ImageTemplate.NET lets you easily generate images dynamically for use on your website.

This article provides a way to use RSA public key encryption in scripts running on a webserver hosted by a shared hosting company. It also demonstrates how to use RSA in .Net to solve the 'real world' problem of signing license codes so that they cannot be forged.

Gallery Server Pro is a complete, stable ASP.NET gallery for sharing photos, video, audio and other media. This article presents the overall architecture and major features.

Enter the Tilde (~)

Browsing the asp.net forums I notice a lot of people putting the '~' (tilde) character on every control that has some sort src or href.  Many think that the tilde character is a regular character that deals with file locations. Much like: /, ../, ../../ etc.

However, this little angle is actually an ASP.NET character that is a shortcut for"   HttpRuntime.AppDomainAppVirtualPath. (say that 10x in a row). This property refers to the virtual application root - not the root of the web server.  Remember that a Virtual Directory is in fact an Application (Server 2000 / XP). You'll notice that in Vista that the IIS team has gone the better rout and actually calls them "Applications" while still having the ability to have a virtual directory that functions as a directory.

So how do we use this character?

here are some examples.

If my Folder structure is as follow:

• Website
  • Images
  • CSS
  • Admin

I have a master page within my main website, and content pages in my Admin. One thing newer web developers will do is declare an image like:

<img src="Images/MyImage.png" alt="my Image" />

That works for everything in the root directory, however once you get into the Admin directory - all images are broken.  A way to resolve this is:

<img src="http://weblogs.asp.net/Images/MyImage.png" alt="my Image" />

This can also lead into issues if you have a more complex structure. A quick way to resolve this is:

<asp:image id="myImage" runat="server" ImageUrl="~/Images/MyImage.png" AlternateText="My Image" />

This will always go to the root of your application and then to the Images directory.  This is very useful with Hyperlinks when you are working with multiple directories.

 

Enter the ALT-SHIFT (Really... ALT-SHIFT)

I've heard about this but I've always just stored this away in the back of my mind. This little button combo allows you to select VERTICALLY in Visual Studio.

 

 

So, besides the nice little vertical line, what are the uses of this?

• Easy way to remove a single line of characters (say Line numbers from an online post) without having to format a bunch of things
• Easy way to remove comments if you commented out lines (You can use the shortcuts: CTRL E+C to commend and CTRL E+U to uncommented)
• Quickly change values or remove values in XML.
• Many many more.

Needless to say it's a beautiful tool that exists in Visual Studio (not just ASP.NET).

This article discusses how to create an HTML Editor server control for use within an ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 environment.

I had a short video that I needed to share with family this weekend so I thought I'd try out the Silverlight streaming service that's currently free. I started out with this guide Your Video to Silverlight Streaming 101 which seemed pretty straight forward....(read more)

Lori asked:

I’m seeing results with VB’s StrComp function that I would not expect.  For example:

    StrComp("Lee-P", "Leema", vbTextCompare)

Returns 1, but

    StrComp("Lee-P", "Leema", vbBinaryCompare)

Returns -1 as I would expect.

Why does this first return a 1 rather than -1? 

PS: I see the same behavior in VB6 as well as VB.NET.

This may look familiar to regular readers, especially people who have seen Punctuation... now, isn't that SPECIAL [weights]? or the more recent A&P of Sort Keys, part 9 (aka Not always transitive, but punctual and punctuating)....

Yes, it is good old word sorting -- VB does it too! :-)

(The vbBinaryCompare constant is what it sounds like, and the vbTextCompare one is the default user locale)

Expected really is in the eye of the beholder, ain't it?

Now, we are sitting on the opposite side of an implementation that was first written over 15 years ago, though I wonder whether in retrospect it would be more intuitive to make SORT_STRINGSORT the default behavior and only do word sorting when it was explicitly asked for. There would be fewer complaints about cases that are not as intuitive since they aren't as straightforward as the co-op vs. coop case, but at the cost of a lot of less than ideal results.

I have gone back and forth on this one a whole bunch -- trying to make it easier on confused developers, trying to make it better for ordinary users who just wouldn't be expecting punctuation symbols to be weighed so heavily.

Kind of a time waster, but every time this issue comes up I walk through the alternatives again....

Which is better? If it were up to you, what would you have suggested as the default a decade and a half ago?

