Code Monkey Labs: Blog

Weekly Web Nuggets #27

John Clayton — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 20:41:00 GMT

Remember to hug a developer today!

General

DateTime vs. DateTimeOffset In .NET 3.5: In part one of his two part series on working with dates & times in .NET 3.5, Dan Rigsby takes a look at the new DateTimeOffset structure.
TimeZone vs. TimeZoneInfo In .NET 3.5: In part two, Dan takes a look at the new TimeZoneInfo class.

Web Development

The Evolution Of MVC: Stephen Walther has an excellent post discussing the evolution of MVC from conception through ASP.NET MVC.
The Complete Guide For You To Become An Almighty jQuery Developer: A massive collection of jQuery tips, tricks, tutorials, & resources.
ASP.NET Routing Documentation: Good documentation on the new routing system in .NET 3.5 SP1.

Software

NHibernate 2.0: Oren Eini announces the release of NHibernate 2.0, which is comparable to Hibernate 3.2.
Firebug 1.2: John Resig announces and outlines the release of Firebug 1.2.

Weekly Web Nuggets #26

John Clayton — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 01:19:00 GMT

General

Red Gate Buys Reflector: Lutz Roeder's Reflector - the best free .NET development tool of all time - has been purchased by Red Gate Software. They say that it will remain free...let's all hope that it does.

Web Development

jQuery Animation Jump: Ever notice that subtle jump at the end of your jQuery animation? Here's a quick tip on how to fix it!
10 Useful CSS Tricks To Conquer The World: A collection of simple, yet powerful, CSS tips that would likely be useful in nearly every project.
Why I Am No Longer Supporting IE6: Ryan Farley is fighting the good fight and is no longer supporting IE6 on his website.
7 Principles Of Clean And Optimized CSS Code: 7 simple tips for writing better CSS.
40+ CSS/JS Styling And Functionality Techniques: The title says it all - a nice collection of ways to spruce up your forms.

Weekly Web Nuggets #25

John Clayton — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 19:29:00 GMT

General

The Tortoise And The Hare: Tim Barcz has a must-read post comparing enterprise development to the fable of the tortoise and the hare. As someone who's been dealing with this sort of cycle for the last few years, I couldn't agree more. Diligent developers should be striving to be the tortoise, writing maintainable, unit-tested code that breaks the cycle of the hare - quickly written applications that degrade so quickly another rewrite is the only way to fix them.
Hidden Gems - Not The Same Old 3.5 SP1 Post: As I'm sure you're already aware, SP1 for .NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008 shipped this week. Scott Hanselman takes a look at the "metric buttload" of changes with this release.
12 Unit Testing Tips For Software Engineers: A great article by Alex Iskold with 12 tips for unit testing.
Implementing Repository And Specification Patterns Using Linq: Ritesh Rao shows how to get your hands dirty using Linq.
Inversion Of Control Is NOT About Testability: Jeffrey Palermo reminds us that IoC is not about testability - it's about a good design, of which testability is a byproduct.

Web Development

Conditional-CSS: This slick tool lets you include conditional statements right in your CSS files to target specific browsers.
ASP.NET Performance: High CPU Utilization Case Studies And Solutions: Alik Levin, of the Microsoft ACE Team, takes a look at a number of issues that can cause high CPU utilization on your web site.
Keep Your Link-Juice By Using A Custom HTTP Module For 301 Redirects: Dana Coffey shares some SEO-foo - using a custom HTTP module to permanently redirect requests from an old URL to a new one.
Filters In ASP.NET MVC Preview 4: Phil Haack writes about the four types of action filters you'll find in the 4th preview of ASP.NET MVC.
Build Better Pages With Firebug: This is an excellent tutorial on what is without a doubt the MVP of web development tools - Firebug.
ASP.NET Gets No Respect: ASP.NET is a great platform - the best, in my opinion - for building anything on the web, yet it just doesn't have much visibility in the most trafficked web sites. Why? Rick Strahl has the answers!

Weekly Web Nuggets #24

John Clayton — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 01:34:00 GMT

Probably the biggest news of the week is that SQL Server 2008 RTM'd this week, and is already available on MSDN. A word of warning...if you have Visual Studio 2008 installed, you're better off waiting until Monday when SP1 for Visual Studio 2008 ships.

General

The Onion Architecture Part 3: In this third installment, Jeffrey Palermo puts the Onion Architecture side by side with the traditional layered architecture.
36 Steps To Success As A Technical Lead: A good article about how to be successful as a technical lead, a title that brings with it some subtle challenges.
Visual Studio .NET Platform Targets Explained: With 64-bit computing starting to make its way into consumer desktops, it's even more critical to target the appropriate platform.
Visual Studio Theme Generator: A slick tool for creating themes for Visual Studio.

