DevCurry

Building an Image Flip Viewer as an ASP.NET Web API Service using Knockout JS

2013-05-23T22:01:00.001-07:00

Windows 8 introduced a nice component that flips through images using two buttons to the left and right of the control. You can see it the Windows 8 Store when looking at screenshots presented by an app as seen below. I wanted to build one using JavaScript with one requirement that is it shouldn’t load all images at the same time because if you use big images, it kills the page load

Bundling and Minification in ASP.NET MVC

2013-05-20T09:45:00.001-07:00

Richness of Web Content has been growing at a phenomenal pace and thanks to Modern browsers supporting HTML5 and CSS3, with a little work, a Web Application can be made almost as rich as Native applications. Yes, they are still a little behind but Web today is unrecognizable from web 5 years ago. This rich-ness of behavior on the web, is all thanks to the power of JavaScript frameworks,

Uploading Multiple Files through an ASP.NET Web API Service

2013-05-19T21:29:00.000-07:00

I had written a post on DotNetCurry on how to upload multiple-files to an Azure Blob through an ASP.NET MVC Web Application. Today we’ll see how we can do the same but store it in a file system instead and use a Web API controller instead, so that the upload service can be hosted anywhere we want. For brevity, we’ll build our Web API sample to use ASP.NET/IIS host. The API Controller Step 1: We

Using MvcScaffolding Packages to Generate Repositories for your LoB Applications

2013-05-16T22:42:00.001-07:00

ASP.NET MVC’s tooling support goes a long way in making it a LOB Application friendly platform. However the default Controller scaffold contains direct references to the DBContext. This is a little smelly when it comes to separation of concerns and can often lead to ending up with ‘fat-controllers’. Instead, if our Scaffolder could generate a Repository Interface and its corresponding

Implementing Pagination in ASP.NET Web API using OData operators

2013-05-16T10:21:00.001-07:00

ASP.NET Web API is a framework that makes it easy to build HTTP services for various types of clients from Microsoft to Non-Microsoft technologies. The new programming model of developing over HTTP is made simple and flexible by using WebAPI. We can design services which can be accessible from a broad range of clients, including browsers and mobile devices. One of the most frequent

Adopting ASP.NET MVC enhancements in an Existing Web Forms Project

2013-05-10T01:07:00.003-07:00

This article is from our ASP.NET MVC 101 Tutorial Series Whenever we are starting with a Greenfield project, that is a new project from ground up, we prefer using the latest in the technology stack to the point where the team is comfortable with. However, Greenfield projects are pretty rare; enhancement and feature addition projects, often referred to as brown-field projects, are the way forward

Tracing in ASP.NET Web API

2013-05-09T20:55:00.000-07:00

Tracing plays an important part in keeping track of how things are flowing through in your Application Services. Configuring tracing to collate system output is invaluable in gathering correct information about what the service is actually doing other than throwing a HTTP 5xx or HTTP 4xx error. If you want to implement a TraceWriter of your own, you can implement the ITraceWriter and register it

Testing CRUD Operations in ASP.NET Web API using Fiddler

2013-05-03T01:31:00.000-07:00

HTTP Services can be used by a broad range of clients including browsers and mobile devices. By using REST [Representational State Transfer] we can build loosely coupled services. When we think about exposing data on the web, we always talk about four common operations which we use in our day-to-day life – 1. Create 2. Retrieve/Read 3. Update 4. Delete We call these

HTTP Cookies and ASP.NET Web API

2013-04-27T01:00:00.000-07:00

HTTP Cookies are bits of information sent by an HTTP Server in an HTTP Response. So when a browser is said to ‘drop a cookie’, it basically implies that the ‘HTTP Client’ (browser in this case) received a Cookie from the server and has persisted it on the client. The ‘HTTP Client’ then returns this cookie to the server via the Cookie Header in subsequent requests. To dig in just a little bit

Custom Templates, Data Annotations and UI Hints in ASP.NET MVC

2013-04-26T03:24:00.000-07:00

This article is from our ASP.NET MVC 101 Tutorial Series Today we look at a feature in ASP.NET MVC that is not really new but immensely useful if we are building ASP.NET MVC applications that lean on the server to do the UI rendering rather than using JavaScript frameworks like KnockoutJS. Display Templates conceptually are tied to how a particular rendering engine (Razor or Webforms etc.)

ASP.NET MVC 4 - Making Asynchronous Calls to External Services from an Action Method

2013-04-25T01:20:00.001-07:00

While developing applications, developers often face the challenge of retrieving data from more than one external sources. Traditional multi-threaded programming can be often complex and hard to get right. Prior to .Net 4.5, asynchronous controllers used to inherit from the AsyncController class for Async support. However with the introduction of async and await keywords in .Net 4.5, MVC 4

DataList in ASP.NET MVC & KnockoutJS

2013-04-23T10:32:00.000-07:00

We recently learnt how to implement a Master-Details view using Knockout and ASP.NET MVC. Today we will look at how we can create a nice paginated data set that mimics the WebForm DataList/Repeater/Grid functionality. We will again take advantage of Steve Anderson’s excellent KnockoutJS framework to build a rich client side functionality. Thanks to Sumit Maitra for co-authoring this article

Master-Details view using Knockout and ASP.NET MVC

2013-04-22T02:17:00.000-07:00

With the introduction of ASP.NET MVC, the traditional WebForm controls and eventing mechanism has been replaced with the more stateless, HTTP based leaner MVC pattern of application development. However, change in paradigms often don’t imply change in requirements. Developing Master-Details type of functionality probably ranks as the top-most project types that are implemented in any LoB

Play Videos in ASP.NET MVC & HTML5 using Custom ActionResult

2013-04-17T23:25:00.000-07:00

Although the built-in result classes are sufficient for most application scenarios in ASP.NET MVC, it’s worth noting that one of the most important features in ASP.NET MVC is that a developer can extend this framework for occasions where your application requires something special. For eg: the Custom View Engine, Custom Controller Factory, Custom Action Result, Custom Action Filter can be used to

JSON Dates are Different in ASP.NET MVC and Web API

2013-04-12T09:50:00.001-07:00

With the advent of ASP.NET MVC and Web API, working over plain HTML as opposed to obtrusive server side ‘web-controls’ has become the norm. Also partial post-backs and AJAX is a must. Among this paradigm shift from WebForms, JSON data transfer has gained tremendous popularity. We all love JSON it’s easy to understand, light weight and works… almost! We all HATE JSON Dates. Why? Because JSON spec

Dynamic UI in ASP.NET MVC using Knockout.js and Template binding

2013-04-09T22:34:00.000-07:00

Recently I was discussing capabilities of the client-side framework Knockout.js in ASP.NET MVC applications, with some of my students. KO is a lightweight framework and very efficient for developing rich Web application. You can find more about this library here. For a more practical implementation, you can find two articles - Simple Databinding and Templating using Knockout and ASP.NET Web API

Unobtrusive jQuery Validation for Knockout in ASP.NET MVC

2013-04-05T21:38:00.002-07:00

This article is from our ASP.NET MVC 101 Tutorial Series In this article, we will explore how we can use the jQuery Validator in an ASP.NET MVC application that uses Knockout Templating. Traditionally, jQuery validator works out of the box with KO ViewModels that are statically bound. I would recommend reading two articles before you read this one Simple Databinding and Templating using

Debugging Parallel Code in Visual Studio 2012

2013-04-04T21:46:00.000-07:00

.NET 4.0 introduced the Task Parallel Library (TPL) and Parallel LINQ (PLINQ) in an attempt to make parallel programming simpler and making best use of multi-core processors easier. Recently I was playing around with the Parallel.Foreach and the new Enumerator APIs for the File System in System.IO trying to build a Fast Folder Scanner when I chanced upon the Parallel debugging options in Visual

ASP.NET MVC: Creating Custom View Engine

2013-04-02T10:22:00.000-07:00

ASP.NET MVC started off with the premise of being a very ‘pluggable’ framework and we can see it almost everywhere. You can plug in any IoC container, Testing Framework even View Engines! There are two view engines provided by default - the WebForms View engine (views with .aspx extention) and the Razor view engine (view with .cshtml extension). Today we’ll see how the pluggability of view

NuGet – The Visual Studio Sweetner

2013-03-31T22:04:00.000-07:00

Recently we saw some new features in Visual Studio 2012 for a Web Developer. One feature we didn’t touch upon was Nuget! NuGet per-se is not a new feature and it’s been around for a couple of years now. However, no Visual Studio article is complete without a mention of Nuget. So we decided to follow up with an article specially dedicated to NuGet . This article has been co-authored by me and

Debugging your ASP.NET Web APIs with Fiddler

2013-03-29T01:00:00.000-07:00

ASP.NET Web API as we all know, lets us build and expose services over HTTP without the overhead of traditional WS-* based web-services. If you are new to ASP.NET Web API, you can start here. We have also covered some Web API articles on DotNetCurry Since Web API works over HTTP, the services are easy to interact with even without a dedicated front-end as long as we are sending/receiving

Getting Started with ASP.NET MVC 4 Mobile Sites using jQuery Mobile

2013-03-23T13:02:00.002-07:00

This article is from our ASP.NET MVC 101 Tutorial Series ASP.NET MVC 4 introduced a Mobile Site template that leverages the jQuery Mobile to serve up views tailored for consumption on Mobile devices. Even though the latest ASP.NET site templates have responsive CSS, the mobile views aren’t particularly suited for data intensive views. It would be better if we had views dedicated to handle

Model Binding in ASP.NET 4.5

2013-03-20T11:07:00.000-07:00

In this article, we will explore a new feature introduced in ASP.NET 4.5 called Model Binding which displays data on our WebForms using the SelectMethod attribute of a data bound control. We will also see how to filter data using Value Provider Attribute Eg: [QueryString]. A couple of days ago, I had written an article on “Strong Typed Data Controls in ASP.NET 4.5” which demonstrated a new way

Getting started with OData and ASP.NET Web API

2013-03-17T20:47:00.000-07:00

To paraphrase from odata.org – “The Open Data Protocol (OData) is a Web protocol for querying and updating data. OData does this by applying and building upon Web technologies such as HTTP, Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub) and JSON to provide access to information from a variety of applications, services, and stores.” In plain-speak, OData is a protocol that works over HTTP (the same protocol

Async and Await in ASP.NET 4.5

2013-03-14T09:13:00.001-07:00

In this article, we will see how to use Asynchronous Programming using Async and Await in ASP.NET 4.5 web forms. For demonstration purposes, we will create three different WCF Services which will fetch the Customers data, Total No. of orders and the Total Products respectively. Then we will use these services in our ASP.NET web site synchronously as well as asynchronously. We will calculate the

Areas in ASP.NET MVC is a Useful Feature

2013-03-10T10:54:00.000-07:00

Continuing our MVC 101 series, today we look at the concept of Areas. Areas help provide a logical (and physical) separation of the View and Controller layer in ASP.NET MVC. Areas make use of the Routing mechanism in ASP.NET, so if you are not very clear on how routing works, try this article first. Working with AreasEssentially Areas are used for better management of large projects. For example

Windows 8 Apps: Downloading Image from the Server Using WinJS.xhr

2013-03-06T21:24:00.004-08:00

As we all know the WinJS library helps us build Windows 8 Store Apps in HTML5 and JavaScript. The WinJS.xhr is an important module in WinJS wherein it helps wrap cross-domain calls and provides an easy mechanism to work with external web contents using HTTP operations like GET/POST etc. In this sample today, we will see how to make use of WinJS.xhr for downloading image file from a remote URL.

