Entries for miies

[asp.net] session state management / performance [[asp.net] session state management / performance]

miies — Tue, 18 May 2004 12:14:23 GMT

I'm curious to your experiences with performance gains/losses with the different types of session state management (InProc, StateServer, SQLServer).

InProc is pretty much unusable in our projects due to building/deploying issues, so I have the choice: aspnet_state.exe or SQL Server? Probably both have their pros and cons, but which one do you think is 'best'?

Links to webpages/articles are of course very welcome, too.

Thanks,
Michel

in reply to [asp.net] session state management / performance

Longhorn to feature flashy interface [Longhorn to feature flashy interface]

miies — Thu, 06 May 2004 21:40:10 GMT

SEATTLE--The next version of Windows will sport some fancy, three-dimensional graphics, but for those with an older video card, Longhorn will look a lot like Windows 2000.

more...

(CNET.com article)

in reply to Longhorn to feature flashy interface

More movies [More movies]

miies — Sun, 02 May 2004 10:28:44 GMT

scoble(izer) just posted this in his blog, thought you would find it interesting, loving videos and all:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/atthemovies/

It's really fun, I've been watching videos for a while now. Great way to spend a sunday morning :)

Cheers

in reply to More movies

"My" ["My"]

miies — Fri, 23 Apr 2004 19:19:43 GMT

I've just read this:

Navigate the .NET Framework and Your Projects with "My"

and I didn't like it. Although I love easy-to-use software, I think this is just a worthless effort. The way to help developers understand the framework is to improve documentation (as discussed here), not to create yet another vast library of wrapper classes and functions. Why?

- Now, you have to learn two major namespaces (As if the framework itself isn't enough). As I understand it, "My" is used to handle some 'frequently used code', and is certainly not going to provide wrappers for the entire framework.

- Even if it did, I would want to learn the framework structure itself, not just a language extension..

- Since, as I understand it, "My" is a layer on top of the framework, won't it slow down applications even more?

Your thoughts?

in reply to "My"

Show us your workspace [Show us your workspace]

miies — Thu, 22 Apr 2004 19:02:23 GMT

I'm curious to where you all spend your days writing cool applications :) Starting off, here's mine. I deliberately did not directly embed an image, if everyone did that the thread'll take ages to load.

http://browse.secondtry.nl/trilab/miies.jpg

(Never mind the cable mess and stuff, we're moving soon anyway)

in reply to Show us your workspace

C9 suggestion [C9 suggestion]

miies — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 20:16:37 GMT

Maybe it would be a good idea to add an extended 'What is this' section to this site (homepage?) for completely new visitors who don't directly understand it. Lots of sites have such a 'New visitor? Click here!' message. It could contain, for example:

- The introduction text that's on the homepage's left bar right now
- Some links to important forum topics (http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=74 and http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=110 are must-reads)
- What's New list
- Link to the FAQ
etc.

On a sidenote, I just saw that the site is already 3 weeks old today. Time flies when you're having fun :)

Cheers

in reply to C9 suggestion

Automatic Formatting [Automatic Formatting]

miies — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 12:02:34 GMT

VisualStudio 2003 sometimes (randomly) performs automatic formatting on html pages when switching between Design view and code view. Unchecking the relevant option checkboxes has no effect. I've Googled, and saw other people have the same problem.

I assume this is a known bug in VS.. Will it be fixed in Whidbey? It drives me pretty mad :(

If anyone has registry hacks to solve this, they are quite welcome.

in reply to Automatic Formatting

[ASP.NET] the page template paradox - separating design and content [[ASP.NET] the page template paradox - separating design and content]

miies — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 19:34:45 GMT

http://www.asp.net/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?tabindex=1&PostID=35732

As you see, on asp.net there's a very long-running discussion going on on an important topic for many web developers: how to create page templates that contain the layout of a webpage and are re-usable for each of your pages. A template must conform to at least the following rules:

1) The template should contain the entire HTML structure, from <html> to </html>, except for the content section of course.
2) Use of separate header and footer templates are reluctantly allowed, but if it's in any way possible the template must consist of one file.
3) The template must be usable by multiple pages (doh).
4) The template file, as well as the page that uses the template, must remain in a format that VisualStudio recognizes, so you can use Design Mode, IntelliSense, etc.
5) The template should contain customizable properties of its own, for example: a PageTitle property that is parsed within the <title> and </title> tags.

There are many ways to do this, but none of them is perfect: from user controls to inheritance, they all cause problems one way or another.

The question.

To the Channel 9 guys: how have you templated these C9 pages? What technique do you use? (Do you use templates? :)

To all other folks: your thoughts on this problem? What pros and cons do you see in the various methods?

(Reading the entire asp.net thread, or at least skimming it, is recommended)

Cheers!

in reply to [ASP.NET] the page template paradox - separating design and content

What's wrong with ASP.NET? [What's wrong with ASP.NET?]

miies — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 08:55:45 GMT

Well not much actually ;)

There's imho one major flaw I'm currently experiencing and that is the lack of advanced CSS support. I'll explain with an example.

In classic ASP, when I want to build a list I do this:

<table class="list">
<tr class="list">
   <th class="list"></th>
</tr>
<tr class="list">
   <td class="list"></td>
</tr>
</table>

or

<div id="list">
<table>
<tr>
   <th></th>
</tr>
<tr>
   <td></td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>

I am a strong supporter of using CSS for storing as much design as possible. My HTML pages contain the 'skeleton' of the list while my CSS file contains the complete design. This works like a charm - by modifying the CSS, every list on every page in my site uses the new design. I hate using deprecated HTML attributes like border, cellspacing, etc. because almost every one of them is covered by CSS. The last couple of years, web development has slowly begun to evolve like this.

Now I'm using .NET so of course I want to use the very nifty DataGrid control. The problem is, these controls send you right back into the HTML stone age by applying the same old HTML attributes I mentioned above. Oh of course, I can disable most of them and apply CssClass properties, but CssClass is treated as an additional property, not as the container for all visual attributes. The result is an HTML fragment with HTML attributes (cellpadding="0") AND a CSS class (class="list") AND CSS style attributes (style="blah"). Looks like crap.

Imho, when using a web control you should be given the choice:

1) Use HTML attributes
2) Use class=""
3) Use class="" and/or style=""

But never a combination of all. You could (very) slowly phase out option #1 to please webdesigners who are still using classic HTML.

For now, I'l stick to disabling as much datagrid properties as possible (why do the CellSpacing and CellPadding properties accept a -1 value and BorderWith does not?).

Sorry for the lengthy post. I hope this explains my troubles a little, that CSS will play a more important role in future releases/updates, and that I haven't bored you all with this rant. :)

Cheers.

in reply to What's wrong with ASP.NET?