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PostMortem: Harms Millennium MedSpa
CoDe Magazine - 2010 JulAug
July/August2010 Post Mortem by Markus Egger

By: Egger, Markus

What’s New in ASP.NET 4.0, Part Two: WebForms and Visual Studio Enhancements
Online CoDe Magazine - The Web View


By: Strahl, Rick

What’s New in ASP.NET 4.0, Part One: Core Engine Features
Online CoDe Magazine - The Web View
Microsoft released the .NET Runtime 4.0 and with it comes a brand spanking new version of ASP.NET - version 4.0 - which provides an incremental set of improvements to an already powerful platform. .NET 4.0 is a full release of the .NET Framework, unlike version 3.5, which was merely a set of library updates on top of the .NET Framework version 2.0. Because of this full framework revision, there has been a welcome bit of consolidation of assemblies and configuration settings. The full runtime version change to 4.0 also means that you have to explicitly pick version 4.0 of the runtime when you create a new Application Pool in IIS, unlike .NET 3.5, which actually requires version 2.0 of the runtime.

By: Strahl, Rick

CODE Magazine 10 Years Later
CoDe Magazine - 2010 MayJun
May/June 2010 Editorial by Rod Paddock.

By: Paddock, Rod

10 Years of CODE
CoDe Magazine - 2010 MayJun
This is where you would normally expect our popular “Post Mortem” column: An interesting article that describes a project after it is complete and some interesting points about things that went well and things that didn’t. This month is different, however, because this is the 10-year anniversary edition of CODE Magazine! So while CODE Magazine isn’t a project that is “complete” and we certainly expect the magazine to continue on for a long time to come (both in print and online), let’s take a look back and recap what has transpired!

By: Egger, Markus

Using the Amazon Web Service SDK for .NET
CoDe Magazine - 2010 MarApr
The richest set of cloud computing services comes from a little e-commerce company known as Amazon.com. Developers can access the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform using numerous tools including the .NET platform.Amazon.com is a major player in the cloud computing space and has numerous services available to developers. In late 2009, Amazon released the AWS SDK for .NET. This article will demonstrate using the AWS SDK to create a custom backup service using the Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3).

By: Paddock, Rod

Small Building Blocks
CoDe Magazine - 2010 MarApr
Mar/April 2010 Editoral by Rod Paddock

By: Paddock, Rod

Post Mortem Web Project
CoDe Magazine - 2010 JanFeb
First Premier Bankcard (www.firstpremier.com) is the 10th largest issuer of Visa and MasterCard credit cards in the United States.First Premier employs multiple thousands of people spread across the state of South Dakota. A major percentage of the employees at First Premier work in call-center operations helping people apply for credit cards.

By: Paddock, Rod

Can a Fish Use a Bicycle?
CoDe Magazine - 2010 JanFeb


By: Paddock, Rod

Not a Spectator Sport
CoDe Magazine - 2009 Nov/Dec
Cover Headlines: VS 2010, C#, VB, EF, Silverlight, ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC

By: Paddock, Rod

Post Mortem: Tower48 Software Escrow
CoDe Magazine - 2009 Sep/Oct


By: Egger, Markus

Smaller Is Better
CoDe Magazine - 2009 Sep/Oct
Rod Paddock Sept/Oct 09 Editorial

By: Paddock, Rod

Native JSON Parsing: What Does it Mean for Your AJAX Applications?
Online CoDe Magazine - The Web View
JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) has become the de facto data transfer standard for client-side Web applications that use JavaScript. JSON is a JavaScript-based object/value encoding format that looks very close to raw JavaScript and can be very easily parsed by JavaScript code because JavaScript can effectively evaluate a JSON string and re-materialize an object from it. Unlike XML there’s no parsing involved in the process, so it’s easy to work with and also relatively quick because the actual parsing (or rather evaluating) of a JSON string is done internally in the JavaScript engine rather than through manual code. The format and data types are also well defined so it’s easy to generate JSON strings in other languages like .NET (although parsing is a bit more complex).

By: Strahl, Rick

The State of WPF & Silverlight
CoDe Magazine - 2009 Jul/Aug
Markus Egger discusses the current State of WPF and Silverlight and the overall importance and acceptance of these technologies.

By: Egger, Markus

Post Mortem: WPF and Silverlight Styling
CoDe Magazine - 2009 Jul/Aug


By: Egger, Markus

10,000 Hours to Graceland
CoDe Magazine - 2009 Jul/Aug
Rod Paddock July/August 2009 Editorial

By: Paddock, Rod

Add a Safety Net to Your Software with Tower 48
CoDe Magazine - 2009 Jul/Aug
Markus Egger/Tower 48 Advertorial

By: Egger, Markus

Build Composite WPF and Silverlight Applications
CoDe Magazine - 2009 Jul/Aug
WPF is finally gaining momentum, and so is Silverlight.Users are starting to take a serious look at Silverlight as an option for rich applications; some of them even have scenarios where targeting both platforms make sense. The Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight Applications has received improvements that help developers building either WPF, Silverlight, or both types of composite applications.

By: Lassala, Claudio

Open Source Software
CoDe Magazine - 2009 May/Jun
Rod Paddock's May/June 2009 Editorial article.

By: Paddock, Rod

Using jQuery with ASP.NET Part 2: Making an AJAX Callback to ASP.NET
CoDe Magazine - 2009 May/Jun
This time around I’ll expand on these concepts and show you how you can use jQuery in combination with ASP.NET as an AJAX backend to retrieve data. I’ll also discuss how you can create ASP.NET controls and otherwise interact with jQuery content from ASP.NET pages in Web Forms.

