DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by dcrenna

Composing animations with Silverlight.FX

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 14:26:50 GMT

Shows how to use Nikhil Kothari's Silverlight.FX with a fluent interface to build composable animations like jQuery.

How to determine generic implementers and type parameters at runtime

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 03:56:23 GMT

A few extension methods to help when working with generic interfaces, and the types declared with them, at runtime.

Improving the readability of the Specification pattern

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 13:10:09 GMT

A quick tip on how to use extension methods to improve the readability of the Specification pattern.

Reducing the Cost of Change

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 20:59:09 GMT

A philisophical comment on how the biggest hurdle to reducing the cost of change in software is treating change as costly.

LINQ + WCF + Silverlight

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:37:31 GMT

A seven part article with a full solution for setting up a CRUD application across tiers, one of which is a Silverlight application.

A better JavaScript minifier

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 05:14:26 GMT

A complete C# port of Yahoo's YUI Compressor is now available on CodePlex. It also provides complete MSBUILD support.

From ASP.NET to Silverlight in Five Leaps

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 12:39:00 GMT

Starting to work on Silverlight with an ASP.NET background? Here are five subtle shifts in thinking you'll need when planning your first project.

Thoughts on building social software in .NET

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:34:38 GMT

Describes how lack of adoption and existing conventions might cause someone to avoid .NET for social networking projects, with a few ideas on how LINQ's strengths can help separate what makes a social application unique, from everything else we can automate and conventionalize.

IDictionary's missing methods

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:14:19 GMT

A set of extension methods to make any IDictionary-implementing collections easier to work with: TryGetValue, ContainsKey, and RemoveAll.

Books vs. blogs: the value of technical books and ideas to improve the

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:06:05 GMT

Some ideas to raise the value of technical books so that they survive in the face of constant technical change that blogs can adapt to instantly.

Being Smart Does Not a Good Developer Make

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 15:31:08 GMT

Not every programmer needs to be a crazy mathematical genius who knows every algorithm and data structure known to man (although I think Steve Yegge would argue differently).

Experimental LINQ to SQL template

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 14:15:17 GMT

Damien shows a very nice way of customizing code generation of Linq to SQL

Microsoft cracking down on community extensions

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:01:02 GMT

Microsoft released a tool called Microsoft Source Analyzer, or StyleCop. It analyzes source code for standards violations. It's a 1.0 release, so it doesn't do some things ... like have a published API for custom rules or MSBuild integration. So the community dug in and figured out how to do these things and now MS is firing off license-violation emails. Don't they get it? The community wants to use the product, but it's too limited ... these extensions help make it better.

Showing some support for LINQ to SQL

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 16:16:02 GMT

Great article detailing why LINQ to SQL deserves some attention particularly if you buy into the object oriented style of development or are currently working with an ORM such as NHibernate.

An Open Letter to the ALT.NET Community

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 18:31:03 GMT

It seems as if everyone in .net land has chimed in on the whole Entity Framework "Vote Of No Confidence" petition recently, and up until now I have mostly stayed on the sidelines. As with any seemingly risky move, I was quite torn on the issue. And to a certain extent, I still am ...

Rejoinder #1 to "Vote of No Confidence in Entity Framework"

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 09:42:32 GMT

A balanced look at the Entity Framework's "Vote of No Confidence" from an architect that doesn't share the same conclusions as the authors.

How to use the IHttpAsyncHandler in ASP.NET

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 20:21:17 GMT

Basically, the IHttpAsyncHandler interface allows you to serve content asynchronously from a HTTP handler. This is great when you need to free up the worker thread to do processing like IO work etc. ASP.NET actually uses fewer threads when it runs asynchronously, which is great for performance and scalability. That's because each thread is returned much faster to the thread pool.

Ranting and Raving or Getting Results?

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 19:16:07 GMT

Josh talks about the recent Vote of No confidence and offers up some advice for those wanting to see change.

Frictionless data persistence in Silverlight 2

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:18:47 GMT

This article will show you how to work with plain objects in Silverlight code, and use attributes to have those values automatically persisted in IsolatedStorage, or a compressed version of IsolatedStorage. You can also use this approach to define your own targets, all without writing any plumbing code around your state objects.

Compression in Silverlight 2 : porting SharpZipLib

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:08:16 GMT

Maximize the user's IsolatedStorage capacity in Silverlight applications. This article provides a way to use stream compression in Silverlight to shrink your storage payload, by porting ICSharpCode's SharpZipLib project into Silverlight 2 Beta 2.

Foundations of Programming Ebook

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 14:46:04 GMT

Covering the basics of good programming.

Frictionless data persistence in ASP.NET WebForms

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 11:11:21 GMT

This article provides an approach to eliminating boilerplate code for storing state in Application, Cache, Context, Cookies, Session, Hidden Fields, Query Strings, and ViewState (on the client or on the server). Using attributes, you can switch your state persistence from ViewState on the client to an encrypted session variable without writing any code.

Backlight, Silverlight for stick figure designers

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 20:34:54 GMT

A description of an idea to help developers working with Silverlight build better interfaces without design skills. Also an open call for developers to join the project.

Snoo, a social networking language

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 19:38:16 GMT

Describes a social networking DSL concept, and an open call for developers to help make it happen.

Levels of Enthusiasm

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 09:31:04 GMT

A good summary on the various manic states of development.