ASP.NET Resources

June 2005

Office Web Components: Object Model and Terminology

Back in 2001 I picked up a copy of the MSDN News newspaper at some Microsoft event. Yes, you read it right: MSDN News and newspaper. The newspaper was quite small (8 sheets or so) and had quite a few very interesting articles. I even called up MSDN Magazine to find out how to subscribe to MSDN News, but—surprise!—they hadn’t heard of such a newspaper and had no clue about subscription.

6/30/2005 |

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Hype On a Sticky

From Coder to Developer by Mike Gunderloy (sidebar, page 7): When you read an article about some hot new technology, resist the temptation to immediately add it to your code. Instead, write it down on a sticky note and stick it to your monitor. If your application really needs a distributed reflection-based plug-in API, it will still need it in the morning. If not, it’s a lot easier to rip off the sticky note than to roll back the code changes.

6/26/2005 |

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MSNBC Makeover

I don’t know if I missed an announcement or they didn’t publicize it in the first place, but MSNBC has finally updated its web site and got rid of horrendous dropdown menus. The giant banner at the top is gone as well, replaced with a search box and some miscellany. I don’t know what it is, but the whole theme feels lighter this way.

6/26/2005 |

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Book Review: Building Accessible Websites

I have to agree with Veerle: Joe Clark, the author of Building Accessible Websites, might’ve missed his call as an actor. If only Stanley Kubrick auditioned Mr. Clark for the part of Sgt. Hartman, we would’ve had a different Full Metal Jacket. To set the tone for the book review, let’s rewrite the opening scene.

6/23/2005 |

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Maybe Linux Does Stand a Chance

This is a follow-up to my previous post, Linux Does Not Stand a Chance. I can almost hear Bush supporters cry, "Flip-flopper!":) My biggest pet peeve with all Linux distributions I have had is the awful clutter in the menus. A fresh installation comes with a myriad of little utilities which really should be integrated into bigger tools and hidden away.

6/22/2005 |

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Linux Does Not Stand a Chance

Let me state upfront: I like Linux as an operating system, and I like KDE as its desktop environment. Over the years I’ve tried different distributions, such as Red Hat, Slackware, Mandrake Linux, Corel Linux, SuSE, Linspire, Xandros. My newest Linux toy is ArkLinux.

6/16/2005 |

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Hoo-Hah Over MSN Spaces-China

Every media outlet has picked up the story of Microsoft censoring out “freedom”, “democracy” and such from its newly launched blog service MSN Spaces–China. Funny enough, most authors cry in their hankie over this, blaming Microsoft for fighting the virtues of democracy and freedom and… the local McDonald’s. And since we’re comparing Microsoft’s EULA and China’s domestic policy, how about we compare the Constitution and the Patriot Act while we’re at it?

6/16/2005 |

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Hide and Seek With Amazon

Speaking of defensive design, here’s a real-life situation: a person called our company (!) trying to find customer service phone number at Amazon.com! Imagine that. I was a bit lost how that could happen, so I went to Amazon.com with a hope to help this person and dig out Amazon’s 1-800 number or something. I found jack.

6/14/2005 |

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Back On Track

The past two weeks I have had some family in town for my birthday (the big "three-0"), so I needed to slow down blogging and spend some quality time with the family. I have managed to finish reading Joe Clark’s Building Accessible Websites, though, so a review is coming up in a few.

6/13/2005 |

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Toyota Spammers

Over the years the value of email has deteriorated by scumbags of all walks of life peddling junk, spreading virii, and coaxing your personal information through phishing. It’s difficult to rely on email as your primary means of communication these days. On the upside, this distrust plays well into the hands of sales people—many of them would send an email, and then follow-up with a phone call to make sure you receive and read it! The hands-off nature of email, the way to choose whether you want to ignore someone, is not there any longer!

6/8/2005 |

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Control Freak

I’m a sucker for all kinds of sidebars, monitors of system resources, and other gismos which help me see what’s going on in the system, how much memory is taken/available, which process is being too greedy, etc.

6/7/2005 |

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Fixes to Pipeline Generator

No, I’m not talking about power outages or oil pipelines. I’m talking about my online tool (see launch announcement) which generates templates of HttpModules, HttpHandlers, and HttpHandlerFactorys [sic]. Brad Greubel brought to my attention that the generator was producing incorrect code in VB.NET: CodeDOM was emitting code Inheriting interfaces, instead of Implementing them.

6/6/2005 |

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Color Blindness Simulator Now Available

When I first read about protanopia, deuteranopia, tritanopia and other vision deficiencies in Joe Clark’s Building Accessible Websites, I was all confused. I went back and re-read the section on color blindness. It surely fueled my curiosity, so I started digging deeper. This is how I came across a very interesting research, conducted by Japanese researchers, which I mentioned in my previous post.

6/1/2005 |

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Web talk

June 2005