 

This post brought to you by - (U+002d, a.k.a. HYPHEN-MINUS)

A while back I talked about this new inline editing control that was being worked on by Mike Davis over on the Encosia blog.  Yesterday, he posted an updated version that fixes some postback issues and adds some new features that make this a very useful control.  I played around with it a little last night, and it looks great.

Highlights for this release:

• Toggling between edit mode and view mode can be triggered by either a single-click or a double-click.  The single-click option is fast but the double-click option allows you to still work with any embedded links in the edit area without going into edit mode which I think is a great option.
• You can determine whether or not the control functions as an inline edit box or as a plain label.  This is useful if you only want authenticated users to have the ability use the inline editing functionality. Having this option means you can use the control for the back end and the front end for content management.
• A "ClientIDSuffix" property was added to allow multiple instances of the control on a page. Before, you had to do a little workaround to display multiple instances.  The example demonstrates how this property works.

Go take a look and share some feedback:

• Inline Edit Box .NET v0.7

In this week's videos you will learn how to use the ASP.NET validation controls for both server-side and client-side validation and the basics of building a custom user control that can be reused across multiple pages.

Counting days to start the session.

Microsoft just announced its resources and tools investments in adopting SOA. Some of the tools in this set were obvious. As can be expected, the prototype project Biztalk Services will be available as a CTP very soon. I spoke about the huge potential of this project a while back and its nice to see it coming to light. Biztalk Services takes the concepts of an ESB, and pushes it into the internet cloud - an ISB (internet service bus) if you will.

“Oslo will enable a new class of applications that are connected and streamlined — from design through deployment — reducing complexity, aligning the enterprise and Internet, and simplifying interoperability and management.” - Robert Wahbe, Corporate Vice President of the Connected Systems Division

This vision will be delivered through several servers and tools:

• Server:  Microsoft BizTalk Server "6" will continue to provide a core foundation for distributed and highly scalable SOA and BPM solutions, and deliver the capability to develop, manage and deploy composite applications.
• Services:  BizTalk Services "1" will offer a commercially supported release of Web-based services enabling hosted composite applications that cross organizational boundaries. This release will include advanced messaging, identity and workflow capabilities.
• Framework: The Microsoft .NET Framework "4" release will further enable model-driven development with Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF).
• Tools: New technology planned for Visual Studio "10" will make significant strides in end-to-end application life-cycle management through new tools for model-driven design of distributed applications.
• Repository: There will also be investments in aligning the metadata repositories across the Server and Tools product sets. Microsoft System Center "5," Visual Studio "10" and BizTalk Server "6" will utilize a repository technology for managing, versioning and deploying models.

I think October 30, 2007 will be known as the day Microsoft went SOA.  This might be my favorite release (this hour) confirming Microsoft's commitment to SOA.

 "The Managed Services Engine (MSE) is one approach to facilitating Enterprise SOA through service virtualization. Built upon the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and the Microsoft Server Platform, the MSE was developed by Microsoft Services as we helped customers address the challenges of SOA in the enterprise.

The MSE fully enables service virtualization through a Service Repository, which helps organizations deploy services faster, coordinate change management, and maximize the reuse of various service elements. In doing so, the MSE provides the ability to support versioning, abstraction, management, routing, and runtime policy enforcement for Services."

 

With .NET 3.5 being released about the end of the year at the same time as Visual Studio 2008 it's a good time to look around for any remaining .NET 1.0 or .NET 1.1 applications and consider upgrading them. How do you do it? Does it seem overwhelming?...(read more)

This is an updated version of the Winsock.NET control, with more features that's just plain better.

I'm in Redmond this week attending Microsoft's fifth annual SOA and BPM conference. It's pretty interesting so far, and I'm intending on writing a number of different posts (one per session that I attend). For the last nine months I've been working in the federal IT arena stationed working with a reasonably large organization. One of our current objectives is to evaluate means of improving the governance of our processes both at the definition as well as the execution level. The means, that I'm interested in this conference specifically from the aspect of understanding where MSFT is going in the SOA space but also where the various partners play in the space, and working to understand how the various tools work together to affect a workable solution.

A tutorial for loading sections of a page after the main page has loaded. This example uses the Timer and UpdatePanel controls in the AJAX.NET Framework to load content.

During November Microsoft’s Ron Cundiff will be presenting a series of four “Soup to Nuts” webcasts in which he discusses the basics of using ASP.NET to create your first Web applications. More advanced developers are encouraged to check out the Webcasts page to register for upcoming presentations on ASP.NET, AJAX, Silverlight, IIS, and SQL Server.