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  • Ask the Readers: Favorite Deal App?

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Black Friday is mere days away and the holiday shopping season is upon us. This week we want to hear about your favorite deals apps—how do you find the best deals on the go? The parameters for this week’s Ask the Readers question are pretty straight forward: we want to hear about your favorite deal finding/deal comparison smart phone app. Whether it’s for Android, iOS, or a web site with a very cleanly formatted mobile interface, we want to hear about how you score serious deals out in the field. How do you know if the deal you see in the store is the best deal? Sound off in the comments with your favorite deal app and then check in on Friday for the What You Said roundup. How to See What Web Sites Your Computer is Secretly Connecting To HTG Explains: When Do You Need to Update Your Drivers? How to Make the Kindle Fire Silk Browser *Actually* Fast!

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  • Microsoft lance une campagne de promotion de printemps sur Windows 7 et propose des réductions allan

    Mise à jour du 12/04/10 Microsoft célèbre le printemps avec des Windows 7 à prix tout doux Et propose des réductions allant jusqu'à 60€ Si vous souhaitez passer à Windows 7, c'est le moment. Microsoft vient en effet de lancer une campagne de promotion de printemps qui durera 5 semaines. Les réductions sur l'achat du nouvel OS vont de 20 à 60€. "Du 8 avril au 14 mai 2010, Windows 7 édition Familiale, Windows 7 Professionnel et Windows 7 édition Intégrale s'afficheront à des tarifs printaniers, dans les points de vente habituels et sur le Microsoft Store". L'édition Familiale Premium (mise à jo...

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  • WidgetBlock Speeds Up Browsing by Removing Social Media Widgets

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Chrome: If you’re tired of web pages cluttered with social media buttons, WidgetBlock bans the buttons and speeds up the load time of web pages in the process. Even on a snappy internet connection you’ve likely noticed, thanks to the deluge of social media buttons loading in the background, a noticeable lag on popular web sites. WidgetBlock blocks widgets from loading (just like popular ad blocking software blocks ads from loading). The above screenshot, taken from a popular media site, shows just how much screen real estate is taken up by social media widgets. Installing WidgetBlock banishes the social media widgets and speeds load time. Hit up the link below to grab a free copy. WidgetBlock [Chrome Web Store] HTG Explains: When Do You Need to Update Your Drivers? How to Make the Kindle Fire Silk Browser *Actually* Fast! Amazon’s New Kindle Fire Tablet: the How-To Geek Review

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  • Ubuntu, Gnome, PAM and ecryptfs

    - by Michel
    I would like to have a directory accessible to a couple of users, and not readable by maintenance types ... I can do what I want using ecryptfs and a password known only to the "couple of users" in question, who then can mount the directory and use as they see fit. I would love to be able to automate that process and unlock the directory at login - again, only for the "couple users" in question, without asking a password. Gnome-keyring is able to store passphrases/passwords encrypted; and, apparently, if I could get a key identity to ecryptfs, Gnome PAM modules would allow the key with that identity to be unlocked, and the directory could be mounted. Alas, I have found no way to go from point A (Gnome PAM keyring module) to point B (use the unlocked key in ecryptfs). Another use of the same mechanism would allow to build a "key escrow" mechanism, where keys to encrypted volumes are safekept with, e.g., HR; so that company information in encrypted directories can be recovered if you pass under the proverbial bus.

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  • Is this overkill? Using MDX queries and cubes instead of SQL stored procedures

    - by Jason Holland
    I am new to Microsoft's SQL Server Analysis Services Cubes and MDX queries. Where I work we have a daily sales table in SQL Server 2005 that already contains an aggregate of sale information per store per day. At this time it contains only 164,000+ rows. We have a sales cube dedicated to this table that about 15 reports are based off of. Now, I should also note that we generate reports based on our own fiscal year criteria: a 13 period year (1 month equals 28 days etc.). Is this overkill? At what point is it justified to begin using SSAS Cubes/MDX over plain old SQL Server stored procedures? Since I have always been just using plain old SQL am I tragically late to the MDX party?

