Ross Hawkins

Don't do as Johnny don't does.

Ross Hawkins — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 08:37:30 GMT

Originally from dotnet-snippets this lovely piece of code shows the power and danger of LINQ in one go:

var files = from file in new DirectoryInfo(@"C:\").GetFiles()
where file.Name.StartsWith("_")
select file;

Sure, you could use that piece of code to search for files… but don't.

(Although surely it can't be long before someone adds deferred execution support for a filesystem? Maybe it's coming in WinFS Forever?)

Tags: LINQ

Tweaking machine.config for production deployments

Ross Hawkins — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 11:06:36 GMT

Tweaking .NET Machine.Config For Production Deployments is a useful summary post for anyone deploying ASP.NET applications to production who wants to do a bit of performance tweaking to IIS without spending too much time on it.

Tags: IIS

Live Writer's latest release doesn't support 64bit XP, again..

Ross Hawkins — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 21:22:24 GMT

I'm getting a little frustrated by Windows Live Writer's seemingly on again off again support for 64 bit operating systems (and I'm talking 64 bit XP here, not sure whether 64bit Vista support is still patchy or not).

This latest beta release once again doesn't support XP 64, whereas this previous one does. I'd be happy enough running the older version, but it seems to have a weird error where posting to Subtext gives me "Illegal Characters Found" when I post, even though the post makes it up onto the site without problems.

Live Writer is such a great tool, I really wish they'd get these recurring installer issues sorted for 64bit Windows XP.

Tags: Live Writer

jQuery and Microsoft

Ross Hawkins — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 21:10:54 GMT

A while ago I did a bit of exploring into jQuery. I really liked what I saw, and was trying to decide whether to invest a bit of time into knowing it better - but with so many JavaScript frameworks and libraries out there it's hard to know which ones are worthy of attention.

It looks like Microsoft and jQuery have made that decision a lot easier, with this announcement from Scott Guthrie:

I'm excited today to announce that Microsoft will be shipping jQuery with Visual Studio going forward. We will distribute the jQuery JavaScript library as-is, and will not be forking or changing the source from the main jQuery branch. The files will continue to use and ship under the existing jQuery MIT license.

We will also distribute intellisense-annotated versions that provide great Visual Studio intellisense and help-integration at design-time.

There's more info in Scott's post, but it looks like set to make ASP.NET AJAX even more compelling. Looks like it's time to dive deeper into jQuery!

Link: Scott Guthrie - jQuery and Microsoft

Link: John Resig - jQuery, Microsoft, and Nokia

Tags: Microsoft, JavaScript

…and while I'm here

Ross Hawkins — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 08:32:20 GMT

At the computer on a Saturday night, waiting for the game to start, there's only one thing left to say – Go the Warriors.

That is all.

The leaving of Xtra's interleaving

Ross Hawkins — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 08:11:14 GMT

A friend pointed out to me last week that Xtra have finally turned off interleaving for customers. The result is a rather noticable drop in ping times to New Zealand sites, as one would expect. However I'm curious to know why they chose to do it, and why they didn't make a bit more noise about it – or am I the only one of their customers who was at all interested?

Tags: NZ

Silverlight 2 Release Candidate Now Available

Ross Hawkins — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 08:05:33 GMT

As the title says, the just announced RC version of Silverlight brings the final release of Silverlight 2.0 one step closer. The RC release looks packed full of fixes, and unfortunately also contains a few breaking changes.

It's one of the hazards of writing code against a beta product, and something I knew would need fixing one day – and it looks like that day might have to be tomorrow!

Link: Scott Guthrie - Silverlight 2 Release Candidate Now Available

Tags: Silverlight

Rich Text Editor Recommendations

Ross Hawkins — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 06:48:22 GMT

I've worked with a fair few web based rich text editor controls over the past few years, and I really haven't picked an absolute favorite yet.

I need to pick one shortly for a current project and would welcome some recommendations or comments around past experiences. All I'm after is a basic WYSIWYG editor for small chunks of HTML which is simple enough for use by users who aren't overly technical.

So far I've used: CuteEditor (commercial, and over the top for my requirements), FCKEditor (free, but over the top again), and the yui rich text editor (which I liked, and is free, but it's in beta and seemed to need quite a lot of yui on the page before it could run). I've also looked at a few markdown editors which are pretty appealing in that they're lightweight, however they're not too user friendly.

Any thoughts or recommendations would be appreciated.

XmlUnit

Ross Hawkins — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 05:43:15 GMT

I came across XmlUnit quite by accident the other night, when it was mentioned as a way to programmatically validate and correct HTML. It's actual intended use is to enable unit testing against XML, which is potentially useful too, but right now it's HTML sanity checking that I have a need for. Unfortunately it seems this is something that's only currently available in XmlUnit for Java, and not in it's .NET counterpart.

I've actually seen a JavaScript attempt at something similar and it wasn't pretty, so to the good folks working on this project, please know that you've got a new fan eagerly awaiting an update for the .NET version! :)

(specifically speaking, the TolerantSaxDocumentBuilder)

DNN Inter-Module Communication

Ross Hawkins — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 05:26:06 GMT

If you're working with DotNetNuke, then you're probably writing modules. If you're writing modules, then the chances are that at some point you're going to want them to communicate with each other in some way.

Apparently this is one of those subjects which has a bit of confusing coverage out there, however the good news is that if you know where to look it's incredibly easy. DotNetNuke Inter-Module Communication or: How Your Modules Can Get Their Chat On contains all you'll need to know to implement inter module communication in C# or VB. Nice.