Skip navigation.

Web talk

April 2006

Tightening View State Belt

Looks like the SOBs who mount view state attacks read this blog too. Good. I want them to know I’m watching them and see their attempts to wise up. Read this blog post

4/30/2006  | Discuss this postNo comments yet  |  No TrackBacks

Search Alive Again

My apologies for the search outage. Just when I was about to send a bug report via the MSN Search blog, I noticed everything was back to normal. Ironically, their blog is quiet on this matter, as if nothing happened. Or, perhaps, so few people use their SOAP web service that nobody gave much damn. Go figure. Read this blog post

4/30/2006  | Discuss this postNo comments yet  |  No TrackBacks

Business-As-Usual Now Closed

A couple of valuable thoughts from The Cluetrain Manifesto which you can now read online for free. Read this blog post

4/30/2006  | Discuss this postNo comments yet  |  No TrackBacks

Initialize Page Titles from Site Map

The first time I saw a site map in ASP.NET 2.0, I thought, I wonder if page titles can be synchronized with corresponding nodes automatically. Even if it’s not possible "out-of-the-box", it’s easy enough to amend. Read this blog post

4/28/2006  | Discuss this post2 comments  |  No TrackBacks

More on URL Rebasing in Master Pages

Master pages are strange beasts. Scott Guthrie hinted earlier that there was no need for my BaseURL property to assist with proper linking to external CSS and JavaScript files. The runtime does its magic by adjusting URLs in the page head. However, it appears, the magic misfires at times. Read this blog post

4/23/2006  | Discuss this post6 comments  |  No TrackBacks

Free Apress Book On Web Services

In a recent newsletter, Apress offered an interesting book for free. The title is Google, Amazon, and Beyond: Creating and Consuming Web Services which you can download as a PDF. Read this blog post

4/22/2006  | Discuss this post3 comments  |  No TrackBacks

Every Developer a Copywriter

There’s an article by Erin Kissane at A List Apart which appeals to me in more ways than one. Take a minute to read Attack of the Zombie Copy. Erin explains, in brief terms, how to deal with incomprehensible language only nerds and engineers can understand. You see this language everywhere: web sites, user interfaces, mission statements, marketing slicks, etc. Read this blog post

4/17/2006  | Discuss this postNo comments yet  |  No TrackBacks

Peter Drucker on Systematic Innovation

I’m reading Innovation and Entrepreneurship by Peter Drucker and I’m simply fascinated by this book. I’d like to share an excerpt many of you might find interesting. See how his advice applies perfectly to our days of wasteful acquisitions, speculations about emerging “billion-dollar industries” and the like. Read this blog post

4/12/2006  | Discuss this post2 comments  |  No TrackBacks

Search Is Down

Some two months ago I decided to power the search on this site by the MSN web service. It was all nice and rosy until two weeks ago when their web service simply quit on me. I’ve been receiving a ton of exceptions from their codegen’ed proxy and I can’t figure out what’s going on. Does anyone know what’s happening? Read this blog post

4/12/2006  | Discuss this post2 comments  |  No TrackBacks

What's New in Web Server Controls

If you don’t have time (or willingness) to dig around MSDN and figure out what changed between 1.x and 2.0, here’s an article for you: What’s New in Web Server Controls, courtesy of MSDN. Read this blog post

4/12/2006  | Discuss this postNo comments yet  |  No TrackBacks

How to Create a Multi-Tiered Web Application in Visual Studio 2005

When we set out to break ground with 2.0 on a recent internal project, I noticed it wasn’t obvious how to set up a multi-tiered web app in Visual Studio 2005 (I just now noticed there’s no .NET in the Visual Studio name anymore). By trial and error I did figure it out and wanted to share my step-by-step process. Read this blog post

4/11/2006  | Discuss this post5 comments  |  No TrackBacks

How to Link Stylesheets from a Master Page (Part 2)

The omnipresent Scott Guthrie has descended upon this blog to set the record straight: the header control was ordained with magical powers of URL rebasing in pre-existence! If you pull out your dusty magnifying glass and pore over Scott’s comment, note this key phrase: relative to the master page location. I guess no need to use my property hack in the head, although it comes in handy in the rest of the master page. Read this blog post

4/11/2006  | Discuss this post4 comments  |  No TrackBacks

How Much Room For Error Have You Built Into Your Business?

The other day I read Customer Satisfaction Is Worthless. Customer Loyalty is Priceless by Jeffrey Gitomer, the self-proclaimed Chief Executive Salesman, mind you (Check your library. Don’t even think about wasting money). Among the loads of crap I found a very healthy thought: Read this blog post

4/9/2006  | Discuss this postNo comments yet  |  No TrackBacks

How to Link Stylesheets from a Master Page

First off, big thanks to Scott Allen for his coverage of master pages in ASP.NET 2.0. Scott nicely summarized some common gotchas that would’ve cost me time if I wasn’t aware of them.  Read this blog post

4/9/2006  | Discuss this post23 comments  |  No TrackBacks