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  • C# XNA 2D Multiple boxes collision detection and movement

    - by zini
    Hi, I've been making simple game where you shoot boxes that are coming towards you. All game objects are simple rectangles. Now I have problem with collision detection; how to check where the collision comes so I can change the coordinates right? I have this kind of situation: http://imgur.com/8yjfW Imagine that all of those blocks are moving towards you (green box). If those orange boxes collide with each other, they should "avoid" themselves and not go through each other. I have class Enemy which has properties x, y and such. Now I'm doing the collision like this: // os.Count is an amount of other enemies colliding with this enemy if (os.Count == 0) { // If enemy doesn't collide with other enemy lasty = y; lastx = x; slope = (x - player.x) / (y - player.y); x += slope * l; // l is "movement speed" of enemy (float) if (y > player.y) { y = lasty; } else if (y < player.y) { y += l; } } else { foreach(Enemy b in os) { if (b.y > this.y) { // If some colliding enemy is closer player than this enemy, that closer one will be moved towards the player b.lasty = b.y; if (!BiggestY(os)) { // BiggestY returns true if this enemy has the biggest Y b.y += b.l; } b.x = b.lastx; } } } But this is very, very bad way to do this. I know it, but I just can't figure out other way. And as a matter in fact, this method doesn't even work pretty good; if multiple enemies are colliding same enemy they go through each other. I explained this pretty badly, but I hope that you understand this. And to sum up, as I said: How to check where the collision comes so I can change the coordinates right?

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  • What You Said: Are You A Second Screen Multi-Tasker?

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Earlier this week we asked you if you used a second screen while watching television or movies–such as a smartphone or tablet. Now we’re back to highlight how HTG readers are engaging (or disengaging) with their mobile devices. Image courtesy of Umani, a TV-companion application for iPad. By far and away the biggest trend was the use of the second screen as a filler for commercials and/or and outright diversion from lackluster programming. Jack in TN writes: Yes. I keep a laptop going 7×24 pretty much, and TV in going normally. Pretty much my ‘throne’ in the family room. I have almost always multi-tasked, before laptop it was a book or magazine or 3 at my side. My wife has accused me of using TV as a radio more than once, and I can’t say she is wrong. How to Get Pro Features in Windows Home Versions with Third Party Tools HTG Explains: Is ReadyBoost Worth Using? HTG Explains: What The Windows Event Viewer Is and How You Can Use It

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  • Is IDirectInput8::FindDevice totally broken on Windows 7?

    - by Noora
    I'm developing on Windows 7, and using DirectInput8 for my input needs. I'm tracking gamepad additions and removals (that is, GUID_DEVINTERFACE_HID devices) using the DBT_DEVICEARRIVAL and DBT_DEVICEREMOVECOMPLETE messages, which works fine. However, what I've come to find out is that no matter what I do, passing the received values from DBT_DEVICEARRIVAL to IDirectInput8's FindDevice method, it will always fail to identify the device, returning DIERR_DEVICENOTREG. DirectInput still clearly knows about the device, because I can enumerate and create it just fine. I've tried with three different gamepads, and the error persists, so it's not about that either. I also tried passing some alternative interface GUIDs for the RegisterDeviceNotification call, didn't help. So, has anyone else faced the same problem, and have you found a usable workaround? I'm afraid I'll soon have to stoop down to re-enumerating all devices when something is added or removed, but I'll first give this question one last shot here. EDIT: For the record, I've also tried pretty much every single HID API & SetupAPI function for alternative ways of figuring out the needed GUIDs, with zero success. So if you're facing the same problem as me, don't bother with that route. I'm pretty sure those GUIDs are made up by DirectInput itself somehow. Short of reverse engineering dinput8.dll, I'm truly out of ideas now.

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  • MS Marketing Strategy

    - by Aaron Kowall
    I found this week’s Windows Phone 8 event interesting.  Not just because it looks like some fantastic new features in the new OS but because of the wait for release.  If I were a Nokia shareholder (which I am not) I’d be very unhappy with MS announcing that Windows Phone 8 will NOT work with current hardware.  So, there are some very nice Lumia devices that are now end-of-life that have arrived relatively recently at carriers and retailers. I understand that MS needs to demonstrate progress against iOS and Android and that there is some Windows 8 tie-in that they are trying to capitalize (and MS IS still all about Windows).  However, it’s a bit of a kick to partners that have invested in the platform with pretty decent devices (Samsung, HTC and of course Nokia). Personally, I’m still using a Samsung Foucs.  I was seriously considering upgrading to a Lumia 900 (we just got Lync mobile available) but will now wait it out until new devices arrive with Windows 8.  If MS had waited to announce, I would happily have upgraded to the Lumia and when I found out it couldn’t be upgraded then that would be a gamble I took and lost and I’d live with it.  Now, however, I can see the future and know that waiting is the better option for me so that is 1 sale Nokia will miss out on.  Based on some chats I’ve seen on mobile forums I’m certainly far from the only one. I’m sure glad I’m not in charge of marketing at MS.  There are tough decisions to be made there and I’m pretty sure you piss somebody off regardless. Technorati Tags: WP8,Lumia,Nokia,Samsung

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  • Over 300 "NetBeans Platform for Beginners" Sold

    - by Geertjan
    I've noticed that the authors of "NetBeans Platform for Beginners" have started exposing the number of sales they have achieved. Below, notice the '304' (which will probably change quite quickly) at the lower left end of this screenshot: That's pretty good since the book has only existed for a few months and developers tend to share books they buy in PDF format. That probably means there are 300 teams of software developers around the world who are using the book, which is pretty awesome. (Though it would help the authors significantly, I'm sure, if individual developers on teams would buy the book, rather than sharing one between them. Come on, let's support these great authors so that they'll write more books like this.) Also note that there is a set of reviewer comments on the page above: Plus, the book is updated at the end of each month, so it continues to grow and improve from month to month, for free for everyone who has bought it. If you've read the book and want to contribute a review like the above, contact walternyland @ yahoo dot com. Great work, guys! For anyone out there who hasn't got it yet: https://leanpub.com/nbp4beginners

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  • Should I make my project free software?

    - by SkyDan
    The story Over the last couple month I have been working on a pretty big project. It's an enterprise-level software, I designed to be used at a local gym, but I believe it can be used in other places, where things like keeping track of clients, attendances, purchases and payments are required. The problem Well recently, I started to think on how to mature this project from being home-made. Not just because I want my project to grow but also because I would like to have some gain from it. The solutions? And here I saw 2 paths: License the software under some restricted license and try to sell the software to other business around. This way I can get some money for college (I am a high school junior right now) License the software under some free license, publish it on GitHub or something, and try to engage other developers to participate in the project. This way I get experience of working in a team and a better chance that the project will keep growing. The latter would be a good + for my resume, when I'll trying to find a job. So far both ways seem pretty exciting and beneficial to me. The first one offers a good college career, while the second one offers some additional experience and the project's growth. The questions Can anyone point to some other +/- of these 2 options? What would the better option in my situation and why? Or are there other options?

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  • Will Unity skills be interchangeable?

    - by Starkers
    I'm currently learning Unity and working my way through a video game maths primer text book. My goal is to create a racing game for WebGL (using Three.js and maybe Physic.js). I'm well aware that the Unity program shields you from a lot of what's going on and a lot of the grunt work attached to developing even a simple video game, but if I power through a bunch of Unity tutorials, will a lot of the skills I learn translate over to other frameworks/engines? I'm pretty proficient at level design with WebGL, and I'm a good 3D modeller. My weaknesses are definitely AI and Physics. While I am rapidly shoring up my math, and while Physics is undeniably interesting there's only so many hours in the day and there's a wealth of engines out there to take care of this sort of thing. AI does appeal to me a lot more, and is a lot more necessary. AI changes drastically from game to game, is tweaked heavily during development, and the physics is a lot more constant. Will leaning AI concepts in Unity allow me to transfer this knowledge pretty much anywhere? Or will I just be paddling up Unity creek with these skills?

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  • Choosing the Database Solution for Large Data Application

    - by GµårÐïåñ
    I have been tasked to write an application that will be a combination of document and inventory management in VB.net which will be used to store document images in TIFF, PDF, XPS, TXT, DOC, PPT and so on as binary data that can be retrieved for viewing, printing, and possible OCR to be searchable as well along with meta data such as sender, recipient, type of document, date, source, etc. So the table would probably be something like: DOC_NAME, DOC_DATE, NOTES, ... DOC_BINARY (where the actual document will be put inside) What my concern is finding a database solution that will not become unstable due to size restrictions, records limitations and performance. Some of the options are MS_SQL, SQL Express, SQLite, mySQL, and Access. Now I can pretty much eliminate Access right off the bat as it is just too limiting and not scalable. I can further eliminate SQL Express because of the 2 GB limit and again scalability. So that leaves me with MS_SQL, SQLite and mySQL (although if anyone has other options they think would be good as well, please feel free to share them, by no means am I set on these only). So this brings me to what you guys think is the best option for what I have described. The goal is that the data is all in one place (a single file) that will make backup and portability easier. For small volume usage, pretty much any solution will hold for a while, but my goal is to think ahead and make sure its able to withstand heavy large volume usage as well. Another consideration is also the interoperability with .NET and stability of such code to avoid errors and memory leaks. Your feedback would be greatly appreciated.

