My name is Justin Kohnen, and I’m a Geek.

How To: Disable “Attach Security Warning” of Visual Studio

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Kohnen) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:36:00 +0000

When you attach to a process, you sometimes get the message confirming whether you want to attach the process.

This happens for each process you are attaching. ANNOYING! This is how to disable it.

Make sure Visual Studio 2010 is first shut down
Click Start > Run... Type "regedit" <Enter>
For VS 2010 navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Debugger
1. For VS 2008 navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\Debugger
Set DisableAttachSecurityWarning to 1

Cheers,
Justin

Developing for a specific version of Silverlight

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Kohnen) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 01:50:00 +0000

I recently ran into an issue where the version of Silverlight I had installed on my development environment didn’t match my end clients’ version of Silverlight.

I was running Silverlight v4.0.60831.0, they were running Silverlight v4.0.50401.0. (Who would of thought a 0.0.1 difference would of really mattered?)

Anyway I set out to accomplish two tasks

Replicate the issue by uninstalling my version of Silverlight and installing there’s.
Update my development environment so that I could fix the problem.

Here are my notes:

I using Control Panel to Uninstall Silverlight 4 from my test box.

I located an older version of Silverlight by using Microsoft’s “Microsoft® Silverlight™ Release History.” Which I installed on my test box.

I successfully reproduced the error.

I used Control Panel to Uninstall Silverlight 4 SDK from my development box.

I downloaded the SDK for the specific version I needed. Once again, using Microsoft’s “Microsoft® Silverlight™ Release History.” Which I installed on my development box.

I opened Visual Studio 2010, rebuilt the solution, deployed, the error was corrected.

That’s it. I hope it helps someone.

Making the selected time of a RadTimePicker scroll to top.

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Kohnen) — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 15:22:00 +0000

I rely heavily on Telerik’s ASP.NET AJAX tools. Recently I had an issue with the RadTimePicker when we attempted to put it in a scrolling container. Once in the container could scroll we wanted the selected time to be the first item when the picker’s TimeView appeared.

Out of the box this behavior is not possible, so I had to find a solution. After a lot of research, and some help from Telerik, I would like to share my solution:

To allow for scrolling you have to apply the proper styles

        1: <style type="text/css">

       2:     #<%= StartTime.ClientID %>_timeView_wrapper {

       3:             overflow:auto;

       4:             width:83px;

       5:             height:200px;

       6:     }

       7: </style>

The RadTimePicker

       1: <telerik:RadTimePicker runat="server" ID="StartTime" CssClass="rsAdvTimePicker"

       2:     Width="78px">

       3:     <dateinput id="DateInput3" runat="server" emptymessagestyle-cssclass="riError" emptymessage=" " />

       4:     <timepopupbutton visible="false" />

       5:     <timeview id="TimeView1" runat="server" columns="1" showheader="false" starttime="00:00"

       6:         endtime="23:59" interval="00:30" />                                                        

       7:     <ClientEvents OnPopupOpening="InitializePopup" />

       8:     <ShowAnimation Duration="0" />

       9:     <HideAnimation Duration="0" />

      10: </telerik:RadTimePicker>

Lastly, I used a bit of JavaScript and jQuery to apply the “scroll to top” behavior.

       1: <script type="text/javascript">

       2:     function InitializePopup(sender, eventArgs) {

       3:         var htmlPopUp = eventArgs.get_popupControl().get_element();

       4:         var jQueryPopUp = $(htmlPopUp);

       5:  

       6:         setTimeout(

       7:         function() {

       8:             var selectedTime = jQueryPopUp.find(".rcSelected");

       9:  

      10:             if (selectedTime.length > 0) {                    

      11:                 selectedTime.get(0).scrollIntoView(true);

      12:             }

      13:         }, 150);

      14:     }        

      15: </script>

You’ll notice I set a delay on line 6. This is because the TimeView html object needs a bit of time to render before we preform the find. Without this delay, the find returns an empty collection, and the scroll will not work.

I hope this helps someone.

Cheers.

