Sol 3

Here's the results, as promised, of the .NET Survey I took last week. Also, here's the disclaimer. I did this on a whim, it's not scientific, so the margin of error is +/-101%. That said, the results feel intuitively right to me, personally. It was a single question with 14 checkboxes. You were asked to ''check al the .NET Framework features ...

Before I graduated from College/University I was convinced that school was for lamers. Then I graduated from school and decided that NOT going to school was for lamers. That shows you what a wishy-washy person *I* am. ;) School is for some folks and not for others. Wear the shoe that fits you best. Totally random retrospective self-focused ...

There's been some confusion about the size of the .NET Framework. The .NET Framework is not really a 200+ meg download.  Which installer do I use? Here's the whole thing in a nutshell for Developers, ISVs, and Administrators. Offline Installer - One single file that can be run offline and can install the .NET Framework any system ...

I got an interesting question recently emphasis mine: I am regular reader of you blog. I need some help in single instance winform. I have to open application when a file (.ext) is clicked (File is associated with that application like .doc with WINWORD). Application should be single instance. When I click the .ext file it should open the ...

I'm still using the Kindle every day for casual reading, but just now I noticed that my pile of technical books on my desk is taller than my son. Actually, a few of these I've already read in manuscript form and I wrote either a foreword or a quote for good ones. The vast majority of the pile are books I'm currently wading through ...

Bil Simser has just done the .NET Community a huge solid. Bil has dug up and re-released Terrarium to CodePlex wtih the intent to update it to use new language features and new usability features like ClickOnce. If you're newish to the .NET Community (<3-5 years?) you might not have heard of Terrarium. There was a time when it was the tool for ...

Downcasting is kind of something you usually want to avoid, but sometimes it's not easily avoided. It depends on the situation. Because it's not an idiom you'll find yourself doing every day, sometimes you'll forget to do it entirely and what you're looking for is right there under your nose. The Problem A buddy was trying to host the WebBrowser ...

I just had a great one on one coding learning session with a good friend of mine over lunch. He's trying to take his coding skills to the ''next level.'' Just as we plateau when we work out physically, I think we can plateau when coding and solving problems. That one of the reasons I try to read a lot of code to be a better developer and why I ...

WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) is confusing, to me at least. It's one of those things that is so completely different from how things were done in the past that it's not only hard to just pick up, but it's hard to tell what's the right way to do things. Often, there's a half-dozen ways to do something but no way to know which is the right. ...

The Beta of .NET 3.5 and VS2008 SP1 is out. I'm sure everyone is blogging the heck out of it, so I'll try to add my own specific kind of value. There's fixes, many improvements (some subtle, some dramatic), and some new technology. Should You Fear This (Beta) Release? Maybe a little bit. Don't be afraid of the new assemblies or the bug fixes, I ...