By: Strahl, Rick

Isolating Dependencies in Tests Using Mocks and Stubs
CoDe Magazine - 2009 May/Jun
Unit tests are not “unit” tests if they test things other than the System Under Test (SUT).In order to test a SUT (the class to be tested), a developer must make sure that the class’s dependencies won’t interfere with its unit tests. Enter mocks and stubs.

By: Lassala, Claudio

Yes, We Can! 2009 Will Be Great!
CoDe Magazine - 2009 Mar/Apr
Mar/April 09 Editorial by Markus Egger

By: Egger, Markus

Programming Twittering with Visual Basic
CoDe Magazine - 2009 Mar/Apr
Social networking has reached critical mass. One unique social networking platform, Twitter, launched in March of 2006 and took the world by storm with its social networking and microblogging platform.The developers of Twitter had the forethought to provide a REST -based API. Numerous developers have used the REST-based API to build Twitter clients on dozens of different platforms. In this article I’ll demonstrate how to access Twitter using the .NET platform.

By: Paddock, Rod

Building Polished UIs with Expression Blend - Part 1
CoDe Magazine - 2009 Mar/Apr
With WPF and Silverlight, Microsoft provides both Windows and Web developers with powerful technologies to create rich, professional, and exciting user experiences.However, in general, developers aren’t graphical designers, leaving most developers wondering how to cope with this new world of designed interfaces and polished user experiences. But fear not! With Expression Blend, Microsoft provides a great tool to create such UIs, and even developers with no graphical talents whatsoever can learn a few techniques that allow for better looking applications.

By: Egger, Markus

Roundtables vs. Lunch Counters
CoDe Magazine - 2009 Jan/Feb
Rod Paddocks Jan/Feb 09 Editorial

By: Paddock, Rod

An Introduction to jQuery, Part 1
CoDe Magazine - 2009 Jan/Feb
jQuery is a small JavaScript library that makes development of HTML-based client JavaScript drastically easier. With client logic getting ever more complex and browsers still diverging in features and implementation of features, jQuery and other client libraries provide much needed normalization when working with JavaScript and the HTML DOM.

By: Strahl, Rick

Back to Basics
CoDe Magazine - 2008 Nov/Dec
Rod Paddock's Nov/Dec 2008 Editorial

By: Paddock, Rod

Languages Re-Unleashed
CoDe Magazine - 2008 Sep/Oct
Sept/Oct 08 Editorial by Rod Paddock

By: Paddock, Rod

Unlearn
CoDe Magazine - 2008 Jul/Aug
July/August 2008 Editorial

By: Paddock, Rod

Setting Up and Running Subversion and Tortoise SVN with Visual Studio and .NET
CoDe Magazine - 2008 Jul/Aug
It can help you manage your application more efficiently and make sure that your project is backed up and can be rolled back to any revision on the file or project level. I recently got acquainted with the open source Subversion and Tortoise SVN tools and, for the first time, feel that this is source control that I can live with comfortably. This article describes all you need to know to get started with Subversion and Tortoise SVN for Visual Studio projects.

By: Strahl, Rick

jQuery Puts the Fun Back into Browser Scripting
Online CoDe Magazine - The Web View
Rick Strahl discuss scripting with jQuery.

By: Strahl, Rick

REST-Based Ajax Services with WCF in .NET 3.5
Online CoDe Magazine - The Web View
Rick Strahl discusses Rest-Based Ajax Services.

By: Strahl, Rick

Reflections on 2007
CoDe Magazine - 2008 Mar/Apr
Rod Paddocks Mar/Apr 08 editorial article.

By: Paddock, Rod

It’s an Agile World
CoDe Magazine - 2008 Jan/Feb
Jan/Feb 08 Editorial by Rod Paddock

By: Paddock, Rod

What’s Ailing ASP.NET Web Forms?
Online CoDe Magazine - The Web View
Rick Strahl discusses ASP.NET Web Forms

By: Strahl, Rick

The Age of Specialists and Generalists
CoDe Magazine - 2007 Nov/Dec
Nov/Dec 2007 Editorial Column by Rod Paddock

By: Paddock, Rod

Creating Visual Studio Add-Ins
CoDe Focus Magazine - 2008 - Vol. 5 - Issue 1 - Extensibility
Visual Studio provides one of the most powerful IDE’s on the market. One under-exploited aspect of this IDE is the extensibility model. Programming IDE’s are not static development tools. Development techniques, tools, and concepts change. Extensibility has been built into Visual Studio from its early inceptions. The great thing about Microsoft’s foresight is that you can augment functionality of Visual Studio yourself. This article will demonstrate how to extend the Visual Studio IDE using Visual Studio, the .NET Framework, and the Visual Studio Add-In and automation models.

By: Paddock, Rod

Creating and Distributing Packages with the Visual Studio SDK
CoDe Focus Magazine - 2008 - Vol. 5 - Issue 1 - Extensibility
Visual Studio is a great tool on its own and it can be extended.By using the Visual Studio SDK (VS SDK), one can create powerful extensions to fit almost any developers’ needs.

By: Lassala, Claudio

Unwrapping LINQ to SQL
Online CoDe Magazine - The Web View
Rick Strahl discusses LINQ to SQL features.

By: Strahl, Rick

A Silverlight to Illuminate the Path Ahead…
Online CoDe Magazine - The Web View
At Mix 2007 in Las Vegas, Microsoft announced Silverlight (formerly known as WPF/E) to much fanfare. Silverlight is very intriguing in concept, as it further travels the path previously laid out by WPF (Silverlight’s big brother), and it aims to bring the worlds of Windows and Web development, as well as the worlds of software development and graphical design, much closer together. As more and more details emerge (and the first released version is now available), it becomes clear that Silverlight is not just an intriguing concept, but it is for real! Markus discusses Silverlight concepts in this article.

