One of the most frustrating things that I've found in developing/debugging in IE is that you can only view the page source which was initially rendered with the first page load. This was acceptable a couple of years ago, but is really a huge limitation utilizing AJAX (and I'm not just referring to UpdatePanel's).

Of course you can view generated source with Firefox but what are you supposed to do when debugging any newly inserted client side script and/or viewing dynamically added markup? After searching around I found that you can simply copy and past the following script into the browsers address bar and it will open a new window with the pages currently generated source.

javascript:void(window.open("javascript:document.open(\"text/plain\");document.write(opener.document.body.parentNode.outerHTML)"))

You can also add this to your IE favorites or add it to your Links toolbar so that its always one click away.

I cannot tell you how much this saved me this last week when I was using eval() to dynamically add script elements to the page's header.

I recently lost my home server and was forced to re-install the base OS. Among a number of problems that I was having was that I needed to find a free utility which could both RIP CDs to an ISO or burn an existing ISO onto a disk. Usually I can just mount the ISO's but in the case where I needed to do a clean install on a server, I was forced to boot off of a win2k3 installation CD.

Anyway I was super happy to find this little utility which met all my needs. You can download the vista version here : http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com/Vista.htm . Also an overview of how to use (with screenshots) can be found here : http://www.petri.co.il/how_to_write_iso_files_to_cd.htm .

A couple of days ago I was working converting one of our grids from using server-side databinding to pure client-side AJAX databinding. I ran into a very interesting issue/feature which I was not aware of : you cannot set the onclick action for an element with javascript, using a straight forward approach.

A sample way to do this on the server (for a button) would be :

btnTest.OnClientClick = "alert('Something Here');
return false;";

The following simply does not work (when you are setting on the client):

$get('clientIdHere').onclick = alert('message');

Instead you will need to do something like this (Thanks to this post I was able to find this solution):

element.onclick = function() {your_func_with_param(params)}

If you use jQuery (which seems to be picking up steam in the .Net community) then you might write something like this :

$('#' + elementClientId).bind('click', function() 

{ alert('display something here'); } );

One last example as to how you can use jQuery to set onclick events in JavaScript would be an real world example that we have in our project where we are doing client side databinding with telerik's radGrid and are attempting to set client side events for Edit and Delete columns. (do not ever attempt to do this - telerik controls are terrible for real world applications are most of the functionality client side functionality just simply doesn't work, I will post more on this).

Here is an example as to how you would set an image's onclick event, on each rowdatabound event, so that we can edit a grid item in a popup window.

$('#' + args.get_item().get_cell("EditColumn").firstChild.id).bind('click', 

   { 'editUrl': args.get_dataItem().EncryptedEditUrl
}, function(event)
{ ShowPopupWindow(event.data['editUrl'], 'EditSomething', 'RefreshGrid()', 360, 380, true);
});

Take note on how you need to build a JSON object and pass it to the new function in order for this to work properly. Giri Kalluri is the one who pointed this solution out to me.

I've been working on the same web project for over 2 1/2 years now... Its been a great experience because I was able to start the foundation of the project and have watched it grow from an idea, to a simple 2-tier ASP.Net web app, and now to a multi-tier application which utilizes a wonderful service architecture and has numerous external integration points. I've worked with great people along the way and we still have an impeccable team but there is one thing looming on the horizon which we cannot fend off. Its the J-word. Not my beloved J# but JavaScript.

When the project started, ASP.Net 2.0 was the latest and great and with Atlas looming on the horizon we designed the application with the expectation that the UpdatePanel would AJAXify the user's experience so that they felt like they were working with a rich client. Well it was great for a while but once we started stacking up more features in smaller content areas (which is another issue all-together) we started realizing the the standard UpdatePanel callbacks were not cutting it. Plus with sites like flickr, facebook, etc.  it makes it much more difficult to please your users with traditional postbacks (even if they are wrapped in UpdatePanel AJAX calls). We had previously evaluated our WCF service to see if the issue was SQL roundtrips, other service dependencies, and all that we found was a very well performing infrastructure which should only yield a great web application for its frontend. The only left to change was the web application tier itself, so we began to scrutinize where we could squeeze a few more seconds with each user click.

What we realized a few weeks ago is that we were going to need to embrace JavaScript to make true AJAX calls...which meant that we were going to:

1. Bind our grids using full client side databinding - For this we would be making PageMethod AJAX calls or Webservice AJAX calls. We planned on using the latest Telerik RadGrid for our grid control. (Using the Telerik Grid control has been a nightmare thus far but ill post on that @ a later time)

2. Use the Telerik RadWindow control for our popups -  In the past we were using <Div>'s to hide and show content within the context of an update panel. It looked great but the extra 1-2 second(s) of lag time added up to a poor user experience.