Web Development

JSON Serializers In .NET - Not There Yet: Rick Strahl explains why he's created his own JSON serializer, despite there already being two such classes in .NET.
YUI Compressor For .NET: Some kind souls have ported the popular YUI Compressor to .NET.
A Practical Review Of ASP.NET MVC: Josh Charles takes a good long look at ASP.NET MVC.
Moving My Site Onto A 64 Bit Server: Rick Strahl has a lengthy post outlining his move to a brand-spanking-new 64-bit server and the challenges he encounterd along the way.

Weekly Web Nuggets #23

John Clayton — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 14:34:00 GMT

General

The Onion Architecture Part 1: Jeffrey Palermo proposes a new architectural pattern that is based on how components are coupled to each other.
The Onion Architecture Part 2: Jeffrey Palermo continues his presentation of the Onion Architecture with a practical example.
How To Review NHibernate Applications: Oren Eini writes about some key points to look for when reviewing an NHibernate-based application.
More Fun With 'yield return': Mike Hadlow presents a great usage of the yield keyword...very, very nice!

Web Development

jQuery Hotkeys Plugin: A jQuery plugin that lets you easily add and remove handlers for keyboard events using almost any key combination!
Generate Web Page Thumbnail Screen Shots: Chris Pietschmann shows how to use the WebBrowser component to take screen shots of web pages.
ASP.NET MVC - Avoiding Tag Soup: As a response to Jeff Atwood's Tag Soup post, Rob Conery shows the spaghetti code can be pared down to something much simpler.
Enhance Your Input Fields With Simple CSS Tricks: Janko Jovanovic shows some simple CSS tricks to spice up your form fields.
Using CSS To Do Anything: 50+ Creative Examples and Tutorials: A nice collection of some neat things you can do with CSS.
Get Language and Country From A Browser In ASP.NET: Mads Kristensen shows off a pretty slick trick - determining a visitors language and country using only information sent by the browser!

Weekly Web Nuggets #22

John Clayton — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:59:00 GMT

This week is the TDD edition of the web nuggets. This week I've been getting my feet wet with some practical TDD...and loving it! A number of the links this week were a big help in pointing me in the right direction.

Test Driven Development

Getting Started With TDD: Steve Smith writes about getting started with TDD, something that I've been struggling with recently. I couldn't agree more with his point of view - you just have to jump in and get your feet wet. It doesn't have to be a whole project, start to finish...it can be new functionality in an existing project. You can research the topic until your head explodes, but you just won't 'get it' until you start doing it. Go ahead, jump in!
TDD Is How I Do It, Not What I Do: In the event your find yourself in the position to have to explain to management why you 'waste time writing those test things', Brett Schuchert's post about TDD is a must-read. TDD is simply how you write good code! He outlines a number of reasons of how TDD is a means to the end result - good, maintainable code and a product that meets the expectations.
Unit Test Boundaries: Phil Haack helps to define the 'unit' in unit test by pointing out where the boundaries are. This is another great realization when hitching a ride on the TDD train!
Mocking ASP.NET MVC: This is an older post, but one that I've found incredibly helpful as I've been diving into TDD & MVC.
StructureMap Medium-Level Usage Scenarios: Chad Myers outlines the different ways you can wire-up StructureMap.

General

What's Your Personal (Developer) Brand: Are you trying to further your career at your current job or while searching for a new one? Andrew Tokeley recommends working on your personal brand.
Skip Lists Are Fascinating: Igor Ostrovsky takes a look at the skip list, a simple, yet powerful data structure.
LINQ & Lambda, Part 4: Lucene.Net: Vijay Santhanam shows how you can use LINQ against your Lucene.Net indexes.

Web Development

Adding OpenSearch To Your Website And Getting It In The Browser's Search Box: Ever notice the search box in Firefox glowing blue? Turns out that the glow is based on the presence of a simple <link/> tag on the page, and allows users to add your site to their search providers! Scott Hanselman shows us how it's done.
From ASP.NET To Silverlight In Five Leaps: Making the shift from ASP.NET to Silverlight requires a bit of a shift in thinking - Dimebrain has 5 tips for making that shift.
Make Your Website Mobile & iPhone Friendly: Traffic is on the rise from iPhones and other mobile devices. Scott Hanselman has two tips for making your site more friendly to our small-screened brethren.

Weekly Web Nuggets #21

John Clayton — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 00:25:00 GMT

General

Lessons That I Learned From Waegis: Keyvan Nayyeri shares the lessons he learned from launching Waegis, a spam filter for web sites.
Don't Mix Using Statements And Lambda Expressions: Jared Parsons explains why you do not want to mix using statements with lambda expressions.
Nullable<T> Usage Guidelines: Krzysztof Cwalina has some great guidelines on using the Nullable<T> type that was introduced in .NET 2.0.
Design Patterns - Adapter Pattern: David Cumps adds the adapter pattern to his series of design patterns.

Web Development

ASP.NET MVC Preview 4 Release (Part 1): Scott Guthrie walks us through the latest release of ASP.NET MVC. In this first of two posts, Scott talks about the new caching, error handling, and security features in this release.
jQuery Sparklines: Splunk Inc has released a jQuery plugin for creating sparklines (small inline graphs).

