ASP Experts » Learning .NET

Back to Basics: Daylight Savings Time bugs strike again with SetLastModified

Editor — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 07:14:05 +0000

No matter how well you know a topic, or a codebase, it's never to late (or early) to get nailed by a latest bug a over a half-decade old. DasBlog , the ASP.NET 2 blog engine that powers this blog, is done. It's not dead, but it's done. It's very stable. We had some commits last year, and I committed a bug fix in February, but it's really well understood and very baked. My blog hasn't been down for traffic spike reasons in literally years as DasBlog scales nicely on a single machine. It was 10:51pm PDT (that's Pacific Daylight Time) and I was writing a blog post about the clocks in my house, given that PST (that's Pacific Standard Time) was switching over soon. I wrote it up in Windows Live Writer, posted it to…(read more)

Using Code Signing Certificates to sign downloaded MSIs and build reputation with IE9 SmartScreen

Editor — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 18:39:45 +0000

First, let me start that if you want a lot of people to download something, make sure that the words "HTML5," "Support" and "Update" appear in the title. I'm sure if the folks that are making Diablo 3 called it "Diablo 3 HTML5 Support Update" that a metric buttload more people would download it. That said, a bunch of folks in the Web Platform and Tools team created the Web Standards Update package with HTML5 Support for the Visual Studio 2010 Editor . This Web Standards Update is something that anyone in the community could have released, just extending Visual Studio in a standard way. Like many other (most) extensions in Visual Studio Extension Gallery, it was not "signed." It was not a…(read more)

The Weekly Source Code 56 – Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit – Code Contracts, Parallel Framework and COM Interop

Editor — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 09:07:55 +0000

Do you like a big pile of source code? Well, there is an imperial buttload of source in the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit . It's actually a 178 meg download, which is insane. Perhaps start your download now and get it in the morning when you get up. It's extremely well put together and I say Kudos to the folks that did it. They are better people than I. I like to explore it while watching TV myself and found myself looking through tonight. I checked my blog and while I thought I'd shared this with you before, Dear Reader, I hadn't. My bad, because it's pure gold . With C# and VB, natch. Here's an outline of what's inside. I've heard of folks setting up lunch-time study groups and going through…(read more)

The Weekly Source Code 52 – You get using that LINQ, I dunna think it means what you think it means.

Editor — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 04:11:11 +0000

Remember good developers don't just write source code, they also READ it. You don't just become a great poet by writing lots of poems. Read and absorb as well. Do check out the Source Code category of my blog here , there's (as of today) 15 pages of posts on Source Code you can check out. Recently my friend Jonathan Carter (OData Dude, my name for him) was working with a partner on some really weird stuff that was happening with a LINQ to SQL query. Remember that every abstraction sometimes leaks and that the whole port of an abstraction is "raise the level" so you don't have to worry about something. Plumbing is great because it abstracts away water delivery. For all I know, there's a dude with a bucket who runs…(read more)

The Weekly Source Code 52 – You keep using that LINQ, I dunna think it means what you think it means.

Editor — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 04:11:11 +0000

Visual Studio 2010 Released

Editor — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 17:00:42 +0000

It's a big day at Microsoft today as Visual Studio 2010 officially releases. There's a lot going on with this release and I thought I'd do a big rollup post with lots of details and context to help you find your way to the information and downloads you're looking for. Download Visual Studio 2010 First, if you want it, go download Visual Studio 2010 now. If you're an MSDN Subscriber or WebSiteSpark / BizSpark member, you can download the final release now. If not, you can download a free trial or one of the free Express editions . Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional Web Install ISO (DVD-9) Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Web Install ISO (DVD-9) Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server ISO (DVD-9) I'm…(read more)

SmallestDotNet Update – Now with .NET 4 support and an includable JavaScript API

Editor — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 05:44:03 +0000

A few years back I wrote a post on the size of the .NET Framework . There's historically been a lot of confusion on the site of the .NET Framework. If you search around on the web for ".NET Framework" or ".NET Framework Redistributable" you'll often get a link to a 200 meg download. That download is the complete offline thing that developers redistribute when they want to install the .NET Framework on any kind of machine without an internet connection. The .NET 3.5 Client Profile is more like 28 megs and the .NET 4 Client Profile is a looking smaller that than, in fact. Back then I made this website, SmallestDotNet.com to help out. It'll sniff your browser's UserAgent and tell you want version of .NET you…(read more)

Hanselminutes Podcast 196 – .NET 4 CLR, Framework and Language Chat with Jason Olson

Editor — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 06:28:35 +0000

My one-hundred-and-ninety-sixth podcast is up . Jason Olson works (or worked, as you'll hear) for Microsoft in DPE. In this episode he takes Scott a little deeper into some of the new features in .NET 4, including security, CLR changes, C# 4 and VB 10 improvements and the new Task Parallel Library. Subscribe: Download: MP3 Full Show Links from the Show Parallel Computing Developer Center Visual Studio 2010 and .Net Framework 4 Training Course Jason's Blog Whitepaper: Patterns for Parallel Programming: Understanding and Applying Parallel Patterns with the .NET Framework 4 10-4 Show on Channel 9 Jason Olson on Twitter Visual Studio 2010 and .Net Framework 4 Training Kit Do also remember the complete archives are always up and they have…(read more)

How many PCs in the world have the .NET Framework installed?

Editor — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 06:29:02 +0000

I did a second .NET Framework features informal poll recently , and as with all .NET related polls the question comes up: How many PCs have the .NET Framework on it? If you're a company that is considering creating a client application using .NET (not Silverlight, but the .NET Framework) you'd probably like to know if your end-user needs to install something extra to use your app. So I started asking questions. We've said things here and there about the pervasiveness of the .NET Framework but I wanted to get the final word (at the time of this writing) and put it somewhere easy to fine. After some digging, here's what I've got: Well over 90% of the PCs in the world have some version of the .NET Framework installed. Over 65…(read more)

2010 Survey Results: What .NET Framework features do you use?

Editor — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 22:48:39 +0000

In October of 2008 I took an informal survey on Twitter . I wanted to get an idea of what features of the .NET Framework people were using. Also, here's the disclaimer. I did this on a whim, it's not scientific, so the margin of error is +/-101%. That said, the results feel intuitively right to me, personally. I put the poll out again last week, adding only Silverlight to the end as an option. I realize I could have added many other subsystems and choices, but I felt it would have made this new poll too different from the original. There's certainly many ways that it could be improved as a survey, but it's best to think of it more as a "which direction is the wind blowing" question, than a survey per se. I also didn't…(read more)