ASP.NET

Professional Grade Hosting starting at $4.95

Mark H. Wagner — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 08:29:00 GMT

I have been hosting at WebHost4Life how for about three years. I cannot say enough good things about this hosting service. Yes, this is something of a shameless advertisement - but it is the honest truth. If you are in the market for a new hosting service with professional grade products, you should try WebHost4Life. Here is an article I posted a while back that covers my experience with WebHost4Life.

Here are the reasons I find the WebHost4Life hosting service of great value:

Excellent self-service control panel. (I can do it myself)
Unlimited Bandwidth/Traffice (no monthly fee suprises)
Excellent support with very good response
and Professional grade products

Google Web Part for SharePoint

Mark H. Wagner — Wed, 08 Jun 2005 16:21:00 GMT

Google Search Web Part

Mark Wagner
http://blogs.crsw.com/mark
June 10, 2005

Article: http://blogs.crsw.com/mark/articles/1009.aspx

I created a custom Google web part a few weeks ago for my demo SharePoint site. You can see what it looks like on my testing SharePoint home page http://sharepoint.crsw.com. The Google web part submits a search request by navigating the user directly to the Google search web page and performs a Google search using the Google search engine. I have since received a number of emails requesting to get this web part for use on their SharePoint sites, so I decided to make it available for others.

First and foremost, the Google name and search service are the property of Google. I have no affiliation with the Google name and its services.

Google is a must-have resource for my daily work. If I need to find something, I Google it, and nothing else comes close when searching on the Internet. With this dependency, I had to have it on my new SharePoint demo site. My SharePoint demo site is more of a test-harness at this point since it is hosted on a shared/public server, so don’t be too disappointed when you see it.

For those of you not familiar with Google, welcome to the Internet. Google is the single best Internet search service available on the Internet, for the Internet. If you need to find something on the Internet, Google will find it for you. This process of searching is commonly referred to Googling. If you Google something, your are using Google to search the Internet for it. For the rest of you, Google is probably how you found this article.

It is important to remember that this Google Search web part is not intended to replace the SharePoint search feature. In order for Google to find any results, Google must have already searched and indexed your site. Also remember that Google will not be able to crawl and index pages on your SharePoint site that are not accessible to the public. This is where the SharePoint search has the upper hand. Again, this web part is not intended to replace the SharePoint search feature, but to conveniently access the much used Google search from your SharePoint page.

Configuring the Google Search Web Part

Here is a picture of the web part configurations.

Google Image URL

Once you have installed the web part, in the configuration options of the web part is a Google Image URL property which defaults to an image on Google’s web site. You should use the default url for the Google image. I have made this property available just in case Google renames or moves their image.

This Google Search Web Part can be configured in three distinct ways.

Standard Google Search

Local Site Search

Custom Site Search

Complete article here...

Visual Studio 2005 Standard Beta 2 Released

Mark H. Wagner — Mon, 18 Apr 2005 08:33:00 GMT

For those of you with an MSDN subscription, Visual Studio 2005 Standard Beta 2 has been released.

What is your (assembly's) native tongue?

Mark H. Wagner — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 20:05:00 GMT

Per an MSDN TV episode (Using Managed Resources) - to improve the performance (albeit minimal - I expect) of your assemblies, you should include the following line in your assemblyinfo.cs

[assembly: NeutralResourcesLanguageAttribute("en-US")]

This defines the default language for your assembly. This allows the .NET runtime to bypass the process of looking for a satellite assembly for the “en-US” (default) language if the current culture matches the assemblies default culture. Of course, assemblies intended for other languages should define that language as the default language.

Also, if you can put your satelite assemblies in the Global Assembly Cache (GAC), the Common Language Runtime (CLR) will load the assembly faster by not having to verify the cryptographic assembly signature.

Trace.axd - The more you learn, the less you know

Mark H. Wagner — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 15:08:00 GMT

The more you learn, the less you know.

Trying to keep up with the extensive areas of .NET and Microsoft products can easily bring you to this conclusion. Its easy for us to continually focus on all the new technologies and versions (Whidbey and the .NET Framework 2.0) only to overlook some of the low hanging fruit - at least for me it is. Remember, this is the “Simple Thoughts from a Simple Mind“ blog. ;)

One area I forgot about is the ASP.NET Trace - Trace.axd page. As you may know, ASP.NET allows you to trace the processing for a single page or for all pages. The trace output can be rendered at the end of each page. Don't forget (as I did) there is also the Trace.axd page that provides a nice list of traced pages such as this.

The web.config file needs only a small change to make this available.

Clicking on the View Details link for a page process will present you with the familiar trace detail.

Visual Studio .NET Intellisense: CTRL + SHIFT + SPACE

Mark H. Wagner — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 09:00:00 GMT

Intellisense is a must-have for me. One thing I tend to do is type a comma or the left parentheses just to get the Intellisense for the arguments of a method of class constructor, or overload list. I recently found out you can type CTRL + SHIFT + SPACE to force this to appear. - Thanks Spence!

