jQuery .sortable plug-in is one of the nicest jquery.ui components. It looks and feels great, is easy to use and provides a common feature for user interfaces. However I've run into an issue a few times with the .sortable behavior triggering clicks when items are dropped at the end of a sort operation. Here's how to get around this.

IIS 7 Error Pages taking over 500 Errors

Fri, 01 May 2009 05:23:45 GMT

I've been running into a problem with IIS returning error pages when my application is actually returning 500 errors along with custom content. IOW, IIS is taking over error display completely even if I send my own content for errors. This has some profound effects on error handling and on some custom handler implementations that relying on returning error information to the client. Thankfully there's a new ASP.NET 3.5 property that helps with this problem, although it's a rather obscure fix for this issue.

How I handle JSON dates returned by ASP.NET AJAX

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:01:04 GMT

The problem of how to handle dates in JSON is one of the more troublesome issues that may arise when directly calling ASP.NET AJAX web services and page methods.. Since the question of how I handle this problem is something asked often in emails and in comments on other posts here, I want to address the topic with its own post.

Creating Visual Studio Templates from your Web Projects

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 06:16:03 GMT

Visual Studio has the nice capability to create project templates from existing projects and with a little bit of work it's real easy to create a project environment that's ready to roll without having to dig for related components first. This applies to Web projects more than anything for me as I have a fair bit of generic utility code that is project specific and needs to be added to just about all projects. Templates make this real quick and easy. Here's how.

JSON Serialization of a DataReader

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 07:46:03 GMT

On a few occasions recently I've ended up with DataReaders in my AJAX services. The data comes from low level componets with data from APIs over which I have no control and it feeds only feeds data from DataReaders. Rather than converting these readers into more complex data structures it can be more efficient to directly turn these DataReaders into JSON. Here are a couple of ways to do this using a custom serializer and a JavaScriptConverter for JavaScriptSerializer.

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.

Native JSON Parsing: What does it mean?

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 11:23:00 GMT

The new native JSON support in new and upcoming browsers is going to improve JSON parsing performance. But there are still issues you need to deal with like the age-old JSON issue of date persistance with a JavaScript date literal. In this post I discuss various aspects of the native JSON parsers and how you can have one set of code that deals with either native parsers or the existing JSON2 interface.

A Closable jQuery Plug-in

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 03:16:03 GMT

I've found it very useful to have a closeable plug-in that hide the content of an HTML element providing a visual close image cue. Almost every UI I build these days requires either closing pop up windows or even more commonly requires that items are removed and visually hidden which usually implies 'close' behavior. In addition to removing a bunch of HTML markup, having a plug-in is also quite useful for server controls especially if multiple behaviors (plug-ins) need to be applied.

Native JSON in IE8, Firefox 3.5 plus Json.NET

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 13:46:04 GMT

This post looks at how to use the new native JSON API in IE8 and Firefox 3.5, and how it can complement Json.NET's server side JSON support by parsing and generating JSON on the browser.

Use HttpApplication.CompleteRequest Instead of Response.End

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:50:59 GMT

HttpApplication.CompleteRequest is preferable to use for aborting a request in an ASP.NET application over Response.End, because it has better performance characteristics.

Using complex types to make calling services less... complex

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 22:46:03 GMT

A detailed examination of how jQuery can call ASP.NET AJAX web services (or page methods) with complex types as parameters, to simplify the process of serializing and sending several fields of data at a time.

A Localization Handler to serve ASP.NET Resources to JavaScript

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 02:31:03 GMT

Here's an implementation of an HTTP handler that can serve ASP.NET Server resources to JavaScript clients easily. The handler can provide both local and global, normalized server resources to client JavaScript pages as objects, so that you can localize resources in one place on the server. Use standard Resx resources or custom database resource provider from the Westwind.Globalization tools (included in the download)

Polyglot Programming: Death by a thousand DSLs

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 19:03:14 GMT

In 2006, Neal Ford wrote a blog post on the topic of Polyglot Programming which foresaw a future where applications will be increasingly built using multiple general purpose languages and domain specific languages. This post discusses one of the pitfalls of the recent language and technology explosion

CodeRush & Refactor! Pro 9.1 is released

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 17:31:16 GMT

Performance should be noticeably faster in most areas of the product, especially on large projects. Startup time, project opening time and editing performance have all been affected by this work. Memory usage has been reduced significantly, and should be especially noticeable when working with large projects. Code issue technology is now shipping. This new technology shows redundant code, hints, warnings, errors, and design-related problems (a.k.a. "code smells") while you work, and also binds to CodeRush's CodeProvider technology and Refactor! Pro's refactoring technology, so you can quickly apply fixes to a number of detected issues.

Updated Westwind.Globalization Data Driven Resource Provider for ASP.N

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 18:34:35 GMT

I've updated the ASP.NET Data Driven Resource Provider code base and examples. There are a number of small improvements based on user feedback as well as a few new features like a new JavaScript Resource Handler that can provide server resources to JavaScript code easily.

$(document).ready() and pageLoad() are not the same!

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 00:16:02 GMT

A few examples about how $(document).ready() and pageLoad() differ, practical examples of when both are useful, and a third alternative that is more suitable in some cases.

Use jQuery to catch and display ASP.NET AJAX service errors

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 22:46:05 GMT

An example of how to detect errors that occur when requesting ASP.NET AJAX web services and page methods with jQuery, how to handle them, and how to more attractively present errors to the user.

Time released content in ASP.NET

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 01:01:17 GMT

"While working on the PDC2008 website, we had several time-critical updates. There were some announcements that needed to go live on the website at specific times to coincide with other marketing, there were updates to the list of of software being given to attendees that needed to go live right after the keynotes in which they were announced, etc."

Monitoring HTTP Output with Fiddler in .NET HTTP Clients and WCF Proxi

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 01:01:18 GMT

Http debugging is immensely useful and Fiddler is a nice tool that provides many options and an easy to use interface to monitor HTTP requests to get maximum information about each request. In order to monitor requests of .NET clients like WebClient, HttpWebRequest or WCF or Web Service proxies you need a little additional configuration to get Fiddler to monitor these requests.

Removing the .SVC Extension from WCF REST URLs

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 07:31:42 GMT

One of the most frequent questions that come up when talking about WCF REST urls is how to remove the .SVC file extension from the endpoint Url for a REST service. While it's not automatic, there are a couple of fairly simple solutions to this problem: Using the IIS 7 Rewrite Module or a small custom module.