Virtualization

Processor Topology Inside of Hyper-V Virtual Machines: The Virtual PC Guy explains why you can add 4 virtual processors to an OS that is only 'supported' by 2.
How to Run VMWare Workstation on Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V: Are you using Windows Server 2008 as a workstation? Want to run VMWare Workstation, but having issues? Aaron Tiensivu has the answer!

Software

ASP.NET MVC Preview 4: This latest preview release of ASP.NET MVC continues to polish the core components, but also starts building common functionality on top of them.

Weekly Web Nuggets #20

John Clayton — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 19:00:00 GMT

General

Kill Your Users Table: Rob Conery isn't afraid to ask the tough questions - do we really need to store users' data? With services like OpenID, where the user has complete control over their data and what they present to a site, it's certainly an intriguing idea!
Conventions-Based Binding Using Ninject: Nate Kohari shows how easy it is to use "convention over configuration" with your bindings using Ninject.
Negative Attitudes Are A Cancer To Successful Teams: Steve Harman has written a great post about team dynamics and how negative attitudes can have devastating effects on the whole group.
Calling Virtual Functions From Constructors: I've seen ReSharper flag calls to virtual methods from the constructor, but never really understood why that was an issue. Shahar Abramovich has the answer!
Tips For Unit Testing: Ben has some great tips for unit testing, especially for those just getting started. For the management folks, he's explained it with the best graphic ever!
Signing An Unsigned Assembly: How many times have you encountered an unsigned, third-party assembly that you want to reference from your signed code? Best case scenario - it's open source and you can just build it yourself. Worst case scenario - it's closed source and you have to either find another tool, or remove the signing from your assembly. Oliver Reeves has come up with a solution that, while a feat of hackery magic, could prove to be better than the worse case!
Everyone Remember Where We Parked (That Memory): Scott Hanselman reminds us about garbage collection with his latest Back to Basics post.
MVC or MVP And The Benefits Of A Designer: Scott Hanselman writes about how his BabySmash project benefits from a MVP design, as well as the touch of a real designer.

Web Development

Inclusion of JavaScript Files: Rick Strahl takes a look at the many different ways you can include JavaScript files in your HTML.
Cheat Sheets for Front-end Web Developers: This is a must-read for any web developers...a collection of 23 ready-to-print cheat sheets for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, including MooTools and jQuery!

Software

Moq 2.5: Daniel Cazzulino announces the release of Moq 2.5, which brings a number of features an enhancements to this popular mocking framework.
Depender: Roy Osherove, author of tools such as Regulazy and The Regulator, announces his latest creation - Depender - which allows you to search for code that would be difficult to test due to tight coupling.
Microsoft Application Request Routing for IIS7 CTP1: This is the first I've seen about this, but it looks like the good folks in Redmond are creating what appears to be mod_rewrite and mod_proxy for IIS7.

Weekly Web Nuggets #19

John Clayton — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 01:36:00 GMT

Happy 4th of July!

General

First Impressions of Rhino Mocks 3.5 Beta: Derik Whittaker takes a look at the beta of Rhino Mocks 3.5. One of the major new features is that the syntax has been updated to take advantage of the new language features in .NET 3.5.
Configuring Eclipse on Windows to Use With Google App Engine: Google's App Engine is pretty slick - love it or hate it, the idea of having your applications hosted on Google's infrastructure is and intriguing one. This article walks through how to use Eclipse as an IDE for App Engine.
Replacing Loaded Assemblies: ASP.NET makes replacing assemblies dead simple - just drop a new one over the old one. Wouldn't it be nice if you could do that for services or windows forms? Paul Morgado shows how it can be done!
Top 5 Things to Know About Hyper-V: Ronald Beekelaar has a list of the top 5 things you should know about Hyper-V.
10 Commonly Asked Questions or Issues Seen During the Hyper-V Beta: Jeff Hugh helps us not make the same mistakes twice by highlighting the top 10 issues customers ran into during the beta of Hyper-V

ASP.NET

Back to Basics: Implementing HTTP File Upload with ASP.NET MVC: Scott Hanselman takes us back to the basics - uploading a file - but using ASP.NET MVC instead of a user control. He also walks through writing mocks and unit tests for the scenario.
A Lap Around Microsoft "Velocity": Bart De Smet takes a close look at Microsoft's Velocity.

Software

The Pencil Project: A free, open source GUI prototyping tool, powered by the Gecko engine.

Ctrl-Alt-Del via Remote Desktop

John Clayton — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 18:40:00 GMT

How many times have you been connected to a remote computer via RDP, hit Ctrl-Alt-Del, just to be greeted by the Windows Security popup on your local computer. Unless you are using an RDP client that supports sending the Ctrl-Alt-Del to the remote computer, you're out of luck...or are you?

As it turns out, it couldn't be simpler - to send a Ctrl-Alt-Del to the remote computer, just hit Ctrl-Alt-End! D'oh!