Also, I have used CTRL + J quite often; and for some time now, to popup the Intellisense list of members for an object. As long as your cursor is on an existing object.method the list will appear. The prevents having to go to the object and type a period. This is another key combo I use quite often.

Intellisense is truly a time-saver!

WebHost4Life: The Best ASP.NET Web Host I Can Afford

Mark H. Wagner — Wed, 30 Mar 2005 09:59:00 GMT

The best ASP.NET web host I can afford

I felt I just needed to share my happiness about my web site hosting provider. I have been hosting with WebHost4Life for about two years now and I must say I have been very satisfied with the service and support. Yes, I know this may appear to be a shameless advertisement. But I am truly satisfied with both the service and support.

Just to be absolutely clear and upfront with you. I do get a referral bonus for anyone who joins WebHost4Life that I have referred (by clicking on my WebHost4Life link), and it doesn’t cost you anything extra. But I promise you, I could not be more sincere about what I say here. And don't think I'm special; you can get the same referral bonus if you are a member and refer others to WebHost4Life to!

As a professional software developer, one of the things I like best is the web-based Control Panel. I'm a self-serve kind of guy. With WebHost4Life I can do about 99% of anything I need to do on my own, including SQL Server management, backups, and more. I don't need to try to explain what I need and why I need it to an under-paid, overworked (and sometimes an incapable), technical support person. I can do it myself.

WebHost4Life has plans I can afford. I don't consider myself to be cheap, but I do know a good value when I see one. Besides, I really can’t reasonably justify and afford more than the $9.95 per month I pay WebHost4Life.

With this said, I have needed to contact support a few times in the past two years, and I have been very happy with the response and support I have received. WebHost4Life recently added support for SharePoint Server and I decided to install it. With my hosting plan I get SharePoint Server for free, and I only have the $9.95 per month plan. Anyhow, using their web Control Panel I installed it myself - only to get an error. I contacted technical support using the web-based support request application and they promptly replied saying I needed to have my account (website) moved to a new server that supported SharePoint. They moved it and my site was down for about 20 minutes. All was good.

This morning I encountered a problem with my site; which was not good, but was due to the move to a new server. What I like about WebHost4Life and their support, is how responsive they are. As a software developer, I work with systems and software in the real world every day, not just at home for fun. Problems do happen. What is important is how often these problems happen and how quickly they are resolved. With WebHost4Life I have had almost no problems; and when I have had a problem, they have resolved it very quickly.

Again, I know this post sounds like a commercial. And yes, I do hope some of you sign-up with WebHost4Life using one of my links :). But, for me this is simply the truth.

Web Hosting, ASP.NET Hosting, Web Host, ASP.NET Host, ASP.NET Server, Web Server Hosting, .NET Web Hosting, .NET Website Hosting, .NET Hosting, SQL Server, .TEXT web host, .TEXT Host, .TEXT Blog Host

Why C# is used more or preferred over VB.NET?

Mark H. Wagner — Mon, 14 Mar 2005 09:49:00 GMT

I recently received a question from someone asking:
Why C# is used more or preferred over VB.NET?

I believe the answer to this question has mostly to do with syntax and history.

Although VB.NET is an excellent language, the problem with VB.NET has more to do with the history of BASIC than what VB.NET is today. I can tell you that I prefer C# over VB.NET, and I programmed with Visual Basic versions 3 through 6 with much success. However, as any ex-Visual Basic developer an attest to, Visual Basic was always viewed as a second-rate language by C++ and Java developers. There were certainly a number of things that the C++ language would allow over Visual Basic, and not all of them were necessarily positive. Much of the flexibility allowed by C++ was also the demise of many C++ applications.

I viewed C++ like a surgeon’s scalpel. With a scalpel, it can take a long time to carve out a piece of art. And, in the wrong hands you can do more damage than good, as I have seen. However, in the right hands, you can do very good things. With C++ a developer could do virtually anything since C++ was the core language on which most operating systems were written, and the core for the Microsoft libraries.

Visual Basic was intended to address the need to rapidly develop applications for the largest share of applications needed, such as business applications. Business applications are more about good business process logic and intuitive user interfaces, not complex user interfaces or algorithms. Visual Basic was Microsoft's initial attempt at providing a development language to improve programmer productivity. Visual Basic addressed this need well.

With this little bit of history, programmers who used Visual Basic were not considered by some (C++ and Java developers) to be “professional” developers. The fact that Visual Basic had the word “Basic” in it was probably the single most dominating reason – in my opinion. Anything that is “Basic” is probably not powerful – as viewed by many who never really ever used Visual Basic. I must confess, I had the same biases about other database-related languages like FoxPro and DBase – and I was probably overly critical about those and other tools as well.

I personally have a great deal of respect for Visual Basic and its place in history. For me, it was the right tool for many solutions at that time. Visual Basic versions 3 through 6 existed during a time when companies were only beginning to see the advantages of Local Area Networks (LAN), the wide-spread introduction of the Internet and the explosion of the Internet, all of which happened during the timeline of Visual Basic.

