- TrIpLeZoNe -

Changed blog

2005-04-07T12:56:00.000+08:00

Hi guys. Blogger has been giving SO MANY PROBLEMS lately, with not letting me post when I need to, I've decided to migrate to SgDotNet's blog space. All of you can get my blog at http://community.sgdotnet.org/blogs/triplez. Rss Feed and ATOM Feeds are at http://community.sgdotnet.org/blogs/triplez/rss.aspx and http://community.sgdotnet.org/blogs/triplez/atom.aspx respectively. I'll be migrating my entire blog over there this weekend. I hope you guys continue to support me and update your feed links. Thanks!!!

SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Articles

2005-04-04T15:45:00.000+08:00

Here's a link to Patrick Tisseghem's Blog on some Sharepoint Articles.

http://blog.u2u.info/DottextWeb/patrick/articles/211.aspx

A few good articles to take note is the "Building Web Parts for Sharepoint Services".

An Object-Aware Memory Architecture

2005-04-04T10:58:00.000+08:00

A paper published on February at Sun's site, by Greg Wright, Matthew L. Seidl and Mario Wolczko: An Object-aware memory architecture. Quoting from the abstract:

Despite its dominance, object-oriented computation has received scant attention from the architecture community. We propose a novel memory architecture that supports objects and garbage collection (GC). Our architecture is co-designed with a Java Virtual Machine to improve the functionality and efficiency of heap memory management. The architecture is based on an address space for objects accessed using object IDs mapped by a translator to physical addresses. To support this, the system includes object-addressed caches, a hardware GC barrier to allow in-cache GC of objects, and an exposed cache structure cooperatively managed by the JVM. These extend a conventional architecture, without compromising compatibility or performance for legacy binaries.

Advanced Personalization Services in ASP.NET 2.0

2005-04-04T09:52:00.000+08:00

Advanced Personalization Services in ASP.NET 2.0 Part1

Advanced Personalization Services in ASP.NET 2.0 Part2

Advanced Personalization Services in ASP.NET 2.0 Part3

Summery: Learn about personalization, how to implement the first aspect of personalization features in your web applications using membership object provided by ASP.NET 2.0.

A fantastic article on Personalization in ASP.NET 2.0 by Khaled Hussein.

Enjoy.

Minimizing Applications

2005-04-03T23:44:00.000+08:00

I've done this before so many times and I've always forget. It's high time I jot it down. Most of the times during startup applications, I want those applications to start up minimized, and usually these applications will minimize into the tray. So how do I do it? Very simply -

1) Right click on the shortcut
2) Click on Properties
3) Under Shortcut tab, change Run option to "Minimized"

As simple as that. I use it to load my Outlook during startup into the tray, and my Task Manager too! Well, mostly those 2 only. :)

Try it out. Task Manager is a MUST-HAVE during start up.

Finally! I can BLOG! Updates on SgDotNet!

2005-03-31T16:32:00.000+08:00

Hey guys and girls! It's been so long since I blogged. Anyway I've been busy getting Community Server up and working for SgDotNet. The link for the new forums is http://community.sgdotnet.org/forums.

I'll be switching my blog as soon as I can figure out how to migrate all my posts here to the Community Server Blogs @ SgDotNet.

Well, anyway, my new blog url is @ http://community.sgdotnet.org/blogs/triplez. There's nothing up yet until I write the code to migrate. A lot of people I know are waiting for this migration code. Well, I'll try my best to write it this weekend.

I have to get the SgDotNet Website up ASAP, because we're having a meeting next thursday. I achieved something today with the website, I've fixed the Single-Sign-On issue between cross-sites, the website and the community server. :) I rock. Yeah I do! :)

Till next time, hopefully you'll see me in my new blog space. Cyaz!

Content Management System - Is creating one viable?

2005-03-28T12:33:00.000+08:00

A friend of mine was telling about creating a commercial Content Management System is a good way to go. Then I was asking myself, why would I want to pay for a CMS which is so expensive, when I can get a CMS which costs $0, has online support, and many resources on how to set the system up.

One of them is the Mambo CMS created using PHP and MySQL which all runs on Apache. Here's a recent review on it.

Open source Mambo CMS succeeds admirably

All these are free. Another one of them is the DotNetNuke created using Visual Basic.NET and runs on IIS which isn't much of a CMS but there are modules to convert it into a CMS which can also interface with MySQL. The same goes with PHPNuke.

Just do a google search for "Content Management System Opensource" and you'll get back so many results. So now I ask you, why should I spend time creating my own, and selling it? One way to make money from CMS would be to take one of these Opensource free CMS, and provide the service of customising it for the client. It's much faster, reduces cost, and it's already easy and ready to use.

Now I want your opinion on this.

What's the rationale for creating your own CMS? Even if the rationale is that CMS is meant for big enterprise-level businesses, and most SME aren't really taking for it, as previously mentioned, there is the niche market there to push into. But why would I want to spend time creating a CMS from scratch, then customising it, then selling it?

And why should I as a businessman want to buy the CMS from Microsoft when it's so complicated, difficult to setup, and most of all, EXPENSIVE? Integration is one thing, but that's all I can see as the advantage, which I don't quite need really for CMS.

Comments please. :)

Discovered (??) CSS Hack - Loading Logos First

2005-03-28T00:13:00.000+08:00

I've always had problems putting links on css backgrounds. For example, a simple logo like this.

<div id="logo">
<a title="SgDotNet For Cool Developers" href="/">
<span class="alt">SgDotNet For Cool Developers</span>
</a>
<div>

with the CSS...

#logo a { background: transparent url(../Images/logo/sgdn.jpg) no-repeat left top; }

The logo will render the background image LAST! Now, as a main website logo, we don't want that do we? We want it to be rendered first. So here's what I changed.

#logo { background: transparent url(../Images/logo/sgdn.jpg) no-repeat left top; }

This will render the background image FIRST, but the anchor is gone. This isn't what I need.

So this is what I did... I added both CSS in. And it renders FIRST, plus the anchor is still there.

#logo { background: transparent url(../Images/logo/sgdn.jpg) no-repeat left top; }
#logo a { background: transparent url(../Images/logo/sgdn.jpg) no-repeat left top; }

And this is all I did. It worked perfectly fine. If there's such a hack already discovered out there, please forgive me for my ignorance.

Hee, feeling proud I discovered this myself.

BrainGate - Science Fiction becomes Reality

2005-03-25T16:16:00.000+08:00

Have you ever watched sci-fi movies that show interaction between computer and human just by thought alone? Or plugging into the computer through a jack like the Matrix?

It's becoming reality.

Check out the research here.

Cyberkinetics - Neurotechnology Systems, Inc.

Cool huh! Check out the demo video.

Google OS?!? And advice for Imagine Cup teams

2005-03-25T12:57:00.000+08:00

For those participating in Imagine Cup 2005, I wished you would have given me something like this.

A Google OS by 2010?

I was just talking to another group of participants in IC2005 about an idea similar to that article up there, though it's not coupled to a specific OS. Apparently this article came up soon after. LOL. Great minds think alike.

You guys want dissolving boundaries? That is your ultimate idea. Why didn't anyone from Singapore think about that? Or something similar, or even something of the same granduer. Think grand scale, think innovation, think out of this world.

What was mentioned in the article is just waiting to be implemented, to be used, to be wide-spread. The idea has been going around since ages ago. We have webservices, we have SOA, we have the .NET Framework, we have Java, we have Linux. The technology is out there already. We're waiting for it to happen.

Come on people, I was very disappointed with most of your proposals that I judged. Apparently Singaporeans have very little ambition, and are quite polluted by the fact of marketing and business. Think of out the box, please!! I had an agonizing time reading all the proposals I got.

Anyway, I wish all of the teams who got into the Semi-Finals of Imagine Cup 2005 in Singapore all the best, and please go all out to impress.

A good idea is only good when you yourself are excited over it.

Accepted into University!!

2005-03-24T16:18:00.000+08:00

Yesterday I just got news that I've been accepted to University of Waterloo. I did it!!

1 hour later, I got news that I've been accepted to University of Toronto @ Scarborough (UTSC) too!! Stress! Now I've got to choose which one.

Anyone knows which I should go? Anyone knows which is better? Stress!

And furthermore, now that I got in, I've got to consider about paying for my education. I'm wondering if there's any grants or scholarships around for my lowly results. Because all I see is scholarships asking for high A level results, with S-Papers and such. Oh well, I'll do my best searching for some $$$. Each university also has scholarships and grants over there. So I might be applying for those too.

Well, congratulations to me! WOOOOHOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

Game Developer Conference 2005 Slides

2005-03-23T16:05:00.000+08:00

The Microsoft DirectX slides are available for download here.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=8e9d5a43-a045-4ed8-99ae-09f3d69211ee&DisplayLang=en

This download includes presentations given by the Windows gaming and graphics team at the Game Developers Conference 2005. Included is the Microsoft DirectX Developer Day content and the High-Level Shader Language (HLSL) Workshop content.

The nVidia slides are available for download here.

http://developer.nvidia.com/object/gdc_2005_presentations.html

The ATI slides are available for download here.

http://www.ati.com/developer/techpapers.html#gdc05

Enjoy.

Zeta OS Deluxe Edition Screenshots

2005-03-23T15:01:00.000+08:00

A few days ago I posted some news on Zeta OS, the successor of BeOS. Here are some screenshots to follow.

http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=223&slide=1

I'll be ordering my Zeta OS v1.0 when it's officially released on the website.

Cool looking Pub

2005-03-23T14:56:00.000+08:00

Here's a cool looking pub in Poland.

http://www.living-images.org/livingimages/beer/goodbeer.html

Take a look at it. It looks damn cool. :P

lex / YACC on .NET?