Grok talk on NuGet 6/22/2011 1800 EST

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Kohnen) — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 15:53:00 +0000

I will be giving a grok talk about “NuGet” (the Visual Studio 2010 extension) to the Dayton .NET Developers Group. If you’re in area, I invite you to come down. (Don’t forget to point and laugh )

Here is my slide deck.

When: June 22, 2011 at 6pm EST

Where: 711 East Monument Avenue, Suite 101 in downtown Dayton, OH

jQuery Boxy content will not display / show

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Kohnen) — Wed, 18 May 2011 16:24:00 +0000

Every so often I’ve used the jQuery plugin called “Boxy”

Today I ran into an issue: The content I gave boxy would not display / show on the page.

Here was my incorrect code:

        1: new Boxy("Justin Kohnen is the best programmer ever!", 

       2: { 

       3:     closeText: "close"

       4:     , title: "Shout out."

       5:     , unloadOnHide: true

       6: });

After reading the fantastic manual I found: (underline added for emphasis)

The content passed to the constructor can be any valid parameter to jQuery's $() function - a DOM element, an HTML fragment or another jQuery object. Whatever is provided will be set to display: block and have the class boxy-content added prior to its insertion within the dialog.

The key here was raw text is not a “valid parameter to jQuery’s $() function.”

So my fix is simply to wrap my text in a tag. Making it an HTML fragment

Here is the corrected code:

       1: new Boxy("<p>Justin Kohnen is the best programmer ever!</p>", 

       2: { 

       3:     closeText: "close"

       4:     , title: "Shout out."

       5:     , unloadOnHide: true

       6: });

Simple, but silly problem.

I hope this helps someone.

Cheers.

Installing and Uninstalling a Windows Service from the Command Line

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Kohnen) — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 20:47:00 +0000

I develop a windows service every now and then. I always have to dig up the install and uninstall commands. I figured I would post it for all.

Install

C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\installutil /LogToConsole=true "<path_to_service_exe>"

Uninstall

C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\installutil /u "<path_to_service_exe>"

Make sure to replace <path_to_service_exe> with what works for you.

If you’re on Win7 or Win2008 Server, you’ll need to start your Command Prompt as an administrator.

Cheers.

Tracking a browser’s Time zone Offset in ASP.NET

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Kohnen) — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 21:14:00 +0000

Just the other day I was required to display a website’s dates in a user’s local time.

The solution I came up with was based on getting the time zone offset from the user’s browser using JavaScript, Storing that value into a cookie, then converting the cookie value to the a number I’m used to working with (i.e. negative hours), then I can convert UTC dates to the user’s local time zone by adding the Offset.

All of this magic happens for me in my website’s base page. (All my pages inherit from my base page)

        1: public class BasePage : System.Web.UI.Page

       2: {

       3:     private const string mTimeZoneCookieName = "TZOS"; // Time zone Offset

       4:  

       5:     protected override void OnPreInit(EventArgs e)

       6:     {

       7:         setCookieForTimezoneOffset();

       8:     }

       9:  

    private void setCookieForTimezoneOffset()

    {

        if (Request.Cookies[mTimeZoneCookieName] == null)

        {

            ClientScript.RegisterStartupScript(GetType(), "Timezone",

            string.Format(

            @"<script language=""javascript"">document.cookie = ""{0}="" + new Date().getTimezoneOffset(); </script>",

            mTimeZoneCookieName));

        }

    }

  

    public int TimezoneOffset

    {

        get

        {

            return getTimezoneOffset();

        }

    }

  

    private int getTimezoneOffset()

    {

        int returnValue;

        returnValue = (Request.Cookies[mTimeZoneCookieName] == null) ? 0 : Convert.ToInt32(Request.Cookies[mTimeZoneCookieName].Value);

        // JavaScript returns 300 if the offset is -5 offset so I convert the number

        return (returnValue / 60) * -1; 

    }

}

The only catch is: The very first time a user loads any page the times will be GMT/UTC after a single postback everything is as right as rain. On way this could be corrected is by tweaking the “Timezone” start up script a bit to force a refresh. (And that’s just one solution, I’m sure you can come up with another.)

I hope that helps someone.

Cheers.