If I may deviate a bit, during this time most companies; except for the large Fortune 1000 type companies), viewed personal computers and LAN’s as an expensive investment with very little return on investment (ROI). This close scrutiny of Information Technology investments eventually proved to be a good investment in productivity for the average company. The investment in technology then began to swing the other direction at a pace where many companies and investors could not throw enough money into the advancement of technology and new technology companies; and as we all know, this ended with the DOT-COM boom and bust.

Back to the original question about VB.NET or C#. The important thing to remember is that both VB.NET and C# get their muscle from the .NET Framework. Other than a few minor differences in functionality between the two, the decision becomes mostly driven by syntax. I do not include functional because all .NET languages are interoperable with one another. Again this is provided by the .NET Framework. I personally prefer the C# syntax. It is more like C++, JavaScript, and Java. Although I don’t use Java, I like developing in a syntax that is more widely adopted. I use JavaScript occasionally and as a creature of habit I like that C# and JavaScript are similar in basic syntax. I also prefer the terminology or keywords used by C# because they are more object oriented in nature.

This is my preference from a non-technical approach. Your comments are welcome.

Building a Better Busy Box (Processing… Please Wait) - Ver 1.2

Mark H. Wagner — Wed, 16 Feb 2005 10:09:00 GMT

Building a Better Busy Box - Ver 1.2
(Processing… Please Wait)

Mark Wagner
Castle Rock Software, LLC
http://blogs.crsw.com/mark

February 16, 2005

Updates

February 16, 2005 - Rewrite to use an IFRAME instead of a DIV tag.
January 7, 2005 - Fixed z-Index attribute.
November 13, 2004 - Original article

Summary: We often need to provide a user message informing the user that their request is “processing”. Like the hour-glass mouse pointer lets the Windows user know the system is busy processing their last request, I have a simple, clean, and effect solution to providing this on web pages.

BusyBox Demo
http://blogs.crsw.com/mark/samples/BusyBoxDemo/Default.aspx

Article source and sample code links
This article is located at: http://blogs.crsw.com/mark/articles/642.aspx
Source code sample at: http://blogs.crsw.com/mark/files/BusyBox-1.2-Demo.zip

Technologies employed

JavaScript
HTML (ASP.NET)

Supported browsers

Internet Explorer 6
Netscape Navigator 7.1, 7.2
Firefox 1.0
No other browsers have been tested

Introduction
Anyone who has used the Internet for more than a few hours has encountered times when the “Internet” is being slow. I use the term “Internet” in jest here since it is often the term used when websites are not responding as quickly as we would like. As most of us know, the problem is more often caused by an over-worked website, one that is unable to handle its current workload. This article does not address any performance issues as that is a much larger topic for another time. However, for those well designed and well cared-for websites there are very acceptable times when displaying a “processing” message to the user is very helpful and very appropriate.

I have certainly experienced times; as I am sure you have, where after clicking a submit or search button I began to wonder if the web server was going to process my request successfully. Why shouldn’t it. I didn’t expect it to take more than a second or two. Performing functions like a search, report generation, or the processing of a large order, can often take more time than we would like. These predictably slow responding places in an application are ideal candidates for user feedback in the form of a processing message. As long as your website is not normally slow, your users will appreciate being notified of potentially long running processes.

There are a number of different approaches to accomplishing this. One of the more common methods is to navigate to an intermediate page where an animated image and/or message are presented to the user. The intermediate page then immediately initiates the process of navigating to the long-processing page. This allows the intermediate “please wait” page to be displayed to the user while the long-processing target page is crunching away. When the target page completes its long process it then begins rendering to the user’s browser, thus replacing the “please wait” message. While this technique works well when navigating from page A to page B, it does not work well when a post-back (from page A to page A) is needed. Additionally, having the benefits of things like ViewState become discarded.

My Approach
The approach I am about to cover functions just as well during a post-back as it does when navigating from page X to page Y. Moreover, there is no need (or desire) to have an intermediate processing page. If you are using a custom base page for your application; (i.e. a MasterPage), it becomes even easier to user. I have added this to my personal CastlePage class making it very easy to use at anytime.

My approach is to pre-load my busy box message in a hidden IFRAME tag on any page that will navigate (or post-back) to a potentially long running process. After all, my busy box message has a pretty small code footprint. The page will begin it’s unload process whenever the browser posts to a new page or performs a post-back. By placing JavaScript code in the onbeforeunload event of the body tag I can instantly reveal the busy box message to the user. Since this is part of the original page it will display immediately and remain visible until the new page completes its processing and begins to render in the user's browser. Best of all, this works great with post-backs too.

Click here for the complete article.

Busy Box improvements...

Mark H. Wagner — Thu, 10 Feb 2005 11:18:00 GMT

I have my updated busy box completed. Before I post the new code to my blog, I need to update my article and sample. Should be up sometime in the next day or so.