Guru Stop

jQuery for Absolute Beginners: The Complete Video Series

Mohamed Meligy — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 04:38:25 PST

A great VIDEO series on all the nice effects (and functionality) you can achieve with jQuery JavaScript library for those who know NOTHING about it.

jQuery is a very powerful library. One of the first things I do when creating new project is to include the library in it. Microsoft is going to include it by default in ASP.NET web projects (All ASP.Net projects, not just MVC) starting Visual Studio 2010.

Here are some few examples of what you can do with it (VIDEO):

http://net.tutsplus.com/articles/web-roundups/jquery-for-absolute-beginners-video-series/?awesm=fbshare.me_EIez#

Have fun jQuerying…

Technorati Tags: jQuery,Videos,Screencasts,Tutorial

Microsoft’s Oxite Successor, Orchard, A CMS “Platform”

Mohamed Meligy — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 01:22:46 PST

If you heard about Microsoft Oxite CMS, this is the new one, created as a different project to avoid previous developer comments.:

From Press:

Microsoft's open-source CMS platform is (re)born | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=4506

Project Homepage:

http://orchard.codeplex.com

Quote From Press:

The guesses (by me and others) look like they were on target. The “Orchard Project,” which is getting its debut on November 11 at Tech Ed Europe is, indeed, the successor to the Microsoft Oxite content-management system (CMS).

Microsoft made available the first the open-source Oxite CMS bits at the end of 2008. Like Oxite, Orchard will be a free, open-source CMS platform — plus a set of shared components for building ASP.Net applications and extensions. The Orchard code is licensed under an OSI-approved New BSD license.

From the Orchard page on the Microsoft CodePlex code-repository site:

“(T)his core (Orchard) team will use their experience working with ASP.NET and Oxite to deliver a fundamentally new architecture that is the Orchard CMS. We have deliberately chosen to start development, with the guidance and contribution from the community. Over time we expect this project to become a viable successor to Oxite v1 and we know that providing a migration path for users of that existing application will be a high priority.”

The Orchard team includes various ASP.Net developers; two of the principal developers of Oxite, Erik Porter and Nathan Heskew; and Louis DeJardin, the creator of the SparkViewEngine for Model View Controller (MVC).

Despite its origins and team, Microsoft officials are claiming that Orchard is “not a Microsoft project,” according to the Orchard Web page. From the CodePlex page:

“Some of the initial (Orchard) source code and specs are available for review and comment but there is no downloadable release at this time. We encourage interested developers to check out the source code on this site and get involved with the project in these early stages.”

There is no public timetable (so far) for when a test build of Orchard will be out or when a final version will be released.

(Thanks to @kellabyte for the Orchard pointer, via Twitter.)

Update: As one reader (thanks, @karlseguin) noted, Oxite was anything but a big hit with developers, including many of those in Microsoft’s own .Net community. There have been many complaints about Oxite, from the development process, to the scope of the project, to the quality of the code and the way Microsoft explained the concept/product. Perhaps that’s one reason why Microsoft is starting over with a new codename and claiming this is not a Microsoft project…

Mary Jo has covered the tech industry for more than 20 years. Don't miss a single post. Subscribe via Email or RSS. You can also follow Mary Jo on Twitter.

Quote From CodePlex Project Page:

About The Orchard Project

Orchard is a free, open source, community-focused project aimed at delivering applications and reusable components on the ASP.NET platform. It will create shared components for building ASP.NET applications and extensions, and specific applications that leverage these components to meet the needs of end-users, scripters, and developers. Additionally, we seek to create partnerships with existing application authors to help them achieve their goals. Orchard is licensed under a New BSD license, which is approved by the OSI.
The intended output of the Orchard project is three-fold:

· Individual .NET-based applications that appeal to end-users , scripters, and developers

· A set of re-usable components that makes it easy to build such applications

· A vibrant community to help define these applications and extensions

In the near term, the Orchard project is focused on delivering a .NET-based CMS application that will allow users to rapidly create content-driven Websites, and an extensibility framework that will allow developers and customizers to provide additional functionality through extensions and themes.

Project Status

Orchard is currently in the initial stage of development. We have chosen to launch the project at this stage in order to invite early participation by the developer community in shaping the project’s direction, and so that we can publicly validate our designs and development approach. Some of the initial source code and specs are available for review and comment but there is no downloadable release at this time. We encourage interested developers to check out the source code on this site and get involved with the project in these early stages.

· Feature roadmap

· Developer information

· Docs and designs/specs

About The Team

The Orchard team is a small group of developers at Microsoft who are passionate about delivering open source solutions on .NET technology. This team is releasing the project on its own; Orchard is not a Microsoft project. The team is primarily composed of ASP.NET developers and has recently grown with the addition of two of the principal developers on Oxite, Erik Porter and Nathan Heskew, as well as Louis DeJardin, a long-time ASP.NET developer, community software advocate, and creator of the SparkViewEngine for MVC.
Together this core team will use their experience working with ASP.NET and Oxite to deliver a fundamentally new architecture that is the Orchard CMS. We have deliberately chosen to start development, with the guidance and contribution from the community. Over time we expect this project to become a viable successor to Oxite v1 and we know that providing a migration path for users of that existing application will be a high priority.
We are working to define our contribution model, so stay tuned for information about how you can contribute and join the project team.

