.NET DAD

March is Mine.

Rajeev Gopalakrishnan — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 21:46:00 GMT

I am going to speak about Themes and Skins in ASP.NET 2.0 in our local .NET user's group (www.central-penn.net) on the third Tuesday of March (21st of March, that is). I have been looking forward to this for a long time. With my busy schedule recently, I have not had enough time to dig deeply into VS2005 and ASP.NET 2.0. And this would give me an excuse to do so.

.NET DAD MEETS .NET DUDE!

Rajeev Gopalakrishnan — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 19:03:00 GMT

Oh Yeah!

It was Miguel Castro at our local user group meeting (www.central-penn.net), speaking about building
Web Controls.

It was indeed an interesting session, with Miguel. He was really prepared and was really active. Most of the members in our group are either beginners or are getting into .NET.

As Miguel told (or complained) that building web controls are an area which most developers (or the powers-to-be, for that matter) do not like to swim in. I get complains from fellow developers around of how the DataGrid or LisBox do not give them what they need. Well, if they could see them as just templates rather than a fully blown product for them to use, they could really take the advantage of extending the functionality. My favourite quote - "No one can make the whole world happy. Not even Microsoft." But it does make our life easier. With passion and courage, Miguel showed us that extending the functionality of the existing controls or building a new one from the scratch is not that hard and cumbersome as we think it is.

The most important (and confusing) area is State Management. I got lost in that area and got my doubts cleared with Miguel after the session.

We are really proud for having Miguel with us.

Three Cheers to Miguel.
Three Cheers to Judy.

ADA Compliancy and Windows Applications

Rajeev Gopalakrishnan — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 17:36:00 GMT

Well, I have been developing web applications for about 6-7 years now. ADA compliancy struck my day to day life during the last project I worked, for Department of Public Welfare, called HCSIS (Home and Community Services Information System). It is one of the best projects I have worked on. I have a special place for this project in me, as it is an application which has changed more lives.

Back to what I intend to talk about - ADA. For the uninitiated, ADA stands for American Disability Act. As a law, all government web sites (take a note) should be ADA compliant. I said web sites, didn't I? Why didn't I say “all goverment applications“?

I am currently designing and developing two versions of the application for the Department of State (of PA). One is the Web Application piece and the other is the Windows application piece. The Web application is already ADA compliant, as we have all the standards and guidelines and tools in place to test the same. I have been searching for ADA guidlines for Windows applications, but did not reach anywhere.

If any of you have any leads towards this, I would appreciate you sending me the same.

UPDATE

I was looking for this.

http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/software-tutorial.htm

I had posted a question in Joel on Software. And one answered. Thanks a lot, friend.

Generics

Rajeev Gopalakrishnan — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 19:43:00 GMT

A very good and descriptive article on Generics:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dndotnet/html/Fundamentals.asp#fundamentals_topic1

Move In

Rajeev Gopalakrishnan — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 20:40:00 GMT

Considering myself as a geek in .NET, I am moving in as a part of geekswithblog community. Eventually, I would be moving all my blog entries (at least the important ones) in here from my original and first blog repository.

A Click of a Nightmare

Rajeev Gopalakrishnan — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 20:45:00 GMT

One of my colleagues came to me with a problem: He wanted to make the click event of button in his form to be activated when anyone pressed ENTER key. I said it works by default and it needs no tweaking. To my surprise, he showed me that it is not.

Then I went back to the form that I had developed and showed him that I did no extra coding to make it work. The click event just got raised when I hit the ENTER key. He was surprised too.

It would have been easy to implement his requirement with some JavaScript programming, but I wanted to find out the reason behind this contradictory behavior. The only difference between my form and his was that mine had more than one input controls (such as textbox and dropdownlists) and his had only one textbox. Well, after going through a lot of sane thoughts, I did one last insane activity: I added one more textbox control to his form. And it all worked: the click event got raised at the hit of the ENTER key.

UPDATE

When contacted, Scott Mitchell, whom I consider a GURU in .NET, was grateful enough to cook up an article addressing this issue.

One Hell of an Error!!!

Rajeev Gopalakrishnan — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 22:18:00 GMT

Oh...Ya! I am frustrated!!! No, No, not with my boss :-)

My home computer got some wild adwares, that is causing me not to open any applications! The x732e7800 error! &^@%#&^%@! I spend almost half of my Sunday trying to fix it... downloading some antivirus and antispyware stuff. One thing I downloaded and used was EWIDO Security Suite. It caught almost 600 (you bet!) adwares! But still the error would not disappear. Then I googled today morning and Karen had the same problem couple days ago! I mailed her and she said to try RegistryFix. Will try this evening.

