VS 2008 Nested Master Page Support

Scott Guthrie has this to say about VS 2008 Nested Master Page Support:

"The good news is that VS 2008 fully supports nested master pages, and makes using them super easy. Going forward I recommend that almost all ASP.NET projects should advantage of this feature - since it can add tremendous flexibility to the UI of your projects."

Also mentions Open Source Templates.

Tips for Nested Master Pages and VS 2005 Design-Time

From Scott Guthrie. He has sample code to get around the problem of nested master pages not being editable in the visual designer. (Emphasis added.)

"One of the cool advanced features of the new Master Pages feature in ASP.NET 2.0 is the ability to nest them. For example, you could define a top-level master-page called “MainMaster.master” that defines a common logo header and footer, and defines a content-placeholder for the page called “content”. You could then define two sub-masters beneath it – one that provides a two-column layout model for the content (“TwoColumnMaster.master”), and one that provides a three-column layout model (“ThreeColumnMaster.master”). These two nested-master pages could then use the MainMaster.master file as the root master, and only adjust the layout within its content section (each would fill in the "content" placeholder and in turn add their own content-placeholders for sub-pages within it). The benefit of this approach is that if a designer ever changed the logo or top-level design of the site, they only have to update one file (MainMaster.master) and then have every page on the site automatically pick it up regardless of what master file they were based on.

"This nested model is pretty cool and powerful, and allows arbitrary levels of nesting. The only downside is that VS 2005 only supports nested master page editing in source-view, and doesn’t support it in the WYWSIWYG designer (note: obviously it does support editing them when the master-pages are not nested). "

Cool way to style HTML forms using CSS

Interesting article at Webmonkey. Uses things I've never heard of, including <fieldset> and <legend> tags, and using unordered lists and stylesheets to style the forms.

CMS Ratings

This article publishes ratings of many different open source CMS systems.

jQuery and ASP.NET AJAX UpdateRegion

When using jQuery with Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX UpdatePanel controls, you need code similar to this, in a script tag in the UpdatePanel. Otherwise events are fired multiple times, and event.preventDefault() does not work.

    // Necessary for update regions.

    Sys.Application.add_load(WireEvents);

    function WireEvents() {

// my jQuery "ready" event stuff goes here.

    }

Normally, of course, you would do the following:

    $(document).ready(function{} {

// my jQuery "ready" event stuff goes here.

    });

Google hosting javascript libraries

The AJAX Libraries API is a content distribution network and loading architecture for the most popular open source JavaScript libraries. By using the Google AJAX API Loader's google.load() method, your application has high speed, globaly available access to a growing list of the most popular JavaScript open source libraries including:

• jQuery
• jQuery UI
• Prototype
• script.aculo.us
• MooTools
• Dojo

Applied Software Project Management - Test Plan and Test Cases

Applied Software Project Management - Test Plan and Test Cases: "The goal of test planning is to establish the list of tasks that, if performed, will identify all of the requirements that have not been met in the software. The main work product is the test plan. There are many standards that can be used for developing test plans. The following table shows the outline of a typical test plan. (This outline was adapted from IEEE 829, the most common standard for software test plans.)"

There's also this Wikipedia link, which gives an outline of the IEEE 829-1998 test plan outline: Test Plan

Install multiple versions of IE on your PC | TredoSoft

Install multiple versions of IE on your PC TredoSoft: "It is not difficult to follow the instructions and get any version of IE running in standalone along side other versions. Most of you probably know of evolt's archive of Internet Explorer which has them readily packaged in ZIP files. Now suppose you want to download them all. An installer that would conveniently automate the whole process would be great. Thanks to this comment for the idea. "

Testing on Mobile Devices using Emulators « klauskomenda.com

Testing on Mobile Devices using Emulators « klauskomenda.com -- Has a list of emulators with photos of the emulators.

Mobile Web Developer’s Guide Part I

Mobile Web Developer’s Guide Part I
-- excellent guide to designing mobile web apps! Includes how to think of page flow, how to think about the options available to a mobile user, the market segment breakdown to phone types (in 2007), the choice of WAP, WXHTML, etc., and recommendations and best practices.

Mobile Emulators | dev.mobi

Mobile Emulators | dev.mobi: "The following emulators are very usful for testing mobile applications without incurring data charges.