3. Focus on the overall user's experience by trying to eliminate mouse-clicks with a new set of navigation controls. The first one which we are building is a flickr style control which when you hover over, will dynamically build a context menu so that users can navigate to their immediate need. (Since our app is a CRM the contact names will contain this functionality)

Overall this is our current approach. We are in the middle of our first sprint meant to tackle the performance improvements so we're hopeful that a lot of positives will come out of this. More posts will follow documenting our experiences...

My wife and I recently took a 1 month trip to Europe. We had been planning this ever since we got married (about 2 1/2 years ago) but work has been so busy that I was never really able to find the time. We planned to be gone for 3 weeks and in the last days leading up the trip we added an extra week. The first 2 weeks we're planned out but after that we just used our rail pass to go wherever sounded the most interesting.

Our Itinerary

• London
• Paris
• Versailles
• Florence
• Tuscan Towns
• Cinque Terre
• Rome
• Amalfi Coast
• Pompeii
• Venice
• Switzerland (Murren, Gimmelwald, Latterbrunnen, and Interlaken)
• Germany (Rothenburg)
• Amsterdam
• Belgium (Brugges)

My Humble Recommendations when Traveling in Europe

1. Make all of your foreign purchases with an American Express. Although Visa and Mastercard are taken all over Europe, there is a 3% conversion charge on all foreign purchases. American Express only charges 1% so you'll save 2 percent on all of your credit card purchases which can add up. Also, if you get the American Express Blue Card you can get 1.5% cashback on all of your purchases (after you spend 5K) so then you can foreign charge expenses all together.
2. Try to book your hotels through expedia  if you cannot find a good deal on a hostel or a pensione. This works out especially well when there is a currency conversion which is not working in your favor. We were able to save thousands of dollars by booking a few hotels on expedia. I'm not sure how they do it but here is an example : London conversion rate 2.1 Pound to 1 USD. Hotel Room 275 Pounds = 577.50 USD. In London we were able to book a room @ a holiday in for only 125USD which saved us about 450 a night. In Amsterdam we stayed for 3 nights and were saving almost 500 dollars a night on our room. I'm not suggesting that its always best to use expedia but if its a big city, and the dollar is not that strong (ex. like it was about a month ago), then check out expedia before committing to anything. (As far as hostels go...DO NOT stay at any hostels near the train station in Rome)
3. Read up on the history before you go. We read Rick Steve's Europe 101, Rick Steve's Europe through the Backdoor, and Rick Steve's Best of Europe. The 101 book was absolutely amazing. It covered all of the basics of history + art. Had it not been for this I would have had little to no appreciation for most of the art we saw in the museums. Definitely bring the Best of Europe book on your trip and instead of carrying the book around just tear out the section which pertains to your current location and put it in your back pocket.
4. Get a good camera and read up on photo basics. We got 2 cameras before we went: A Canon G9 and a Canon XSI SLR. Both took amazing pictures which we'll enjoy forever. (We went to Chicago earlier this year and were pretty dissapointed with some of our pics so we decided that it was worth the extra money to upgrade cameras)
5. Talk to the locals. One of the biggest surprises that I had on the trip was how friendly everyone was to us. People were more than willing to point you in the right direction if you looked confused, and they were also very eager to understand more about the US (specifically the upcoming election and our perceptions of W). The people there really made the trip for me, on one of our last nights in Brugges we met a local older man, who took it upon himself to walk us through the city, give us a brief historical tour with his own personal context, invited us to dinner with his friend, and treated us to the best beer and wine that we've had to date.
6. Talk to other people. We had such a good time meeting other Americans abroad. It was really inspiring to see travelers of all different ages and walks of life. It definitely helped us gain perspective on the world.
7. Eat on great meal in each city. Although we tried to cut costs as much as possible, we did treat ourselves to a really nice meal in each of the major places that we visited. Going out to a local gourmet meal can permanently imprint a positive outlook on your visit.
8. Drink local beer and wine. The beer was so amazing. Luckily there is a store near my house which imports beer from all over the world, so ive been able to drink some of my favorites here too.
9. Share your pictures on flickr. You can see our Europe 2008 collection and sets on our flickr account. They're all uploaded but not completely commented.