Using FlipView Control in Windows Store Apps using JavaScript and HTML

2013-03-02T20:35:00.000-08:00

For Windows Store Apps, WinJS has provided several controls for displaying data interactively. Some of the examples are SemanticZoom, GridView, ListView, FlipView etc. All these controls accept collection as data source and provides a mechanism so that end-user can easily navigate through it. On the SemanticZoom, I already have some information which you can find from Windows 8: Working with

Action Filters in ASP.NET MVC

2013-02-27T04:49:00.000-08:00

Continuing with our MVC 101 series today we look at an important MVC feature, Filters. Filters in ASP.NET MVC are a way to apply cross-cutting logic at the controller level. Some examples of cross-cutting logic is Security and Logging. Security is a cross cutting concern because, once enabled, we need to apply it for all incoming requests in the web Application. Imagine a world where you don’t

Random ASP.NET, MVC & C# Tips in 100 Chars

2013-02-24T21:45:00.000-08:00

I had a lot of fun last Friday! The South Asia Microsoft MVP group had organized a Techweet Friday where Microsoft MVP’s would tweet tips about different Microsoft Technologies in 100 chars or less. I tweeted too and here are some ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC and C# tips for my non-twitter friends C# TipsOnce you assign a value to a BigInteger variable, it becomes immutable (cannot change) 'var' is not

Windows 8 Apps: Creating Picture Library Viewer using XAML GridView and C#

2013-02-21T23:29:00.002-08:00

When building Windows Store Apps, WinRT provides an easy mechanism to work with operating system special folders like Pictures, Videos, Music etc. WinRT has built-in APIs to access these special folders and makes it easier for developers to safely access files in here. APIs to access files and folder groups are defined in the Windows.Storage namespace. This provides various classes to manage

3 ASP.NET Repeater Control Tips

2013-02-18T23:05:00.000-08:00

The ASP.NET Repeater control is a lightweight templated data-bound list control that allows customization of your layout by repeating a specified template for each item displayed in the list. In this article, we will see 3 lesser known ASP.NET Repeater Control tips Tip 1: Bind an ASP.NET Repeater to List<string> Let’s first declare a List<String> for ourselves. Create an Employee and

Perform CRUD Operations using OData Services in .NET

2013-02-15T00:30:00.000-08:00

In this article, we will see how to perform CRUD Operations using OData Services in .NET applications. OData (Open Data Protocol) is a web protocol for performing CRUD operations which is built upon web technologies like HTTP, Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub) and JSON to provide access to the data to various applications, services and stores. We can use WCF Data Service to expose OData. For

Windows 8 Apps: Working with Toast Notifications

2013-02-12T00:30:00.000-08:00

With the advent of always-connected smart devices like phones and tablets, users have become increasingly accustomed to receiving notifications for changes as opposed to checking for changes (aka Push instead of Pull). For example, if a professional is using a tablet application to keep track of appointments, they would rather want to be notified when their appointments change instead of

Windows 8 Store Apps: Working with the Contact Picker (C# + XAML)

2013-02-09T20:58:00.000-08:00

Windows 8 has been out for 3+ months now and is doing rather well according to official Microsoft reports. The new Windows 8 Store Application model makes available a set of useful applications out of the box e.g. Contact, Mail, Photos, Messaging etc. Windows 8 also comes with various extensibility points, referred to as the ‘Charms’ that can be accessed programmatically in the Windows 8 Store

ASP.NET MVC - Using Resource Files to Manage String Constants

2013-02-06T02:28:00.000-08:00

This article is from our ASP.NET MVC 101 Tutorial Series Continuing with the MVC 101 series, today we explore how to save strings in Resource files instead of constants spread out all over the application or worse, hard coded in the source itself. Mind you, we are not looking at cultures and Internationalization today. It is very easy to start working on a project and continue adding string in

ASP.NET and HTML 5 Canvas - Draw Images and Save in ASP.NET Image Object

2013-02-03T22:57:00.001-08:00

The Canvas element is a popular HTML 5 tag that can be embedded inside an HTML document for the purpose of drawing and displaying graphics. In this article, we will see how to use the HTML 5 canvas element in an ASP.NET Page to draw shapes and save them to an ASP.NET Image object. Let’s get started. Open Visual Studio 2010/2012 and create a blank ASP.NET Website. Now add a page ‘default.aspx’ to

Getting Started with NUnit in ASP.NET MVC

2013-02-01T23:22:00.000-08:00

This article is from our ASP.NET MVC 101 Tutorial Series Visual Studio 2012 comes with a perfectly capable Unit Testing system in MS Test. However if your team’s skills require you to use alternate Testing frameworks like NUnit, Visual Studio is game to play along. In this article, we’ll see the how we can setup NUnit to work with Visual Studio’s Test Explorer and run Unit tests in our project.

What is the AntiForgeryToken and why do I need it? - ASP.NET MVC 101 series

2013-01-31T00:21:00.002-08:00

This article is from our ASP.NET MVC 101 Tutorial Series When we get started with projects, often our core focus is Domain and Business logic. We often slack up on the nitty gritty of securing our web input and sometimes it continues till a disaster strikes and at that point, it becomes a major PR as well as legal headache. Well today, we will look at a type of security breach in a web

ASP.NET MVC Cascading Dropdown List

2013-01-28T20:40:00.001-08:00

I have been receiving lots of emails from devs requesting me to send them materials to help learn ASP.NET MVC. I usually point them to http://www.asp.net/mvc which is a good starting point. However often when you get started with a project, things are not exactly as in tutorials and you start hitting snags, little things that are different from tutorials and require you to do multiple searches to

Using LogParser to Find Most Frequently Accessed Pages of an ASP.NET Website

2013-01-25T06:43:00.000-08:00

Log parser is a powerful, versatile tool that a SQL-like query language to access a wide variety of text-based data sources such as log files, XML files and CSV files, as well as the Event Log, the Registry, binary files, and Active Directory. You can download LogParser here. The installer also contains samples and documentation about the different commands of Log Parser. In this short article,

Using NHibernate in an ASP.NET MVC 4 Application

2013-01-22T00:16:00.003-08:00

Now a days ASP.NET MVC is a common framework for developing web applications. As we all know that M in MVC stands for model, and for a Line of business (LoB application ), the model is often the backbone. For defining a model that persists in a database, ASP.NET MVC supports Entity Framework (now Open Source) out of the box. Other possible options are: ADO.NET hand coded data layer where you

ASP.NET MVC - Getting started with Unity IoC Container

2013-01-19T01:00:00.000-08:00

In one of my recent discussions with a client, we talked about how to decouple model layers with the controller layer in an ASP.NET MVC application. Generally a decoupled design helps maintainability and Unit Testability of an application. There are various frameworks already available for implementing Dependency Injection, like Ninject. You can get more information about it in the articles

ASP.NET MVC 4 - Implementing Asynchronous controller using .NET Framework 4.5

2013-01-16T06:40:00.003-08:00

Most web developers know about ASP.NET’s request processing pipeline. An HTTP request is synchronously processed on a Thread which is grabbed from the ThreadPool. The Thread on which this request is processed is blocked from doing anything else like handling another incoming request. This scenario can be really problematic for large number of concurrent requests. If the server is busy

Minification and Bundling of CSS and JavaScript Files + Win 10 ASP.NET EBooks

2013-01-09T09:14:00.002-08:00

By minifying and bundling your static files, you will dramatically improve the load time and performance of your web pages as you reduce the number of requests your users' browsers have to make to your server. This article, guest blogged by Dean Alan Hume and based on chapter 5 of Fast ASP.NET Websites, discusses minification and bundling of static files. Win 10 Free Copies of this EBook

Excel Style Data Filtering in ASP.NET MVC using DataTables.js Plugin

2013-01-07T04:06:00.001-08:00

DataTables is a really cool jQuery plugin for adding LOTS of nifty features to data laid out in tabular format. Yes, <table>s are looked down upon by hipsters but they are very useful for presenting – tabular data. Today I’ll show how we can use DataTable to do Excel style filtering in an ASP.NET MVC application where we have filter-dropdowns on the footer of each column and filtering data by

Connect to LinkedIn using OAuth in an ASP.NET MVC Application

2013-01-03T19:44:00.002-08:00

ASP.NET 4.0 introduced OAuth integration using the DotNetOpenAuth library. We can use it to authenticate our ASP.NET application using various OAuth providers. Today we will see how we can Authenticate using the built in LinkedIn client. For more about OAuth in the real world, refer to my article in the Free DNC Magazine Issue 4. Registering with LinkedInBefore we can start using LinkedIn as an

Task based WCF Services in .NET 4.5

2012-12-17T00:01:00.002-08:00

Task based asynchronous programming is now simplified and streamlined in .NET 4.5 through the use of keywords ‘await’ and ‘async’. These keywords help makes asynchronous code look similar to synchronous coding, making it easier to write and understand Asynchronous code. Those who have used WCF service might have used the Asynchronous contract generation while adding WCF service reference in the

HTML5 and CSS 3 in ASP.NET 4.5 – Part 1

2012-12-06T21:48:00.000-08:00

In the first part of ‘HTML5 and CSS 3 in ASP.NET 4.5’ article, we will see how HTML5 is supported in ASP.NET 4.5. We will also explore some new features of HTML5 with ASP.NET 4.5. ASP.NET 4.5 by default supports HTML5. To see this in action, let’s create a new empty web site with the name “HTML5SupportPartI” using Visual Studio 2012 as shown below – For this demonstration I am using Windows – 8