By: Egger, Markus

Re-Igniting Creativity
CoDe Magazine - 2007 Sep/Oct
Rod Paddock Editorial for Sept/Oct 2007

By: Paddock, Rod

ASP.NET Orcas: Quiet Revolution
Online CoDe Magazine - The Web View
Rick Strahl discusses the new ASP.NET Orcas beta release.

By: Strahl, Rick

Have You Xiine It?
CoDe Magazine - 2007 - Jul/Aug
Article on Xiine by Markus Egger July/August 2007

By: Egger, Markus

The Client-Side JavaScript Dilemma
Online CoDe Magazine - The Web View
Rick Strahl discusses considerations when writing JavaScript

By: Strahl, Rick

Beyond HTML: Rich Internet Applications
Online CoDe Magazine - The Web View
Rick Strahl discusses building rich internet applications

By: Strahl, Rick

The House that Fox Built
CoDe Magazine - 2007 - May/Jun
May/June 2007 Editorial by Rod Paddock

By: Paddock, Rod

Being Ultra-Mobile
CoDe Focus Magazine - 2007 - Vol. 4 - Issue 2 - Mobility
CoDe Focus Mobile Editorial by Markus Egger

By: Egger, Markus

Exploring Tablet PC Application Deployment
CoDe Focus Magazine - 2007 - Vol. 4 - Issue 2 - Mobility
You have decided to take the plunge and create a Microsoft® Windows® XP Tablet PC Edition operating system-aware application. This decision comes with a new set of requirements when it comes to enabling Tablet PC-specific features and deployment of your application. This article will take you through the process of creating a Tablet PC-aware application and deploying it in the enterprise.

By: Paddock, Rod

ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 is here
Online CoDe Magazine - The Web View
Rick Strahl discusses the newly released ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 (MS AJAX)

By: Strahl, Rick

Process Introspection
CoDe Magazine - 2007 - Mar/Apr
Mar/April 2007 Editorial by Rod Paddock

By: Paddock, Rod

Building a PreserveProperty Control in ASP.NET 2.0
CoDe Magazine - 2007 - Mar/Apr
ASP.NET provides a couple of page-level state persistence mechanisms in ViewState and the new ControlState.While both mechanisms work, they both have some limitations in that they are not deterministic for the application developer-ViewState can be turned off and can be very bulky, and ControlState can only be set from within a control implementation. In this article I’ll show another, more flexible state mechanism using a PreservePropertyControl that allows automatic persistence and restoration of field values automatically without requiring ViewState.

By: Strahl, Rick

The Missing LINQ
CoDe Focus Magazine - 2007 - Vol. 4 - Issue 1 - Sedna: Beyond Visual FoxPro 9
Visual FoxPro’s (VFP) Data Manipulation Language (DML) is one of VFP’s most compelling features. It is also the most obvious feature VFP developers miss in .NET languages such as C# and Visual Basic. However, Language Integrated Query (LINQ), a new query language for .NET developers is a new feature in the upcoming releases of C# 3.and Visual Basic 9.0 that addresses these shortcomings.

By: Egger, Markus

From VFP to .NET
CoDe Focus Magazine - 2007 - Vol. 4 - Issue 1 - Sedna: Beyond Visual FoxPro 9
A practical look at what’s involved in converting your Visual FoxPro (VFP) applications to Visual Studio and SQL Server. Let me say up front that I am a long-time FoxPro developer and that I love VFP. I also love .NET and SQL Server and I’ve headed up and participated in many conversions. Most of the conversions I’ve worked on were not driven by technical necessity, but by customer demand that software be built with .NET and SQL Server. Whatever the reason, conversion from VFP to .NET is a significant undertaking.

By: Yeager, Mike E.

Visual FoxPro Web Services Revisited
CoDe Focus Magazine - 2007 - Vol. 4 - Issue 1 - Sedna: Beyond Visual FoxPro 9
Web services with Visual FoxPro (VFP) have never been easy. The most common Web service tool for FoxPro is the SOAP Toolkit, which has been discontinued and which had a host of problems when dealing with complex types passed over Web Services. In this article I’ll show how you can leverage the powerful Web service features of .NET and the new Windows Communication Foundation in your FoxPro application through COM Interop.

By: Strahl, Rick

Integrating .NET Code and SQL Server Reporting Services
CoDe Magazine - 2007 - Jan/Feb
SQL Server Reporting Services versions 2000 and 2005 (SSRS) has many powerful features. SSRS has a well-designed data access engine, a great set of layout tools, and an excellent expression system for creating complex formulas. While the expression system is quite powerful it is not suitable for all applications. This is where SSRS shines. SSRS gives developers the ability to add custom code to their report layouts. This article demonstrates adding custom code to SQL Server Reporting Services reports.

By: Paddock, Rod

Surfs Up!
CoDe Magazine - 2007 - Jan/Feb
Rod Paddock's Jan/Feb 07 Editorial

By: Paddock, Rod

A New Foundation: Taking a Look at WCF
Online CoDe Magazine - The Web View
Rick discusses WCF

By: Strahl, Rick

Are You Ready for IIS 7?
Online CoDe Magazine - The Web View
In this article, Rick discusses the new features of IIS 7.

By: Strahl, Rick

I Have a Dream
CoDe Magazine - 2006 - Nov/Dec
Rod Paddock Nov/Dec 2006 Editorial

By: Paddock, Rod

What's The Resolution?
Online CoDe Magazine - Publisher's Point
Markus Egger discusses screen resolutions.

By: Egger, Markus

ATLAS Grows Up
Online CoDe Magazine - The Web View
Rick Strahl discusses ATLAS, Microsoft's ASP.NET implementation of AJAX.