· About us

· Contact us

How To Get Involved

We hope that by engaging with the community in the very early stages of the project that we will be able to shape Orchard into a valuable set of tools and applications for the community. The Orchard team is committed to open community participation and is in the process of working through the details to be able to accept code contributions. We encourage community participation at all levels from general project feedback to bug fixes and patches.

· Check out the code

· Check out the docs

· Find and file a bug

· Propose a feature idea

· Send us feedback

Consider the opportunities…

Technorati Tags: Microsoft News,Microsoft,CMS,ASP.NET,News,Open Source,OSS

Microsoft Releases New Facebook SDK Version (v 3.0)

Mohamed Meligy — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:59:47 PST

Microsoft has released a new Facebook SDK Version 3.0 (other than their old not-so-great one) and it looks to have not just updated APIs but also wide range of features supported in many application types.

Quoting a related blog post from c|net “The web services report” blog:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13515_3-10393823-26.html

Microsoft on Monday released a software development kit for Facebook that allows developers to create Facebook applications for Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation. This should expand the reach of Facebook in third-party applications as well as make Silverlight and WPF more viable platforms for developers looking to build social applications.

A screenshot showing off the NewsFeed control for WPF.

(Credit: The Silverlight Team Blog)

The SDK comes complete with samples and tools to develop Facebook applications in ASP.NET, Silverlight, WPF, and WinForms. It also features the source code for the API, components, controls, and samples.

There are currently other libraries available that allow Facebook developers to develop with other technologies, such as JavaScript, PHP, ActionScript, and the iPhone. There are a variety of others as well, which can be seen here, but these are the ones that Facebook officially provides support for.

Microsoft, as you may remember, invested $240 million in Facebook back in October 2007. Many called this move more of a strategic play to keep Google and Yahoo from getting a stake in the company. The release of this SDK is a part of Facebook and Microsoft's ongoing partnership.

If you're interested in taking a look, you can download the SDK here.

Check out the SDK Overview at:

www.microsoft.com/facebooksdk

Quoting from homepage:

The toolkit is comprised of the following core assemblies:

Facebook.dll: This is the main assembly that will be used by all applications. This has all the logic to handle communication with the Facebook application. This assembly also has specific support of XAML applications (Silverlight and WPF) to enhance the Facebook platform to make databinding and data caching easier.

Facebook.Silverlight.dll: This is the Silverlight version of the main assembly that will be used by all Silverlight applications. This has all the logic to handle communication with the Facebook application. This assembly also has specific support of XAML applications to enhance the Facebook platform to make databinding and data caching easier. The REST API in this assembly is Asynchronous only.

Facebook.Web.dll: This assembly should be used by Canvas applications. The main functionality supported in this assembly is to encapsulate the handshake between the Facebook application and a canvas application (both FBML and IFrame)

Facebook.Web.Mvc.dll: Provide a support building canvas applications using ASP.NET MVC. Separated from Facebook.Web.dll to avoid all developers from needing to install the MVC bits.

Facebook.Winforms.dll: This assembly provides support for writing Facebook applications using Winform technology. This provides a Component that wraps the API to make it easier to use from Winforms. This also contains some user controls to help display Facebook data easily.

To get started we recommend you download the SDK and refer to the "How to" guides and the Facebook Developer Wiki to get familiar with these new resources.

Download the SDK.

Refer to the detailed instructions on the Facebook Developer Wiki. Here are some important links to use as a starting point.

Anatomy_of_a_Facebook_App

Platform_Core_Components

How-to_Guides

Creating_a_Platform_Application

Facebook SDK Version 3.0 Notes

ASP.NET Development

Canvas Development

Facebook Connect

FBML Canvas

IFrame Canvas

Overview of ASP.NET Development

ToolKit Content Folder

Facebook Connect

FBML Canvas

IFrame Canvas

Facebook Platform

Facebook Platform

REST API

Other Platforms

Silverlight

WinForm

WPF

Have fun,

Technorati Tags: Facebook,Microsoft,Microsoft News,Developers,Applications,SDK

Arabic SharePoint Resources and Screencasts

Mohamed Meligy — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 04:29:00 PST

Some cool guys (all working in ITWorx I guess, one of the biggest Egyptian Software houses) have created a new website:

http://www.sharepoint4arabs.com

The website, as the name implies, is dedicated for ARABIC resources related to SharePoint.

It originally contained the technical blogs of the site founders (Founders' Blogs) which are very useful for posts about SharePoint, then very recently they have also lunched Screencasts (Also in Arabic) that start from the very beginning until further advanced stuff.

I think you’ll enjoy them!

I hope you like them,

Technorati Tags: Arabic,MOSS,SharePoint,Video,Videos,Screencasts,SharePoint4Arabs,Microsoft,News,Microsoft News

[Link List]Microsoft Application Architecture Guide, 2nd Edition is now complete (Ebook, Print)

Mohamed Meligy — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:03:55 PST

Microsoft has released a final version of its book “Microsoft Application Architecture Guide, 2nd Edition”.

