October 2009 Entries
Intel pulls SSD Toolbox for killing drives under Windows 7 – for what it’s worth it looked to me like the firmware had been pulled, but that the toolbox was still available. I’ve downloaded the toolbox and installed it under Windows 7 – it simply didn’t detect my drive, so I decided to worry about it later. Looks like procrastination paid off big time here.
12 Useful Windows 7 Shortcuts on Extremetech contains… do I really need to say it? Some of these are pretty useful. Some of my favorites: Ctrl+Click on a taskbar group to restore the last active window from a group (especially useful for Windows Explorer groups and MSN windows) Windows+Arrow keys to automatically snap the active window (especially useful for multi monitors, as you can’t drag to dock against the adjoining monitor sides) Windows+shift+left or right arrow to shift the active application between monitors. This is something I previously used Ultramon for on Windows XP, so having it...
Apparently Intel's SSD Toolbox, firmware update promises a boost in performance, and it’s supposed to be a fairly hefty boost too. However when I checked for the download this morning it seems to have been pulled. Possibly related to the comments in the post above where people claim it bricked their drives. Here’s hoping the next release fixes that “minor” issue. 40% performance improvement over something which is already rather impressive is very tempting indeed. EDIT: Yep, looks like it has been officially removed for now.
Windows 7’s addition of access methods such as jumplists and quick accessing of items from the most recently used list when an application is pinned to the start menu are great productivity boosts, so I was a little annoyed that they didn’t seem to work with Visual Studio solutions. Here's why they don't work by default, and how to fix it. Tags: Windows, Visual Studio
One of my clients has an application which makes extremely heavy use of UpdatePanels. That’s my way of saying it was “architected” by idiots. It’s okay for me to say that, as they didn’t design it themselves – instead they paid a set of so called experts to do it for them. HINT: when you’re nesting UpdatePanels more than 3-4 levels deep, and using them in repeater templates then you’re doing it wrong. A couple of changes they wanted made were going to be easier done using jQuery, so in it went, however it took a few more tweaks...
Universal IQueryable Search is a handy extension for Linq to SQL and EF users. Again (as I’m saying this a lot lately) it does what the title implies. I’ve used this with Linq to SQL and it works incredibly well. The ability to specify which columns are included in the search as well as being able to pass through a collection of keywords makes it pretty versatile. Link: IQueryable Search (Codeplex) Link: Universal IQueryable Search (Informational blog post)
Ever since browsers started getting pretty good at remembering their sessions, I started to develop a bad habit. It’s not uncommon for me to have a lot of sites open in tabs across my various browsers, and sometimes they stay there for weeks at a time. So once or twice a month, I’m going to start dumping the contents of my browser in a post here. Why? I’m not turning this site into another linkblog. I’m hoping it might be fairly interesting or amusing reading. The links are often things I mean to write about, but which don’t...
Currently downloading the just released Notes/Domino 8.5.1. Hoping to get it all downloaded before the Americans wake up so I can give it a test drive tomorrow. Very interested to see whether this release fixes some of my current gripes with the full blown Godzilla client. I may finally put Notes on my Mac too, as apparently it’s more Mac like! Tags: IBM,Lotus,Notes
The above error can occur when moving projects created on machines with 3.5 SP1 over to a machine without it. I googled, and found tales of people needing to re-create their projects from scratch and basically needing to do a whole load of work to get their code up and running. However, in my case (and hopefully in yours too) there was a much quicker and fairly obvious fix – simply changing the ToolkitScriptManager from the toolkit to a straight ScriptManager.
Ok. It doesn’t work. I get that. IE8’s addition of X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff is very welcomed, and seems to actually work. I get that too. But I need a hack to make it work for IE7, or any alternative way to force IE7 to download a file rather than open it directly over http – and right now I don’t care how nasty it is. This is for an intranet style scenario, where I have complete control over the headers which get sent down to the clients – which are IE7. Hit me with your hacks people. Tags:...
ASP.NET MVC 2 Preview 2 is now available for download. With all the talking about ASP.NET MVC it’s easy to forget that it’s still only in a preview cycle. What’s my point? Well, nothing really, other than wanting those people who write “GIVE UP AND USE ASP.NET MVC” as a reply to every forum post which mentions a problem with ASP.NET webforms to stop and think about what they’re writing before they click post. We can all dream. Tags: Microsoft,MVC
Ajax Control Toolkit: new controls, bug fixes – I can’t think of an immediate use for the Seadragon control, but I’m sure on a long enough timeline one will make itself apparent. I’m quite interested to give the AsyncFileUpload control a run through – if they’ve done a good job with this then there’s a lot more reason to use the AjaxControlToolkit. On an AjaxControlToolkit related side note, be thankful you're not this guy. Tags: AJAX, Microsoft
About me
My name is Ross Hawkins and I'm a developer, consultant, business owner and writer based in Auckland,
New Zealand (pictured below!). My current work revolves around ASP.NET, C#, jQuery, Ajax,
SQL Server, and a mix of other Microsoft development technologies.
I also have about 15 years of experience with IBM Lotus Notes/Domino and associated technologies. While Notes/Domino
is no longer my primary focus I still like to dabble and keep my skills up to date.
I own and run 2 businesses - Hawkins Consulting Services,
and Ignition Development.
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Popular Content
Troubleshooting WebResource.axd
The .NET 2.0 framework changed the way clientside JavaScript is
delivered to the browser. Previously, ASP.NET 1.1 used the
aspnet_client directory whereas now 2.0 uses WebResource.axd.
Published on October 8, 2006
Microsoft AJAX Extensions: Sys.Debug is null or not an object
One of the breaking changes which was made with
the 1.0 release of the Microsoft Ajax Extensions was the renaming
of the 'Debug' class to 'Sys.Debug' for reasons of compatiability
with other frameworks. Breaking changes like this can often be a source of frustration..
Published on May 22, 2007
Simple ASP.NET Character Counter
A textbox character counter is a pretty simple piece of functionality, and there's a lot of different ways to apply one to your application. The following method is nice and simple, and can be done using only clientside JavaScript if required, or combined with server side code in order to create a more dynamic effect
Published on December 4, 2006
Adding Tooltips to Gridview Headers
As the title says, this is a very simple but dynamic way of achieving tooltip text on a header column. It's not overly flash, but it's lightweight and quick to implement.
Published on April 15, 2007
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