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  • Day in the Life of Agile - The Forge Michigan November 27, 2012

    - by csmith18119
    Went to training at The Forge yesterday and did a Day in the life of Agile with Pillar.  It was pretty good. Check them out at: http://pillartechnology.com/ Abstract: A single-day agile project simulation that is engaging, educational, provocative, and fun. This simulation introduces concepts like time-boxed iterations, User Stories, collective estimation, commitment to a product owner for iteration scope, formal verification ritual at iteration conclusion, tracking velocity, and making results big and visible through charts. The exercise is designed to simulate not only how agile teams and practices work, but the inevitable challenges that arise as teams attempt to adopt such practices. One of the best parts of this training was getting some hands on experience with agile.  We used a program called Scratch to create an arcade video game.  Our team chose Frogger.  We had 3 iterations at 20 minutes each.  I think we did pretty good but in the panic of trying to get a bunch done in only 20 minutes made it interesting. To check out our project, I uploaded it to my CodePlex site Download Source Code (Under Scratch/Frogger) Cool class! I highly recommend if you get the opportunity.

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  • Test JPQL with NetBeans IDE 7.3 Tools

    - by Geertjan
    Since I pretty much messed up this part of the "Unlocking Java EE 6 Platform" demo, which I did together with PrimeFaces lead Çagatay Çivici during JavaOne 2012, I feel obliged to blog about it to clarify what should have happened! In my own defense, I only learned about this feature 15 minutes before the session started. In 7.3 Beta, it works for Java SE projects, while for Maven-based web projects, you need a post 7.3 Beta build, which is what I set up for my demo right before it started. Then I saw that the feature was there, without actually trying it out, which resulted in that part of the demo being a bit messy. And thanks to whoever it was in the audience who shouted out how to use it correctly! Screenshots below show everything related to this new feature, available from 7.3 onwards, which means you can try out your JPQL queries right within the IDE, without deploying the application (you only need to build it since the queries are run on the compiled classes): SQL view: Result view for the above: Here, you see the result of a more specific query, i.e., check that a record with a specific name value is present in the database: Also note that there is code completion within the editor part of the dialog above. I.e., as you press Ctrl-Space, you'll see context-sensitive suggestions for filling out the query. All this is pretty cool stuff! Saves time because now there's no need to deploy the app to check the database connection.

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  • I need a decent alternative to c++ [closed]

    - by wxiiir
    I've learned php and c++, i will list the things i liked and didn't liked on each of them, how i decided to learn them in the first place and why i feel the need to learn a decent alternative to c++, i'm not a professional programmer and only do projects for myself. PHP - Decided to learn because i wanted to build a dynamic website, that i did and turned out very good, i even coded a 'not so basic' search engine for it that would display the results 'google style' and really fast, pretty cool stuff. PROS - Pretty consistent syntax for all stuff (minor caveats), great functionality, a joy for me to code in it (it seems to 'know' what i want it to do and just does it) CONS - Painfully slow for number crunching (which takes me to c++ that i only learned because i wanted to do some number crunching and it had to be screaming fast) C++ - Learned because number crunching was so slow in php and manipulating large amounts of data was very difficult, i thought, it's popular programming language and all, and tests show that it's fast, the basic stuff resemble php so it shouldn't be hard to pick up PROS - It can be used to virtually anything, very very fast CONS - Although fun to code at the start, if i need to do something out of the ordinary, memory allocation routines, pointer stuff, stack sizes etc... will get me tired really quick, syntax is a bit inconsistent some times (more caveats) I guess that from what i wrote you guys will understand what i'm looking for, there are thousands of languages out there, it's likely that one of them will suit my needs, i've been seeing stuff today and a friend of mine that is a professional programmer tried OCaml and Fortran and said that both are fast for numerical stuff, i've been inclined to test Fortran, but i need some more input because i want to have some other good 'candidates' to choose from, for example the python syntax seemed great to me, but then i found out from some tests that it was a lot slower than c++ and i simply don't want to twiddle my thumbs all day.

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  • Can an Employer turn you down if you have said the fact about current work culture being bad [closed]

    - by MansonRix
    I had recently an interview where I scored good in 1st two round of technical interview . Then in the 3rd round was the managerial round where the guy started about my experience and whether I have vaptured any requirement and handled and trained any teams. This went pretty well for around 50 mins . Then there was the awkward question , Interviewer: why amI looking for a change? Me: coz I want to explore my carrier options? Interviewer: But your current company is big enough and you can explore options over there? (This was supposedly the trap) Me: Apart from that I am missing the flexibilty of working with Us and Europe based company as my current company is not that flexible. Interviewer: What exactly you don't find flexible. Me: The login time . Even if you get late by 1sec you might have to explin. Though this is not a big problem , still I will prefer flexibilty as we are working really hard. Interviewer: Allright ( Then couple of more questions) , Hope to C U Ya , that's pretty much it . Now I called up HR and they say , they are yet to get the feedback from Interviewer. Did I screw it? I mean does some one really have to pretend always by saying positive things about company and manager though not saying negative things?

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  • optimizing iPhone OpenGL ES fill rate

    - by NateS
    I have an Open GL ES game on the iPhone. My framerate is pretty sucky, ~20fps. Using the Xcode OpenGL ES performance tool on an iPhone 3G, it shows: Renderer Utilization: 95% to 99% Tiler Utilization: ~27% I am drawing a lot of pretty large images with a lot of blending. If I reduce the number of images drawn, framerates go from ~20 to ~40, though the performance tool results stay about the same (renderer still maxed). I think I'm being limited by the fill rate of the iPhone 3G, but I'm not sure. My questions are: How can I determine with more granularity where the bottleneck is? That is my biggest problem, I just don't know what is taking all the time. If it is fillrate, is there anything I do to improve it besides just drawing less? I am using texture atlases. I have tried to minimize image binds, though it isn't always possible (drawing order, not everything fits on one 1024x1024 texture, etc). Every frame I do 10 image binds. This seem pretty reasonable, but I could be mistaken. I'm using vertex arrays and glDrawArrays. I don't really have a lot of geometry. I can try to be more precise if needed. Each image is 2 triangles and I try to batch things were possible, though often (maybe half the time) images are drawn with individual glDrawArrays calls. Besides the images, I have ~60 triangles worth of geometry being rendered in ~6 glDrawArrays calls. I often glTranslate before calling glDrawArrays. Would it improve the framerate to switch to VBOs? I don't think it is a huge amount of geometry, but maybe it is faster for other reasons? Are there certain things to watch out for that could reduce performance? Eg, should I avoid glTranslate, glColor4g, etc? I'm using glScissor in a 3 places per frame. Each use consists of 2 glScissor calls, one to set it up, and one to reset it to what it was. I don't know if there is much of a performance impact here. If I used PVRTC would it be able to render faster? Currently all my images are GL_RGBA. I don't have memory issues. Here is a rough idea of what I'm drawing, in this order: 1) Switch to perspective matrix. 2) Draw a full screen background image 3) Draw a full screen image with translucency (this one has a scrolling texture). 4) Draw a few sprites. 5) Switch to ortho matrix. 6) Draw a few sprites. 7) Switch to perspective matrix. 8) Draw sprites and some other textured geometry. 9) Switch to ortho matrix. 10) Draw a few sprites (eg, game HUD). Steps 1-6 draw a bunch of background stuff. 8 draws most of the game content. 10 draws the HUD. As you can see, there are many layers, some of them full screen and some of the sprites are pretty large (1/4 of the screen). The layers use translucency, so I have to draw them in back-to-front order. This is further complicated by needing to draw various layers in ortho and others in perspective. I will gladly provide additional information if reqested. Thanks in advance for any performance tips or general advice on my problem!

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  • Memory Troubles with UIImagePicker

