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Posted by on 9th November, 2007

Visual Studio 2005 Accelerators

Visual Studio 2005 Accelerators

Visual Studio 2005 is probably one of the most complex pieces of software ever developed. It has so many features, so many tools to (try to) satisfy every developer that is trying to accomplish such a wide variety of tasks, that it is easy to see how a product like that could become very bloated and sluggish. So, how do I speed it up? Here are some tips I have collected over time: Disable the Splash Screen Add the following parameter to your VS2005 shortcut: “C:Program Files…devenv.exe” -nosplash Note: the same trick applies to Business Intellgience Managment Studio and SQL Management Studio…. Install Visual Studio Service Pack 1 get it here. Turn off any IDE animated windows Go to Tools | Options | Environment and uncheck Animate environment tools. Get a faster hard drive – seriously Scott Gu writes: “What you are much more likely to block on is the Seek and I/O speed capacity with which your computer accesses your hard drive.  If you are using an application...

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Posted by on 3rd October, 2007

Developing a SharePoint Feature

Developing a SharePoint Feature

I have worked with SharePoint for a while now, mostly mostly writing code for integration scenarios, where data needs to be “pulled” or “pushed” into SharePoint involving other enterprise software applications. SharePoint 2007 Features are basically a mechanism to extend SharePoint in any way you need. Mike Ammerlaan wrote a brief and concise technical article describing features: I will try to describe how to develop a SharePoint 2007 Feature from zero. In this case our feature will handle the event that SharePoint usually handles when a file gets added to a Document Library. When a user uploads a new document to a Document Library, we want to run some custom code. In our example we will simply be creating a text file on the desktop containing data from the file that fired such event. Obviously you would want to make it something meaningful, like pass that data to an external workflow application or do womething with that document, but this is just an example. I have worked with SharePoint for a...

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Posted by on 6th September, 2007

Live Javascript form validation

Live Javascript form validation

I had to do some simple form validation the other day and thought to myself that, in our current Web 2.0 world, I should do it with AJAX since it is really everywhere and it didn’t even cross my mind todo it the old fashioned way with plain Javascript, which might do the job just a good. So, I stumbled upon Live Validation which offers a lightweight, open source javascript library to do just that: real time form validation with some very useful features. They have some excellent examples here and the code is decently commented. Definitively a must have in my toolbox! [button link=”http://www.livevalidation.com” color=”#FFFFCC” size=”1″ style=”4″ dark=”1″]read...

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Posted by on 25th August, 2007

Content aware image resizing

Content aware image resizing

Re-sizing an image is nothing new, and if you maintain the aspect ratio, it will look exactly the same but smaller or larger: smaller, you’ll see less of it and larger, you’ll distort the image. But what if you could in some way, intelligently resize an image without distorting the content of it…? What if that intelligent technology could identify the less important background pixels in an image and delete those to shrink the image without touching the main object in the middle? That sounds crazy, but that is exactly what this technology will offer. (Imagine this technology built into your browser…) [button link=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qadw0BRKeMk” color=”#FFFFCC” size=”1″ style=”4″ dark=”1″]read...

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Posted by on 2nd August, 2007

Amazon Flexible Payments Service

Amazon Flexible Payments Service

Amazon Flexible Payments Service (Amazon FPS) is the first payments service designed from the ground up specifically for developers. The set of web services APIs allows the movement of money between any two entities, humans or computers. It is built on top of Amazon’s reliable and scalable payment infrastructure.” It seems very flexible (hence the name, I guess…) and the pricing is surprisingly decent as well. There are several companies out there doing this this, PayPal being one of them, but I think this will offer some serious competition. [button link=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=342430011″ color=”#FFFFCC” size=”1″ style=”4″ dark=”1″]read...

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Posted by on 18th July, 2007

What tools I use for software development

What tools I use for software development

I read a post somewhere (truly can’t remember where…) about the tools one uses to develop software and thought to myself: do the software tools or programs we use identify us? I think it would it be safe to say that you can tell a lot from a person from what he is wearing or which software products he/she uses. Would you think doifferent of someone who told you they used x application…? maybe because you preferred another one? Interesting questions, but I’d thought I’d post some of my own tools I use on a daily basis… Here they are: Visual Studio 2005 (IDE) SQL 2005 Management Studio (Database) Virtual PC / VMWare (PC Virtualization) Winmerge (File/Folder differencing) Fireworks / Paint.NET (Image editor) Dispatch (VS FTP add-in) SyncBack (FTP Syncronization) Fiddler (HTTP debugger) Axosoft Ontime (VS bug track...

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Posted by on 6th April, 2007

Speed Test: Switch vs If-Else-If

Speed Test: Switch vs If-Else-If

Most of the times when I have to make the choice it really depends on the case…maybe I have only to check one or two cases, in which case, I choose if/else. However, I knew there was some sort of performance issue with one over the other, but never really knew the details. Well, the folks at BlackWasp have doen some extensive research and determined the pro’s and con’s, in terms of speed, of each of these two approaches. The .NET framework and the C# language provide two methods for conditional processing where multiple discrete values can be selected from. The switch statement is less flexible than the if-else-if ladder but is generally considered to be more efficient. [button link=”http://www.blackwasp.co.uk/SpeedTestIfElseSwitch.aspx” color=”#FFFFCC” size=”1″ style=”4″ dark=”1″]read...

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Posted by on 17th February, 2006

ASP.NET Web Application best practices

ASP.NET Web Application best practices

I Stumbled across this article by Ali Khan with some good guidelines for developing fast and efficient ASP.NET applications. Some I knew, others I did not, but nonetheless a comprehensive guide to things to keep in mind writing your next web application. [button link=”http://www.codeproject.com/useritems/ASPNET_Best_Practices.asp” color=”#FFFFCC” size=”1″ style=”4″ dark=”1″]read...

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Posted by on 17th September, 2005

Cheat Sheets for Developers

Cheat Sheets for Developers

Lets face it, unless you have a photographic memory, no developer can remember all the different functions, options, tags, etc. that exist. Documentation can be cumbersome at times, that's why I like cheat sheets. They are quick references that feature the most commonly forgotten things on a specific topic. You can print them out and hang them on your wall, or just keep them handy in your bookmarks for quick reference. Here are over 30 cheatsheets that developers might find useful… [button link=”http://www.petefreitag.com/item/455.cfm” color=”#FFFFCC” size=”1″ style=”4″ dark=”1″]read...

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Posted by on 30th June, 2005

AJAX  in ASP.NET 2.0 or not?

AJAX in ASP.NET 2.0 or not?

No, not Ajax, Amsterdam football team. The other Ajax… the Asynchroneous Javascript and XML kind. A recent article by CNet hints that Microsoft is building software, code-named Atlas, that provides developers with tools designed to ease creation of AJAX-style applications. "Developers can use the Atlas software through Microsoft's Visual Studio 2005 development tools and the Web development framework ASP.Net 2.0, both of which are expected to ship in November." But….then there is this comment from the folks at MSDN product feedback in reply to a suggestion of officially adding AJAX support to Whidbey/ASP.NET 2.0: "Thank you for your suggestion. AJAX is definitively gaining attention and is something that the team has given thought to. Considering where we are in the product cycle, I hope you'll understand that it wouldn't be possible to do this in Whidbey but we'll evaluate the suggestion for a future release" So, what is it? Will the AJAX support be a separate piece that somehow will still work with Visual Studio 2005 to create ASP.NET...

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