DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by turtlespin

Speeding up ASP.NET with the Runtime Page Optimizer

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 00:31:08 GMT

An great new tool to automatically optimize your ASP.NET website.

Free Visual Studio File Explorer Add-in

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 09:31:03 GMT

The Visual Studio File Explorer Add-in (sexy name we know, but hey, it's self documenting) is a free Tool Window add-in for VS 2008 that provides a Windows Explorer style file system view. It's particularly useful for performing routine file system tasks without the need to "context switch" away from Visual Studio, which can be time-consuming over the course of days and weeks. It is shell-enabled so extensions like TortoiseSVN work too.

Elegant Invariant Checking with C# 3

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 07:16:03 GMT

Leveraging expression trees and extension methods to build a fluent invariant checking API.

Development Team Meetings - Keeping the Focus

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 09:40:54 GMT

Weekly team meetings are an essential part of any Development Team. Especially when team members are working on different projects and multiple locations. Keeping these meetings relevant and informative is crucial - people are busy and no-one wants their time wasted. I recently sent out an email expanding on the types of meetings we have and how people can participate - perhaps they will help your team when they get together.

Faster domain model development with schema round-tripping

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 05:01:02 GMT

Schema round-tripping is the ability for your domain model entities to be updated seamlessly when schema changes occur or, when your modify your model, for those changes to be propagated back to your database schema without any fuss. This article covers how to leverage schema round-tripping with LightSpeed 2.0's Visual Studio 2008 integrated domain design tool. This functionality is baked into every version, including the free express edition.

Rich domain modeling with Visual Studio 2008

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 04:16:03 GMT

LightSpeed 2.0 includes a powerful visual domain model designer that has support for database round tripping (auto update on schema changes, push model changes to the database), creates .NET 2.0 compliant or .NET 3.5 compliant code depending on the target framework of your project and customizable code generation templates. Drag and drop database support for SQL Server, Oracle, My SQL, SQLite and PostgreSQL is also supported right out of Visual Studio 2008. Free version available.

MVC: Creating SSL Links/URLs

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 18:31:10 GMT

A couple days ago a reader sent in a question regarding how to use SSL with the MVC framework. Specifically the reader wanted to know the easiest way to make an Ajax call to a HTTPS page from a non HTTPS page. The tricky part here is to do so without hard-coding any URLs, so I whipped up a few extension methods that should make this a bit easier.

Leveraging LightSpeed specific features from LINQ

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 22:54:28 GMT

Post about accessing the powerful features that LightSpeed offers through the new LINQ provider supplied with LightSpeed 2.0. Specifically this article deals with leveraging the powerful Named Aggregates feature and Soft Delete functionality.

Sandcastle Removed From CodePlex

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 02:46:02 GMT

Sandcastle - the .Net community equivalent of RDoc/JavaDoc and the spiritual successor of the now defunct NDoc - has been removed from CodePlex. It's fate is currently up in the air and Microsoft is asking you for input on what should happen next.

When to use LINQ?

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 04:16:03 GMT

Great, in-depth discussion of when it makes to sense to use LINQ in LightSpeed 2.0.

jQuery UI v1.5 Released

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 17:46:02 GMT

Focus on Consistent API and Effects

Introducing LINQ to LightSpeed

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 03:31:02 GMT

LightSpeed 2 incorporates LINQ (Language Integrated Query) support. LINQ to LightSpeed means that if you know LINQ, you can get these benefits without having to learn a new API. You can continue to write LINQ queries as if against LINQ to SQL or another LINQ provider, but you'll get database independence (effectively LightSpeed gives you LINQ to Oracle, LINQ to MySQL, LINQ to PostgreSQL and LINQ to SQLite as well as LINQ to SQL Server, all in the one box), advanced eager loading functionality (avoiding the so-called "n+1" problem which affects some LINQ implementations) and of course the blazingly fast LightSpeed query engine.

"Velocity" project - memcached by Microsoft?

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 00:31:07 GMT

Is the Velocity project by Microsoft simply a me-too framework or are they creating real value for developers on the Windows platform?

Silverlight 2 Beta2 Released

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 06:31:02 GMT

Silverlight 2 Beta2 was released today. Silverlight 2 Beta2 supports a go-live license that allows you to start using and deploying Silverlight 2 for commercial applications. There will be some API changes between Beta2 and the final release, so you should expect that applications you write with Beta2 will need to make some updates when the final release comes out. But we think that these changes will be straight-forward and relatively easy, and that you can begin planning and starting commercial projects now.

LightSpeed 2.0 Released

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 04:16:02 GMT

LightSpeed 2.0 has been released. It includes a full, round-tripping Visual Studio designer and support for LINQ!

Using the unit of work-per-request pattern in ASP.NET MVC

Tue, 13 May 2008 08:01:03 GMT

Describe a simple, efficient and testable approach to implementing the unit of work-per-request (a.k.a session-per-request) pattern in Microsoft's new ASP.NET MVC framework.

LightSpeed 2.0 Gets Visual Studio Designer

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 08:46:02 GMT

First it was LINQ support, now LightSpeed 2 gets a complete Visual Studio design experience.

Ninject (Part 2): Customizing your infrastructure for logging

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 22:11:15 GMT

Part 2 of a primer on getting started with Ninject. It uses NLog, Ninject, NSpecify and LightSpeed

Ninject: Getting all the stuff you'll need

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 13:16:03 GMT

A primer on getting started with Ninject. It uses NLog, Ninject and LightSpeed

Mindscape releases WPF Elements

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 02:01:04 GMT

WPF Elements is a suite of 12 controls that make WPF more approachable for developing line of business applications. Included is a MulticolumnTreeView (aka TreeListView) control, MaskedTextBox control, DateTime controls, Numeric text boxes and much more.

Dear Software Tool Vendors...I'm Breaking Up With You

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:16:04 GMT

Ever feel like you can't keep up with the latest and greatest and things are getting more complex not easier? So does Jimmy Bogard.

Json.NET 2.0 Beta 3 - Turkey Test Approved

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 10:16:02 GMT

Hopefully the final Json.NET 2.0 beta. Lots of new features and bug fixes. Library now passes 'The Turkey Test'.

Mindscape ships the WPF Property Grid

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 10:31:02 GMT

The prolific Mindscape from Wellington (NZ) released another cool developer's tool: a property grid for WPF.

Dynamic LINQ (Part 1: Using the LINQ Dynamic Query Library)

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 15:46:03 GMT

While writing type-safe queries is great for most scenarios, there are cases where you want the flexibility to dynamically construct queries on the fly. For example: you might want to provide business intelligence UI within your application that allows an end-user business analyst to use drop-downs to build and express their own custom queries/views on top of data.

Internet Explorer 8 now passing Acid2

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 21:46:02 GMT

The IE8 team just announced some new news about IE8 - they just passed a major milestone which is to have IE8 render Acid2 when in IE8 standards mode. Includes link to official post and video.