    - by Dan Ray
    I'm building an app that has several different sections to it, all of which are pretty image-heavy. It ties in with my client's website and they're a "high-design" type outfit. One piece of the app is images uploaded from the camera or the library, and a tableview that shows a grid of thumbnails. Pretty reliably, when I'm dealing with the camera version of UIImagePickerControl, I get hit for low memory. If I bounce around that part of the app for a while, I occasionally and non-repeatably crash with "status:10 (SIGBUS)" in the debugger. On low memory warning, my root view controller for that aspect of the app goes to my data management singleton, cruises through the arrays of cached data, and kills the biggest piece, the image associated with each entry. Thusly: - (void)didReceiveMemoryWarning { // Releases the view if it doesn't have a superview. [super didReceiveMemoryWarning]; UIAlertView *alert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:@"Low Memory Warning" message:@"Cleaning out events data" delegate:nil cancelButtonTitle:@"All right then." otherButtonTitles:nil]; [alert show]; [alert release]; NSInteger spaceSaved; DataManager *data = [DataManager sharedDataManager]; for (Event *event in data.eventList) { spaceSaved += [(NSData *)UIImagePNGRepresentation(event.image) length]; event.image = nil; spaceSaved -= [(NSData *)UIImagePNGRepresentation(event.image) length]; } NSString *titleString = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"Saved %d on event images", spaceSaved]; for (WondrMark *mark in data.wondrMarks) { spaceSaved += [(NSData *)UIImagePNGRepresentation(mark.image) length]; mark.image = nil; spaceSaved -= [(NSData *)UIImagePNGRepresentation(mark.image) length]; } NSString *messageString = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"And total %d on event and mark images", spaceSaved]; NSLog(@"%@ - %@", titleString, messageString); // Relinquish ownership any cached data, images, etc that aren't in use. } As you can see, I'm making a (poor) attempt to eyeball the memory space I'm freeing up. I know it's not telling me about the actual memory footprint of the UIImages themselves, but it gives me SOME numbers at least, so I can see that SOMETHING'S happening. (Sorry for the hamfisted way I build that NSLog message too--I was going to fire another UIAlertView, but realized it'd be more useful to log it.) Pretty reliably, after toodling around in the image portion of the app for a while, I'll pull up the camera interface and get the low memory UIAlertView like three or four times in quick succession. Here's the NSLog output from the last time I saw it: 2010-05-27 08:55:02.659 EverWondr[7974:207] Saved 109591 on event images - And total 1419756 on event and mark images wait_fences: failed to receive reply: 10004003 2010-05-27 08:55:08.759 EverWondr[7974:207] Saved 4 on event images - And total 392695 on event and mark images 2010-05-27 08:55:14.865 EverWondr[7974:207] Saved 4 on event images - And total 873419 on event and mark images 2010-05-27 08:55:14.969 EverWondr[7974:207] Saved 4 on event images - And total 4 on event and mark images 2010-05-27 08:55:15.064 EverWondr[7974:207] Saved 4 on event images - And total 4 on event and mark images And then pretty soon after that we get our SIGBUS exit. So that's the situation. Now my specific questions: THE time I see this happening is when the UIPickerView's camera iris shuts. I click the button to take the picture, it does the "click" animation, and Instruments shows my memory footprint going from about 10mb to about 25mb, and sitting there until the image is delivered to my UIViewController, where usage drops back to 10 or 11mb again. If we make it through that without a memory warning, we're golden, but most likely we don't. Anything I can do to make that not be so expensive? Second, I have NSZombies enabled. Am I understanding correctly that that's actually preventing memory from being freed? Am I subjecting my app to an unfair test environment? Third, is there some way to programmatically get my memory usage? Or at least the usage for a UIImage object? I've scoured the docs and don't see anything about that.

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  • Making a non-trivial Image and Video Gallery with a really nice interface

    - by Cawas
    Short part: I'm starting to build an Image and Video Gallery for our intranet. It's pretty much like an image gallery with video thumbnails that play on click. It's just good to keep that in mind because caching and streaming happen in very different ways there. It will serve to browse our reference database, which will also contain searching, tagging and voting. There are 3 features that I need to begin with: Quick preview of thumbnails from each Gallery Fast zoom in / out Animated scrolling Now to the long part, since I can't seem to reduce this: I hope this question belongs here. Maybe people can read this through and identify with it, specially since I expect answers to be pretty specific. The first plan was getting Apple's mobile me gallery as base, because it just so happens to have all those 3 features. If you've never seem it, you should check it out. Move the mouse over each collection and you'll get a nice preview "per pixel". Carousel got a really good scrolling, not just because of the pretty effect. I like it much more than cooliris, but it would be nice to have it in several rows, maybe without the magnifying effect... Then it could be all in the same place with the zoom. The more the features blend-in together, the better. Zooming out with the mouse, scrolling by dragging, once the zoom is really out it becomes a browsing through galleries, with the quick-show preview of each, all properly cached and fast. That'd be perfect. A very compelling interface will be important in this project. Well, my point here is just describing what I need and hope to hear from people with more experience in all that stuff of what's already done and what I'd have to do myself. And how (i.e. which framework to use) to do it. To begin with, I've found a gallery demo and its source code (I think it was from here, but the link seems broken now). I guess it was made in SproutCore, which is what mobileme was based upon. Definitely with JQuery (which already seems a little slow). But I'm still missing two features there: the carousel and the fast zoom (it's just not as slow as the zoom in this demo with cappuccino). Then I've found a supposedly better one with a pretty good and similar zoom, that I'm not sure if it's using any framework and is already in php. Right now it'd be better having just the HTML, no server-side, since I'm building interface first. So, can anyone point directions? There are way too many options! Should I look for another solution closer to what I need, or try and tweak this one? I'm not familiar with any framework at all. Sorry for bringing this question that I will have to answer myself anyway sooner or later and sorry that I couldn't make this smaller. Thanks.

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  • The ASP.NET Daily Community Spotlight - How posts get there, and how to make it your Visual Studio Start Page

    - by Jon Galloway
    One really cool part of my job is selecting the articles for the Daily Community Spotlight, on the home page of the ASP.NET website. The spotlight highlights a new post about ASP.NET development every day from a member of the ASP.NET community. You can find it on the home page of the ASP.NET site, at http://asp.net These posts aren't automatically drawn from a pool of RSS feeds or anything - I pick a new post for each day of the year. How I pick the posts I have a few important selection criteria: Interesting to well rounded ASP.NET developers The ASP.NET website has a lot of material for all skill and experience levels, from download / get started to advanced. I try to select community spotlight posts to round that out with fresh and timely information that working ASP.NET developers can really use. Posts highlight solutions to common problems, clever projects and code that helps you leverage ASP.NET, and important announcements about things you can use today. As part of that, I try to mix between ASP.NET MVC, Web Forms, and Web Pages (a.k.a. WebMatrix). As a professional developer, I want to keep on top of all of my options for ASP.NET development, and the common platform base they all share generally means that good ASP.NET code is good ASP.NET code. Exposing new and non-Microsoft community members as much as possible The exercise of selecting good ASP.NET community posts every day of the year has made me think about what the community is. Given the choice, I'll always favor non-Microsoft employees, but since Microsoft often hires ASP.NET community members and MVP's (myself included), I really think that the ASP.NET community includes developers who are using and writing about ASP.NET, both inside and outside of Microsoft. I'm especially excited about the opportunity to highlight new and lesser known bloggers. Usually being featured on the ASP.NET Community Spotlight gives a pretty good traffic bump, and I love being able to both provide great content to the community and encourage lesser known community members by giving them some (much deserved) attention. Announcements only when they're useful to working developers - not marketing Some of the posts are announcements about new releases, such as Scott Hanselman's post on ASP.NET Universal Providers for Session, Memebership, and Roles. I include those when I think they're interesting and of immediate use to you on projects. I occasionally get asked to link to new content from a team at Microsoft; if it's useful and timely content I'll ask them to point me to a blog post by an actual person rather than a faceless team. How the posts are managed This feed used to be managed by an internal spreadsheet on a Sharepoint site, which was painful for a lot of reasons. I took a cue from Jon Udell, who uses of a public Delicious feed feed for his Elm City project, and we moved the management of these posts over to a Delicious feed as well. You can hear more about Jon's use of Delicious in Elm City in our Herding Code interview - still one of my favorite interviews. We ended up with a simpler scenario, but Note: I watched the Yahoo/Delicious news over the past year and was happy to see that Delicious was recently acquired by the founders of YouTube. I investigated several other Delicious competitors, but am happy with Delicious for now. My Delicious feed here: http://www.delicious.com/jon_galloway You can also browse through this past year's ASP.NET Community Spotlight posts using the (pretty cool) Delicious Browse Bar Submitting articles I'm always on the lookout for new articles to feature. The best way to get them to me is to share them via Delicious. It's pretty easy - sign up for an account, then you can add a post and share it to me. Alternatively, you can send them to me via Twitter (@jongalloway) or e-mail (). If you do e-mail me, it helps to include a short description and your full name so I can credit you. Way too many developer blogs don't include names and pictures; if I can't find them I can't feature the post. Subscribing to the Community Spotlight feed The Community Spotlight is available as an RSS feed, so you might want to subscribe to it: http://www.asp.net/rss/spotlight Setting the ASP.NET Community Spotlight feed as your Visual Studio start page If you're an ASP.NET developer, you might consider setting the ASP.NET Community Spotlight as the content for your Visual Studio Start Page. It's really easy - here's how to do it in Visual Studio 2010: Display the Visual Studio Start Page if it's not already showing (View / Start Page) Click on the Latest News tab and enter the following RSS URL: http://www.asp.net/rss/spotlight If you didn't previously have RSS feeds enabled for your start page, click the Enable RSS Feed button Now, every time you start up Visual Studio you'll see great content from members of the ASP.NET community: You can also configure - and disable, if you'd like - the Visual Studio start page in the Tools / Options / Environment / Startup dialog. Credits I'll do a follow-up highlighting some places I commonly find great content for the feed, but I'd like to specifically point out two of them: Elijah Manor posts a lot of great content, which is available in his Twitter feed at @elijahmanor, on his Delicious feed, and on a dedicated website - Web Dev Tweets Chris Alcock's The Morning Brew is a must-read blog which highlights each day's best blog posts across the .NET community. He's an absolute machine, and no matter how obscure the post I find, I can guarantee he'll find it as well if he hasn't already. Did I say must read?