By: Strahl, Rick

Compilation and Deployment in ASP.NET 2.0
CoDe Magazine - 2006 - Sep/Oct
It’s crucial to understand how your ASP.NET code compiles in order to debug your Web applications effectively. ASP.NET 2.0 has changed the way compilation and deployment works, and in this article I’ll dig in and show you how compilation works now and what has changed from ASP.NET 1.x.

By: Strahl, Rick

Axes and Imagination
CoDe Magazine - 2006 - Sep/Oct
So what the heck is Rod doing with Stewie and Brian Griffin (of Family Guy fame) you ask? Well, Rod is sharpening his axe.

By: Paddock, Rod

A Look at Windows Vista from a Developer Perspective
Online CoDe Magazine - The Web View
Rick Strahl discusses Windows Vista for developers.

By: Strahl, Rick

Wither T-SQL
CoDe Magazine - 2006 - Jul/Aug
Rod Paddock July/August 06 editorial

By: Paddock, Rod

Web Application Projects Are Here
Online CoDe Magazine - The Web View
Rick Strahl discusses Web Application Projects

By: Strahl, Rick

How Many Threads Do You Need?
Online CoDe Magazine - Publisher's Point
Markus Egger discusses the need to create multi-threaded applications.

By: Egger, Markus

RAD in the Time of Agile Development
CoDe Magazine - 2006 - May/Jun
Rod Paddock - Editorial - May/June 2006

By: Paddock, Rod

Web Standards: Standards or Stasis
Online CoDe Magazine - The Web View
Rick Strahl discusses the current status of the Web.

By: Strahl, Rick

ASP.NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005: You win some, you lose some
Online CoDe Magazine - The Web View
Rick Strahl discusses Visual Studio 2005.

By: Strahl, Rick

Creating a Generic Message Display Page for ASP.NET
CoDe Magazine - 2006 - Mar/Apr
Creating messages in your Web application should be quick, easy, and most importantly, consistent.They should look like they belong with the rest of the application even if an error occurs. How often have you created a new page to display simple text or a notification message to your users? Wouldn’t it be better if you could reuse an existing template and simply pass in a few parameters to tell it to render an application-specific message? In this article I will show you how to create a reusable Message Display class that reduces displaying messages generically in your application to a single line of code.

By: Strahl, Rick

Developers Toolkit
CoDe Magazine - 2006 - Mar/Apr
Rod Paddock Developers Toolkit commentary

By: Paddock, Rod

Beyond the Mists of Avalon
Online CoDe Magazine - Publisher's Point
Markus Egger discusses tools used to create WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation, formerly "Avalon") interfaces, in particular, WinFX Extensions for Visual Studio as well as the Microsoft Expression product line.

By: Egger, Markus

LINQ
CoDe Magazine - 2006 - Mar/Apr
At PDC 2005, Microsoft introduced brand new technology known as LINQ, which stands for “Language Integrated Query.”The feature-set hiding behind this acronym is truly mind-boggling and worthy of a lot of attention. In short, LINQ introduces a query language similar to SQL Server’s T-SQL, in C# and VB.NET. Imagine that you could issue something like a “select * from customers” statement within C# or VB.NET. This sounds somewhat intriguing, but it doesn’t begin to communicate the power of LINQ.

By: Egger, Markus

Get Excited About IIS 7.0
Online CoDe Magazine - The Web View
RIck Strahl discusses IIS 7.0

By: Strahl, Rick

Introduction to Tablet PC Development
CoDe Focus Magazine - 2005 - Vol. 3 - Issue 1 - Tablet PC and Mobile PC
If you are familiar with development on PCs using Microsoft’s tools, you know most of what you need to develop for Tablet PCs.The main addition in the Tablet PC development arena is that of Digital Ink and the features that go along with it, such as Ink collection, Ink management, and Ink recognition. There are also a few minor additional things, such as new user interface considerations and screen operation in portrait mode.

By: Egger, Markus

Ink Recognition and Ink Analysis
CoDe Focus Magazine - 2005 - Vol. 3 - Issue 1 - Tablet PC and Mobile PC
Being able to take handwritten notes or annotations is nice, but the real power of Tablet PCs comes from the ability to analyze and recognize digital Ink.Recognition of handwriting is important as it allows for the conversion of digital Ink into standard text strings. Ink analysis takes the concept a step further and adds spatial interpretation to the mix to apply further semantics. Gesture recognition enables the user to trigger real-time actions.

By: Egger, Markus

Get Control and Performance with the Real Time Stylus API
CoDe Focus Magazine - 2005 - Vol. 3 - Issue 1 - Tablet PC and Mobile PC
Standard Ink collection is incredibly easy using the Tablet PC SDK.For scenarios that require more control or non-default behavior, default Ink collection may not be the best choice. The Real Time Stylus API provides lower-level, higher performance access to stylus input, making this the API of choice for power-developers.Standard Ink collection is incredibly easy using the Tablet PC SDK.For scenarios that require more control or non-default behavior, default Ink collection may not be the best choice. The Real Time Stylus API provides lower-level, higher performance access to stylus input, making this the API of choice for power-developers.

By: Egger, Markus

Unveiling Windows SideShow
CoDe Focus Magazine - 2005 - Vol. 3 - Issue 1 - Tablet PC and Mobile PC
Windows SideShow enables users to use PCs even when they are turned off.SideShow allows users to remotely control PCs and servers. It allows PCs to create interactive output on devices other than monitors so users can view useful data stored on their PCs when they are away from it. It enables users to interact with their PCs in scenarios that would previously have been very cumbersome, and allows for the creation of secondary display and interaction devices that would previously have been cost-prohibitive.

