IE6/Windows XP

Microsoft wants users to give up IE6 & Windows XP.  I want users to give up IE6 & XP.  Please, please, please give those things up.  IE6 of course more than XP.  With what Windows 7 is though, go ahead, get on the bandwagon.  Win XP is moving the way of Win98/95 finally so let's keep that movement going.

Free SEO Toolkit from ole' Microsoft

So this looks interesting.  The thing is, as stated above, one has to kick the Windows XP Habit!  So drop it and check this out.  I am keen to see what anybody is coming up with as for these platforms these days.  Especially companies like Microsoft who have vast resources to put toward it.

Adbrite Switches to Webtrends

I see this regularly these days, as we are gaining tons of switchers, since our analytics generally rocks.  But this one really brings it home for me since I have worked with the Adbrite Team on the Implementation.  Great team at Adbrite, excellent implementation if I might say so myself.  If you are looking for a company to do advertisements on the web with, this is definitely a company to take a look at.

The engineering group at work got v9.0 up and live.  If you have an account you can check it out at http://insight.webtrends.com.  Props out to Justin, Rob, Joel, James, Adam, David and the whole crew working on the release.  Great job!

Here's a few of the new bits that really provide some great insight (pun intended?) into activity on a site.  In this case I'm comparing the profile I have setup for Loosely Coupled Human Code Factory.

(Click on the larger for a full screen shot of the image).

In the image I have the red arrows pointing at the RSS feed, which is actually an existing feature, but this is a perfect example of wiring in an RSS feed so one can see the effects of the entry?s increase in hits after posting.  In addition looking a little further back on the graph you can see where the blog experienced a decrease after a posting.  Looking at the grey bars, which represent weekends, one can see that posting a blog entry on Friday or Saturday usually makes for bad readership, especially on a tech blog like this.  But posting on a Monday, Tuesday, or even Wednesday usually bodes well for readership.

In this image I've shown what clicking to add a Note looks like.  Adding Notes is a new feature.  Just hover over the Notes bar on the left hand side and click on the + that appears.  It will show this modal focused window as the image shows.  Enter the information for the note and set the date & time, if it is for a global setting or the current profile and the privacy setting.  Once done just click on save.

As you can see, the note now shows up as A on the chart.  In the display below the note text shows.

This is a great way to put markers into charts to show significant events such as a product release or something similar that would cause an increase or decrease in visitors, visits, or other measure.

This image shows the Twitter Feed I have, that I often associate links with to this blog or others.  I started tracking it to show the tweets in the description area and to see when a particular tweet or link posting increases views of the particular link posted.

That is my quick multi-second tour of the new Webtrends Insight interface, hope you enjoyed.  Hopefully I?ll have more to post real soon so keep an eye on this blog and the Webtrends' Developers' Blog for DX and DC.

I'm working with varied technology stacks these days and figured it was a good time to throw a few questions and tool suggestions out to the community.  First, the tools list.

IDEs & respective plugins/addons

• Visual Studio 2008
  • ReSharper 4.5
  • Visual SVN
  • Subversion/Tortoise
• Flex Builder 3
• Flash CS4

Some of the Main Bits I'm Using These Days

• Silverlight 3 SDK
• Silverlight 3 Toolkit
• .NET Facebook Toolkit (including for MVC, Facebook Developer Toolkit Starter & more)
• ActionScript Facebook API, Wiki for ActionScript & Facebook,
• Adobe AIR
• Adobe Flash

That is about it.  I am amazed, looking at this list, how minimal it has become even with the increase in technology stacks I've been working with.

While checking out more ideas for my data generation tool/app/libraries I stumbled on this video of a presentation by Ben Hall.  The presentation “DDD7 Session Video - Microsoft Pex - The Future of unit testing?” is a great introduction to the PEX framework/toolset.  If you write unit tests, or are trying to get started writing tests, this is a great video to watch.

I watched the video and have a new level of admiration for this guy, and for Red Gate.  He’s using ReSharper (+ points), steps through code smoothly and logically (+ points), and above all he knows his information.  Excellent traits.

PEX Worries?

At 40:14 in the video Ben brings up a major point of contention that I too have.  I don’t really want to use PEX with the Microsoft Test Framework.  I?d much rather use NUnit, mbUnit, or SOMETHING besides Microsoft Test.  Even though, I know, the last dozen code entries I’ve posted uses the Microsoft Test Framework I intend to change that soon.  Ben goes on to point out that almost all of the major test frameworks are now supported.  This is awesome news!  I now have full motivation and have downloaded the PEX libs.

