A C#, C++, Delphi, ActiveX and Java trace framework and a trace viewer: Tail, outputDebugString, event log, and with Log4J, Log4Net, and Microsoft Enterprise Instrumentation Framework (EIF) support. This also comes with full support for Pocket PC development (C++ and .NET).

I recently found out from my buddy "Woay Chee from Malaysia" that he had been posting DotNetNuke goodies/tips & tricks at his blog http://woaychee.wordpress.com/

Even though he had started 2 - 3 months ago but I realized that he had really nice content in there. Keep it up Woay Chee. 

Check it out :)

We just published a WF Hosting Quickstart sample today and it shows a common hosting model for building WF programs and running them in either of: ASP.NET and IIS Your NT Service A Console Host Okay the third is just a debugging convenience for the second....(read more)

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

This story starts, as all stories should, with me sitting on a beach outside of Sao Paolo, Brazil.  My team was releasing some bug fixes to our production setup (we do this every week).  When I got back, I saw that our sites were having very intermittent problems executing SQL against our database.  A trace through the code found that they were able to establish the connection to the database with no problems, but when the code actually ran a query (or stored procedure) using that connection, we'd see various mystifying error messages ... out of memory, SQL Server doesn't exist or access is denied, and some DBNETLIB errors.

Let me step back a step further and outline the setup.  We have two load balanced web servers running an application of mixed ASP and ASP.NET.  It's a homegrown CMS built over the last 7 years by a series of talented (and many not-so-talented) developers.  The data comes from a SQL Server 2005 cluster that resides on a different subnet from the web servers.  There are redundant Nokia firewalls that control all traffic into, out of, and between the networks, and the firewalls were managed by a third party.

The most inexplicable thing about this whole scenario was that the sites would experience these problems only during periods of low usage.  During peak activity times they clicked along nicely.  It was confusing at first.  Our research started to point us to the firewall and we found that the source of the problem was that the firewalls would sever connections that showed no activity for 3600 seconds.  What was happening was that the web servers would open database connections and pool them.  After an hour of not being used, the connections were severed at the firewall level but the web servers still believed them to be valid and usable.  When users would use the site, one of these unusable connections would be drawn from the pool and an error would result.

Fortunately for us, our firewalls were configurable.  We placed a policy change request into our firewall team and increased the timeout period.  The problems immediately ceased.  Our current working theory about why this problem began while I was away is that one of the bug fixes that we put live fixed a bug that was subtly causing more traffic between the web and database servers which resulted in the connections in the pool being kept alive by the firewall.  We believe this to be true as we noticed a 2500% increase in packets dropped on port 1433 on our firewall after we released the bug fixes.
 

An article describing how to do fast image rotation on the .NET Compact Framework

This article provides an implementation of a POP3 MIME client using .NET 2.0 and C#.

Everyone has a certain set of tasks that they simply do not want to perform.

Even if it seems like the sort of thing that others might (right or wrong) expect them to do as a part of their job.

Like some housekeepers don't do windows.

And some secretaries don't get coffee.

And I don't do dishes.

And GDI on Windows doesn't do supplementary characters.

Over in the microsoft.public.win32.programmer.international newsgroup, semi-regular reader Christian Kaiser asked:

Possibly I'm missing something, but I did not find any documentation on how to use GetCharABCWidths() with UTF16 surrogate pairs (additional planes).
Is there any way to use that API (or the like)? The API gets UINT instead of TCHAR, so maybe by shifting the high surrogate and 'or'ing with the low one?

Christian

But Christian isn't missing anything here -- the only way that GDI can ever handle supplementary characters is as glyph ID values; it cannot handle either surrogate pairs or UTF-32 encoded Unicode Scalar Values.

Kind of unfortunate for the whole family of GDI functions like GetCharABCWidths, since only some of them will also take glyph ID values. And although all supplementary character processing does through Uniscribe, there are many pieces of the supplementary ranges that do not require any complex script processing other than this particular requirement, which just means that some functions have no supplementary equivalent.

Because GDI wouldn't know a supplementary character if that character walked up and bit it in the ass (thus inspiring the post's sponsor)....

