Paul Speranza's .Net Life

JQuery selectors – selecting elements by a partial id

Paul Speranza — Fri, 08 May 2009 00:28:00 GMT

Recently a coworker had a grid like the one below in an ASP.Net page. He wanted me too see if there was any way to make the javascript the manages the checkboxes easier to maintain. + The checkboxes on the left check or uncheck the day check boxes for...(read more)

Toggling visibility with JQuery

Paul Speranza — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:30:00 GMT

There is a subtle issue with the JQuery toggle method. I had a page that had a div set up similar to this < div id ="divGoodbye" style =" border : 1px solid green ; visibility : hidden ; float : right ; "> Goodbye </ div > I was trying to...(read more)

My new love - jQuery

Paul Speranza — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:47:00 GMT

I have been learning jQuery for about a month now. All I can say is wow! Where were they hiding this? I have been trying to write a post on it for about a week but everytime someone beats me to what I was going to say. I am going to start sharing some...(read more)

Curly braces and C# Code generation using Sparx Systems' Enterprise Architect

Paul Speranza — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 01:31:50 GMT

When I write code I like the curly braces to be on the next line public class Customer { } I use Enterprise Architect by Sparx Systems to create my UML. Unfortunately, the code generated looks like this public class Customer{ } There is...(read more)

What should Microsoft do next?

Paul Speranza — Mon, 05 May 2008 01:50:50 GMT

Ok, so the Yahoo! thing seems to be dead for now. So what does everyone think they should do with the money that they obviously have lying around to invest in other companies? I think they need some drastic changes. Take the iPhone for example. Windows...(read more)

Getting calendar items using Exchange Web Services

Paul Speranza — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 22:59:00 GMT

I am no expert at exchange, let alone Exchange Web Services (EWS), but I recently had to use it to get at calendar information for a project. Let me tell you that the documentation for EWS sucks and the API is not very intuitive. That said, I was able...(read more)

Setting up Sandcastle

Paul Speranza — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 17:44:19 GMT

I just spent an interesting few hours setting up Sandcastle. The whole process is absolutely insane. Sandcastle itself is no problem, and neither is Sandcastle Help File Builder (by the way, nice job). The problem is finding the help compilers. The Help File Builder home page provides a link to resources for all of the compilers which I completely missed. My bad.

You have to install the Visual Studio 2005 SDK. Or is the the VS 2003 SDK? Wait, I have VS 2008, so is it the VS 2008 SDK? It depends on if you want the Help 1.x files generated or the Help 2.x files generated. The VS 2005 SDK puts HXCOMP.exe in an archive directory.

Why is this so hard? Even though the Help File Builder seems to be the piece that requires the compilers, when you pull down Sandcastle it should give you everything you need for help files, after all, isn't this the whole point?

In the end I decided to go with the website version for my needs. I am building a help file for a set of WCF services. These will be outward facing and we don't know what our consumers will be using for their apps. Why does the HTML version of the help require an ActiveX control for the browser?

Maybe I am missing something so if anyone has any thoughts please pass them along.

The Big Switch

Paul Speranza — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 21:58:01 GMT

In December, Michael Arrington had a post that held a contest to win a copy of 'The Big Switch' by Nick Carr of 'Does IT Matter' fame. It talks about computing services becoming a utility. I won a copy by giving my thoughts on the topic.

It was a fast read, provided some background on the history of electric utilities and then makes the parallel with computing services. Corporate infrastructure departments should give it a gander. His theory makes sense as the foundation is already being laid. Smaller shops are already there.

One interesting note - he claims Bill Gates' time has come and gone. I can see that and I guess with the impending changing of the guard at Microsoft, so does Bill.

Anyway, its an interesting book.

Overloaded again

Paul Speranza — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 21:19:00 GMT

I have just read Keith Harvey's post Slow Down Microsoft, I Can't Take It! about the pace the development of .Net technologies. He says it's not so bad but wow, my head hurts.

With the release of Visual Studio 2008 and .Net 3.5 we have several new things to play with, in addition to the CTPs for MVC, Entity Framework, Astoria plus whatever else I have heard about and can't think of at the moment.

LINQ, with all of its flavors is a monster. Thanks to Scott Guthrie for his tutorials here and here. What is going to be interesting with LINQ is to see how and when Oracle supports it, but I heard its coming.

So here we go again. I can't master it all, heck, I can't even use it all, but for now the goal is to gain a decent understanding of it so I'll know its there for a deeper dive when I start my next project.

UPDATE As Robert pointed out in the comments, I forgot Silverlight. So, while I am at it - WCF which I work with, WPF which I read a book about, WF which I ran a few tutorials for, CardSpace an on an on an on!

Ajax and security

Paul Speranza — Sat, 04 Mar 2006 07:32:00 GMT

I have been toying with Ajax on and off for a few months now. I like the idea and there seems to be a never ending stream of ajax samples, tools and ideas. What I have yet to see is how these calls are secured.

Maybe I am missing something, but I really don't think that I have seen any examples. Maybe I am just getting hung up on the fact that javascript is making the calls but I would like to see some concrete examples just to be sure. The way I see it is that there might be something in calling from javascript that throws something off. Its not as much the things that I might be looking for as much as the things that I don't know to look for.

I found this from Rob Hurlbut's blog. What I think is lacking is that many tutorials leave this kind of stuff out.

Enterprise Library 2.0 released for real

Paul Speranza — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 04:04:00 GMT

Ok, they finally let the Enterprise Library 2.0 loose in the wild. I have been jonesing for it but I promised myself I wouldn't touch it until it was final. I didn't want to spend time with the beta . I'm trying not to use beta stuff if I can help it. Congrats to the team. Now I can get to work.

Enterprise library 2.0 released?

Paul Speranza — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 15:23:00 GMT

Am I insane or did they actually release the final version? A few blogs are pointing here but it is for the November CTP. Anybody know what is up?

The answer to being overwhelmed.

Paul Speranza — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 17:06:00 GMT

I have a way to stop being overwhelmed with all of the new techologies : Stop reading all of your blogs. Yeah, right.

Overwhelmed

Paul Speranza — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 00:51:00 GMT

In my last post I mentioned I was having trouble with the VS 2005 help system. I filed a bug which got me absolutely nowhere. I had to repave my machine. All is well now. I just discovered code snippets and I like them.

Anyway, there are so many things to get into with .Net I am starting to feel like I can't focus. Just when I start digging into something I find out about something else. I really need to focus, but it is all so cool. Anyone else have this problem? if so, how do you manage it? Leave a comment.

It's been a long while!

Paul Speranza — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 13:21:00 GMT

Yes it has and shame on me. I have had alot of personal things going on, plus a new consulting gig on a massive project with a major sports network. This project is in VB .Net, and while I normally prefer C#, VB ain't too shabby. The switch over wasn't that bad but when I do other work in C# I keep forgetting braces and semi colons.

I am really going to try to blog more. Its good therapy.

Anyway, I have VS 2005 Team System Developer on my laptop at home and MS Help just keeps blowing up, so much that I can't even get the error from it. Has anyone seen this? I get results but as soon as I click on them it lets go.