With That Written?

I’m now off to download NUnit and get rid of my Microsoft Tests.  I will prospectively go get XUnit too and start taking a solid look at that tool.

Data Generation Tools

While viewing this video Ben also mentioned a data generation project on CodePlex.  I couldn’t help but get a bit giddy about this fact.  So I checked it out.  Red Gate Generators – Red Gate also has a professional tool that they sell.  The libraries look pretty cool and solid, but I’ll have to review the library license before I know if I can use anything there or not.  I might have to just “not see” anything there.

Fini.

I've been working on getting certificates setup for development with the WCF Web Services I'm building for the High Ball Project.  On a few topics I'm just completely new, like messing with the Certificates, X.509 and SSL and such.  I'm getting there, but road blocks are stopping me every once in a while.  One of my recent issues was how to view the values that the certificate has.  I searched and searched, for some reason I couldn't find something on MSDN or via Google that would do what I wanted it to do.  In addition to that, the reason I was looking for this application to begin with, I was having issues with getting my web.config settings correct for finding the local certificate I had created with makecert.exe.

Stack Overflow!

That's when it clicked in my head, hey, I should try this stackoverflow site out!  So I shot over there and posed these two questions and within less than a 24 hr period on the WEEKEND, I got some solid answers.  I gotta say the guys over at stackoverflow are onto something here!

My first question, "Cannot find the X.509 Certificate using the following search criteria:..." and second question "Tool for Viewing X.509 Certificates?" have two great answers.  So check em' out, and if you aren't signed up with an OpenID get one and go log into the site!  It rocks.  In addition, for you dot netters out there like me, know that the site is built on ASP.NET MVC!  It's solid and FAST!

UPDATED 10/25/2008 Code Sections Formatting Fixed With CSS

What I'm using is available Plugin Collection for Windows Live Writer on Codeplex.  This comes in real useful when getting code into a blog entry.  Because straight pasting really doesn't do so well for readability.

So here are my test code pastes.  A basic view in C#.

   1:  using System;

   2:  using System.ComponentModel;

   3:  using System.Windows.Forms;

   4:  using Microsoft.Practices.Unity;

   5:  using Tsr.SeatingSystem.Controller;

   6:  using Tsr.SeatingSystem.Controller.Views;

   7:  using Tsr.SeatingSystem.WinForm.Properties;

   8:  using Tsr.SeatingSystem.WinForm.Seating;

   9:   

  10:  namespace Tsr.SeatingSystem.WinForm

  11:  {

  12:      public partial class SeatingSystemMainView : Form, ISeatingSystemMainView

  13:      {

  14:          private TsrController controller;

  15:   

  16:          public SeatingSystemMainView()

  17:          {

  18:              InitializeComponent();

  19:              Icon = Resources.Clock;

  20:          }

  21:   

  22:          [Dependency]

  23:          public TsrController Controller

  24:          {

  25:              get { return controller; }

  26:              set

  27:              {

  28:                  controller = value;

  29:                  controller.SetSeatingSystemMainView(this);

  30:              }

  31:          }

  32:   

  33:          #region View Events & Raise Events

  34:   

  35:          public event EventHandler SeatingSystemMainView_Load;

  36:          public event EventHandler ExitToolStripMenuItem_Click;

  37:          public event EventHandler TicketingToolStripMenuItem_Click;

  38:          public event EventHandler SeatingToolStripMenuItem_Click;

  39:          public event EventHandler ReservationsToolStripMenuItem_Click;

  40:          public event EventHandler OptionsToolStripMenuItem_Click;

  41:          public event EventHandler AboutToolStripMenuItem_Click;

  42:          public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged;

Some basic SQL.

   1:  /****** Object:  View [dbo].[tmtUserListing]    Script Date: 07/06/2008 01:27:11 ******/

   2:  IF  EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sys.views WHERE object_id = OBJECT_ID(N'[dbo].[tmtUserListing]'))

   3:  DROP VIEW [dbo].[tmtUserListing]

   4:  GO

   5:  /****** Object:  View [dbo].[tmtUserListing]    Script Date: 07/06/2008 01:27:11 ******/

   6:  SET ANSI_NULLS ON

   7:  GO

   8:  SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON

   9:  GO

  10:  IF NOT EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sys.views WHERE object_id = OBJECT_ID(N'[dbo].[tmtUserListing]'))

