Columns


Beyond the Betta Fish

In a recent cover story, VSM Editor in Chief Michael Desmond asked whether developers would flock to Windows 7.

C#: Interface-Based Programming

Interfaces can make your applications easier to test and maintain.

Mastering Silverlight

Silverlight offers impressive talents and more than a few frustrations. From customizing your application UI to battling obscure bugs and error messages, this column helps with the transition to Silverlight tools.

Modular Process Improvement

After nearly eight years of working as a C++ developer at Rik V.'s insurance company, a certain coworker was finally laid off.

2009 Annual Review: A Year in Microsoft Development

I began writing Redmond Review one year ago, with a column covering the 2008 Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC2008).

Microsoft Sunsets .NET for Oracle: What's Next?

Microsoft has decided to drop development of OracleClient from its ADO.NET roadmap; while the provider remains available, use of it should be avoided in new applications accessing Oracle data sources.

Listening to ThunderMain

Windows provides an ongoing stream of general system notifications that you can fairly easily hook into.

Simplify Calling a WCF Service from Silverlight

Large-scale Silverlight applications can end up making hundreds of calls from the application to WCF service operations. Here's how to consolidate those calls into a single method.

Building Better Client Internet Apps

Peter looks at the options for client-side development and the practicalities of leveraging ASP.NET.

Suppressing the Back Button: Just Say No

Peter deals with all the people who want to disable the Back button. First, he tells them to stop asking but (finally) breaks down and suggests a solution.

Maintaining Data Integrity from the DataView

DataViews fire a range of events that you can use to ensure that data is correct before it goes to the database -- and they're especially useful when you're using the GridView or DetailsView.

Integrating jQuery, Web Services, AJAX and ASP.NET

The jQuery library makes it easier to create applications that execute in the browser. By leveraging existing ASP.NET technologies and merging them with jQuery, you can create faster, more responsive applications.

Bridging the Document-Data Divide

The Microsoft SharePoint Conference (SPC) 2009 event defied the tough economic times. With more than 7,400 attendees, SPC eclipsed the size of this year's TechEd and MIX confabs combined.

A More Unique Identifier

With more than 340 billion trillion quadrillion (and that's no typo) possible values, the probability of having two identical GUIDs is basically non-existent.

Types and Tuples in .NET 4

Visual Basic 10 introduces new generic tuple classes that can help you get more done with less -- if you're careful about it.

No Such Thing as a Windowless VB App

All Classic VB apps have at least one top-level window. Normally out of reach, you can put them to good use if you know how to get to them.

Dynamically Setting Parameters

At design time, you can tie parameters in the DataSource to a variety of data sources. But sometimes the source for your values can't be set at design time. Here's how to set those values at runtime.

Requiring SSL for MVC Controllers

ASP.NET MVC provides a lot of flexibility when it comes to changing how controllers, actions, routes and more work within an application. Having flexibility is good especially when you need to make a modification quickly without having to write a lot of code to get the change in place.

Dynamic Data Retrieval

You can't always make all of your data retrieval decisions at design time -- sometimes you have to wait for the user to tell you what data to get. Peter shows you how to work with a DataSource to retrieve data dynamically at runtime.

Inside Alternative Data Streams

NTFS offers an almost unknown way to obscure streams of data behind the most innocent looking files. Find out how to do this with VB6.

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