March 2004 Entries

Scott Watermasysk has posted an excellent article that explains Generics in it's simplest form possible. Call this Generics 101. An awesome read to get you really pumped up (if you're not already) about Generics. Thanks Scott!

I realize Longhorn is still only in it's pre-alpha stages, but please put the order of the taskbar right-click menu back how it was before (in previous versions of Windows). This thing is driving me crazy!

I've always been the kind of guy who loves using command prompts. I guess that is partly a reason why I got deep into *nix back in college. No windows, just a trusty command prompt. That carried into how I worked in Windows. I still to this day add a shortcut to the command prompt in the quick start area because I love using them.

There are times when you are integrating your .NET applications with other existing applications that you cannot modify and is possibly even non-.NET application. This can often result in problems integrating your .NET application's windows with the other application. However, this can be accomplished. You can easily obtain the handle (HWND) of the other application and convert it to a System.Windows.Forms.IWin32Window which can be used in your .NET application.

Tony Schreiner, who works on the IE team at Microsoft, has posted about some of the changes coming for IE in XP SP2. Many many great changes, such as the new information bar to lessen the modal dialog madness - but my favorite is the new option on the authenticode dialog “Never install software from Company X”. About frickin' time! I can finally opt to never see a prompt to download something like Gator again!

The other day I posted again about using Dispose. I guess I just can't post about Dispose without also mentioning using. For those not aware of what using is, I am not talking about the using directive (where you include namespaces in your code such as using System.Text; etc) but the using statement. The using statement defines a scope for an object where the object will be automatically exposed at the end of the scope. The using statement goes hand in hand with calling Dispose since that is wha

Scott Mitchell (of 4GuysFromRolla.com) has a cool new article up on MSDN that has a pretty complete and detailed dip into URL Rewriting. An awesome article - Scott really walks you through the entire process. This article will give you everything you need to implement URL Rewriting in your ASP.NET apps.

I see things surface from time to time on the question of Dispose vs. Close on objects that implement IDisposable. I posted a while back my ideas on why calling Dispose is not only correct, but necessary. To me the facts are clear, but you'll find the question arise frequently. There seems to be two areas of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) surrounding the use of Dispose.

Tha Shizzolator done tricked out my blog.

About time. In the tradition of nerd diners in other areas, Paolo Hutchinson suggests we do one here. Count me in.

FYI, I'm going to be changing a few things this week on my blog. Basically the URL will change slightly (I'll be going back to the standard port 80 instead of the freaky port 82 that it get's redirected to now). Old links will still work and will end up in the right place. However, for those subscribed to the RSS feed, you'll need to modify the URL in your reader or you won't get any of the new posts. The change should take place on Tuesday.

I just caught some news from Neil (who kinda speaks Elvish) that Peter Jackson (LOTR director) is planning the film the LOTR prequel “The Hobbit”. And all the geeks rejoice.

Carter Maslan has made available yet another Longhorn concept application video (See here and here for others). This time focusing on the financial services industry. Big focus on WinFS and Indigo in this one.

As a follow-up to my last post about an article on CodeProject, I should point out that I do live by Scott Hanselman's Rule# 0x3eA

I came across an interesting article on CodeProject today. The article discusses an attribute based strategy for automatic population of instance fields and properties on an ASP.NET page from parameters supplied via properties of the Request object (.QueryString, .Form etc...). A very interesting approach. I am not endorsing using it and haven't really considered the performance impact that this might have - but what I found interesting was the approach. I really like to see people think outside

An awesome new article from Eric Gunnerson showed up on MSDN this week that focuses on the cost of calling code dynamically. Eric compares the speeds between direct call, using Type.InvokeMember(), calling through an interface, & calling via a delegate. It should be no surprise that Type.InvokeMember() lost out to the others by a long shot. That's not to say you shouldn't use Type.InvokeMember, it has some great uses - but you should know what you're getting yourself into.

According to the Death Clock, I will die on Monday, December 29, 2042. Dang. I'll only be 72, what a jip.

Last month Microsoft released a new application block. This application block of re-usable code and samples, can be used to model your own applications to allow them to detect the presence or absence of a network connection, cache data for use while offline, and re-synchronize data and tasks with the network once the application goes online.

Do you know what the difference is between using SET and SELECT when assigning varaibles in T-SQL? Well, there is a difference. I came accross a great article by Narayana Vyas Kondreddi from the UK that describes the difference between the two.