eWorld.UI - Matt Hawley

Ramblings of Matt

FogBugz getting an API & VS2005 Plugin!

December 22, 2006 16:29 by matthaw

Yes, the title says it all. FogBugz is getting an exposed API (oddly enough feels like WebServices but isn't even close - rar!) in the next version. The good news is there's a beta version of this API already out that enables a new Visual Studio 2005 Plugin to see your cases by your various filters. I've been wanting something like this for home for quite awhile, so I'm quite happy to see this finally exists. I would have posted sooner about this, but it was a rocky start for the API as it's already on (my version #, not there's) 1.2 due to some bugs not allowing me or many others to work with it. So definately check this out if you're using FogBugz and Visual Studio 2005 & hate to have a separate IE window open to manage your bugs.



Released: Excentrics World Server Controls v2.0.1

August 2, 2006 09:06 by matthaw

Unfortunately I had some decently nasty bugs crop up that couldn’t wait for v2.1 of my control set to come out. Because of that, I had to release v2.0.1 that contains the following fixes:

  • Fixed issue where AppendDataBoundItems had no effect when binding against the Multi-Text controls.
  • Fixed issue where posting back a page with the ListTransfer controls are present but not visible throws a NULL reference exception.
  • Fixed issue where determining the scrollLeft and scrollTop in IE was causing improper behavior when the page scrolled. This breaks the scrolling div fix for IE.
  • Fixed issue where disabling the CalendarPopup and TimePicker controls upon a postback with the Image displayed, didn't actually disable the image.
  • Fixed issue where it's possible to receive a NULL reference exception in the CalendarPopup or TimePicker when calling the Clear or Reset methods.

While I don’t normally do quick releases like this, I’d rather have a more solid product in the end. Unfortunately these items were not identified sooner and had to wait until the public took a crack at the RTM bits, but I digress. Official build number for this is 2.0.1.2222.

The updated version can be downloaded by visiting http://www.eworldui.net/Download.aspx



Released to Public: Excentrics World Server Controls v2.0, RTM!

July 30, 2006 22:51 by matthaw

The day has finally come! After many hours migrating (and well, re-writing) my website, I’m happy to announce the official RTM release of Excentrics World Server Controls v2.0! There are still a few known issues logged on my forums that didn’t make the cut, however this official release marks an important part since 2004.

With this release comes a few changes…

  • Some controls have been dropped due to ASP.NET 2.0 native support.
  • There are some breaking changes, which are all noted within the readme file.
  • The 1.9 version is still freely available for ASP.NET 1.0 and 1.1.
  • Source code licensing price has increased to $100. However, this price increase does not affect current source code license owners.

At this time, my forums are currently down due to the upgrade and I’m working with my hosting company to resolve the issue. However, the site has been fully ported & working great under ASP.NET 2.0!

Enjoy the new release community! Download it Now!

Update 1: Forums are up, and now located at http://forums.eworldui.net however I’m now having issues with my main site. Bear with me!

Update 2: Site is finally back up, but currently sending emails are disabled – so don’t try and contact me as I may not respond… stupid ThreadPool…

Update 3: Site should have email capability now, while slow (I hope just slow). Check out Smart Thread Pool if you need a thread pool that will work in hosted environments.



Released to Public: Excentrics World Server Controls v2.0, RC2

May 23, 2006 08:14 by matthaw

I’m happy to announce the public release of Excentrics World Server Controls v2.0, RC2! While there haven’t been many changes since the RC1 release, there was a notable change that I believe a lot of users would benefit from if the control set was released. If you’re new to the next version or Release Candidates, please read my RC1 release post.

If you’re interested in test-driving, I’m waiting for you! Help continue flushing out bugs in Server Controls v2.0 prior to it going RTM.

Enjoy this new Release Candidate community!



Most Favorite VS2005 Item

December 22, 2005 00:52 by matthaw

So as I’ve been playing around with VS2005 and the 2.0 framework, my mostest favorite new addition in the C# IDE is being able to write a type and have it intelligently tell me “HEY! I don’t know where that type is!” and give me the option to either fully qualify it or adding in a “using” statement. Whenever you see the red line underneath a type when your cursor is in the word, simply press Shift+Alt+F10, then Enter. And voila! you know have a new using statement. The only downside, is that this only works when the assembly that type is contained in is referenced in your project. Ohh - and if you like using the mouse more than the keyboard, just hover your cursor over the red line and it’ll allow you to do the same thing.

Update: If you’re looking for the keyboard shortcut for this, its called “View.ShowSmartTag”. I just added Shift+Alt+Space which is a lot easier on the hands as I don’t have to hunt for F10.



Categories: Whidbey
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Wizard Control - Annoyance Factor 1.2.3

December 20, 2005 23:03 by matthaw

So I’m playing around with the new ASP.NET Wizard control. Quite an impressive control to say the least, however within 1 hour I realized there were 3 annoyances that I think were implemented incorrectly.

1 – The wizard control has 2 events, NextButtonClick and FinishButtonClick, that are raised when the user’s clicking through the wizard. Both use the same event handler, and thus the same event args. The WizardNavigationEventArgs has a Cancel property that acts just like the CancelEventArgs. However – cancelling within the FinishButtonClick event when FinishDestinationPageUrl is set, doesn’t work – you still get redirected.

