April 2004 Blog Posts
Code in books has always been a dilema; what language should we use? For books targetted at a aspecific language it's no problem, but what of books aimed at a technology, such as ASP.NET books. The general consensus is that C# programmers can generally read VB better than VB programmers can read C#. It's a catch-all statement, and obviously doesn't cover everyone, but on the whole it's probably right. Certainly in the ASP.NET community I reckon it's more accurate. So, the dilema is what to do with code samples. And we're talking samples within the book, not downloadable ones. Do...
Here's something that might be useful if you're starting to look at ASP.NET 2.0. Master pages allow you to centralise the site design, Themes allow users to customise (to a degree) UI and the personalization Profile allows easy configuration and access of personal settings (such as the theme). Because of the way the control tree is constructed, the Theme either has to be set declaratively (in the Page directive or web.config) or in the new PreInit event. The question is what do you do if you want all pages to a) use a master and b) have the Theme set...
Sorry, just had to post this exception I've just received. I've always thought exceptions were for things that didn't complete sucessfully.
So here's an interesting point. When we have a problem when using beta code do we just naturally assume it's a problem with the beta? I had some questions to ask the team so Alex asked me to report a bug with the BulletedList control, where the BulletStyle attribute didn't seem to be working. He's checked the code several times and wondered why the attribute wasn't being acted on server side, but being passed to straight through to the client. He's off to a conference so I looked at the code, and spent half an hour or so trying to...
I've had VPC installed for some time, but have only just started using it in anger, what with Whidbey builds and all. So I ahve Whidbey running on VPC with a bunch of windows open, plus several windows on main OS. I'm quite a heavy user of Alt-tab, so have a habit of using that to switch to the VPC image to check something. This is where the habit drives me mad, since once in the VPC window I just automatically Alt-tab to go back to the previous window (invariably Word, since I'm doing book work at the moment). But...
There's been a lot written about the upcoming changes to immigration (ie finger printing and photos) for all travellers, including those on the visa waiver program (such as the UK). I'm not going to comment on the rights or wrongs, but rather remark on what the undersecretary for border and transportation security said. He said "[the security measures] should not create massive backlogs ... it takes only 23 seconds per person to take fingerprints and photos and check them against government files". Nicely put, as it 23 seconds doesn't seem a lot. What's glossed over of course, is that 23...
Yesterday I spent the day at Microsoft UK for the first meeting for the WeFly project. This is a .NET 2.0 project for a DVD of training material, supported by the Learn247 site. I wasn't involved in the previous DVDs, but am in charge of the ASP.NET track for the new one. This means I'm defining the requirements for the ASP.NET application, creating and recording the training sessions. The team currently stands at 9 people; two developers (writing the applications), two multimedia people (creative content, graphics, design, and DVD production), and 5 architecture and content creation people. Others may well...