Peter Henry's TechTidBits (Blog)

Author:	Peter Henry	Created:	Wednesday, August 06, 2008 11:25 PM
Providing technical information from a slight slanted standpoint.

"Unable to start debugging on the web server" messages from Visual Studio

By Peter Henry on Tuesday, October 28, 2008 10:35 PM

Have you seen this message before but have NO clue how to fix it? I have a few of the common links here, AS WELL as one which actually fixed the problem I was having, which you might be having too and can't seem to find the answer.

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Senior Developers/Architects should be teachers

By Peter Henry on Monday, October 27, 2008 10:17 PM

Have you ever asked a senior developer for help? What did they do? Were they actually helpful or did they just talk over your head?

I think to climb the corporate ladder, "teaching" should be a mandatory skill! Unfortunately not too many companies value teaching as an asset.

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Premature Optimization

By Peter Henry on Tuesday, October 21, 2008 11:58 AM

As developers, we've been asked to "rework" pieces of code/sql to optimize it. But have you ever questioned WHY? Still forced to optimize eh? Seems like you've been stung with Premature Optimization.

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Mapping between .NET CLR types and SQL Server types

By Peter Henry on Friday, October 17, 2008 9:56 AM

Every once in a while I want to know how the CLR datatypes map up to the SQL Server data types and I can never remember the link. Well, here it is.

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Generics, and searching for a needle in the haystack

By Peter Henry on Thursday, October 16, 2008 9:21 PM

I've been using Generics for a little while now (List<Team> = new List<Team>()); and I'm liking them quite a bit. I LOVE the strong typing it gives me, It's ALWAYS better to find bugs at compile time than at runtime. But I always forget the predicate syntax for anonymous methods. So here it is for all posterity.

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SQL Server access resultings in a Page Not Found error in IIS but works perfectly on Vista?

By Peter Henry on Friday, October 10, 2008 12:30 AM

Using a GridView with ObjectDataSource or SqlDataSource, parameter setting results in Page Not Found error in IIS but works perfectly on Vista?

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Frustrated using the Tabs at the top of Visual Studio after opening files?

By Peter Henry on Thursday, October 09, 2008 8:07 PM

I read today on Sara Ford's blog a VS trick about forcing VS to put the MRU file opened on the far left.

As you open up files for viewing/editing, they're added to the tabs to the right of the current one. Well after opening a few, ok, more than a few, they start to drop off out of view! :< It can be frustrating cause chances are the files you're looking at only once in a while are already in your face on the left, but the ones you REALLY want are gone! Sara's got a fantastic registry trick to fix that! The trick forces all the most recently used (MRU) files to the far left, therefore the more recent the file is, the further to the left it is.

If you just want the reg key, here it is.

Under the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0 key, you can create a DWORD UseMRUDocOrdering = 1

If you want more details, please visit Sara's blog.

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Using the SiteMaps with Role security and STILL seeing menu/tree nodes? hint: google web.config, AspXmlSiteMapProvider and securityTrimmingEnabled

By Peter Henry on Wednesday, October 08, 2008 11:08 PM

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T-SQL Date Manipulation

By Peter Henry on Monday, October 06, 2008 7:50 PM

Have you ever wanted to get the Date part of a DateTime field in SQL Server? What about the Time part? What about the different formats available to you? You might know you need to use Cast/Convert, DateAdd, DatePart or DateDiff but who can remember their parameters? What about the order of the parameters? Oh you can? Good for you, here's your hero biscuit, for the rest of us, there's this link. :>

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Using the MS PasswordRecovery object and getting an SMTP Server authentication connection error, server response was 5.7.0, must issue a STARTTLS command first?

By Peter Henry on Saturday, September 27, 2008 2:00 PM

Are you getting this error message?

The SMTP server requires a secure connection or the client was not authenticated. The server response was: 5.7.0 Must issue a STARTTLS command first. 9sm3590188qbw.6

Exception Details: System.Net.Mail.SmtpException: The SMTP server requires a secure connection or the client was not authenticated. The server response was: 5.7.0 Must issue a STARTTLS command first. 9sm3590188qbw.6

Are you using the Microsoft.NET PasswordRecover object and the LocalServer connection string in web.config? Are you using Google's smtp servers as well? Well, THERE'S your problem (taken from Adam Savage's quote).&l Read More »

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VS Tips'n'Tricks: Clipboard Ring

By Peter Henry on Wednesday, September 24, 2008 8:40 PM

Did you just cut'n'paste something to the clipboard but thought DANG! I wanted that other thing that was there before! :< Oh man, it's lost now. Have no fear, it's not lost! Introducing the Clipboard Ring!

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Creating WebControls and VS designer bug about not being able to set a property

By Peter Henry on Tuesday, September 23, 2008 11:18 PM

I'm working through creating WebControls and got a funky bug tonight (read that as it smelled realy bad) but I couldn't figure out what was going on. Turns out I tripped onto a bug with VS08.