My TortoiseSVN Global ignore pattern

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Kohnen) — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 21:41:00 +0000

Some files shouldn’t be committed into version control. Usually things generated by the computer (i.e. exe’s, dlls, etc.) and user specific files (i.e. *.suo, *.user, etc.)

Here is the global ignore pattern I use for TortoiseSVN to exclude such files.

<pattern>
*.o *.lo *.la *.al .libs *.so *.so.[0-9]* *.a *.pyc *.pyo *.rej *~ #*# .#* .*.swp .DS_Store _ReSharper.* *.resharper *.suo *.user bin obj
</ pattern>

Hope it helps someone.

Computing First and Last Day of the Month

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Kohnen) — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 15:56:00 +0000

I stumbled across this the other day and I thought it was so slick I would share.

This example computes the DateTime for both the first and last day of the current month.

     var monthStartDate = new DateTime(DateTime.Now.Year, DateTime.Now.Month, 1);

    var monthEndDate = start.AddMonths(1).AddDays(-1);

You can take the range even further by changing the “AddMonths” number.

Pretty slick.

Issue: IIS7 “Reports” folder is requiring Windows Authentication

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Kohnen) — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 20:00:00 +0000

I’ve been working on a ASP.NET project that contained a sub folder call “Reports.” Oddly, every time I tried to browse to it under IIS7 I would get prompted with a “Windows Authentication” dialog.

I had never programmed this, and couldn’t figure out why it was required.

Turns out, the issue was with having SQL Server Reporting Services installed. SSRS by default uses the “Reports” virtual directory under port 80 as it’s Report Manager URL.

After I changed the “Report Manager URL” within the “Reporting Services Configuration Manager” everything was right with the world again.

I just thought I would share this with everyone in case someone else runs into the problem.

Details:

I’m using IIS7 and SQL Server 2008

Silverlight: When do Xap files get downloaded and when are they cached?

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Kohnen) — Mon, 10 May 2010 19:23:00 +0000

A friend recently asked me “When do [silverlight] xap files get downloaded and when are they cached [in the browser]?”

So, using fiddler, I set out to find that answer:

Here are my test results.

To prepare, I deleted my temporary internet files and closed my IE window so there is no iexplore process running on my computer.

I load a new IE window - xap is loaded from cache

which I found odd because I thought deleting the files would have wiped my temporary internet files

I refresh the page (F5) - xap is loaded from cache
I force refresh the page (Ctrl+F5) - xap is loaded from cache
I do a clean and rebuild my solution, making a new xap file
I refresh the page (F5) - xap is loaded from cache
I force refresh the page (Ctrl+F5) - xap is loaded from cache
I close my IE window so there is no iexplore process running on my computer
I load a new IE window - new xap is download from server
I refresh the page (F5) - xap is loaded from cache
I force refresh the page (Ctrl+F5) - xap is loaded from cache
I close my IE window so there is no iexplore process running on my computer
I load a new IE window - xap is loaded from cache

Therefore, my testing shows a new xap is downloaded next time IE is restarted on the client.

Hope that helps someone.

Central Ohio Day of .NET 2010 is ON!

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Kohnen) — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 01:09:00 +0000

The date has been set: June 5th, 2010

The Central Ohio Day of .NET is a joint venture between the Dayton .NET Developers Group, Central Ohio .NET Developers Group, Cincinnati SQL Server Users Group and the Cincinnati .NET Users Group. The event originally was called the Cincinnati-Dayton Area Code camp and ran in 2006 and 2007 under that name. With the inclusion of the Columbus And CincySQL group the event has been renamed to the Central Ohio Day of .NET. The event is a FREE day of technology discussions devoted to helping the local development community grow. Please check back often for more information about Day of .NET events.

Day of .NET events are a series of mini-conferences organized by developers for developers. You can find out more about Day of .NET events, including seeing upcoming events, on the series website at http://www.dodn.org.

Registration is set to begin on May 2nd, 2010.

Help spread the word, blog it, tweet it, water cooler it, in short “pimp it.” CODODN 2010 is on!

And don’t forget your Blog Bling:

<a href="http://www.cinnug.org/cododn/"><img border="0" src="http://www.cinnug.org/images/cododnbadge2010.gif" alt="Central Ohio Day of .NET"></a>

Google is phasing out Internet Explorer 6.0 support during 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Kohnen) — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 02:57:00 +0000

I just got this in an email the other day.