2005-03-23T12:26:00.000+08:00

I was trying to find a lex or YACC or bison equivalent on .NET, and lo ho and behold I finally found it, by accident.

It's called The Compiler Generator Coco/R, or just Coco/R in short. Here's the link to it.
http://www.ssw.uni-linz.ac.at/Research/Projects/Coco/

It has ports to C#, Java, and others. It does things slightly different from lex or YACC or bison, but it still serves the same purpose. To parse text/code.

So that's that. This is actually for a project that MIGHT be doing in future. Check out the thread here.
http://forums.sgdotnet.org/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=10570

Design Patterns C#

2005-03-23T12:10:00.000+08:00

I think it's high time I posted this up.

Design Patterns C#
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321126971/002-3952322-5488036
This book covers all the 23 patterns in the Gang of Four book.

Here is an online resource for the 23 patterns in C#.
http://www.dofactory.com/Patterns/Patterns.aspx

Learn the basic design patterns and appreciate it. Every developer needs to have this book.

Routing Secured SOAP Messages Through Multiple SOAP Intermediaries Using WSE 2.0

2005-03-22T23:17:00.000+08:00

Routing Secured SOAP Messages Through Multiple SOAP Intermediaries Using WSE 2.0

(snip)
Route secure SOAP messages through multiple HTTP SOAP intermediaries using "Next-Hop" mechanisms, and use the ExtendedSecurity function to form a secured chain of SOAP nodes through which messages must pass.
(/snip)

--
Well, this is my friend's, Softwaremaker, or he'll like me to call him William Tay instead, article on MSDN!! Well, I've read it, and it's one great article. But it really needs indepth knowledge of the internals of web services. So be prepared for one hell of a ride.

Here's his blog about this article.
http://www.softwaremaker.net/blog/PermaLink,guid,efeecf7b-a2bc-45bc-8e71-3f16e586ce15.aspx

Good stuff. Thumbs up!

Atom Resources

2005-03-22T22:53:00.000+08:00

Hey ho. I'm back again with more things. Here I am getting interested in Atom.

Here are some resources to read up on.

Note that the current version of Atom is v0.3, and the Atom WSDL specs are for v0.3, and not the drafts.

Atom WSDL
---------
After reading, this link seems to have the most updated WSDL file for Atom.
Randy Charles Morin
http://www.kbcafe.com/iBLOGthere4iM/?guid=20040614174016

This is link is some fix up before the top link, and provides some c# client code.
Sam Ruby
http://intertwingly.net/stories/2003/12/18/AtomAPI.wsdl

And some thoughts from Christopher Ferris about the old Atom WSDL before the top link was revised.
http://webpages.charter.net/chrisfer/2004/02/some-thoughts-on-atomapi-wsdl.html

For those playing with WSDL 2.0, here's the updated WSDL file.
Dave Orchard's Blog
Atom 0.3 WSDL 2.0
http://www.pacificspirit.com/Authoring/wsdl/atom3.1.wsdl2

And lastly, this is the official WSDL that everyone uses. IMO, the first WSDL file posted up there is still the latest and updated one.
http://atomenabled.org/developers/api/AtomAPI.wsdl

Atom .NET API
-------------
Atomizer
Atom.NET

Atom Specifications
--------------------------
New Atom Format Draft
Atom Publishing Protocol (txt) (html)
Current Atom v0.3 Specifcations

Atom Resource/Website
---------------------
AtomEnabled
The Atom Project Wiki

From what I see, the Atom community activity seems to have stopped for a while, web-presence I mean. Whereas in the mailing list and such, they are very much active.

That's all folks. Note to self, get softwaremaker to take a look at the Atom WSDL file.

You guys might be wondering why the sudden interest in Atom, and the WSDL. You'll find out soon. Hee! Man I took 1 hour to type out this post.

Cheerios

ManWrap Library - Managed Code in Unmanaged C++!?!

2005-03-22T19:02:00.000+08:00

Use Our ManWrap Library to Get the Best of .NET in Native C++ Code

(snip)
The Managed Extensions for C++ make it possible to mix native and managed code freely, even in the same module. Wow, life is good! Compiling with /clr, however, has consequences you may not want. It forces multithreading and dispenses with some useful runtime checks. It interferes with MFC's DEBUG_NEW, and some .NET Framework classes may conflict with your namespace. And what if you have a legacy application that uses an older version of the compiler that doesn't support /clr? Isn't there some way to reach into the Framework without the Managed Extensions? Yes!

In this article, I'll show you how to wrap Framework classes in a native way so you can use them in any C++/MFC app without /clr. As my test case, I'll wrap the regex classes from the .NET Framework in a DLL and implement three MFC programs using it. You can use RegexWrap.dll to add regular expressions to your own C++/MFC applications, or use my ManWrap tools to wrap your own favorite Framework classes.
(/snip)

--
WOW! THIS IS COOL STUFF!!!!! I ALWAYS WANTED TO DO THIS; THE OTHER WAY AROUND FROM MANAGED TO UNMANAGED!! Enough of CAPS. This is cool. Alot of C++ guys will love this. Maybe I should fire up my passion for C++ again, since C++ is actually getting SOME recognition in the .NET environment, finally.

The Trustworthy Computing Security Development Lifecycle

2005-03-22T15:28:00.000+08:00

The Trustworthy Computing Security Development Lifecycle

This paper discusses the Trustworthy Computing Security Development Lifecycle (or SDL), a process that Microsoft has adopted for the development of software that needs to withstand malicious attack. The process encompasses the addition of a series of security-focused activities and deliverables to each of the phases of Microsoft's software development process. These activities and deliverables include the development of threat models during software design, the use of static analysis code-scanning tools during implementation, and the conduct of code reviews and security testing during a focused "security push". Before software subject to the SDL can be released, it must undergo a Final Security Review by a team independent from its development group. When compared to software that has not been subject to the SDL, software that has undergone the SDL has experienced a significantly reduced rate of external discovery of security vulnerabilities. This paper describes the SDL and discusses experience with its implementation across Microsoft software.

--
4 words - Read it. Use it.

Klipfolio

2005-03-22T15:21:00.000+08:00

My friend icelava had asked me what's that blueish thing with so many headlines at the top right hand corner of my laptop screen. That, is KlipFolio.

Download it here.

http://www.serence.com

You can get more klips here at KlipFarm.

Klips are just getting changes from anything and everything under the internet skyline. :) That's about it.

Cheerios.

IE7 and CSS: the Acid2 test - Microsoft has now been challenged

2005-03-22T15:08:00.000+08:00

This is just something my friend Kit Kai was interested. So I thought maybe you guys might be interested too.

IE7 and CSS: the Acid2 test - Microsoft has now been challenged

In a public effort to encourage Microsoft to add as much CSS 2 support as possible as its developers embark on IE7, Håkon Wium Lie (CTO of Opera Software and the father of CSS) and the Web Standards Project have begun the development of a test suite, known as “Acid2.”

"To ensure that IE 7 does not become another failed promise, the Web community will issue a challenge to Microsoft. We will produce a test page, code-named Acid2, that will actively use features Web designers crave, such as fixed positioning of elements.

...To the IE 7 developers, I want to say:

You are smart and talented. You know Web standards as well as anyone. You were capable of fixing IE in the past, but your managers didn't let you. You now have a new chance to get it right--don't waste it. Download Acid2 when it's released and get in touch if you think it's unfair for any reason. Resist pressure from management to ship before you are done--spend the extra time it takes.

...To the Web community I want to say: Microsoft has now been challenged. They will respond, if enough people remind them of the challenge. Please remind them. And, when IE 7 is released, make sure this is the first thing you type into it

http://webstandards.org/testsuites/acid2/"

--
What do you guys think? For me, I support the web standards committee to push IE 7 to be as compliant as it can be. I like the current CSS 2.0, and XHTML 1.1 standards. It's clean, simple, and good.

Infrared Programming Using the .NET Compact Framework

2005-03-22T11:51:00.000+08:00

This is quite old, but it seems quite a few people are asking how to do it. It's written by Lee Wei Meng from Singapore. Yay! 3 Cheers.

Here's the link.

Infrared Programming Using the .NET Compact Framework

Oh btw, if I'm not wrong there are some changes for Infrared and Bluetooth programming on .NET Framework 2.0. I'll have to check that out.

Changelog from .NET Framework 1.1 to .NET Framework 2.0

2005-03-22T10:49:00.000+08:00

Here's the changelog link for the changes from .NET Framework 1.1 to .NET Framework 2.0.

http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/changeinfo/default.aspx

Cheerios.

Microsoft Solutions Framework v3.0 and v4.0 Resources

2005-03-21T16:41:00.000+08:00

If anyone realise yet, I'm bored and tired. So I'm just searching stuff to read.

Here's a link of resources on MSF v3.0 and v4.0(still under beta).

MSF v3.0 Resources

MSF v4.0 Resources

I'm sure you guys will benefit more from the v4.0 resource. I've been trying to find stuff about v4.0 and this guy's all I've got.

If anyone has more links, please feel free to post them under comments.

Patterns And Practices LIVE

2005-03-21T16:34:00.000+08:00

Some schedules of Enterprise Library Webcast.

http://www.pnplive.com/

Check it out.

Enterprise Library can be downloaded here.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=0325B97A-9534-4349-8038-D56B38EC394C&displaylang=en

Software Factories

2005-03-21T16:16:00.000+08:00

This is a bit old, but I'll post it anyway.

Download it from here.
http://download.microsoft.com/download/c/7/b/c7bd6035-ed1c-4885-85de-43f7158c70b9/msdn_1102.zip

It's a webcast talking about Software Factories. I'm not too sure about this topic, but I'll be watching the webcast and will write more on it.

DynWsLib

2005-03-21T14:18:00.000+08:00

DynWsLib

A .NET Library to dynamically call Web services at runtime.

