Harsha Blog

Upcoming ASP.NET Releases in April

2006-04-04T09:54:00.000-07:00

The current list of ASP.NET related things planned in April includes WebApplication Project,Atlas Refresh,Atlas Suites of Controls ,CSS Control Adapters and Few Tutorials are on card for asp.net.Check the same out here

Microsoft Onfolio

2006-03-08T17:45:00.000-08:00

Microsoft Onfolio (Web Research Assistant) is an extremely powerful IE add-in for Windows Live Toolbar (toolbar.live.com) - Onfolio offers Blogging, RSS news reader, Screen Capture, Note taking, Offline Web browser, Website Capturing and data sharing capabilities.

Onfolio has been offered to users of both Microsoft Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, although the Microsoft version of Onfolio is not offered for Firefox.

Microsoft Onfolio (earlier $99) looks inspired by some of the best Firefox extensions like Scrapbook, Sage, BlogThis, ScreenGrab, Httrack (Spiderzilla) and DownloadThemAll. If you spend a good portion of your day doing research on the Web, it's hard to ignore Onfolio.

Read More.

Tool for Building Code Snippets

2006-02-15T13:00:00.000-08:00

For those of us who have fallen in love with the new "Code Snippets" feature of Visual Studio 2005, but really wish there was some way other than marking up XML to build them, check out this FREE "Snippy" tool. It is simple yet elegant UI tool for building all of your snippet types (i.e. Expansions, Surrounds With, and Refactoring). It supports C#, J#, VB.NET and XML Snippets within the same interface. You can download it from the Community Web Site gotdotnet.

For those who don’t know what “Code Snippets” are, please check here, which describes Code Snippets and how to build them in XML. You can also find a short Screen Cast here.

Seventeen Minutes With Bill on CH9

2006-02-15T12:56:00.000-08:00

Head on over to channel9 and watch a recent interview with BillG.. on CH9.

Wink - Tutorial and Presentation creation program

2006-02-10T10:59:00.000-08:00

Wink is a free Tutorial and Presentation creation program.Using Wink you can capture screenshots, add explanations boxes, buttons, titles and generate a highly effective tutorial.

Features

1.Distributed as freeware for business or personal use.
2.Available for Windows and various versions of Linux.
3.Capture screenshots from your PC, or use images in BMP,JPG,PNG,TIFF,GIF formats.
4.Output formats - Macromedia Flash, Standalone EXE, PDF, PostScript, HTML.
5.Capture screenshots automatically as you use your PC, based on mouse and keyboard input.
6.Creates highly compressed Flash presentations

http://www.debugmode.com/wink/

.NET PetShop 4.0

2006-02-09T14:15:00.000-08:00

The .NET Pet Shop application is designed to show the best practices for building enterprise, n-tier .NET 2.0 applications that may need to support a variety of database platforms and deployment scenarios.

It also shows the ASP.NET 2.0 improvements like Membership or MasterPages that simplify development of n-tier applications with .NET 2.0.

Internet Explorer 7 BETA

2006-02-08T13:31:00.000-08:00

Internet Explorer 7 BETA 2 is out and ready for download..

Download Link

Clear Google Toolbar Search History

2006-02-06T08:54:00.000-08:00

Here is a way to clear the GOOGLE Toolbar History by performing these steps:
1. Start the registry editor(by typing regedit.exe in cmdpromt).
2. Navigate to the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\NavClient\1.1 registry subkey
3. Select the History subkey, click the Del key on your keyboard, then click Yes to confirm.
4. Close the registry editor

And that is it. Please be careful while deleting the key.

Yahoo Mail

2006-02-02T14:10:00.000-08:00

Just found this coool tutorial from yahoo...about yahoo mail...

check it out here

It is still in Beta though!

ASP.NET Alerts

2006-01-30T14:08:00.000-08:00

Here is a cool way to display the alert box from the server side code. He also have a post in Gotdotnet on the same tool. He has also published in GotDotNet workspace that contains an Alert server control and a ConfirmButton server control that you can use both client-side and server-side. The controls works fine in all browsers, but says will look a little nicer in IE.

Link

MSDN Virtual Lab - Pocket PC

2006-01-19T11:26:00.000-08:00

Attend any MSDN Virtual Lab and submit an evaluation between now and June 30, 2006 and you could win a Pocket PC! See official rules for more details. Offer open to residents of the U.S. and Canada only.