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  • 20 Windows Keyboard Shortcuts You Might Not Know

    - by Justin Garrison
    Mastering the keyboard will not only increase your navigation speed but it can also help with wrist fatigue. Here are some lesser known Windows shortcuts to help you become a keyboard ninja. Image by Remko van Dokkum Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Get the Complete Android Guide eBook for Only 99 Cents [Update: Expired] Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 7: Design and Typography How to Choose What to Back Up on Your Linux Home Server How To Harmonize Your Dual-Boot Setup for Windows and Ubuntu Hang in There Scrat! – Ice Age Wallpaper How Do You Know When You’ve Passed Geek and Headed to Nerd? On The Tip – A Lamborghini Theme for Chrome and Iron What if Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner were Human? [Video] Peaceful Winter Cabin Wallpaper Store Tabs for Later Viewing in Opera with Tab Vault

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  • Storing and Finding Art Assets

    - by ashes999
    I've started down a line of art asset development that will allow me to (hopefully) reuse and improve assets for several games. But how do I go about storing and finding them? Let's say for example I decide to focus on RPGs for ~2 years. I would create items, monsters, etc. and store them somewhere. How would I categorize them and make them easier to search later on? Is the best solution "use directories with broad categories like landscape/items/monsters/etc.?"

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  • DIY Door Lock Grants Access via RFID

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    If you’re looking to lighten the load on your pocket and banish the jingling of keys, this RFID-key hack makes your front door keycard accessible–and even supports groups and user privileges. Steve, a DIYer and Hack A Day reader, was looking for a solution to a simple problem: he wanted to easily give his friends access to his home without having to copy lots of keys and bulk up their key rings. Since all his friends already carried a Boston public transit RFID card the least intrusive solution was to hack his front door to support RFID cards. His Arduino-based solution can store up to 50 RFID card identifiers, supports group-based access, and thanks to a little laser cutting and stain the project enclosure blends in with the Victorian styling of his home’s facade. Hit up the link below to see his code–for a closer look at the actual enclosure check out this photo gallery. RFID Front Door Lock [via Hack A Day] HTG Explains: What is DNS? How To Switch Webmail Providers Without Losing All Your Email How To Force Windows Applications to Use a Specific CPU

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  • Junior software developer - How to understand web applications in depth?

    - by nat_gr
    I am currently a junior developer in web applications and specifically in ASP.NET MVC technology. My problem is that the C# senior developer in the company has no experience with this technology and I try to learn without any guidance. I went through all tutorials (e.g music store), codeplex projects and also read Pro ASP.NET MVC 4. However, most of the examples are about CRUD and e-commerce applications. What I don't understand is how dependency injection fits in web applications (I have realized that is not only used for facilitating unit testing) or when I should use a custom model binder or how to model the business logic when there is already a database schema in place. I read the forum quite often and it would very helpful if some experienced developer could give me an insight about how to proceed. Do I need to read some books to understand the overall idea behind web applications? And what kind of application should I start building myself - I don't think it would be useful to create similar examples with the tutorials.

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  • CRM + Invoicing/Billing + Ticketing for a small web design company

    - by Mike
    Hi everyone, I am currently using ActiveCollab but it lacks the typical CRM features. I can't even keep notes about a customer saved in one place. What I am looking for is a simple but efficient CRM application that allows me to store all the (potential) customers along with their phone calls noted down, contracts, agreements. On the billing end, I should be able to keep track of invoices and payments, along with a bit of sales reports. A great extra would be a ticket support feature but not really necessary I looked at VTiger and SugarCRM at first. Though, they look too complex on the sales/campaigns end but completely lack the billing side. Do you have some good apps/services to suggest? :) Any programming language or OS would do. Both paid and free. Thanks Mike

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  • Content, MetaData and Taxonomy 1 Taxonomy Manager

    This article is cross-posted from my personal blog. In DotNetNuke version 5.3, we introduced the concept of a centralized Content store, together with the ability to apply Taxonomies (categories) to the content. We have extended this in DNN 5.4 by completing the MetaData API as well as adding Folksonomy (user tags). In this series of blogs I will explain how developers can take advantage of these new features in their own extensions. But first lets take a look at how the pieces work together....Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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  • Is donationware a good monetization model for developers?