By: Egger, Markus

The Modern World of Mobility
CoDe Focus Magazine - 2005 - Vol. 3 - Issue 1 - Tablet PC and Mobile PC
Rod Paddock - Editorial for Tablet PC 2006

By: Paddock, Rod

LINQ Up!
Online CoDe Magazine - Publisher's Point
At PDC 2005, Microsoft announced a new technology called Language Integrated Query (LINQ), which will be available with Visual Studio “Orcas” (the next version of Visual Studio). A lot of exciting new technologies are announced at every PDC, and as a result, LINQ got some attention, but not nearly as much as I think it deserves. LINQ represents the ability to run queries right inside of Visual Basic, C#, or any other .NET language.

By: Egger, Markus

C-Sharpest
Online CoDe Magazine - Publisher's Point
C# 2.0 just shipped with a number of interesting new features: anonymous methods, nullable objects, iterators, partial classes, generics, and others. But the innovation does not stop there! Microsoft (and Anders Hejlsberg in particular) have already allowed us a sneak peek at some of the new features that will be available in C# 3.0.

By: Egger, Markus

A Low Level Look at ASP.NET Architecture
CoDe Magazine - 2005 - Nov/Dec
ASP.NET is a powerful platform for building Web applications, that provides a tremendous amount of flexibility and power for building just about any kind of Web application. Most people are familiar only with the high level frameworks like WebForms and WebServices which sit at the very top level of the ASP.NET hierarchy. In this article I’ll describe the lower level aspects of ASP.NET and explain how requests move from Web Server to the ASP.NET runtime and then through the ASP.NET HTTP pipeline to process requests.ASP.NET is a powerful platform for building Web applications, that provides a tremendous amount of flexibility and power for building just about any kind of Web application. Most people are familiar only with the high level frameworks like WebForms and WebServices which sit at the very top level of the ASP.NET hierarchy. In this article I’ll describe the lower level aspects of ASP.NET and explain how requests move from Web Server to the ASP.NET runtime and then through the ASP.NET HTTP pipeline to process requests.

By: Strahl, Rick

Tragedy and a Call to Action
CoDe Magazine - 2005 - Nov/Dec
Rod Paddock Nov/Dec Editorial Article.

By: Paddock, Rod

Atlas to Carry the Web World
Online CoDe Magazine - The Web View
Rick Strahl talks about the new Atlas framework for ASP.NET.

By: Strahl, Rick

The Quest for the Killer App
Online CoDe Magazine - Publisher's Point
Markus Egger discusses the evaluation of new technologies.

By: Egger, Markus

Security Is Job One!
CoDe Magazine - 2005 - Sep/Oct
Rod Paddock Editorial Article - September/October 2005 Issue

By: Paddock, Rod

Integrating PayPal into E-Commerce Applications with ASP.NET
CoDe Magazine - 2005 - Sep/Oct
E-commerce applications require user-friendly mechanisms for payment.Although e-commerce sites usually use full credit card processing gateways, offering PayPal for payment provides an option for those who don't want to send credit card information across the Internet. If you run a Web shop that uses direct credit card processing and you want to integrate PayPal, you'll find that using PayPal as a processing service is not as straightforward as using a payment gateway. In this article, I'll describe how you can minimize the external PayPal interaction and work the PayPal payment into your order processing workflow to provide a seamless interface using ASP.NET and C#.

By: Strahl, Rick

The AJAX Hype - Some Things to Think About
Online CoDe Magazine - The Web View
Rick Strahl discusses AJAX technology.

By: Strahl, Rick

User Interface Challenges
Online CoDe Magazine - Publisher's Point
Markus Egger discusses user interface technologies developers should familiarize themselves with.

By: Egger, Markus

Where's Your Logic?
Online CoDe Magazine - Publisher's Point
Markus Egger discusses the role of business logic in modern application architecture.

By: Egger, Markus

The Times they Are a Changin'
CoDe Magazine - 2005 - Jul/Aug
Rod Paddock Editorial Article July/August 2005

By: Paddock, Rod

VB Paradigm Shift
CoDe Magazine - 2005 - May/Jun
Rod Paddock Editorial Article May/June 2005

By: Paddock, Rod

What an Amazing Five Years It Has Been!
CoDe Magazine - 2005 - May/Jun
Markus Egger 5 Year Anniversary Editorial May/June 2005

By: Egger, Markus

Who's On First?
Online CoDe Magazine - Publisher's Point
Markus Egger discusses the importance of a solid basis of knowledge.

By: Egger, Markus

Anything To Declare?
Online CoDe Magazine - Publisher's Point
Markus Egger discusses declarative programming

By: Egger, Markus

Aux Displays Rock!
Online CoDe Magazine - Publisher's Point
Markus Egger discusses the new Aux Display feature supported in Windows "Longhorn".

By: Egger, Markus

Grokking .NET
CoDe Magazine - 2005 - Mar/Apr
Rod Paddock Editorial Mar/April 2005

By: Paddock, Rod

Pest Control
Online CoDe Magazine - Publisher's Point
Brian Kernighan [1] once said, "Debugging is twice as hard as writing code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it." This quote gets a little giggle out of most developers, but on the serious side, there is a lot of truth in it. Writing code that does cool or useful things certainly is much easier than writing code that does cool or useful things reliably.

By: Egger, Markus

The Revenge of the Thick Client
Online CoDe Magazine - Publisher's Point
If you have been involved in a new software development project during the last five years ? and if you read this article, chances are you have ? then you have probably been faced with the question "Web application or Windows® UI?" And in the vast majority of cases, the answer to this question was probably "Web application." For modern, enterprise-wide systems there were simply many reasons and issues that made it hard to implement the desired feature set in a conventional Windows application and deploy it in a reasonable manner. At this point, the advantages and disadvantages of each application type are well understood, and decisions are easy to make. Or are they?