Strongly Typed Data Controls in ASP.NET 4.5

2012-11-26T08:03:00.002-08:00

In this article, we will explore a new feature introduced in ASP.NET 4.5 called Strongly Typed Data Controls. We will see why we should care about this new feature and how can used instead of the Eval function in ASP.NET. Also read Avoid DataBinder.Eval in ASP.NET and improve Performance For this demonstration, I am using Windows 7 and Visual Studio 2012. Let’s first create a blank web site

ASP.NET MVC 4: External Login using OpenID

2012-11-24T00:50:00.001-08:00

All those who are working on Web Application development using ASP.NET (all versions) are well aware of the out of the box Authentication and Authorization providers. These default MembershipProvider and RoleProvider provide a reasonable boiler-plate forms authentication, to start off with. The typical use of this is that the new user registers with the web application with username, Password and

ASP.NET MVC: Using jQuery AutoComplete UI with WEB API

2012-11-15T02:30:00.000-08:00

Last week when I was conducting a MVC training with one of my clients, I was asked about some possible ways to implement auto-complete in ASP.NET MVC Views, similar to what we have in Google Search or the AJAX Extender. My solution was to use Query UI. You can get this free library from www.jquery.com and www.jqueryui.com. If you use Visual Studio for your development, you can use the respective

A Free .NET Magazine for Developers and Architects

2012-11-01T16:09:00.000-07:00

A couple of months ago, on DotNetCurry.com, we started the 'DNC Magazine', a FREE, bimonthly (once every 2 months) digital publication bringing you the latest from the .NET world presented by Microsoft MVP's and industry veterans. We are three editions old and so far, we have covered topics like C# 5, ASP.NET, MVC, SharePoint, Azure, TDD, Visual Studio, VS ALM, Entity Framework, HTML5, jQuery,

Client Side Progress Bar in ASP.NET MVC using jQuery UI, WebAPI and JsRender

2012-10-22T06:58:00.000-07:00

Editorial note: This article has been modified to incorporate (to an extent) the comments by an avid reader Parag. Thanks Parag! In a recent discussion, I was asked about progress bars to visually depict ongoing activity on the web page. The scenario was that a page makes an Ajax call to an external service, receives JSON data and then displays this data in a tabular fashion. However the

TypeScript Template for ASP.NET MVC4

2012-10-13T08:14:00.001-07:00

Microsoft introduced TypeScript to the world on October 1, 2012. Read my post on Hello TypeScript – Getting Started if you are new to TypeScript. It’s a typed superset of JavaScript and has rich tooling support. However it’s still in Alpha and there is only one ASP.NET MVC project that has TypeScript integrated in it and that is for ASP.NET MVC3. To use it in ASP.NET MVC4, you need to jump

Hello TypeScript – Getting Started

2012-10-02T04:40:00.000-07:00

A first look at TypeScript and what it takes to get started with the newest language on the block from Microsoft using Visual Studio 2012. What is TypeScript? October 1, 2012 will probably be remembered in the history of Software Development when Microsoft Technical Fellow and father of C# Anders Hejlsberg announce TypeScript, a new Type conformant JavaScript. A language that compiles down to

ASP.NET MVC - Displaying Images using Custom Html Helper Method

2012-10-01T05:52:00.000-07:00

Recently in one of the trainings I conducted on ASP.NET MVC, I was asked about Image management in the View. The scenario was that images had to be fetched from the database server and then displayed in a View. It required generating the image on the fly and showing it to the user. In this article, we will go through the steps to do this. Editor’s Note: Storing images in a Database is generally

ASP.NET MVC 3 - Performing Model Validation Explicitly

2012-09-20T21:36:00.000-07:00

In an MVC application, a View does not have code-behind by default, so performing validation becomes very important. In MVC, model validation can be performed using the following techniques: Using Data Annotations Using Custom Data Annotations Using Asynchronous validations using Remote Using client-side validations using jQuery In this small article, I have explained the technique of

A Windows Store App using JavaScript for Accessing Camera

2012-09-05T06:30:00.000-07:00

The WinJS library for WinRT applications allow us to build Windows 8 style apps using HTML5 and JavaScript. In this article, we will build a sample application, and demonstrate the use of Media APIs exposed for accessing Camera device to capture the image. As Windows 8 will be available on the Tablet, it may happen that the end-user will take snaps with the device and may want to make use of

Filtering Data in ASP.NET MVC using jQuery and Partial Views

2012-08-20T11:24:00.000-07:00

Recently I completed an ASP.NET MVC workshop where we discussed several advantages of using jQuery in MVC. During the session, one of the attendee wanted to know how to filter data in the ‘Index’ view based upon the matching search string passed from the view. In this article, we will see a simple solution for this problem. Also read - ASP.NET MVC: Displaying Partial Views using jQuery UI Dialog

Using jQuery for displaying ASP.NET MVC Partial View to Perform Edit Operation

2012-08-10T22:09:00.000-07:00

ASP.NET MVC replaces the traditional WebForm eventing model with a more maintainable Model View Controller approach towards building web pages. Without events and controls, requirements for partial page updates are met by using jQuery scripting and via Partial Views.Also read - ASP.NET MVC: Displaying Partial Views using jQuery UI Dialog BoxesRecently while conducting an MVC training, one of my

Custom Action Filter in ASP.NET MVC

2012-08-06T05:44:00.000-07:00

In MVC, filters play a very important role. Filters are used to inject an extra logic into the MVC request processing. Typically in an MVC application, we make use of filters to define logic which is used to apply add-on functionality to the application e.g. defining authorization, caching etc. In MVC, developers are provided with the following basic filters: · Authorization Implements

TextBox Watermark using HTML5 and jQuery

2012-07-24T21:48:00.000-07:00

A ‘TextBox Watermark’ is an UI effect that is often employed in space constrained scenarios where putting in a label next to a text box explaining the purpose of the textbox is not possible. In such scenarios, the TextBox has a watermark that stays on till a user starts typing. For example the WordPress.com home page Here when we start typing on the Username or the Password textbox, the text

Using the ‘Remote’ Attribute for Async Validation in ASP.NET MVC

2012-07-17T00:14:00.000-07:00

Validation is an integral part of any input process in any computer software. As the saying goes ‘never trust anything the user gives you’. On the web, there are various ways of validating user input, some happen on the web-browser itself, some happen on the server after a user submits a form of data. ASP.NET MVC 3.5 onwards supports various Data Annotation attributes that you can decorate your

ASP.NET MVC: Displaying Partial Views using jQuery UI Dialog Boxes

2012-07-12T02:46:00.000-07:00

One of my clients had a requirement in an ASP.NET MVC 3 project where they wanted to load a View in a Modal Dialog that can then be moved around. I suggested a solution where the jQuery UI Dialog can be used to load an MVC Partial View. The jQuery UI Dialog object provides properties like width, resizable, draggable etc. to customize the dialog layout and behavior. This object provides functions

ReadOnlyDictionary in .NET 4.5

2012-07-05T12:56:00.000-07:00

Yes! For people doing custom implementation to create a Read Only Dictionary, there is now a .NET BCL implementation of the same in .NET 4.5. For the Uninitiated the question is - Why do you need a ReadOnlyDictionary in the first place?A ReadOnlyDictionary is a useful data container when you are sending data across layers of an application and you want to ensure the data is not modified across

Zip Archives Become a First class citizen in .NET 4.5

2012-06-17T20:52:00.000-07:00

Compression in the .NET framework has been supported via different libraries in the past (via Open File Conventions) but the support for .zip archives hasn’t quite been complete. With .NET 4.5 we get a dedicated zip compression library that allows us to manipulate zip libraries fully. Introduction Up until now, compression in .NET was supported only to the extent of supporting Open File

Using Caller Info Attributes in C# 5.0 to Improve Logging

2012-06-13T01:28:00.000-07:00

The problem of passing current method details haunted my team and me when we were asked to add logging to every available business layer method in a two year old project, that had no logging and empty try { } catch { } blocks. We eventually worked around it by using a mix of reflection and string literals to get the current method name. But in my guts I hated the fact that I had to use reflection

Retrieving Gravatar using jQuery

2012-06-10T23:59:00.000-07:00

If you have an account with Wordpress or Github, you might have seen them requesting you to setup your Gravatar image so that they can associate it with your account. You can easily set one up and it gets associated to your email address. Now multiple services can choose to simply choose to use your email address to show your Gravatar when you specify your email address, for example when you are

ASP.NET MVC: Handling Exceptions and 404 Errors

2012-06-07T00:35:00.000-07:00

In a previous article, we saw how to use ELMAH for managing unhandled errors in MVC applications. If for some unique scenario, ELMAH does not handle your needs, you can fallback on the default HandleError Attribute in MVC. In this article, we will see how we can use the HandleError attribute to quickly put together an exception handling mechanism that helps hide the ‘dark’ underbelly of your

Using Infragistics jQuery Mobile Controls to Create a Mobile App

2012-06-04T00:35:00.001-07:00

This post is written by guest blogger Damyan Petev With the jQuery product, Infragistics envisioned business intelligence and data visualization across a range of platforms, not just one – more like every single one of them. Built on popular and largely supported HTML5 and jQuery UI and striving to provide a comprehensive toolset for development of performing and stylish applications that are

Your Chance to Win .NET Training, Software and EBooks

2012-05-25T03:43:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to give a quick shout-out that we are hosting a .NET GiveAway at www.dotnetcurry.com There are some super cool prizes like 5 PluralSight Annual Subscriptions, 25 Oreilly EBooks, 6 RedGate Ants and Performance Profiler licenses 5 KendoUI licenses to be won. Many prizes have been given away and there are many more to be won. So participate before the 31st of May and enter a

Building a Live Tile jQuery Plugin

2012-05-22T01:28:00.000-07:00

The idea of a jQuery enabled Tile display unit came to me when I was trying to build a Metro Styled UI for my own website. I wanted a basic functionality where a list of items would scroll horizontally and on hover, it would highlight the title text. It should be similar to the following: Regular Hover With this requirement in mind, I found a very nice JavaScript

Error Handling with ELMAH in ASP.NET MVC

2012-05-14T20:23:00.000-07:00

Every major software project, across the board has one crosscutting concern that they have to take care of – Error Logging and Management. Over the years, various frameworks have matured into robust error logging frameworks like Log4Net, Microsoft Exception Handling framework, NLog etc. While logging frameworks focus on handling errors and other application flow/state information, logging them