Details go here.

Web Services with Visual Studio 2005

2006-01-17T07:44:00.000-08:00

The Web Services platforms represents the evolution of past distributed component technologies. They really were the result of developments and companies struggling with the various interoperability issues that were common with other technologies. Web Services aren’t the only distributed technology available but certainly the most prevalent.

In this screencast on channel9 Thom takes a look at some of the more important changes within the Web Services infrastructure using Visual Studio 2005. These include the addition of the WS-I basic profile, and building typed datasets.

Microsoft Office Tips and Tricks

2006-01-15T11:32:00.000-08:00

This FREE event is brought to you by Boston University Corporate Education Center.

Microsoft Office Tips and Tricks

Date: Wed,Feb 22, 2006
Time: 10:00 a.m. - 11:30 a.m. and
1:00 p.m. - 2:30 p.m.

Venue: 1050 Winter Street, Suite 1400
Waltham MA

SQL Server 2005 Samples

2006-01-13T13:29:00.000-08:00

The samples download provides over 100 samples for SQL Server 2005, demonstrating the following components:

>Database Engine, including administration, data access, Full-Text Search, Common Language Runtime (CLR) integration, Server Management Objects (SMO), Service Broker, and XML
>Analysis Services
>Integration Services
>Notification Services
>Reporting Services
>Replication

samples for SQL Server 2005 here

ASP.NET 2.0 Design Templates and Starter Kits

2006-01-13T12:52:00.000-08:00

If you are hopeless with web designing, but still want to get a good looking, professional web site put together, and don't want to go and hire a professional graphics team, then I've got a good news for you.

The folks at the MSDN ASP.NET developer center have posted a set of starter kits and design templates for ASP.NET 2.0 that you can use in your applications, and modify to suit your needs. These kits and templates make it much easier for those of us who are design challenged to start from a great looking design, modify it for our needs, and spend more time focusing on the actual functionality of our site.

get here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/reference/design/templates/

Architecture Journals

2006-01-11T07:08:00.000-08:00

Just ran across these useful journals for Software Architects and thought it might be useful for some...

They are indeed Microsoft published journals but folks from other programming discipline too can get "enlightened" because of general topics like Metropolis and SOA Governance, Services-Based Integration Technologies, Business Patterns for Software Engineering Use, Part 1 , Understanding Service-Oriented Architecture etc...

For more pointers refer to http://www.architecturejournal.net/

Read along for more...

FolderShare

2006-01-10T07:18:00.000-08:00

Microsoft Acquired FolderShare, a File-Synchronization Technology Provider. It is very cool and it is worth a peek.

This free service allow you to:

>Synch files between work and home
>Download non-shared files from your other pc using web interface.
>Share specific folders with friends
>Distribute your software

ASP.NET tips and tricks

2006-01-09T08:21:00.000-08:00

Here are some more of HTML tips and tricks than a ASP.NET..

To refresh a page at regular interval(say 10 sec) place this code in HEAD tag of the page
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="10">

this tag causes a fading effect on page transition, place this code in HEAD tag of
the page
<meta http-equiv="Page-Exit" content="progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Fade(duration=.5)">

To redirect automatically after 10 sec to next page, place this code in HEAD tag of
the page
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="10;URL=page1.htm">

If you don't want Microsoft products to automatically generate smart tags on your web pages, then simply include this tag. It must be included on each page of your site for which you do not desire this feature, place this code in HEAD tag of
the page
<meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="true" />

Absolute positioning Controls in ASP.NET 2.0

2006-01-08T07:14:00.000-08:00

In ASP.NET 1.1 when we use draw control the style attribute was automatically added but in ASP.NET 2.0 this is not a default behavior. So the workaround is
1. to set the style properties for each control you add
2. you can Toolsà OptionsàHTML Designerà CSSPositioning, here select the Check box for Absolute Positioning as shown in the picture.

ASP.NET GridView DataFormatString Problem

2006-01-03T14:36:00.000-08:00

For DataFormatString Property in the ASP.NET 2.0 GridView to working properly, need to disable the HtmlEncode Property. Because HtmlEncode is on(by default), the data is retrieved from the data store, HtmlEncoded, and then the format string is applied. By HtmlEncoding the value from the data store, we are protecting unsafe script from the data store from being displayed to the client.