    - by Nathan Campos
    I've been developing for Android for about 2 years (and ~1 year for iOS), releasing freeware and open source applications (mostly because my AdSense account was disabled in 2010), but recently I had an idea for a great app that I wanted to get some money, since it would take some effort to develop and also I would like to test this "commercial" model to know if this could make me invest more time improving and making my apps better. Since my AdSense account was disabled and then I'll not be about to sell it on the Google Play Store, I thought about making it a donationware so I would distribute it for free (and probably open source too) and users that really liked the app and wanted to give me a thanks and a incentive to continue developing it could donate any amount of money. So, what's your experience with donationware? Is it worth compared to paid apps?

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  • Modified Strategy Design Pattern

    - by Samuel Walker
    I've started looking into Design Patterns recently, and one thing I'm coding would suit the Strategy pattern perfectly, except for one small difference. Essentially, some (but not all) of my algorithms, need an extra parameter or two passed to them. So I'll either need to pass them an extra parameter when I invoke their calculate method or store them as variables inside the ConcreteAlgorithm class, and be able to update them before I call the algorithm. Is there a design pattern for this need / How could I implement this while sticking to the Strategy Pattern? I've considered passing the client object to all the algorithms, and storing the variables in there, then using that only when the particular algorithm needs it. However, I think this is both unwieldy, and defeats the point of the strategy pattern. Just to be clear I'm implementing in Java, and so don't have the luxury of optional parameters (which would solve this nicely).

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  • Beta Testing iOS Application

    - by dbramhall
    I was wondering if it is advisable to get a small team of beta testers for an iOS application that will be released to the App Store. I am developing an iOS application and I have setup a beta application form however I was wondering if it is advisable to even do beta testing considering I am actively testing and using my application on all of my own iOS devices (iPad 2, 2 iPod Touches and an iPhone 4 (plus, of course iOS Simulator)) - all running various versions of iOS 4. My question is: would you advise someone to get beta testers for an iOS application and, if so, how would you advise them to go about getting testers. For those interested, my application is at http://affogato.visioa.com/

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  • Best practice for storing HTML coming from text fields to a database?

    - by user1767270
    I have an application that allows users to edit certain parts of text and then email that out. My question is what is the best way to store this in a Microsoft SQL Server database. Right now I have two tables, one holding the HTML data and one holding the plain text data. When the user saves the info, it replaces newlines with br's and puts it in the HTML-conntaining table and then puts the regular text in the other table. This way the text box has the newlines when they go to edit, but the table that contains the HTML data, has the BR's. This seems like a silly way to do things. What would be the best practice? Thanks.

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  • Mobile Apps for Hospitals?

    - by Joey Green
    I currently work for a pretty large hospital and have been dabbling in iPhone development for a couple years. The CEO is wanting to get together a group to see what mobile technology we could create. I was contacted to be the main developer. I wanted to gather some ideas of what kind of mobile apps people have seen deployed in hospitals. Not necessarily medical apps that you can get on the app store, but rather apps built specifically for a hospital. Any ideas? If this is not the appropriate forum for a question like this, can someone point me to a forum where it would be appropriate?

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  • JavaOne 2012 - Java Deployment on Mac OS X

    - by Sharon Zakhour
    Also at the JavaOne 2012 conference, Scott Kovatch presented a session on Deploying Your Application with OpenJDK 7 on Mac OS X. The session had special emphasis on how to deploy Java applications to the Mac App Store and discussed topics relevant to using Oracle Java on the Mac. Interested developers may find the following documentation useful: Packaging a Java App for Distribution on a Mac. For more information on installing and using Oracle Java for the Mac, refer to the following documentation: Mac FAQ JDK 7 Installation for Mac OS X JRE 7 Installation for Mac OS X Mac OS X Platform Install FAQ Note for Users of Macs that Include Apple Java 6

