.NET

My New WPF blog and site

Walt Ritscher — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 23:55:00 GMT

2007 is going to the year of WPF for me. I've got a lot of projects pending, I'll tell you more about them as I get the details worked out. But I can tell you this....

I started a new blog at wpfwonderland.wordpress.com that's dedicated to WPF topics. I'll have a companion website up and running sometime this month too.(www.wpfwonderland.com )

Please check it out. I'm really excited about WPF. Can't wait to talk to you about all the cool bits.

Walt

Visual Studio 2005 SP1 is Released

Walt Ritscher — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 08:51:00 GMT

Hooray! Microsoft released the service packs for Visual Studio today. These are a MUST INSTALL for anyone using VS. There are plenty of bug fixes. The two that I'm most excited about are the Visual Basic background compiler fix and the performance fix for compiling large projects. Both of these issues have slowed my daily development consistently during the last year.

If you are an ASP.NET developer you'll be happy that the Web Deployment and Web Application projects are now included.

Microsoft has added some interesting new features in the SP too.

Multicore support for profiling
Multicore support for code gen
Team Server performance improvements
See the Microsoft website for more details

There are several version of the SP. Pick the one that matches your version of Visual Studio.

Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite SP1 (includes SP1 updates for Standard, Professional, and Team Editions of Visual Studio 2005)
Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server SP1
Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions SP1
Visual Studio 2005 SP1 Update for Windows Vista Beta

Seriously, if you are using Visual Studio 2005 you should install this SP as soon as possible.

Microsoft finally starts giving us preinstalled software on Virtual Harddrives (VHD)

Walt Ritscher — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 10:41:00 GMT

I'm a big advocate of Virtual Machines. I've been using VM's for a number of years, starting with VMwares great offerings back in 2000. The last few years I've used both VMWare and Microsoft Virtual PC and Virtual Server. My friend know that I'm always trying to convince Microsofties to ship trial/beta software as VPC images. I won't say that I'm responsible for this :). I'm sure that pressure from VMWare had more to do with it. But I'm still happy!

In the last year Microsoft has started releasing beta software preconfigured on VHDs(Virtual Hard Drives).

Recently Microsoft announced the same VHD support for more current products.

The VHD Test Drive program is a first for Microsoft software and the more than 7,000 software vendors who can now deliver pre-configured mainstream applications within Windows Server-based virtual machines to their customers. Microsoft partners can now offer their prospective/current customers greater choice during the software evaluation process for mainstream applications and make it easier to evaluate complex solutions through the distribution of pre-configured virtual machines that can run on Virtual Server 2005 R2. You can also use System Center Virtual Machine Manager, now available as a beta, to manage all the virtual machines in your environment.

I think that they'll only be offering trial versions, but that is still a great deal. The best part, at least for me, is that it takes only a few minutes to setup the VHD on my system. Download the file, open VPC manager, add new Virtual PC, use the VHD provided. Done!

Contrast that 3 minute scenario with your scenarios of the past. Have you ever tried to setup an Exchange Server?

ASP.NET 2.0 "Generation of designer file failed: ConnectionString error fixed

Walt Ritscher — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 23:59:00 GMT

Tonight I was converting an ASP.NET 2.0 Website to a Web Application Project. There is a nice step-by-step guide that I was using to walk me through the process. I ran into troubles as soon as I ran the “Convert to Web Application” menu.

I tracked the trouble down to four files in the project. All of them were failing with this message.

Generation of designer file failed: The expression prefix “ConnectionStrings” was not recognized. Please correct the prefix or register the prefix in the <expressionBuilders> section of configuration.

The first place I looked was a dead end. I looked in the web.config, thinking that was the configuration file in the error message. Wrong!

Next I looked at the html on one of the problem pages.

<asp:SqlDataSource ID="dsUsers" runat="server" ConnectionString="<%$ ConnectionStrings:aspnetdbConnectionString %>"

There was the ConnectionStrings text!

The Fix

Cut everything between the quotes for value of the ConnectionString attribute.
Do the same for any other ConnectionString attributes on the same page.
Run the “Convert to Web Application” for the current page.
Restore the ConnectionString value and save the file.