Deploying your ASP.NET App on AppHarbor

2012-05-10T11:44:00.000-07:00

As web developers, we often want our applications to be available on the Internet, out from the confines of our dev machines. Traditionally the only way to do it is to get some hosting space and setup you app on your hosting provider. This often involves setting up a build/deploy process or manual code deployments and hacks to get things working. Enter AppHarbor! Their tag line is “Where .NET

What is ASP.NET MVC TempData

2012-05-08T02:03:00.000-07:00

Simply said, ASP.NET MVC TempData dictionary is used to share data between controller actions. The value of TempData persists until it is read or until the current user’s session times out. Persisting data in TempData is useful in scenarios such as redirection, when values are needed beyond a single request. By default, the TempData saves its content to the session state. ASP.NET MVC

Task-Based Asynchronous Pattern in .NET 4.5 – Part 1

2012-05-03T02:14:00.001-07:00

In a previous article we saw an overview of the new IDE and Framework features of the current .NET Framework beta v4.5. Among other things .NET 4.5 has an improved support for Asynchronous programming through a new Task based model. In this article, we will take a look at the new async and await key words introduced in the C# language. Asynchronous programming has always been considered a

ASP.NET Error - ProfileCommon could not be found

2012-04-21T04:59:00.000-07:00

While converting a Web site project to a Web App project, you may encounter an error: The type or namespace name 'ProfileCommon' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?) It so happens that if you are using the ASP.NET Web site project template, you have Profiles autogenerated for you, out of the box. However Web App projects don't support the auto

Partial Views in ASP.NET MVC 3

2012-04-16T00:22:00.002-07:00

A Partial View is a reusable fragment of content and code that can be embedded in another view and improves the usability of a site, while reducing duplicate code. Note: A Partial View in ASP.NET MVC is similar to a user control in ASP.NET Web Forms and is rendered using the ViewUserControl class, which derives from the ASP.NET UserControl class. If you are using the Razor view engine, the

jQuery: Change ASP.NET Image Source at Runtime

2012-04-13T06:37:00.003-07:00

In this post, we will see a quick tip of how to change the source of an ASP.NET Image at runtime using jQuery. Create a new website. Create two folders called Scripts and Image. In the scripts folder, download the latest jQuery minified file. In the Image folder, add two different images of the same size. I have added dnc.png and devc.png. In the Default.aspx page, add a reference to the

jQuery 1.7: What happened to live and die?

2012-04-09T08:46:00.000-07:00

In case you did not notice, in jQuery 1.7, the .live() and .die() methods have been deprecated. That does not mean you cannot use them but .on() and .off() are now the new and recommended ways to attach event handlers! If you open the jQuery code file, you will observe that .bind(), .live() and .delegate() now map to .on(). Similarly .unbind(), .die() and .undelegate() now map to .off()

Expression Blend Preview for Silverlight 5

2012-04-05T04:38:00.001-07:00

Microsoft has released an updated version of the Expression Blend Preview for Silverlight 5 which provides support for creating Silverlight 5 and Silverlight 5 SketchFlow projects. You may probably recollect that Expression Blend Preview for SL 5 was released in September 2011. This update comes with a GoLive license and its ration date has been extended to June 30, 2013. Moreover the

How to 'Git' ASP.NET Web Stack

2012-03-30T05:12:00.001-07:00

Recently Microsoft went Apache 2.0 with large chunks of the ASP.NET Web Framework. Just before that, they introduced Git support on Codeplex. Now it doesn’t seem so co-incidental. Git, if you didn’t know is a Distributed Version Control System (DVCS), and has been the OSS world’s darling since it got introduced. GitHub, the premier source control site for OSS projects having overtaken

How to Determine Resources Coming From Cache using Browser Developer Tools

2012-03-27T23:55:00.001-07:00

As web developers, we all use web browser developer tools to monitor browser requests. The most commonly used ones are Firebug, Fiddler and Chrome Developer Tools. Have you tried using these tools to determine which resources are served off the cache? You will be surprised to learn that only Chrome Developer Tool is able to correctly show the CDN resources coming from a cache. Let’s see

TechEd India 2012–Watch it Live!

2012-03-17T21:01:00.000-07:00

TechEd India is being hosted from March 21 – 23 in Bangalore India and like every year, I will be attending this year too. This paid event focuses on technical education to the community, coupled with deep-dive sessions, big news announcements and exploration of Microsoft tools, platforms and services.Being a Microsoft MVP gives me an easy access to Microsoft developer events locally as well as

Struct Layouts Performance Tip

2012-03-05T07:48:00.001-08:00

Most developers aware of that Structs needed to be in smaller size (16byte or less) so they can run efficiently as possible. If you are interested in how the Struct size contributes to better performance, please refer to this question. This post is about another less popular tip that may contribute to improve the efficiency of Structs. Just a bit of back ground on Struct Layouts: The way

Creating Custom Code Snippets in Visual Studio 2010 is as Easy as 1-2-3

2012-02-27T03:21:00.002-08:00

Code Snippets are the little shortcuts in Visual Studio that help us do boilerplate stuff faster. For example in a C# class file, if we write prop and hit Tab, a property gets generated allowing us to change the Type and Name of the property. Of late, I have been blogging a lot and most examples involve some amount of boilerplate code that get’s repeated. For example if you are doing Poor Man’

Sysinternals Suite Update

2012-02-19T23:34:00.000-08:00

The Sysinternals Suite by Mark Russinovich’s has some recent updates. The latest build 16.02.2012 brings along updated Coreinfo, DebugView, LiveKd and Process Explorer. Sysinternals Suite is a powerful set of Windows system utilities. Here are some changes in this latest update: Coreinfo v3.04: Coreinfo, a tool that dumps information about a system’s processor topology and capabilities, adds

Real Developers never start a Project without Source Control, Period! Mercurial on BitBucket

2012-02-06T05:28:00.000-08:00

Real developers never start a project without source control, period! So, today I am going to walk you through the steps to use www.bitbucket.org’s Mercurial (Hg) repository. Disclaimer: BitBucket has not sponsored this article, you can use any available online Mercurial repository BitBucket offers both Mercurial and Git repositories. I started off with Hg because at the time they had

Referencing jQuery UI in ASP.NET MVC

2012-01-18T01:22:00.000-08:00

jQuery is a very popular JavaScript library integrated into the ASP.NET MVC framework. jQuery UI is a toolkit built on top of the jQuery library. Those getting started with MVC wonder how to reference jQuery UI API in their ASP.NET MVC apps. Here’s a simple post that shows how to do so. To add jQuery UI in our MVC 3 apps, we have to add two references. The first reference is to our jQuery UI

Displaying URL’s in ASP.NET MVC 3 - Difference between Html.ActionLink vs Url.Action

2012-01-13T20:52:00.000-08:00

The Html.ActionLink method renders a hyperlink (<a href=".."></a>) to another controller action. The Url.Action URL helper works the same way as Html.ActionLink, but it does not return an anchor tag. Let’s see an example. Add the following code to your Index.cshtml or any view you want to display this on Run the page and observe the source generated While Html.ActionLink generates an

Hello RavenDB! Introducing RavenDB for ASP.NET Developers

2012-01-13T18:14:00.000-08:00

In this article, we will look at a NoSQL database called RavenDB. If you are new to NoSQL or RavenDB or Document Databases, don’t panic! We’ll walk you through an introduction for each. What is NoSQL and what are NoSQL Databases? Before we get into the classical definition, let’s look back at our approach towards building n-layer ASP.NET applications. Typically we have the RDBMS system with

Introducing ASP.NET Web Pages

2012-01-09T01:08:00.000-08:00

ASP.NET Web Pages is the latest addition to the ASP.NET platform and provides a web development framework for new developers who want to build simple websites using ASP.NET. Although ASP.NET Web Pages provides a simple framework, it leverages on the .NET Class libraries, enabling developers to create simple yet powerful web apps. The configuration steps involved are fewer in comparison to

Use HTML 5 Elements in IE 8 using HTML 5 Shiv

2012-01-07T07:23:00.001-08:00

There are a lot of new HTML 5 elements like <header>, <article>, <footer> etc. that browsers like IE 8 and versions prior to that, do not support. These browsers need some help recognizing the new HTML5 elements and Remy Sharp’s HTML 5 Shiv provides just that. To use this script, it must be included before the <body> element (i.e. in the <head>). To improve performance, include the CSS

Most Popular .NET, jQuery and Web Development articles in 2011

2011-12-27T02:07:00.001-08:00

With 2012 fast approaching and 2011 drawing to an end, we've put together our list of the Most Popular .NET articles on DevCurry.com this year. The year 2011 featured articles on DevCurry covering many technologies like jQuery, HTML 5, ASP.NET, MVC, Silverlight, WPF, .NET, VS 2010, Entity Framework and Sharepoint, just to name a few. I would like to thank each one of you who has visited my

Create Triangles using Plain CSS and No Images

2011-12-22T05:15:00.001-08:00

If someone asks you to create a graphic on a webpage using four triangles in a Square, how would you suggest he/she goes about it? Use JavaScript or Images? I recently picked up a nice CSS trick from Paul (CSS guru) who told me how to achieve the above output using pure CSS. Here’s the code CSS code: #one{ height:0; width:0; border-top:80px solid #FFFF01; border-left

HTML 5 Developer's Dilemma - Which Video File Format to Convert and Support

2011-12-17T02:42:00.001-08:00

Until recently, the only way to embed video in web pages was using third-party plugins like Silverlight, Flash and QuickTime. HTML5 has made it easier to include multimedia in your web pages without any plugins, by just using the <video> element. However support for video and audio file formats varies across browsers. HTML5 capable browsers support different video formats. They are:

What’s New in Silverlight 5

2011-12-13T01:56:00.001-08:00

Now that Silverlight 5 has been Released To Web (RTW), let’s take a quick overview of what’s new in Silverlight 5 Note: Read 100’s of Free Silverlight Articles and Tutorials over here Here’s a summary of the new features in Silverlight 5, since it’s Beta release and since Silverlight 4.0 Performance Improvements Improved XAML Parser Performance Improved

.NET Programming for Absolute Beginners [Free Video Series]

2011-12-07T02:43:00.001-08:00

Channel 9 has just launched an absolute beginner programming series to help people learn to program. This FREE training series is created for programmers who have no experience with C# or VB.NET The series of 49 episodes (24 episodes for C# and 25 for VB.NET) walks you through fundamentals, getting the .NET tools, writing C# and VB.NET code, debugging features, customizations and much more

jQuery 1.7 Custom Events Using .on Method

2011-12-02T02:22:00.001-08:00

The browser event model can behave differently in different browsers. jQuery provides a consistent framework to handle standard events like the mouse click in browsers with an easy to understand syntax. However we are not limited to the set of events provided by jQuery. jQuery provides support for custom events as well. Custom events provide a great way to decouple your application code and