Workaround? Sure – but its not obvious and requires some comments inline so developers know whats going on.

private void FinishStep(object sender, WizardNavigationEventArgs e)
{
   if (!Page.IsValid)
   {
       this.wizardControl.FinishDestinationPageUrl = string.Empty;
       return;
   }
   this.wizardControl.FinishDestinationPageUrl = “AfterPage.aspx”;

}

The reason setting e.Cancel = true doesn’t work and clearing the destination page url does, is that the OnFinishButtonClick doesn’t care if you’ve cancelled or not, but redirects the user to the destination url as long as it exists. Now – if you don’t want to redirect to a page, but still show a completion message, you can create another wizard step and set it’s StypeType equal to “Complete”. When doing this, cancelling within the finish event works as expected.

2 – There are some instances that during a wizard, you have multiple paths based on the data entered in the current step. Being able to dynamically choose your next step works great in the Wizard control because it remembers what step you came from (a bonus feature that I wasn’t expecting!). However, setting the next active step isn’t one that “falls into the pit of success” that I’ve read / heard about a lot within the last week.

One would think the WizardNavigationEventArgs would allow you to set the next page index – but you cant… NextPageIndex is read-only. But the kicker, is they have an internal method (SetNextStepIndex) that is used by the Wizard control. While it would make most sense to allow the next page index to be set via the EventArgs since they have code in the OnBubbleEvent method to set ActiveStepIndex for you, but you have to resort to setting the ActiveStepIndex property on the wizard control itself.

3 – Okay, so this one falls into “why do we have multiple properties for the same (?) thing!” category. The Wizard control contains properties like StartNextButton[Text/Style/Type/ImageUrl] as well as StepNextButton[Text/Style/Type/ImageUrl]. When I was first configuring the wizard control, I didn’t realize that both of these existed and only set StepNextButton*. Much to my amazement, my 2 step wizard didn’t have what I just set it up to be. Needless to say I had to go digging through docs and intelli-sense to realize that, “Yes Virgina, there is a real santa claus.” A bit confusing and annoying if you ask me because if you want all your “Next” buttons to look the same you have to set 2n properties to do so!

Okay – enjoy your coding, I just had to get these few annoyances out!



Categories: Whidbey
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ASP.NET Membership - Configuration Error in Documentation

December 20, 2005 01:25 by matthaw

So I’m currently playing around with ASP.NET’s new Membership / Role providers with a dummy application, and I came across an error in the documentation concerning the MinRequiredNonAlphanumericCharacters property.

The documentation clearly states that for configuration via web.config should use “minAlphanumericCharacters” attribute which is to be set on the membership element. The example right below explains that “minRequiredNonAlphanumericCharacters” should be used, however the example configuration shows it using the invalid item.

It should be noted that “minRequiredNonAlphanumericCharacters” is the correct attribute name that should be used, as well as it is not set on the membership element, but on the provider add element itself.

I’ve also been told that the documentation has been updated internally and will eventually get published to the web in the future…so until then, remember this post.



Categories: Whidbey
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Disk Output Caching for ASP.NET 2.0

December 14, 2005 17:35 by matthaw
The feature that was cut from ASP.NET 2.0 now makes its debut as an HttpModule. Dmitry states that this isn’t the same code base that they were working from, but is another implementation. Very cool for those intense caching applications!

Categories: .NET | Whidbey
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Breaking Changes from 1.1 to 2.0

November 14, 2005 18:47 by matthaw

So I may be a little late to the game on this, however, its the first time I’ve seen the list which makes me think there are many others that haven’t seen the list of breaking changes from .NET 1.1 to 2.0. A few notables include:

  • “Conditional Grammar ambiguity” – Because of the new nullable syntax, there are certain scenarios where the compiler cannot tell the difference between a conditional operator and the nullable ? syntax. (bool A; for (A ? F() : G(); ; ))
  • “Ambiguity between comparison and generic definition” – The addition of generics has led to an ambiguity between a generic method and function parameters. (int a, b, c; F(a < b, c > (7));)
  • “Ignore ‘remove’ and ‘clear’ directives” – This change only affects web.config and application.config files that remove a section handler declared in a parent configuration file.
  • “FormsAuth should not leave tickets around for 50 years”
  • “<location> path attribute cannot end with any of '.', '/', or '\'.” – In V1.1, a user can put <location path="app/"> in the config file. The config system won't complain about the trailing forward slash, but the problem is that the config settings inside this location tag actually won't get applied in a request to that path.
  • “The title element on aspx pages with a runat server tag was instantiated as a HtmlGenericControl in v1.1, in v2.0 it has its own type HtmlTitle but this doesn't derive from HtmlGenericControl and thus the compat break.”
  • “HttpContext is a sealed class. If users created their own wrapper to expose this and returned their wrapped instance as the Context property for pages / usercontrols, their apps would fail unless they implemented the new properties on HttpContext. “


Categories: .NET | Whidbey
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VS2005 Web Deployment Project Bits

November 10, 2005 02:08 by matthaw

I just found out that the VS2005 Web Deployment Project bits are now released for public consumption. You can find more information out about it here, download the bits, read the article to get started, and provide feedback at the forums. Enjoy!

From the site:
“Visual Studio 2005 Web Deployment Projects provide additional functionality for building and deploying Web site applications that you create in ASP.NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005. This add-in includes a new tool that enables you to merge the assemblies created during ASP.NET 2.0 precompilation, and it provides a comprehensive UI within Visual Studio 2005 for managing build configurations, merging, and pre-build and post-build task using MSBuild.”



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