Recent Articles
Jun 03 2007 - 06:01:58 PM
- Categories:
- ASP.NET
One of the most powerful features of ASP.NET AJAX is often times one of the most overlooked uses - consuming web services. Many ASP.NET developers are beginning to implement AJAX into their site by the use of the drop-in-place controls such as the UpdatePanel, ModalPopup and Timer. This article will focus on some of the deeper things of ASP.NET AJAX.
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May 31 2007 - 09:14:52 AM
- Categories:
- ASP.NET
Unless you've been hiding under a rock for the past few years you probably are at least somewhat familiar with ASP.NET AJAX. There are a few things though that you might not realize. We will discuss 1) why ASP.NET AJAX is so popular, 2) what are some potential dangers that you should be aware of and 3) how to begin using some of the basics of ASP.NET AJAX.
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May 26 2007 - 05:43:25 PM
- Categories:
- SQL
If you've used other flavors of SQL (such as MySQL or PostgreSQL) and now you have switched over to TSQL (Microsoft SQL Server) you may have noticed that there is no native way of doing pagination. In some SQL versions, pagination was as easy as "SELECT * FROM 'myTable' LIMIT 0, 10" and that would pull out the first 10 records from your table. SQL Server 2005 introduced a beautiful new world of 'Ranking Functions', one of which we can use to easily perform pagination directly in SQL.
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May 22 2007 - 05:32:36 AM
- Categories:
- SQL
Often times when inserting a new record into a table that has an auto-key field (an identity field that is set to auto increment), you may need to get that new ID back to use in other SQL statments. This can be done with @@IDENTITY or SCOPE_IDENTITY(), but those methods are very limited when compared to the new OUTPUT clause in SQL Server 2005. This article will show how and when to use these powerful TSQL features.
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May 21 2007 - 02:10:15 PM
- Categories:
- Security
If you've ever needed to send an encrypted email you know the pain of dealing with third party encryption and decryption tools especially if you need to try to explain and support them for people in management. The S/MIME protocol takes care of all the dirty work for you, allowing seemingly transparent encryption and decryption that works beautifully with all the major email applications available today.
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May 15 2007 - 05:09:52 AM
- Categories:
- SQL
Creating and maintaining 'customer' data is a common task that most people handle by creating a single table that holds a customer's FirstName, LastName, Address, City, State, Zip etc. But when it comes to tracking changes in a customer record this type of table fails to provide needed functionality. This article will show how to maintain a customer's basic data (name, address etc.) and also keep track of transient data such as an 'IsActive' status that is derived from whether or not the customer has paid for service within the last 30 days.
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May 10 2007 - 12:40:05 PM
- Categories:
- ASP.NET
Control Adapters give the ability to change how any web control is rendered. This is a very powerful tool as you can just plug in your adapter to your web application and automatically change your content for the better. With very little code we are going to see how to change the way a very simple control is rendered, the RadioButtonList, without changing our ASP.NET code! We'll discuss some of the awesome benefits that come with this power, as well as some drawbacks.
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May 08 2007 - 09:37:52 PM
- Categories:
- ASP.NET
In an earlier article (Making Your Own Semantic Controls) we talked about how HTML tags should have a "meaning", and should define your content. An <ol> tag describes an ordered list of items, such as your "top 10 favorite sites." Because that list is in a specific order, you would use the <ol> tag. A <ul> tag describes an un-ordered list of items, such as your site's navigation links, or as in the case with this article, a list of radio buttons or checkboxes.
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May 06 2007 - 03:36:44 PM
- Categories:
- ASP.NET
ASP.NET gives developers a lot of powerful tools to seperate functionality into Master Pages, Custom Controls, User Controls and Content Pages allowing clean and segragated application design. The problem comes in when you actually WANT two pages to talk to each other. A common scenario is when you have a control, such as a DropDownList, on one part of the page that needs to filter results on another part of the page that is not directly accessable (meaning it's in a UserControl, or part of the MasterPage and you are in another UserControl or the ContentPage). This article will describe how to easily tie your entire web application together without running into cross-threading issues due to using static objects.
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May 05 2007 - 06:08:41 PM
- Categories:
- Standards
Back when I first started making web pages, I thought of HTML tags as a way to get pictures, text, sound and input boxes to display on a web browser. Back then I would pride myself on my extensive use of the <table> tag to design an entire website. I could open up PhotoShop and slice my giant JPEG of a site into dozens of smaller images and then spend a couple of hours making my <table>'s, <tr>'s and <td>'s. Looking back at the aweful code and even worse coding standards that I used to follow is like looking back at MC Hammer's parachute pants and wondering why we ever thought that was cool.
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