Wesley Walraeve

PowerCommands 1.1 for Visual Studio 2008

2008-09-01T11:18:38Z

A collegue .NET consultant, Tim Cools, gave me a tip about a good VS.NET 2008 extension.

PowerCommands 1.1 is a set of useful extensions for the Visual Studio 2008 adding additional functionality to various areas of the IDE.

Some examples:

Clear All Panes
Copy Path
Email CodeSnippet
Insert Guid Attribute
Show All Files
Undo Close
Collapse Projects
Copy Class
Paste Class
Copy References
...

- Wesley

New BMW concept GINA.

2008-06-10T13:42:00Z

As I'm a BMW freak, I follow the BMW technology and new models a little. But this, this is amazing. I hope they bring this kind of cars in production very fast.

You can have design cars en fancy cars, but this is more, MORE, MUCH MORE.

You can see it here on http://www.bmw-web.tv/en/channel/new or directly on http://www.bmw-web.tv/en/video/gbiXGRR/BMW%20GINA%20Light%20Visionary%20Model%3A%20Premiere

- Wesley

A good blog for .NET assembly debugging

2008-06-10T08:59:18Z

While looking for a solution I found a good blog about hardcore debugging in .NET.
On the right side you can even find some labs for debugging. Think this is really handy if you run in some "non standard .NET (bug) behaviour" or memory problems.

It's a blog from Tess, she's working for Microsoft.

You can find the blog here http://blogs.msdn.com/tess/

-Wesley

Validators on AJAX updatepanel not working on IIS

2008-06-04T11:41:00Z

I've been looking for hours to find a solution for this problem. Well first of all defining what the problem exaclty is and then finding a solution.

The Problem:

I've an dynamic loaded usercontrol(ascx) with textboxes and rangevalidators and requiredFieldValidators on an Ajax UpdatePanel.
I was developing and of course running the site in my VS.NET 2005 Cassini web server.
On a post-back the in the update panel my validators were not working anymore on my IIS (Win2k3). On my Cassini everyhting was fine.
I was using the latest AjaxToolkit for ASP.NET 2.0, thought there was a fix in it, but not.

The Solution:

I found the solution on the site of Matt Gibbs: http://blogs.msdn.com/mattgi/archive/2007/01/23/asp-net-ajax-validators.aspx

From previous experience (post that were deleted after linking them) I post the solution also here (All credits goes to Matt):

ASP.NET AJAX provides new APIs for registering script with the ScriptManager. Using these APIs allows controls to work well with partial rendering. Without them, controls placed inside an UpdatePanel won't work as expected. In previous CTP releases of ASP.NET AJAX, we had a set of validator controls that derived from the v2.0 controls and used the new APIs. This made them work well with ASP.NET AJAX. WindowsUpdate will soon include a version of System.Web that can take advantage of the new APIs. So the new controls which would have been redundant have been removed. However, the update isn't available yet and ASP.NET AJAX has been released. So, in the short-term, the source code for a set of custom validator controls that work with partial rendering is available here.

The .zip file includes a solution and .csproj file as well as the compiled DLL. Just put the DLL in the /bin directory of your application and include the following <tagMapping section in the pages section of the web.config.

As you can see Matt is mentioning SOON, his post was from 27/01/2007. And as i know now it's still not working. :-)

Maybe somebody else has a solution or I'm I using a wrong or rather old version of Ajax (extensions) you think?

TIP: Never or ever use the Cassini in development. Use IIS.
Also, an IIS 6.0 has different behaviour on a Windows XP and on a Windows 2003 server. So if you develop and test on your IIS 6 on XP also try it on a Win2k3 IIS 6.0 if you plan to deploy it on such a server.

- Wesley

ASP.NET Multi file upload

2008-05-09T10:27:35Z

For a project I was working on I needed to be able to upload multiple files via HTTP to a website.

You can put X Http FileUpload controls on your page but then you need to select the files one by one. So a busy job if you need to upload +100 files.

So I was looking on the web and found this great control on the code project from darick_c.

Here you have the URL: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/FlashUpload.aspx

And attached the code and an example. I know you can download it from the code project site but you never know.

Have fun.

-Wesley

Flash text font on your site.

2008-05-04T09:27:00Z

I'm writing a website for restaurants and got a tip from a graphical guy to use flash for my fonts. Well it sounds strange but it is great.

The thing/technology is called Sifr and can be found here http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/sifr/ and http://novemberborn.net/sifr/2.0.5.

It's easy to use, add 2 scripts to your page and some stylesheet items, you also need a swf file with your font. The script will replace the specific tags, ex. h1 with the flash movie with your text.
You can even change the font size of the tag in the CSS and the font in the flash will be changed aswell.

A must have if you want fancy fonts on your website.

- Wesley

VisualSVN Server - Subversion on the server

2008-01-08T14:34:00Z

Before, when you wanted to use Subversion you had to install Subversion and Tortoise on the development server and use Windows Explorer to create a repository. It was not that hard to create the rep. but you always had to create the tags, trunk and branches directories aswell.

Now you can use VisualSVN server. This is a free tool which gives you a GUI for creating the repositories (with tags, trunk, branches dirs if wanted) and even managing the security. So no more strugling with the text files to manage the read and writes permission. All can be done from the VisualSVN Server GUI.

