Adil's Weblog

2011 Achievements and Plans Ahead

2012-01-05T02:05:00.001+05:00

2011… How fast that was? it seems as if it was yesterday only that 2011 began and here we are in 2012 BUT I really had an exciting year with great memories, rich experience and some good learning. Like each year, I try to take little time out to reflect on what I have accomplished so far so as I can analyze myself, set new goals, and identify area of improvements. This blog post contains some of

IIS 7 not loading CSS and Image

2011-11-25T22:51:00.001+05:00

Yesterday, I faced a wired yet crazy issue. My machine has a bit freshly installed windows 7 and so while running web site hosted on local IIS, I was getting a pretty plain asp.net pages without CSS and Images being loaded properly. After a little investigation, it appears to be a problem with Windows feature installation. All you have to do is run ‘optionalfeature’ command and make sure ‘Static

Microsoft Certification Overview [Update 2011]

2011-11-03T23:40:00.001+05:00

Q: How can I become Microsoft Certified Professional? Q: What are the available certification tracks for me? Q: I am a web developer, How can I prepare for MCTS exams? Q: Which paper do I have to clear to become SharePoint Administrator? These are some of the most frequently asked questions to me by Industry Professionals via email or forums or community events. If you have been following my blog

Session: Refactoring to SOLID Code

2011-10-30T16:35:00.001+05:00

We recently organized October User Group Meeting on Design Principles and Practices at MIC, Karachi. I did a session on “Refactoring to SOLID code” and really enjoyed discussion with developers on design principles and practices. We talked about aspects of bad design, better design and how we can apply SOLID principles to our day to day code. The session was irrespective of any technology and

WCF Custom Header with Silverlight

2011-10-18T22:15:00.000+05:00

In my previous post "Client Additional Parameters using Custom Headers in WCF", I discussed about passing additional parameters from client in SOAP header with WCF service by implementing IClientMessageInspector, IEndPointBehavior and BehaviorExtensionElement. I am really glad to know that it help some of you. However, I have received some queries from readers for implementing custom headers with

Client Additional Parameters using Custom Headers in WCF

2011-10-14T17:10:00.001+05:00

When building Service communication applications using Windows Communication Foundation, we often come to a situation where we have multiple clients communicating with WCF Service and we need to pass additional parameters from client to service. This may be due to number of reasons such as sharing a unique customer ID to identify certain elements for that particular client. In such scenarios, for

Visual Studio 11 IDE Improvements

2011-09-18T19:38:00.001+05:00

This is second post of the Dev11 series. If you have not installed preview bits, you may like to read my previous post on “Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview”. In this post, I am going to share some of the improvements in Visual Studio 11 IDE. //Disclaimer #1: This post is written for Developer Preview version, and features may change in later releases.//Disclaimer #2: The views expressed in this

Visual Studio 11 Dev Preview

2011-09-18T13:09:00.001+05:00

Like me, if you work on .NET platform and Visual Studio, you must be excited about the recent announcements of “Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview” or “Dev 11” at BUILD conference on September, 14, 2011. The next version of Visual Studio and .NET framework contains many new features and enhancements, making job of .NET developer easy. Over the next few weeks, I am going to write series of posts

Microsoft Certified Professional Developer

2011-07-28T17:47:00.000+05:00

I am super excited that yesterday I have completed Microsoft Certified Professional Developer track for Web. The overall track include 3 Technology Specialist (TS) level exams as pre-requisites and 1 Professional (PRO) level exam as depict below. It took around 10 months to prepare and pass all exams but finally completed Alhamdulillah. And now I am pleased to say that I have become Microsoft

Awarded Microsoft MVP 2011

2011-07-02T01:51:00.001+05:00

1st July 2011, I received an email from Microsoft and I am delighted to share that I have been awarded “Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) 2011” for the third consecutive year in Visual C# category. I would like to thank everyone of you who have supported me in any form especially my friends, family, colleagues, community partners, MVPs, MVP Lead, DPE and MIC team at Microsoft Pakistan.

MCTS - .NET Framework 4, Data Access

2011-06-27T23:08:00.001+05:00

I am super excited to share that today I have successfully passed the exam “70-516: TS: Accessing Data with Microsoft .NET Framework 4” and therefore become Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist, .NET Framework 4 Data Access. As for the exam, there were around 73 questions divided into two sections and including one case study. The major focus was on ADO.NET Entity Framework and so you can

Configuring ELMAH with WCF using NuGet

2011-05-11T00:42:00.001+05:00

I am sure most of you have used Error Logging Module and Handlers (ELMAH) for ASP.NET. ELMAH is one great open source project and real blessings for ASP.NET developers. If you don’t know about it, It’s a MUST SEE tool and in that case I would recommend you to read out Scott Ha introductory blog post on ELMAH. BUT, in this post we are going to see how to configure ELMAH to work with WCF services

