Feed Yourself:
Subscribe by Email:
|
|
|
On this page....
 Email Us
Archives
| March, 2007 (1) |
| January, 2007 (3) |
| December, 2006 (9) |
| November, 2006 (9) |
| October, 2006 (1) |
| September, 2006 (3) |
| August, 2006 (1) |
| July, 2006 (1) |
| June, 2006 (4) |
| May, 2006 (5) |
| April, 2006 (6) |
| March, 2006 (5) |
| February, 2006 (5) |
| January, 2006 (5) |
| December, 2005 (2) |
Navigation
Categories
Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this site are those of the individual authors and
do not necessarily represent the official view of Ardent Development nor its employees, subsidiaries, partners,
or customers.
© Copyright 2009, Ardent Development
Powered by: newtelligence dasBlog 1.8.5223.1
|
|
|
|
 Tuesday, March 20, 2007 Thursday, January 11, 2007
|
|
|
Have you been spending some extra time when supplying code samples for your posts? Here's a fantastic tool that formats your code in HTML and the output looks great. http://www.manoli.net/csharpformat/
Posted by Sebastien Aube 1/11/2007 5:09:50 PM (Atlantic Standard Time, UTC-04:00)
|
|
Saturday, January 06, 2007
|
|
|
Update: Samsung released a Vista driver for the ML-4500 printer on January 29, 2007
I have been running Vista on my tablet PC for a while but just this week I put Vista on my main desktop machine at work. I have to say that the Aero Glass experience is really nice on a decent machine (and not even something to write home about - just dual core 2.8GHz, 2GB RAM, Intel 945G Express chipset with integrated graphics). Seriously, Aero Glass really rocks. It raises the bar for OS X.
But I'm at my wit's end with all the driver troubles. Off the top of my head, here's what I've dealt with so far: 1. Display resolution option was maxing out at 1920 x 1080 even though my monitor is 1920 x 1200. And the little Intel applet was showing 1920 x 1200 as a supported monitor resolution. Nothing I tried worked and then in the middle of doing something else, the screen flickered and voila! it switched to the proper resolution autmoatically. (My monitor is a BenQ FP231W and I had to download a driver to get Vista to recognize it - never had that problem with XP.) 2. I can't install my Samsung ML-4500 printer because it is an NT 4.0 style kernel mode driver (if I understood the error message correctly). You can enable kernel mode printer drivers in the local computer policy but that didn't fix the problem (even after a reboot). 3. I can't install my TASCAM US-122 USB audio interface device. I've been using it to record the Devcasting podcast. I called TASCAM operational support and they told me Vista is still in beta so they don't have a driver yet! I tried to explain that it was released (i.e., business vs. general consumer release) but they said I was wrong. Uh, yeah, thanks fer nuthin', TASCAM. Grrr. I'm going to need to dual boot XP I guess to record Monday's show. 4. My motherboard is from ASUS and the ASUS web site has no Vista drivers available so I had to go find them from Intel, Realtek, etc. I don't know why I do this to myself. I should just buy new machines with Vista pre-installed. Of course my TASCAM and Samsung printer still wouldn't work. Ah the joys of early adoption.
Posted by Derek Hatchard 1/6/2007 1:55:23 PM (Atlantic Standard Time, UTC-04:00)
|
|
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
|
|
|
 Episode #5 of the developer podcast Devcasting is up. Derek Hatchard and Mike Mullen talk to Dan Martell about the notion of "less is more" in software development.
This show ran long so it is split into two parts: Part 1 Part 2
Posted by Derek Hatchard 1/3/2007 10:33:16 PM (Atlantic Standard Time, UTC-04:00)
|
|
Thursday, December 28, 2006 Wednesday, December 20, 2006
|
|
|
You might encounter a situation where you need to Post to a web page and read it's response.
Here's a function that uses System.Net.HttpWebRequest and System.Net.HttpWebResponse to do just that.
