Darrell Norton's Blog [MVP]

Sep 4: MVC: Free Yourself from Web Forms!

darrell — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:25:15 GMT

Meeting Sponsor: MaconIT

September's Presentation: MVC: Free Yourself from Web Forms!
by Joey Beninghove

Thursday, September 4, 2008, 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM
Social Time starts at 6:00!
Location: Markel Plaza
4600 Cox Road
Glen Allen, VA 23060 [map]

Please take a moment to register so we'll know how many people to expect. Thanks!

MaconIT is bringing dinner from Firehouse Subs and they will give away a 160GB portable hard drive!

Abstract
The Model View Controller (MVC) pattern has been around since 1978, so why do we all of a sudden see these new MVC frameworks springing forth? Why should we care and what advantages does it have over Web Forms? What is Microsoft doing to help the .NET community leverage the power and simplicity of the MVC pattern? During this presentation, we'll discuss the MVC pattern and why it helps us to create applications that are easier to test and maintain by adhering to sound object-oriented design principles. We'll also dive into the up and coming ASP.NET MVC framework. Interactive discussion is very much welcomed and expect to see a lot of code.

About Me
Joey Beninghove is a senior software engineer for TrackAbout, Inc. He is an experienced test-driven development (TDD) practitioner having utilized TDD and solid object-oriented principles to build quality ASP.NET web applications since .NET 1.0 using both the "Web Forms" approach as well as MVC. His blog can be found at joeydotnet.com.

For User Group Leaders: Get free stuff from Manning Pubs

darrell — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 13:35:01 GMT

From the Manning web site:

Manning Publications User Group Program

Manning Publications is proud to support User Groups worldwide with review copies of Manning titles, donations of promotional items, UG member discounts on books, newsletters, updates, and contests.

Want to register your group?

Groups wanting to register with the Manning Publications User Group Program should have a membership of at least 5 and communicate regularly through newsletters or an online website. In exchange for review copies, please publish your review on your group's website, online bookstore, newsletter or other relevant public forum. Please also send a copy of your review to . We reserve the right to use quotes from reviews in promotional materials, but most of all, we pass reviews along to the editors and authors as valuable feedback. We expect reviews to be published within 60 days of receipt of the book.

Review copies are available in ebook format and/or as print books. We cannot ship review copies outside our normal distribution territories. Foreign requests may be limited to ebooks.

Group leaders can register here!

Questions and Comments:

Contact Manning’s User Group program at .

My Love Affair with FireFox 3

darrell — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 13:03:38 GMT

I get a pretty large number of hits to my old post on Speeding Up Firefox the Right Way. So much so that Brendan changed the algorithm we use to determine the top blog posts on CodeBetter.com! At least the ad revenue from that post helps pay for our servers and the large amount of bandwidth all of our wonderful readers consume (I'm not complaining, really).

I downloaded Firefox 3 the day after it was released. Great download speeds and no dropped or busy connections. I have to say it is truly a great browser. I tweeted once that I wonder how much is left in the IE tank. The one place that IE trumps Firefox is in corporate settings. There is a ton more support for administrative configuration in enterprise settings than Firefox offers. But for home use, Firefox is my favorite.

My most recently discovered cool feature:

In the browser history for your current tab (the browser history is tab-specific) you can middle-click any link to open that link up in a new tab.

Aug 7: SharePoint for ASP.NET Developers by Joshua Carlisle

darrell — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 14:26:23 GMT

Meeting Sponsor: UDig Techforce Solutions

August's Presentation: SharePoint for ASP.NET Developers
by Joshua Carlisle

Thursday, August 7, 2008, 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM
Social Time starts at 6:00!
Location: Markel Plaza
4600 Cox Road
Glen Allen, VA 23060 [map]

Registration is not required, but please take a moment to register so we'll know how many people to expect. Thanks!

UDig is bringing dinner from Jersey Mike's subs (meat and veggie) and they will give away a $100 gas card!

Abstract

SharePoint for ASP.NET Developers - Whether it be by choice or by company directive many traditional ASP.NET developers are being asked to implement and support SharePoint based solutions for their company. Previous versions of SharePoint only utilized the .Net Framework but SharePoint 2007 has been rebuilt from ground up on the .Net Framework. Many have gone as far as referring to SharePoint as application extensions for ASP.NET. In this session we'll cover many of the common elements found in ASP.NET and we'll compare and contrast the implementations of those elements in SharePoint in order to get a better understanding of how to leverage your skills and knowledge as an asp.net developer within the SharePoint context.