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  • Motion Sensing Fog Machine Increases Savings and Spook Factor

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    This DIY add-on switches a standard fog machine from always-on to motion-activated–increase your savings and spook factor at the same time. Courtesy of tinker Greg, this modification involves a new relay and motion sensor mounted onto the existing switch of a store-bought fog machine. When the motion-sensor detects motion the fog machine releases a burst of fog for 5 seconds and then disarms itself for 10 seconds–long enough for the startled victim to move on and for the machine to recharge for the next passerby. Check out the video above to see it in action and then hit up the link below to see the project’s build guide. Motion Sensing Fog Machine Trigger [via Hack A Day] How Hackers Can Disguise Malicious Programs With Fake File Extensions Can Dust Actually Damage My Computer? What To Do If You Get a Virus on Your Computer

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  • Error pages in ASP.NET

    - by koevoeter
    In ASP.NET you can retrieve the last unhandled exception via:(HttpContext.Current.)Server.GetLastError() // Server object is available as a property in Page and UserControl context This obviously only works in the same roundtrip. If you want to retrieve this information in your error page, you got a problem because the error page is not returned in the same roundtrip. The server responds with a redirect response and a new request to the error page is automatically sent. A common workaround would be to store the exception in your Session state from the Application_Error event in Global.asax. From ASP.NET 3.5 you can configure the redirect mode for error pages: <customErrors mode="On" defaultRedirect="~/Error.aspx" redirectMode="ResponseRewrite" /> This way the redirect response is not sent and the error page is returned right away. That implies that the browser is not aware of a page change and cannot reflect it in the address bar, so your original URL is not replaced with the URL of the error page, which might be what you actually want…

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  • Having Fun with Roughriders

    - by D'Arcy Lussier
    So I’m in Regina for a conference, and I happen to notice that some RoughRiders (Weston Dressler, Wes Cates, and Marcus Adams) are going to be signing autographs at the local SaskTel store on Thursday. So a plan gets hatched, and I call my buddy Mike who hasn’t left Winnipeg yet and have him pick up my Alouette jersey from home. My buddy Dylan who was here too happened to bring his Bomber jersey. And so we set off on our adventure: to get three Saskatchewan Roughrider players to autograph a calculator (cause, y’know…tough counting to 13 and all). Below is the footage. And continued… And here’s the autographed calculator: Thanks for being good sports guys! D Technorati Tags: CFL,Roughriders,Alouettes

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  • Speaking tomorrow @ JAX, Mainz, Germany

    - by terrencebarr
    Just a quick note: I’ll be speaking at the JAX conference in Mainz, Germany, tomorrow: “JavaFX 2: Java, RIA, Web, and more”, April 17, 18:00 The talk will be giving an overview of JavaFX 2.0, top features, demos, tools, and the roadmap of what’s in store for the technology in 2012 and beyond. Also, be sure to check out the other Oracle sessions: “Java everywhere – The Vision becomes true, again”, Dennis Leung, April 17, 9:00 “Die Oracle-Java-Plattformstrategie zeigt klare Konturen”, Wolfgang Weigend, April 18, 17:30 “Lambdas in Java 8: their Design and Implementation”, Maurizio Cimadamore, April 18, 17:30 “OpenJDK Build Workshop”, Frederik Öhrström, April 18, 20:45 “The Future of Java on Multi-Core, Lambdas, Spliterators and Methods“, Frederik Öhrström, April 19, 10:15 For a complete list of all sessions, see here. Cheers, – Terrence Filed under: Mobile & Embedded Tagged: JavaFX, JAX

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  • Resources for Test Driven Development in Web Applications?

    - by HorusKol
    I would like to try and implement some TDD in our web applications to reduce regressions and improve release quality, but I'm not convinced at how well automated testing can perform with something as fluffy as web applications. I've read about and tried TDD and unit testing, but the examples are 'solid' and rather simple functionalities like currency converters, and so on. Are there any resources that can help with unit testing content management and publication systems? How about unit testing a shopping cart/store (physical and online products)? AJAX? Googling for "Web Test Driven Development" just gets me old articles from several years ago either covering the same examples of calculator-like function or discussions about why TDD is better than anything (without any examples).

