GridView custom paging and sorting

If only I'd known about this page last December!

Multiple IE Versions revisited

I wrote a while back about installing multiple versions of IE on your computer. Since IE 8 came out, I went back to the site to see if it had been updated. It hadn't, but a commenter on the site posted this link: http://finalbuilds.edskes.net/iecollection.htm

I haven't tried it yet, however.

Using Script# with ASP.NET

Random notes on this topic.

• Follow instructions here on wiring up the control, specifically the parts about implementing IScriptControl, and overriding OnPreRender() and Render(). However you *must* make one crucial change, or else you'll break ALL javascript on the page.
• You must change this line as follows:

Before:

    var descriptor = new ScriptControlDescriptor("namespace.class", this.ClientID);

After:


    var descriptor = new ScriptControlDescriptor("namespace.class", someOtherControl.ClientID);

The problem is that user controls do not, per se, have an associated HTML control, so it's necessary to place the control's contents inside a Panel. If you do try to create a descriptor using "this", the un-handled error resulting from the $create() call on the client will cause all page-initialization-related Javascript that runs after that point to fail, thus breaking the page in a big way.

GWT Designer, ScriptSharp, Ext JS

Some AJAX things I've been eyeing. Microsoft AJAX just isn't good for certain things, although it's nice.

• GWT, of course. Now 1.6 is in beta.
  
• GWT Designer -- $99 purchase, or $59/year.
  
• Script# - a .NET answer to GWT. Not many widgets, but works with Ext JS (!) via the extsharp project. Was on Codeplex, but removed. Speculation is that MS will integrate it into Visual Studio at some point. Here's a good video/powerpoint presentation on getting started. Helps to navigate your way around the bugs.
  

Asp.Net Session Timeout control

Works with AJAX too.

This is pretty cool. It truly is just something you drop onto the page and configure.

http://weblogs.asp.net/latishsehgal/archive/2008/08/29/asp-net-session-timeout-control.aspx

The blog post describes an important change, but he documents it rather poorly. The changes he describes must be made to the “Timeout.js” script.

Free AJAX progress spinner graphics

How cool is this?!

NYTimes: Job Losses Hint at Vast Remaking of Economy

History happens in slow motion. This article looks like it's eerily foreshadowing the future. We go about our lives, worried about the situation around us, but the world is the same for the most part. After 9/11, everyone talked about how everything would change, yet the world continued as it did before. Irony did not die. But I think that the changes happening now will dwarf the post-9/11 changes that everyone was predicting at the time.

From The New York Times:

Job Losses Hint at Vast Remaking of Economy
By PETER S. GOODMAN and JACK HEALY

With unemployment at 8.1 percent, some economists believe that a wrenching restructuring is under way....

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/07/business/economy/07jobs.html

Building Composite Data Bound Controls in ASP.NET

Describes how to build a CompositeDataBoundControl, overriding CreateChildControls() and so on.

Useful Visual Studio shortcut keys

I didn't know about "match brace," i.e. Ctrl-].

How to determine iPhone firmware version

This didn't work for me. Brought up tons of diagnostics, but no version.

"How do I find out what firmware version my iPhone is?

You don't actually need to know this in order to unlock your iPhone with us, as our software works with all current iPhone firmware versions, but to check yours - simply dial *3001#12345#* then press the call button, compare your Modem version to the table below to find out your firmware version:

1. 04.04.05_G - OTB 1.1.4 iPhone
2. 04.03.13_G - OTB 1.1.3 iPhone
3. 04.02.13_G - OTB 1.1.2 iPhone
4. 04.01.13_G - OTB 1.1.1 iPhone"

ASP.NET AJAX partial update does not work with xhtmlConformance tag in web.config

What a pain! I spent hours troubleshooting this.

I converted a .NET 1.1 application to .NET 2.0. The web.config had this section:

  <system.web>
    ...
    <xhtmlConformance mode="Legacy"/>
    ...
  </system.web>

When I removed the xhtmlConformance tag, it began working again.

Temporal Data Techniques in SQL

Timestamps, holidays, etc., written by a member of the SQL-92 standards committee. Maybe coulda used this at Rockwell!

THE PALM PILOT AND THE HUMAN BRAIN

Interesting...

Part I.

and Part II.

Jeff Hawkins' web site is here: http://www.onintelligence.org/

Microsoft Naming Conventions

"The general format for a namespace name is as follows:

<Company>.(<Product>|<Technology>)[.<Feature>][.<Subnamespace>]

For example, Microsoft.WindowsMobile.DirectX."

Economy Made Few Gains in Bush Years

"President Bush has presided over the weakest eight-year span for the U.S. economy in decades, according to an analysis of key data, and economists across the ideological spectrum increasingly view his two terms as a time of little progress on the nation's thorniest fiscal challenges."

And yet there are those who will worship Dubya until the day they die. How can you take seriously any supposedly religious person who believes that Dubya was sent by God? Maybe he was sent by God to punish us for something -- like to punish us for voting Republican.

Developing a use case document, looking for guides or software to help

On StackOverflow.com, someone asked about a good reference guide and templates for writing use cases. The person with the best answer talked about Alistair Cockburn, and mentioned this document as well, which I haven't read yet: http://www.bredemeyer.com/pdf_files/functreq.pdf

Goodbye Tangled Cables, Wrap the iPod Earphone Cord Neatly

I got an iPhone 3G on December 4, so this is invaluable to know.

My first WSCF web service project. Contract first, code later.

We're using WSCF (Web Services Contract First) 0.7 at work, and this guy published a review of an earlier version (0.5). He loved it except for the following, which might be different in 0.7, but I haven't checked yet:

"So far using WSCF for building the web service is quite a success. But I did not use it for building the consuming client. My main problem was that every roundtrip of the contracts requires deploying (plain copy) the generated wsdl and the accompanying schema's to the client code. Instead I created just a server project which included the contract schema's. One clean and independent project. As all info needed by a consumer of the service is in the wsdl all the consuming client application needs is a reference to the wsdl. Which is exactly what add web reference in VS does. Having updated the service all I need to do in the client project is Update Web Reference. However, the proxy generated by WCSF does offer some nice extra's. It returns the data (when the option in the wizard is set) as a collection, the VS web reference just sees an plain array. I also have to set the service endpoint (the URL with it's location) by hand. The latter is something I'll have to do anyhow, as it will be read from a config file. And I can live with the arrays as a trade off for a cleaner development process. This is a point where WSCF could be improved."

LINQ support on .NET 2.0

Oh thank god!!!

I'm working in a shop with ancient servers which run only .NET 2.0, so this is a wonderful thing to know about. Woo hoo!

Here's what he has to say:

1. "Create a new console application
   
2. Keep only System and System.Core as referenced assemblies
   
3. Set Copy Local to true for System.Core, because it does not exist in .NET 2.0
   
4. Use a LINQ query in the Main method. For example the one below.
   
5. Build
   
6. Copy all the bin output to a machine where only .NET 2.0 is installed
   
7. Run"
   

[Update Apr 2 2009: This didn't work for me because our server was using .NET 2.0 without SP1. Instead, I used the excellent LINQBridge.]

Gizmodo's 20 Essential iPhone Apps

Some cool shite.