Final Comments

Of all of the things which I've done in my life, I truly believe that this was the most enriching experience that my wife and I have shared. I cannot think of any better way to spend a month of vacation time and a ton of money. I can't wait to go back sometime soon....

Wow its been a long time since this blog has seen an update. The project that ive been working on has demanded much more time ... like 2 years of my dedicated attention. Im vowing @ this time to start posting on this blog again. Im not sure if anyone is even subscribed to this anymore but what will come in the next few days are more posts on WCF, AJAX, ASP.NET and probably less of TFS releated topics.

About 3 months ago I had a need to do some in-memory sorting on a generic list of objects which were being bound to a GridView control. Due to the fact that we were not working with standard ADO.NET objects and that LINQ has not been fully released, we decided to get clever and come up with a simple sorting method which could handle the case where the a list of objects could be sorted by any one of the fields which was clicked on the GridView control. Note: For the sake of simplicity, I created a dumbed down version of both the object and the sorting method, such that all properties were strings.

For weeks I had heard Sasha talk about how neat anonymous methods were in .NET 2.0, so we sat down and wrote out this nice little SortBy() function. 1st we enumerated through the generic list. 2nd we took the passed propertyname and did a compare between the properties in the two different customer objects. 3rd we used the SortDirection to determine how we would return the compare results. The result, a great little method which is capable of sorting a generic collection with only the objects propertyname and the sortdirection supplied.

          public
          class CustomerList
: List<Customer> { /// <summary>///
Sorts the CustomerList using Generics, Anonymous Methods, and Reflection ///
</summary>/// <param name="propertyName">Property
Name to sort the List with</param>/// <param
name="sortDirection">Direction to sort the List</param>publicvoid SortBy(string propertyName,
SortDirection sortDirection) { this.Sort ( //Anonymous
method used sort the base generic list.delegate(Customer
item1, Customer item2) { //Use reflection to get the Properties PropertyInfo
prop1 = item1.GetType().GetProperty(propertyName); PropertyInfo prop2 = item2.GetType().GetProperty(propertyName); if (prop1
== null || prop2 == null)
{ thrownew ArgumentException("Invalid
property name: " + propertyName + " specified.");
} //Get the property values from each of the objectsstring value1
= (string)prop1.GetValue(item1, null); string value2
= (string)prop2.GetValue(item2, null); int compareVal
= Comparer.Default.Compare(value1, value2); if (sortDirection
== SortDirection.Ascending) return compareVal; elsereturn compareVal
* -1; //return the negated
value } ); } } publicclass Customer
{ privatestring _id; privatestring _firstName; privatestring _lastName; privatestring _age; publicstring ID
{ get { return _id;
} set { _id = value; } } publicstring FirstName
{ get { return _firstName;
} set { _firstName = value; } } publicstring LastName
{ get { return _lastName;
} set { _lastName = value; } } publicstring Age
{ get { return _age;
} set { _age = value; } } } 

Old news...but very cool if you didnt already know....Team Foundation Server Power Tools v1.2 was released.

The Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server Power Tool (formerly known as Power Toys) is a set of enhancements, tools and command-line utilities that improve the Team Foundation Server user experience. This release includes two new command-line tools for the developer and three non-command line tools: a process template editor, a set of custom check-in policies, and a test tools build task:

• Team Foundation Server Power Tool Commands (tfpt.exe) - A command-line tool with enhanced functionality for Team Foundation Version Control with graphical user interfaces for some commands.
• Process Template Editor - A tool integrated with Visual Studio for authoring custom work item types and some of the associated process template components.
• Check-In Policy Pack - A set of handy check-in policies to address needs customers have expressed.
• Test Tools Build Task - A tool that allows running unit tests by simply specifying the DLLs, or by specifying a file name pattern in TfsBuild.proj, instead of using .vsmdi files to specify tests to run.

I was a little bummed that the check-in policy pack didn't have any of the policies which I had requested (laughs)(especially since I posted on sending all of your comments). With that aside I couldnt have been happier with this release of the Process Template Editor. The integration with visual studio, the form control, and the validations were a great upgrade in this release. Note: You must first install the Domain-Specific Language Tools for Visual Studio 2005 in order for the Process Template Editor to appear in the Team Menu.

Here are a few screenshots of some of the process template editor features:

Screen - Editing the Process Template

Screen - Editing a work item type

Screen - Previewing the work item control

Screen - Work Item workflow

In the end, I couldn't be happier because this release came at the perfect time for me. I am steadily working on my Master's Project and alot my project will require me to customize the MSF for Agile process template, work items, and reports. Currently, my tentative title is "Customizing Team Foundation Server Process Templates for Software Quality Improvements". I know its quite a mouthfull, but I figured it would be a great way to learn the ins-and-outs of TFS and how to apply some of my MSE Master's knowledge to Microsoft's latest and greatest.