By: Egger, Markus

Great Reasons to Ring In 2005!
Online CoDe Magazine - Publisher's Point
Wow, another year has gone by, and as you read this, you are probably returning to the office after a few more or less relaxing holiday time spent with friends and family and a New Year's celebration. Interesting things have happened in our industry in the last 12 months, but I predict that the next 12 months will be quite a bit more interesting! Seldom before have I been as excited about new technologies and developments as I am now.

By: Egger, Markus

It's a Blog World
CoDe Magazine - 2005 - Jan/Feb
Rod Paddock January February 2005 Editorial Article

By: Paddock, Rod

CoDe Talks: Steve Ballmer, Chief Executive Officer, Microsoft
CoDe Magazine - 2004 - November/December
Markus Egger interviews Steve Ballmer

By: Egger, Markus

Best Practices
CoDe Magazine - 2004 - November/December
Rod Paddock Editorial Article November December 04 Issue

By: Paddock, Rod

Visual FoxPro 9 IDE Enhancements
CoDe Focus Magazine - 2004 - Vol. 2 - Issue 1 - Visual FoxPro 9.0
Visual FoxPro 9 includes a number of IDE enhancements that make its already rich development environment considerably richer.

By: Paddock, Rod

Controls, Events, Commands, and More
CoDe Focus Magazine - 2004 - Vol. 2 - Issue 1 - Visual FoxPro 9.0
Microsoft Visual FoxPro 9 is here and it brings lots of new features.This entire issue of CoDe is dedicated to Visual FoxPro 9, providing details and scenarios on how you can use the new features and enhancements. In this article, I will discuss some of the new controls, events, and commands, and a little more.

By: Lassala, Claudio

COM Interop: Making .NET and VFP Talk to Each Other
CoDe Focus Magazine - 2004 - Vol. 2 - Issue 1 - Visual FoxPro 9.0
Many companies have been relying on COM components in the last couple of years. That includes Microsoft.Using COM components made it possible for different programming languages to reuse logic between them, by agreeing to a standard defined by the COM specification.

By: Lassala, Claudio

The Importance of the Managed Platform
Online CoDe Magazine - Publisher's Point
.Net is a maturing platform. The first .NET alphas and betas went to a selected group of people years and years ago. At this point, we are approaching the third major installment of Visual Studio .NET (now called "Visual Studio 2005"). Surely at this point, nobody has to explain what .NET and the Managed Platform is. Or do we?

By: Egger, Markus

Are You Insecure?
Online CoDe Magazine - Publisher's Point
Markus Egger talks about developing secure applications.

By: Egger, Markus

Creating Custom Data Extensions for SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services
CoDe Magazine - 2004 - July/August
In early 2004, Microsoft released a new set of extensions to SQL Server 2000 called SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services.SQL Server Reporting Services provides a comprehensive platform for creating, managing, securing, scheduling, and outputting data from SQL Server, Oracle, OLE DB and ODBC data sources. When Microsoft created SQL Server Reporting Services they created it as an extendable platform. You can create your own data extensions and your own output extensions. In this article, I'll show you how to create your own custom data extensions for SQL Server Reporting Services.

By: Paddock, Rod

Building a Better Configuration Settings Class
CoDe Magazine - 2004 - July/August
Configuration settings make it possible for users and administrators to configure an application before it is run for the first time and while it runs..NET provides a good rudimentary mechanism for storing and retrieving configuration settings in the application's .config file with the ConfigurationSettings class, but this mechanism is missing a number of essential features. This article describes how to improve on the base functionality using a class that provides strong typing, allows for writing of keys, and provides optional encryption of keys.

By: Strahl, Rick

Put Your Team To Work!
Online CoDe Magazine - Publisher's Point
Markus Egger discusses team development with Visual Studio 2005 Team System.

By: Egger, Markus

Do You Think In Ink?
Online CoDe Magazine - Publisher's Point
Markus Egger talks about TabletPC development.

By: Egger, Markus

Learn Outside the Box
Online CoDe Magazine - Publisher's Point
Markus Egger talks about the needs to learn about the latest development technologies.

By: Egger, Markus

Using Your Inheritance
Online CoDe Magazine - Publisher's Point
Markus Egger discusses the use of inheritance in Visual Studio .NET applications, in particular WinForms apps.

By: Egger, Markus

Can You Hear Me Now?
Online CoDe Magazine - Publisher's Point
Markus Egger discusses mobile development and mobile devices.

By: Egger, Markus

Creating User-Defined Data Types in Yukon
CoDe Magazine - 2004 - January/February
The next version of SQL Server (code name Yukon) has extensive support of the Common Language Runtime (CLR).Previous versions of SQL Server (2000 and earlier) had a mechanism for creating custom data types. These data types were nothing more than aliases to system data types. In Yukon, you can create your own fully functional custom data types.

By: Paddock, Rod

Three Cool New Features in C#
CoDe Magazine - 2004 - January/February
C# has always had a reputation as a clean language with lots of innovation.The Whidbey-release of Visual Studio .NET ships with a new version of the C# compiler that has a number of great new features. Some of them will be implemented as generic runtime features that will show up in other languages as well, and some are truly C#-specific. All of them originated in the C# camp. In this article, I will shed some light on my three favorite new features.

By: Egger, Markus

Implementing Two-Way Control Binding for Web Forms
CoDe Magazine - 2003 - November/December
ASP.NET has considerably raised the bar for Web development with very rich developer functionality built into a flexible and highly extensible object model.If you have a background of hand-coding ASP or other scripting or CGI-style technology, .NET's redundant code reduction and development process simplification seems almost too good to be true. But data binding for controls leaves a lot to be desired in terms of ease-of-use and reading the data back into the data source. This article examines what's wrong with simple data binding and provides a set of subclasses, making data binding a lot quicker and requiring much less manual code.