Have you ever thought of invoking your Web services dynamically without having to generate a client-side proxy class at design/compile time with WSCF, wsdl.exe or Visual Studio .NET? No need to know the exact Web service description and endpoint at compile/design time. Just get your WSDL, specify the service (binding) to use and the operations to call, and voila! The library can be used especially good in testing scenarios.

Just noticed this other good stuff for web services, posted by Softwaremaker. It's from the same guy as the previous post I made, WS-ContractFirst (WSCF).

Do check it out.

Oh and just to add, the web services guru in Singapore, Softwaremaker aka William Tay's blog. http://www.softwaremaker.net/blog

MSDE Deployment Toolkit

2005-03-21T06:22:00.000+08:00

Finished! Completed 1 project. Feeling good. 5 more to go. UGH!

Anyway, here's something to tingle your senses. I'm sure everyone needs to use a database somehow or another during their development, and not everyone has SQL Server 2000 installed. One way would be to use Access, but that's too slow. Another way would be to use MSDE. Here's a good article as how to create your application installation to include and setup MSDE 2000 for your application.

The MSDE Deployment Toolkit (RC) in Action

Enjoy!

Next up I'll talk about Paladin, if I can remember anything to write about.

WS-ContractFirst (WSCF)

2005-03-20T19:41:00.000+08:00

Yo yo yo. I'm 90% done with one of my long-passed dateline project, and NOW I'm going to rest. But before that, I'd like to share with you guys WebServices - Contract First.

A few weeks ago, my friend Softwaremaker gave a presentation to the SgDotNet User Group. And he did a wonderful presentation about WebServices - Contract First. Here's his blog about it.

Introducing WS-ContractFirst (WSCF) to Singapore

And he did mention about Christian Weyer's WS-ContractFirst (WSCF) tool. Please do check it out. Contract First with webservices is a good way to go, though not the best, but I assure you SWM has convinced me it's the best way to go at the moment.

There is a March 2005 Indigo CTP just released on MSDN Subscribers. Here are a few good articles on Indigo.

Microsoft "Indigo" The Unified Programming Model for Building Service-Oriented Applications

Introducing Indigo: An Early Look

Well, that's all folks! It's dinner time, and after that, I have to do the rest of this. I have another 5 more projects which datelines are way long overdued. Sigh.

Hopefully till tomorrow, I'll be blogging again.

Saying Hi from MRT!

2005-03-19T17:42:00.000+08:00

Yo! I'm using GPRS with Bluetooth connection to my cellphone to connect to the interenet from the MRT train! w00t! Technology rocks. Improving my productivity by the double, or maybe eventually triple. Who knows... Weeeeeee!!!

Being connected every second and minute feels good.

Cheerios.

No technical stuff today. It's rest day for me. w33t.

Phalanger - the PHP Language Compiler for .NET Framework

2005-03-19T10:28:00.000+08:00

Phalanger - the PHP Language Compiler for .NET Framework

The Phalanger is a complex solution giving web-application developers the ability to benefit from both the ease-of-use and effectiveness of the PHP language and the power and richness of the .NET platform. This solution enables developers to painlessly deploy and run existing PHP code on an ASP.NET web server and develop cross-platform extensions to such code taking profit from the best from both sides. Compatible with PHP 5.0, the object model in Phalanger enables to combine PHP objects with the .NET ones. It is possible to use a class written in PHP from a .NET application or even to import a .NET class (written for example in C# or Visual Basic .NET) into PHP scripts provided that this class respects the PHP object model implemented in the Phalanger. The Phalanger is the only existing PHP compiler which produces .NET Framework MSIL bytecode.

From another point of view, Phalanger provides the .NET programmers with the giant amount of practical PHP functions and data structures - many of them reimplemented in the managed environment of the .NET Framework. The whole Phalanger class library (including functions implemented in the PHP extensions) is accessible to a .NET programmer regardless to her favorite programming language together with type information and in-library debugging.

For last but not the least, compilation of PHP scripts gives yet more power to the existing web applications in the Phalanger environment. All the static (run-time immutable) code in the scripts gets parsed and compiled only once and all following accesses to a page benefit from the unleashed execution of the native compilation of the script. Yet the usage of Phalanger is not limited to web applications. The compiler supports output of standalone executables or dynamic link libraries enabling you to create managed PHP console applications or library modules reusable from any other .NET Framework application.

--

Take a look at their interview at Channel 9
Phalanger: PHP .NET compiler revealed #

Thoughts on Business

2005-03-18T00:09:00.000+08:00

I was thinking just now about business and how it runs. Basically, a business simply contains 3 things.

1 - Providing (a) service(s)
Be it a product, a way to do things, creating applications, and so on, everything is based on providing a service. That's what the main business runs on, and depends on.

2 - Creating Awareness
You have to make known of what your business does, and let people know it's benefits and how it is different from others and so on. This in it's way is to create awareness, or advertising, or social networking, or whatever you call it. It basically boils down to creating awareness for your business.

3 - Innovation
As mentioned above, you need to let people know how your service is different from others. Therefore you'll need to innovate, and come out with something unique for your "service". Why I put this last is because innovation in itself is quite difficult to achieve, and it requires someone of certain calibre to handle it. Most businesses do not have that calibre. But they still fulfill the first 2 criterias on business.

These are just my thoughts on business, as I was talking to a friend. I don't study business or marketing or what have you, so I might be wrong, or this might be extremely obvious to everyone, but I just find it quite interesting that every business must at least fulfill 2 of the criterias.

Do you guys have any thoughts on this? Feel free to comment.

GoWebTools - Free Hit Counter

2005-03-17T15:17:00.000+08:00

GoWebTools

This looks like quite a good hit counter provider. Reminder to use this for SgDotNet website.

Five Undiscovered Features on ASP.NET 2.0

2005-03-16T16:28:00.000+08:00

Five Undiscovered Features on ASP.NET 2.0

By now, developers everywhere have had the opportunity to download the first beta of the Microsoft® .NET Framework 2.0. ASP.NET developers who have played with it are no doubt salivating at all the cool new features. From Master Pages to declarative data access to new controls to a new provider-based state management architecture, ASP.NET 2.0 offers myriad ways to do more with less code. And with Beta 2 just around the corner, now is the time to get serious about ASP.NET 2.0.

You may have read some of the many books and magazine articles previewing the upcoming features. You might even have seen a live demo at a conference or user group meeting. But how well do you really know ASP.NET 2.0? Did you know, for example, that those wonderful $ expressions used to declaratively load connection strings and other resources can be extended to create $ expressions of your own? Did you realize that the new ASP.NET 2.0 client callback manager provides an elegant solution to the problem of keeping browser displays in sync with constantly changing data on the server? Did you know that you can encrypt sections of Web.config to prevent connection strings and other potentially injurious data from being stored in plaintext?

---

My Take? Interesting article. I like the part about the client script callbacks, which is extremely useful. And the custom expression builder.

Interest Articles : Communities

2005-03-15T21:39:00.000+08:00

My friend Savagerx at SgDotNet posted something interesting for me to read up.

This article discusses some of the common roles we can expect to find in a community.
http://www.fullcirc.com/community/memberroles.htm

Yet another of somehow the same article.
http://www.dtinational.org/resources/articledisplay.asp?id=27

Designing a Computer Supported Community
https://web-imtm.iaw.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/pub/bscw.cgi/0/208299/30402/30402.pdf

I should get all these read one of these days. Reminder.

Visual Studio 2002 SP 1

2005-03-15T21:35:00.000+08:00

Download it here.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=c41d8159-b42f-4d06-a797-e510494976ee&displaylang=en

Here is a list of the changes and hotfixes included in the SP.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;837234

Release Notes are here.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=C64786BC-FC5D-46C8-9E2E-FCD3A79935D8&displaylang=en

This download installs Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2002. Fixes in this Service Pack concern stability and security enhancements made in many areas of the product. A comprehensive list of hotfixes requested by customers since the release of Visual Studio .NET 2002 and included in this Service Pack can be found by following the appropriate link under Related Resources on this page.

Enjoy! :)

And you thought ActiveX was bad... Here comes Java!

2005-03-15T21:20:00.000+08:00

Firefox Spyware infects IE?

The terror has come. Java Runtime Environment is now the target for spywares. It's no more ActiveX. Read on to find out.

<snip>
What if there was an infection out there that could bypass Firefox and still get its grubby little paws on IE, and from there, the heart of your OS? What if that same infection could get past not only FF, but a whole raft of other (supposedly more secure) browsers too?

What if, of all people, Neil Diamond was indirectly involved in this craziness?

Unfortunately, this has now become a reality and woe betide anyone looking for lyrics from Neil's latest hit. You're more likely to end up with a nasty case of browseritis. After hearing rumours of a Firefox Adware bundle from this thread, I thought I'd go check it out. The results were, as they say, a right kick in the pants.
</snip>

The Algorithm Structure Design Space in Parallel Programming

2005-03-15T11:32:00.000+08:00

The Algorithm Structure Design Space in Parallel Programming

The first phase of designing a parallel algorithm consists of analyzing the problem to identify exploitable concurrency, usually by using the patterns of the Finding Concurrency design space. The output from the Finding Concurrency design space is a decomposition of the problem into design elements:

A task decomposition that identifies tasks that can execute concurrently

A data decomposition that identifies data local to each task

A way of grouping tasks and ordering the groups to satisfy temporal constraints

An analysis of dependencies among tasks

This chapter will help you, the algorithm designer, to leave the parallel algorithm design abstract enough to support portability while ensuring that it can eventually be implemented effectively for the parallel systems on which it will be executed.

