There is a known issue/feature with MSBuild which also affects TFS build, since it uses MSBuild to compile, where secondary assembly references are not identified and added to csc and vbc tasks. The exact details are explained here, on MSDN and Stackoverflow with various workarounds and on Microsoft Connect. Visual Studio handles the issues automatically by referencing any secondary references that are required, so you don’t see the problem in Visual Studio but may get compile [...] Read more »
No joy – WP7 emulator in Parallels 7
For a couple of years I have been running my development environments completely virtualized – there are many benefits in being able to quickly change operating systems and toolsets for working in different environments. With advancements in virtualization technology my original gripes with running things virtualized have more or less entirely disappeared. Unfortunately my virtualization environment of choice Parallels 7 on OSX has failed me terribly, I blame Microsoft too for forcing me to use [...] Read more »
Speaking at SweNug
Tonight I will be speaking at SweNug, this is an introduction to Scrum and XP and will be based on the courses I have held for Addskills on doing Scrum in practice. I am looking forward to hearing what some of the members of SweNug think about Scrum, XP and agile in general; is it generally accepted everywhere or is it just the Agilist bubble I live in where everyone talks about Scrum, XP and [...] Read more »
Generic repository interface for entity framework 4
Huy Nguyen has a great write up on implementing a generic repository interface that supports Entity Framework 4. His code is written in C# and today I had to rewrite it in VB.Net. The VB.Net version looks like this Public Interface IRepository Inherits IDisposable Function GetQuery(Of TEntity As Class)As IQueryable(Of TEntity) Function GetAll(Of TEntity As Class)() As IEnumerable(Of TEntity) Function Find(Of TEntity As Class)(predicate As Expression(Of Func(Of TEntity, Boolean))) As IEnumerable(Of TEntity) Function [Single](Of TEntity [...] Read more »
ASP.NET DropDownList always fires SelectedIndexChanged
After a couple of days trying to get to grips with a misbehaving custom compositecontrol I finally located the issue to a feature/bug in the framework implementation of DropDownList and ListControls in general. There is an issue logged on Microsoft Connect but it has been closed as “by-design”. I don’t think that this behavior really is by-design but there are two contradicting features interacting with each other leaving Microsoft with no other choice but to [...] Read more »
Break-down of javascript mobile frameworks for phonegap development
I am experimenting with PhoneGap for a couple of projects that I am currently working on. PhoneGap is a native mobile app packager which basically converts a html5/js based site into an app that will run on mobile phones and can be distributed via app store/market. Since PhoneGap merely leverages existing support for html5 and javscript in the mobile phone you have pretty much the same issues as when developing a regular mobile enabled web [...] Read more »
Don’t Base64 encode things that users should enter
Base64 encoding is great for converting binary data into a string representation which can be transported over text based protocols like soap or json. Unfortunately Base64 uses a character set which is difficult for humans to interpret so for any data that needs to be human interpretable, like binary representations added to urls, base64 can be a real problem. Douglas Crockford solved this issue years ago with his special Base32 encoding scheme which uses a [...] Read more »
Passed MCPD ASP.NET exam
I have finally passed the MCPD for ASP.NET 3.5 Web developer exam. When I took my first exam back in 2006 my goal was to try and eventually become MCPD – enterprise developer. But I just never took the time to study and take exams, I moved away from working in 2.0 to start with 3.5 and the 2.0 exams became less and less attractive so I realigned my sights on the 3.5 enterprise certification. [...] Read more »
Passed 70-562 MCTS ASP.NET 3.5
Last week while i was at the MCT Summit in Stockholm attending Train the Trainer I also sat down to do exam 70-562 and passed! As usual I used transcender to study and obviously I have worked with ASP.Net technology since it was released, which kinda helps! Read more »
Reflections on three days at Tech Ed
This is my third day at Tech Ed 2008 in Barcelona, the breadth of the technologies and languages that we as .Net developers now need to at least understand and preferably master to some degree is enormous. I believe that developers will need to specialize more explicitly on certain technology areas to remain productive in the future. It has been impossible to master all of Microsoft’s products for many years now but up until a [...] Read more »