About Joshua Carlisle

Joshua Carlisle is a principal consultant in Raleigh based Viewfusion Solutions LLC. He specializes in collaboration solutions based on the .Net Framework, ASP.NET, and SharePoint. He has been developing with Microsoft tools for over 13 years and with SharePoint since 2003. In his current role he works with clients to design and implement enterprise and commercial solutions based on the SharePoint platform. He is on the Triangle .Net User Group Leadership Council, active in many community projects, and can be found speaking at many user groups and code camps across the east coast. His blog can be found at http://www.sharepointbrainfreeze.com.

Disable TFS 2008 AutoConnect

darrell — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:00:51 GMT

I'm not a big fan of having Visual Studio 2008 automatically trying to connect to my TFS server. Sometimes you just want to open VS and bang out some code!

I've found the registry hack for TFS 2008 is a bit different than 2005. It's simple enough, though.

In the registry editor, navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\TeamFoundation\Servers\<TFS SERVER NAME HERE>
Open the AutoReconnect DWORD
Change the value to 0 (zero) decimal

Let me know if you've found a different or better way to do this!

Richmond .NET UG: July 10, 2008 Meeting

darrell — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 03:06:23 GMT

Kevin Hazzard
presents Accessing Web Services from Silverlight 2 Beta 2

Thursday, July 10, 2008, 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM
Social Time starts at 6:00!
Location: Markel Plaza
4600 Cox Road
Glen Allen, VA 23060 [map]

Registration is not required, but please take a moment to register so we'll know how many people to expect. Thanks!

July's Presentation: Accessing Web Services from Silverlight 2 Beta 2
by Kevin Hazzard

Abstract

Silverlight is a client-side technology. So it’s not really a part of your SOA strategy, right? You may want to think twice about that. SOAP and WSDL support are coming to the web desktop via Silverlight. And Silverlight has good client support for REST+ JSON/POX and RSS/ATOM-based web services, too. During this discussion, we’ll dive into data serialization, security and cross-domain access policy capabilities inside Silverlight 2 Beta 2. We also talk about the nuances and pitfalls of provisioning your web services for an Internet audience. This presentation will be heavy on coding, demonstration and interactive discussion.

About Kevin Hazzard

Kevin is currently the Software Architect for SnagAJob.com in Richmond, Virginia. He has served on the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and as an advisor to Virginia’s Joint Commission on Technology and Science (JCOTS). While serving as a Senior Engineer in the Intel Architecture Lab, Kevin successfully authored patents and designed ciphers, protocols and peer-to-peer networking components used by millions of users worldwide. Kevin has been writing software for 25 years and loves the art and science of his job as much today as he did in the very beginning. Kevin is a father to five, a husband to one and a servant to many others. He speaks a bit of Portuguese and enjoys doing missionary work in South America. He also enjoys motorcycling, welding, hiking, etymology, bird-watching and friendly discussions about world politics and history.

iPhone theme for BlackBerry

darrell — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 03:00:24 GMT

I found a cool iPhone-like theme for my BlackBerry 8830 called bPhone for BlackBerry. Please do NOT leave comments saying that the iPhone is better. Work pays for my BlackBerry - FREE is better than iPhone. Thank you. :)

.NET P2P web search

darrell — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:16:35 GMT

Faroo is P2P web search built with .NET. They only require .NET 2.0 so it wasn't built using WCF PeerChannel. They have add-ins for IE and Firefox.

Very interesting. I wonder if peer-to-peer searching will work.

Check out WeeWar.com

darrell — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 15:57:52 GMT

A few people have found out about WeeWar.com from my blog. I can tell since I see how many people have joined from my referral link.**

Weewar is an addictive turn-based strategy game. The cool part - the entire game is an AJAX app that you can play from any standard browser. Units include ground, air, and naval types and games include from 2 to 6 people. There are bonuses and penalties for terrain, artillery, multiple attacks and direction of attacks, unit types versus other unit types (mechanized units do well against infantry, etc.), and more. Turns can last from 5 minutes to 3 days, so you can fit it into your busy schedule.

And if you have a Pro account ($24 per year) you can create new maps. And the map editor is completely AJAX as well. You have to see it to believe it.