After installing Team Foundation Server and Team Foundation Build, I came across a problem where I would successfully execute a Build on the project, however the build would not appear in the Build Report.

I opened up the Builds database on the TFS Server to see whether not the builds had been recognized. I found that the builds were being stored but that they were not being pulled over into the reports.

This issue is a result of the fact that the reports in TFS are pulled from the data warehouse and the not the Builds Database. In order to decrease the latency between your builds showing up in your Build reports (along with any other TFS changes not showing up in your reports....ex. closing out a bunch of work items and having it reflect on your "Remaining Work" reports) you can change the rate at which the datawarehouse is updated.

The warehouse is updated on a timer so in order to improve the turn around for your reports (or more importantly if you need to pull some reports from some data which has not been updated in the warehouse) then you can modify the update interval by calling this webservice.

Changing the Interval Setting

In Internet Explorer, open the following URL:

http://<tfsserver>:8080/Warehouse/v1.0/warehousecontroller.asmx?op=ChangeSetting

where <tfsserver> represents the name of the Team Foundation Server. A page that contains two boxes labeled settingID and newValue opens.

In the box labeled settingID, type RunIntervalSeconds.

In the box labeled newValue, type the new interval time in seconds.

Click Invoke to change the setting.

Security

To perform this procedure, you must be a member of the Administrators group on the Team Foundation application-tier server. For more information, see Team Foundation Server Permissions.

Manually Kick Off the DataWarehouse Update

1. Go to http://localhost:8080/Warehouse/warehousecontroller.asmx using a browser on the app tier.

2. Click the ‘Run’ link.

3. Press the ‘Invoke’ button.

This will trigger a refresh of the reports.

I meant to publish this document some time ago, but I haven't had much time at all to post anything lately.

This document was a result of early project research into what DAL and BLL code generation tool that we should use. In sum the project was a CRM web application which was to be developed using the MSF Agile process. The requirements were loosely defined and likely to change. Before I had started at the company, a developer had already created a prototype site for the project using the NetTiers template for CodeSmith. Initially, I was extremely impressed with the generated code but as I started needing more customization, flexibility, and stability I decided to do a small comparison between NetTiers and LLBLGen to see which product best served our project.

This .doc file is the result of my findings:

Code Generation Product Comparison.doc

In the end we decided to go with LLBLGen. Looking back  a few months ago I definitely feel that this was the best decision that we could have made. Our company is so impressed that a couple of our other projects have purchased licenses and are under development as we speak.

Biggest reasons why we chose LLBLGen over NetTiers:

1. LLBLGen is much more flexible - We are capable of renaming entities, customizing property names, adding custom relationships, creating typed lists, etc.
2. LLBLGen will probably be supported much more strongly. Since NetTiers is an open source project we were concerned about building an important (costly) application on something which would bear little to no responsibility on any vendors.
3. NetTiers 2 was currently under development when we were considering the decision. As we modified the database and regenerated the project, we were running into both runtime and compiler errors.

1. The first .NET application that I ever wrote was in J#.Net. That being said, I still share some reverence for the old language. Well() not() that() much() anymore().
2. Up through my last year in college, I never had thought that I was going to work as a programmer/software engineer. At that time, my true passion was philosophy...so much in fact that my goal was to go back to grad school to become a philosophy professor.
3. I surfed competitively for many years (as an amatuer). I was featured in a few surfing magazines, I finished equal 7ths in CA and in the top 20 at Nationals.
4. I dated my wife for almost 11 years before we got married. We started dating in Jr. High and finally married a year after I graduated from SDSU.
5. Although I hate to reveal something this terrible...At one point in my life I was seriously considered buying a mac. It was a sad day...but to my defense I was a confused Linux user at that time...please don't judge me.

Although nobody really tagged me for this. I still thought it would be interesting...especially since I need to get back into the swing of blogging. Currently, I'm working on a project which has had way too much of an aggressive schedule and its starting to take its toll on my time.

Here are some more from much greater developers/bloggers than I : Buck Hodges, Martin Woodward, Rob Caron, Eric Lee, Mickey Gousett.

Flickr has decided to give the gift of additional bandwidth. Free accounts can now upload 100mb a month (previously 20mb) and Pro accounts now have unlimited bandwidth (previously 2gb a month).