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  • This Week in Geek History: Birth of Linux Creator, FM Radio Appears, and Q*Bert Released

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Every week we bring you interesting trivia from the annuals of geekdom. This week in Geek History witnessed the birth of Linux creator Linus Torvalds, the patent for FM radio, and the release of wildly popular 80s arcade game Q*Bert. Read on to learn more about each event. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The 20 Best How-To Geek Explainer Topics for 2010 How to Disable Caps Lock Key in Windows 7 or Vista How to Use the Avira Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials Is Your Desktop Printer More Expensive Than Printing Services? 20 OS X Keyboard Shortcuts You Might Not Know Classic Super Mario Brothers Theme for Chrome and Iron Experimental Firefox Builds Put Tabs on the Title Bar (Available for Download) Android Trojan Found in the Wild Chaos, Panic, and Disorder Wallpaper Enjoy Christmas Beyond the Holiday with Christmas Eve Crisis Parrotfish Extends the Number of Services Accessible in Twitter Previews

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  • Telerik Reporting introduces WPF Report Viewer, the first reporting tool supporting all .NET desktop

    With the release of Telerik Reporting Q1 2010 Service Pack 1 we are proud to announce a very important addition to Telerik Reporting. Finally, our suite of report viewers is now complete, making Telerik Reporting the first reporting tool to support all .NET desktop and web platforms: ASP.NET, Silverlight (incl. out-of-browser support), Windows Forms, and WPF. The newest member of the viewer family is the WPF Report Viewer which allows developers to deliver reports produced by Telerik Reporting to any rich application developed with WPF. The viewer supports all functionality available in the ASP.NET, Silverlight and Win Viewers,  including printing and exporting to all supported formats. Here is a quick overview of the most important features (in WPF disguise): Different technology, same report The WPF Viewer is tightly integrated with Telerik Reporting and as such uses the same powerful reporting engine, which guarantees that you will ...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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  • What&rsquo;s New in ASP.NET 4.0 Part Two: WebForms and Visual Studio Enhancements