''Usage
' Dim xmlDoc As Xml.XmlDocument
' xmlDoc.Load(MakeHttpRequest("request=listPersons&filter=last(a*)","/requestManager.php","application/x-www-form-urlencoded"))
Protected Function MakeHttpRequest(ByVal data As String, ByVal url As String, ByVal contentType As String) As System.IO.Stream
Dim retVal As System.IO.Stream
Dim httpRequest As System.Net.HttpWebRequest
Dim httpResponse As System.Net.HttpWebResponse
Dim encoding As New System.Text.UTF8Encoding
Dim uri As New System.Uri(url)
Dim postBytes As Byte()
postBytes = encoding.GetBytes(data)
httpRequest = CType(System.Net.HttpWebRequest.Create(uri), System.Net.HttpWebRequest)
httpRequest.ContentLength = postBytes.Length
httpRequest.Method = "POST"
httpRequest.ContentType = contentType
Dim postStream As System.IO.Stream = httpRequest.GetRequestStream()
postStream.Write(postBytes, 0, postBytes.Length)
postStream.Close()
httpResponse = CType(httpRequest.GetResponse(), System.Net.HttpWebResponse)
retVal = httpResponse.GetResponseStream()
Return retVal
End Function
Variation: If the webpage you are calling expects xml you could easily replace and pass a valid xml string as data
replace
httpRequest.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
with
httpRequest.ContentType = "text/xml"
You could even go further and return an xml document if the expected datatype is "text/xml".
Posted by Sebastien Aube 12/20/2006 1:44:56 PM (Atlantic Standard Time, UTC-04:00)
|
|
Monday, December 18, 2006
|
|
|
I am planning two developer training events in Moncton, New Brunswick in early 2007 (tentatively the weeks of January 22 and 29). I'll be doing one week and it will be a .NET focus - probably Professional ASP.NET Development but if there's demand for something else I can switch it. The other week will be Mike Mullen and the focus will probably be either Professional PHP Development or Building Ajax Web Apps with Prototype and Dojo. Again, Mike is flexible based on demand. Details are not finalized so there's time to influence the schedule or topics if you're interested. We hope to offer these workshops from time to time. To keep costs in check we are trying to avoid advertising so please help us spread the word by telling your colleagues in Atlantic Canada. Classes will be a minimum of 3 people and a maximum of 5 people. The cost is $1200 for the week.
Posted by Derek Hatchard 12/18/2006 11:19:10 PM (Atlantic Standard Time, UTC-04:00)
|
|
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
|
|
|
You heard it here first: the next Microsoft Professional Developers Conference will be October 2 - 5, 2007 in Los Angeles, California. The Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) is the definitive developer event focused on the future of the Microsoft platform. Registration is NOT open at this point. The dates have simply been announced. http://msdn.microsoft.com/events/pdc/ It was PDC 03 that tipped me off to the coming web-desktop convergence. It was PDC 05 where I saw what a real Avalon (humph, WPF) designer could look like with timelines, transitions, reflection, etc. Start saving your pennies or start dropping hints to your boss!
Posted by Derek Hatchard 12/13/2006 9:35:40 AM (Atlantic Standard Time, UTC-04:00)
|
|
Monday, December 11, 2006 Friday, December 08, 2006
|
|
|
Finally got podcast episode #3 and show notes posted at http://devcasting.com/index.php/2006/12/06/devcasting-3-give-me-20-cents/. The show has a name now: Devcasting. And we're in iTunes. Just search the iTunes store for devcasting or browse through the Technology category of the iTunes podcast directory. We're looking for your favourite Firefox extensions for an upcoming show. Email them to me at derek@ardentdev.com.
Posted by Derek Hatchard 12/8/2006 12:12:19 AM (Atlantic Standard Time, UTC-04:00)
|
|
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
|
|
The Panel is the place to collect showcases of the new user experiences [in Vista and WPF] and provide insights on how they were implemented. http://www.microsoft.com/emea/msdn/thepanel/ Definitely check out UniveRSS, a 3D Vista RSS reader. I can't really see myself using this but it's neat to see. (And it did run like crap on my tablet because the NVIDIA WDDM drivers aren't final and things crash when I try the pre-release. Of course the XP driver causes problems too - could be a hardware issue I suppose. Or just crappy drivers. Who knows.) UniveRSS: http://www.microsoft.com/emea/msdn/thepanel/featured/universs.aspx (CBC Radio 3 is in the screenshot - woohoo).
Posted by Derek Hatchard 12/6/2006 11:09:39 PM (Atlantic Standard Time, UTC-04:00)
|
|
|
|