ASP.NET Resources

Load Testing vs. Profiling

A fellow geek asked me the other day, “What’s your take on load testing and profiling?” Incidentally, this question comes up once in a while, so I figured I’d explain my position here.

6/22/2009 |

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IIS7 Resource Kit Rocks!

I’ve never been much of an “infrastructure guy” which is why Microsoft’s Resource Kit books always induced sleep on me.

6/19/2009 |

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Getting to the Bottom of JavaScript Includes

I get frustrated when an outside vendor insists that I include their JavaScript file all the way up in my pages. Usually they want it right in the <head>. I have a couple of issues with that.

6/17/2009 |

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If Only They Tested It on Themselves

The company I’m on a contract with has moved to a new building in NYC. Actually, it’s an old building, but fully remodeled. Since day one we’ve all noticed weird “bugs” about the new design which could’ve been easily prevented if… the contractors tried to use the building the way employees would.

6/15/2009 |

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Message to GEICO: Usability First Please

Seriously, GEICO, how difficult is it to write a regex to accept a policy number exactly as you print it without resorting to the lame “do not include dashes”?

6/15/2009 |

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SuperPreview Blew Me Away

A fellow user group attendee pointed me to a preview of SuperPreview for Expression Web (no pun intended). Testing a web site in various browsers has been such a headache over the years! Either you had to install lots of virtual machines (I so don’t recommend running multiple versions of IE on the same box!), or use a paid service which provided you merely a static screenie of the site. Not good for debugging either way.

6/14/2009 |

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Slides and Code from Hartford Code Camp 2

A big thank you to those of you who came to my presentation at the Hartford, CT Code Camp 2. A special thank you goes to the organizers and sponsors of the event.

6/14/2009 |

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Temporary Fixes Are Permanent Fixes

A somber reminder that temporary (aka “quick and dirty”) fixes almost always become permanent:

6/11/2009 |

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Geek Marketing Done Right

Although I’ve been reading his blog for some time, I’ve never met Billy McCafferty. And yet I’m fascinated by his latest brainchild: IT Samurai School.

5/23/2009 |

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Visual Studio Full Screen For Presentations

Visual Studio has one very obvious but little–used feature which helps presentations go much smoother: the full screen view.

5/21/2009 |

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Dear Art Director...

Dear Art Director, I believe you are confused. To prove my point, please answer a simple multiple-choice question below.

5/17/2009 |

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Why Async Pages?

While reading about asynchronous web pages (Chapter 11 of Pro ASP.NET 3.5 with C# 2008), I came across a great reminder:

5/17/2009 |

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Two Components with The Same Id AJAX Error

While debugging a script control written with ASP.NET AJAX, we came across this weird exception:

5/16/2009 |

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ColoRotate Is Cooler Than Kuler

Michael Douma sent me a quick introduction to a very interesting project he’s involved in: ColoRotate. In Michael’s own words:

5/16/2009 |

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Rediscovering Nolo

I’m my persistent quest for independent consulting, I have read several books by Nolo. In case you’ve never heard of them, Nolo publishes a wide array of titles for those of us who want to understand legal and accounting mumbo-jumbo. They neither get cutesy like the For Dummies series (those are great in their own way) nor do they sound like law dictionaries.

3/22/2009 |

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Book Review: ASP.NET 3.5 / Application Architecture and Design

It is difficult to write about architecture because it’s such a subjective topic. The term itself means different things to different people. Given that Microsoft produces weak architectural guidance, I welcome any and all attempts to hone in on that illusive perfect architecture of a web application. Unfortunately, ASP.NET 3.5: Application Architecture and Design by Vivek Thakur falls short of my expectations.

3/22/2009 |

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Web Site vs Web Application Project (WAP)

In ASP.NET 1.x there was only one way to create a web app—the Web Application Project (WAP). In ASP.NET 2.0 WAP was killed, deliberately or not, and replaced with the lame Web Site “model.” WAP for Visual Studio 2005 was shipped separately later.

3/13/2009 |

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Cassini vs IIS

Cassini is a “simple, fully managed Web server that hosts ASP.NET” (source). It’s a lightweight “server” you get when you create a new ASP.NET application in Visual Studio.

3/12/2009 |

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Class View Pane: An Overlooked Visual Studio Gem

For me, a quick way to see if a project is properly structured is to go to View | Class View. This is one badly overlooked but handy Visual Studio tool.

3/12/2009 |

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Let Your Code Fail Early

To the list of disturbing practices I nominate this:

1/26/2009 |

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