    - by Rick Strahl
    In the last installment I talked about the core changes in the ASP.NET runtime that I’ve been taking advantage of. In this column, I’ll cover the changes to the Web Forms engine and some of the cool improvements in Visual Studio that make Web and general development easier. WebForms The WebForms engine is the area that has received most significant changes in ASP.NET 4.0. Probably the most widely anticipated features are related to managing page client ids and of ViewState on WebForm pages. Take Control of Your ClientIDs Unique ClientID generation in ASP.NET has been one of the most complained about “features” in ASP.NET. Although there’s a very good technical reason for these unique generated ids - they guarantee unique ids for each and every server control on a page - these unique and generated ids often get in the way of client-side JavaScript development and CSS styling as it’s often inconvenient and fragile to work with the long, generated ClientIDs. In ASP.NET 4.0 you can now specify an explicit client id mode on each control or each naming container parent control to control how client ids are generated. By default, ASP.NET generates mangled client ids for any control contained in a naming container (like a Master Page, or a User Control for example). The key to ClientID management in ASP.NET 4.0 are the new ClientIDMode and ClientIDRowSuffix properties. ClientIDMode supports four different ClientID generation settings shown below. For the following examples, imagine that you have a Textbox control named txtName inside of a master page control container on a WebForms page. <%@Page Language="C#"      MasterPageFile="~/Site.Master"     CodeBehind="WebForm2.aspx.cs"     Inherits="WebApplication1.WebForm2"  %> <asp:Content ID="content"  ContentPlaceHolderID="content"               runat="server"               ClientIDMode="Static" >       <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtName" /> </asp:Content> The four available ClientIDMode values are: AutoID This is the existing behavior in ASP.NET 1.x-3.x where full naming container munging takes place. <input name="ctl00$content$txtName" type="text"        id="ctl00_content_txtName" /> This should be familiar to any ASP.NET developer and results in fairly unpredictable client ids that can easily change if the containership hierarchy changes. For example, removing the master page changes the name in this case, so if you were to move a block of script code that works against the control to a non-Master page, the script code immediately breaks. Static This option is the most deterministic setting that forces the control’s ClientID to use its ID value directly. No naming container naming at all is applied and you end up with clean client ids: <input name="ctl00$content$txtName"         type="text" id="txtName" /> Note that the name property which is used for postback variables to the server still is munged, but the ClientID property is displayed simply as the ID value that you have assigned to the control. This option is what most of us want to use, but you have to be clear on that because it can potentially cause conflicts with other controls on the page. If there are several instances of the same naming container (several instances of the same user control for example) there can easily be a client id naming conflict. Note that if you assign Static to a data-bound control, like a list child control in templates, you do not get unique ids either, so for list controls where you rely on unique id for child controls, you’ll probably want to use Predictable rather than Static. I’ll write more on this a little later when I discuss ClientIDRowSuffix. Predictable The previous two values are pretty self-explanatory. Predictable however, requires some explanation. To me at least it’s not in the least bit predictable. MSDN defines this value as follows: This algorithm is used for controls that are in data-bound controls. The ClientID value is generated by concatenating the ClientID value of the parent naming container with the ID value of the control. If the control is a data-bound control that generates multiple rows, the value of the data field specified in the ClientIDRowSuffix property is added at the end. For the GridView control, multiple data fields can be specified. If the ClientIDRowSuffix property is blank, a sequential number is added at the end instead of a data-field value. Each segment is separated by an underscore character (_). The key that makes this value a bit confusing is that it relies on the parent NamingContainer’s ClientID to build its own ClientID value. This effectively means that the value is not predictable at all but rather very tightly coupled to the parent naming container’s ClientIDMode setting. For my simple textbox example, if the ClientIDMode property of the parent naming container (Page in this case) is set to “Predictable” you’ll get this: <input name="ctl00$content$txtName" type="text"         id="content_txtName" /> which gives an id that based on walking up to the currently active naming container (the MasterPage content container) and starting the id formatting from there downward. Think of this as a semi unique name that’s guaranteed unique only for the naming container. If, on the other hand, the Page is set to “AutoID” you get the following with Predictable on txtName: <input name="ctl00$content$txtName" type="text"         id="ctl00_content_txtName" /> The latter is effectively the same as if you specified AutoID because it inherits the AutoID naming from the Page and Content Master Page control of the page. But again - predictable behavior always depends on the parent naming container and how it generates its id, so the id may not always be exactly the same as the AutoID generated value because somewhere in the NamingContainer chain the ClientIDMode setting may be set to a different value. For example, if you had another naming container in the middle that was set to Static you’d end up effectively with an id that starts with the NamingContainers id rather than the whole ctl000_content munging. The most common use for Predictable is likely to be for data-bound controls, which results in each data bound item getting a unique ClientID. Unfortunately, even here the behavior can be very unpredictable depending on which data-bound control you use - I found significant differences in how template controls in a GridView behave from those that are used in a ListView control. For example, GridView creates clean child ClientIDs, while ListView still has a naming container in the ClientID, presumably because of the template container on which you can’t set ClientIDMode. Predictable is useful, but only if all naming containers down the chain use this setting. Otherwise you’re right back to the munged ids that are pretty unpredictable. Another property, ClientIDRowSuffix, can be used in combination with ClientIDMode of Predictable to force a suffix onto list client controls. For example: <asp:GridView runat="server" ID="gvItems"              AutoGenerateColumns="false"             ClientIDMode="Static"              ClientIDRowSuffix="Id">     <Columns>     <asp:TemplateField>         <ItemTemplate>             <asp:Label runat="server" id="txtName"                        Text='<%# Eval("Name") %>'                   ClientIDMode="Predictable"/>         </ItemTemplate>     </asp:TemplateField>     <asp:TemplateField>         <ItemTemplate>         <asp:Label runat="server" id="txtId"                     Text='<%# Eval("Id") %>'                     ClientIDMode="Predictable" />         </ItemTemplate>     </asp:TemplateField>     </Columns>  </asp:GridView> generates client Ids inside of a column in the master page described earlier: <td>     <span id="txtName_0">Rick</span> </td> where the value after the underscore is the ClientIDRowSuffix field - in this case “Id” of the item data bound to the control. Note that all of the child controls require ClientIDMode=”Predictable” in order for the ClientIDRowSuffix to be applied, and the parent GridView controls need to be set to Static either explicitly or via Naming Container inheritance to give these simple names. It’s a bummer that ClientIDRowSuffix doesn’t work with Static to produce this automatically. Another real problem is that other controls process the ClientIDMode differently. For example, a ListView control processes the Predictable ClientIDMode differently and produces the following with the Static ListView and Predictable child controls: <span id="ctrl0_txtName_0">Rick</span> I couldn’t even figure out a way using ClientIDMode to get a simple ID that also uses a suffix short of falling back to manually generated ids using <%= %> expressions instead. Given the inconsistencies inside of list controls using <%= %>, ids for the ListView might not be a bad idea anyway. Inherit The final setting is Inherit, which is the default for all controls except Page. This means that controls by default inherit the parent naming container’s ClientIDMode setting. For more detailed information on ClientID behavior and different scenarios you can check out a blog post of mine on this subject: http://www.west-wind.com/weblog/posts/54760.aspx. ClientID Enhancements Summary The ClientIDMode property is a welcome addition to ASP.NET 4.0. To me this is probably the most useful WebForms feature as it allows me to generate clean IDs simply by setting ClientIDMode="Static" on either the page or inside of Web.config (in the Pages section) which applies the setting down to the entire page which is my 95% scenario. For the few cases when it matters - for list controls and inside of multi-use user controls or custom server controls) - I can use Predictable or even AutoID to force controls to unique names. For application-level page development, this is easy to accomplish and provides maximum usability for working with client script code against page controls. ViewStateMode Another area of large criticism for WebForms is ViewState. ViewState is used internally by ASP.NET to persist page-level changes to non-postback properties on controls as pages post back to the server. It’s a useful mechanism that works great for the overall mechanics of WebForms, but it can also cause all sorts of overhead for page operation as ViewState can very quickly get out of control and consume huge amounts of bandwidth in your page content. ViewState can also wreak havoc with client-side scripting applications that modify control properties that are tracked by ViewState, which can produce very unpredictable results on a Postback after client-side updates. Over the years in my own development, I’ve often turned off ViewState on pages to reduce overhead. Yes, you lose some functionality, but you can easily implement most of the common functionality in non-ViewState workarounds. Relying less on heavy ViewState controls and sticking with simpler controls or raw HTML constructs avoids getting around ViewState problems. In ASP.NET 3.x and prior, it wasn’t easy to control ViewState - you could turn it on or off and if you turned it off at the page or web.config level, you couldn’t turn it back on for specific controls. In short, it was an all or nothing approach. With ASP.NET 4.0, the new ViewStateMode property gives you more control. It allows you to disable ViewState globally either on the page or web.config level and then turn it back on for specific controls that might need it. ViewStateMode only works when EnableViewState="true" on the page or web.config level (which is the default). You can then use ViewStateMode of Disabled, Enabled or Inherit to control the ViewState settings on the page. If you’re shooting for minimal ViewState usage, the ideal situation is to set ViewStateMode to disabled on the Page or web.config level and only turn it back on particular controls: <%@Page Language="C#"      CodeBehind="WebForm2.aspx.cs"     Inherits="Westwind.WebStore.WebForm2"        ClientIDMode="Static"                ViewStateMode="Disabled"     EnableViewState="true"  %> <!-- this control has viewstate  --> <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtName"  ViewStateMode="Enabled" />       <!-- this control has no viewstate - it inherits  from parent container --> <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtAddress" /> Note that the EnableViewState="true" at the Page level isn’t required since it’s the default, but it’s important that the value is true. ViewStateMode has no effect if EnableViewState="false" at the page level. The main benefit of ViewStateMode is that it allows you to more easily turn off ViewState for most of the page and enable only a few key controls that might need it. For me personally, this is a perfect combination as most of my WebForm apps can get away without any ViewState at all. But some controls - especially third party controls - often don’t work well without ViewState enabled, and now it’s much easier to selectively enable controls rather than the old way, which required you to pretty much turn off ViewState for all controls that you didn’t want ViewState on. Inline HTML Encoding HTML encoding is an important feature to prevent cross-site scripting attacks in data entered by users on your site. In order to make it easier to create HTML encoded content, ASP.NET 4.0 introduces a new Expression syntax using <%: %> to encode string values. The encoding expression syntax looks like this: <%: "<script type='text/javascript'>" +     "alert('Really?');</script>" %> which produces properly encoded HTML: &lt;script type=&#39;text/javascript&#39; &gt;alert(&#39;Really?