Rick Strahl's Web Log

Recent Weblog Posts

Amazon Kindle on the Road
Wednesday @ 4:08 pm

So I broke down and got myself an Amazon Kindle reader last week before I left for an extended trip to Europe. I've been reluctant to spend this kind of money ($399) on an electronic reader, but since I'll be spending a good deal of time on the road this year in Europe I thought it'd be a good idea to stock up on reading material before I hit the road and not have to deal with keeping stacks of...

3 comments

ASP.NET Connections Slides and Samples Posted
May 02, 2008 @ 3:22 am

I've posted my session slides and samples from my ASP.NET Connections sessions last week in Orlando. I did three sessions at the conference and you can check out the slides and samples here. All three sessions had extensive samples (and I didn't even get to them all) so if you attended my sessions be sure to take a look at the samples as there's lots of extra stuff that didn't get covered in...

6 comments

Reusing old Laptop SATA Drives via USB
May 01, 2008 @ 1:32 pm

Since I travel around with a spare SATA drive all the time anyway (one too many 'surprise' drive failures) I finally decided to put that spare drive to use as a backup device by using a USB to SATA cable. Handy and maybe enough for me to ditch the shitty process of DVD backups.

2 comments

jQuery.ui Sortable
April 28, 2008 @ 12:59 am

Sortable lists are a common thing to work on and jQuery.ui's Sortable plug in makes it super easy to create very nice looking sortable lists that work consistently even in complex layouts.

13 comments

Customized Loading... Images
April 27, 2008 @ 4:13 pm

Here's a cool site that provides a number of different Ajax loading images that you can use in your apps: http://www.ajaxload.info/ What's cool about this thing versus some other sites that have many of these same images is that this is actually a dynamic app that lets you completely customize foreground and background colors including background colors which is great if you need to stick...

3 comments

Variable Scoping in Anonymous Delegates in C#
April 26, 2008 @ 6:24 pm

On a few occasions anonymous methods still throw me for a conceptual loop. I'm comfortable with them in JavaScript, but in C# the behavior is a bit foreign and makes for some interesting compiler gymnastics. Anonymous methods work like closures and so variable scoping can be extended into these anonymous methods from the calling method scope which is pretty damn useful and the basis for what makes Lambda expressions work in the first place.

5 comments

Visual Studio's JavaScript Editor Really needs a Function/Class Viewer!
April 25, 2008 @ 1:17 pm

One thing I really would like to see in Visual Studio's JavaScript support is the ability to see all the functions/classes defined in the code. Right now there's no mechanism for navigating code in the JavaScript editor and while that's not a problem for small bits of code, for more complex code like libraries or truly client driven Web applications the VS editor becomes problematic with its CTRL-F or scroll wheel based search navigation.

7 comments

jQuery AJAX calls to a WCF REST Service
April 21, 2008 @ 12:52 pm

Here's an overview of how to call WCF REST services with jQuery. The basic process is very easy, but if you want to handle the formats that Microsoft sends down reliably, you have to make some format choices and deal with JSON encoding and decoding that is not native to jQuery.

8 comments

LINQPad as a Code Snippet Execution Engine
April 17, 2008 @ 12:45 am

LINQPad is an awesome tool to quickly execute code. Besides the obvious LINQ testing features that its name implies, LINQPad also can come in quite handy as a generic .NET code snippet execution utility that allows you to run any .NET expression or single statement block. It's a great tool for your toolbox to quickly check behavior of BCL functions for example...

9 comments

Byte Order Marks and XmlDocument Streaming to HTTP
April 15, 2008 @ 5:32 pm

If you're generating XML content that gets sent out to HTTP you'll need to watch out for the default XmlTextWriter encoding which includes a byte order mark. Including a BOM in Http output effectively produces invalid XML and while a smart XML client will skip over the BOM, others will barf on the BOM and treat it as content.

2 comments

Dynamic Queries and LINQ Expressions
April 14, 2008 @ 12:58 am

Using LINQ to SQL in some scenarios where dynamic expresions are required on the right side of a LINQ query expression can be tricky. How do you for example allow a query to use a dynamic field in a query and then query its data? Due to the strong typed nature of LINQ direct LINQ syntax can't be used for this sort of query, but there are a several ways to work around this by using dynamic expressions.

8 comments

On the Road again...
April 13, 2008 @ 2:41 pm

The next two weeks are going to be hectic. It's this time of year again, and I'm packing up home and hearth to go on my annual migration back to the West Coast. Except this year there will be a not so little European detour... The next couple of weeks will be especially hectic though. I'm getting on a plane in a couple of hours to fly back to Portland as I usually do this time of year. But this...