The book is described as:

This guide is available online here in the MSDN Library and will be available in the Fall of 2009 as a Microsoft Press book, ISBN# 9780735627109, that you can purchase through local and online booksellers.

The guide is intended to help developers and solution architects design and build effective, high quality applications using the Microsoft platform and the .NET Framework more quickly and with less risk; it provides guidance for using architecture principles, design principles, and patterns that are tried and trusted. The guidance is presented in sections that correspond to major architecture and design focus points. It is designed to be used as a reference resource or to be read from beginning to end.

The guide helps you to:

Understand the underlying architecture and design principles and patterns for developing successful solutions on the Microsoft platform and the .NET Framework.

Identify appropriate strategies and design patterns that will help you design your solution's layers, components, and services.

Identify and address the key engineering decision points for your solution.

Identify and address the key quality attributes and crosscutting concerns for your solution.

Create a candidate baseline architecture for your solution.

Choose the right technologies for your solution.

Identify patterns & practices solution assets and further guidance that will help you to implement your solution.

More information about the book in this blog post:

http://blogs.msdn.com/jmeier/archive/2009/11/05/now-available-patterns-practices-application-architecture-book.aspx

The book is:

Available for online reading at:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd673617.aspx

Available for free download (PDF Format) at:

http://www.codeplex.com/AppArchGuide/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=20586

Available in print (to buy hard copy) from Amazon at:

http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft%C2%AE-Application-Architecture-Patterns-Practices/dp/073562710X

Have fun reading,

Technorati Tags: book,ebook,Microsoft,Architecture,P&P,Patterns,Best Practices,codeplex,news

Which ORM? LINQ To SQL, Entity Framework? LLBLGen? NHibernate?…?

Mohamed Meligy — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 07:09:00 PDT

While I was planning to write about the same topic and have the draft ready in my Windows Live Writer waiting to complete, I found an interesting question in StackOVerflow and couldn’t just resist to answer:

ORM/Persistence layer Advice

The question starts with:

I'm starting a new project and I'm looking around for either a very good ORM or for a non-SQL-based persistence layer.

Then follows up with a REALLY GOOD summary of what he believes about each known ORM he knew out of his own findings and search. I advice you to go read it.

However, all this investigation didn’t get him to a single choice answer. And I can’t blame him. This is one fo the questions that will remain for so long without a single answer, or maybe having the popular “It depends” answer.

I have had a LONG research in this topic as well. I have read for so long (and watched videos/casts) to make sure of the best usage of many ORMs and then used them sometimes in test projects sometimes in production, and I wanted to share my thoughts based on this. I posted a long answer there on the question in StackOverflow, and I want to share this answer with you here. I may also have a second part of this post based on my existing Windows Live Writer draft, but, based on my previous times, I think I won’t!

Let me first quote some parts from the question itself:

I also want to avoid at all cost having to mess with string-based queries so tools supporting LINQ or otherwise intuitive and possibly strongly typed queries get a big bonus.
Finally working with POCO objects is another thing I'd really want to do
Here's a list of products I've evaluated and why they don't fit, just so that I don't see any advice about using those:

NHibernate: crazy xml stuff, too much set up, high maintenance complexity and cost for model changes, session factories are messy and don't fit well with my needs

Castle ActiveRecord: NHibernate based, little documentation plus some problems related to NHibernate still apply. Furthermore, to get decent models it takes so many attributes that one is better off creating the schema manually, and the way relations are handled is a shame.

Linq To SQL: missing POCO objects and according to MS it won't improve much overtime (EF is what they're committed to)

Entity Framweork: although in v4 POCO objects are possible, they're still pretty hacky and force you into doing too much manual work to set things up. Besides, v4 is just a beta

LLBLGen Pro: good, especially with SelfServicing adapters, but not POCO. Also, the LINQ provider isn't perfect yet. Finally, deleting a group of objects is not possible via LINQ which results in mixing APIs (one of which is far from intuitive) and that I don't like.

SubSonic SimpleRepository: for a few minutes I thought I was dreaming. The deam came to an end as I figured out how the thing didn't handle relationships

Here was my answer:

If you can afford LLBLGen license, go for it.

I seriously don't like LINQ query-syntax the more I work with it (although I LOVE the language features related to it like Extension Methods and Expression Tres).

I loved at first like everybody else, but being uncertain whether [[ where employee.Name.StartsWith("John Smit") ]] in that XYZ LINQ provider will be done in SQL statement or in LINQ to Objects (after the SQL returns all results), and whether [[ user.Roles.Contains(role) ]] will at all work or not is a big step behind.

LLBLGen can make deleting all items without loading them as easy as
MyEntityCollection.DeleteAll( new MyEntity {Condition = value} );
This is pretty simple and I like it. You get lazy loading and you set eager/deep loading by default and/or per query using Prefetch API. You can compose and construct dynamically (and easily) any filter/sort/loading at infinite levels. It's very nice.