Zeta 1.0

2005-03-14T14:16:00.000+08:00

BeOS has been dead for almost 4 years or more. Yellowtab took up the mandate and carried on it's legacy. Now, Zeta 1.0 is out. Check it out at http://yellowtab.com

Other news on reliving BeOS, probably my most favourite OSes in my life, OpenBeOS or now named Haiku-OS is the opensourced implementation of the recreation of BeOS. This is how wonderful BeOS is. Perfect and powerful in it's own being.

For those OS hackers, please consider helping out Haiku-OS. Long Live BeOS.

More CSS?!? Oh no...

2005-03-14T13:11:00.000+08:00

To re-iterate my growing love for CSS, here again are some links (some which I've posted before) to get good resources.

Why tables for layout is stupid: problems defined, solutions offered
http://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/index.html

css Zen Garden: The Beauty in CSS Design
http://www.csszengarden.com/

css-discuss Wiki
http://css-discuss.incutio.com/
The css-discuss Wiki is a companion to the CssDiscussList mailing list.

meyerweb.com
http://www.meyerweb.com/

A List Apart: Alternative Style: Working With Alternate Style Sheets
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/alternate/

A List Apart: CSS Design: Taming Lists
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/taminglists/

WebDeveloper.com: Advanced HTML, CSS, and DHTML
http://www.webdeveloper.com/advhtml/

glish.com : CSS layout techniques
http://www.glish.com/css/

CSS, Accesibility and Standards Links
http://www.dezwozhere.com/links.html

The W3C CSS Validation Service
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

SitePoint
http://www.sitepoint.com/
Quite a number of articles & forum discussions regarding design, layout, css, etc.

CssCreator
http://www.csscreator.com/
Good forums for CSS discussions

Cracking Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA)

2005-03-14T13:02:00.000+08:00

Cracking Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) Part 1

Cracking Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) Part 2

Good read. Don't tell anyone I told you about this. Hee! Anyway it's quite a difficult thing to understand unless you've done lots of packet h*cking before.

Disclaimer:
I'm not responsible for whatever damage might come from you learning from those links.

The Wordlist Project

2005-03-14T08:45:00.000+08:00

The Wordlist Project

I won't talk much about this. It's just for my reference. Wonderful list. Fantastic for *ahem*. Enough said. Those of you who knows what to do with it, use it. Any other links to other similar sites would be much appreciated.

Microsoft Learning 2nd Shot Exam Offer

2005-03-13T23:21:00.000+08:00

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/offers/2ndshot/

Give yourself the best chance for success with an extra opportunity to pass any Microsoft IT Pro or Developer certification exam. Sign up now, and if you don't pass the first time around you can retake it free.

Website Statistics - AXS Visitor Tracking

2005-03-13T23:10:00.000+08:00

AXS Visitor Tracking

AXS records visits to your web page and processes those records into meaningful graphs and database listings. The scripts tell you where visitors are coming from, charts their flow through your site, and tells you which links they follow when leaving. In addition, the scripts record visitors' server name, IP address, type of web browser, and time of visit.

It is based on Perl.

This is something I want to set up on the SgDotNet website.

ASP.NET and Struts: Web Application Architectures

2005-03-13T22:24:00.000+08:00

ASP.NET and Struts: Web Application Architectures

Summary:
Learn about the similarities and differences between ASP.NET on the .NET Framework and Struts on Java 2 Enterprise Edition; and the features that each provides to solve common developer problems. Learn about the advantages and disadvantages of each, and the utility that they bring to next-generation Web development.

My Take:
Struts was the revolution in J2EE. Struts seperated design from logic using the MVC model. Struts was the next best thing for J2EE other than JBoss. Struts is the Controller.

But then came about ASP.NET. :)

Professional C#, 2nd Edition: Graphics with GDI+

2005-03-13T10:45:00.000+08:00

Professional C#, 2nd Edition: Graphics with GDI+
The sample book chapter shows you how to interact directly with users in C#, displaying information on the screen and accepting user input. You'll draw lines and simple shapes, images from bitmap and other image files, and text.
By Scott Allen, Ollie Cornes, Steve Danielson, Jay Glynn, Zach Greenvoss, Burton Harvey, Jerod Moemeka, Christian Nagel, Simon Robinson, Morgan Skinner, and Karli Watson

http://accessvbsql.advisor.com/doc/13649

C# Game/Graphics Engines

2005-03-10T15:41:00.000+08:00

Just looking back at my old love of game development, I'm here to recommend some good game and graphic engines that's free and opensourced, which are all very good stuff. Naturally, that works with C#, but not confined to Managed DirectX. Did I mention they are also cross-platform?

Axiom3D - Game Engine that's based on OGRE, a C++ graphics engine. It uses Managed DirectX and Managed OpenGL.

Personally I'ved worked with Axiom3D before to create some demoscenes and mini-games. It's a wonderful piece of work. But the interface changed quite alot since the last time I played with it. It has a lot of new stuff, like new physics and UI engine.

RealmForge GDK - Game Development Kit that's also opensource.

I haven't used this before, but I heard from recommendations it's quite extensive and complete, eventhough it's just v0.6 and not a full v1.0 yet. If I'm not wrong, it includes a scripting engine too. Not too sure.

Purple# - Game Engine that's coded in C#. It's a shader driven 3d engine for .NET.

Neither have I used this before. I'm not too sure how good it is, but it's another engine coded for the .NET platform. Not much to comment on this, but I heard it's good.

That's that. As you can see, I don't have much experience with game development on the .NET framework, but I feel there is potential for it. It's definitely much faster than working in Java.

For more information, do check out this fantastic website.

www.gamedev.net

I frequent there last time, until I realise game development just didn't make money here in Singapore. Anyway it's still my passion to create a wonderful game where people can enjoy.

Cheerios.

Scholarships for University and more on CS 1.0

2005-03-10T09:27:00.000+08:00

I think this might be my first non-technical post. I'm desperate to find scholarships or someone to sponsor me to go University, if I get into the University I want.

For those who already know, I've applied for University of Toronto and University of Waterloo, to the Computer Science program. Apparently, one of my family member is having an operation today, and that operation costs quite a far bit of money. Therefore, as you should already guess, my funds for university is much diminished.

I've looked at quite a few scholarships, and most of them require 3 A level distinctions, or S-Papers, which is quite apparent that I don't have those. I'm currently holding a Diploma in Computer Engineering from Ngee Ann Polytechnic, and it's only a B average (or so my counselor at the Canadian Education Centre says). Furthermore, for those who doesn't know, I'm very active in SgDotNet and currently am an MVP - Visual Developer C#.

So, now the big thing. Where do I find scholarships? I've checked up BrightSparks but like I said, most of them require quite exceptional results.

Oh well. Anyway, enough of lamenting. Here's something I'd like to share with you guys who's playing around with Community Server 1.0. The conversion tool from Asp.net forums 2.0.1 to CS 1.0 is released by external sources. Here's the link.

http://www.communityserver.org/forums/475923/ShowPost.aspx

There's a fix for the Anonymous users here.

http://www.communityserver.org/forums/476239/ShowPost.aspx

Links for converting from nGallery to CS 1.0.

http://www.communityserver.org/forums/2/476157/ShowPost.aspx

Community Server has also released their "documentation" which is a wiki. Check it out here.

http://docs.communityserver.org

Oh yes, did I mention SgDotNet is going to do migration? :) Yes that's right. That's why I posted all these links here. And you think it's for you. Haha! This blog is for me to remember things, not for you! Just joking. *wink*

Other cool stuff is this very cool Content Management System (CMS) that is actually quite good. It's XHTML and CSS compliant. It's called WordPress. And it's totally done in PHP. Very good stuff. I'm wondering if CS 1.0 and DNN 3.0 is XHTML and CSS compliant. Even if it's XHTML 1.0 Transitional, that's pretty good already, in my opinion. Check WordPress out. They have a demo site setup here. http://www.opensourcecms.com/

Is that enough information? Or is it not enough?

Interesting news. It seems that MVPs are going on revolt because Microsoft is stopping development on VB6.

http://rblevin.blogspot.com/2005/03/microsoft-mvps-revolt.html

That's all folks for today.

Emails ALL GONE!!!!

2005-03-06T22:18:00.000+08:00

For those who have sent me emails since 05/03/2005 onwards, please re-send. My emails all went down the /dev/null.

Apparently the problem was this.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/842293

Fixed it. Now everything works. But I lost 2 days worth of emails. Sorry to everyone. Please resend emails to me. Thanks. That includes Jason, Ken, Kitkai, Howard.

Thanks alot for the inconvenience. I'll be sending you guys emails to request you guys to resend to me.

More on Small Business Server 2003

2005-03-05T10:18:00.000+08:00

Here are a few links that would help with deploying your SBS 2003 to your network.

Migrating from a Peer-to-Peer Network to a Windows Small Business Server 2003 Network

Getting Started Guide

Connecting Mobile and Remote Users

These are a few documents which helped me greatly in planning and deploying SBS 2003 into my current small network.

I'm still having that tingly sensation of how wonderful SBS is. Hehe!!!

Exchange Server 2003 and Small Business Server 2003

2005-03-04T13:20:00.000+08:00

Let me first say, Exchange Server alone sucks. It's too damn difficult to configure, and requires alot of registry editing and doesn't have POP3 connector to download emails into exchange accounts.

I was trying to get Exchange Server 2003 working on my Windows 2003 Server for the past few days, and with some effort it worked. It takes almost 5 to 10 mins to shutdown the Exchange Server and reboot, and doesn't have anything to guide you through. You'll definitely have to be very good with your knowledge of Exchange Server 2003 to be able to set it up. Not for someone like me who knows nuts about infrastructure.

The purpose of setting up Exchange Server 2003 was to have a central repository of my emails, contacts, appointments all at my home server, and able to sync with my notebook, any web-enabled device, and at home. Right now I've problems trying to keep everything in sync manually, which reduces my productivity that requires me to go home to read my emails, and recopying mails from my notebook to my desktop.