Web Browser Developer Tools and Layout Engines

2011-11-27T21:59:00.001-08:00

A layout engine a.k.a web browser engine or browser rendering engine is a component that parses HTML, XML, CSS, Images etc. and renders it on the screen. A browser developer tool lets you inspect, debug, analyze and diagnose issues with CSS, HTML, Scripts etc. inside your browser. As a web developer, you must know what layout engines and developer tools your browser uses. It helps to

The ViewBag Property in ASP.NET MVC 3 is Just Syntactic Sugar

2011-11-19T04:00:00.001-08:00

The MVC Controller can pass data to the View using multiple ways. It can either use a strongly typed object or use a global dictionary such as ViewData etc. ASP.NET MVC 3 introduces a dictionary in the Controller base class called the ViewBag property to access view data. The new ASP.NET MVC 3 ViewBag property strictly speaking is just syntactic sugar – with a terse syntax when compared to

ASP.NET 4.0 Chart Control to Display Statistical and Analytical Data

2011-11-12T22:52:00.001-08:00

I was conducting an ASP.NET 4.0 training for a webdev team recently. The participants were working on a project where they were supposed to display a statistical report using charts. Now with ASP.NET 3.5 Charts, this was somewhat challenging since no default charts controls were provided in 3.5. However In ASP.NET 4.0, adding charts to applications is much simpler. In ASP.NET 4.0, the Chart

ASP.NET 4 URL Routing : A Quick Overview

2011-11-06T03:15:00.000-08:00

Those who are currently building ASP.NET MVC web applications are very well aware of the Routing concept. URL routing enables the developer to make URLs flexible, dynamic and readable. URL Routing was originally devised for ASP.NET MVC and has been implemented as a core feature. A route is a URL pattern which has a mapping with a handler, that can be physical file like the ASP.NET Web form .

WPF 4: Style ListBox Items using ItemContainer Style

2011-10-29T22:27:00.000-07:00

Recently I was asked a question about the default styles for WPF ListBoxItems and how to change the Style for the a Selected ListBox Item. This article has the solution to both the queries. When data is bound to a WPF List Box, the List Items gets generated automatically and it becomes a bit clumsy to apply any style on the individual items in the ListBox. In such scenarios, we can implement

jQuery Add Elements Dynamically: Performance Tip

2011-10-18T00:55:00.000-07:00

jQuery provides several ways of adding elements dynamically into an already existing element. Some methods are: before(), insertBefore() after(), insertAfter(), append, appendTo, prepend, prependTo and so on. A couple of days ago, I had shared a tip on how jQuery Event Delegation Improves Performance. In this short article, I will share a quick performance tip while using jQuery.append()

CSS3 Code Generation Tools That Save Time

2011-10-12T06:59:00.000-07:00

One of the challenges faced by designers is to implement cross-browser properties while designing sites. The extra bit of code to accommodate properties that are browser-specific, can take up a lot of time. CSS3 Code Generators can help you save time and reduce errors, by generating code that works across different browsers. In this article, I will list six very useful CSS3 Code Generators.

JavaScript Quick Way to Find Max and Min Value in an Array

2011-10-05T22:52:00.000-07:00

I have been using some JavaScript techniques in the past to find the maximum and minimum number in an array. I recently stumbled upon a real fast and simple solution to find the max and min number in an array and thought of sharing it with all of you. Let me know what do you think of this method. Add these two methods in your code: Array.prototype.max = function () { return Math.max.apply(

Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview Download Links

2011-09-28T18:13:00.000-07:00

In the BUILD Developer conference a couple of days ago, Microsoft introduced the next version of Windows called Windows 8 and next version of Visual Studio called Visual Studio 11. Microsoft released the Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview and Windows Server 8 Developer Preview which will enable devs to start building apps for Windows 8. .NET 4.5 Preview and ASP.NET MVC 4 Preview were also

Visual Studio 2010: Insert Image in Code

2011-09-20T05:47:00.000-07:00

Powered by WPF and MEF, the extensibility model in Visual Studio 2010 is richer than its previous versions. You can easily extend the IDE, code editor, toolbars etc. One such extension I stumbled upon recently is the Image Insertion extension that lets you insert images directly in line with your code to help you visualize aspects of your code. How cool! I recently used it to insert some UML

jQuery Event Delegation Improves Performance

2011-09-14T19:24:00.000-07:00

In this post, I will share a simple tip of how you can improve jQuery performance by using Event Delegation to add event listeners to the parent element, and in turn, check for events on its children. First let’s take an example where there are a bunch of ‘li’ elements inside an unordered list. We have to use jQuery to provide a click event and perform an action, when the user clicks on a li

Change Silverlight 4 DataGrid Cell on Mouse Actions

2011-09-11T20:18:00.000-07:00

I am using the Silverlight DataGrid from its first release and it’s an extremely useful control. However while programming the DataGrid for various UI as well as data binding operations, I still find it difficult to work with some basic DataGrid elements e.g. how to find a specific cell index in the DataGrid? I have come across this question during my training programs and I have discussed

Windows Phone 7 Mango Training Videos

2011-09-09T04:46:00.000-07:00

I had very recently blogged about the FREE two-day Windows Phone 7 Jump Start class Building Applications for Windows Phone Mango–Free Training on Aug 23/24 by Rob Miles and Andy Wigley, two mobile development MVPs. This course was specially tailored for developers looking to build cool applications and games for the new Windows Phone “Mango” Platform. In case you missed that training, here’s

jQuery UI DatePicker Built-In Date Formats

2011-09-06T23:13:00.000-07:00

The jQuery UI DatePicker offers plenty of functionality to the developer, and even though well-documented, at times you could miss out on some useful built-in functions. One such functionality is the built-in date formats, available as constants. We all know how to change the date format for the DatePicker. To change the dateformat to something like “14 Sep 2011” , is as simple as this:

HTML 5 Number Spinner Control

2011-09-05T00:53:00.000-07:00

The HTML 5 "spinner" or number input control provides an input for entering a number and also allow users to click up and down arrows to select a number. <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="UTF-8"> <title>Spinner Control in HTML5 by DevCurry.com</title> </head> <body> <form> <label for="age"> I am <input type="number" name="age" id="age"

JavaScript, jQuery, CSS3, HTML 5, Other .NET articles Link List – August 2011

2011-08-31T23:58:00.001-07:00

Here’s a quick wrap up of JavaScript, jQuery, CSS3, HTML 5, .NET, Product Releases and other articles published on DevCurry.com in the month of August 2011. jQuery, JavaScript and CSS Articles CSS: after and before Pseudo Elements - CSS Pseudo Elements are useful for adding special effects to selectors, which would be difficult to achieve if we were to use real markup. For eg: styling of the

SQL Server for .NET Programmers

2011-08-29T21:39:00.000-07:00

As a programmer who has been developing data oriented .NET applications on SQL Server for over a decade now, I have become a strong believer of the fact that a programmer’s knowledge is incomplete, without having knowledge of the database and network he/she is interacting with. In my opinion, T-SQL and SQL Server Administration knowledge to some degree of depth, helps to design and develop your

Parallel Running Task Window in Visual Studio 2010

2011-08-26T04:14:00.000-07:00

Visual Studio 2010 has provided lots of facilities for developers writing applications targeting various .NET versions. The .NET 4.0 Framework has introduced task parallel library using which you can write code which makes use of the available cores on the deployment machine. Now as a developer, if you are working on multiple asynchronous operations, you can make use of the Task class. I have

Entity Framework 4.2 Beta 1 Released with Bug Fix - The given assembly name or codebase was invalid

2011-08-24T20:44:00.000-07:00

The Entity Framework 4.1 Update announced in July contained a bug that affected third party EF providers using a generic class for their provider factory implementation. A FileLoadException occurred with the message “The given assembly name or codebase was invalid”. Microsoft recently announced EF 4.2 Beta 1 which fixes this bug. To refresh your memory, with EF 4.1 Update 1 there’s no need to

Building Applications for Windows Phone Mango–Free Training on Aug 23/24

2011-08-22T23:33:00.000-07:00

Microsoft MVP’s are always on the forefront when it comes to adopting and training others on the latest technologies. Rob Miles and Andy Wigley, two mobile development MVPs are conducting a FREE two-day Jump Start class which is specially tailored for developers looking to build cool applications and games for the new Windows Phone “Mango” Platform. Since this free Live training is available only

Which .NET Attributes are my Assemblies Using?

2011-08-17T01:25:00.000-07:00

An attribute describes a characteristic of some elements (classes, methods, fields) of a .NET program. Once associated with a program entity, the attribute can be queried at run time and used in any number of ways. In this post, we will learn how to list all the .NET Attributes that are used by the loaded assemblies in your program. Use the following code: The above code gets the assemblies

Free Minesweeper and Sudoku for Windows Phone 7

2011-08-13T23:50:00.000-07:00

If you are a Windows 7 Phone owner and are in the US, here’s a good way to spend the weekend. Microsoft has added Minesweeper and Sudoku to the Windows Phone Marketplace, and Owners of Windows Phone 7 devices can download both Xbox LIVE Sudoku and Xbox LIVE Minesweeper immediately. Both the games come with the Metro UI style and both feature panorama menus. Just remember that Bing ads will be

Where are my ASP.NET Temporary Files Stored?

2011-08-12T21:18:00.000-07:00

Ever wondered where ASP.NET stored its temporary files? ASP.NET provides the HttpRuntime.CodeGenDir property which gets the physical path to the directory where ASP.NET stores temporary files (generated sources, compiled assemblies, and so on) for the current application.Here’s how to use this property: protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { Response.Write(

.NET Framework 4 Reliability Update 1

2011-08-11T23:54:00.000-07:00

Microsoft has released a Reliability Update 1 for the Microsoft .NET Framework 4 to fix some stability, reliability, and performance issues in the Microsoft .NET Framework 4. Some of the 14 issues that are fixed are as follows: If the locale is not Indian, the new Rupee symbol is not displayed on a .NET 2.0 app Fixes access violation error while running a domain neutral mixed assembly for a .