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  • Data Storage Options

    - by Kenneth
    When I was working as a website designer/engineer I primarily used databases for storage of much of my dynamic data. It was very easy and convenient to use this method and seemed like a standard practice from my research on the matter. I'm now working on shifting away from websites and into desktop applications. What are the best practices for data storage for desktop applications? I ask because I have noticed that most programs I use on a personal level don't appear to use a database for data storage unless its embedded in the program. (I'm not thinking of an application like a word processor where it makes sense to have data stored in individual files as defined by the user. Rather I'm thinking of something more along the lines of a calendar application which would need to store dates and event info and such where accessing that information would be much easier if stored in a database... at least as far as my experience would indicate.) Thanks for the input!

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  • Dynamically loading Assemblies to reduce Runtime Depencies

    - by Rick Strahl
    I've been working on a request to the West Wind Application Configuration library to add JSON support. The config library is a very easy to use code-first approach to configuration: You create a class that holds the configuration data that inherits from a base configuration class, and then assign a persistence provider at runtime that determines where and how the configuration data is store. Currently the library supports .NET Configuration stores (web.config/app.config), XML files, SQL records and string storage.About once a week somebody asks me about JSON support and I've deflected this question for the longest time because frankly I think that JSON as a configuration store doesn't really buy a heck of a lot over XML. Both formats require the user to perform some fixup of the plain configuration data - in XML into XML tags, with JSON using JSON delimiters for properties and property formatting rules. Sure JSON is a little less verbose and maybe a little easier to read if you have hierarchical data, but overall the differences are pretty minor in my opinion. And yet - the requests keep rolling in.Hard Link Issues in a Component LibraryAnother reason I've been hesitant is that I really didn't want to pull in a dependency on an external JSON library - in this case JSON.NET - into the core library. If you're not using JSON.NET elsewhere I don't want a user to have to require a hard dependency on JSON.NET unless they want to use the JSON feature. JSON.NET is also sensitive to versions and doesn't play nice with multiple versions when hard linked. For example, when you have a reference to V4.4 in your project but the host application has a reference to version 4.5 you can run into assembly load problems. NuGet's Update-Package can solve some of this *if* you can recompile, but that's not ideal for a component that's supposed to be just plug and play. This is no criticism of JSON.NET - this really applies to any dependency that might change.  So hard linking the DLL can be problematic for a number reasons, but the primary reason is to not force loading of JSON.NET unless you actually need it when you use the JSON configuration features of the library.Enter Dynamic LoadingSo rather than adding an assembly reference to the project, I decided that it would be better to dynamically load the DLL at runtime and then use dynamic typing to access various classes. This allows me to run without a hard assembly reference and allows more flexibility with version number differences now and in the future.But there are also a couple of downsides:No assembly reference means only dynamic access - no compiler type checking or IntellisenseRequirement for the host application to have reference to JSON.NET or else get runtime errorsThe former is minor, but the latter can be problematic. Runtime errors are always painful, but in this case I'm willing to live with this. If you want to use JSON configuration settings JSON.NET needs to be loaded in the project. If this is a Web project, it'll likely be there already.So there are a few things that are needed to make this work:Dynamically create an instance and optionally attempt to load an Assembly (if not loaded)Load types into dynamic variablesUse Reflection for a few tasks like statics/enumsThe dynamic keyword in C# makes the formerly most difficult Reflection part - method calls and property assignments - fairly painless. But as cool as dynamic is it doesn't handle all aspects of Reflection. Specifically it doesn't deal with object activation, truly dynamic (string based) member activation or accessing of non instance members, so there's still a little bit of work left to do with Reflection.Dynamic Object InstantiationThe first step in getting the process rolling is to