Today I saw the notice of the first official release of the freely available blogengine.net. I already installed it once when it was in the alpha/bèta phase. Back then I saw the potentials and definitly the ease of customizing and integrating it. Nowadays when I look at the features list as well as the roadmap for the next versions to come it already looks a lot more advanced. I still have to download the release version to see if they’ve managed to keep the simplicity the project had when I tested it a while ago. I hope they really do, because that will be their stronghold in compairison with other engines. Anyways enough said –>
CHECK IT OUT: http://www.dotnetblogengine.net/
Filed under: .net 2.0, Asp.net 2.0, Blog, blogengine.net
April 20, 2007 • 12:16 am
I saw the notice on Informationweek that Microsoft released a beta of the VS.net Orcas.
Find out more here.
Filed under: .net, .net 2.0, .net 3.0, .net 3.5, Asp.net, Asp.net 2.0, Asp.net Ajax, General, Visual Studio .Net "Orcas"
March 23, 2007 • 10:39 am
The ajax control toolkit contains a control called ModalPopupExtender. This extender allows you to create a dialog-like interface for webpages.When you use it like it is meant to use you would set a TargetControlID and a PopupControlID. The first is the control that will trigger the popup to show while the latter is the control that will be shown. That’s already nice, but what I needed recently was to show the result of a certain query in such a popup. This means that when I click the control that is pointed as TargetControl it would do a postback, execute some serverside code and then show that result in the browser. This is logical you might think but the problem is that when you click the control assigned to the extender as TargetControl you’ll see the popup immediately and only then the postback occurs.Okay how to solve this? Well add an additional linkbutton for example and make sure it is visible but has not text. You can then set the TargetControlID to this “no-text” linkbutton. Since there is no text, you can’t see it and since you can’t see it the user won’t click it. Nifty 
Next you can have a second linkbutton the performs a callback to the server and executes some serverside code. If you put this linklabel in an asp.net ajax updatepanel you won’t notice the callback and you can use the ProgressIndicator functionality in asp.net ajax.At serverside you can perform some code execution and for example set a Label’s text proeprty to the result. Finally you can access the ModalPopupExtender and call the Show method that’s available this will cause the popup to appear.I really like this way of working because it allows for a nice userinterface experience and interaction with user.
*** UPDATE: I am sorry for all of you that wanted the sample code, with moving to this blog I lost it when my old blog went offline. I cannot provide you with the code anymore ***
Filed under: .net 2.0, Asp.net 2.0
March 20, 2007 • 11:39 pm
When I was working on the ISBNDB API wrapper website I faced the problem of having grey backgrounds on my png images that were supposed to be transparant. After searching for a bit on the all knowing google I found the following site that proposes a working fix in the form of a javascript.
URL: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bobosola/index.htm
Filed under: Asp.net 2.0, IE
Hello,
I’ve been working on and off on the isbndb api wrapper. It’s a managed component that wraps around the api of isbndb.com.
I’ve created a small website that will demonstrate the functionalities of the wrapper. It is still very basic and there are already more functionalities completed that can not be tested on the website yet.
Here is the site: http://suddenelfilio.net/isbn/
Filed under: .net 2.0, Asp.net 2.0, isbndb
February 27, 2007 • 10:07 pm
Today I saw on David’s blog that microsoft is offering a free e-learning course for the ASP.Net Ajax technology.
Check out David’s post about this for more information.
Filed under: Asp.net 2.0, Asp.net Ajax
February 15, 2007 • 11:14 pm
Yesterday we had a small problem with a project of ours. We have a reporting system that server side will process the report and if configured it will print this on a printer somewhere in the network.
When we first tried this every time we printed to a network attached printer we got an error saying that we did not have access to this printer. This behavior is actually normal if you think about it. The server side code runs through an ASP.NET Web Service which in our case runs under it’s native aspnet account. Since this is a local account it does not have access to the network printer.
A solution could be impersonation or just simply make sure the web service runs as a dedicated domain account that has access. This however was not an option for us so we had to look for something else.
The solution I came up with was creating a local printer, but instead of letting it print to a local port like LPT1 I created a new standard TCP/IP port. This allows you to enter an IP and port for the networked printer. The advantage is that this printer is a local printer which requires no authentication at all, so asp.net can use it to print without knowing that it is actually being sent to a network printer.
Filed under: .net, Asp.net, Asp.net 2.0, Windows