By: Strahl, Rick

Creating Tablet PC Applications with VS .NET
CoDe Magazine - 2003 - September/October
In the Fall of 2002, Microsoft introduced Tablet PCs based on the popular Windows XP operating system.By default, this new platform includes applications with special Tablet PC features enabled, such as Ink Input and Pen-based operation. In order for this platform to become truly popular, third-party vendors will also have to ink-enable their applications. Luckily, this is a pretty straightforward task.

By: Egger, Markus

Using GDI+ in ASP.NET Web Applications, Part 2
CoDe Magazine - 2003 - July/August
In the last issue, I investigated GDI+ and how to use it for image manipulation in Web applications.This time around, I will look at the generation of brand new images using the same GDI+ technology and features.

By: Egger, Markus

Creating a Statusbar Control with VFP 8
CoDe Focus Magazine - 2003 - Vol. 1 - Issue 1 - Visual FoxPro 8.0
Visual FoxPro 8 offers many new features and opportunities to make life easier.In this article Rick describes how to build a native VFP-based status bar that fixes some of the problems found in the Windows Common Control OCX version (MSCOMCTL.OCX) that ships with VFP and other development tools. This article introduces several new VFP 8 features: Collections, the Empty object, AddProperty() and BindEvents(), and shows how to integrate these new features into a useful component.

By: Strahl, Rick

VFP 8 Feature Highlights
CoDe Focus Magazine - 2003 - Vol. 1 - Issue 1 - Visual FoxPro 8.0
Visual FoxPro 8 includes numerous new features that are a direct response to the requests of VFP developers.Just reading through the "What's New" section of the documentation will take you quite a while due to large quantity of additional or changed features and commands. Let's take a brief look at just a few of the exciting new capabilities that you can put to use immediately.

By: Lassala, Claudio

Event Binding in VFP 8
CoDe Focus Magazine - 2003 - Vol. 1 - Issue 1 - Visual FoxPro 8.0
Visual FoxPro developers have been using an event-based methodology for a very long time.For most purposes, events are what drive the development effort. The user clicks a button, causing an event to fire, and the developer writes code to react accordingly. All of this happens very transparently and without difficulty for either party. However, from a developer's point of view, there also isn't much flexibility in this approach. But in VFP 8, event handling is changing for the better.

By: Egger, Markus

Structured Error Handling in VFP 8
CoDe Focus Magazine - 2003 - Vol. 1 - Issue 1 - Visual FoxPro 8.0
With the introduction of Visual FoxPro 3.0, error handling in VFP changed substantially.Rather than using "on error" statements, "state of the art" error events became available. Now, 7 years later, more sophisticated error handling mechanisms take center stage as Visual FoxPro 8.0 introduces structured error handling.

By: Egger, Markus

The Basics of GDI+
CoDe Magazine - 2003 - May/June
In graphical user interfaces such as Microsoft Windows, drawing on the screen is an important task.Everything displayed on the screen is based on simple drawing operations. Often, environments such as Visual Basic abstract those drawing operations away from the developer. However, the same drawing operations still take place under the hood. In Visual Studio .NET, developers have easy access to that drawing functionality whenever they need it through a technology called GDI+. Using GDI+, developers can easily perform drawing operations such as generating graphs or building custom controls.

By: Egger, Markus

Using GDI+ in ASP.NET Web Applications, Part 1
CoDe Magazine - 2003 - May/June
GDI+ is a technology that developers generally associate with Windows Forms applications because they use it to draw anything on the screen from custom controls to diagrams.However, you can also use GDI+ in ASP.NET Web applications whenever you want to serve up dynamic images. You can use GDI+ to create dynamic banners, photo albums, graphs, diagrams, and more.

By: Egger, Markus

The Two Faces of .NET
CoDe Magazine - 2003 - March/April
Rick Strahl takes a frank look at the "Good", "Bad", "Obnoxious" and "Unknown" qualities of .NET.

By: Strahl, Rick

Shaped .NET Windows Forms
CoDe Magazine - 2003 - Jan/Feb
Since the earliest versions of the Windows operating system, all Windows have been rectangular.However, the number of applications that break out of this boring mold is rising. Even Microsoft, the king of rectangularity, is starting to create applications that use shaped windows, such as Media Player. Unfortunately, creating shaped forms has always been quite tricky. Until now that is! The .NET Framework and the Windows Forms package in particular make it easy to produce forms that have rather sophisticated shapes.

By: Egger, Markus

Threading Support in the .NET Framework
CoDe Magazine - 2002 - Nov/Dec
This article explains in depth how to implement multi-threading in your .NET applications.

By: Egger, Markus

The Power of Inheritance in .NET
CoDe Magazine - 2002 - Jan/Feb
Inheritance is one of the most fascinating features in the Visual Studio.NET languages. We have discussed this feature in several articles in the past, mainly to explain the basic concepts. Now we are going to take a look at what inheritance can actually do for you, rather than how it works.

By: Egger, Markus

Understanding Visual Inheritance in .NET
CoDe Magazine - 2001 - Issue 2
Inheritance is the single most important new object-oriented feature in Visual Studio.NET. Surprisingly, not much has been written about the subject, and most of the information available is either very basic and an "overview" at best, or just plain misleading. In this article, I give you a real-world overview of what inheritance - especially visual inheritance, can do for you.

By: Egger, Markus

The Importance of Friends
CoDe Magazine - 2002 - Sept/Oct
Rod Paddock Editorial March April 2004 Issue

By: Paddock, Rod

Never Give Up
CoDe Magazine - 2004 - March/April
Rod Paddock Editorial March April 2004 Issue

By: Paddock, Rod

Dynamically Executing Code in .NET
CoDe Magazine - 2002 - Nov/Dec
This article demonstrates the techniques for compiling dynamic code in your .NET applications.