instantiate the type you need to work with. This might be a two step process - loading the instance from a string value, since we don't have a hard type reference and potentially having to load the assembly. Although the host project might have a reference to JSON.NET, that instance might have not been loaded yet since it hasn't been accessed yet. In ASP.NET this won't be a problem, since ASP.NET preloads all referenced assemblies on AppDomain startup, but in other executable project, assemblies are just in time loaded only when they are accessed.Instantiating a type is a two step process: Finding the type reference and then activating it. Here's the generic code out of my ReflectionUtils library I use for this:/// <summary> /// Creates an instance of a type based on a string. Assumes that the type's /// </summary> /// <param name="typeName">Common name of the type</param> /// <param name="args">Any constructor parameters</param> /// <returns></returns> public static object CreateInstanceFromString(string typeName, params object[] args) { object instance = null; Type type = null; try { type = GetTypeFromName(typeName); if (type == null) return null; instance = Activator.CreateInstance(type, args); } catch { return null; } return instance; } /// <summary> /// Helper routine that looks up a type name and tries to retrieve the /// full type reference in the actively executing assemblies. /// </summary> /// <param name="typeName"></param> /// <returns></returns> public static Type GetTypeFromName(string typeName) { Type type = null; // Let default name binding find it type = Type.GetType(typeName, false); if (type != null) return type; // look through assembly list var assemblies = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies(); // try to find manually foreach (Assembly asm in assemblies) { type = asm.GetType(typeName, false); if (type != null) break; } return type; } To use this for loading JSON.NET I have a small factory function that instantiates JSON.NET and sets a bunch of configuration settings on the generated object. The startup code also looks for failure and tries loading up the assembly when it fails since that's the main reason the load would fail. Finally it also caches the loaded instance for reuse (according to James the JSON.NET instance is thread safe and quite a bit faster when cached). Here's what the factory function looks like in JsonSerializationUtils:/// <summary> /// Dynamically creates an instance of JSON.NET /// </summary> /// <param name="throwExceptions">If true throws exceptions otherwise returns null</param> /// <returns>Dynamic JsonSerializer instance</returns> public static dynamic CreateJsonNet(bool throwExceptions = true) { if (JsonNet != null) return JsonNet; lock (SyncLock) { if (JsonNet != null) return JsonNet; // Try to create instance dynamic json = ReflectionUtils.CreateInstanceFromString("Newtonsoft.Json.JsonSerializer"); if (json == null) { try { var ass = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.Load("Newtonsoft.Json"); json = ReflectionUtils.CreateInstanceFromString("Newtonsoft.Json.JsonSerializer"); } catch (Exception ex) { if (throwExceptions) throw; return null; } } if (json == null) return null; json.ReferenceLoopHandling = (dynamic) ReflectionUtils.GetStaticProperty("Newtonsoft.Json.ReferenceLoopHandling", "Ignore"); // Enums as strings in JSON dynamic enumConverter = ReflectionUtils.CreateInstanceFromString("Newtonsoft.Json.Converters.StringEnumConverter"); json.Converters.Add(enumConverter); JsonNet = json; } return JsonNet; }This code's purpose is to return a fully configured JsonSerializer instance. As you can see the code tries to create an instance and when it fails tries to load the assembly, and then re-tries loading.Once the instance is loaded some configuration occurs on it. Specifically I set the ReferenceLoopHandling option to not blow up immediately when circular references are encountered. There are a host of other small config setting that might be useful to set, but the default seem to be good enough in recent versions. Note that I'm setting ReferenceLoopHandling which requires an Enum value to be set. There's no real easy way (short of using the cardinal numeric value) to set a property or pass parameters from static values or enums. This means I still need to use Reflection to make this work. I'm using the same ReflectionUtils class I previously used to handle this for me. The function looks up the type and then uses Type.InvokeMember() to read the static property.Another feature I need is have Enum values serialized as strings rather than numeric values which is the default. To do this I can use the StringEnumConverter to convert enums to strings by adding it to the Converters collection.As you can see there's still a bit of Reflection to be done even in C# 4+ with dynamic, but with a few helpers this process is relatively painless.Doing the actual JSON ConversionFinally I need to actually do my JSON conversions. For the Utility class I need serialization that works for both strings and files so I created four methods that handle these tasks two each for serialization and deserialization for string and file.Here's what the File Serialization looks like:/// <summary> /// Serializes an object instance to a JSON file. /// </summary> /// <param name="value">the value to serialize</param> /// <param name="fileName">Full path to the file to write out with JSON.