There are only two problems about LLBLGen: first, it's price not all companies would love to pay especially given the hype Microsoft alternatives have. Second, the naming convention although standard in RDBMS theories) like PredicateFactory instead of "where" or "filter" and Prefetch instead of deep loading and even SortExpression instead of orderby, those all are a little scary to a developer working with it for the first times, but soon you learn to love them, given the power and ease they give. There are talks about POCO support in LLBLGen 3.0. I cannot tell about it because I don't know.

Now given I no longer work in a company that uses LLBLGen, the company uses LINQ to SQL mainly because it's "proven" in so many projects without big failures (unlike EF 1, which is lacking even LINQ features in LINQ to SQL and has very bad performance and can be quite limiting in advanced mapping - which it should have been best for!). This website StackOVerflow itself runs on top of it!!! I used both in this company (EF after L2S) and hated both. The decision for new projects remained LINQ to SQL, and doing all we can to overcome it's limitations. You can work around it to do SEMI-POCO (you still need to use some L2S related types when it comes to associations).

I also do some small projects at home. Since I nolonger have LLBLGen license, I decided to learn NHibernate and use it along with Fluent NHibernate and LINQ To NHibernate. I have learned through this that NHibernate is VERY strong. It changed how I work by some features like updating DB schema automatically (I never touched the DB almost when using it). LINQ provider (in NHibernate Contrib project) is quite lacking sometimes but there is the unreleased source code of NHibernate itself contains a better LINQ provider (haven't tried it yet). The "Session" in NHibernate has problems when you are doing web development similar to those related to DataContext in L2S or ObjectContext in EF (LLBLGen doesn't suffer from those thanks to self tracking entities).

The biggest problems I had with NHibernate though was ability to find information. Too many pieces that should be put together in certain way and not much guidance can include advanced information for both mapping and querying. If not I had a friend (Tuna Toksoz , @tehlike on twitter) who happended to be a committer in NHibernate project source code, I'd really be in serious trouble.

The moral I learned was: If you want something that just works and a bit basic use Linq To Sql or SubSonic, if you want something in the middle and your production environment can afford BETA .NET version (given golive exists) use Entity Framework 4.0, if you want something very powerful and can afford the hard learning process go to NHibernate, AND, BEST OF ALL, if you can afford LLBLGen, USE IT.

Let me know your own thoughts on the topic.

Technorati Tags: ORMs,ORM,.NET,dotNET,LINQ TO SQL,LinqToSql,L2S,Entity Framework,EF,EntityFramework,NHibernate,Fluent Nhibernate,FluentNhibernate,LINQ,CSharp,LLBLGen,LLBLGen Pro,LLBL Gen,LLBL Gen Pro

On the Arrival of Mr. Adam Mohamed Meligy…

Mohamed Meligy — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:29:28 PDT

Today (technically yesterday, since it’s 3:26 AM already while I’m starting this), Mr. Adam Mohamed Meligy finally arrived home, after staying 9.5 days in nursery. This –dear audience- given Mr. Adam arrived to our world only in October 5, 2009, a date that the entire world will (sooner or later) always remember!

Mr. Adam is now taking a personal cover, pretending to be a normal baby, while he is pretty professional, he cannot sometimes hide his special natures, being relatively quiet compared to normal babies, and highly responsive to touches and (believe it or not) spoken notes/requests.

These are things that the world will remember once Mr. Adam finishes his first big achievement in the field he will take up for living (God Willing). Some other small details matter more to the family, both his grandparents –for example- note him as their first grandchild. I –personally- recognize him as my extra chance in life! If I fail to manage to be another Anders Hejlsberg/Martin Fowler, Scott Guthrie/Brad Abrams, or Scott Hanselman/Rob Conery/Phil Haack (still trying), Mr. Adam has a bigger chance; else wise, he’ll be digging his road as a notable figure in some different field (God Willing).

I feel that I was blessed with not just two more legs and hands, one more tongue and a couple of stronger eyes, extra more years to live, but also with an extra brain and superpowers. You can always upgrade your thinking methodologies, even reinvent the way you think completely, but you are always limited to your physical brain constraints that -although can be always stretched more and more- have their limits. Now I have an extra brain that can do pair thinking with me and reinvent the way things happen by the experiences he will be having on his own (God Willing).

So, this is to log that Mr. Adam (temporarily until he decides to replace that with “Eng.”, “Dr.”, and/or “Prof.”) has just finished implementing phase zero, coming to existence!

