DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by rblaettler

7 of my favorite jQuery plugins for use with ASP.NET

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 14:46:04 GMT

Seven of my favorite jQuery plugins to use with ASP.NET and ASP.NET AJAX, based on my own successes and failures using them over the past year and a half.

7 principles of clean and optimized CSS code

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:01:02 GMT

With the popularity of CSS layouts and JavaScript-enriched web page experiences, it's not uncommon, particularly for large sites, for the CSS files alone to grow in size, but there are some principles to consider during and after you write your CSS to help keep it tight and optimized. Optimization isn't just minimizing file size - it's also about being organized, clutter-free, and efficient. You'll find that the more knowledge you have about optimal CSS practices, smaller file size will inevitably come as an direct result of their implementation. You may already be familiar with some of the principles mentioned in this article, but they are worth a review. Being familiar with this concepts will help you write optimized CSS code and make you a better all-around web designer.

C#: Generate WebPage Thumbmail Screenshot Image

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 16:16:08 GMT

There are a few services out there that serve up screenshots of any webpage for you to display on your website. One popular one is Kwiboo; this is the one that DotNetKicks uses. For some time now I've wondered what the easiest way to do this in .NET was, and today I stumbled upon the undocumented WebBrowser.DrawToBitmap method that makes this extremely easy to do.

25 Resources for Tuning Your .NET Application Performance

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 08:46:02 GMT

A great list of resources, including MSDN links, guides, .NET blogs and how tos about improving .NET performance.

Optimize WebResource.axd and ScriptResource.axd

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 20:01:06 GMT

Some weeks ago I wrote how to minify and compress the WebResource.axd handler. In the comments of that post someone asked how to do the same with ScriptResource.axd. I thought about it and realized it could be done much smarter.If you take a look at the HTML source at the CodePlex Issue Tracker page, you'll see it references 13 WebResource.axd and ScriptResource.axd. That's 13 different web requests on each page load. The ScriptResource.axd is using HTTP compression but WebResource.axd does not. None of them minifies the scripts.Therefore it would be cool to create a plug 'n play HttpModule that combines all resource.axd scripts into one single web request and then minify and compress them. It would result in smaller HTML, fewer web requests and optimized JavaScript code. If you're a YSlow nazi like me, this is a must-have.

Jump between braces in Visual Studio.

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 17:01:09 GMT

Move fast between open and close braces. No more scrolling to find beginning of that illusive if statement.

15 Tools to Help You Develop Faster Web Pages

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 16:16:14 GMT

Response times, availability, and stability are vital factors to bear in mind when creating and maintaining a web application. If you're concerned about your web pages' speed or want to make sure you're in tip-top shape before starting or launching a project, here's a few useful, free tools to help you create and sustain high-performance web applications.

Turn Google App Engine into your own Personal Content Delivery Network

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 20:01:03 GMT

As anybody who has run a growing website or blog knows, response time is going to get worse with the more users you have visiting your site. The users come from all angles, RSS feeds, homepage visits, search engine visits, people sealing your static files that you host, and pretty much anything else that can be served over HTTP. The solution to this problem is to off load your static content on to a Content Delivery Network or CDN. CDN providers cost a lot of money though, so it is nothing for us mere mortals with one server can afford. But thanks to Google anyone can now run their own CDN for free on Googles servers. Lucky for you and me Google has made the process really painless and you can even have the CDN under you own domain name. In my case static.coderjournal.com.

Nikhilk Kothari's site (almost) made XHTML valid

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 07:16:03 GMT

I decided to try and make good old Nikhilk Kothari's personal site a valid one. I didn't have access to the source code, so all changes were made on the rendered ASP.NET. Why Nikhilk? I don't know, I guess I just like his web site! Short and entertaining video.

Test with multiple IE Rendering Engines

Thu, 29 May 2008 20:01:03 GMT

IETester is a free WebBrowser that allows you to have the rendering and javascript engines of IE8 beta 1, IE7 IE 6 and IE5.5 on Vista and XP, as well as the installed IE in the same process.