  11:  EXEC dbo.sp_executesql @statement = N'CREATE VIEW dbo.tmtUserListing

  12:  AS

  13:  SELECT     dbo.tmtUsers.UserId, GrandCentral.dbo.aspnet_Users.UserName

  14:  FROM         dbo.tmtUsers LEFT OUTER JOIN

  15:                        GrandCentral.dbo.aspnet_Users ON dbo.tmtUsers.UserId = GrandCentral.dbo.aspnet_Users.UserId

  16:  ' 

  17:  GO

Some XAML (Which technically isn't on the list, but I formatted it via HTML)

   1:  <UserControl x:Class="SecurityAdministratorWpf.Login"

   2:      xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"

   3:      xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"

   4:      Height="225" Width="410">

   5:      <Grid>

   6:          <Button Height="23" 

   7:                  HorizontalAlignment="Right" 

   8:                  Margin="0,0,28,15" 

   9:                  Name="buttonLogin" 

  10:                  VerticalAlignment="Bottom" 

  11:                  Width="75" 

  12:                  ToolTip="Click to login.">Login</Button>

  13:      </Grid>

  14:  </UserControl>

Some HTML

   1:  <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

   2:  <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">

   3:  <head runat="server">

   4:      <link rel="stylesheet" href="default.css" type="text/css" />

   5:      <link rel="shortcut icon" href="~/pics/blogengine.ico" type="image/x-icon" />

   6:  </head>

   7:  <body>

   8:      <form id="Form1" runat="server">

   9:      <div class="outerouter">

  10:          <div class="outer-container">

  11:              <div class="inner-container">

  12:                  <div class="header">

  13:                      <div class="title">

  14:                          <div class="sitename">

  15:                              <a href="~/" runat="server">

  16:                                  <%=BlogSettings.Instance.Name %></a></div>

  17:                          <div class="sitenameshadow">

  18:                              <%=BlogSettings.Instance.Name %></div>

  19:                          <div class="slogan">

  20:                              <%=BlogSettings.Instance.Description %></div>

  21:                      </div>

  22:                  </div>

  23:                  <div class="path">

  24:                      <div class="left">

  25:                          <ul>

  26:                              <li>

  27:                                  <asp:HyperLink ID="HlHome" NavigateUrl="~/default.aspx" runat="server">Home</asp:HyperLink></li>

  28:                              <li class="page_item">

  29:                                  <asp:HyperLink ID="HlArchive" NavigateUrl="~/archive.aspx" runat="server">Archive</asp:HyperLink></li>

  30:                              <li class="page_item">

  31:                                  <asp:HyperLink ID="hlContact" NavigateUrl="~/contact.aspx" runat="server">Contact</asp:HyperLink></li>

  32:                          </ul>

  33:                      </div>

  34:                      <div class="right">

  35:                          <a href="<%=Utils.FeedUrl %>">Subscribe to My Feed<asp:Image ID="RssIconImage1" runat="Server"

  36:                              Width="24px" Height="24px" AlternateText="RSS Feed" ImageAlign="AbsMiddle" Style="margin: 0 0 0 10px" /></a>

  37:                      </div>

  38:                      <div class="clearer">

  39:                      </div>

  40:                  </div>

  41:                  <% if (Page.User.Identity.IsAuthenticated)

  42:                     { %>

  43:                  <div class="adminpath">

  44:                      <h2>

  45:                          Admin:</h2>

  46:                      <uc1:menu ID="Menu1" runat="server" />

  47:                  </div>

  48:                  <%} %>

  49:                  <div class="main">

  50:                      <div class="content">

  51:                          <asp:ContentPlaceHolder ID="cphBody" runat="server" />

  52:                      </div>

  53:                      <div class="navigation">

  54:                          <blog:SearchOnSearch ID="SearchOnSearch1" runat="server" MaxResults="3" Headline="You searched for"

  55:                              Text="Here are some results for the search term on this website" />

  56:                          <div class="block">

  57:                              <h2>

  58:                                  Search</h2>

  59:                              <blog:SearchBox ID="SearchBox1" runat="server" />

  60:                          </div>

  61:                          <div class="block">

  62:                              <h2>

  63:                                  Tags</h2>

  64:                              <blog:TagCloud ID="TagCloud1" runat="server" />

  65:                          </div>

  66:                          <div class="block">

  67:                              <h2>

  68:                                  Categories</h2>

  69:                              <blog:CategoryList ID="CategoryList1" ShowRssIcon="true" runat="Server" />

  70:                          </div>

  71:                          <div class="block">

  72:                              <h2>

  73:                                  Archive</h2>

  74:                              <blog:MonthList ID="MonthList1" runat="Server" />