&#39;);&lt;/script&gt; Effectively this is a shortcut to: <%= HttpUtility.HtmlEncode( "<script type='text/javascript'>" + "alert('Really?');</script>") %> Of course the <%: %> syntax can also evaluate expressions just like <%= %> so the more common scenario applies this expression syntax against data your application is displaying. Here’s an example displaying some data model values: <%: Model.Address.Street %> This snippet shows displaying data from your application’s data store or more importantly, from data entered by users. Anything that makes it easier and less verbose to HtmlEncode text is a welcome addition to avoid potential cross-site scripting attacks. Although I listed Inline HTML Encoding here under WebForms, anything that uses the WebForms rendering engine including ASP.NET MVC, benefits from this feature. ScriptManager Enhancements The ASP.NET ScriptManager control in the past has introduced some nice ways to take programmatic and markup control over script loading, but there were a number of shortcomings in this control. The ASP.NET 4.0 ScriptManager has a number of improvements that make it easier to control script loading and addresses a few of the shortcomings that have often kept me from using the control in favor of manual script loading. The first is the AjaxFrameworkMode property which finally lets you suppress loading the ASP.NET AJAX runtime. Disabled doesn’t load any ASP.NET AJAX libraries, but there’s also an Explicit mode that lets you pick and choose the library pieces individually and reduce the footprint of ASP.NET AJAX script included if you are using the library. There’s also a new EnableCdn property that forces any script that has a new WebResource attribute CdnPath property set to a CDN supplied URL. If the script has this Attribute property set to a non-null/empty value and EnableCdn is enabled on the ScriptManager, that script will be served from the specified CdnPath. [assembly: WebResource(    "Westwind.Web.Resources.ww.jquery.js",    "application/x-javascript",    CdnPath =  "http://mysite.com/scripts/ww.jquery.min.js")] Cool, but a little too static for my taste since this value can’t be changed at runtime to point at a debug script as needed, for example. Assembly names for loading scripts from resources can now be simple names rather than fully qualified assembly names, which make it less verbose to reference scripts from assemblies loaded from your bin folder or the assembly reference area in web.config: <asp:ScriptManager runat="server" id="Id"          EnableCdn="true"         AjaxFrameworkMode="disabled">     <Scripts>         <asp:ScriptReference          Name="Westwind.Web.Resources.ww.jquery.js"         Assembly="Westwind.Web" />     </Scripts>        </asp:ScriptManager> The ScriptManager in 4.0 also supports script combining via the CompositeScript tag, which allows you to very easily combine scripts into a single script resource served via ASP.NET. Even nicer: You can specify the URL that the combined script is served with. Check out the following script manager markup that combines several static file scripts and a script resource into a single ASP.NET served resource from a static URL (allscripts.js): <asp:ScriptManager runat="server" id="Id"          EnableCdn="true"         AjaxFrameworkMode="disabled">     <CompositeScript          Path="~/scripts/allscripts.js">         <Scripts>             <asp:ScriptReference                    Path="~/scripts/jquery.js" />             <asp:ScriptReference                    Path="~/scripts/ww.jquery.js" />             <asp:ScriptReference            Name="Westwind.Web.Resources.editors.js"                 Assembly="Westwind.Web" />         </Scripts>     </CompositeScript> </asp:ScriptManager> When you render this into HTML, you’ll see a single script reference in the page: <script src="scripts/allscripts.debug.js"          type="text/javascript"></script> All you need to do to make this work is ensure that allscripts.js and allscripts.debug.js exist in the scripts folder of your application - they can be empty but the file has to be there. This is pretty cool, but you want to be real careful that you use unique URLs for each combination of scripts you combine or else browser and server caching will easily screw you up royally. The script manager also allows you to override native ASP.NET AJAX scripts now as any script references defined in the Scripts section of the ScriptManager trump internal references. So if you want custom behavior or you want to fix a possible bug in the core libraries that normally are loaded from resources, you can now do this simply by referencing the script resource name in the Name property and pointing at System.Web for the assembly. Not a common scenario, but when you need it, it can come in real handy. Still, there are a number of shortcomings in this control. For one, the ScriptManager and ClientScript APIs still have no common entry point so control developers are still faced with having to check and support both APIs to load scripts so that controls can work on pages that do or don’t have a ScriptManager on the page. The CdnUrl is static and compiled in, which is very restrictive. And finally, there’s still no control over where scripts get loaded on the page - ScriptManager still injects scripts into the middle of the HTML markup rather than in the header or optionally the footer. This, in turn, means there is little control over script loading order, which can be problematic for control developers. MetaDescription, MetaKeywords Page Properties There are also a number of additional Page properties that correspond to some of the other features discussed in this column: ClientIDMode, ClientTarget and ViewStateMode. Another minor but useful feature is that you can now directly access the MetaDescription and MetaKeywords properties on the Page object to set the corresponding meta tags programmatically. Updating these values programmatically previously required either <%= %> expressions in the page markup or dynamic insertion of literal controls into the page. You can now just set these properties programmatically on the Page object in any Control derived class on the page or the Page itself: Page.MetaKeywords = "ASP.NET,4.0,New Features"; Page.MetaDescription = "This article discusses the new features in ASP.NET 4.0"; Note, that there’s no corresponding ASP.NET tag for the HTML Meta element, so the only way to specify these values in markup and access them is via the @Page tag: <%@Page Language="C#"      CodeBehind="WebForm2.aspx.cs"     Inherits="Westwind.WebStore.WebForm2"      ClientIDMode="Static"                MetaDescription="Article that discusses what's                      new in ASP.NET 4.0"     MetaKeywords="ASP.NET,4.0,New Features" %> Nothing earth shattering but quite convenient. Visual Studio 2010 Enhancements for Web Development For Web development there are also a host of editor enhancements in Visual Studio 2010. Some of these are not Web specific but they are useful for Web developers in general. Text Editors Throughout Visual Studio 2010, the text editors have all been updated to a new core engine based on WPF which provides some interesting new features for various code editors including the nice ability to zoom in and out with Ctrl-MouseWheel to quickly change the size of text. There are many more API options to control the editor and although Visual Studio 2010 doesn’t yet use many of these features, we can look forward to enhancements in add-ins and future editor updates from the various language teams that take advantage of the visual richness that WPF provides to editing. On the negative side, I’ve noticed that occasionally the code editor and especially the HTML and JavaScript editors will lose the ability to use various navigation keys like arrows, back and delete keys, which requires closing and reopening the documents at times. This issue seems to be well documented so I suspect this will be addressed soon with a hotfix or within the first service pack. Overall though, the code editors work very well, especially given that they were re-written completely using WPF, which was one of my big worries when I first heard about the complete redesign of the editors. Multi-Targeting Visual Studio now targets all versions of the .NET framework from 2.0 forward. You can use Visual Studio 2010 to work on your ASP.NET 2, 3.0 and 3.5 applications which is a nice way to get your feet wet with the new development environment without having to make changes to existing applications. It’s nice to have one tool to work in for all the different versions. Multi-Monitor Support One cool feature of Visual Studio 2010 is the ability to drag windows out of the Visual Studio environment and out onto the desktop including onto another monitor easily. Since Web development often involves working with a host of designers at the same time - visual designer, HTML markup window, code behind and JavaScript editor - it’s really nice to be able to have a little more screen real estate to work on each of these editors. Microsoft made a welcome change in the environment. IntelliSense Snippets for HTML and JavaScript Editors The HTML and JavaScript editors now finally support IntelliSense scripts to create macro-based template expansions that have been in the core C# and Visual Basic code editors since Visual Studio 2005. Snippets allow you to create short XML-based template definitions that can act as static macros or real templates that can have replaceable values that can be embedded into the expanded text. The XML syntax for these snippets is straight forward and it’s pretty easy to create custom snippets manually. You can easily create snippets using XML and store them in your custom snippets folder (C:\Users\rstrahl\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Code Snippets\Visual Web Developer\My HTML Snippets and My JScript Snippets), but it helps to use one of the third-party tools that exist to simplify the process for you. I use SnippetEditor, by Bill McCarthy, which makes short work of creating snippets interactively (http://snippeteditor.codeplex.com/). Note: You may have to manually add the Visual Studio 2010 User specific Snippet folders to this tool to see existing ones you’ve created. Code snippets are some of the biggest time savers and HTML editing more than anything deals with lots of repetitive tasks that lend themselves to text expansion. Visual Studio 2010 includes a slew of built-in snippets (that you can also customize!) and you can create your own very easily. If you haven’t done so already, I encourage you to spend a little time examining your coding patterns and find the repetitive code that you write and convert it into snippets. I’ve been using CodeRush for this for years, but now you can do much of the basic expansion natively for HTML and JavaScript snippets. jQuery Integration Is Now Native jQuery is a popular JavaScript library and recently Microsoft has recently stated that it will become the primary client-side scripting technology to drive higher level script functionality in various ASP.NET Web projects that Microsoft provides. In Visual Studio 2010, the default full project template includes jQuery as part of a new project including the support files that provide IntelliSense (-vsdoc files). IntelliSense support for jQuery is now also baked into Visual Studio 2010, so unlike Visual Studio 2008 which required a separate download, no further installs are required for a rich IntelliSense experience with jQuery. Summary ASP.NET 4.0 brings many useful improvements to the platform, but thankfully most of the changes are incremental changes that don’t compromise backwards compatibility and they allow developers to ease into the new features one feature at a time. None of the changes in ASP.NET 4.0 or Visual Studio 2010 are monumental or game changers. The bigger features are language and .NET Framework changes that are also optional. This ASP.NET and tools release feels more like fine tuning and getting some long-standing kinks worked out of the platform. It shows that the ASP.NET team is dedicated to paying attention to community feedback and responding with changes to the platform and development environment based on this feedback. If you haven’t gotten your feet wet with ASP.NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010, there’s no reason not to give it a shot now - the ASP.NET 4.0 platform is solid and Visual Studio 2010 works very well for a brand new release. Check it out. © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  

