Author Archive
Wednesday, August 13th, 2008
Many aspects of Internet Explorer are just downright annoying. Therefore, it’s always nice when I find a way to customize one of the parts that I don’t like. Anyone like me who loathes the built-in Windows Notepad and has replaced it with an alternate text editor (i.e. NotePad++ or NotePad2) will want to change the default application used to ‘View Source’ in IE. To accomplish this change the value of the registry key [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\View Source Editor\Editor Name] to the application you would like to use.
Wednesday, July 16th, 2008
I have never been a huge fan of IIS. It has always struck me as being developed with ease of use as it’s driving paradigm, while ignoring the need for many power-use options. There are just so few settings and options for configuring websites under IIS. However, as an ASP.Net developer we must deal with what we have. Luckily IIS7 appears to be finally filling in some of the major gaps left by previous incarnations of the product. The general modularity and API of IIS7 allows easy development of add-ins for controlling nearly every part of the Webserver process, much like Apache.
The IIS team has been hard at work releasing new modules for IIS7. This week they just released three new modules IIS7 PowerShell Provider CTP2, URL Rewrite Module CTP1, Application Request Routing CTP1. The third module is the one that sounds the most intriguing to me. This module will finally bring the the same functionality provided by modproxy, modloadbalance and modproxyhttp in an Apache environment.
For more information on all of this goodness read this blog post
New Modules for IIS7: Application Request Routing – Proxy and Load Balancing Module
Monday, June 30th, 2008
As an ASP.Net developer I have had the glorious benefit of forgetting the C method malloc to dynamically allocate memory. One of the major benefits of the .Net framework over C and C++ is it’s built-in memory management. The framework automatically handles allocating memory when I request a new object and the Garbage Collector magically cleans up after me to remove any unused objects I might have left lying around.
While this is a huge benefit to development in a ‘Managed’ language like C# or VB.Net, occasionally, I may need more visibility into the underlying memory management. Debugging the dreaded System.OutOfMemoryException for example requires developers to try to identify where all the memory has gone. The Windows Performance monitors and the CLR Profiler provide nice tools for accomplishing this task.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008
Here’s an interesting article comparing C++ now to COBOL in the 80’s. It’s an interesting perspective on how languages drift out of widespread usage. I tend to agree with the author’s conclusions that one of the main driving forces behind a language becoming ‘outdated’ is not because it stops receiving support or new features, but instead that it drifts away from the current trends in developer experience. With older languages it becomes increasingly difficult and maybe more importantly increasingly time consuming to use current UI and programming concepts.
Thursday, May 29th, 2008
In order to try to stay up on what’s happening on the interwebs I try to read a few blog posts a day. Here are a few of my favorite. Sorry Mike and Ryan this list may be .Net-centric.
Scott Guthrie – the man responsible for Asp.Net
Rick Strahl
Scott Hanselman
Devlicio.Us
Coding Horror
Code Better