Let me stress again, Exchange Server 2003 is NOT for dummies like me who wants to do advance stuff like that.

Let me stop lamenting on Exchange Server 2003. Then I decided, what the heck, why don't I just re-format and install Small Business Server 2003 instead. I must say, SBS 2003 is one of the easiest and the most effortless setting up ever. Although installation takes a few hours (I took almost 6 hours to install and configure everything), after all that long wait, everything appears as a wizard. They have wizards for almost everything. And a very intuitive System Manager, with everything I need to configure at my fingertips. They have this TO-DO thingy after installation that tells you what you need to configure, and they have wizards for everything.

And did I mention they have a wizard to set up your POP3 connector? It's so simple and effortless. They included a POP3 connector into the Exchange Server. You just have to key in your pop server, username and password, and where the mails will go into. And of course the frequency of checking your pop server.

Simply wonderful. I also love the Certificate Wizard where they help you to create a self-signed certificate for you. You're able to replace the name to your internet fqdn, instead of the intranet name which I seem to be creating ALWAYS. Like I said, I'm a infra dummy.

Furthermore, it takes only a 1-2 mins to reboot, much much faster than Exchange Server 2003 stand alone on Windows 2003.

Did I mention they have a wizard that helps you set up your AD and lan and everything else?

It's good stuff. I recommend it to everyone who's setting up a business, especially a SOHO, which is quite popular in Singapore.

Alrighty, enough praising. It rocks.

Boo - New .NET Language

2005-02-21T19:56:00.000+08:00

http://boo.codehaus.org/

Something I found yesterday. Quite an interesting language that's very dynamic. Here's the description of it.

Boo is a new object oriented statically typed programming language for the Common Language Infrastructure with a python inspired syntax and a special focus on language and compiler extensibility.

Do check it out.

CS-Script - The C# Script Engine

2005-02-21T19:22:00.000+08:00

Something I came across that's quite interesting.

http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/~olegshilo/

CS-Script. Looks good. Wonder if it can be done for websites, instead of using javascript? :)

Non-Rectangular Windows Forms Part 2

2005-02-18T19:20:00.000+08:00

I figured nobody could answer my question. Therefore, I solved it myself.

Basically what I did was to use the form's Region property. This Region property selects the region in which it is to display.

Problem, how am I gonna find out the region of an irregular shape? Simple. Parse each pixel bit by bit to check for your transparency key. If it is not transparent, create a graphics path of 1 pixel to create your region. I got the idea from here.

http://weblogs.asp.net/cumpsd/articles/79878.aspx

The code is as follows.

public static Region ConvertFromTransparentBitmap(Bitmap imageRegion, Color transparentColor) {
// First we get the dimensions of our image
GraphicsUnit aPixel = GraphicsUnit.Pixel;
RectangleF imageBoundsF = imageRegion.GetBounds(ref aPixel);
int imageWidth = Convert.ToInt32(imageBoundsF.Width);
int imageHeight = Convert.ToInt32(imageBoundsF.Height);

// This will be the path for our Region
GraphicsPath regionPath = new GraphicsPath();

// We loop over every line in our image, and every pixel per line
for (int intY = 0; intY < imageHeight; intY++) {
for (int intX = 0; intX < imageWidth; intX++) {
if (imageRegion.GetPixel(intX, intY) != transparentColor) {
// We have to see this pixel!
regionPath.AddRectangle(new Rectangle(intX, intY, 1, 1));
}
}
}

Region formRegion = new Region(regionPath);
regionPath.Dispose();
return formRegion;
} /* ConvertFromTransparentBitmap */

But that took 12 secs to load up. So I did it the opposite way, since I have more visible part than transparent. If the pixel matches your transparency key, create the graphics path then. And I did an exclude. Like this.

public static Region ConvertFromTransparentBitmap(Bitmap imageRegion, Color transparentColor) {
// First we get the dimensions of our image
GraphicsUnit aPixel = GraphicsUnit.Pixel;
RectangleF imageBoundsF = imageRegion.GetBounds(ref aPixel);
int imageWidth = Convert.ToInt32(imageBoundsF.Width);
int imageHeight = Convert.ToInt32(imageBoundsF.Height);

// Create an arraylist to store the rectangles
ArrayList rectArray = new ArrayList();

// This will be the path for our Region
GraphicsPath regionPath = new GraphicsPath();

// We loop over every line in our image, and every pixel per line
for (int intY = 0; intY < imageHeight; intY++) {
for (int intX = 0; intX < imageWidth; intX++) {
//Color c = imageRegion.GetPixel(intX, intY);
if (imageRegion.GetPixel(intX, intY) == transparentColor) {
// We have to see this pixel!
//regionPath.AddRectangle(new Rectangle(intX, intY, 1, 1));
// Add a rectangle to the array
rectArray.Add(new Rectangle(intX, intY, 1, 1));
}
}
}

Rectangle[] rectList = new Rectangle[rectArray.Count];

// Now we convert the ArrayList into an array of Rectangles
for(int i=0; i < rectArray.Count; i++) {
rectList = (Rectangle)rectArray;
}

regionPath.AddRectangles(rectList);
Region formRegion = new Region(regionPath);

// we need to create a region which encompasses the entire form
Region fullRegion = new Region(new Rectangle(0, 0, imageRegion.Width, imageRegion.Height));

// we do a simple exclude those parts that intersect
fullRegion.Exclude(formRegion);

formRegion.Dispose();
regionPath.Dispose();
return fullRegion;
} /* ConvertFromTransparentBitmap */

Basically this alternate way speed up the entire loading process down to 4 secs. Of course together with DoubleBuffering on, and using the 32bit-enabled transparency code up there, I was able to create one ultra fast and smooth irregular window, without any flicker to the controls within.

A faster way to speed up the loading process, which I haven't tried yet, is to create the array of points to the graphics path. Meaning you'll have to pre-generate the points first, put it in an array, and use it in a GraphicsPath object. This will speed everything up to the second, theoretically speaking.

This method is called inline masking. If those of you have done low-level graphics and trying to accelerate graphics and transparency, this is how the old school does it.

If anyone has any suggestions whereby how to make it work another way, please post here.

Non-Rectangular Windows Forms

2005-02-18T19:18:00.000+08:00

Yo, now a problem from me. I tried to search for it, without any success.

http://www.thecodeproject.com/csharp/nonRectangularForm.asp

I'm trying to create a non-rectangular windows form. Currently it's quite easy if the person uses 24bit and below resolution, you just assign your background image and set your transparencykey. But who uses 24bit and below nowadays? We all use 32bit.

That article above explains to you how to get it done. The modification I made was to make it happen in OnPaintBackground event instead of OnPaint event, because if it was OnPaint event, the controls will flicker and you can see what's behind the form.

So now, the problem is, it still flickers and is very slow. To solve this flickering, you must implement double buffering. But when I set the styles to do double buffering, the transparency of the background is ignored.

Question. How can I achieve double buffering which the background transparency still intact?

Here's the code for reference

protected override void OnPaintBackground(PaintEventArgs e)
{
base.OnPaintBackground(e);
this.SuspendLayout();

// First we create a graphics object using the PiantEventArgs e that will use the
// form
Graphics grfx = e.Graphics;
// Make Antialiasing which avoid stepped look for circular path and curves you
// may use the SmoothingMode.AntiAlias
grfx.SmoothingMode = SmoothingMode.None;
grfx.DrawImage(this.background, this.frmRectangle);

this.ResumeLayout();
}

Setting the styles I'm sure you guys should know. How to I apply transparency over here?

Thoughts on Integrating DNN 3.0 + CS 1.0

2005-02-17T02:28:00.000+08:00

I've been playing around with both applications, and been thinking about how to merge these 2 wonderful applications together.

There are a few ways of doing it.

1. Rewriting the Membership/Role/etc providers and having both applications use the same providers. Then merging of the memberships would be needed, into 1 table. But I'm pondering how can it be done.

2. Writing a DNN module that interfaces with CS 1.0, stripping CS apart into different modules, i.e. Forums module, Blog module, Gallery module and so on. But CS dependencies on HttpContext is alot.

3. Stripping DNN apart and make it part of CS 1.0. I think that's the intention of CS, since I saw an empty web dll, which means the intention of having a Community Server - Web.

4. Quick hack. Sync between the databases and cookies. Which is what most people are doing now.

Personally, I think point 3 would be wonderful to try it out. What do you guys think? Which way is better?

DotNetNuke 3.0 & CS 1.0

2005-02-16T19:03:00.000+08:00

I just realised something interesting. Both applications are sharing the same MachineValidationKeys. That means that they are preparing to be able to merge and interop with each other.

This is good news.

Practical Session : Visual Source Safe on SCCBridge

2005-01-28T11:01:00.000+08:00

Yesterday we had a practical session yesterday trying to set up SCCBridge to access VSS. It actually was quite simple to set up actually.

Just a short description of SCCBridge. SCCBridge is a bridge between your VSS and supposedly your lan/internet. It uses WSE 2.0 and SOAP to achieve this. It's split into 2 parts. The server and the client. The server is a webservice that interfaces with your VSS. It's simple to set up. Just edit the web.config and change your VSS directory settings, and expose it to your IIS and the outside world.

The client is basically an SCC that installs into your Visual Studio. You'll need to install WSE 2.0 first. The functionalities are all the same.

Anyway, the problem we faced was quite simple. We had to set up the VSS directory permissions. Added the Network Service account and give it read/write/modify access.

Another problem we faced was when trying to access through the internet, as an external connection. I can't seem to log in. It might be something wrong with my connection I guess. I'm behind a router.

Anyway, here are the threads that discusses this.