3 comments

LINQ to SQL ObjectTrackingEnabled and Deferred Loading of Related Data
April 12, 2008 @ 3:28 pm

LINQ to SQL supports object tracking by default, but if running queries it's often more efficient to turn off object tracking. This can be done with ObjectTrackingEnabled, but unfortunately this option has a rather severe side effect on deferred object loading.

4 comments

WCF REST Configuration for ASP.NET AJAX and plain REST Services
April 10, 2008 @ 7:56 pm

.NET 3.5 includes WCF REST service functionality that allows for cleaner HTTP access to services. For AJAX applications this means that WCF can now be used both for MS AJAX clients as well as non-MS AJAX clients like jQuery or Prototype. This post focuses on setting up and configuring WCF for REST operation with a focus on AJAX scenarios looking at some of the different configuration options available.

10 comments

Custom iPhone Ringtone Installation
April 09, 2008 @ 3:40 pm

This entry talks about how to get custom ringtones onto a phone including jail breaking and connecting to the phone to manually copy files on a Windows box.

8 comments

WCF REST Services and Could no load file or assembly... Error?
April 08, 2008 @ 1:26 am

I'm working with a few different WCF REST services for some demo code and I've been getting an inconsistent error, every few hours. I've been getting the old "Could not load file or assembly... or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified" errors when accessing the WCF .SVC file in an ASP.NET hosted WCF service: The odd thing about the error is that it only occurs with...

8 comments

Google AdSense Advertising - eeech...
April 04, 2008 @ 10:49 pm

I'm both a consumer and a publisher of Google Adsense advertising on the Web and even though Web advertising makes me some money by publishing ads on this blog and in a few other places around this site, both publishing and providing ads feels like a bit of black magic over which I have only a tiny bit of control. Buying Advertising But let's start with the part that really gets my goat, which is...

85 comments

Client Side Templating with jQuery
April 03, 2008 @ 4:22 am

When building AJAX applications there's often the requirement to choose between client and server side rendering. Server side ASP.NET controls provide rich templating, but updating those controls on the client can be difficult. Or is it? Here's one approach using jQuery and HTML templates in markup script to dynamically create complex layout on the client without writing reams of script code.

9 comments

Rendering individual controls for AJAX Callbacks
April 01, 2008 @ 3:21 am

It's quite handy to render HTML as part of AJAX callbacks and spit it back to the client. It's quite easy in fact to take advantage of ASP.NET Web Form rendering to render individual controls or compound user controls and pass them back to provide partial rendering even if you're using tools like jQuery, Prototype etc. rather than using ASP.NET AJAX.

4 comments

What can you keep in your Head?
March 30, 2008 @ 3:16 am

So as I'm sitting here working on a project I'm realizing that the information that I'm actually pulling up from my head is getting to be less and less, and information that I'm drawing on from old code I have sitting around from other projects or documentation, blog entries is becoming my primary knowledge source. Am I getting senile or is this just a way to be able to deal with the myriad of technologies that we are tasked to work with these days. There's just not enough room to store it all 'up there' any more...

32 comments

Absolute Positioning inside of a Relative Element with CSS
March 28, 2008 @ 2:39 am

Getting elements positioned absolutely inside of a container is not terribly obvious and not very discoverable using CSS. But it can make for a cool effect and is a useful feature for many overlay type operations in Html markup. Here's an example of a hover over delete button that pops up on focus of an element.

9 comments

.NET 3.5 Framework Distribution Size
March 27, 2008 @ 1:23 am

One of the considerations of whether to choose .NET 3.5 for your non-server applications might be distribution size. If you're building a vertical application that you're distributing over the Internet you are probably concerned about the size of your installation if you want people to download it. Recent versions of the .NET runtime have a made decidedly nasty turn for the worse when it comes to...

24 comments

LINQifying - getting rid of CollectionBase?
March 26, 2008 @ 1:57 am

If you're sitting on some old types that implement CollectionBase you might find that they don't directly work with LINQ. Here's how you can make these types work with LINQ.

7 comments

Where's my .NET 3.5 (on IIS), Dude?
March 24, 2008 @ 12:36 pm

I just delivered a small 3.5 application to a customer in compiled form and told him to install the application on IIS. The company is one I've dealt with on a few occasions and they are .NET aware shop where I deal with developers and a .NET familiar IT department. But it wasn't long after I sent my email that I got a call back from the customer who - slightly embarrassed - mentioned that they couldn't find the 3.5 Runtime option in the ASP.NET configuration panel.