Few More Facts About Mr. Adam’s Arrival

The exact time of arrival to world is October 5, 2009, 10:30 AM Abu Dhabi Time, that’s 8:30 AM Cairo Local Time (CLT), 6:30 GMT.
Although born in Kornesh Hospital, Abu Dhabi, UAE, Mr. Adam holds the Egyptian nationality, just like his parents. He also inherits the Islam religion, which he will be (God Willing) discussed about as soon as starts making conversations, so that he practices it for the sake of belief, not inheritance!
Mr. Adam reached our world after hiding in a secret cafe for slightly less than 35 weeks, reaching our world at the weight of 2.25 Kg.
Mr. Adam has his email, Facebook and twitter accounts created on the day of arrival and moderated by parents. Soon (God Willing) he will be running those himself, and creating his own LinkedIn account on his own once he finishes his first school and starts a professional expert career simultaneously.
Mr. Adam has come with the message to make the world a a better place to live for humans, not to dominate the entire world ;-).
Since arrival, the protocol requires using the prefix “Mr.” when mentioning Mr. Adam’s name in conversations. Only tweets/categories, etc… are allowed exceptions due to technical/official nature. This prefix is temporary as per the relevant note above.

On behalf of the family, I congratulate the world on having Mr. Adam with us. I’ll be following up with his significant news until he starts blogging (hopefully soon, God Willing).

Technorati Tags: Adam Mohamed Meligy,Adam Meligy,Meligy,Egypt,Abu dhabi,AbuDhabi,UAE,World News,World,birth,World Peace,Science,IT,Family,Achievements

Funny Problem: Windows 7, IIS 7.5: Images, CSS not showing!

Mohamed Meligy — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:21:34 PDT

Few minutes ago a colleague and friend asked me about some problem he was having with ASP.NET themes. He was using a theme and including a CSS file in it, the CSS file was linked in the generated HTML but clearly it was not applied. Putting the URL of the CSS file in the browser address bar would return an empty result in Firefox, and a crappy DOCTYPE,HTML,HEAD,BODY tags in IE. The same website works normally with other developers running Windows XP or Windows 7.

Going further to the problem, I tried checking the file access, giving extra permissions and so on, checking web.config and global.asax for any ASP.NET HTTP Handler or HTTP Module that might be handling all requests. None of this existed. Then, I switched to IIS, trying to change the website from custom Application Pool to default integrated pipeline one to default classic (IIS 6 like) one, but no use.

Now I started thinking, images in the website didn’t show also! I didn’t know whether this was a DB/code issue or related to not showing the CSS, well, maybe something is wrong with IIS installation, right? Well, exactly!!!

Here’s what the problem was:

Having installed IIS 7.5 for the first time, the guy thought he just needed to choose ASP.NET features in WWW, he never realized he has to have “Static Content” checked as well. It was really funny when discovered!

Wouldn’t you agree?

Technorati Tags: ASP.NET,ASPNET,IIS,Windows 7,Windows7,Win 7,Win7,Static Content,IIS7,IIS 7,IIS 7.5,IIS7.5,Themes,ASP.NET Themes,CSS,Images,FAIL,Problem,Solution,Tip,Trick

Re: Should the team be allowed to drop the retrospective?

Mohamed Meligy — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 01:33:42 PDT

Few minutes ago, I saw @mShady, my dear friend (Real life friend, not just on twitter) tweeting:

RT @ASGEgypt: RT @scrum_coach: Should the team be allowed to drop the retrospective? http://bit.ly/bkOgv #scrum #agile #lean #xp #kanban

I checked the post and found the options are:

Yes, It’s their process why not?
No, explain to them and work through why the retrospective is so important.
Maybe, if they are no longer a team then why continue with Scrum?
Only do retrospectives once a quarter and build up a good list of things to change.
Yes, the process will take care of itself we don’t need to watch it that closely. After all it’s common sense!

Interesting question! Not the most important topic in Scrum but like the way Agile works in general, if you play with it wrong, it is an indicator you have something else wrong as well before that, so, it gives you an alert.

See the rest of the blog post. I find the options my main interest, and wanted to share with you here how I answered this question:

I’d say have a really short one if the team members have been working together for sometime it can go really quick (an hour or so) just before the planning for the next sprint. We used to do so in a previous company and it was pretty successful.
It was like it’s one meeting divided into 2, one hour or so for previous sprint retrospective, and probably rest of the day (or most of it) for the planning for next sprint.

If they cannot have a quick meeting like this quickly then something else is wrong and they need to work on their team skills. Time boxing would be one option: The meeting will be needed “more” if they do not communicate well, Time box it to 2 hours or so and make it clear and strict since beginning, and consider investigating (assuming you are scrum master or team leader) what other issues the team may be suffering from.

However, I find myself going with (1) and (5) at the same time, “it’s their process” and “After all it’s common sense!”.

What do you think??

Technorati Tags: teamwork,agile,scrum,sprint,retrospective,twitter,ASGEgypt,scrum_coach,Meligy,Scrum master

I changed my twitter username to @Meligy

Mohamed Meligy — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 22:47:53 PDT

Yesterday I changed my twitter username from @Mohamed_Meligy to just @Meligy.

Why?

I have been thinking about this step for a long time, as my tweets are relatively long, and when I want to to allow people to re-tweet. With my old username, I used to have to write at max 120 characters per tweet to allow re-tweet (leaving 20 characters out of the real 140 characters limit to “RT @Mohamed_Meligy: ”). With my new twitter username I can use up to 128 characters (leaving 12 for “RT @Meligy: ”). I know I ‘m a person who can make nice use of those 8 extra characters, but is this worth doing? For sometime I thought: No.