Free Podcast For Developers

2011-08-10T23:57:00.000-07:00

I love reading books but when I am travelling or commuting to and from work, I prefer listening to Podcasts or what is also known as AudioBooks. There are many podcasts available for developers, but in this post, I will share some podcasts that are FREE, interesting, regularly updated and have maintained quality over the years. Being a .NET Developer, although this list is inclined towards .NET

CSS: after and before Pseudo Elements

2011-08-09T23:51:00.000-07:00

CSS Pseudo Elements are useful for adding special effects to selectors, which would be difficult to achieve if we were to use real markup. For eg: styling of the first letter or first line of a paragraph. In a previous article, I had introduced the CSS First-Letter First-Line Pseudo Elements. In this article, we will take a quick overview of two more pseudo elements: ::after and ::before Note:

Prefix an Integer using JavaScript

2011-08-08T23:43:00.000-07:00

While formatting numbers, prefixing an integer is a common operation. For example: If you have the 79, but you want to make it five digits always, just prefix it with three zeros – so it becomes 00079. Let’s see how simple it is to prefix an integer in JavaScript. This script was originally shared by a programmer tobytai <head> <title>Prefix Integers with Zeros - DevCurry.com</title> <script

PLINQ: Set Degree of Parallelism using WithDegreeOfParallelism

2011-08-07T20:36:00.000-07:00

Degree of parallelism is the maximum number of ‘concurrently’ executing tasks that will be used to process the query. A query could become a long running one if it is waiting for a resource to be released or hardware to respond. PLINQ can parallelize this query by calling WithDegreeOfParallelism (which sets the maximum processor cores) after AsParallel(). AsParallel() method enables

Windows Azure Tools v1.4 for Visual Studio 2010

2011-08-06T23:38:00.000-07:00

Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio extend Visual Studio 2010 to enable the creation, configuration, building, debugging, running, packaging and deployment of scalable web applications and services on Windows Azure. The tool is now available as a standalone download as well as via the Web Platform Installer. Microsoft recommends installing Azure Tools using the Web Platform Installer.

HTML 5 DataList Element with Fallback option for Old Browsers

2011-08-05T21:27:00.000-07:00

A DropDown menu in HTML 5 is accomplished using a combination of the new DataList element and the list attribute. This is done in two steps: Step 1: Create a datalist and populate it with option elements as shown below: <datalist id=tvseries> <option value=Heroes> <option value=LOST> <option value=Fringe> <option value=CriminalMinds> <option value=

JavaScript: Find Day of Year

2011-08-04T22:58:00.000-07:00

Here’s a simple script that finds the current day of the year We first get the timestamp for the 1st day of the year - number of seconds elapsed since midnight Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) of January 1, 1970, not counting leap seconds. This is done using the following piece of code var timestmp = new Date().setFullYear(new Date().getFullYear(), 0, 1); The setFullYear() takes the year,

50 LINQ Examples Now in LINQPad

2011-08-03T19:54:00.000-07:00

I had recently written an article on 50 LINQ Examples, Tips and How To's. Software Developer and geek John Flynn took these examples and did a great job compiling these queries into a format which can be executed using LINQPad. You can download these examples over here. LINQPad is a FREE tool that can execute any C#/VB/F# expression, statement block or program with rich output formatting. It’s

WCF RIA Services Toolkit Update

2011-08-02T22:51:00.000-07:00

There is an update to the WCF RIA Services Toolkit and new features have been added including:Linq to SQL support EntityFramework 4.1 (EF CodeFirst support) T4 Template based Code Generation ViewModel (MVVM) support for CollectionViews Windows Azure Table Storage support SOAP and JSON endpoints ASP.NET DomainDataSource support Preview of the jQuery client for RIA Services (RIA/JS) You can

jQuery: Convert Text to Links

2011-08-01T22:21:00.000-07:00

I had some italic text in a paragraph and I wanted to convert this text into links, all pointing to the same url. Here’s how this can be done using a single line of jQuery code. In the example, we have a div element with class ‘cls’ and inside this div, we have some text that is italicized. We will convert all these text elements into links and point them to www.devcurry.com Consider this

JavaScript, CSS3, Silverlight, ASP.NET, SharePoint articles Link List – July 2011

2011-07-31T10:12:00.000-07:00

Here’s a quick wrap up of JavaScript, CSS3, Silverlight, ASP.NET, SharePoint and other .NET articles published on DevCurry.com in the month of July 2011.jQuery, JavaScript and CSS ArticlesjQuery: Load Page in a Div - Loading an external page in a div using jQuery is as simple as calling thejQuery Load method. JavaScript: View Source code without Comments - One my clients had a requirement of

Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 RTM Trial

2011-07-30T23:28:00.000-07:00

Microsoft recently released the Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 RTM. This tool is available for free to MSDN subscribers. However those who are not MSDN subscribers can download the RTM trial for 30 days. This can be extended up to 90 days after customers have registered the software. What is Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011? As quoted here, Visual Studio LightSwitch is the newest edition of the

Silverlight TextBox Numeric Validation

2011-07-29T10:53:00.000-07:00

While conducting a Silverlight training at one of my clients who was migrating from ASP.NET AJAX to Silverlight 4.0. While discussing input validations, my students raised a question that in AJAX we have the FilteredTextExtender using which the TextBoxes can be restricted to accept only Character or numeric data. Can we have a similar capability in Silverlight 4.0 too? On a side note, if you are

ASP.NET MVC Web Matrix & Razor Tutorials

2011-07-28T23:12:00.000-07:00

The Microsoft WebMatrix tool is a lightweight web development platform that enables website creation in different ways. This tool is aimed at developers who are starting with web development using ASP.NET as well as PHP/Ruby developers planning to develop web apps using ASP.NET. Microsoft WebMatrix utilizes the new Razor syntax. In this list, we will see some articles written by our authors on

SharePoint 2010 and Azure Free Training

2011-07-27T20:05:00.000-07:00

I had recently published a list of SharePoint 2010 Tutorials For Beginners and Intermediate Developers. If you are a developer/architect who is interested in understanding how SharePoint 2010 and Windows Azure can leverage each other, then Microsoft recently released the July 2011 update of SharePoint 2010 & Windows Azure Training Kit. The kit contains twelve modules that include PowerPoint decks

Entity Framework 4.1 Update

2011-07-26T20:20:00.000-07:00

If you are using Entity Framework to create data access applications, then there’s a new update to Entity Framework 4.1. EF 4.1 was announced in April. Microsoft has just released EF 4.1 Update 1 to fix some bugs as well as introduced some new types. There is no more the need to specify ‘Persist Security Info=True’ in the connection string when using SQL authentication for Code First development.

ASP.NET: Accessing Nested Repeater Control

2011-07-25T20:47:00.000-07:00

The ASP.NET Repeater control is a handy data-bound list control that allows you to create a custom layout by repeating a specified template for each item displayed in the list. You can nest a repeater control inside the other to create advanced layouts. A frequently asked question about the Repeater control is accessing nested repeater controls from the parent control and providing a DataSource

Swap Variables in JavaScript – Different Methods

2011-07-24T21:41:00.000-07:00

Here are some different ways to swap variable values in JavaScript. I will show swapping using a temporary variable, without a temporary variable, XOR operator and a single line swap. Swap variable values using a temporary variable // Using a Temp Variable var x = 10; var y = 20; var tmp = x; x = y; y = tmp; alert("Value of X=" + x + " and value of Y=" + y); Swap variable values without a

Free Photo Editors for Web Designers

2011-07-23T20:04:00.000-07:00

A good photo editing software comes with a price, but here are some free open source photo editors that could do the job for you! IrfanView IrfanView is a popular free, fast lightweight graphic viewer and editor which can handle a number of graphic file formats including BMP, JPEG, GIF (animated), PNG, PCX, TIFF and more Developer: Irfan Skiljan Current Version: 4.3 Supported File Formats:

Conditional CSS and JavaScript for Different Browsers

2011-07-22T21:59:00.000-07:00

A common technique adopted by developers is to detect browsers and conditionally differentiate CSS rules and JavaScript for specific versions of browsers. In simple words, a requirement could be that if the browser is IE, use a different set of CSS and JavaScript files. Let us see how to achieve this using conditional comments. In the example shown above, if the browser is IE, iescript.js is

Create Social Games in Windows Azure

2011-07-21T20:05:00.000-07:00

I recently stumbled upon the Windows Azure Toolkit for Social Games that includes accelerators, libraries, developer tools, and samples that can be used in games created using .NET or HTML5. The goal is to let game developers focus on development instead of operational hurdles. The Windows Azure platform provides game developers with on-demand compute, storage, content delivery and networking

Text Shadow Filter in IE

2011-07-20T22:32:00.000-07:00

You can drop shadows to text using the text-shadow property which was re-introduced in CSS3. The syntax goes as: .divOne { text-shadow: 3px 4px #666; } which adds a drop shadow hex code #666 3px to the right and 4px down from the original text. However text-shadow works on only Firefox, Opera and WebKit browsers. It is not supported in IE. In IE 5.5+ you have to use

BizTalk Server 2010 Training Kit and VHD

2011-07-19T21:51:00.000-07:00

Microsoft has released the BizTalk Server 2010 pre-configured VHD and Training Kit to help you get started with BizTalk. Download the BizTalk Server 2010 Training Kit and VHD As given on the site “This training kit contains a complete set of materials that will enable you to learn the core developer capabilities in BizTalk Server 2010. This five-day instructor-led course consists of a series of

JavaScript: Convert CamelCase to Dashes and vice-versa

2011-07-18T23:29:00.000-07:00

My colleague Satyam shared a nice piece of JavaScript code that converts a camelcase to dashes and dashes to Camelcase. For eg: if the string has a camelcase in it - like ‘viceVersa’, the result expected is ‘vice-Versa’. Similarly if a string has a dash in it, like ‘dot-net’, the result expected is ‘dotNet’. Let’s see the piece of code to make this possible: <script type="text/javascript"

Silverlight 4 and 5 Tutorials–Link List

2011-07-17T20:44:00.000-07:00

I recently published a list of Silverlight 4 and Silverlight 5 Tutorials that should be a useful resource for every Silverlight developer out there. Check the article at Microsoft Silverlight 4 Tutorials You Must Read The list provides learning resources and covers various Silverlight controls like the DataGrid, DataBinding in Silverlight, Security, Communication in Silverlight using JSON, OData,

Silverlight 4.0 : Open .Exe Files using COM Interoperability

2011-07-16T20:47:00.000-07:00

While working with Silverlight Line of Business applications, there may be a scenario where the user wants to open .exe applications e.g. Notepad or Calculator from the local machine. The question here is how to make this possible in Silverlight? In Silverlight 4.0, using the AutomationFactory class we can create an instance of these .exe applications and can use them along with our Silverlight