Dear Google Apps admin,

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.

Starting this week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser. We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.

In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience. We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.

Thank you for your continued support!

Sincerely,

The Google Apps team

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

Guess people better start upgrading.

<IMHO>
I’m glad Google is making this move. IE 6.0 makes developing good web applications very difficult. I hope it goes away very quickly…. IN A HUGE FLAMING BALL OF FIRE!!! ;-)
</IMHO>

If you’re a technology startup and need a FREE* MSDN Subscription, you should look into BizSpark

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Kohnen) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 04:12:00 +0000

I signed up and I’m loving every minute of of it. Once Kohnen Solutions was approved we received a retail MSDN Subscription. (Which contains any piece of Microsoft software I could ever need to get my company going. Operating Systems, Databases, Blend, Visual Studio Team System Team Suite (VSTS), the list goes on)

You’ve got to first be eligible. Are you:

Actively engaged in development of a software-based product or service that will form a core piece of its current or intended business
Privately held
In business for less than 3 years
Less than US $1 million in annual revenue

If you meet all of the above you might be eligible for BizSpark.

But software’s not the only thing, you get access to the Developer Network, 2 Technical Support Incidents, Discounts from Third Party Providers (I’m constantly getting snail mail discount offers), and so much more.

To sweeten the deal, you even get a certain level of access to Windows Azure

*Free for a while at least. When you leave the program you have to pay a fee of $100. (Hell, that definitely beats $10,939 if you buy it new. IMHO, BizSpark is worth it.)

Adding Code Samples to Blogger with Windows Live Writer

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Kohnen) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:17:00 +0000

Sorry, if anyone got the slew of test posts I made in order to get my code formatter right.

But as a small reward for putting up with my bumbling, I give to you my findings.

I’m using Windows Live Writer with the “Code Snippet plugin for Windows Live Writer,” but I found when I published my posts my formatting was off. Many “ ” tags were appearing in my blog and RSS feed that came out of it.

The problem was not with the plugin, but with Blogger.com formatting my posts. So to fix the problem here is what you do…

Log into you Blogger.com Dashboard
Choose “Settings” for your respective blog
Choose “Formatting” under the Settings tab
Set “Convert line breaks” to “No”

Tooltip for TextBlock in Silverlight (and any other Silverlight control)

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Kohnen) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:40:00 +0000

I’ve always been used to “.ToolTip” to add a tool tip text to a control. Unfortunately not all Silverlight controls have such a property.

However, Silverlight does provide a class called “ToolTipService” so you can add a Tooltip to almost all Silverlight UI elements.

You can use the class both in the XAML

   1:  <TextBlock x:Name="txtblkNotification" Text="My Textblock">

   2:      <ToolTipService.ToolTip>

   3:          <ToolTip Content="My tool tip for the TextBlock"></ToolTip>

   4:      </ToolTipService.ToolTip>

   5:  </TextBlock>

Or directly in code

   1:  ToolTipService.SetToolTip(txtblkNotification, "My tool tip for the TextBlock");

I hope someone else finds this useful. (I sure did)

Because of Fiddler I could not browse the web after a power failure.

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Kohnen) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:58:00 +0000

I was in the middle of debugging my network traffic with Fiddler when there was a power “hiccup” and my computer rebooted.

When I came back up, I opened an Internet Explorer window and could not reach any web address. I could “ping www.google.com” but when I tried to browse to “www.google.com” IE kept sending me back to “http:///”

I’ve learned recently the fiddler makes strong usage of a local proxy. I stared up fiddler again, and did a clean shutdown of the app. After this I was able to browse the web again.

Interesting experience I thought I would share it.

Now it’s time to get an Uninterrupted Power Supply.

CODODN 2009 Registration is open!

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Kohnen) — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 06:34:00 +0000

Registration for the Central Ohio Day of .NET is now open. Quick sign up while spots are still open.