My old username has some nice features. First, it includes my full name, so, that’s nice for people who don’t know me very well. Second, it has been around for over a year and over ~2390 tweets! That’s something!! People got used to using this twitter username when replying to me (mentioning me) and I did my best to put it everywhere in my Google and Facebook profile and blog and everywhere, and also used it with many twitter applications that require entering username/password.

Few days ago, one of my friends brought up the topic and encouraged me to do the change. I tweeted asking my friends whether they would promote the change, and encouraged me even more, so, I switched twitter username to @Meligy.

How

Some friends may wonder, how did I change my twitter username and still kept all my previous followers and reserved the old username also still on twitter. What part of it is a feature of twitter, and what part is something I did?

So, here is the story:

I created a new twitter account with username @Meligy, and same password.
I changed the @Meligy username to @Mohamed_Meligy2.
In another browser I went to my old @Mohamed_Meligy account, changed username to @Meligy. Now I have @Meligy and @Mohamed_Meligy2.
I noticed When I go to twitter replies in twitter website, it shows all replies that came to me, even those including @Mohamed_Meligy. This is good.
The bad part is that when I click on @Mohamed_Meligy link in those replies/mentions, it goes to @Mohamed_Meligy not @Meligy.
I changed the new account @Mohamed_Meligy2 back to @Mohamed_Meligy.
I deleted the old @Mohamed_Meligy account from tweetdeck, and added both @Mohamed_Meligy and @Meligy (as default).
I couldn’t just add the @Meligy account even with same password in both – I had to delete the old one.
I used tweetdeck to tweet from both accounts “Changed twitter username from @Mohamed_Meligy to @Meligy. Followers needn't change anything except using @Meligy in future replies/mentions”.
I started trying to remember all the websites and applications I logged with the old twitter username and change it to @Meligy.
Having the same password on the other @Mohamed_Meligy account, I’ll be monitoring it for a while in case I forget some application or so.

Note that any link to previous tweets (in the format: twitter.com/{username}/status/{tweetID}) before changing username will still be broken.

Follow Me!

If you already followed me back with the old username, you should still be able to receive my updates.

If not, follow me on twitter via @Meligy.

Technorati Tags: twitter,Meligy,Mohamed Meligy,Mohamed_Meligy,MohamedMeligy,Mohamed.Meligy,Facebook,Google,FriendFeed,Personal

Google Chrome Frame: Use Chrome Inside IE

Mohamed Meligy — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 23:38:56 PDT

Some of you who use Firefox (FF) might know about a Firefox plug-in called “IE Tab” which allows you to view a page/tab using the Internet Explorer (IE) rendering engine INSIDE Firefox (so, if some page displays better in IE, you don’t have to leave FF and go open an IE window).

Now, Google is doing something similar, but the other way around!

Google has recently released “Google Chrome Frame”, a plug-in for IE that allows you to view a page/tab using the Google Browser “Google Chrome” rendering engine INSIDE Internet Explorer.

This is interesting in two ways, first, it may decrease IE problems with crashes and such, and second, that Google maybe later will drop support for IE rendering engine in its products (like Google Mail, Reader, Video, Youtube, etc..), so that you have to use Firefox, Safari or Google Chrome (or Google chrome Frame) to use these applications.

Interesting enough, this is the case already with one of Google’s new products, called Google Wave!

They say the reason is supporting IE6!! They did much effort to get it to work with it but it didn’t. Of course the Chrome Frame plug-in is supported under IE 6, so, is supposedly solves their problem!

Google Chrome Frame Homepage:

http://www.google.com/chromeframe

Using EQUATEC FREE .NET Profiler with ASP.NET Applications

Mohamed Meligy — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 01:35:25 PDT

This was originally an email I sent to .NET team in my company, then decided to share as a blog post.

The problem:

Let’s say you have a complex application, and this application (or part of it) runs very slowly. No bug s in results, no errors or exceptions, but it just so slow! Now you want to know which part of your code is the reason, which method(s) you need to go and modify., which methods take so long to execute or consume so much memory/CPU. How would you know that?
Let’s say you want to improve the performance of your application in general (say add caching or such), so, you want to identify which parts of your code deserve your attention and will really make difference (so that you don’t waste your time on optimizing something that will not have big effect in performance), for example, you might want to identify which methods are called more than others from different parts of your code. How would you do that?

How to solve it, or, what is a profiler (v. short):

It is an application that you can run along with your own program. It’ll track all method calls and how any method call other method and most importantly how long each method call will take, and how it consumes resources.

There are many .NET profilers out there.