New Search Engine

2006-01-03T07:42:00.000-08:00

New Search Engine

Check out this

http://beta.previewseek.com/

Preview seek is more intelligent than google!

Note that it is still in beta.

Greetings

2005-12-31T05:30:00.000-08:00

Monday went to Tuesday to see Wednesday and asked Thursday whether Friday has told Saturday that Sunday is New year.

Wishing you

12 months of happiness
52 weeks of Fun
365 days laughter
8760 Hrs of Good-luck
525600 Minutes of Joy
31536000 Seconds of Success.

Happy New Year to all!

New Downloads for ASP.NET

2005-12-28T07:42:00.000-08:00

Here is a list of some good downloads for ASP.NET 2.0

1. ATLAS DEC CTP RELEASED :- Here is the link get from atlas site or from here in download site about the new changes you can get more info in nikhil's blog .My suggestion also download the new HOL and check the ATLAS tutorials

2. WINDOWS VISTA DEC CTP RELEASED:- THE windows vista DEC CTP also got released along with CIDER .Thus check out the details in VISTA HOME and here is the download link

3.WEB DEPLOYMENT PROJECT FOR ASP.NET 2.0 RELEASED :-
FOR THE DETAILS SEE following links :-

4.MASTER PAGE AND XHTML Templates are available for download:- get it here

5. ADDINS for CSS PROPERTIES WINDOW released :- download it here get the details here

6. UPCOMIGN FEATURES IN ASP.NET 2.0 from Scot's blog HERE

7.Scot posted the migration tutorials from vs2003 to vs2005 - Know more about it here

8.Microsoft P&P has posted materials for VS2005 as well as ENTERPRISE LIBRARY FOR vs2005 released and CAB DEC CTP released.

Krypton Toolkit - Free

2005-12-21T07:25:00.000-08:00

Krypton Toolkit 0.9.0

Create the following Microsoft Office style look and feel by combining the MenuStrip and ToolStrip from .NET Framework 2.0 and the Krypton Toolkit. This is the default look and feel but you can fully customize all aspects of the appearance from the tool bars to the button controls.

Includes:-
Krypton Button
Krypton Group
Krypton Header
Krypton HeaderGroup
Krypton SplitContainer
Krypton Panel
Krypton Label

Download it here..

Disk Output Caching in ASP.NET 2.0

2005-12-19T07:32:00.000-08:00

To provide a good boost to the ASP.NET 2.0 caching feature which is already a superb feature at least after the integration with database cache invalidation was lacking one more feature namely the lack of surviving ASP.NET process recycle.

Dimtry has come with a utility to
1. Preservation of cached output across app domain and process restarts.
2. Avoiding using memory for cached responses.

for more details check out dimtry blog here..

Deleting ASP.NET 2.0 APP Sub-Directories Shuts Down the AppDomain

2005-12-15T10:55:00.000-08:00

Got this important info from Todd Carter's Blog.

This issue seems to be coming up recently since ASP.NET 2.0 shipped; probably because this behavior has changed from previous versions. In previous versions ASP.NET did not care if you deleted sub-directories of the web application and it appears some folks actually depended on this behavior and now when upgrading to ASP.NET 2.0 are finding their AppDomains are restarting after deleted a sub-directory.

Check this Weblog here..

CLR Profiler for the .NET Framework 2.0

2005-12-14T06:45:00.000-08:00

Here is a nice article on the CLRPROFILER for .Net 2.0 and how you can use it in .NET Framework 2.0.

CLR Overview:
The CLR Profiler includes a number of very useful views of the allocation profile, including a histogram of allocated types, allocation and call graphs, a time line showing GCs of various generations and the resulting state of the managed heap after those collections, and a call tree showing per-method allocations and assembly loads.

Asp.net DataSource Controls

2005-12-13T07:05:00.000-08:00

Just found a series of articles on datasource controls in msdn. Found it useful for me..