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  • An Xml Serializable PropertyBag Dictionary Class for .NET

    - by Rick Strahl
    I don't know about you but I frequently need property bags in my applications to store and possibly cache arbitrary data. Dictionary<T,V> works well for this although I always seem to be hunting for a more specific generic type that provides a string key based dictionary. There's string dictionary, but it only works with strings. There's Hashset<T> but it uses the actual values as keys. In most key value pair situations for me string is key value to work off. Dictionary<T,V> works well enough, but there are some issues with serialization of dictionaries in .NET. The .NET framework doesn't do well serializing IDictionary objects out of the box. The XmlSerializer doesn't support serialization of IDictionary via it's default serialization, and while the DataContractSerializer does support IDictionary serialization it produces some pretty atrocious XML. What doesn't work? First off Dictionary serialization with the Xml Serializer doesn't work so the following fails: [TestMethod] public void DictionaryXmlSerializerTest() { var bag = new Dictionary<string, object>(); bag.Add("key", "Value"); bag.Add("Key2", 100.10M); bag.Add("Key3", Guid.NewGuid()); bag.Add("Key4", DateTime.Now); bag.Add("Key5", true); bag.Add("Key7", new byte[3] { 42, 45, 66 }); TestContext.WriteLine(this.ToXml(bag)); } public string ToXml(object obj) { if (obj == null) return null; StringWriter sw = new StringWriter(); XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(obj.GetType()); ser.Serialize(sw, obj); return sw.ToString(); } The error you get with this is: System.NotSupportedException: The type System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2[[System.String, mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089],[System.Object, mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089]] is not supported because it implements IDictionary. Got it! BTW, the same is true with binary serialization. Running the same code above against the DataContractSerializer does work: [TestMethod] public void DictionaryDataContextSerializerTest() { var bag = new Dictionary<string, object>(); bag.Add("key", "Value"); bag.Add("Key2", 100.10M); bag.Add("Key3", Guid.NewGuid()); bag.Add("Key4", DateTime.Now); bag.Add("Key5", true); bag.Add("Key7", new byte[3] { 42, 45, 66 }); TestContext.WriteLine(this.ToXmlDcs(bag)); } public string ToXmlDcs(object value, bool throwExceptions = false) { var ser = new DataContractSerializer(value.GetType(), null, int.MaxValue, true, false, null); MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream(); ser.WriteObject(ms, value); return Encoding.UTF8.GetString(ms.ToArray(), 0, (int)ms.Length); } This DOES work but produces some pretty heinous XML (formatted with line breaks and indentation here): <ArrayOfKeyValueOfstringanyType xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/Arrays" xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>key</Key> <Value i:type="a:string" xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">Value</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>Key2</Key> <Value i:type="a:decimal" xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">100.10</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>Key3</Key> <Value i:type="a:guid" xmlns:a="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/">2cd46d2a-a636-4af4-979b-e834d39b6d37</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>Key4</Key> <Value i:type="a:dateTime" xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">2011-09-19T17:17:05.4406999-07:00</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>Key5</Key> <Value i:type="a:boolean" xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">true</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>Key7</Key> <Value i:type="a:base64Binary" xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">Ki1C</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> </ArrayOfKeyValueOfstringanyType> Ouch! That seriously hurts the eye! :-) Worse though it's extremely verbose with all those repetitive namespace declarations. It's good to know that it works in a pinch, but for a human readable/editable solution or something lightweight to store in a database it's not quite ideal. Why should I care? As a little background, in one of my applications I have a need for a flexible property bag that is used on a free form database field on an otherwise static entity. Basically what I have is a standard database record to which arbitrary properties can be added in an XML based string field. I intend to expose those arbitrary properties as a collection from field data stored in XML. The concept is pretty simple: When loading write the data to the collection, when the data is saved serialize the data into an XML string and store it into the database. When reading the data pick up the XML and if the collection on the entity is accessed automatically deserialize the XML into the Dictionary. (I'll talk more about this in another post). While the DataContext Serializer would work, it's verbosity is problematic both for size of the generated XML strings and the fact that users can manually edit this XML based property data in an advanced mode. A clean(er) layout certainly would be preferable and more user friendly. Custom XMLSerialization with a PropertyBag Class So… after a bunch of experimentation with different serialization formats I decided to create a custom PropertyBag class that provides for a serializable Dictionary. It's basically a custom Dictionary<TType,TValue> implementation with the keys always set as string keys. The result are PropertyBag<TValue> and PropertyBag (which defaults to the object type for values). The PropertyBag<TType> and PropertyBag classes provide these features: Subclassed from Dictionary<T,V> Implements IXmlSerializable with a cleanish XML format ToXml() and FromXml() methods to export and import to and from XML strings Static CreateFromXml() method to create an instance It's simple enough as it's merely a Dictionary<string,object> subclass but that supports serialization to a - what I think at least - cleaner XML format. The class is super simple to use: [TestMethod] public void PropertyBagTwoWayObjectSerializationTest() { var bag = new PropertyBag(); bag.Add("key", "Value"); bag.Add("Key2", 100.10M); bag.Add("Key3", Guid.NewGuid()); bag.Add("Key4", DateTime.Now); bag.Add("Key5", true); bag.Add("Key7", new byte[3] { 42,45,66 } ); bag.Add("Key8", null); bag.Add("Key9", new ComplexObject() { Name = "Rick", Entered = DateTime.Now, Count = 10 }); string xml = bag.ToXml(); TestContext.WriteLine(bag.ToXml()); bag.Clear(); bag.FromXml(xml); Assert.IsTrue(bag["key"] as string == "Value"); Assert.IsInstanceOfType( bag["Key3"], typeof(Guid)); Assert.IsNull(bag["Key8"]); //Assert.IsNull(bag["Key10"]); Assert.IsInstanceOfType(bag["Key9"], typeof(ComplexObject)); } This uses the PropertyBag class which uses a PropertyBag<string,object> - which means it returns untyped values of type object. I suspect for me this will be the most common scenario as I'd want to store arbitrary values in the PropertyBag rather than one specific type. The same code with a strongly typed PropertyBag<decimal> looks like this: [TestMethod] public void PropertyBagTwoWayValueTypeSerializationTest() { var bag = new PropertyBag<decimal>(); bag.Add("key", 10M); bag.Add("Key1", 100.10M); bag.Add("Key2", 200.10M); bag.Add("Key3", 300.10M); string xml = bag.ToXml(); TestContext.WriteLine(bag.ToXml()); bag.Clear(); bag.FromXml(xml); Assert.IsTrue(bag.Get("Key1") == 100.10M); Assert.IsTrue(bag.Get("Key3") == 300.10M); } and produces typed results of type decimal. The types can be either value or reference types the combination of which actually proved to be a little more tricky than anticipated due to null and specific string value checks required - getting the generic typing right required use of default(T) and Convert.ChangeType() to trick the compiler into playing nice. Of course the whole raison d'etre for this class is the XML serialization. You can see in the code above that we're doing a .ToXml() and .FromXml() to serialize to and from string. The XML produced for the first example looks like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <properties> <item> <key>key</key> <value>Value</value> </item> <item> <key>Key2</key> <value type="decimal">100.10</value> </item> <item> <key>Key3</key> <value type="___System.Guid"> <guid>f7a92032-0c6d-4e9d-9950-b15ff7cd207d</guid> </value> </item> <item> <key>Key4</key> <value type="datetime">2011-09-26T17:45:58.5789578-10:00</value> </item> <item> <key>Key5</key> <value type="boolean">true</value> </item> <item> <key>Key7</key> <value type="base64Binary">Ki1C</value> </item> <item> <key>Key8</key> <value type="nil" /> </item> <item> <key>Key9</key> <value type="___Westwind.Tools.Tests.PropertyBagTest+ComplexObject"> <ComplexObject> <Name>Rick</Name> <Entered>2011-09-26T17:45:58.5789578-10:00</Entered> <Count>10</Count> </ComplexObject> </value> </item> </properties>   The format is a bit cleaner than the DataContractSerializer. Each item is serialized into <key> <value> pairs. If the value is a string no type information is written. Since string tends to be the most common type this saves space and serialization processing. All other types are attributed. Simple types are mapped to XML types so things like decimal, datetime, boolean and base64Binary are encoded using their Xml type values. All other types are embedded with a hokey format that describes the .NET type preceded by a three underscores and then are encoded using the XmlSerializer. You can see this best above in the ComplexObject encoding. For custom types this isn't pretty either, but it's more concise than the DCS and it works as long as you're serializing back and forth between .NET clients at least. The XML generated from the second example that uses PropertyBag<decimal> looks like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <properties> <item> <key>key</key> <value type="decimal">10</value> </item> <item> <key>Key1</key> <value type="decimal">100.10</value> </item> <item> <key>Key2</key> <value type="decimal">200.10</value> </item> <item> <key>Key3</key> <value type="decimal">300.10</value> </item> </properties>   How does it work As I mentioned there's nothing fancy about this solution - it's little more than a subclass of Dictionary<T,V> that implements custom Xml Serialization and a couple of helper methods that facilitate getting the XML in and out of the class more easily. But it's proven very handy for a number of projects for me where dynamic data storage is required. Here's the code: /// <summary> /// Creates a serializable string/object dictionary that is XML serializable /// Encodes keys as element names and values as simple values with a type /// attribute that contains an XML type name. Complex names encode the type /// name with type='___namespace.classname' format followed by a standard xml /// serialized format. The latter serialization can be slow so it's not recommended /// to pass complex types if performance is critical. /// </summary> [XmlRoot("properties")] public class PropertyBag : PropertyBag<object> { /// <summary> /// Creates an instance of a propertybag from an Xml string /// </summary> /// <param name="xml">Serialize</param> /// <returns></returns> public static PropertyBag CreateFromXml(string xml) { var bag = new PropertyBag(); bag.FromXml(xml); return bag; } } /// <summary> /// Creates a serializable string for generic types that is XML serializable. /// /// Encodes keys as element names and values as simple values with a type /// attribute that contains an XML type name. Complex names encode the type /// name with type='___namespace.classname' format followed by a standard xml /// serialized format. The latter serialization can be slow so it's not recommended /// to pass complex types if performance is critical. /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TValue">Must be a reference type. For value types use type object</typeparam> [XmlRoot("properties")] public class PropertyBag<TValue> : Dictionary<string, TValue>, IXmlSerializable { /// <summary> /// Not implemented - this means no schema information is passed /// so this won't work with ASMX/WCF services. /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public System.Xml.Schema.XmlSchema GetSchema() { return null; } /// <summary> /// Serializes the dictionary to XML. Keys are /// serialized to element names and values as /// element values. An xml type attribute is embedded /// for each serialized element - a .NET type /// element is embedded for each complex type and /// prefixed with three underscores. /// </summary> /// <param name="writer"></param> public void WriteXml(System.Xml.XmlWriter writer) { foreach (string key in this.Keys) { TValue value = this[key]; Type type = null; if (value != null) type = value.GetType(); writer.WriteStartElement("item"); writer.WriteStartElement("key"); writer.WriteString(key as string); writer.WriteEndElement(); writer.WriteStartElement("value"); string xmlType = XmlUtils.MapTypeToXmlType(type); bool isCustom = false; // Type information attribute if not string if (value == null) { writer.WriteAttributeString("type", "nil"); } else if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(xmlType)) { if (xmlType != "string") { writer.WriteStartAttribute("type"); writer.WriteString(xmlType); writer.WriteEndAttribute(); } } else { isCustom = true; xmlType = "___" + value.GetType().FullName; writer.WriteStartAttribute("type"); writer.WriteString(xmlType); writer.WriteEndAttribute(); } // Actual deserialization if (!isCustom) { if (value != null) writer.WriteValue(value); } else { XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(value.GetType()); ser.Serialize(writer, value); } writer.WriteEndElement(); // value writer.WriteEndElement(); // item } } /// <summary> /// Reads the custom serialized format /// </summary> /// <param name="reader"></param> public void ReadXml(System.Xml.XmlReader reader) { this.Clear(); while (reader.Read()) { if (reader.NodeType == XmlNodeType.Element && reader.Name == "key") { string xmlType = null; string name = reader.ReadElementContentAsString(); // item element reader.ReadToNextSibling("value"); if (reader.MoveToNextAttribute()) xmlType = reader.Value; reader.MoveToContent(); TValue value; if (xmlType == "nil") value = default(TValue); // null else if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(xmlType)) { // value is a string or object and we can assign TValue to value string strval = reader.ReadElementContentAsString(); value = (TValue) Convert.ChangeType(strval, typeof(TValue)); } else if (xmlType.StartsWith("___")) { while (reader.Read() && reader.NodeType != XmlNodeType.Element) { } Type type = ReflectionUtils.GetTypeFromName(xmlType.Substring(3)); //value = reader.ReadElementContentAs(type,null); XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(type); value = (TValue)ser.Deserialize(reader); } else value = (TValue)reader.ReadElementContentAs(XmlUtils.MapXmlTypeToType(xmlType), null); this.Add(name, value); } } } /// <summary> /// Serializes this dictionary to an XML string /// </summary> /// <returns>XML String or Null if it fails</returns> public string ToXml() { string xml = null; SerializationUtils.SerializeObject(this, out xml); return xml; } /// <summary> /// Deserializes from an XML string /// </summary> /// <param name="xml"></param> /// <returns>true or false</returns> public bool FromXml(string xml) { this.Clear(); // if xml string is empty we return an empty dictionary if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(xml)) return true; var result = SerializationUtils.DeSerializeObject(xml, this.GetType()) as PropertyBag<TValue>; if (result != null) { foreach (var item in result) { this.Add(item.Key, item.Value); } } else // null is a failure return false; return true; } /// <summary> /// Creates an instance of a propertybag from an Xml string /// </summary> /// <param name="xml"></param> /// <returns></returns> public static PropertyBag<TValue> CreateFromXml(string xml) { var bag = new PropertyBag<TValue>(); bag.FromXml(xml); return bag; } } } The code uses a couple of small helper classes SerializationUtils and XmlUtils for mapping Xml types to and from .NET, both of which are from the WestWind,Utilities project (which is the same project where PropertyBag lives) from the West Wind Web Toolkit. The code implements ReadXml and WriteXml for the IXmlSerializable implementation using old school XmlReaders and XmlWriters (because it's pretty simple stuff - no need for XLinq here). Then there are two helper methods .ToXml() and .FromXml() that basically allow your code to easily convert between XML and a PropertyBag object. In my code that's what I use to actually to persist to and from the entity XML property during .Load() and .Save() operations. It's sweet to be able to have a string key dictionary and then be able to turn around with 1 line of code to persist the whole thing to XML and back. Hopefully some of you will find this class as useful as I've found it. It's a simple solution to a common requirement in my applications and I've used the hell out of it in the  short time since I created it. Resources You can find the complete code for the two classes plus the helpers in the Subversion repository for Westwind.Utilities. You can grab the source files from there or download the whole project. You can also grab the full Westwind.Utilities assembly from NuGet and add it to your project if that's easier for you. PropertyBag Source Code SerializationUtils and XmlUtils Westwind.Utilities Assembly on NuGet (add from Visual Studio) © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in .NET  CSharp   Tweet (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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  • Top 4 Lame Tech Blogging Posts

