Rick Strahl's Web Log

Weblog Posts in November 2007

Detecting Text Encoding for StreamReader
November 28, 2007 @ 1:04 am

Reading Text files with proper encoding and byte order marks can be a bit of a pain when using a StreamReader as there's no detection of no byte order mark that defaults to UTF-8 which is usually incorrect. Here are a few thoughts on explicitly detecting BOM settings and getting a corresponding Encoding.

12 comments

What's Ailing ASP.NET Web Forms
November 27, 2007 @ 1:44 am

The recent announcement that ASP.NET will soon get an alternate engine in the ASP.NET Model View Controller framework (MVC - see last month’s editorial) has brought out some renewed discussion of the merits and shortcomings of Web Forms and the potential need for an alternate mechanism of building...

31 comments

JavaScript Minifier Utility Posted
November 26, 2007 @ 1:14 pm

I've posted a quick and dirty JavaScript minifier utility based on Douglas Crockford's Java Script Minifier that minifies JavaScript by stripping comments and whitespace. The utilty provides both GUI and Command line operation with a few options for string or file conversion and batch operation. Provided with source code.

14 comments

.NET 3.5 Upgrade SNAFU on my Server
November 24, 2007 @ 11:37 am

In the .NET 3.5 Upgrade shuffle I ran into a small problem caused by a difference in the .NET 2.0, .NET 2.0 SP1 Beta 2 and RTM runtimes. During beta 2 small change was made that broke some of my apps, which has been undone in RTM causing a couple of apps to fail for me until I recompiled.

CSS Validation showing up as Errors in Visual Studio 2008
November 23, 2007 @ 11:06 am

Visual Studio 2008 finally allows the ability to mark HTML, CSS validation and JavaScript errors as Warnings rather than as errors that show up in the build error list. But there's a small issue related to CSS errors not properly showing as warnings by default until you reset the settings explicitly.

8 comments

Getting Images to render properly in the ASP.NET Designer
November 21, 2007 @ 5:25 pm

I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't quite know how to get controls to render image urls properly in the designer. The situation is as follows: You create a custom server control and you have an image property and you allow the use of the ~/images/someimage.gif syntax to specify the image path. I...

4 comments

Visual Studio 2008 RTM Installed
November 20, 2007 @ 2:05 pm

I've done a bunch of uninstalls and reinstalls and they've all gone pretty well with a few minor hiccups. The best way I've found to do the uninstall is to: Uninstall the Sql Server Compact 3.5 stuff Uninstall all the .NET 3.5 Compact Framework stuff Uninstall the Visual Studio Web Authoring...

8 comments

Anonymous Types in C# 3.0
November 15, 2007 @ 4:25 pm

One of the most convenient features of C# 3.0 is the ability to create new types 'on the fly' using Anonymous Types. Anonymous Types are essentially compiler generated types that you don't explicitly declare with an official type declaration. Rather you define the type inline as part of the code...

9 comments

Type Intializers in C# 3.0
November 12, 2007 @ 1:20 am

During my LINQ to SQL session at DevConnections somebody in the audience asked what happens behind the scenes when you use type initializers in C# 3.0 and well it turns out I gave a hedged answer with a guess that was - uhm - wrong. So here's a discussion of how this feature actually works....

8 comments

My DevConnection Fall '07 Session Slides and Sample Links
November 10, 2007 @ 7:14 pm

I've posted the updated slides and samples for my DevConnection sessions. As usual the content here has changed a bit from what's on the conference CD as I tend to work and update samples right on up until the last day usually.

Done!
November 10, 2007 @ 1:31 am

Yup I'm done with conferences and a couple of projects that have been sapping my energy for the last couple of months. You've probably noticed that the frequency of posts on this blog has dropped a bit in the last few weeks. With DevConnections over I'm finally past the threshold of pain...

8 comments

Stranded
November 03, 2007 @ 5:19 pm

Ugh... it's 4am now and I just got home from the airport. I was on my way to Vegas for DevConnections when my flight was cancelled due to plane troubles. Now these things happen and although I'm not particularily happy about this I prefer technical difficulties on the ground than in the air. It's a...

12 comments

Visual WebGui and a LINQ to SQL quirk
November 02, 2007 @ 12:02 am

Over the last week I've been spending quite a bit of time on non-Microsoft tools building samples for my DevConnections Html Alternatives session. I spend the better part of this week working with Flex and also with Visual WebGui utilizing some existing business objects and Web Services to hook...

21 comments