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

2005-12-12T15:21:00.000-08:00

The asp.net1.1 to 2.0 Upgrade center

Often I got question from devs and friends what are the changes and impcat of upgrading from asp.net1.1 to asp.net 2.0 .If you ae also looking for the same here is the info for you msdn has the asp.net 1.1 to 2.0 upgrade center where you can know what you need to do as well as common issues and how you can track it.
Remember that asp.net 1.1 and 2.0 can run side by side in same IIS box but with the rich set of features provided thru asp.net 2.0 i hope you ll soon move into 2.0 and this site is your friend in that scenario

Generic diagramming, graph-drawing and graph-layout kit

2005-12-12T09:34:00.000-08:00

Today while Searching for Some tool I came across a Good .NET Control which is Capable of Drawing diagrams.

This Project is a Shareware project, Supported by SourceForge.NET http://netron.sourceforge.net/ewiki/ .

Download Url http://sourceforge.net/projects/netron/

Is it a Better product to try out to draw Diagram.

King Kong - The movie 2005

2005-12-10T16:03:00.000-08:00

I am early waiting to watch this movie.
Links:Official site
,Reviews

SQL Server 2005 - books

2005-12-09T12:55:00.000-08:00

SQL Server 2005 Books Online from Microsoft

get your free book..

Asynchronous pages in ASP.NET 2.0

2005-12-09T07:18:00.000-08:00

Here's an interesting MSDN article that focuses building Asynchronous pages in ASP.NET 2.0

Link..

I guess it will help writing better responsive web pages for sure.

how to wow a girl..

2005-12-08T19:16:00.000-08:00

Here is how to impress a girl..

Microsoft Virtual Labs (for pre-release products)

2005-12-08T16:51:00.000-08:00

Never knew till yesterday that you can actually demo Microsoft pre-release products by remotely logging onto these labs.

Microsoft Demo Servers
Have fun!

LINQ - first look

2005-12-07T12:10:00.000-08:00

MVPs have been chomping at the bit to release info about a new bit of technology - LINQ. Well, Microsft has finally made it public, so here is the scoop. First of all what is LINQ? It is Just an acronym for Language Integrated Query. What this means is that starting in C# 3.0 and VB 9, you'll be able to write data queries inline with the code as if it were a natural part of the language.

string[] words = { "cherry", "apple", "blueberry" };

var sortedWords =
from w in words
orderby w
select w;

The variable sortedWords then contains the resulting data.

Standard LINQ is the base technology that lets you query any enumerable data structure. DLINQ is used to query databases and XLINQ is used to query XML.

LINQ is Microsoft's answer (or rather Anders Heilsjberg's answer) to the much discussed issue of impedance mismatch.

We sure could use the advantages of integrating SQL schema into CLR metadata. One interesting aspect of LINQ is that it not only integrates SQL Server into the CLR through DLINQ but is also used for just about any type of structured data that we use in our programs - be it objects, string arrays, XML data etc.

LINQ also has a predecessor called Cω (C Omega) which was also intended to reduce the "impedance mismatch" between the Object-oriented world and the relational world. But i guess it didn't see the light of the day or it was abandoned and is still lurking around somewhere in the Microsoft Research Labs

Anyway, if you want more info on LINQ, go here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/future/linq/

ASP.NET 2.0 Security Practices at a Glance

2005-12-06T13:22:00.000-08:00

From the summary of this security practice: This module presents a set of consolidated practices designed to address ASP.NET version 2.0 security issues. The answers and recommendations presented in this module are tight distillations designed to supplement the companion modules and additional guidance. The practices are organized by various categories that represent those areas where mistakes are most often made.

Security Practices: ASP.NET 2.0 Security Practices at a Glance

free .NET obfuscators

2005-11-21T11:26:00.000-08:00

Many of you might already be knowing about this, but its still worth mentioning. I came across this .NET reflection tool long back which was developed by a German Software engineer named Lutz Roeder who now works for Microsoft. The tool can be found at http://www.aisto.com/roeder/dotnet/

The best part of this tool is that its free and I even had success in disassembling some of today's most successful enterprise components like Infragistics, DeveloperExpress etc. I know of other tools like www.9rays.net which fail to do the same and/or has limits.

It is more similar to the ILDASM.exe that comes with the .NET framework but this tool has more features like showing the lists of base types and descendant types, a list of dependencies for the assembly and call trees etc.

More pointers to the subject can be found here

Attached the tool in the zip file, thought I could save some trouble downloading it since accessing the site itself takes minutes.

Now, does anybody know any good "free" .NET obfuscators apart from the one that ships with Visual Studio .NET 2003 (Dotfuscator from PreEmptive Solutions) ?