• dotMobi Online Emulator - mTLD has an online emulator that you can use to quickly see what your site will look like on a common phone
  
• Nokia Browser Simulator - this simulator simulates a generic Nokia phone and WAP gateway
• Openwave Phone Simulator - Openwave's browser simulator
• Opera Mini Simulator - simulates Opera's popular J2ME browser
• BlackBerry Simulator - multiple different BlackBerry simulators
• Yospace SmartPhone Emulator - a versatile emulator that can display multiple phone instances at the same time"

The dotMobi one is pretty cool!

Gloger_TototaScrum-170706.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Toyota Way mapped to Scrum (pdf)

CodeProject: 100% Reflective Class Diagram Creation Tool. Free source code and programming help

CodeProject: 100% Reflective Class Diagram Creation Tool. Free source code and programming help

Simple graph drawing algorithms too!!!

Microsoft Virtual Labs

TechNet Virtual Labs: "Quickly evaluate and test Microsoft's newest server products through a series of guided, hands-on labs you can complete in 90 minutes or less. You can use TechNet Virtual Labs online immediately, free. Start by selecting the lab you're interested in from the list below."

Also this link, which appears to be more inclusive: http://www.microsoft.com/events/vlabs/default.mspx

They only work in Internet Explorer.

Migration: Convert A Java Web Application To ASP.NET Using JLCA

Migration: Convert A Java Web Application To ASP.NET Using JLCA: "The JLCA is a tool used to convert a Java application into a C# application. The tool has shipped with Visual Studio® since Visual Studio .NET 2003. Currently in version 3.0, the JLCA is included with Visual Studio 2005 and is also available as a free download from the JLCA home page.

Version 3.0 includes enhancements to convert Java artifacts, such as Servlets and Java Server Pages (JSPs), as well as rich-client applications that use Swing or the Abstract Windowing Toolkit (AWT). In practice, the JLCA provides a very good place to start a conversion, but it will not successfully complete the entire process. So don’t expect this to be completely hands-free—you will still need to do some manual resolution of converted items after using the tool."

How safe is instant messaging? A security and privacy survey | The Iconoclast - politics, law, and technology - CNET News.com

How safe is instant messaging? A security and privacy survey | The Iconoclast - politics, law, and technology - CNET News.com: "The number of interested parties eager to listen in on your online conversations, including what you type through instant messaging, has never been higher.

It's trivial to monitor unencrypted wireless networks and snatch IM passwords as they flow through the ether. Broadband providers and their business partners are enthusiastically peeking into their customers' conversations. A bipartisan majority in Congress has handed the FBI and shadowy government agencies greater surveillance authority than ever before."

Humanist → Why Make Erlang a Functional Language?

I like this page. It gives great rationales, and therefore insightful descriptions, of the core Erlang features.

Humanist → Why Make Erlang a Functional Language?: "I’ve heard the argument many times. People “don’t like Erlang’s syntax so [they] don’t like Erlang.” I, for instance, didn’t understand the block terminator syntax when I was first learning Erlang, so I asked Yariv Sadan about it:"

Here's the accompanying reddit discussion: http://www.reddit.com/r/erlang/info/6p74v/comments/

robert zubek / blog :: Commentary on “A History of Erlang”

Very good summation of an Erlang program -- helps me to visualize it.

robert zubek / blog :: Commentary on “A History of Erlang”: "At a certain level, I always knew that Erlang was designed for programming telephone exchanges. But this paper really conveys the feel for what that means: huge collections of loosely coupled finite-state machines, all running in parallel, doing little bits of protocol validation here and there, but mostly staying dormant."

Relying on getters and setters is mostly wrong, here's why and what to do instead

"Relying on getters and setters is mostly wrong, here's why and what to do instead" (Reddit)

"Mike Feathers has posted an exploration of some ideas about and misconceptions of TDD. I wish that more people were familiar this story that he mentions:

John Nolan, the CTO of a startup named Connextra [...] gave his developers a challenge: write OO code with no getters. Whenever possible, tell another object to do something rather than ask. In the process of doing this, they noticed that their code became supple and easy to change.

That's right: no getters. Well, Steve Freeman was amongst those developers and the rest is history. I think that there's actually a little bit missing from Michael's telling. I'll get to it at the end."

But then, some guy thought this whole idea sucked.