WCF 4.0 : Discoverable Service

2011-07-15T23:40:00.000-07:00

Continuing my WCF 4.0 Tutorials series, in this small article, I have explained the WCF 4.0 Discovery feature. This feature is used when the location of the service gets changed e.g. changing in the hosting environment or changing the physical address of the server etc. With this feature, we can very well say that hosting is not controlled only by the service creator or publisher. For

Upside Down Text with CSS3

2011-07-14T23:58:00.000-07:00

When it comes to rotating, tilting or scaling text, you would normally rely on JavaScript or images laid on top of each other, to give that effect. However with the CSS3 transformation functions, you can do all of this without any JavaScript code. Although you can use CSS relative/absolute positioning and achieve some of these effects, CSS3 transforms gives you flexibility and more control. For

Unary plus operator in JavaScript

2011-07-13T23:16:00.000-07:00

The unary plus (+) operator is a unary operator and converts its operand to a number, if it isn’t already. It is equivalent to the Number() constructor called as a function. Let us see some examples of the Unary + operator and what does it imply in different scenarios +new Date; // implies Number(new Date)a + “” // implies String(a)+a // implies Number(a), so “+1.2” becomes 1.2a = null; a = +a; /

"Partially Succeeded" TFS status in Visual Studio while upgrading to TFS 2010

2011-07-12T20:56:00.000-07:00

While upgrading from TFS to TFS 2010 and to TFS Team Build 2010, you may have come across the ‘partially succeeded’ message. The message also appears when you build a Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 project by using the default upgrade template in TFS 2010. Microsoft has released a Cumulative update for Team Foundation Server 2010 Service Pack 1 which fixes this and many more issues as listed below:

JavaScript Object can have Private Methods

2011-07-11T20:19:00.000-07:00

I was watching a JavaScript video tutorial by Douglas Crockford where he explained private members in JavaScript. Although there are no ‘private methods’ in a JavaScript object, we can easily create something similar by defining a function variable with a local scope. As crockford says “If a value is a function, we can consider it a method”. Let us see a simple example that shows how to use a

C#: Find Previous Month's First and Last Day

2011-07-10T21:44:00.000-07:00

Here’s a simple query that gives you the first and last day of the previous month. static void Main(string[] args) { var yr = DateTime.Today.Year; var mth = DateTime.Today.Month; var firstDay = new DateTime(yr, mth, 1).AddMonths(-1); var lastDay = new DateTime(yr, mth, 1).AddDays(-1); Console.WriteLine("First day Previous Month: {0}", firstDay); Console.WriteLine("Last day Previous Month: {0}",

SharePoint 2010 Content Database and Other Data Storage Changes

2011-07-09T21:57:00.000-07:00

Microsoft recently announced some nice changes to SharePoint 2010 Data storage limits. If you have installed SharePoint 2010 SP1, then you can now take advantage of a larger content database limit. Previously, the content database limit was under 200 GB for collaboration and < 1TB for document archive. However with SP1, SharePoint 2010 now supports up to 4TB of data in all usage scenarios and

Array Shuffle in JavaScript

2011-07-08T23:01:00.000-07:00

I have yet to find a script that truly does a random shuffle across all browsers using JavaScript (no frameworks). However there are a couple of scripts I use, that are ‘good-enough’ to be used when an Array has to be shuffled. One of them which works well with a large set of records and handles good amount of iterations without hanging the browser is the Microsoft’s Shuffle alogrithm. I learnt

JavaScript: View Source code without Comments

2011-07-07T22:30:00.000-07:00

One my clients had a requirement of viewing an object while debugging, and they wanted to view only the source code, without comments. I first thought of looking out for a similar approach implemented in one of the javascript minifiers. But on further digging, I found that JavaScript has a toSource() method. The drawback is it is gecko-only and works only in Firefox. Since the source code had

Silverlight 4: Consuming WCF REST Service using JSON

2011-07-06T21:56:00.000-07:00

A nice feature of WCF programming is the support for REST and JSON, using which a client can communicate with the WCF service without using A proxy. In this article, I have used a Silverlight 4 client application to make a call to WCF service using JSON. In Silverlight, we have been provided with the System.Json assembly. This provides a ‘JsonArray’ class which represents an ordered sequence of

SharePoint 2010 Service Pack 1 Released

2011-07-05T20:33:00.000-07:00

Microsoft recently released Service Pack 1 for SharePoint 2010 and Office Products. Some of the products covered in SharePoint SP 1 includes Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Service Pack 1 Microsoft SharePoint and Project Server 2010 Service Pack 1 Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 Service Pack 1 Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 Language Pack Service Pack 1

Windows Communication Foundation WCF 4.0 Tutorials

2011-07-04T22:37:00.000-07:00

Author and Trainer Mahesh Sabnis has been writing some in-depth WCF 4.0 tutorials that I thought of sharing with all my blog readers. This tutorial series covers some basics and advanced concepts of WCF 4.0 programming Hope you find this list useful! Please retweet and spread the word. Thanks! What's New in Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) 4.0 Part- I - VS 2010 and .NET 4.0 has come out

jQuery: Load Page in a Div

2011-07-03T20:13:00.000-07:00

Loading an external page in a div using jQuery is as simple as calling the jQuery Load method. The Load() method loads data from the server and places the returned HTML into the matched element.Assuming you have a Div called ‘divOne’ and an anchor link called ‘ext’. On clicking the anchor, a different page ‘from the same domain’ gets loaded. See a Live Demo. When you click the link, observe how

ASP.NET MVC 3 Documentation Available in 10 Different Languages

2011-07-02T04:06:00.000-07:00

As you probably know that localized versions of ASP.NET MVC 3 is available in 9 different languages via the Web Platform Installer. To supplement these releases, Phil Haack recently announced on his blog that now apart from English, the MVC 3 Documentation is also now available in these nine local languages. Nice! Here are the links. MVC 3 Documentation Links ASP.NET MVC 3 Documentation (English)

Awarded the MVP Title – 4 Years in a Row

2011-07-01T22:11:00.000-07:00

“The key to happiness is having dreams. The key to success is making your dreams come true.” - Unknown I was awarded the Microsoft MVP title again for the 4th consecutive year, and I thank Microsoft for bestowing this award on me. I am glad my efforts and contributions to the community via my sites DotNetCurry.com, DevCurry.com and SqlServerCurry.com were recognized by Microsoft. Last year my

jQuery, JavaScript, Silverlight, LINQ and .NET articles Link List – June 2011

2011-06-30T23:19:00.000-07:00

Here’s a quick wrap up of jQuery, JavaScript, HTML 5, Silverlight, SharePoint, LINQ, WPF and other .NET articles published on DevCurry.com in the month of June 2011. jQuery, JavaScript, HTML 5 and CSS Articles JavaScript: Detect Plug-ins and MIME Types - Plug-ins are programs that add the ability to play audio, video, animation etc. Some examples of plugins are the Adobe Flash Player, QuickTime

IE10 Platform Preview 2 Released with better HTML 5 support

2011-06-29T21:28:00.000-07:00

Microsoft just released Preview 2 of the new Internet Explorer 10 and it's getting better! You can download it from http://www.ietestdrive.com. Here’s a broad list of what’s new in preview 2: Support for the Web Worker API which allows to run complex JavaScripts in the background Support for Web File API providing browsers controlled access to the local file system, HTML 5 sandbox and iFrame

JavaScript: Strict Mode support in Browsers and Backward Compatibility

2011-06-28T23:42:00.000-07:00

Strict Mode was introduced in ECMAScript 5.0 and is intended to make programs simpler and free of errors. In strict mode, a more rigid set of syntax checks is used to either catch an undeclared variable or any other errors in your code. Strict mode changes semantics! What is ECMAScript? ECMAScript was initiated by a European Standards Body called ECMA to create a formal standard for the

LINQ: Generate Odd Numbers using Parallel Execution

2011-06-27T22:59:00.000-07:00

A couple of months ago, I had written on Generate Odd Numbers within a Range using LINQ. In that post, I had demoed how to ‘sequentially’ generate odd numbers within a Range. However what if you have to generate a large set of numbers and are not interesting in generating the numbers in a sequence, you can use Parallel Execution. The ParallelEnumerable.Range() is just the right method for this

ASP.NET 4: Register HTTP Module at Runtime without Editing your Web.config

2011-06-26T23:00:00.000-07:00

The ASP.NET pipeline allows HTTP modules to be plugged-in to a request and intercept or modify each individual request. Modules can be used for processes like caching, authentication etc. However a basic requirement for an HTTP module to function, is that it must be registered in your config file. This leads to editing the Web.Config whenever you have to add/remove modules. I hate fudging with my

LINQ: Compare two Sequences

2011-06-25T21:42:00.000-07:00

How do you compare two sequences using LINQ? The answer is by using the Enumerable.SequenceEqual(). SequenceEqual() compares the source and target sequences elements, by using the default equality comparer for their type, and returns a Boolean. Note: Check out my entire LINQ Snippets series here There are many ways to use the SequenceEqual() extension method – like to compare the files in two

New Tags in HTML 5

2011-06-24T23:21:00.000-07:00

HTML 5 is the latest version of the Hyper Text MarkUp Language and introduces many new features. HTML 5 introduces many new tags devoted to describing a documents’ structure, multimedia etc. Here are some of the new tags added in HTML 5 (OutDated Article. Please refer to the latest list at http://www.w3.org/TR/html5-diff/) HTML 5 Tag Description <article>

SharePoint 2010 Application Templates for Health Organization

2011-06-23T23:23:00.000-07:00

SharePoint 2010 Application templates are out-of-the-box custom scenarios that are created to address the business process requirements of a particular business industry – say the Health sector. These templates facilitate the business process owners and developers to build deeper SharePoint-based solutions. Microsoft has released a set of Sharepoint 2010 Application Templates for Health

Windows Azure Sample Project - .NET Stock Trader 5 Sample Application

2011-06-22T20:58:00.000-07:00

Ask an experienced programmer and he/she will tell you that the best way to learn a new technology is by getting some hands-on experience in it. Microsoft has released a .NET Stock Trader 5 Sample SOA application that is an end-to-end sample application illustrating Windows Azure Platform Cloud Migration and Integration and will give you a good head start as well as demonstrate how to create

