Here is a link to my presentation

Here is a link to the new version of DCMCSD demo website. Update include WebParts implementation for tonight's presentation.

dcmcsd3.zip (7.91 MB)

Tonight I'm going to do a demo at DCMCSD discussion group.

I'm going to show how to configure you web application to use membership, role management and personalization providers. I'll show how to use new security controls (Login, CreateUserWIzard etc). The big part of this demo will be devoted to the new personalization feature of ASP.NET 2.0.

Here's a link to sources for this demo: DCMCSD2.ZIP (7.89 MB)

Come and see how easy it is to create ASP.NET 2.0 website with membership, role-based security and personalization features.

Jeffrey Richter posted an update on Wintellog, and what a great news it is. His new book “CLR via C#” (which is an update for his famouse "Applied Microsoft .NET Framework Programming") is ready to print. His proficiency and deep knowledge of Windows and .Net fundamentals make him one of the best technical authority in the world of Windows programming. He updated the book with C# 2.0 content, added new chapters on asynchronous programming and thread synchronization. Can't wait to get this book in my possession

Eric J Smith, the author of CodeSmith code generator, published a great tutorial and video on how to create Data Acceess Layer for your .Net application using free .NetTiers template. I've been using .NetTiers for couple of my last projects, and I have to admit that it's really worth trying. What's cool is that this template is based on Microsoft Enterprise Library from Microsoft Patterns & Practices. That means you get all the benefits of following those P&P guidance almost for free (by almost I mean the cost of CodeSmith itself ).

Here is what you ahve to do to run this little website:

1. Unzip all files in a folder on your hard drive
2. Change path to the database in connectionStrings section of Web.Config to your local path
3. Set permissions for you ASP.NET and IIS accounts to read/write on Repository folder
4. Either configure virtual folder in your local IIS or just open this website from file system in VS 2005 (Visual Web Developer Express works just fine)

Warning: You have to have MS SQL Express installed on your machine!

Last night a lot of people were amused by the trick with enabling IntelliSense in Web.config. So, I decided to post it here. All you have to do is to remove xml namespace attribute (xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/.NetConfiguration/v2.0") from <configuration> element of your Web.config. Yes, it's that simple

Don't forget that you'll have to do this procedure each time after you launch ASP.NET Administration Web Site because it consistently puts namespace back in.

Enjoy!

PS You can read about enabling IntelliSence in .skin files here.

Tonight I'm going to do a presentation on "ASP.NET 2.0 Master Pages, Themes and Skins" at DCMCSD discussion group. This will be my first time presenting such a big topic, so come and see my public humiliation

Here you can find PowerPoint presentation and Demo project files:

MasterPagesThemesSkins.zip (29.41 KB)

DCMCSDWebSite.zip (7.99 MB) (Read instructins to run this demo here)

Last week I've been in Dallas, TX on training from Wintellect. The title of the training is "Debugging .NET Applications, A Devscovery-Intense Series" and the speaker is John Robbins - the famous Bugslayer and co-founder of Wintellect. He is author of "Debugging Applications for .NET and Windows" that is on my bookshelf.

Duration of training is tree days. The course is stuffed with information about debugging .NET applications. Starting from "the basics of coding" all the way to advanced topics about using WinDBG with SOS and ADPlus. The training took place in one of the Microsoft's building in Irving. The number of people in the conference room was about 30. The audience seems to be pretty savvy on debugging issues and there were a lot of good questions. During presentations John pointed a lot of tips and tricks and almost every slide was backed-up with samples from his new (work in progress) book. All samples were available to download and the right to use this code in production applications was granted to all participants. Main accent was put on using new features of Visual Studio .NET 2005. The new features of VS 2005 debugger (intellisense, advanced breakpoints, visualizers etc) are bringing a tremendous value of performance and convenience in programmers day to day job.

So, speaking short, my expectations from this training matched absolutely with the reality. This was my second conference with Wintellect (another one was Devscovery 2004 in Atlanta, GA) and I'm completely satisfied with its content and the way it was presented as well as with the pricing ($750 p/person). I would be glad to recommend it to any level of software developers, from juniors to seniors and even PMs.

Thanks a lot John for such a good job! Oh, and don't forget to send me that second diploma you promised .

In one of my previous posts I already mentioned about new namespase in .Net Framework 2.0 - System.Net.Mail. That's the new set of classes to work with SMTP mail. Yesterday I stumbled across great web site with whole lot of information about this new namespace. Check it out:

Complete FAQ for the System.Net.Mail namespace found in .NET 2.0

IntelliSence everywhere! That's one of the biggest features in new Visual Studio .NET 2005 (VS 2005). But guess what, it doesn't work out of the box in .skin file  - the place you really need it. Those of you who worked with ASP.NET 2.0 themes understand me . Good news - there is a workaround to enable this feature. Do the following:

1. Go to Tools->Options menu.
2. Pick Text Editor -> File Extesion fom a tree at the left part of Options dialog.
3. Type skin in Extesion text box.
4. Select User Control Editor from Editor dropdown.
5. Click Add and then Ok to close dialog and re-open your skin files.
6. Say something corny about Microsoft.

Enjoy!

PS You can probably skip step 6 but it really helps you to feel better

It's finally available! Check out MSDN website.