The Central Ohio Day of .NET is a joint venture between the Dayton .NET Developers Group, Central Ohio .NET Developers Group, Cincinnati SQL Server Users Group and the Cincinnati .NET Users Group. The event is a FREE day of technology discussions devoted to helping the local development community grow. Please check back often for more information about Day of .NET events.

If you need additional information please visit the official website.

If you want to track the event start following @CODODN on Twitter. Or keep an eye on the hash tags.

And since I'm the board member in charge of marketing for the event, help me spread the word.

Tweet it on Twitter
Download the flyers and print some off to hang around the office
Blog about it
- Don't forget your blog bling. Wear your badge with pride:
 <a href="http://www.cinnug.org/cododn"><img style="border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-bottom-style: none" src="http://www.cinnug.org/images/cododn2009Badge.gif" border="0" /></a>
Tell your friends, your mother, your cats, and dogs.

A great event is coming up.... don't miss it. Register Today!

Software Development Trueisms

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Kohnen) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 14:47:00 +0000

A co-worker sent these to me, and I thought they were hilarious and instead of spamming people I thought I would post about it.

Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the programmer who must maintain it.
Users don’t know what they really want, but they will know when they see it…
The degree of normality in a database is inversely proportional to that of its DBA.
If you work on a program long enough, it will eventually send E-mail.
Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.
If you want software made you have 3 options: You can have it done FAST, you can have it done RIGHT, You can have it done CHEAP. Pick 2.

CAPTCHA Tool for Protecting Email Addresses

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Kohnen) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 05:27:00 +0000

This post is a continuation of my previous post. "Some tips and tricks to prevent Email Harvesting / Scraping"

One of the techniques I mentioned was an "Anti-bot" process and I made reference to the Google Groups CAPTCHA design.

Today I found out that reCAPTCHA.net offers the same service for free. It's called Mailhide

Just browse out to http://mailhide.recaptcha.net/, supply an email address, and they will provide you with HTML you can use to mask your email.

Here's the process with pretty pictures

Providing an email address.

The generated HTML

Once the HTML is embedded, clicking the "..." gives you

When you provide the correct input you get

Pretty cool huh?

Give it a try yourself: User...@Domain.com

They also have an API available if you want to do the same process in bulk.

Happy coding.

Virtualization: My experience installing VMware ESXi 3.5.0

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Kohnen) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 19:26:00 +0000

What is VMware Server ESXi?

When you're using visualization usually you need a host operating system that your virtual machines (VM's) will run on top of. With ESXi, the need for a host OS is removed.

"With a General Purpose OS, the VM's are only as reliable as the host OS. So if the host OS crashes or needs to be patched all the VM's on the machine are affected." ESXi removes these problems. In addition ESXi only has a 32MB footprint, therefore using less resources and having a smaller surface area for attack.

If you want to learn more, check out the VMware ESXi Online Demo.

Now let's begin my experience installing ESXi 3.5

Installation

First problem I ran into was trying to get the installer to actually run. I kept getting an error when the installer tried to start, "Unable to find a supported device to write the VMware ESX." Turns out, VMware ESXi won't install to an IDE hard drive with it's standard configuration. After some Googling I found a post in VMware's community forum which pointed me to the solution to my problem.

"Install ESXi 3.5 to an IDE drive"

Now I was able to successfully complete the rest of the install process.

Configuration

Second problem I hit was when I was trying to configure the "Management Network". I wanted to give a static IP address to my ESXi server. Every time I tried to enter the menu I was repeatedly asked to "Restore network factory settings." This time I learned the config menu does weird things if it encounters hardware it doesn't support. (In this case my motherboard's onboard NIC.) Google and Expert Exchange helped me find this answer.

"What storage and network devices will ESXi 3.5 recognize?"

I installed a different NIC and was able to successfully complete the the rest of the configuration process.

Client Installation

I then connected to my new ESXi's IP via http in a web browser, and downloaded/installed the "VMware Infrastructure Client". (This thru me for a loop too, the install manual never said how you got a copy of the infrastructure client.)

Adding a storage device

The next hurdle I had to jump was when I tried to add my WAMP VM via the "Import a virtual appliance" feature. The moment I would click on the feature, I would get an error "Index was out of range. Must be non-negative and less then the size of the collection. Parameter name:index"

This error I figured out by poking around. The problem was because I didn't have a data source configured yet. I had to configure one thru the "Configuration" tab. Heh, go figure. :-P (Once again, something the installation manual kinda missed.)