JavaScript: Warning the user when CapsLock is on

Sat, 17 May 2008 22:16:02 GMT

Describes a method for warning a user that their caps lock is on using JavaScript. Also includes an ASP.NET control

Fast ASP.NET web page loading by batching javascripts downloads

Fri, 16 May 2008 17:01:12 GMT

Hack for the .Net script manager to pull all needed javascript files at once and push them to the bottom of the html to speed up rendering.

Implement MetaWeblog API in ASP.NET

Sat, 10 May 2008 18:31:03 GMT

There is no doubt that MetaWeblog API is one of the very helpful and popular inventions around online publishing especially for blog engines and services. Of course MetaWeblog API has not been a tool only for blogs because it's used as a general publishing service for others sites as well.

CSS sliding doors technique

Mon, 12 May 2008 14:01:04 GMT

This article will show you how to create fancy buttons using CSS sliding doors technique. It is much better to use this technique than to use image buttons because you can apply the style to any link and at the same time you don't have to create an image for each button.

Implementing Generic Caching

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 08:46:02 GMT

I develop for a large, high-availability website, with hundreds of thousands of daily users. As such, we need to cache a lot of data in our web-server memory (which is cheap) to save numerous hits to our main database cluster (which is very expensive). I would imagine the desire to improve performance by saving on database hits is common across many web applications - and caching frequently used data is often seen as one of the best ways to solve this problem.

Page that lists ASP.NET ServerVariables

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 12:31:45 GMT

A simple page that lists all ASP.NET ServerVariables from the Request object. and some other interesting Request properties. As an add-on it also shows the current Browser Caps.

stylizedweb.com - Most used CSS tricks

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 00:01:02 GMT

Earlier before I have written an article about current best CSS hacks which you can see here And now here's the list of today's most used CSS tricks - tips. I have added image examples for most of them because of critics on CSS hacks article. If you think I have missed any please let me know.

Over 250 High Quality Royalty Free icons set

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 13:31:02 GMT

Free Icon Download Offers High Quality Royalty Free icons for Windows, Mac and Linux.

if ... else if ... else if ... else ... : an alternative

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 17:16:02 GMT

Did you know there's an alternative way of writing "if .. else if .. else if .. etc.." in C#? You probably do, but if you don't, read on...

Why my ASP.NET AJAX forms are never submitted twice

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:46:02 GMT

A few examples of how to use getElementsByTagName and/or jQuery, in conjunction with ASP.NET AJAX, to easily disable all Button controls on a page or logical groups; to prevent duplicate submissions during partial postbacks.

Three levels of extension methods

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 03:46:02 GMT

Some tips for building up C# 3.0 extension methods to solve problems, from wrapping static framework classes, to creating missing methods, to performing business logic validation.

Embedding ASP.NET Server Variables in Client JavaScript

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 15:46:03 GMT

Getting Server Variables embedded into a page and using them from JavaScript code can be a pain. Following Jon Galloway's post a few days ago I thought that maybe a solution that doesn't rely on ASP.NET AJAX and is more generic might be useful to make the task easier and apply much broader scope. The result is an easy to use, generic class that generates a JavaScript object from key value pairs created on the server from static values or dynamic control/object properties.

RESX file Web Editor

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 14:16:02 GMT

A collaboration tool to enable your translators to do their job right on your ASP.NET website!

10 ASP.NET Performance and Scalability Secrets

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 16:31:02 GMT

ASP.NET 2.0 has many secrets, when revealed, can give you big performance and scalability boost. For instance, there are secret bottlenecks in Membership and Profile provider which can be solved easily to make authentication and authorization faster. Furthermore, ASP.NET Http pipeline can be tweaked to avoid executing unnecessary code that gets hit on each and every request...

File Upload Components for ASP.NET

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 15:01:02 GMT

A quick evaluation of different File Upload Components for ASP.NET. Requirement are a progress bar and it should work on Safari, IE and FF for large files. Results are disappointing, most components did not work. What do other people use?