Rick Strahl's Web Log

Weblog Posts in June 2007

HttpWebRequest and GZip Http Responses
June 29, 2007 @ 2:57 am

I've talked a bit about GZip compression (here and here and here) on the server recently. It's pretty straight forward to use GZip compression either by letting IIS do it for you automatically or by using some simple ASP.NET code to compress content. As a quick review to create GZip content on...

13 comments

Images as Style Attributes
June 29, 2007 @ 12:45 am

Here's a little tip that I started using more frequently recently that involves images. When embedding images into pages you're often inclined to use an IMG tag or an ASP.NET image control. In some situations though - especially if the same image repeats on the page - it can be much more efficient...

6 comments

ConfigSection Security
June 27, 2007 @ 12:10 am

I am cleaning up my localization provider code for my presentation tomorrow at PADNUG (uh, today I guess <g>) and while I'm at it checking for proper operation in medium trust. This is the sort of thing I should be doing right from the start - start with Medium trust and then fix...

3 comments

Finding Child Item Controls in ASP.NET
June 26, 2007 @ 5:52 pm

I was mucking around with some old control code today where I have a control that has an array of child items. While making some modifications I realized that I really wanted to make some of these controls available as child controls. But alas it turns that ASP.NET is not readily firing any 'add'...

4 comments

Apache and ScriptMaps - It's killing me!
June 25, 2007 @ 11:43 am

Whenever I think I finally figured out one of the cryptic configuration settings Apache laughs at me yet again with a nice big fat "Gotcha sucka!". I've struggled through all sorts of bullshit to get scriptmapping to work with Apache. So today I'm putting the final touches on an installation...

6 comments

Global Resources Localization Suggestion for ASP.NET
June 24, 2007 @ 12:45 am

ASP.NET provides the ability to use strongly typed resources for Global resources that are contained in App_GlobalResources. This is a nice feature, but it has a pretty major flaw as it's implemented right now. The way this works is that you have your Resx file in App_GlobalResources and...

4 comments

Hiding ASP.NET Controls from the Toolbox
June 22, 2007 @ 3:53 pm

I've often built custom ASP.NET controls that contain other custom child controls. For example, I have a DataBinder control that contains individual DataBindingItems which are based on Control. The problem is that by default these child controls show up on a control list. Here's what the...

8 comments

IIS 7 and JavaScript Compression not working consistently
June 22, 2007 @ 2:36 am

IIS 7 has improved and simplified support for GZip encoding enabled out of the box and for the most part it seems to be working well on my Vista install. I see my CSS and other text content properly GZip encoded. IIS 7 also allows you to encode dynamic content easily which is nice because that was...

15 comments

Speaking at PADNUG on Wednesday: Data Driven Localization
June 21, 2007 @ 8:51 pm

I'll be speaking at the Portland Area .NET User Group next Wednesday. The topic is: A Data Driven Approach to Localization with ASP.NET This session provides an introduction to localization with ASP.NET as well as demonstrating how to extend ASP.NET with a custom data driven ResourceProvider. The...

Lost Ability to run Click Once
June 20, 2007 @ 2:14 am

So all of a sudden my machine refuses to run any thing related to ClickOnce in the browser. This has been working in the past but a few weeks back when I tried to check out Markus' Xiine reader I noticed that I haven't been able to install it. When I click the link on the Xiine page for...

8 comments

Hero Water Camera
June 19, 2007 @ 12:01 am

I love to spend time on the water and over the years I've tried quite frequently tried to take pictures out on the water. To date most of these efforts have been pretty pitiful, from disposable water cameras to various small SLR cameras (in the days of film) with water housings. Recently i picked up a small GoPro Hero camera which although not perfect is pretty nice for taking out on the water with me.

7 comments

Hosting a WCF Service in a non-.NET Client
June 15, 2007 @ 11:05 pm

I'm still screwing around Web Connection and trying out a quick proof of concept tonight and thought I'd share a few steps on how to host a WCF in a non .NET client via COM Interop client like Visual FoxPro. This article discusses WCF server and client creation in general terms and in addition covers the interop issues to make it work in these clients.

3 comments

STA Threading Issues in ASP.NET
June 15, 2007 @ 2:43 am

Recently I built an HttpHandler to replace my ISAPI interface for Web Connection, which is an application interface that provides Web connectivity to Visual FoxPro. The ISAPI extension has been working fine for many years, however with the advent of IIS 7 I figured it's time to create a more...

7 comments

Properties getting mixed up in VS 2005 ASP.NET Visual Designer
June 11, 2007 @ 7:42 pm

Here's an interesting problem in the ASP.NET designer in VS 2005: I have a custom control that has two properties with similar names. Somehow Visual Studio's designer appears to be getting the properties mixed up when trying to display the properties in the property sheet. Here are the property...

2 comments

Apache and Script Mapping
June 09, 2007 @ 12:03 pm

I've been struggling with mapping scripts to a custom ISAPI handler in Apache for some in Web Connection (which is a FoxPro based ISAPI interface). Web Connection works with Apache, but recently with version 2.2 Apache changed its module binary format and required recompilation so I ended up...

2 comments

GridView and CommandArguments
June 07, 2007 @ 7:28 pm

I don't know about you, but I cringe every time I need to create a GridView based layout that needs to create a few custom link handlers off that grid. The typical scenario might be a list where you can toggle certain options or where you can fire an operation that otherwise updates the data that's...

10 comments

IIS 6 Compression and App_Themes CSS
June 05, 2007 @ 12:15 am

Hmmm. I finally got around to setting up static GZip compression on my server. I can't remember the reason why I didn't do this sooner, but I today I was looking at some of my CSS files getting out of hand so I thought I better check into this again. It's easy enough to do. MVP Omar Al Zabir has a...

6 comments

IE Lockup with createElement and appendChild
June 04, 2007 @ 8:15 pm

I've been working on some client side AJAX code in a photoalbum application and I ran into a horrible situation today with IE. This innocuous code which is part of my library code (which in this case pops up an opaque overlay ontop of the page generically to render another window with an image...

4 comments

The JavaScript Dilemma
June 03, 2007 @ 3:00 am

In the last year or so the Ajax lifestyle has become common practice for Web development even in the developer mainstream after a few years where the technology was primarily treated as bleeding edge technology. Today however, Ajax is drifting more and more into the mainstream of Web development...

20 comments

nVidia - WTF are they doing?
June 01, 2007 @ 5:47 pm

Ok, I'm pretty much at the end of my rope here. I've been dealing with nVidia's lousy Vista drivers now for nearly a year and officially Vista will now have been released for 4 months with RTM for over a half a year. What are those bozos doing at nVidia that they can't create drivers in over a half...

16 comments