ValidateRequest="false" in ASP.NET 4

2011-05-09T23:37:00.003+05:00

If you are someone like me who have recently upgrade to ASP.NET 4.0, you may have come across Yellow Screen of Death with Http Request Validation Exception, something like: “A potentially dangerous Request.Form value was detected from the client” Exception Details: System.Web.HttpRequestValidationException: A potentially dangerous Request.Form value was detected from the client Surprisingly,

As A Good Technical Lead

2011-04-12T00:18:00.002+05:00

/* DISCLAIMER: This blog post is purely based on my personal observation and experience. The views expressed are mine alone */ Whether you call it Technical Lead or Dev Lead or Team Lead or Lead Programmer, this blog post is about the role and some of the characteristics Good Technical Lead must have. A Central Role Trust me, Dear Reader, if you are a technical lead or in a similar role you

Debug Class in .NET

2011-04-04T23:12:00.001+05:00

One of the alternative yet under utilized way to debug code in .NET is using Debug class found in System.Diagnostics Namespaces. This class really gives bunch of functionalities to developer that are very useful for debugging and I wonder why but I have observed that fewer percentage of developers use it. So I thought to share the usage of Debug class with developers out there as I found it very

Sessions on Web Development

2011-04-03T15:50:00.001+05:00

Good Job NED Volunteers Source: http://www.devnextug.org/2011/04/sessions-on-web-development-using.html On request of students from NED University of Engineering and Technology, DevNext User Group recently organized two day sessions on Web Development using ASP.NET at NED University. The sessions were held on 12th and 19th March, 2011. The purpose of facilitating such sessions was to provide

2 Day Workshop on WPF for Faculty

2011-03-26T21:49:00.001+05:00

Higher Education Commissions (HEC) and Microsoft Innovation Center (MIC) recently organized a 2 day workshop on Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) for faculty and I was invited as trainer. The overall agenda of the 2 day workshop was to introduce Microsoft’s platform for building Windows client applications. The audience comprises of faculty from University of Karachi, NED UET, IBA, LUMHS

MVP Summit 2011–Trip Summary

2011-03-10T18:28:00.001+05:00

I have recently returned back from USA after attending Microsoft MVP Summit 2011. The MVP Summit, an event hosted by Microsoft, provides a great platform for Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) to connect with each other and with Microsoft Product Groups. It is always exciting and interesting to attend summit and getting updates on Microsoft Product roadmaps and future improvements. The

Attending MVP Summit 2011

2011-02-18T22:52:00.001+05:00

*Excited* - I will be attending “2011 MVP Global Summit” from 28th February till 2nd March at Microsoft Headquarters in Redmond, USA. “The MVP Global Summit is a multi-day event that is hosted in Bellevue and at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington. With a large catalog of deep dive sessions and a variety of networking opportunities, the MVP Global Summit enables MVPs to connect with

Announcement: DevNext Student Volunteers for Year 2011

2011-02-10T00:54:00.001+05:00

Source: http://www.devnextug.org/2011/02/announcement-devnext-student-volunteers.html Like each year, we are glad to announce “DevNext Student Volunteers” for the year 2011. DevNext volunteers are selected on the basis of their interest and passion to serve their University and indirectly to overall students’ community by working in collaboration with DevNext User Group Leader, industry experts

DevNext NED Volunteers’ Meet up

2011-01-15T23:01:00.001+05:00

As the new academic year begins, DevNext volunteers at NED University had a small meet up to discuss about the role of new volunteer force of DevNext at NED. Adil Mughal, DevNext User Group Leader, discussed with new volunteers about the User Groups, INETA, and DevNext history in NED. Adil talked about how DevNext is serving students by providing a platform for them and what they can do to

Year 2010

2010-12-27T15:28:00.001+05:00

wow! What a year. 2010 was really tremendous year with great memories, remarkable achievements and significant experience Alhamdulillah. I wonder time passed so fast, I remember writing Year 2009 highlights as well. HIGHLIGHTS FROM 2010: I was promoted twice this year in my career at Telenor. First from Development Officer to Executive and very recently to Development Team Lead For the first

Event Summary: Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate LoadFest

2010-12-05T02:37:00.001+05:00

Reference: http://edotnetdevs.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/event-summary-visual-studio-2010-ultimate-loadfest/ THANK YOU FOR ATTENDING VISUAL STUDIO 2010 ULTIMATE LOADFEST! 4th December 2010, we had another exciting event “Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate LoadFest”. The event was held at FAST- National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, Karachi. We would like to thank all the organizers,

MCTS 70-513–.NET 4, Service Communication Apps

2010-11-29T23:25:00.001+05:00

Today, I am excited and pleased to share that I have passed Microsoft Exam TS: 70-513 and hence become Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) – .NET Framework 4, Service Communication Applications. “This exam is designed to test the candidate's knowledge and skills for developing applications using Windows Communication Foundation and the .NET Framework 4”. To see the skills measured

Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate LoadFest

2010-11-25T23:29:00.001+05:00

I will be speaking at Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate LoadFest. Registration is open currently and is free but seats are limited. Register yourself now!