In case you wonder how Expression Web deals with custom ASP.NET controls, there are 2 things to notice :

1. Having the control assembly into the \bin directory will not give you any design time rendering in Expression Web.
2. Expression Web do not support custom controls into the Toolbox.

Ok, that's not good so far...
So how do you get custom controls to work in Expression Web ?

Andrew Jewsbury, the Expression Web program manager gives a solution on his blog :

http://blogs.msdn.com/andrewj/archive/2006/12/13/custom-asp-net-controls-and-expression-web.aspx

Basically you have to install the custom control in the GAC, then use a "<%@ Register Assembly=..." tag with fully qualified name, or a "<add assembly=..." tag in the <controls> section of your web.config.

Humm, this is not a designer friendly solution... but it works.
Note only the "<%@ Register Assembly=..." seems to work for me.

Then you get full design time support and even smart tag as well as IntelliSense in code for your customs controls.

If you are still using HTML <table> elements to create page layouts, Chris Pels shows you why you should start using Cascading Style Sheets and <div> elements. We then learn how to create a custom membership provider and a custom profile provider for your ASP.NET application.

According to the MSDN Subscriptions WebLog we can expect to see Visual Studio 2008 to be downloadable early next week.

“Visual Studio 2008 is anticipated out early next week, with availability for Subscribers. Check out the "Top Subscriber Downloads" area on http://msdn2.microsoft.com/subscriptions for VS 2008 downloads.

You will also be able to access these downloads by clicking on the Subscriber Downloads and Product Keys links that take you to all of your downloads. ”

(source: Ken Cox)

That would be great and just in time for a session I'm doing Friday on 'what's new in Visual Studio 2008'. More details on that here: http://www.newhorizonslearning.nl/New-Horizon-s-Developers-day.554.0.html (it's Dutch).

 

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.

THE telco is eight weeks ahead of schedule with its information technology transformation known as TR1, with TR2 waiting in the wings.

The ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit provides a set of AJAX controls to spice up your Web site, and as a shared-source project you can use its infrastructure to create your own cool controls and extenders. Be sure to grab the newest release of the Control Toolkit, as it contains a number of bug fixes.

We published another version of the .NET Framework common Namespaces and Types poster . It's an XPS format file which prints over 16 individual pages. This will allow you to put the poster on your wall, with the help of some tape and scissors....(read more)

The ASP.NET AJAX Showcase demonstrates how businesses are using ASP.NET AJAX to add functionality and provide greater user experiences in their Web-based applications. The three exciting new additions include Foonance, Lottery Post and RoundPegs. If you too have created a cool Web site leveraging ASP.NET AJAX, please let us know.

Over in the microsoft.public.win32.programmer.international newsgroup, JohnD asked:

Hello all,

I have an interest in calling KbdLayerDescriptor.

Michaels blog here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/michkap/archive/2004/12/22/329657.aspx

reports that the return of KbdLayerDescriptor is defined in "kdb.h".

I've downloaded the "Windows Driver Kit for Windows Vista", but I cannot find kbd.h or anything relevant in there.

Where can I get kbd.h? Is it part of one of the other Microsoft SDKs/DDKs?

Thanks in advance.

/john

If JohnD had asked in the blog's Suggestion Box or as a reply to that post (%WINDIR%\system32\kbd*.dll) I probably would have seen the question sooner!:-)

Anyway, I have had several of the various DDK/WDK packages installed plus being enlisted in various source code projects at Microsoft, so here are three reliable places to find the file:

• If you are internal to Microsoft and work in a source code project that picks up the NT Publics, it can be found at oak\inc\kbd.h.
• If you have MSKLC 1.3 or 1.4 installed, it can be found in the MSKLC installation directory, at inc\kbd.h.
• If you install the Windows Driver Kit, it can be found in the WDK install directory, under inc\api\kbd.h (sample projects using it can be found in the WDK install directory under src\input\layout).

There are other DDK/WDK type installations that also have it, so in all likelihood if you have one installed some casual spelunking through inc directories might be worth a look.

John had a follow-up question a few days later after he found the file (on his own, via the third bullet point above):

Am I correct in assuming that typedef KbdLayerDescriptor returns a struct tagKbdLayer?

This is a great time to look at those samples I mention above -- with the exception of conceptual topics, code is always the best documentation, dontcha think? :-)

I must admit that I am always curious about what people are trying to do when they want to call a keyboard layout DLL directly. It has come up probably about 15 times over the last five years, in all but one case it was not really what was needed....

 

This post brought to you by ᢤ (U+18a4, a.k.a. MONGOLIAN LETTER MANCHU ALI GALI ZHA - a letter that is not on the Vista keyboard for Mongolian, for hopefully obvious reasons?)

An article on socket programming in raw C++ on the Windows platform

A server control, similar to the ASP.NET Repeater in its principles, that can handle recursive (or hierachical) data.

Register now for ASP.NET Connections and Visual Studio & .NET Connections on November 5 — 8 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. Learn all about the new features in Visual Studio 2008 from Microsoft and industry experts.

Over the past few years, I've been speaking and conferences and user groups around North America on the the subject of Microsoft AJAX, and the ASP.NET AJAX Extensions.

If you've been to one of my talks, or read any of my material; first of all -- thank you for your time. I hope it was well spent, and that you were able to learn something.

Second, I've moved the example project I use from what was made available as a zipped file to CodePlex. This will make it much easier for people to follow, add, comment, report bugs, etc, and hopefully will help the project mature over time.

Depending on how this initial test works, my current plan is to make this a standard. Standard for me and my Conference/User group samples that is, I'm not trying to change the world here.

So if you're interested in a fully loaded project of working MS AJAX samples, check it out.

http://www.codeplex.com/ScottCateAjax

Enjoy!

You can now find the open-source projects on one Starter Kits and Community Projects page. Check out the newly listed DinnerNow.net and Umbraco CMS for examples of building a connected application and a fast, flexible content management system

I'm kind of a shortcut nut - and the constant looking for stsadm utility has been driven me nuts.  You can't create a shortcut directly to it.  And once you do get past, "where is it again... common?", I keep finding myself asking "what was that command again?".  So, I decided to rid myself of these two common issues I keep having.

1. Create a shortcut on your desktop to cmd.exe (it's here: %SystemRoot%\system32\cmd.exe)
2. Right-Click on the shortcut and select Properties so you can go edit them (our stuff is on Shortcut Tab) 
3. Change the Target to: %SystemRoot%\system32\cmd.exe /K stsadm.exe -help
4. Change the Start in to: "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN\" 
5. Click Change Icon, and browse to stsadm to select it: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN\stsadm.exe
6. Click OK until all of your windows are closed.
7. Rename your shortcut to stsadm

There you go!  You now have a fake shortcut to stsadm.  When it intitally runs, it will display all of the available operations for you (just need to scroll up).

- dan

If you are new to ASP.NET, you may think that your only options to handle processing events are during Page_Init and Page_Load in your .aspx page. Yet there are many application events before and after your .aspx page is processed, and in this week’s video you will learn how you can execute code during these events.

Whether you want to jump-start your own web site or simply view the code of a complete ASP.NET application, an open-source project is a great place to start. Check out the My Web Pages starter kit, the Codeplex Club starter kit, and the ScrewTurn Wiki project.

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.

This lite calculator, written in VB.NET, not only can be useful for installing on your smartphone as a real powerful scientific calculator, but also, can be used for learning some good ideas which I've learnt while developing it.

This article provides a simple means to debug a .NET based Windows Service.