Rick Strahl's Web Log

Weblog Posts in January 2008

Creating an In-Place Editing Component for Table Editing with jQuery
January 28, 2008 @ 5:02 am

Here's a jQuery based implementation of an Editable extender that makes any simple text element editable. You can apply it against simple tags or entire tables or grids and make them editable. Callbacks fire when data changes and there are host of useful features like editing anchor text, limited keyboard navigation, visual change indication and more...

3 comments

Invalid Service Urls in a WSDL Definition
January 26, 2008 @ 2:09 am

Watch out for invalid URIs for the service address in a WSDL contract. When imported by .NET for Web References or WCF client proxies the invalid address can cause an instantiation failure in the proxy.

An easier Table Design View in Sql Server Management Studio
January 25, 2008 @ 12:33 am

One of the things that bugs me no end in Sql Server Management Studio is that the table designer's UI is a pain to use. Entering column properties is an excercise in mousercise. It turns out there's an easier way to do this with custom views in the DataBase Diagram Designer.

12 comments

Chaining the C# ?? Operator
January 23, 2008 @ 6:12 pm

The C# 2.0 ?? operator makes it easy to assign a default value to nulls. Nothing new here, but did you know that you can also chain the operator to quickly check many value and find the first non-null vlaue?

15 comments

Issue: Migrating Web Application Projects between VS 2005 and VS 2008
January 22, 2008 @ 1:26 am

If you move Web Application Projects between Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2005 and a machine that doesn't have Visual Studio 2005 installed you will find that the project doesn't load due to a build target difference.

4 comments

Forms Authentication and path= in the <forms> Tag
January 20, 2008 @ 2:08 am

Ah the beauty of a self made blunder - I managed to bungle up a tag's path in web.config which caused some very unpredictable behavior that essentiall failed all forms authentication requests.

3 comments

SmtpClient in Medium Trust
January 18, 2008 @ 6:13 pm

SmptClient is supposed to work in Medium trust and it in fact does work, but only if you use Port 25. I ran into an unexpected failure while connecting to my ISP who requires an alternate port for SMTP access outside of their network.

1 comment

Griping about System.Net.Email.SmptClient/MailMessage
January 14, 2008 @ 11:07 am

For many years I've been using a home built SMTP client I built using low level Sockets. Single class, set a few properties and it goes off and sends emails. With about 5 lines of code I can be off sending an email from just about any app Web or otherwise. I created the custom class originally to...

7 comments

Doing away with an Assembly Dependency
January 12, 2008 @ 6:37 pm

I'm looking at some oldish code that sits inside of a web control library. This is my main web control library were I keep all of my custom controls that I typically use. It includes all the AJAX controls, a custom databinder, some generic status display controls, a number of stock control...

10 comments

wwHoverPanel/West Wind Ajax Toolkit Updated
January 08, 2008 @ 4:12 pm

I've finally had a bit of time over the holidays to roll in a few updates into my wwHoverPanel library. In the process I decided that wwHoverPanel is not really a fitting name for the library anymore since it does quite a bit more than that by now, with the hover panel operation only being a part...

6 comments

Ctrl-S in web.config in Visual Studio closes web.config file
January 04, 2008 @ 9:48 pm

If you've hit a bug in Visual Studio where you hit Ctrl-S/Save while editing a web.config file causes the web.config file to close, you're not alone. Looks like the ADO.NET Entity Tools Designer somehow mucked up the Visual Studio save option for web.config files.

6 comments

Extending Live Writer for Blog Posting
January 03, 2008 @ 1:53 am

I've been using Live Writer for writing blog posts for some time and I'mvery happy with the way I can post entries to my Web Log. The process is pretty damn painless compared to what I went through with using Word and uploading images separately at the time. Plug In Creation Over the last couple of...

3 comments

Visual Studio and <location> parsing in web.config
January 02, 2008 @ 2:56 pm

So here's a funky Visual Studio behavior: On my root Web site (which is mostly static) I have my web.config set up to handle the root site configuration in a separate <location> element in order not to force the settings of the root site down into the many, many virtual...

6 comments

Weird DataGrid Paging Error with Last Page Selection
January 02, 2008 @ 12:19 am

This is one posts of an oddball problem I've run into where I feel like I 'shoulda known' but just didn't for - way too long <g>. I have a form in my Web Store with a DataGrid on it. Yeah the form is pretty old and dates back to 1.1 but I hadn't changed over because the page is inherited and...

2 comments

Crazy Expression Web Bug
January 01, 2008 @ 2:10 pm

So I'm working away in Expression Web on a new page that has bunch of changes. I'm updating, saving and occasionally dump the file up to my Web server. Now an hour into it I decide I need to change the title, so I change it in the HTML save and a bit later upload the file to the server. So I'm...

1 comment