Practical: Visual Source Safe over Internet
Access VSS via the Internet

OS Development Resources

2005-01-27T13:24:00.000+08:00

Here are some resources that's quite interesting.

The Common Man's Guide to Operating System Design
Writing a Kernel in C

Resources on data sheets and hardware specifications
Cottontail OS Development Library
OS Resources

Look out for more OS stuff in the later posts.

Niels' Blog

2005-01-27T12:05:00.000+08:00

Niels' Blog

A blog on the BeOS USB Stack that's being worked on by Niel. Something I'd like to keep track on and help out.

Xtreme Programming and Open Source Software Development

2005-01-26T02:16:00.000+08:00

Interesting article on how Open Source development can work with Xtreme programming.

Xtreme Programming and Open Source Software Development

Read it. Enjoy it.

MIME Media Types

2005-01-26T01:48:00.000+08:00

For those who have a hard time finding what the MIME type is from application/* or whatever, here's the list.

IANA MIME Media Types

Enjoy. :)

Problems installing VSTS 2005 Dec. 2004 CTP

2005-01-23T14:17:00.000+08:00

Some of you guys might be having trouble installing VSTS aka Visual Studio Team Suite (which is the new name for Visual Studio 2005) and come across this problem as described here.

Problems installing VSTS 2005 Dec. 2004 Refresh

Well, the problem I had was a conflict with the .NET Framework 2.0, with SQL Server 2005 Dec 2005 CTP being installed first. And what is the solution for this?

Uninstall your .NET Framework 2.0, install the VSTS (which now installs), then repair SQL Server 2005. This is how you get it working.

I do not know if you'll have any problems install SQL Server 2005 after installing VSTS 2005. :) Anyone tried and have problems?

Interesting Jokes

2005-01-22T16:00:00.000+08:00

I got them from a newsgroup. Hope you enjoy.

My very own OS

2005-01-21T23:11:00.000+08:00

This is official. I'll be working on my very own OS. I'm drawing up the plans with my friend soon enough. Anyone can suggest what they want in their OS? :)

More CSS Resources

2005-01-20T14:25:00.000+08:00

This is such a boring day for me, so I went around surfing for things. Some things I actually want to learn more about is CSS and how can I code the new ASP.NET 2.0 together with CSS. It's supposedly said that ASP.NET 2.0 generates XHTML conformant code, and I've yet to really find any flaws with it yet. I haven't tried parsing an ASP.NET 2.0 page through the XHTML validator. I'll try that out one day.

Well, here are the interesting resources.

How to hide CSS from buggy browsers
W3 CSS tips & tricks
WordPress CSS Tips and Tricks
CSS Shorthands
Scrollable area using CSS
Sitepoint "CSS Resources, Tutorials, Tips and Tricks" thread
CSS Vault - The Web's CSS Site
Top Style Lite - Great CSS/XHTML Editor

Well, that will keep be busy for a few more hours I think. Yawnz. I'm so bored. *rub eyes*

UML Books

2005-01-20T09:46:00.000+08:00

Here are some UML Books I think are useful that I should get around reading one of these days.

Writing Effective Use Cases
by Alistair Cockburn

Patterns for Effective Use Cases
by Paul Bramble, Alistair Cockburn, Andy Pols, Steve Adolph

Use Case Driven Object Modeling with UML : A Practical Approach (Addison Wesley Object Technology Series)
by Doug Rosenberg, Kendall Scott

UML Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Standard Object Modeling Language, Third Edition
by Martin Fowler

Yeap. Lots of books to read.

Successful Product/Solution Analysis

2005-01-20T01:49:00.000+08:00

Stupid blogger destroyed my writing on it. And I'm too lazy to write again. So I'm just going to sum everything up.

Analysing how a successful product/solution become successful is basically what I've been thinking about the last few days.

To have a successful product/solution, you'll need to have a solid Vision for it. Vision to bring the product/solution far and wide. That means you'll have to promote, advertise, and get people to listen to you.

Next. You need to have Passion to drive the product/solution. With passion, you can bring the product to higher reaches. With Passion, you can imagine the possibilities out there.

Next. Cooperation VS Competition. For me, I'd rather choose Cooperation. Cooperation yields almost the same result as Competition. You further your product/solution to become better, you strive to be better than your competitor. But Cooperation really brings about a whole new meaning to everything. Let me explain. Cooperating will give your users/clients a better and smoother ride along your product/solution.

Next. Don't think of possibilities. Try out unknown possibilities and see how it can start something new. What I mean is, instead of pondering how we can work together, why don't you think, we CAN work together, let's discuss further how we can work together even more. During this discussion or whatever, you'll start seeing MORE possibilities coming out than you thinking of it by yourself without the other party.

Next. Possibilities are the Key to Innovation. Don't turn away any idea or possibility that might come into your mind. Keep it. Archive it. Store it for later use. Don't let your mind be restricted by what you can do. Possibilities are limitless, it is you who set the limit.

Next. And I think it's the most important point. User Experience. It's really how your user/client enjoy using your product/solution and how easy it is to use it. Don't restraint yourself to within the box. Think and innovate outside, and new possibilities on new ways you can create your user experience. I'm not talking about fanciful graphics and such. I'm talking about a totally new concept that's natural, easy to pick up, and it's just simply fun to do.

That's about all I want to say. Summed up from my previous attempt to post. I'm going to copy this post just in case. I hope someone reads this and actually finds this useful.

Disclaimer. These are my own thoughts. And some discussion points I might like to bring up. I might be wrong.

Product Analysis

2005-01-20T01:31:00.000+08:00

What makes a good product or solution? It's not your idea, it's your vision for the product or solution. Here's what I've been thinking lately.

There are alot of very wonderful and fantastic products, solutions, applications out there that alot of people do not know of. Why is that so? Because they lack the vision to promote, advertise and gain the public's interest. Vision is very important and you have to get that straight down way before you get anything done. What do I want this product or solution to achieve? How am I going to achieve it? Not only that, which I'm going to go on to my next point here.

The next question you should ask yourself. Who and How can I cooperate with other people, companies, organisations, government? This will expand your horizons and discover new ways to improve your product/solution, and to find new ways to collaborate with your partners.

Yet another question you must ask yourself, do you have the drive to carry this out? You must foremost have the passion and the belief to carry all these out. You also need to have to come up with more plans, more ideas constantly to improve your product/solution. You will also need to think outside your box. For example, how would a totally unrelated subject/thing can help with my product/solution, or how can my product/solution help it/them/her/his?

It's quite vague right now as it's an idea that's been swarming around my head. Because what I realise with Asians is that they are quite closed-minded, living in the box, and very competitive.

Another point I want to bring up also. Cooperation VS Competition. I see more sense in finding ways to cooperate than to compete. With cooperation, you co-exist and work together, helping each other in some ways or another, to improve each other's solution/product. One must start the initiative to give first, and the other must also have the initiative to return in favour. In this aspect, each can grow in its own ways. Why compete, when you can cooperate to make something even better together? Or make the customer's lives better by having our products/solution work together?

I'd like to bring up is to try out new ideas. Always try it. Don't be afraid to carry it out. Don't keep thinking of how you're going to do it. You'll have to solve it some day. JUST DO IT (NIKE Trademark).

Lastly, it's to engage in new possibilities even when THERE AREN'T ANY POSSIBILITIES YET. It's always good to sit down and discuss informally, and somewhere somehow something might come up, and we go back to the Cooperation point. Cooperate.

What I can say now is.

Possibilities are Limitless, It is Only YOU Setting The Limit.
Possibilities are the key to Innovation.
Always concentrate on the Solution, and not think about the problem.

Cheers. I hope to read this blog one day and realise what I think now is true and can apply everywhere.

HTTP and it's Messages

2005-01-19T23:20:00.000+08:00

I was just helping a friend at SgDotNet to answer a question, and I found a few sites that are interesting in respect to HTTP and it's Messages and Message Headers.

Here's the thread I replied.

http://forums.sgdotnet.org/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=9359

Further resources can be found here.
HTTP Made Really Easy
http://www.jmarshall.com/easy/http/

It's something that explains how the HTTP protocol actually works in examples.

Here is a resource for the RFC.
RFC 2616
Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1
http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616.html

Which is rather technical.

Well, I hope it helps out.

Business Clients and how they actually think

2004-12-23T01:19:00.000+08:00

I just met up with a very business-like client who's the total non-technology savvy person, and I must say it has been a very fruitful experience to understand the thinking of how non-techno people think.

Basically just drawing back on my previous blog, the idea of a User-Role-Centric Solution and Approach to the problem. Apparently it came to very good use as I subtlely veered her into that thinking, or maybe she already is thinking using that approach. Anyway, that's really besides the point. But that approach actually made her able to come up with fantastic ideas for what she actually wants in her business or logic-wise. Note that we were actually talking quite non-technical here and more of what she wants to do, or what service she wants to provide the user. By thinking along that terms, she could come up with quite alot of business processes that she wants implemented, like her Invoice process, her Customer process, and so on.

From my point of view, this is actually quite a good way to draw out what your client actually wants for the solution, and how she wants it done. In my case, I would have never thought about enabling the invoice to be output into an excel file then making it available for printing, nor would I have known about how she wants herself to view the payment reports, nor would I have thought about how she wants to keep her customers by adding some added-value/services to her business, and so on. And she also has a better understanding and quite a clear understanding of how the solution works by us listing down the functionalities of what each type of person can do, without alot of the techy details. The most techy thing would be to describe the process of how the system works. As in, the user enters something, and the information is submitted into the system, and thus the system will inform the admin staff and send back a confirmation email to the user. Something along that lines. Very basic techy stuff. Nothing on like how it actually works.