If you are seeing the error below, then you're dealing with a VS08 bug and not a coding error (well, at least not YOUR coding error :>).

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How do you bake constants into your code?

By Peter Henry on Sunday, September 21, 2008 3:03 PM

Do you use magic number/strings in your code? Shame on you! Do you use constants or read only variables, KUDOS to you! But do you know the difference between a const and a readonly variable? Read on for some insights into their differences.

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Are you trying to use Templated User Controls and getting missing using directive or assembly errors?

By Peter Henry on Thursday, September 18, 2008 10:34 PM

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Are you a member of the ODNC 70-528 Web Study Group?

By Peter Henry on Wednesday, September 17, 2008 8:43 PM

If you are a member of the ODNC 70-528 Web Study Group, then you'll be interested in a new website I'm working on.

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You can create a Web User Control, but can you hide it now?

By Peter Henry on Tuesday, September 16, 2008 10:46 PM

Have you ever had to create a web User Control and dynamically show/hide stuff in it? Have you had issues with it? I have the solution here, and it's easier than you think! :>

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How do you ///todo?

By Peter Henry on Thursday, September 11, 2008 8:44 PM

From yesterday's blog, I hope you noticed I'm a fan of the ///todo tag! I raised one caveat, you cannot see all your solution's or project's ///todo tags for unopened files. So how can you fix this you ask? Great question! It's actually quite simple, but you'll need to get your hands dirty with a bit of code. We're all code-heads here right? So this shouldn't be too foreign?! Let's dive in!

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///todo - If you can see this then you're too close

By Peter Henry on Wednesday, September 10, 2008 10:32 PM

Hopefully you've all heard of XP, Agile, TDD, BDD, but have you heard of ///TODO Management? If you're using Visual Studio, have you see the ///todo tag in action?

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A picture's worth a thousand words!

By Peter Henry on Sunday, September 07, 2008 8:04 PM

How do you grab a screen capture? Do you hit the PrtScn button and then copy/paste it into Paint? Or do you have some expensive (read as you paid for) tool? I used to use SnagIt! as my screen cap tool, it was AWESOME! But with Vista, there is a new kid on the blog, sorry, block! Introducing, the Vista Snipping tool.

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What is RSS?

By Peter Henry on Thursday, August 28, 2008 9:05 PM

Have you heard of RSS but don't really know what it is? You've heard other's talk about getting updates via RSS or maybe reading blogs over RSS, but what IS RSS? Read further to get a solid foundation of what Realy Simple Syndication is all about.

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Have you ever had a boss like this?

By Peter Henry on Thursday, August 28, 2008 9:03 PM

A picture is worth a thousand words right? So I'll take this opportunity to shut up and let the picture speak for itself. Has anyone else had a boss like this?

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WTF: why do we need/want another tool for WPF dev?

By Peter Henry on Thursday, August 28, 2008 12:48 PM

With the introduction of Microsoft's next generation smart client called Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), they also introduced some news tools. YAHOO! But is it really that exciting to find out you actually have to do more work than you used to with WinForms. WTF?

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Series: Coding Contentions: Constructor Chaining, do you go up or down?

By Peter Henry on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 8:54 PM

If you are reading this blog, hopefully you're into C# and therefore OOP. I would hope you've heard of constructors, but have you heard of Constructor Chaining? It's the process of keeping your code DRY by having one constructor method calling another. There are two ways to do it, general to specific (forward, down) or the other way around, specific to general (backwards, up the object hierarchy tree). Both have their benefits and draw backs.

Slang for this is daisy chaining your constructors.

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Series: Coding Contentions: Data Types, are you native?

By Peter Henry on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 3:25 PM

When you're coding, do you use Int32 or int? So you use String or string? When it comes time to picking your datatypes do you use the native .NET type or the language specific types?

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Series: Coding Contentions: How do you return?

By Peter Henry on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 1:32 PM

As you're processing a method, how do you return back to the calling method? Do you have multiple returns in your logic or just have one at the end of the method?

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Series: Coding Contentions: Naming Conventions

By Peter Henry on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 9:03 AM

I would like to start a series (nope, don't know how many installments yet :>) on coding better. The first installment/chapter will be on Naming Conventions.

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Testing for types using "is" and "as" operators

By Peter Henry on Thursday, August 21, 2008 11:40 PM

Ever find yourself trying to figure out what sender is in an event handler? Have you resorted to using String comparisons thinking there has to be a better way? Well, there is!

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Save Development Time With These Visual Studio Keyboard Shortcuts

By Peter Henry on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 11:27 PM

Here are some of my favourite Visual Studio keyboard shortcuts I use to save coding time. Anything that helps me keep thinking about what I want to do instead of thinking how I want to do it, is awesome IMHO.

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