So I put the server in "Maintenance Mode" and did the following.

Once I was done, I brought the server back out of "Maintenance Mode," and the error was gone.

Importing a Virtual Machine

Justin, so you're done right? Well almost, yes my server was ready, but I still needed to add my VM to it. The last issue I ran into was when I again tried to import my WAMP VM using the "Import a virtual appliance" feature. The WAMP VM is a VMware Workstation VM, and Workstation VM's are not compatible with VMware Server ESXi.

To solve this problem I had to use another tool from VMware. The VMware vCenter Converter. I used the "Import Machine" feature of the converter to import my Workstation VM into my ESXi server.

After the conversion/import process was done, SUCCESS!!! I now have my WAMP VM running on my ESXi server.

Now wasn't that easy?

Where can I download old versions of JetBrains' ReShaper?

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Kohnen) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 20:17:00 +0000

Often times I've tried to find old version of JetBrain's amazing tool ReSharper (R#). Usually I have to settle with some download site. Which makes me feel a little uneasy. The other day I found the JetBrains' provided link. So I figured I would share with the world. http://www.jetbrains.net/devnet/docs/DOC-280;jsessionid=3B8C7B3BA56CA355357DE8E5437485E9

The "var" keyword works in .NET 2.0?

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Kohnen) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 02:51:00 +0000

Just the other day I installed Resharper 4.1 into my copy of Visual Studio 2008. Once I loaded my .NET 2.0 web application Resharper started suggesting I replace my variable type declarations with "var"!

What's this? Isn't "var" a C# 3.0 (.NET 3.5 Framework) feature?

So for giggles I swapped int for var and did a solution build (Ctrl + Shift + B).

NO ERRORS!

I ran the web application.

NO ERRORS!

So I posed a question to my twitter friends.

Why is my C# project for 2.0 framework, compiling fine with "var"?

Turns out, it's all Visual Studio 2008 slight of hand. As Phil Japikse says:

@JustinKohnen it's syntactic sugar in VS2008. If you look at the IL, it compiles down to 2.0 compatible code.

Isn't that interesting? You can also use automatic properties, and object initializers too! After Phil opened my eyes, he wrote a great blog post about these Visual Studio 2008 Compiler Tricks.

A thanks to Phil Japikse, Leon, and Matt Brewer for the help.

FYI: I'm changing my feed URL

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Kohnen) — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 20:27:00 +0000

I just wanted to give my RSS people a heads up. Some time in the next few months I will be shutting down my old feed URL.

My new URL is:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/JustinKohnen

Please switch over when you get a chance. I'd hate to lose you as a reader.

Kindest Regards,
Justin Kohnen, Geek

When do browsers download images defined in Cascading Style Sheets?

noreply@blogger.com (Justin Kohnen) — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 03:59:00 +0000

Just the other day I was talking with a coworker about ASP.NET Themes. We were addressing a question about putting multiple Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) into a theme.

Unless you do something special, ASP.NET Themes adds a link reference to every CSS file in the theme directory. We were fine with this behavior even if the styles weren't used by the page, but what about all the background images defined in the style sheets?

Here's where we asked the question "When do browsers download images defined in Cascading Style Sheets?"

Here are my findings:

Both Internet Explorer 7 and FireFox 3.0 do not download an image unless the style is used on an element of the page.

For Example:

Consider a style sheet called style.css which containes

.image
{
 background:transparent url(testImage.png);
}

If you have a html file which contains:

<html>
 <head>
 <link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" media="screen, projection" href="style.css">
 </head>
 <body>
 Hello World
 </body>
</html>

There will be two requests to the server: html, and css

If you have a html file which contains:

<html>
 <head>
 <link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" media="screen, projection" href="style.css">
 </head>
 <body class="image">
 Hello World
 </body>
</html>

There will be three requests to the server: html, css, and png

I tested using FireFox 3.0 with FireBug (HEH HEH, FIRE!), and Internet Explorer 7 and Fiddler.