LINQ: Calculate Average File Size in C#

2011-06-21T20:52:00.000-07:00

Let us see a simple code using LINQ and C# that calculates the average FileSize of the files kept in a folder. First import the following namespaces: using System.Linq; using System.IO; Then write the following code: class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { string[] dirfiles = Directory.GetFiles("c:\\software\\"); var avg = dirfiles.Select(file =>

Hash Tables in JavaScript

2011-06-20T20:42:00.000-07:00

One of my C# code snippets had a Hash Table functionality and I was trying to emulate the same in JavaScript. JavaScript does not have a built-in HashTable, however you can make use of object properties as hash-type tables. Here’s an example: OUTPUT: Jane The limitation in the above method is that you can use only string or integers as keys. When you are using integers as keys, it gets

jQuery: Numbering an Unordered List

2011-06-19T23:20:00.000-07:00

Here’s a very simple script which adds numbers sequentially to an unordered list using jQuery Let us assume you have an unordered list as shown below: To add numbers to it sequentially, use this code: <script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.aspnetcdn.com/ajax/jQuery/jquery-1.6.1.min.js"> </script> <script type="text/javascript"> $(function () { $('ul > li').each(function

Visual Studio 2010 Update for HTML 5 and CSS3

2011-06-18T19:54:00.000-07:00

Microsoft recently released the first Web Standards Update for Visual Studio 2010 SP1 and for Visual Web Developer Express 2010 SP1. This release brings up-to-date support for HTML 5 , and CSS 3 as per the latest W3C specifications. Support has also been added for API’s for JavaScript Intellisense. This is a welcome update especially for ASP.NET developers and you should download and start using

CSS First-Letter First-Line Pseudo Elements

2011-06-17T20:33:00.000-07:00

CSS Pseudo Elements are used to modify and add special effects to some selectors. For example to modify the first line or letter of a paragraph, you can use the :first-line and :first-letter pseudo elements. You can either increase the font size or even apply an image if you wish. Let’s see how to use the :first-letter and :first-line pseudo elements and give a nice effect to your first paragraph

Coded UI Tests (CUIT) In Visual Studio 2010

2011-06-16T22:34:00.000-07:00

Coded UI Tests (CUIT) is a brand new feature added in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate or Premium version which allows you to test a a User Interface using automated tests. CUIT allows functional testing for UI and the code gets created with the help of high level languages like C# or VB.NET. DotNetCurry.com author Gouri Sohoni has written some good articles about CUIT. Here are the links to them if

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit–June 2011

2011-06-15T19:42:00.000-07:00

Microsoft released the June update of VS 2010 and .NET Framework Training Kit. The Training Kit contains presentations, hands-on labs, and demos and is designed to get you up and running in no time with the following technologies including C# 4 Visual Basic 10 F# Parallel Extensions Windows Communication Foundation Windows Workflow Windows Presentation Foundation Silverlight 4 ASP.NET 4

JSON Enabled WCF 4 Service

2011-06-14T02:25:00.000-07:00

The advantages of using JSON enabled WCF service is that the data is communicated in plain text like stream, it does not require any data/message parsing. For exposing a WCF service as JSON enabled WCF service, we need to apply the [WebGet] attribute on the method of the ServiceContract with ResponseFormat as JSON. The binding used here is WebHttpBinding which is also used for REST enable WCF

jQuery size() vs length

2011-06-13T03:09:00.000-07:00

I have seen a lot of jQuery developers getting confused over the usage of the jQuery size() function and length property. Both of these return the count of elements on the page or jQuery object. jQuery documentation however says that the length property should be preferred over the size() function as using the length property will avoid an extra method call. So it is quicker. There’s a

Java to .NET Migration WhitePaper–Trends and Benefits

2011-06-12T02:49:00.000-07:00

I stumbled upon an interesting whitepaper written by Pique solutions. It spoke about the trends and insights and the strategic investments being made by companies, while doing a development platform migration from Java to .NET. According to the whitepaper, the primary reasons of migration included technical and business reasons, platform stability and reliability, vendor support, total cost of

WCF 4.0 REST POX Service with Help Page

2011-06-11T05:35:00.000-07:00

Representational State Transfer (REST) support was included in WCF 3.5. In WCF 4.0, this feature has been enhanced with Help page support. This facility was added as WCF REST allows direct call to OperationContracts, using HTTP protocol by the client application. Now the problem is if the WCF service has several OperationContracts, then how does the client application know and distinguish between

Generate GUID in JavaScript

2011-06-10T04:22:00.000-07:00

Generating a GUID using JavaScript in Internet Explorer (Windows OS) is as simple as using the Scriptlet.TypeLib ActiveX object. <head> <title>Generate GUID using JavaScript by DevCurry.com</title> <script type="text/javascript"> function GenerateGUID() { return (new ActiveXObject("Scriptlet.TypeLib") .GUID.substr(1, 36)); } alert(

Silverlight 4: Creating Word Documents in MyDocuments Folder

2011-06-09T03:31:00.000-07:00

Silverlight 4.0 supports COM automation. Using this feature we can interact with MS-Word, Excel etc via our application. The business requirement behind this isinteraction that a lot users prefer to store their data in Word or Excel format for immediate accessibility and modification. A common scenario is that if they are using an application which is reading the data from the remote server

Virtual Machine for Visual Studio 2010 and TFS 2010

2011-06-08T00:10:00.000-07:00

Microsoft has released a newer RTM version of its Virtual Machine consisting of Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010. This VM also contains new hands-on-labs, demos, power tools, feature packs and updates, VS 2010 SP1, and Team Foundation Server 2010 Service Pack Lab. This Virtual Machine is available in the virtualization platform of your choice i.e. for Virtual PC 2007,

WPF 4: Change Hyperlink Text and URL using DataBinding

2011-06-07T02:25:00.000-07:00

Let us assume we want to create a WPF UI with a ListBox containing list of web sites. This ListBox must contain Hyperlinks and it should be possible to change the Text and URL of these hyperlinks dynamically. Thankfully in WPF, we have the Hyperlink control element which can be clicked and the user navigated to a URL. But what if the end-user wants to reuse the same Hyperlink to navigate to

Data Validation in Silverlight using Data Annotations and Data Form

2011-06-06T02:10:00.000-07:00

While using Silverlight for developing Line-of-Business applications, the DataForm control is recommended for performing DML operations. This control provides data pagination, insert, and update and delete operations on the records. This control provides ItemsSource property which accepts collection type as an input e.g. ObservableCollection. But while performing Insert and Update operations, it

SharePoint 2010 Technical Library Available as CHM

2011-06-05T21:51:00.000-07:00

Microsoft has made available the SharePoint Foundation 2010 technical library as a downloadable CHM. The CHM contains the following topics not limited to:Newly published content for SharePoint Foundation 2010 Roadmap to SharePoint Foundation 2010 content Downloadable content for SharePoint Foundation 2010 Product evaluation for SharePoint Foundation 2010 Getting started with SharePoint

JavaScript: Detect Plug-ins and MIME Types

2011-06-04T20:56:00.000-07:00

Plug-ins are programs that add the ability to play audio, video, animation etc. Some examples of plugins are the Adobe Flash Player, QuickTime etc. MIME Types are used to exchange file types across the Internet, such as image, audio, video etc. You can use JavaScript to detect plugins and MIME Types. You can detect plugins in JavaScript by looping the plugins[] array of the navigator object and

Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (SDL)

2011-06-03T20:16:00.000-07:00

As software developers, you must address security and privacy threats in your applications. There are many guidelines available of Security Development Lifecycle, but here’s nice 160 page whitepaper from Microsoft that outlines the SDL process used by Microsoft product groups for application development. Download Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (5.1) Whitepaper Although this document

List.ConvertAll<>() with Lambda Expression

2011-06-02T03:51:00.000-07:00

List<T> has many useful methods for dealing with sequences and collections. One such method is the ConvertAll<>() method. All those who have used the List<T>.ConvertAll<>() are aware how useful this method is to convert the current List<T> elements to another type, and return a list of converted elements. However, an instance of a conversion delegate must be passed to this method, which knows how

Silverlight 4: Binding Enum with ComboBox

2011-06-01T11:17:00.000-07:00

In this article, we will explore the mechanism of Binding Enumeration data with the ItemsControls family in Silverlight. Enum is used to store constant type of data with integer values as its contents For e.g. Department values like IT, System etc. can be stored in Enum and can be used as constants in your application code. If this data needs to be displayed in a UI using DataBinding, we can make

jQuery, Silverlight, WPF, SharePoint and .NET articles Link List – May 2011

2011-05-31T03:20:00.000-07:00

Here’s a quick wrap up of jQuery, WPF, Silverlight, SharePoint and other .NET articles published on DevCurry.com in the month of May 2011. jQuery and JavaScript Articles JavaScript: Recursive Anonymous Function - I recently saw a question on the forums – How to make a JavaScript anonymous function refer to itself? In other words, how to make an anonymous function in JavaScript call itself from

Office 2011 for Mac: Free Training

2011-05-30T19:33:00.000-07:00

If you are using Office 2011 for Mac or plan to do so, then here’s some free training material for you to get up and started with Office 2011. Microsoft has released a set of training downloads (.pdf) and PowerPoint (.pptx) slides of all Office 2011 tutorials and videos. Here are the download links:Excel 2011 Training Outlook 2011 Training Powerpoint 2011 Training Word 2011 Training These

ASP.NET 4 Granular View State

2011-05-29T21:30:00.000-07:00

In this post, we will see how to control a view state at Page level as well as Control level. In ASP.NET 4.0, Microsoft has provided a property called 'ViewStateMode' at control level. Now you can turn OFF the View state at Page level and turn ON viewstate at Control level as per your requirements. Note: In ASP.NET 3.5, when you disable view state at web application level from your web.config

SharePoint 2010 Performance and Capacity Recommendation

2011-05-28T19:32:00.000-07:00

Microsoft has released a series of SharePoint whitepapers and articles that contains information about the performance and capacity characteristics of each SharePoint feature and how it was tested by Microsoft. Here’s a list of them: Capacity Planning Key Concepts Capacity management and sizing for SharePoint Server 2010 – Explains the key concepts behind capacity management in SharePoint Server

Remove all Lower Case Letters using C#

2011-05-27T20:30:00.000-07:00

I came across a discussion where the OP wanted to use only the first letter of a word in a string. The first letter of each word was capitalized, so his requirement was to abbreviate the sentence by removing all lower case letters in a string. For example: ‘We Love DevCurry.com’ would become ‘WLDC’ Here’s how this can be achieved with a Regular expression. Use the following code: using System;