  75:                          </div>

  76:                          <div class="block">

  77:                              <h2>

  78:                                  Blogroll</h2>

  79:                              <blog:Blogroll ID="Blogroll1" runat="server" />

  80:                          </div>

  81:                          <div class="block">

  82:                              <h2>

  83:                                  Disclaimer</h2>

  84:                              <p>

  85:                                  The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent

  86:                                  my employer's view in anyway.</p>

  87:                              <p>

  88:                                  © Copyright

  89:                                  <%=DateTime.Now.Year %></p>

  90:                          </div>

  91:                      </div>

  92:                      <div class="clearer">

  93:                          &nbsp;</div>

  94:                  </div>

  95:                  <div class="footer">

  96:                      <div class="left">

  97:                          <div>

  98:                              Powered by <a href="http://www.dotnetblogengine.net/" target="_blank">BlogEngine.NET</a>

  99:                              <%=BlogSettings.Instance.Version() %>

 100:                              | Design by <a href="http://michael.sivers.co.uk">Michael Sivers</a>

 101:                          </div>

 102:                      </div>

 103:                      <div class="right">

 104:                          <asp:LoginStatus ID="LoginStatus1" runat="Server" LoginText="Sign in" LogoutText="Sign out"

 105:                              EnableViewState="false" />

 106:                      </div>

 107:                      <div class="clearer">

 108:                      </div>

 109:                  </div>

 110:              </div>

 111:          </div>

 112:      </div>

 113:      </form>

 114:  </body>

 115:  </html>

Community Server is costly, elaborate, kind of cool, has a few skins, and blagh blagh blagh.  Out of all these things costly is a big problem.  Of course there is the free version etc., etc, but changing and modularity, ease of code readability, and other related items have caused me to limit what I do or do not build for my web site.  One of the biggest limitations has been the frustrating skins available for Community Server, at least the version I have.

All that said, Community Server is a 6 or 7 out of 10.  I looked at DasBlog and it is pretty decent too, probably a 7, maybe 8 out of 10.  But the one that is uber easy to setup, by far easier than those other two is BlogEngine.NET started by the cool man madskristensen.  This software, even though it doesn't follow all of the particular standards and such that I might have used, is still a top notch and ridiculously easy package to setup.  Especially if one actually uses or develops with VS.NET.  It took me about 5  minutes total, including download time, to get the whole thing setup.

So over the next few weeks things might take a bit of a back burner while I build the ETL solution for getting the comments, posts, and other such infoz from the current site to the future soon to be site.

...so stay tuned.

I was talking with a co-worker recently.  He had stumbled onto Scott Hanselman's Blog.  We started talking about the major blogs that could/should/probably be read on a regular basis and what information they provide.  I came up with a top 5 blogs that I read and did a really short write up of each. If you're looking for some blogs to read (of course read mine too) definitely check these guys out, they've got some really great content.

#1 Scott Guthrie - ScottGu's Blog

The leader of the pack, for .NETters and such is ScottGu's Blog.  Scott Guthrie handles tons of development related material.  If you want to keep up with the latest and greatest of the .NET world from a person in the Microsoft Beast itself, this is the blog to read.

Some of his latest entries that I like in particular have been;  Unit Testing with Silverlight, Tip/Trick: Creating and Using Silverlight and WPF User Controls, and his regular posting of good links that cover .NET material (like this entry) are very helpful.

#2 Scott Hanselman - Scott Hanselman's ComputerZen.com

Scott Hanselman comes in with tons of useful entries too.  He does tend to stray from the core topics sometimes (it is HIS blog, so I'm not deriding him for that) and approach the personal side of his life.  This however just adds context to many of his other entries and his life as a software grognard.

Some of his recent entries that I've really dug include; The Weekly Source Code 27 - Suck Less Libraries of his numerous weekly source code entries (be warned, clicking on this link will render a MASSIVE freaking page, which may or may not trash your browser), and of course one of my favorite topics is often brought up during his discussing ASP.NET MVC.

#3 Phil Haack - You've been haacked and you like it

Phil's blog, I think I've actually read more than the above two, but I've listed it 3rd for no real reason except that I think some might find his topics a bit more hard core than the above two.

Phil's focus is heavily on the ASP.NET MVC, with entries of late; Using Routing With WebForms and the Updated Entry, and covers a lot of unit test topics such as Unit Testing Routes, Tell Me Your Unit Testing Pains, and Comparing Moq to Rhino Mocks.