Seattle Code Camp 2006 (October 28,29)

Walt Ritscher — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 11:35:00 GMT

It's only three weeks away and coming to Seattle. That's right, the Seattle Code camp is looking for camp counselors (speakers). If you want to talk tech to a room full of eager participants this is the event you've been waiting for.

Last year we had over 50 presenters and 250+ attendees.

http://seattle.techevents.info/codecamp/2/default.aspx

Bug Fix: Disappearing Intellisense in ASP.NET web.config

Walt Ritscher — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 10:53:00 GMT

I really like the Visual Studio 2005 intellisense (See here) . There is a bug in the VS however that can stop it from working. I believe it will be fixed in the VS 2005 service pack coming in December but in the meantime here are some things to help fix the problem. Thanks to ScottGu and others for the ideas. I'm posting here so I don't forget.

Configuration Element troubles

The main thing that causes the intellisense to stop working is adding a xmlsn attribute to the root <config> element.

From Scott

There is one gotcha to be aware of, though, that can sometimes cause intellisense for the web.config file to stop working in the IDE. This happens when a default namespace is added to the root <configuration> element. For example, like so:

<configuration xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/.NetConfiguration/v2.0">

This doesn’t cause any runtime problems – but it does stop intellisense completion happening for the built-in .NET XML elements in the web.config file.

The bad news is that the built-in web admin tool (launched via the WebSite->ASP.NET Configuration menu item in VS 2005 and Visual Web Developer) always adds this xmlns namespace when it launches – so if you use this tool to manage users/roles you’ll end up having it added to your web.config file for you.

To get intellisense back when you are editing the web.config file in the IDE, just delete the xmlns reference and have the root configuration element look like so:

<configuration>

Everything will then work fine again.

Changing WebAdmin Tool

A quick fix to the WebAdmin tool will prevent your config file from getting hammered.

Go to %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\ASP.NETWebAdminFiles\App_Code
Open the WebAdminPage.cs file
Edit the config.NamespaceDeclared line.

Thanks to Massimo Prota

Intellisense in ASP.NET web.confg

Walt Ritscher — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 10:29:00 GMT

Visual Studio 2005 improves on the intellisense in many file-types. One of my favorites is the support for intellisense in XML and .config files. You get a listing of what elements and attributes are available for the current config section.

It's also smart enough to know when you've used a element and not show it in the list (if it is restricted to one instance in the schema).

First Time

Second Time

Ruby in Steel - Writing Ruby code in Visual Studio 2005

Walt Ritscher — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 11:00:00 GMT

It seems that a lot of my colleagues are intrigued with Ruby and it's web cousin Ruby on Rails. I have to admit I'm intrigued with the language, I just haven't had the time to look into the benefits of Ruby first hand.

A couple of people/companies are working on .NET implementations for Ruby. Last week at the Portland Code Camp I sat in on IronRuby session. A very interesting look at how Wilco Bauwer is building a version of Ruby that runs on the .NET CLR. Wilco is an intern on the ASP.NET team and still finds spare time to work on the Iron Ruby project.

Another interesting find is Ruby in Steel. This is a Visual Studio implementation of Ruby on Rails from a company name SapphireSteel. You can use all the tools you know and love from Visual Studio to build, modify and test Ruby on Rails code. They're still in early beta releases but it looks very interesting to me. According to their web site SapphireSteel will release a commercial version and a free standard edition.

I might be learning Ruby on Rails sooner than I thought.

Updated Portland Code Camp 2006 code

Walt Ritscher — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 10:00:00 GMT

For anyone at the Portland Oregon Code Camp

I updated my ASP.NET tips code this week and uploaded to my website. Thanks for coming to my talk.

Get the code.

Glean Programming Knowledge from Paul Sheriff

Walt Ritscher — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 20:06:00 GMT

Paul Sheriff is always thinking of new ways to share his enormous knowledge of .NET and other programming skills with the world. Every-time I have dinner with him or see him at a conference he's bubbling with energy and enthusiasm over some new idea. I'm always probing and mulling new ideas too, my wife will tell you that she can't get me to shut up , but I have a hard time keeping up with Paul.

His latest idea sound exciting. He has started a subscription website that shares his catalog of tools, utilities, books, articles and web-casts. It's called Paul Sheriff's Inner Circle and it launched today. For as little as $9.00 a month you can tap into a wealth of knowledge.

I've previewed the site and I think you'll like it. Check it out.