One of them is provided by Microsoft itself. It’s a bit old but works: CLR Profiler
- Download Page: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=a362781c-3870-43be-8926-862b40aa0cd0&displaylang=en
- Learning Resources: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=CD5AA57C-9CD1-45AB-AA4B-8DC586D30938&displaylang=en
Another is DotTrace, this is the best .NET profiler ever! Used by the real gurus out there, like the guys running stackoverflow.com (which is run on asp.net mvc BTW). It’s created by JetBrains, a company that create treasure developer solutions
- But it’s NOT FREE
- Check it out anyway! Homepage: http://www.jetbrains.com/profiler/
Another FREE one is EQATEC. This is very nice simple profiler that I wrote this message for. It focuses on measuring code speed and method call sequence not memory usage
- Homepage: http://www.eqatec.com/tools/profiler
- Features: http://www.eqatec.com/tools/profiler/features
- Complete user guide: http://www.eqatec.com/tools/profiler/guide

So, what about EQATEC:

Quoting from homepage:

Spot slow code

Are you a .NET developer? Would you like your application to run faster? Then use our free profiler to spot you app's slow code.

Point and go

No source code changes are needed. Just point the profiler to your app, run the modified code, and get a visual report.

Speedup any .NET app

As the only code profiler in the world, our profiler can even handle Compact Framework applications.

Language

Version

Platform

C#

VB.NET

Managed C++

F#

C or C++

Java

.NET 3.5

.NET 3.0

.NET 2.0

.NET CF 3.5

.NET CF 2.0

.NET 1.1

WinXP, Vista

Windows Mobile

Windows CE

XP embedded

PocketPC, PDA

Linux

To use it with ASP.NET application, all you need to is:

to put the path of the “bin” folder of your website as “App Path” (no need for source code or debug files), then it shows a list of all assemblies in it so you choose the DLL(s) you want to profile, and click “Build” at the right corner of the screen:
Click “Open output folder” on the bottom left corner, copy the DLLs from there to your website “bin” folder
- Alternatively you can click “App Options” and set the output folder to “$(AppDir)” so that the generated files replace the old one
- You need to repeat these previous steps if you build the website again using Visual Studio
run the website and start using it for a while
go to EQUATEC “Run” tab and click “Take Snapshot
go to the “View” tab and start reading the results
- for more information check the user guide: http://www.eqatec.com/tools/profiler/guide

It might be important also to spot the limitations:

Known limitations

This is a list of known limitations and problems in version 2.0.

Blocking methods, such as Read(), will be counted as the total time, including the time the thread spends being descheduled and waiting for the call to complete. For now, you will have to recognize and judge situations like this manually.

No debug information is available for the profiled assemblies. It means that you cannot debug the profiled versions - but you would probably not like to do that, anyway.

No Visual Studio integration yet. We are looking into providing an add-in that will make it even easier to enable profiling your solution's assembly files.

No full method signature is displayed yet. So if you have several overloaded methods by the same name, or use generic methods, you cannot easily distinguish them as their signature (the method's parameter list) is not displayed anywhere.

Only defined methods are currently profiled, not referenced ones. So all the methods that your application itself defines will be profiled, but not System.* etc.

I hope this is useful for some of you as it was a real saver at times to me. Thank you very much!

Technorati Tags: equatec,.net,dotnet,profiler,.net profiler,dottrace

Listen to me talking about ORM in Arabic - DotNetArabi Podcast

Mohamed Meligy — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 09:28:00 PDT

Emad Ashi (@splashup on twitter) interviewed me in the 5th episode of his first Arabic podcast series DotNetArabi to talk about Object Relational Mapping in .NET in Arabic.

Podcast Page: Mohamed Meligy Talking about ORMs (MP3 Direct Download)

السلام عليكم

أصدقائي العرب ممن يتابعون هذه المدونة.. يسعدني أن أعلن عن أول حديث لي على الانترنت - و كذلك أول حديث لي على الانترنت بالعربية، عن الـ Object Relational Mappers – ORMs

شكرا جزيلا لـ “عماد العشي” (splashup@ على تويتر) على استضافته لي في موقع “دوت نت عربي DotNetArabi”، و هو موقع عربي يتضمن لقاءات صوتية مع العديد من المطورين في مجال الدوت نت، تماما على غرار DotNetRocks ، HanselMinutes و سواها، و هو في حد ذاته فخر لي أن أكون ضيفا للحلقة الخامسة في برنامج كهذا، خاصة عندما يكون ضيف أولى الحلقات هو عمر قعدان (omarq@ على تويتر).

الحلقة 5: محمد مليجي يتكلم عن الـ ORM (Object Relational Mapping)

وصف الحلقة من دوت نت عربي:

محمد مليجي تكلم عن الـ ORM (Object Relational Mapping) و هي برامج مساعدة تستطيع من خلالها نقل المعلومات و تحويلها من طبيعة قاعدة البيانات إلى طبيعة البرامج المبنية بأسلوب الـ Object Oriented. حلقة غنية بالتفاصيل و المعلومات القيمة جدا.

يمكنكم الاستماع للحلقة و متابعة تقاصيلها كاملة على صفحتها بالموقع
أو تحميل الحلقة برابط مباشر بصيغة MP3.
أو الاستماع إليها من خلال هذه الصفحة بالأسفل:

Listen to the episode now (in Arabic):

الشكر خاص جدا لعماد الذي أتى لي في وقت قل فيه اتصالي بمجتمع المطورين في مصر، و اقتصر نشاطي في مجتمع المطورين بصفة عامة على بعض المحاضرات خارج نطاق الالتزامات الرسمية في شركتي الحالية، و مشاركات قليلة في المنتديات و المجموعات البريدية خاصة ALT.NET و مدونتي هذه، (و هو ما يقل مع الوقت) و متابعة أخبار المجتمعات العربية على تويتر كـ Mohamed_Meligy@ و على Google Reader.