</param> /// <param name="throwExceptions">Determines whether exceptions are thrown or false is returned</param> /// <param name="formatJsonOutput">if true pretty-formats the JSON with line breaks</param> /// <returns>true or false</returns> public static bool SerializeToFile(object value, string fileName, bool throwExceptions = false, bool formatJsonOutput = false) { dynamic writer = null; FileStream fs = null; try { Type type = value.GetType(); var json = CreateJsonNet(throwExceptions); if (json == null) return false; fs = new FileStream(fileName, FileMode.Create); var sw = new StreamWriter(fs, Encoding.UTF8); writer = Activator.CreateInstance(JsonTextWriterType, sw); if (formatJsonOutput) writer.Formatting = (dynamic)Enum.Parse(FormattingType, "Indented"); writer.QuoteChar = '"'; json.Serialize(writer, value); } catch (Exception ex) { Debug.WriteLine("JsonSerializer Serialize error: " + ex.Message); if (throwExceptions) throw; return false; } finally { if (writer != null) writer.Close(); if (fs != null) fs.Close(); } return true; }You can see more of the dynamic invocation in this code. First I grab the dynamic JsonSerializer instance using the CreateJsonNet() method shown earlier which returns a dynamic. I then create a JsonTextWriter and configure a couple of enum settings on it, and then call Serialize() on the serializer instance with the JsonTextWriter that writes the output to disk. Although this code is dynamic it's still fairly short and readable.For full circle operation here's the DeserializeFromFile() version:/// <summary> /// Deserializes an object from file and returns a reference. /// </summary> /// <param name="fileName">name of the file to serialize to</param> /// <param name="objectType">The Type of the object. Use typeof(yourobject class)</param> /// <param name="binarySerialization">determines whether we use Xml or Binary serialization</param> /// <param name="throwExceptions">determines whether failure will throw rather than return null on failure</param> /// <returns>Instance of the deserialized object or null. Must be cast to your object type</returns> public static object DeserializeFromFile(string fileName, Type objectType, bool throwExceptions = false) { dynamic json = CreateJsonNet(throwExceptions); if (json == null) return null; object result = null; dynamic reader = null; FileStream fs = null; try { fs = new FileStream(fileName, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read); var sr = new StreamReader(fs, Encoding.UTF8); reader = Activator.CreateInstance(JsonTextReaderType, sr); result = json.Deserialize(reader, objectType); reader.Close(); } catch (Exception ex) { Debug.WriteLine("JsonNetSerialization Deserialization Error: " + ex.Message); if (throwExceptions) throw; return null; } finally { if (reader != null) reader.Close(); if (fs != null) fs.Close(); } return result; }This code is a little more compact since there are no prettifying options to set. Here JsonTextReader is created dynamically and it receives the output from the Deserialize() operation on the serializer.You can take a look at the full JsonSerializationUtils.cs file on GitHub to see the rest of the operations, but the string operations are very similar - the code is fairly repetitive.These generic serialization utilities isolate the dynamic serialization logic that has to deal with the dynamic nature of JSON.NET, and any code that uses these functions is none the wiser that JSON.NET is dynamically loaded.Using the JsonSerializationUtils WrapperThe final consumer of the SerializationUtils wrapper is an actual ConfigurationProvider, that is responsible for handling reading and writing JSON values to and from files. The provider is simple a small wrapper around the SerializationUtils component and there's very little code to make this work now:The whole provider looks like this:/// <summary> /// Reads and Writes configuration settings in .NET config files and /// sections. Allows reading and writing to default or external files /// and specification of the configuration section that settings are /// applied to. /// </summary> public class JsonFileConfigurationProvider<TAppConfiguration> : ConfigurationProviderBase<TAppConfiguration> where TAppConfiguration: AppConfiguration, new() { /// <summary> /// Optional - the Configuration file where configuration settings are /// stored in. If not specified uses the default Configuration Manager /// and its default store. /// </summary> public string JsonConfigurationFile { get { return _JsonConfigurationFile; } set { _JsonConfigurationFile = value; } } private string _JsonConfigurationFile = string.Empty; public override bool Read(AppConfiguration config) { var newConfig = JsonSerializationUtils.DeserializeFromFile(JsonConfigurationFile, typeof(TAppConfiguration)) as TAppConfiguration; if (newConfig == null) { if(Write(config)) return true; return false; } DecryptFields(newConfig); DataUtils.CopyObjectData(newConfig, config, "Provider,ErrorMessage"); return true; } /// <summary> /// Return /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TAppConfig"></typeparam> /// <returns></returns> public override TAppConfig Read<TAppConfig>() { var result = JsonSerializationUtils.DeserializeFromFile(JsonConfigurationFile, typeof(TAppConfig)) as TAppConfig; if (result != null) DecryptFields(result); return result; } /// <summary> /// Write configuration to XmlConfigurationFile location /// </summary> /// <param name="config"></param> /// <returns></returns> public override bool Write(AppConfiguration config) { EncryptFields(config); bool result = JsonSerializationUtils.SerializeToFile(config, JsonConfigurationFile,false,true); // Have to decrypt again to make sure the properties are readable afterwards DecryptFields(config); return result; } }This incidentally demonstrates how easy it is to create a new provider for the West Wind Application Configuration component. Simply implementing 3 methods will do in most cases.Note this code doesn't have any dynamic dependencies - all that's abstracted away in the JsonSerializationUtils(). From here on, serializing JSON is just a matter of calling the static methods on the SerializationUtils class.Already, there are several other places in some other tools where I use JSON serialization this is coming in very handy. With a couple of lines of code I was able to add JSON.NET support to an older AJAX library that I use replacing quite a bit of code that was previously in use. And for any other manual JSON operations (in a couple of apps I use JSON Serialization for 'blob' like document storage) this is also going to be handy.Performance?Some of you might be thinking that using dynamic and Reflection can't be good for performance. And you'd be right… In performing some informal testing it looks like the performance of the native code is nearly twice as fast as the dynamic code. Most of the slowness is attributable to type lookups. To test I created a native class that uses an actual reference to JSON.NET and performance was consistently around 85-90% faster with the referenced code. That being said though - I serialized 10,000 objects in 80ms vs. 45ms so this isn't hardly slouchy. For the configuration component speed is not that important because both read and write operations typically happen once on first access and then every once in a while. But for other operations - say a serializer trying to handle AJAX requests on a Web Server one would be well served to create a hard dependency.Dynamic Loading - Worth it?On occasion dynamic loading makes sense. But there's a price to be paid in added code complexity and a performance hit. But for some operations that are not pivotal to a component or application and only used under certain circumstances dynamic loading can be beneficial to avoid having to ship extra files and loading down distributions. These days when you create new projects in Visual Studio with 30 assemblies before you even add your own code, trying to keep file counts under control seems a good idea. It's not the kind of thing you do on a regular basis, but when needed it can be a useful tool. Hopefully some of you find this information useful…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2013Posted in .NET  C#   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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  • Is there any difference between storing textures and baked lighting for environment meshes?

    - by Ben Hymers
    I assume that when texturing environments, one or several textures will be used, and the UVs of the environment geometry will likely overlap on these textures, so that e.g. a tiling brick texture can be used by many parts of the environment, rather than UV unwrapping the entire thing, and having several areas of the texture be identical. If my assumption is wrong, please let me know! Now, when thinking about baking lighting, clearly this can't be done the same way - lighting in general will be unique to every face so the environment must be UV unwrapped without overlap, and lighting must be baked onto unique areas of one or several textures, to give each surface its own texture space to store its lighting. My questions are: Have I got this wrong? If so, how? Isn't baking lighting going to use a lot of texture space? Will the geometry need two UV sets, one used for the colour/normal texture and one for the lighting texture? Anything else you'd like to add? :)

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