Rick Strahl's Web Log

Weblog Posts in March 2004

VS2005 Installation - Success at last with IIS and ASP.Net
March 30, 2004 @ 8:41 pm

After a little help from several folks at Microsoft I finally managed to get the VSNet 2005 Community Distribution to run ASP.Net 2.0 properly after my original install disasters. The problem turns out to be a fault in the installer which incorrectly creates registry entries for the ASP.Net mappings in the registry. These registry keys are corrupt and point at bogus filenames.

7 comments

Detecting and setting the Locale on the Current ASP.Net Web Request
March 28, 2004 @ 9:10 pm

Here's a useful tip on how to switch the Locale in your Web Applications to provide proper number and date formatting for users from different countries. Detect the Locale and then switch the current request to this Locale to provide a more customized user experience.

24 comments

More problems with the VS2005 Community Preview after VPC install
March 28, 2004 @ 8:13 pm

After having problems a few days ago with the VS.Net Community Preview I tried again, to the tune of a whole new set of problems...

6 comments

ASP.Net Failures Installing with VSLive VS2005 Build
March 26, 2004 @ 1:55 pm

I went ahead and tried to install the new VS2005 beta I picked up at VSLive this week. Unfortunately I haven’t had much luck with it – it killed all of ASP. Net and worse the IIS Management Console. It looks like there’s a failure registering various virtual directories under ASP. Net 2.0. But the real bummer is that it crashes the IIS Admin console. As soon as I bring up the management console and right click on a Web site the MMC blows up with an exception.

23 comments

Weird WinForms MultiLine TextBox and Scrollbar Controls issue
March 15, 2004 @ 11:26 pm

I've run into a very strange problem that I cannot solve in WinForms. I have some forms in my application where any control that has a scrollbar has a 5 point or so margin in the controls client area. For example a text box that is multi-line (and thus has a vertical scroll bar) looks like it has an indent compared to a single line text box.

7 comments

Of Server Troubles
March 15, 2004 @ 11:16 pm

For the first time in about 10 years I've had a major server failure that took my Web server down completely. Over the years I've had lots of minor failures and problems with the software (especially windows) and there have even been a few nasty virus infection. But overall I've had very, very few problems and I've always managed to keep the server up and running and fix whatever problem presented itself immediately without any long downtime.

1 comment

Updated Configuration Class Article and Code
March 08, 2004 @ 4:26 pm

I've updated the Building a better .Net Application Configuration Settings Class article and code. There have been a number of additions to the class including support for writing to external .Config files and writing to custom sections.

1 comment

Adventures in Debugging an ASP.Net Control at design time
March 07, 2004 @ 5:51 pm

Today I had a hell of a time trying to debug a problem with an ASP.Net server control. The Control was working just fine at runtime, but I noticed that in the VS.Net designer it always showed as an error button (red text name of the control rather than the rendered control). In fact, it was a specific interface I was creating and implementing on a set of controls and all controls with this interface were failing in the designer.

15 comments

Open Source and making money
March 03, 2004 @ 12:49 pm

There's an interesting letter I ran into at (of all places) Slashdot regarding open source and making a living and how it relates. I have my own thoughts on this topic that goes beyond just the open source debate...

4 comments

Configuration File Settings and ASP.Net Security
March 02, 2004 @ 3:08 pm

Somebody brought up a good point about my Configuration Settings class today that I failed to mention in the article: Security requirements for an ASP.Net application to be able to actually make changes to the .Config file.

31 comments

Building Demo/Shareware ASP.Net app distributions
March 01, 2004 @ 2:17 am

Recently I built an application (West Wind Web Store) that I wanted to distribute as a shareware app for people to download and play with to try out the software. This being an ASP. Net application the problem was how to protect this application so that it can’t just be used without restrictions while still allowing some access to the programmatic interface (allowing pages to be edited for example). I’d done this sort of thing for WinForm apps all the time

13 comments