Of course, the document must have these things available, in a bit more details, but that's for another section. I actually have a Project Guidelines document which I'll put up some time this week for you guys to look at. It's quite interesting. But some things I might want to emphasize. Know your clients, and write your document accordingly. Safest way to do it, think in a business sense. :)

Till next time,
Cheerios.

Project Lamenting and User-Role-Centric Solution

2004-12-18T10:42:00.000+08:00

For those of you who know about my new project, I've been so damn busy working on it. This client basically wants me to come up with all the business logic and specifications of what SHE wants, but DOESN'T tell me what SHE wants, so therefore I have to predict and be a fortune-teller to come up with something that SHE'S expecting, because she herself doesn't know what SHE'S wants the solution to do.

Simply fantastic, lamenting on this crappy project. I'm going to charge her for the consultation! Furthermore, I wasn't there during the meeting with the client to dig out information from her, and pick out everything out of her brains.

So anyway, here's what I've been researching and doing for the past few days.

I finally realised when creating a solution, one MUST think about the person using the solution itself. Trying to explain this method to my friend(s), who are in on the same project as me, made me realise the importance of a User-Role-Centric Solution. While coming up with the User-Role profiles, I realised a lot of unseen features appear that's not realised during the so-called "feature-creation" phase, which was done BEFORE creating this User-Role profile. Which was not supposed to be the case. *DEVELOPERS*

Anyway, creating a user-role profile is basically as simple as this. Determine who's going to use the solution. For example, in my case, we came up with 4 user-roles. The "General Person", the "Student", the "Teacher", the "Admin Staff". From this, I think you'll have a rough idea what the type of business this company I'm doing this project for are doing.

The question to ask when figuring out what user-roles there are is simply,
Who will use this solution?

So then, here are a few questions you'll ask yourself about each user-role.
1) Who are the people who falls into this category?
2) What does the person expect to accomplish with this solution?
3) What does the person need to have to use this solution?
4) Is there any problems with the current solution that can be solved with our solution?
5) Is there any forms of information communication between another user-role? What are they?
6) What are the tasks that the person can do with this solution?

Basically these are the few questions that one would ask the client, but apparently there wasn't a chance to do that for my case. Therefore I had to ask myself, and my other friends this question, and see what we can come up with.

In actual fact, we realised that when comparing with our original feature-list module-seperated format, which isn't entirely non-valid and still useable in the proposal under the section "Scope of the Project" and "Solutions Concepts", that we actually came up with more features that we didn't think of in the feature-list, and removed quite a fair bit of features that weren't needed and quite redundant. Which was good, in a sense that now the entire solution was based on "what the person is able to do with the solution", instead of "what this solution can do for the person". There are subtle differences, but when you actually think about it, your entire specification list simply changes and morphs into an almost totally different style. WHICH IS A GOOD THING(tm). So there and then, things start to change.

And I hope you guys also follow this way of thinking, instead of plunging down into feature-list.

Cheerios. Till next time.

Exhausted

2004-12-12T15:55:00.000+08:00

Sorry guys. I've been so extremely busy creating my presentation slides and demo on "Generics on the .NET Framework 2.0" and organising the Christmas Party yesterday and playing host and everything, that I'm just totally worn out.

I'll be posting more within the next few days so just to let you guys know I'm still alive and blogging.

StringControl

2004-12-04T13:15:00.000+08:00

StringControl, something I wrote last night to handle parsing of text between tags. I'm not too sure whether there's another easier way to do it, but here's what I came up with.



public class StringControl : Control {

  private string m_text;



  public StringControl() {

  }



  public StringControl(string text) {

    m_text = text;

  }

		

  public string Text {

    get { return m_text; }

    set { m_text = value; }

  }

	

  protected override void AddParsedSubObject(object obj) {

    if ( obj is LiteralControl ) {

      m_text = ((LiteralControl)obj).Text;

    }

  }

}

Why did I create a simple control like this? It's basically to handle this situation easily.



<sgdn:ModuleItem href="testhref" forumref="testforumref">

  <heading>Testing Heading</heading>

  <text>Testing Text</text>

</sgdn:ModuleItem>

Notice if I wanted to do that way, I needed to create a control to parse the text between <heading> and <text>. The code is something like this.



[ NotifyParentProperty(true), PersistenceMode(PersistenceMode.InnerProperty) ]

public HeadingControl Heading {

  get { return new HeadingControl(m_heading); }

  set { m_heading = value.Text; }

}		



[ NotifyParentProperty(true), PersistenceMode(PersistenceMode.InnerProperty) ]

public TextControl Text {

  get { return new TextControl(m_text); }

  set { m_text = value.Text; }

}

So basically I consolidated the logic for both HeadingControl and TextControl into 1 class called StringControl which will parse the inner text of the tags.

Fantastic don't you think? But I'd prefer if there's a better way to do.

Inner Content of a Custom Control

2004-12-02T01:18:00.000+08:00

To retrieve the inner content of a custom control, you'll first have to make sure your control does not specify the ParseChildrenAttribute or specifies ParseChildrenAttribute(ChildrenAsProperties = false). Then after that, you can make use of protected void AddParsedSubObject(object obj) method to parse your inner content into a property. For example.



public class MenuItem : Control {

  private string m_href;

  private string m_text;



  public string Text {

    get { return m_text; }

    set { m_text = value; }

  }		



  protected override void AddParsedSubObject(object obj) {

    if ( obj is LiteralControl ) {

      Text = ((LiteralControl)obj).Text;

    }

  }

}

But if you want to parse html, I suggest creating your own Templated Control.

Back to coding.

Complex Properties with Inner Property Persistence persisting a Collection property in a User Custom Control using Code Beside Method

2004-12-02T00:30:00.000+08:00

Man that's one long name. I'm so excited to blog about this!

Here's the case, I've been trying to learn how to embed custom tags within custom tags. Basically in ColdFusion, a custom tag is the same as a Custom Control. It's much easier to do it in ColdFusion, but that's another story.

So I was actually trying out templated controls, but it turned out it wasn't really what I wanted. Templated Controls are basically almost empty controls that exposes it's structure for you to change accordingly. Which is not what I really want.

Then I came upon something that fits the description. To pass in multiple XML-like "data" into the user custom control. NOTE: USER CUSTOM CONTROL. Very important note there.

Anyway, it's basically called inner property. This is how to create an Inner Property.



// your other methods and whatsoever. I'll skip to the property

[NotifyParentProperty(true), PersistenceMode(PersistenceMode.InnerProperty)]

public void MyClassWithInnerProp MyInnerProp {

  get { .... }

  set { .... }

}

As simple as that. And the html side would be like this.



<mytag:mycontrol runat="server">

  <MyInnerProp />

</mytag:mycontrol>

Basically something like that. Wonderful right? That's exactly what I needed. But wait! What if I needed a collection of the same property? Hell breaks loose. Something along the lines like THIS.



<mytag:mycontrol runat="server">

  <MyInnerProp />

  <MyInnerProp />

  <MyInnerProp />

  <MyInnerProp />

</mytag:mycontrol>

The twist is, to create a collection of properties, you'll have to specify this attribute in your control class. Something like this.



[ParseChildren(true,"MyCollecProp")] // where MyCollecProp is your collection property

public class MyControl : WebControl {

  //blah blah blah

  [NotifyParentProperty(true), PersistenceMode(PersistenceMode.InnerDefaultProperty)]

  public MyCollectPropClass MyCollecProp {

    get { ... }

    set { ... }

  }

}

Ok. A few things to note. PersistenceMode.InnerProperty is now changed to PersistenceMode.InnerDefaultProperty. And you HAVE to specify your default property in the ParseChildren(true, "MyCollecProp").

Here comes the problem. What if I want this collection property in my User Custom Control? How do I do it? I can't put an attribute tag when doing Code Beside. You might be able to do it with Code Behind. Anyway, simply enough, I combine the 2 methods, by creating 1 Inner Property which is a Control which this Control has a Collection Property! WOAH! Fantastic!

Here's the code.



// your other methods and whatsoever. I'll skip to the property

[NotifyParentProperty(true), PersistenceMode(PersistenceMode.InnerProperty)]

public void MyControl MyInnerProp { // Notice the change to MyControl

  pget { .... }

  set { .... }

}



// THIS HAS TO BE IN A CS FILE AND COMPILED IN A DLL THEN ADD THE @ REGISTER TO THE

// PAGES INVOLVED (mainly the User Custom Control and your Page using the control)

[ParseChildren(true,"MyCollecProp")] // where MyCollecProp is your collection property

public class MyControl : WebControl {

  //blah blah blah

  [NotifyParentProperty(true), PersistenceMode(PersistenceMode.InnerDefaultProperty)]

  public MyCollectPropClass MyCollecProp {

    get { ... }

    set { ... }

  }

}

And the html would be something like this.



<mytag:MyUserControl runat="server">

  <MyInnerProp>

    <MyCollecProp  />

    <MyCollecProp />

    <MyCollecProp />

    <MyCollecProp />

  </MyInnerProp>

</mytag:MyUserControl>

Of course, I'm assuming you already know how to write your collection class and naturally your data class.

Wonderful idea huh!! Look at it get implemented at SgDotNet website!

I'm not too sure whether any of you guys understood, if there's any questions, just post in the comments and I'll reply them.

w00t rocks!

First Attempt to deploy

2004-12-01T03:38:00.000+08:00

Well, I've deployed the initial stages of the website on to the development site for SgDotNet. Here's the link. http://dev.sgdotnet.org. There are quite alot more visual issues to be fixed, but generally that's how it will look.

I'm still trying to get everything else up and working.

Tired. Cheers.

Problem fixed

2004-11-30T14:40:00.000+08:00

Stupid me fixed the problem. I basically removed the padding at the bottom. Here's the code now.