 

This post brought to you by 𝌽 (U+1d33d, aka U+d834 U+df3d, aka TETRAGRAM FOR CLOSED MOUTH)

Take look at Nikhil's blog about how AJAX can be used with the ASP.Net MVC Framework:

http://www.nikhilk.net/Ajax-MVC.aspx

Following in the footsteps of last year's event, Microsoft Israel is repeating the Microsoft Developer Academt event (tomorrow, November 27, 2007).  This full-day event offers 6 parallel tracks of presentations and panel disucssions, across 5 time slots.  Lots of of real-world and new technology sessions for the MS developer to choose from.  More information and links can be found here.

Personally, when I am not sitting in on sessions, I'll be doing a repeat performance of the session I recently did at TechEd EMEA in Barcelona.  It is a fun session, that covers some usefull tools and technologies from MS that developers aren't as aware of as they should be and tries to trigger your imagination for the next great killer app!

Mashups and Windows Live - Not Just for Browsers
Although there is a lot of "Internet" in a "Mashup" application, that does not mean that it must be a browser-based application! Find out what a mashup really is and how to use some of the common tools, techniques and resources to build a rich client mashup application. These applications will use services and data from Windows Live, Yahoo, as well as other sources and show you how easy it is to build smart client (as well as browser) mashups that combine heterogeneous data and services.

If you are at the event be sure to find me and say "Hi"

 

Experience the latest release of the most productive and powerful development tool and user interface platform on the planet. Learn about the new features in Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5, from built-in ASP.NET AJAX support, to the new Visual Studio Web page designer, to the enhanced JavaScript support; then watch the ASP.NET 3.5 video series and the LINQ video series; and then download a free copy of Visual Web Developer 2008 to try it out yourself.

Wer Web Anwendungen schreibt, der kommt um JavaScript nicht vorbei. Egal welche Web Server Controls man verwendet, wenn's am Client nicht mehr weitergeht oder etwas verbesser werden muss, ist JavaScript die Nummer 1. Auch die ganze AJAX Programmierung verwendet JavaScript am Client.

Am 29.11. zeige ich, wie ich mit jQuery recht einfach und schnell am Client etwas verändern kann, ohne mir groß Gedanken zu machen, ob es mit Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari und Co. funktioniert.

Außerdem könnt ihr dabei ein wenig vom MVC Framework sehen, das verwende ich nämlich während meiner Demo.

Weiter Details gibt's wie immer auf der Dodned Web Site unter http://www.dodned.de/.

A customizable log provider system that allows you to harness your existing logging system to log client side messages to your server. Includes a Silverlight interface and Log Viewer.

Visual Studio Add-in that uses JSLint to verify JavaScript files that are part of Solution

Catchy new site http://edge.technet.com has some IIS 7.0 videos! FREB http://edge.technet.com/Media/Failed-Request-Tracing-in-IIS7/ Installing PHP Applications on IIS7 http://edge.technet.com/Media/Installing-PHP-Applications-on-IIS7/ Remote Administration and Delegation in IIS7 http://edge.technet.com/Media/Remote-Administration-and-Delegation-in-IIS7/...(read more)

Get your new RTM bits now. I'm running Visual Studio 2008 on my box Soma announced it here today. The final RTM bits for Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 are available. The trial editions of Visual Studio 2008 are online here . You can also get...(read more)

Jeff Atwood posted a nice blog post today about The Two Types of Programmers. I always like to refer to programmers by using the term 'Software Engineer', when they're software engineering. The term 'programmer' is often associated with a 'code monkey' (human code generator), and Jeff's post isn't about code monkeys.

The post by itself is interesting, but what's more interesting is the long list of replies to it, mostly in the category of "your categorization is wrong/insulting/arrogant" etc. I think the replies show the point Jeff tried to make.

I'd like to quote one little gem, one reply by Robby Slaughter which IMHO is what Jeff's post is all about :

the question is what percentage of software engineering is done by amateurs who think they are professionals. There's nothing wrong with being an amateur---everyone starts at the beginning---but we don't let people whose only qualification is that they leafed through a few books do brain surgery, design bridges, or organize the Superbowl. There's more to writing good software than being able to sling code. I'm not interested in whether or not you live and breathe tech and write Linux drivers blindfolded for fun, I just care whether or not you *know what you are doing*.

It seems like most people don't. In our industry, that's easy to get away with.

It doesn't matter in which group you belong, according to whatever person. What matters is that last sentence of Robby's reply. In a world where every day we become more and more dependent on software, it's essential that that last sentence becomes history. Let's all work on that, in whatever group you feel yourself belong to.

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).

update: RTM has been reached and VSTS 2008 can be downloaded (source).