When you run the setup, the setup will install subversion, Apache and openSSL (and some others) for you. So the default repository location will be :8080/svn">http://<server ip or name>:8080/svn. The port can be changed in the Apache config file.

The VisualSVN Server can be found on http://www.visualsvn.com/server

- Wesley

note: Updated Tomcat to Apache.

New year, new/fresh Microsoft events.

2008-01-02T14:40:15Z

Yesterday, the first day of the year I got an E-mail of microsoft Belgium in my mailbox with an invitation for DevDays 2008. Well they don't call it DevDays anymore they call it TechDays 2008.

The TechDays 2008 will start on the 11th of March 2008 until the 13th of March.
They start on the 11th because this is the lauch day of the 3 new Microsoft products:

Visual Studio 2008
SQL Server 2008
Windows Server 2008

You can find more information on this site http://www.microsoft.com/belux/heroeshappenhere/default.aspx

I will be there.

- Wesley

Best wishes for 2008.

2008-01-02T14:33:46Z

Hello dotnet6 readers,

I want to wish you all a healthy and great 2008 and that all your dreams come true.

Well on a techical level they will come true for some of us (for me they will) we will have this year VS.NET 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008. A lot of new technology to learn and strugle with.

2008 here we come.

- Wesley

How small fishes are eaten by bigger fishes and the bigger by much bigger and ...

2007-10-26T11:23:00Z

On Friday the 7th of september 2007 there was an article that Business Objects bought a smaller company Fuzzy Informatik. (Small fish eaten by big fish)

1 month later on monday the 8th of october SAP bought Business Objects for 4.8 billion €uro. (The bigger fish eaten by a much bigger fish).

Oh yeah, just for information, approx. 2 years ago Business Object bought Crystal reports. But maybe you already know that.

- Wesley

Doe het niet, Anneke

2007-10-26T11:06:48Z

Sorry for my English blog readers but this is an article on www.professional.be why Anneke shouldn't study IT and shouldn't look for a job as IT developer.

Here is the article(letter, 4 pages) in Dutch http://www.itprofessional.be/career.cfm?id=72849

I think we all recognize some (not to say almost all) points that uncle Tom is mentioning. :-)

Have a nice weekend and it's great to be an IT developer.

-Wesley

Ah no, another 3 letter IT-term: "BDD"

2007-10-15T15:27:00Z

Business Driven Development, an evolution of TDD.

I think it comes from the Java world, from JBehave.

You can find more on http://behaviour-driven.org/

And Dan North wrote JBehave and is giving session about it http://dannorth.net/

And yes there's already an NBehave http://nbehave.org/ :-S

- Wesley

StringBuilder Remove or create a new instance.

2007-10-05T14:28:53Z

I wanted to know if the StringBuilder was faster by removing all the text or creating a new instance everytime. So I created a test winforms application with the following test case and results.

First Case:
Append 100 unique lines of text to a string builder and do this 200.000 times. But every time (200.000 times) create a new instance of the StringBuilder.
Result: 36 seconds

Second Case:
Append 100 unique lines of text to a string builder and do this 200.000 times. But every time (200.000 times) use the Remove method (sb.Remove(0,sb.Length)).
Result: 31 seconds

Is also did the first and second case for 400.000 times and the result was:

First case: 1 min 11 seconds
Second case: 1 min 3 seconds

And to complete the test I also made the test with 200 unique lines of text and in a iteration of 400.000 times. Result was:

First case: 2 min 26 seconds
Second case: 2 min 9 seconds

Memory: For memory usage you don't have to do it, in all the cases the memory uses was almost the same. Just a few K more in the first case.

Conclusion: Maybe a useless test because who is gonna create 400.000 a new stringbuilder with 200 lines. But the Remove is a little faster (small 20%).

Maybe for the .NET newbees: Don't try this with String concatenation. :-)

- Wesley

SmartPart V1.1.0.0

2007-10-05T07:38:05Z

For those who are looking for the SmartPart version 1.1.0.0. I found it thanks to one of my blog readers Bart Segers. Thanks Bart.

You can download the file here. So stop looking on the out-phasing gotdotnet ;-)

- Wesley

How safe is it to use an URL to a good article, tool or component?

2007-10-03T12:29:00Z

Why the question. I'm facing the problem now that I couldn't find the SmartPart for .NET 1.1. You can read a lot of blog entries about the cool smpartpart and they all use a hyperlink to the blog of Jan Thielens or to the download section on gotdotnet.

Now gotdotnet is phasing out, so there is no code anymore. The smartpart project is moved to the codeplex website but only the new version V3 (.net 2.0). So where do I get my old smartpart?

That is why I'm asking the question. How safe is it to write an article about a cool tool or component of somebody else without copying the tool/component. Let's say that the guy stopped paying his bill for the hosting and all the tools are gone.

But even then, let's say you copy the tool/component and use it for your customer projects. After a while everything of that used component disappears from the net, so no support, no backup, no latest version, no contact. Is it safe to use such "open source" free components?

PS: By the way, who knows where I can find the "old" smartPart for .NET 1.1?

- Wesley

UPDATE:

A person I know and who is reading my blog found the "old" smart part v1.1 on a backup. So here it is (in the post attachments).

Many thanks to Bart Segers who still had the SmartPart v1.1.0.0!!