#mainMenu {

	clear: both;

	padding: 10px 10px 0px; /* notice the 0px for bottom */

	height: 55px;

	voice-family: "\"}\"";

	voice-family:inherit;

	height: 35px;

}

html>body #mainMenu {

	height: 35px;

}

Another thing I thought I should blog to remind me. Differences between "Margin" and "Padding". Your background images fills up the entire box PLUS the padding. Your text fills up only the box. And margin is the white space surrounding the padding, which will not have the background image.

I feel proud of myself.

Another thing I should take note of is that photoshop generates much better gif files than fireworks, though that might mean I might not know how to generate great gifs using fireworks. But I did used the same default profiles on each application. Anyway, the size generated are different too, but what the heck, everyone's on broadband nowadays.

Cheerios

Problem with Box NOT SOLVED!

2004-11-30T10:51:00.000+08:00

I just woke up today, loaded up the website, IT STILL SHIFTS DOWNWARDS. THE BOX STILL EXPANDS WHEN I ROLLOVER IT. WHY WHY WHY!?!?! If I removed the Tantek hack, it works for IE, but gives that horrible white line spacing at the top for FireFox. Apparently they read from the cache, hence giving me correct behaviour. When I emptied the cache, the problem came back. I'm SO PISSED.

UGH!

Box margin/padding solved

2004-11-30T03:10:00.000+08:00

Well, not exactly solved, but here's the code anyway.

#mainMenu {

	clear: both;

	margin: 10px 0px;

	height: 55px;

	voice-family: "\"}\"";

	voice-family:inherit;

	height: 35px;

	padding: 10px 0px; /* these are the changes */

	margin: 0px; /* these are the changes */

}

html>body #mainMenu {

	height: 35px;

	padding: 10px 0px; /* these are the changes */

	margin: 0px; /* these are the changes */

}

Well, I thought to myself, since Firefox works with padding, and IE works with margin, may as well use Tantek Çelik’s CSS Box Model Hack method to solve that. And it worked! This method should be called "IE and Mozilla Hacks" or something.

Well, anyway I solve the other problem about my images having a border. Apparently images can't inherit from the cascaded "border: 0;" from anywhere, and therefore MUST specify that in the img css. Every day is a new day with weird happenings from the browsers.

So, I've fixed QUITE alot of boxing issues with the website today, and now the entire website looks more or less the same in both Firefox and IE. Tiring, but excellent job there, triplez! I'll be fixing up the css codes later when I wake up. Now my structural layer looks fantastically clean, but my presentation css codes looks like a rubbish dump. Heh.

Ok, today's a short one as I didn't really research anything and just spent most of my time fixing those visual bugs. More next time with the "Review of Designing with Web Standards" book as promised, and a short article on "Creating proper ASP.Net Custom User Controls with <div>". And, not to mention, awaiting the most anticipated sneak preview of the presentation I'm going to do on 9th December, "Generics on the .Net Framework 2.0". Extremely busy week with lots of writing to be done.

Cheerios.

Photos of KL @ MIND

2004-11-29T02:54:00.000+08:00

They are up! Get your hot pictures over here!

http://gallery.sgdotnet.org/albums/4.aspx

Box margin/padding debugging tip

2004-11-29T01:27:00.000+08:00

Just a tip on how I debug those box margin/padding bugs from those 2 famous but irritating web browsers who doesn't follow the same standards and keep giving me different results.

border: 1px solid black;

Basically I added that in any block of box that I need to check what's wrong with it.

A problem I've been trying to solve in vain is a weird boxing thing in IE. I did something like this.

 

#mainMenu {

	border: 1px solid black;

	clear: both;

	padding: 10px 0px;

	height: 55px;

	voice-family: "\"}\"";

	voice-family:inherit;

	height: 35px;

}

html>body #mainMenu {

	height: 35px;

}

Notice the padding. Whenever I hover over a part of the menu, the (invisible) box EXTENDS downwards. How I know? Everything below it shifts downwards. There's something wrong somewhere with my paddings. But here's the weird thing. I changed padding to margin, and it doesn't extend downwards anymore when I hover over it. BUT, Firefox then again shifts the entire box downwards thus leaving a TOP UGLY WHITE LAYER at the top of the browser. I HATE BOXES IN CSS!

I'll upload the website asap, when I get the other components working.

Busy week / Css Links Galore

2004-11-27T00:30:00.000+08:00

Well, I've been working on the SgDotNet website, converting everything using <div>, and I must say, I'm a convert. <div> rocks. But I'm still not sure whether I've over-designed it and had a bad case of divisitus, but from the tutorials I've been reading, it looked quite alright, in a "component" level. But as a full page, it looks rather packed with <div>. Everyone who looked at the code says it looks extremely neater, more structural and logical, with <div> ids to describe what those segments are.

So, as promised, I was playing around with this Hello application to put up pictures for bloggers, but apparently it's not THAT quite useful. It served its purpose anyway, so there you go, some photos down there. But what the hell. It's there, and hope you enjoy the pictures. I'll post the gallery link once the pictures are up on the SgDotNet gallery.

Onward to XHTML standards! Here's some useful links, or rather A useful link to a fantastic XHTML coding/tutorial website. http://www.alistapart.com. Fantastic tutorials they have there, on CSS.

A few common things I'd like to point out to web client-side coders. CSS liquid layout. Here's a great article from "A List Apart". From Table Hacks to CSS Layout: A Web Designer’s Journey. Some links that gives you ready layout templates. The Layout Reservoir. Little Boxes. Oh, not to mention "The Noodle Incident", a wonderful website on CSS which the "Little Boxes" link came from. He has some rants and a book on CSS, so I might be checking out sometime soon when I pop over to the library. Another link, Glish.com's CSS is another fantastic website on CSS layouts, and his famous "Look Ma, No Tables".

That's for CSS liquid layout. Another thing I'd like to point out is creating menubars out of <ul> and <li>. Here are a few links. Drop-Down Menus, Horizontal Style and Suckerfish Dropdowns from "A List Apart". I love that website. Lots of tutorials on CSS. I used the Suckerfish Dropdown's javascript and some layout techniques from Drop-Down Menus, Horizontal Style. Basically I had to delete everything, and started from scratch by writing all those <ul> and <li> without any styling, then slowly adding piece by piece. The trick to getting the horizontal working is position: relative; I think, but I can't quite remember it. So yeah, read those articles and you'd be half a guru.

Another thing I needed was how do I create boxes surrounding my text, and how to slice it and display it using CSS. Here's a great article that helped me do it with with the navigation bars at the side. CSS Design: Creating Custom Corners & Borders and CSS Design: Creating Custom Corners & Borders Part II. Again, both articles are from "A List Apart".

A few tips that helped me through the browser problems of "96% of the entire world is using" browser, but yeah. Here's Tantek Çelik’s CSS Box Model Hack to fix some misunderstandings of the standards by that browser. There is another one, but I can't quite recall it now. Anyway you have to use that technique if you ever have any margin or padding. YOU MUST! Another tip is from WaSP which gives you some methods on how to "upgrade" or "degrade" your website on older browsers. Fighting for Standards in Our Browsers.

I was also reading Eric Meyer on CSS: Mastering the Language of Web Design and More Eric Meyer on CSS (Voices That Matter) which in fact are more tutorial/walkthrough books than descriptions. But the latter book helped quite a bit on the menu bars I had to create for the SgDotNet website. I've yet to find any useful tutorial/walkthrough from the former book.

I actually finished reading "Designing with Web Standards" at the beginning of this week, and have been using a few of it's techniques quite often to convert the SgDotNet website over to CSS layout, and I'll do a "Summary" cum "Review" on the book soon enough. It'll be on pdf and I'll post the link here, and there will be a html copy up on the SgDotNet website once I'm done with it, which the schedule states, 1st December 2004. Good luck to me.

Oh yes, as mentioned before, and promised, I'll be writing an article on how <div> and CSS would be beneficial to user custom controls, and it will be up hopefully by next week when I've completed converting the website. That's 2 articles I'm promising. I'll also post up the link on the Generics on .Net Framework 2.0 presentation that I'll be doing for the SgDotNet User Group Meeting on 9th December 2004 soon enough. Wish me luck.

Oh btw, just to clear up some air, this blog is really meant to store all my findings and links and book titles so that I don't forget about it. Some place to archive everything that I've researched on, and hopefully will be beneficial for you guys. I won't be writing much on my life, so sorry about that. Basically my life does revolve around everything that's posted. Such a no-lifer huh.

I guess that ends this session. Will be posting again soon!

2004-11-23T21:51:00.000+08:00

1st lesson learn in KL.. Breast Feeding.

2004-11-23T21:50:00.000+08:00

Chye Yaw on BizTalk again

2004-11-23T21:49:00.000+08:00

Triplez again, Ever wonder how I get my nick Triplez

2004-11-23T21:48:00.000+08:00

Paladin meeting 03

2004-11-23T21:47:00.001+08:00

Tallest building, Twin Tower

2004-11-23T21:47:00.000+08:00

Paladin meeting 01

2004-11-23T21:37:00.000+08:00

How to breast feed? Educational lesson!!!

2004-11-23T21:36:00.000+08:00

Initial Crowd

2004-11-23T21:35:00.000+08:00

Chye Yaw on BizTalk

2004-11-23T21:34:00.000+08:00

After break.. Is Terk Sean yawning?

2004-11-23T21:33:00.000+08:00

Look at that amount of people.. More than our Nov UG..

2004-11-23T21:32:00.001+08:00

Triplez again.

2004-11-23T21:32:00.000+08:00

Fook Hwei on SQL Server CE

2004-11-23T21:30:00.000+08:00

Paladin meeting 02

2004-11-23T21:29:00.000+08:00

Don't you think this look like a circuit board

2004-11-23T21:28:00.000+08:00

Sony Robot