By: Strahl, Rick

CoDe Magazine Philosophy
CoDe Magazine - 2004 - July/August
Rod Paddock Editorial July August 2004 Issue

By: Paddock, Rod

So Many Choices, So Little Time
CoDe Magazine - 2004 - May/June
Rod Paddock Editorial May Junel 2004 Issue

By: Paddock, Rod

The Silver Bullet is Found
CoDe Magazine - 2002 - July/Aug
Rod Paddock Editorial July August 2002 Issue

By: Paddock, Rod

The diminishing importance of HTML
CoDe Magazine - 2002 - July/Aug
HTML-based Web development has dominated application development for the last six years or so and there are no signs of that changing.However, things are changing as the .NET initiative takes hold. Although Microsoft has put a lot of effort into its Web-based interfaces, which include the powerful new ASP.NET Web Forms framework, I am guessing that there will actually be a push back to desktop-driven, forms-based applications once .NET takes hold.

By: Strahl, Rick

How Microsoft Builds Community
CoDe Magazine - 2002 - May/June
During the Visual Studio .NET Launch February 13 at VSLive! 2002 in San Francisco, Markus Egger and David Stevenson of Component Developer Magazine interviewed a panel of Microsoft personnel about the concept of developer communities.In this free-ranging discussion, we learned how Microsoft desires to support and encourage the growth inside developer "ecosystems" by focusing considerable resources on "community outreach."

By: Egger, Markus

Introducing .NET My Services
CoDe Magazine - 2002 - May/June
.NET My Services is Microsoft's first attempt at creating a professional, commercial and widely available Web Services platform.The .NET My Services umbrella hosts a number of different Web services, such as a Calendar service, a Contacts repository, and much, much more. These services are major building blocks for the "Everywhere, Anytime" vision, but best of all, they are relatively easy to implement and use in your own applications and Web sites!

By: Egger, Markus

Retrieving HTTP content in .NET
CoDe Magazine - 2002 - May/June
HTTP content retrieval is an important component for applications these days.Although .NET reduces the need to explicitly retrieve content from the Web through built-in mechanisms in the Web Services framework, ADO.NET and the XML classes, there are still many needs to retrieve Web content directly and manipulate it as text or data downloaded into files. In this article, I will describe the functionality of the HttpWebRequest and HttpWebResponse classes and provide an easy to use wrapper class. The class simplifies the HTTP access and provides most of the common features in a single interface while still providing full access to the base functionality of the HttpWebRequest class. In the process, I will describe some sticky issues like string encoding and Cookie handling and some related topics like implementing events and running multiple threads to service Web requests.

By: Strahl, Rick

Editorial - Thinking about .NET
CoDe Magazine - 2000 - Summer
Summer 2000 Editorial Article

By: Egger, Markus

Create Bulletproof Components with COM+ Security
CoDe Magazine - 2000 - Summer
COM+ gives the developer a way to build a flexible and powerful security system into applications without having to write a lot of custom code.This article will examine how to leverage the power of the COM+ security model.

By: Egger, Markus

Load Testing Web Applications using Microsoft's Web Application Stress Tool
CoDe Magazine - 2000 - Spring
Microsoft's Web Application Stress Tool provides an easy way to simulate large numbers of users against your Web application.This tool makes it possible to make intelligent decisions about hardware and software load incurred by your application and how much traffic a given machine or group of machines can handle. In this article Rick shows how the tool works and how to properly interpret the performance data it generates.

By: Strahl, Rick

The "Basics" of Inheritance
CoDe Magazine - 2000 - Summer
Microsoft has recently announced that the next version of Visual Basic will support inheritance.Visual FoxPro has had inheritance for the past 5 years, since Version 3.0, and Visual C++ has always had it. This article will take a closer look at what inheritance is and what it will mean for Visual Basic 7.

By: Egger, Markus

The Web at your service
CoDe Magazine - 2000 - Fall
Fall 2000 Editorial Markus Egger and Rick Strahl

By: Egger, Markus

Configuring IIS via code
CoDe Magazine - 2001 - Issue 1
In this day and age, Web applications have become the norm. We've even come to the point where many development projects involve Web applications that must be installed on multiple servers.But even if you don't build vertical Web applications, it's useful to have a configuration utility that can recreate a configuration via code. This might be for backup purposes, or for high volume environments like load balancing, where multiple servers need to be configured.

By: Strahl, Rick

XML, XSL and HTML in Windows Applications
CoDe Magazine - 2001 - Issue 1
HTML and XML have made the Internet what it is today, but both technologies are not necessarily tied to the Internet.Quite the contrary! Using HTML in regular Windows applications has always been a great alternative. Paired with XML and XSL, this technique is more powerful than ever, since there are a growing number of XML sources, such as SQL Server, Web Services, and XML-enabled Business Objects.

By: Egger, Markus

Building a 21st Century Application
CoDe Magazine - 2001 - Issue 2
In previous issues of Component Developer Magazine, we have introduced technologies such as Queued Components, COM+ Security, Loosely Coupled Events, SQL Server 2000 and BizTalk Server.Each of these represents a fascinating myriad of possibilities. But, how do you put all of them together to build a real-life, highly reliable, 100% available distributed application?

By: Egger, Markus

Handling long Web Requests with Asynchronous Request Processing
CoDe Magazine - 2001 - Issue 2
Web Applications tend to be stateless, and running long requests can be problematic for Web backends. Long-running requests can tie up valuable Web server connections and resources. In this article, Rick describes one approach that can be used to handle lengthy requests. A polling mechanism and an Event manager class can be used to pass messages between a Web application and a processing server running the actual long task.

By: Strahl, Rick