The hard disk of my office computer crashed today morning!

(Yeah, how about a double hit on the face!!!)

UPDATE

I ran CCleaner and it cleaned my registry. Now I am back to business. These adwares!!!

A new venture!

Rajeev Gopalakrishnan — Wed, 07 Sep 2005 16:51:00 GMT

I might sound too excited, but it is true. Every new project is a venture for me. I get always excited and motivated with every challenge; however small it be. Beginning next Monday, I would be on a new venture (:-)) with a different client. The role is as a Technical Architect Specialist. I think this would let me see the project(s) in a more mature angle and I would have a different perspective.

MSEL Issue

Rajeev Gopalakrishnan — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 21:04:00 GMT

Well, I did not intend to term that as an ISSUE, but, it was for me. I used to work with DAAB well for some time. It was like heaven. When I installed MSEL (the Enterprise Library), the problems started crawling in. Well, 4guysfromrolla was my bible for installing and start working on the MSEL. I read through the highlighted area about the Instrumention feature, but didnt care to do install the performance counters (Hell, I did not need them anyways for now.).

Can I conclude that without ever installing the performance counters, do not expect the MSEL to work as expected? I will try to explain the actual problem....there are deadlines disturbing my sleep :-(

Take my point though : INSTALL THE PERFORMANCE COUNTERS, even if you do not need them.

The Perils of installing VS2005 Beta

Rajeev Gopalakrishnan — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 17:01:00 GMT

When I got my DELL computer on 2002 spring, it was the state-of-the-art machine. Now, no one would even take it for a donation.

Well, that's how technology works, right?

That's not the point of the post, though. This is the pain I took for installing VS2005 Beta into my machine. I recieved the BETA DVD from my local .NET User Group and also from Microsoft directly. When you try to install VS2005, it also installs Windows Installer 3.0. That's where I got burned. It wouldn't install Windows Installer 3.0 on my machine. Dont know why, it just wouldn't! Then I started working on getting it installed seperately. All the links from Google or Microsoft took me to the download page for the Installer 3.0 for XP. I sometimes really feel left alone for using Win2K now, as MS is really pampering XP.

Somehow I found what I wanted (for the Win2K Professional). And lo, the VS2005 DVD detected the Installer 3.0 and passed its own installation. Everything ended well and I am on my trial run with the Whidbey!

The Phili event for VS2005 launch

Rajeev Gopalakrishnan — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 22:56:00 GMT

I am already registered for the VS2005 Launch at Philadelphia on November 17th. If you are coming and would like to meet me, drop me a line through this blog.

Are Best Practices only for those who code?

Rajeev Gopalakrishnan — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 13:10:00 GMT

Are they? The best practices for .NET tells us not to use Hungarian Notation. The books that should apply this ethics and relay this to the world are showing reluctance, it seems.

Just browse through one of your text books and see for yourselves....

Can you teach me .NET?

Rajeev Gopalakrishnan — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 00:47:00 GMT

He asked. And I said yes!

With having immense experience as a visiting faculty in my TCS years, I knew (As Tommy Lee Jones says, “100 years back man KNEW that earth was flat!”) that it would be a piece of cake.

I was wrong (again!).

These friends of mine (2 others joined later) come from a very different background. Mainframes!

So, the question was WHERE WOULD I START? I can go on for hours blabbering HTML, or talk OO concepts and dive into Design Patterns. Even though HTML and OO concepts are necessary for a beginner in .NET, it was not practical enough.

Here is what I did:

1. Told them to study HTML on their own.

2. Gave a brief introduction on OO concepts.

3. Did not talk any thing about Design patterns (I did something right!)

4. Gave a brief introduction on ASP.

5. Explained why, what and how of .NET in general.

I could see their head spin. Mine would too if some one did this to me (He wouldn't be alive to see my head spin :-)).

But all went well (I think), and the day rested.

The second day is coming and I feel like a kid. Again :WHERE DO I START?

CODE CAMP IN HARRISBURG

Rajeev Gopalakrishnan — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 23:24:00 GMT

Code Camp is coming to Harrisburg. And the Central Penn .NET User Group is bringing it. Oh, I have been telling this to my friends for months! This is one of the wonderful things ever happened to the city. There were MSDN events for some time and it died again. I understand that MSDN events would not pull in the crowd akin to San Francisco..., but hey, we deserve it!

To know more about what the Code Camp is all about, visit http://www.central-penn.net.

CEO Steve Balmer's Keynote speach

Rajeev Gopalakrishnan — Thu, 10 Nov 2005 17:09:00 GMT

Watch Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer's Keynote speach at the VS2005 READY TO ROCK Launch Event.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/applicationplatform/launch2005/default.mspx