#4 Nikhil Kothari - nikhilk.net

Nikhil has one of the best about pages of all the blogs I read.  But of course that isn't all that relevant to the topics.  Nikhil focuses heavily on ASP.NET related topics, rightfully so since he works for Microsoft on some of those products.  He often has great write ups on Silverlight, and ASP.NET centric .NET topics.  He's also has "Developing ASP.NET Server Controls and Components" to his name.

Some of the latest entries that are good reads include; AutoComplete for Silverlight Text Boxes, AJAX vs. Silverlight, and he works and writes entries regularly on the Facebook.NET Project.

#5 Matt Berseth - A .NET Developer's Blog

Matt Berseth, whom I don't particularly know much about, has an excellent blog that has all types of bits about ASP.NET design work, controls, etc.  Out of all the blogs I read, he definitely has the best visual presentation of material.  With screen shots, and color scheme for the blog that has real POP, his work really stands out.

The entries I've dug recently are;  ASP.NET AJAX Progress Bar Control, Export GridView to Excel, Building a VS 2008 Styled Grid with the GridView Control, Five AjaxControlToolkit Tab Themes created from DynamicDrive.com, AjaxControlToolkit TabContainer Theme Gallery, and generally his entire tab control library is awesome.

I officially joined the effort for the Windows Live Writer called smugmug4writer for Smugmug, currently maintained by Chris Patterson.  I've found myself using the plugin so much while writing entries that I finally decided I'd contact him and see about doing some additions.  If any readers use this application, make sure to leave a comment or three about what additions you might like.

Like any project on CodePlex you need to setup the utility to get the code out of their TFS (Team Foundation Server) Source Repository.  This is done with some tools Brad Wilson and crew are responsible for.  There is also another solution offered by Teamprise to connect to CodePlex Projects.

To download the tool for working on one of the CodePlex Open Source projects swing over to the CodePlex Open Source Project titled "CodePlex Source Control Client".  To grab the Teamprise client swing over to their site.  You'll also need to go pick up a free (as in beer) license for use.  It is subject to "approval" and all but I think they're still sending them out to CodePlex users.

Once I downloaded the Teamprise Client I went to connecting up to the project.  First off go to the actual project page on CodePlex to find the specific details for connecting.  The connection details are located on the right hand side of the "Connection to Source Control Server" section.

I got the Teamprise Explorer downloaded and installed.  Received my key also and entered that.  The first thing that pops up is the login details screen.  The odd thing is the _cp is stuck on the end of the username regardless of what the CodePlex username you have is.

The next that will pop is an activation screen.  I just hit auto-activate and it took care of this itself.

Below is the display of what the full screen looks like.  If you click on the root of the project (the $ symbol) in the Source Control section of the Teamprise Application below and right click...

...this menu will appear.  Here you'll see what are generally the standard options for access to TFS.  First things first, set your working folder for TFS.  This is the area where the code will be put.

The working folder will prompt as below, click on Browse and select a directory.  I highlighted where I've added the specific directory that I want my code to be placed in.

Next I right clicked on the root again and selected Get Specific Version..., the reason being that I don't trust TFS with the simple Get Latest Version command.  I've been rubbed wrong by its performance and behavior in the past.  So I like to play it rough with ole' TFS.

The next screen gives the standard options for getting a specific version.  Since there is nothing in the directory then I figured nothing needed selecting (here's to hoping TFS behaves as designed).

Next the application begins getting the latest files.  Notice that the notification dialog is rather boring and plain.  The real info is now displayed in the application, which has lost focus, but shows the active status down in the lower right hand side.  I've highlighted it below.

After all is retrieved the files are no longer shadowed out in the Source Control area.  Navigate to where you placed them in the directory structure on your machine and you'll find that they've been downloaded accordingly.

...now get started on some open source CodePlex Projects.  I've explained it, so ya aint got no excuse do ya! 

So over the next few weeks and days I'll be pushing out a new development process, methodology and helping extensively with the consulting roles here at work.  My main goal is to make us FAST and to maintain quality and expand that.  One of the best ways to come upon mankind is of course, the Toyota way!  With that in mind I stumbled upon the Kanban Process Template for TFS, which we happen to be using (TFS, not Kanban).  I hope that I can also bring this into the work environment and gain even more productivity and gains in efficiency!  Go check it out yourself if you're into the efficiency of doing things right, well, and downright top notch.

On another note, the ole' gritty Portal Project that came out a long time ago has been updated too.  Utilizing .NET 3.5 and such it is now looking pretty cutting edge.  Go check it out too on CodePlex.