6 comments

Justifying an iPhone
March 23, 2008 @ 3:39 pm

So last week I broke down and bought an iPhone. I know, I know I've talked trash about the hype around the iPhone some time ago and to be honest I still feel this way after buying the phone, although I also feel that after having used the phone for a last week that I made the right choice. My general feeling is that Apple is a pretentious company with their locked in tools and operating systems,...

24 comments

Book Review: LINQ in Action
March 21, 2008 @ 5:36 am

Just got done reading LINQ in Action and it's an excellent read. Rarely do I read books cover to cover, but this book definitely made me want to go through the whole thing as it's full of little gems of information, things I didn't know and lots of new ideas I can hopefully apply soon.

12 comments

A simple formatDate function for JavaScript
March 18, 2008 @ 5:12 am

JavaScript lacks unfortunately built in string formatting functionality. Here is a .formatDate function that provides basic dateformatting for displaying digit based date strings (ie. 10/31/2008 or 2008-10-31 20:22 or 10:24pm etc.).

6 comments

MS Tests failing due to Security Errors
March 17, 2008 @ 12:53 pm

Ran into an odd problem today while testing with a third party DLL. My unit tests failed to run complaining that the third party DLL was not trusted. Turns out the problem is related to the security tags applied to the file when it was downloaded and installed directly of a Web download.

2 comments

Cross Domain Support in IE 8 and Silverlight/Flash Applications
March 16, 2008 @ 1:19 am

Peter Bromberg posts a quick note about the IE 8 Cross Domain Request object which allows making cross domain calls from within the browser. If you'll recall traditionally the XmlHttp object now standard in all main stream browsers does not explicitly support cross domain calls, which are blocked for security reasons. What's a real pisser about this though is that there are other ways to make...

10 comments

Grayed out ASP.NET Toolbox Controls? Check your Mouse!
March 15, 2008 @ 3:23 am

Have you run into a problem with the ASP.NET where you can't access toolbox items for add-on controls? You're not the only one. Apparently there's a bug that causes some hardware configurations involving Microsoft Laser mice to cause problems with the idle state that the designer uses to refresh controls and certain designer aspects.

4 comments

Getting rid of Formatting Marks in Outlook 2007
March 14, 2008 @ 3:15 pm

I use Outlook mainly because I deal with huge volumes of email that I need to shift around into folders and groupings. Overall I'm pretty happy with Outlook even though there are lots of people who complain about how slow and unwieldy it is, but to me personally Outlooks rich desktop interface is still hugely preferable to the clunky Web interfaces from the major email providers. But there are...

5 comments

Debugging Http or Web Services Calls from ASP.NET with Fiddler
March 14, 2008 @ 12:45 am

If you've tried to trace Http requests to Web Services or WebRequest calls in an ASP.NET application you've probably found although ASP.NET requests show up in tools like Fiddler or Charles, but the Web Service or WebRequest/WebClient calls do not. You can make this work however by modifying the proxy settings in web.config explicitly.

1 comment

Firefox 3.0 XmlHttpRequest Default Content-Type change
March 12, 2008 @ 3:30 am

I ran into a small problem with some of my AJAX code that's checking content-type on inbound requests from the client - it looks like FireFox 3.0 is now including the charset on the content type from the client on POST operations which if not explicitly checked for can break existing code expecting only to see a content type. Small issue, but easy to miss especially in framework code like mine that frankly should have been prepared for this...

5 comments

Updated Data Driven ASP.NET Resource Provider Posted
March 11, 2008 @ 1:53 pm

I've update the source and samples for the wwDbResourceProvider component which provides an ASP.NET Resource Provider that is driven from resources stored in a SQL Server database. The tool also includes a real time ASP.NET resource editing front end and the abillity to import and export resources. This update fixes a few small bugs and enhances the ASP.NET resource editing front end with a few UI and AJAX tweaks.

1 comment

Watch out for Collection property Setters in ASP.NET Controls
March 10, 2008 @ 12:05 am

If you've ever run into the ASP.NET Control Design time error "Cannot create Control" you may have run into a small but easy to miss details about collection properties in ASP.NET controls: The controls can't have a setter if they are serialized from the designer or an error will occur in the designer even while code runs just fine at runtime.

4 comments

Sensible Debugging in IE 8
March 06, 2008 @ 11:03 am

One thing that caught my attention in the IE 8 notes and that eventually made me download and install it is that it will feature the Developer Toolbar which has been an add-in for previous IE versions as a built in tool. Not only that but IE 8 includes a very FireBug-like debugger that can be easily hooked up to page content. This is a very worthwhile improvement IMHO because the debugging...

10 comments