To learn more, take the tour. Or register for your FREE account using my referral link.

** Weewar does not pay referral fees, however every 5 people I refer extends my Pro account by 2 weeks. That works out to the equivalent of 18.5 US cents per referral at no cost to you.

Old Executives Never Get Fired

darrell — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 12:12:04 GMT

Mark Griffin, chief investment officer will leave the company to “pursue other career interests.” Dan Sheehan, senior VP of portfolio management, will replace him on an interim basis.

Like Douglas MacArthur's quote about old soldiers, corporate executives never get fired, they just "pursue other career interests."

Is there going to be a surcharge on everything?

darrell — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:07:30 GMT

From Holly Springs, GA:

The surging price of gasoline has come to this: a "fuel surcharge" on your next speeding ticket.

Drivers caught speeding in this north Atlanta suburb soon will have to pay an extra $12 — to cover $4-a-gallon gas costs for the police officers who stop them.

According to the article, the increase in gas had eaten up 60% of the gas budget already. This is just another example of poor management blaming their inability to manage on "unforeseen" circumstances. Like nobody could tell that gas prices were continuing to rise last year.

Of course, surcharges and fees can backfire. Consider the case of hotel phone surcharges in the current age of the cell phone:

To compensate for the loss of revenue caused by widespread cell phone use, some hotels are adding a "phone use fee" to guest room bills. That fee is applied automatically whenever a room phone is activated -- even if it is never used or used only to call the front desk.

And the lengths to which customers (this would include me) go to avoid using the phone:

Clever guests can often find a way to circumvent such charges. Bringing a laptop to a lounge or lobby, or connecting to a wireless router from a nearby source (such as a neighboring hotel).... Although cell phone reception is often spotty in high-rise hotels, it is relatively simple to find a nearby location -- such as a pool deck or open-air patio -- with better service.

I wonder how long until a lawyer gets his client off by challenging the surcharge.

vOptimizer reduces VMs to smallest size

darrell — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 16:53:32 GMT

Just found this cool little program, vOptimizer. It compresses virtual machines to their smallest size with one click.

vOptimizer is an advanced optimization solution that quickly and easily reduces a virtual machine’s virtual hard drive to the smallest size possible while optimizing Windows guest operating systems for speed and performance. vOptimizer offers many new functions for enterprise level customers while improving the interface and ease of operation for smaller, desktop oriented users.

vOptimizer is available in Desktop Edition oriented for optimization of local VMs, and an enterprise ready Network Edition for optimization of VMs located anywhere on the network.

The World Isn't Flat

darrell — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 19:33:58 GMT

A recent consumer research report by BBMG notes:

"While price (58% very important) and quality (66% very important) are paramount, convenience (34% very important) has been edged out by more socially relevant attributes: where a product is made (44% very important), how energy efficient it is (41% very important) and its health benefits (36% very important) are all integral to consumers’ purchasing decisions."

Where a product is made is now third on the list. Although this was written with a green perspective in mind, this is almost a nod back toward Nationalism, which was supposed to be over and done with according to The World is Flat.

Richmond .NET User Group Meeting June 5, 2008

darrell — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 20:05:08 GMT

Justin Etheridge presents Functional Programming Features in C# 3.0

Thursday 5 June 2008, 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM
Social Time starts at 6:00!
Location: Markel Plaza
4600 Cox Road
Glen Allen, VA 23060 [map]

LTL Consulting is bringing Magianno's Little Italy and will be giving away one copy of Resharper and a $75 gas card!! Thanks LTL!

About Functional Programming Features in C# 3.0

Functional programming is a completely different paradigm in programming that focuses on functions and the results of functions rather than on variables and state. C# 3.0 has introduced a few new features that borrow from this world of functional programming and we are going to take a look at them, and show you why this new way of thinking can help improve your code.

About Justin Etheridge

Justin is a local Richmond developer who has been on the front lines for over 8 years. He is currently a consultant for CarMax working with their web team. In a previous life he was a Delphi developer who is now happy to be working with C#. He also operates a blog at www.codethinked.com where he pretends to share useful information.

MVP Renewed Again!

darrell — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 20:02:00 GMT

Just a quick note that I was awarded MVP again for another year. This is my fourth year as an MVP and I'm looking forward to another wonderful year of helping the developer community!