Ross Hawkins

.NET

There are 9 entries for the tag .NET

Umbraco v5 R.I.P

Umbraco v5 RIP is the first time in a while (or possibly ever) where I’ve read about a piece of software going “backwards”. 5 has become an overly complex system that has turned into the very monster Umbraco was originally created as a reaction against. The community was not involved in its development, with one of the results being a highly complex set of code which also means the community will never HAVE the option of being involved with its development. This goes against everything Umbraco stands for. Within the community there was a great...

posted @ Thursday, June 14, 2012 11:58 PM | Feedback (0)

What’s new in ASP.NET 4.5 and Visual Web Developer 11

What's New in ASP.NET 4.5 and Visual Web Developer 11 Developer Preview – somehow I only managed to stumble across this one recently. It was originally posted in September 2011 – wow, really? My quick picks for things I’m personally looking forward to here; Strongly Types Data Controls – one of my pet peeves around non-MVC ASP.NET databinding has been the “bind and hope” approach that Eval has. It always felt a little icky – hopefully this will change now (it looks good on paper, but I think it needs a proper test run before I’ll know for...

posted @ Thursday, February 23, 2012 1:10 PM | Feedback (0)

Google Analytics Dot Net

Google Analytics Dot Net is a library giving you a bit more control over Analytics calls made from .NET. Very useful. On a side note, I also love his blog skin. Tags: .NET, Google

posted @ Wednesday, July 21, 2010 10:07 PM | Feedback (0)

Using Dynamic data with multiple databases

At the risk of becoming too much of an echo chamber here, Using Dynamic Data with multiple databases is a useful post describing... exactly what the title says. Their example refers to Entity Framework and Linq2SQL – in my case I was trying to use L2S alongside Mindscape LightSpeed, which also worked very well. I had low expectations around how Dynamic Data would handle multiple models, much less multiple O/RM tools, so I have to say I was pretty pleased in how it was handled. Tags: .NET, O/RM, Mindscape

posted @ Wednesday, March 24, 2010 5:42 PM | Feedback (1)

Mindscape Silverlight Elements now available for preview

Mindscape has just released a preview of their Silverlight elements suite. They all look very slick, but for me the coverflow and the scheduler could be particularly useful. Maybe it’s time for me to start paying attention to Silverlight again! We’re pleased to announce a technical preview release of our Silverlight Elements suite, a pack of controls for Microsoft’s Silverlight Rich Internet Application platform. Silverlight is becoming an increasingly popular solution for building business applications as well as graphically rich media-oriented applications, and Silverlight Elements builds on that. Check them out here: Mindscape Silverlight Elements...

posted @ Monday, March 01, 2010 4:07 PM | Feedback (0)

Mindscape LightSpeed 3.0 – initial impressions

Over the past few days I’ve finally had some time to give LightSpeed 3.0 a bit of a test drive. Nothing extensive so far, but enough to get some initial impressions. The quick summary? I like it. My testing has been with a couple of different projects / databases. One is a greenfield ASP.NET MVC application I’ve been playing about with, and the other is a quick test project I've created in order to run a few tests with LightSpeed against Ignition’s existing Site Foundation Framework codebase (mostly there I wanted to test the single table inheritance...

posted @ Friday, January 15, 2010 1:13 PM | Feedback (1)

NDepend

One thing in common with developers and infrastructure professionals is that they often turn to monitoring and analysis tools in times of strife rather than incorporate them into their daily routine. If the monitoring and analysis tools are bought out only when there's a problem, then you're often confronted by the fact that no one really knows them well enough to interpret what they're telling you. That's why I'm spending some time getting to know NDepend now, before I really need it. NDepend is a tool designed to perform static analysis on a codebase and provide you...

posted @ Sunday, January 11, 2009 11:31 AM | Feedback (2)

Echo Chamber++; SP1 for VS 2008 and .NET 3.5 released;

Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 both had their SP1 releases a couple of days ago, but I’ve not had time to install it. So this post is basically a reminder to myself and a place to store some links. I’ve skimmed over a few people mentioning a couple of compatibility issues with the VS2008 release, so take a skim through the comments sections of these posts before installing to see if you're going to be affected or not. Link: Service Pack 1 for VS 2008 and .NET FX 3.5 released! Link: More about .NET Framework...

posted @ Thursday, August 14, 2008 4:55 PM | Feedback (0) Filed Under [ Visual Studio Web Development ]

Parallel Extensions CTP

The December CTP of Microsoft's Parallel extensions has recently been released. Some info from the download page: Parallel Extensions to the .NET Framework is a managed programming model for data parallelism, task parallelism, and coordination on parallel hardware unified by a common work scheduler. Parallel Extensions makes it easier for developers to write programs that scale to take advantage of parallel hardware by providing improved performance as the numbers of cores and processors increase without having to deal with many of the complexities of today’s concurrent programming models. Basically a set of extensions...

posted @ Monday, December 03, 2007 9:25 PM | Feedback (8) Filed Under [ ASP.NET Visual Studio C# ]

About me

My name is Ross Hawkins and I'm a developer, consultant, business owner and writer based in Auckland, New Zealand (pictured below!). My current work revolves around ASP.NET, C#, jQuery, Ajax, SQL Server, and a mix of other Microsoft development technologies.

I also have about 15 years of experience with IBM Lotus Notes/Domino and associated technologies. While Notes/Domino is no longer my primary focus I still like to dabble and keep my skills up to date.

I own and run 2 businesses - Hawkins Consulting Services, and Ignition Development.

Follow @rosshawkins

Bethells Beach, located in sunny West Auckland, New Zealand