DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by tlynch

27 Free Must-have Online Collaboration Tools

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 00:46:12 GMT

hese days teams can be dispersed all over the globe. With outsourcing, telecommuting, distance learning and complex project collaboration, it's often helpful to have tools that can assist with the various collaborative tasks need to be done by dispersed teams. I've put together a great list of 27 free...

New ASP.NET Charting Control

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:31:03 GMT

From ScottGu's blog. Brand new, Free, ASP.NET 3.5 chart control. It looks very nice!

jQuery Ajax uploader plugin (with progress bar!)

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:46:04 GMT

Do you want your HTML file upload controls to show a progress bar during the upload? That's always been tricky. Here's a cool jQuery plugin that gets the job done, along with a demo app written in ASP.NET MVC.

Starting with jQuery - Using jQuery with Web Forms

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 02:16:02 GMT

In this sixth and final entry on a series of post focused on using jQuery with no prior knowledge, I dive into applying jQuery into the traditional ASP.Net web form environment. The example code covered in this entry focuses on applying the jQuery Validation plug-in against 2 sets of input in the same form. To make the example more realistic, the form fields are contained inside of content page to ensure the code works with ASP.Net's client id renaming feature/annoyance.

Client Side ASP.NET ListView Sorting via jQuery TableSorter Plugin Dem

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:01:02 GMT

I was recently asked to provide sorting on a ListView that I knew needed it, but had left off originally because I was having trouble with the way I normally handle sorting ListViews with this particular page. This led me to searching for another way. I think what I came up with may replace the way I have been handling user requested sorting (all server side) up until now. What I found was the jQuery TableSorter plugin plus a few extras. The plugin, like just about all jQuery plugins is really easy to use. You just point it at your table and it does the rest (make sure your table has thead and tbody tags though). Of course there are many options that you can set for your particular situation. Check out the demo.

Touchless - A webcam multi-touch SDK

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 20:01:02 GMT

That brings us to today, releasing Touchless to the world outside Microsoft, as a *FREE* *OPEN-SOURCE* SDK with a low barrier to entry for developers and users. Touchless makes developing multi-touch capable software easy, and the results can be enjoyed by anyone with a webcam (and some M&Ms :))! Touchless has come a long way, but its journey has just begun. I can imagine a variety of great directions to explore using Touchless. Perhaps support for the forthcoming Windows multi-touch API, video chat white-boarding, implementing mouse/game/hotkey/media control, and designing decked out Minority Report style file/media browsers.

Check username availability with JQuery & ASP.NET

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:01:04 GMT

This article shows how to use jQuery in a real world practical situation - to check username availability - by making an AJAX call to a WebMethod. In this artcle we examine how to make the call, how get the desired username and pass it correctly as well as using jQuery to style and display firnedly notification messages.

Custom jQuery Selector for ASP.NET WebForms

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 22:16:13 GMT

My quest for a better way to select ASP.NET auto-generated IDs with jQuery.

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#.

How to make my web pages Internet Explorer 8 compatible

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 22:16:02 GMT

Free tool to make your web pages compatible with IE8 by automating the introduction of the compatibility flag.

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!

Json.NET 3.0 Released

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:46:02 GMT

The latest version of Json.NET brings lots of new features including Silverlight support.

Exploring System.Web.Routing

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 18:31:11 GMT

An overview of the new System.Web.Routing namespace that was included in .net 3.5 SP1.

Updated version of Postback Ritalin - ASP.NET AJAX Server Control

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:01:02 GMT

PostBack Ritalin is an ASP.NET AJAX server control to help simplify the common task of disabling buttons and imagebuttons during partial postbacks.

Optimize WebResource.axd and ScriptResource.axd

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 20:01:06 GMT

Some weeks ago I wrote how to minify and compress the WebResource.axd handler. In the comments of that post someone asked how to do the same with ScriptResource.axd. I thought about it and realized it could be done much smarter.If you take a look at the HTML source at the CodePlex Issue Tracker page, you'll see it references 13 WebResource.axd and ScriptResource.axd. That's 13 different web requests on each page load. The ScriptResource.axd is using HTTP compression but WebResource.axd does not. None of them minifies the scripts.Therefore it would be cool to create a plug 'n play HttpModule that combines all resource.axd scripts into one single web request and then minify and compress them. It would result in smaller HTML, fewer web requests and optimized JavaScript code. If you're a YSlow nazi like me, this is a must-have.

3 mistakes to avoid when using jQuery with ASP.NET AJAX

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 12:31:14 GMT

Three common problems that I've seen when using jQuery with ASP.NET AJAX, their underlying causes, and simple solutions to them.

Unofficial google shell... awsome

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 16:16:04 GMT

Web base command shell for google. What else can I say?...

HydrogenCMS Released

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 22:16:02 GMT

The source for a new simple cms has been released using asp.net mvc.

Sysinternals, now easier to get than ever

Sat, 31 May 2008 14:01:07 GMT

The sysinternals team has placed all their tools on a network share... on the internet. Now you can copy and run any of their tools from the command line. Anywhere. With no installs, website googling, unzipping or anything. \\live.sysinternals.com\tools\

Finally, a SelectedItems Option (yaaay)

Wed, 14 May 2008 17:46:04 GMT

The .NET framework does not include a way to get the selected items from a CheckBoxList, ListBox, DropDownList, or RadioButtonList, without iterating the Items collection. This post provides a generic extension method for retrieving the selected items from any ListControl.

Implement MetaWeblog API in ASP.NET

Sat, 10 May 2008 18:31:03 GMT

There is no doubt that MetaWeblog API is one of the very helpful and popular inventions around online publishing especially for blog engines and services. Of course MetaWeblog API has not been a tool only for blogs because it's used as a general publishing service for others sites as well.

Creating great thumbnails in ASP.NET

Sat, 10 May 2008 02:01:03 GMT

The built in function for creating thumbnails in ASP.NET is extremely convenient and very simple to implement. The trouble is that it produces relatively poor quality results and excessively large file sizes. The thumbnails tend to look very muddy when using this route, but many times it's good enough for whatever your needs may be.

Json.NET 2.0 final released

Sun, 04 May 2008 08:46:02 GMT

The final version of Json.NET 2.0. Includes all the new features introduced during the betas such as LINQ to JSON and JsonSerializer improvements in addition to all new API documentation.

Never write another RequiredFieldValidator again

Thu, 01 May 2008 14:56:28 GMT

I don't know about you, but I seem to write RequiredFieldValidators on pretty much every project I work on. So I figured out a way for .Net to do the work for me...

RestLess - A Simple REST Framework Part 2 : ndepth.net

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:16:02 GMT

An updated to Jayme's RestLess framework with some general improvements (better URLs) and some new properties.