Related Links:

DotNetArabi Arabic Podcasts Website - Homepage (Arabic)
DotNetArabi Arabic Podcasts Website – Episodes Archive (Arabic)
DotNetArabi Episode 5: Mohamed Meligy Talking about ORMs – Homepage (Arabic)
DotNetArabi Episode 5: Mohamed Meligy Talking about ORMs – Direct Download (Arabic - MP3)
Emad Ashi – Host of DotNetArabi (Weblog – Twitter: @splashup)
Mohamed Meligy – Me! (Google Reader – Twitter: @Mohamed_Meligy)

Technorati Tags: DotNetArabi,ORM,ORMs,Net,.NET,DotNET,LinqToSQL,Linq-To-SQL,Linq2SQL,L2S,EntityFramework,Entity-Framework,Entity+Framework,EF,LLBLGen,NHibernate

Videos from NDC 2009: SOLID Principles, Legacy Code, WCF, Software Design,…

Mohamed Meligy — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 05:55:00 PDT

Here’s another email from the internal mailing list of Injazat .NET Ninjas (Ninjazat, AKA as we call ourselves), that I’m sharing with blog readers as well.

Just a place holder, until I move one of my 18 (just discovered the number now – terrifying!) drafts in my Windows Live Writer into a published post, or delete them all!

Subject: [Learning] Some very interesting videos

Some videos from NDC 2009 event (Norwegian Developers Conference 2009) - about software design and related issues:

· NDC Video – Robert Martin – S.O.L.I.D Principles of OO class design

· NDC Video – Robert Martin – Craftsmanship and Ethics

· NDC Video – Robert Martin – Component Principles

· NDC Video – Robert Martin – Clean Code III – Functions

· NDC Video – Michael Feathers – Working Effectively with Legacy Code

· NDC Video – Jeremy D. Miller – Convention Over Configuration

· NDC Video – Michael Feathers – Seven Blind Alleys in Software Design

· NDC Video – Ted Neward – WCF Patterns

· NDC Video: Michael Feathers – Design Sense

For the complete list of videos from this event check videos from:

· Day 1

· Day 2

· Day 3

My favorite topics are (recommendations):

· NDC Video – Robert Martin – S.O.L.I.D Principles of OO class design

· NDC Video – Michael Feathers – Working Effectively with Legacy Code

Of course the other topics are interesting as well.

Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: OOP,OOAD,SOLID,Design Patterns,NDC,NDC09,NDC2009,NDC 2009,Clean Code,Code,Working effectively with legacy code,Convention over configuration,Software Design,OO

Small Tip: Use your Google Account OpenID URL. But, What’s The URL?

Mohamed Meligy — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 06:18:00 PDT

Simplified (Inaccurate) Background About OpenID

Some websites allow you instead of registering and logging-in (meaning re-entering the same information you entered before in so many other sites), to enter what is called Open ID URL, which is a URL given by a another website that you already logged in and has your information (called OpenID provider).

Once you enter the URL and continue, you get redirected to the OpenID provider confirmation page whether you want to be able to login to the new website using the same login,which gets redirected back to the new website but this time as logged in user.

If your OpenID provider is a popular provider, like Yahoo or Google or so, some websites will give you a shortcut to writing the URL at login by just selecting the provider from a predefined list of providers in the login page. If your provider is not in the list, or the website does not offer any shortcut list at all, you should be able to know your OpenID URL to enter same as you know your User ID or so.

Google and OpenID

The first relation between Google and OpenID started with Blogger. It first accepted logging in to write comments on Blogger using OpenID, and had Blogger itself become an OpenID provider (you enter your blog URL as your OpenID URL). Why Google did this to Blogger accounts only not all Google Accounts (used for Gmail, etc..)? I don’t know. I think this is because Blogger accounts were not yet merged with Google Accounts at this time.

Later Google as a whole became an OpenID provider for all Google Accounts (AKA Gmail Logins), with different OpenID URL. This means if you have Blogger account, you have two different OpenID URLs offered by Google each maps to DIFFERENT LOGIN. Again, maybe because of backward compatibility or whatsoever.

If your real blog is not on blogger, and you use your Gmail account primarily, you may want to use the Google Accounts Open ID URL as your OpenID login to all websites that support logging in with OpenID, but, unlike the easiness of remembering a Blogger blog URL, the Google Accounts Open ID URL is a bit ugly and you might not know about it.

Well, here is the Google Accounts Open ID URL (yeah, the entire blog post is about this single line):

https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id

Note: You do NOT replace the part "ID" with your Google Account user-name/email. The OpenID URL is "AS IS" above whatever the Google Account ID is..

Have fun!

Technorati Tags: Google,Blogger,OpenID,Open ID,Gmail,SSO