Computer Geek!

For those of you not yet aware, Internet Explorer 7 is now available for download (the actual release not the beta). Get it here.

I just realized how much of a computer geek I am!! I just received an email from one of my co-workers and she said we have Visual Studio 2005 and the MSDN Library ready and waiting for us to install, unfortunately only after a version release, which isn't until the middle of November. I'm excited and can't wait to click the install button! Why!? *sigh* I'm the only one in my group who's excited...

Something worthy for you from Steve Wozniak (Apple co-founder)...

My advice has to do with what you do when you find yourself sitting there with ideas in your head and a desire to build them. But you're young. You have no money. Those ideas are what drive you, they're all you think about. But there's a big difference between just thinking about inventing something and doing it. So how do you do it? How do you actually set about changing the world?

· Believe in yourself. Don't waver.

· A revolutionary new product won't be understandable to most people. Don't let these people bring you down. They only know what they're exposed to. It's a type of prejudice against the spirit of invention. Trust your intuition, that way lies happiness.

· See things in "grey scale".

· Don't follow the crowd. Do a factual study. Don't waste time supporting a bad idea. Keep your ego out of the equation.

· Work alone.

· Don't work in a corporate environment where products are designed by committee.

-- STEVE WOZNIAK

Attributes.Add Lameness

Had some trouble today with *.Attributes.Add and using an ampersand &.

The problem is Attributes.Add and here's what I found:

Using Reflector to trace through System.Web.UI.WebControlsWebControl.Attributes to see if it was doing any kind of encoding turns out that
System.Web.HttpUtility.HtmlAttributeEncode is called on any text added via Attributes.Add. HtmlAttributeEncode turns & into & and turns double quotes (") into "

Lameness I say! Anyways the solution I used was to register a startup script and place my onClick in a function then on my attributes.add I just call the javascript function. Works well, and note that this happened to me on ASP.NET 1.1, not sure if it occurs in 2.0

Quick Book Review

Just finished reading:

• Cascading Style Sheets 2.0 Programmer's Reference
  by Eric A. Meyer
  McGraw-Hill/Osborne © 2001 (334 pages) : ISBN:0072131780

If you know Eric Meyer then you know he's a well known CSS professional. His book is undoubtedly good, even research Amazon.com to see the user reviews.

I was looking for an intermediate introduction to CSS. I have a general knowledge of CSS and use it quite often when designing websites. Recently I heard all about CSS layouts and that they are the way to go. Since I was not too familiar with using CSS for layouts, or the extent and benefits of CSS, I decided to pick up this book. Glad I did because Eric goes over everything you'll need to know and then some. Be forewarned though that beginners who have never touched CSS before may find it hard to catch on, this is certainly an intermediate to expert reference book. I'll be keeping this book close knowing I will be using it for reference quite often. Remember to check his website for great examples.

2007 Camaro

Yes this is not programming related but my love for the '69 Camaro SS has been rekindled! I just got a glimpse of this on accident and I am drooling!! GM is planning on bringingback the amazingly sexy (IMO) Camaro with the 67-69 body style. I can certainly say, God-willing, this will be my next car. (Assuming they stick to anything remotely close to the concepts pictured here)
I've wanted a 69 SS for a while now but seeing these new beauty's really makes me want them. There's nothing better than a new oldie. And this one certainly gets my heart pumping! Cant wait to see the real thing!

Project Foundation

Ok, it's late... I've had a stressful day... and I'd like to try the new Blogger Beta posting... so here goes.

I've finalized my foundation for my new project. After many hours researching and learning about some of this stuff I have chosen a very sexy set of tools and components as my new foundation. Here it is:

• Visual Studio 2005 / ASP.NET 2.0 / VB.NET


• ASP.NET AJAX


• Prototype


• Script.aculo.us


• Curvy Corners - Snicker all you want the curves are sexy ;)


• And I've been looking at Wilson ORMapper or NHibernate - not sure yet
  

There ya go! If anyone has any suggestions or comments please let me know!

New Visual Basic Keywords

For those of you still jumping into VB.NET I have compiled a list of new keywords available in .NET!! These will come in handy so have a sharp pencil ready.

New Keywords:

• Continue


• Using


• My


• IsNot


• TryCast

Below you will find quick explanations of each:

Continue: Enables you to work through loops more logically in specific situations.

Ex:

For i As Integer = 0 To (s.Length() - 1)
   If (s(i).Equals(" ")) Then Continue For
      spaceCounter += 1
Next

Using: The Using keyword ensures that resources get destroyed as soon as possible instead of remaining in memory until the method is executed. No more waiting for garbage collection! Note that there is no need to Dim our object.

Ex:

Using conn as New SqlConnection
   ' use the conn object
End Using ' Automatically disposes our conn object

My: This new keyword is designed to quickly give you access to a large variety of resources you may need to access when developing your applications. Different implementations in ASP.NET and VB.NET / Winforms.

Ex:

'Retrieve the computer name
Dim computername As String = My.Computer.Info.OSFullName

IsNot: The IsNot operator is the opposite of the Is operator.

Ex:

If myObject1 IsNot myObject2 Then ...

TryCast: The TryCast statement attempts to cast without having to handle the invalid cast exception. If the cast is invalid a Nothing value is returned.

Ex:

manager = TryCast(obj, Employee)
If manager IsNot Nothing Then
   ' use the manager object
End If

And that is that! Those are some extremely useful additions to the VB.NET language. Information was referenced from Professional ASP.NET 2.0, Appendix A. For further information and descriptions I highly recommend:

Professional ASP.NET 2.0
by Bill Evjen et al.
Wrox Press © 2006 (1290 pages)
ISBN:0764576100

ASP.NET / AJAX Page Loader Progress Bar

Ran across this article for using ASP.NET and AJAX to create a splash screen / loading bar for your web page (sort of like the loading screens you see in Flash). Haven't had a chance to try it out so I'm not sure of it's performance. If anyone decides to use this let me know how it works out, otherwise I'll post some feedback later on.

Click here for the article / source