    - by jkauffman
    From a consumption point of view, tech blogging is a great resource for one-off articles on niche subjects. If you spend any time reading tech blogs, you may find yourself running into several common, useless types of posts tech bloggers slip into. Some of these lame posts may just be natural due to common nerd psychology, and some others are probably due to lame, lemming-like laziness. I’m sure I’ll do my fair share of fitting the mold, but I quickly get bored when I happen upon posts that hit these patterns without any real purpose or personal touches. 1. The Content Regurgitation Posts This is a common pattern fueled by the starving pan-handlers in the web traffic economy. These are posts that are terse opinions or addendums to an existing post. I commonly see these involve huge block quotes from the linked article which almost always produces over 50% of the post itself. I’ve accidentally gone to these posts when I’m knowingly only interested in the source material. Web links can degrade as well, so if the source link is broken, then, well, I’m pretty steamed. I see this occur with simple opinions on technologies, Stack Overflow solutions, or various tech news like posts from Microsoft. It’s not uncommon to go to the linked article and see the author announce that he “added a blog post” as a response or summary of the topic. This is just rude, but those who do it are probably aware of this. It’s a matter of winning that sweet, juicy web traffic. I doubt this leeching is fooling anybody these days. I would like to rally human dignity and urge people to avoid these types of posts, and just leave a comment on the source material. 2. The “Sorry I Haven’t Posted In A While” Posts This one is far too common. You’ll most likely see this quote somewhere in the body of the offending post: I have been really busy. If the poster is especially guilt-ridden, you’ll see a few volleys of excuses. Here are some common reasons I’ve seen, which I’ll list from least to most painfully awkward. Out of town Vague allusions to personal health problems (these typically includes phrases like “sick”, “treatment'”, and “all better now!”) “Personal issues” (which I usually read as "divorce”) Graphic or specific personal health problems (maximum awkwardness potential is achieved if you see links to charity fund websites) I can’t help but to try over-analyzing why this occurs. Personally, I see this an an amalgamation of three plain factors: Life happens Us nerds are duty-driven, and driven to guilt at personal inefficiencies Tech blogs can become personal journals I don’t think we can do much about the first two, but on the third I think we could certainly contain our urges. I’m a pretty boring guy and, whether or I like it or not, I have an unspoken duty to protect the world from hearing about my unremarkable existence. Nobody cares what kind of sandwich I’m eating. Similarly, if I disappear for a while, it’s unlikely that anybody who happens upon my blog would care why. Rest assured, if I stop posting for a while due to a vasectomy, you will be the first to know. 3. The “At A Conference”, or “Conference Review” Posts I don’t know if I’m like everyone else on this one, but I have never been successfully interested in these posts. It even sounds like a good idea: if I can’t make it to a particular conference (like the KCDC this year), wouldn’t I be interested in a concentrated summary of events? Apparently, no! Within this realm, I’ve never read a post by a blogger that held my interest. What really baffles is is that, for whatever reason, I am genuinely engaged and interested when talking to someone in person regarding the same topic. I have noticed the same phenomenon when hearing about others’ vacations. If someone sends me an email about their vacation, I gloss over it and forget about it quickly. In contrast, if I’m speaking to that individual in person about their vacation, I’m actually interested. I’m unsure why the written medium eradicates the intrigue. I was raised by a roaming pack of friendly wild video games, so that may be a factor. 4. The “Top X Number of Y’s That Z” Posts I’ve seen this one crop up a lot more in the past few of years. Here are some fabricated examples: 5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Code Top 7 Good Habits Programmers Learn From Experience The 8 Things to Consider When Giving Estimates Top 4 Lame Tech Blogging Posts These are attention-grabbing headlines, and I’d assume they rack up hits. In fact, I enjoy a good number of these. But, I’ve been drawn to articles like this just to find an endless list of identically formatted posts on the blog’s archive sidebar. Often times these posts have overlapping topics, too. These types of posts give the impression that the author has given thought to prioritize and organize the points as a result of a comprehensive consideration of a particular topic. Did the author really weigh all the possibilities when identifying the “Top 4 Lame Tech Blogging Patterns”? Unfortunately, probably not. What a tool. To reiterate, I still enjoy the format, but I feel it is abused. Nowadays, I’m pretty skeptical when approaching posts in this format. If these trends continue, my brain will filter these blog posts out just as effectively as it ignores the encroaching “do xxx with this one trick” advertisements. Conclusion To active blog readers, I hope my guide has served you precious time in being able to identify lame blog posts at a glance. Save time and energy by skipping over the chaff of the internet! And if you author a blog, perhaps my insight will help you to avoid the occasional urge to produce these needless filler posts.

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  • This Week in Geek History: NORAD Tracks Santa, First HTTP Test, Babbage’s Birthday

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    History trivia shouldn’t be limited to just treaty dates and wars ending, we’re marking off major milestones in geek history—one week at at time. This week in history we’ve got Santa on the Cold War radar, baby HTTP going for a spin, and Babbage’s birth to help usher in the age of computers. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Use the Avira Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials Is Your Desktop Printer More Expensive Than Printing Services? 20 OS X Keyboard Shortcuts You Might Not Know HTG Explains: Which Linux File System Should You Choose? HTG Explains: Why Does Photo Paper Improve Print Quality? An Alternate Star Wars Christmas Special [Video] Sunset in a Tropical Paradise Wallpaper Natural Wood Grain Icons for Your Desktop and App Launcher Docks My Blackberry Is Not Working! The Apple Too?! [Funny Video] Hidden Tracks Your Stolen Mac; Free Until End of January Why the Other Checkout Line Always Moves Faster

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  • How to map network scanner

    - by Andrew Heath
    I have just bought a shiny new Canon MG6250 multifunction printer/scanner and connected it via LAN. Installing the printing side of things was a breeze, however, I cannot work out how to set up scanning. I installed the MG6200 series ScanGear MP driver from Canon's site but when I open GIMP or Simple Scan, they say there is no scanner detected. Using GIMP's 'update scanner list' button to search for the scanner does not find it. How do I tell Ubuntu, GIMP or Simple Scan to look on the network for the scanner? Is there another utility especially for this?

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  • The Beginner’s Guide to Pidgin, the Universal Messaging Client

    - by Zainul Franciscus
    If you find chatting with multiple chat clients troublesome, then Pidgin is the tool for you. In today’s article, we’ll show you how to connect to popular chat networks, encrypt your conversations, and render mathematical formula in Pidgin Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Use the Avira Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials Is Your Desktop Printer More Expensive Than Printing Services? 20 OS X Keyboard Shortcuts You Might Not Know HTG Explains: Which Linux File System Should You Choose? HTG Explains: Why Does Photo Paper Improve Print Quality? Natural Wood Grain Icons for Your Desktop and App Launcher Docks My Blackberry Is Not Working! The Apple Too?! [Funny Video] Hidden Tracks Your Stolen Mac; Free Until End of January Why the Other Checkout Line Always Moves Faster World of Warcraft Theme for Windows 7 Ubuntu Font Family Now Available for Download

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  • How to Search Just the Site You’re Viewing Using Google Search

    - by The Geek
    Have you ever wanted to search the site you’re viewing, but the built-in search box is either hard to find, or doesn’t work very well? Here’s how to add a special keyword bookmark that searches the site you’re viewing using Google’s site: search operator. This technique should work in either Google Chrome or Firefox—in Firefox you’ll want to create a regular bookmark and add the script into the keyword field, and for Google Chrome just follow the steps we’ve provided below Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Use the Avira Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials Is Your Desktop Printer More Expensive Than Printing Services? 20 OS X Keyboard Shortcuts You Might Not Know HTG Explains: Which Linux File System Should You Choose? HTG Explains: Why Does Photo Paper Improve Print Quality? Simon’s Cat Explores the Christmas Tree! [Video] The Outdoor Lights Scene from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation [Video] The Famous Home Alone Pizza Delivery Scene [Classic Video] Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader Theme for Windows 7 Cardinal and Rabbit Sharing a Tree on a Cold Winter Morning Wallpaper An Alternate Star Wars Christmas Special [Video]

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