World of .NET

The World of .NET covers practical .NET enterprise application development.

Episode #11 - Visual Studio Visualizers
Published 11/04/2009 12:15 by jessyhoule

TECHNICAL SEGMENT - Visual Studio Visualizers

In this segment, we discuss Visual Studio Visualizers, a dialog box or other interface to display appropriate types in a meaningful way.

Default visualizers

Out of the box, Visual Studio provides the following visualizers:
- Text
- HTML
- XML visualizer
- Dataset visualizer (Dataset, DataTable and DataView objects.)

3rd party visualizers

Some useful 3rd party visualizers include Mole, Xml Visualizer, and Zeta Color Visualizer

To deploy/install 3rd party visualizers, copy the .DLL(s) to one of the following directories:
\Install path\Microsoft Visual Studio 9\Common7\Packages\Debugger\Visualizers\
—or—
\My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Visualizers\

DEV TIP - Debug Types

Although the ASP.NET worker process (aspnet_wp.exe) defaults to Automatic: T-SQL code, Managed code debug types, you can change or add to the debug types by simply clicking on the [Select] button when attaching to the process. A handy usage would be debugging script.

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Practical MVC Webcast Promo
Published 10/07/2009 17:17 by jessyhoule

MSDN Webcast: BenkoTips Live and On Demand: Practical MVC with Jessy Houle (Level 200)

Please join Mike Benkovich, of Microsoft, and myself as we discuss Practical MVC on BenkoTips Live.

For more information and to register online, go to http://www.tinyurl.com/practicalmvcpresentation

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Episode #10 - jQuery
Published 09/21/2009 02:41 by jessyhoule

TECHNICAL SEGMENT –  jQuery

In this segment, we discuss jQuery, a JavaScript library with Microsoft backing, integrated into MVC and VS 2010.

jQuery and Visual Studio 2008:

To get up and running with jQuery, including IntelliSense, you need to first apply a Service Pack and also include a vsdoc JavaScript file that provides method/property/parameter information.

KB958502 - JScript Editor support for “-vsdoc.js” IntelliSense doc
Latest jQuery and vsdoc files
More information surrounding the vsdoc fix
Learning jQuery
jQuery Reference

TOOL TIP

Glimmer - Wizard style jQuery code generation for image sequencing, drop down menus, and animation.

DEV TIP

Coupling at the assembly level
The higher the coupling is, the more painful maintaining your application will be.

Metrics:
Afferent coupling - types that depend on your assebly
Efferent coupling - types inside your assembly that depend on outside assemblies

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Episode #9 - Inversion of Control
Published 06/25/2009 18:43 by jeffreydiercks

TECHNICAL SEGMENT –  Inversion of Control

In this segment, we discuss Inversion of Control / Dependency Injection with an IoC tool. During the conversation, mention was made of Bob Martin’s SOLID principles, which include the Dependency Inversion Principle (pdf).

Some IoC tools:
StructureMap
Castle Windsor
Microsoft Unity
Ninject

DEV TIP

We discuss a practice of class design which is to either provide an interface for a class or mark all public members as virtual. By following this practice by default, we can provide extensibility to our application. This can facilitate many pattern implementations and mock/stub testing frameworks.

TOOL TIP

ProcessExplorer and FileMon from the Windows SysInternals suite. While these tools aren’t necessarily targeted at developers, they’re great in troubleshooting situations.

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Episode #8
Published 06/07/2009 13:13 by jeffdiercks

TECHNICAL SEGMENT – Server Controls

We discussed several aspects of creating ASP.NET Web Forms server controls. We also mentioned that using .NET Reflector to examine Microsoft-provided server controls is a great way to see how they are constructed.

MSDN link on creating custom server controls:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa530982.aspx

MSDN link describing all the metadata attributes for custom server controls:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178658.aspx

DEV TIP

Treat Visual Studio compiler warnings as compiler errors – fix them before check-in.

TOOL TIP

Stack Overflow – a great site for getting answers to any of your programming questions.

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About the authors

Jeff Diercks Photo
Jeff Diercks
Jeff Diercks is a consultant for ILM Professional Services. He is a developer, architect and MCSD who has been designing and developing business systems over 10 years. Jeff has fully embraced his nerdiness, and likes to spend his spare time keeping up to date with the latest machinations emanating from the alt.net community and battling monsters with his druidic night elf in World of Warcraft.
Jessy Houle Photo
Jessy Houle
Jessy Houle is an independent consultant representing Minnesota. He is a web developer, and MCSD (C# track), loves long romantic nights where he dabbles at the nuts and bolts level of programming. Jessy loves the front-end, most specifically Silverlight, and finally loves to tease Jeff about playing video games :-)
Vince Bullinger Photo
Vince Bullinger
Vince Bullinger is a .Net developer at Explore Information Services with five years of experience as a developer and consultant in such diverse fields as insurance, health care, custom content management systems and e-commerce, among others. He is a Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer. He's the treasurer of TechMasters, an IT-based ToastMasters chapter. In his spare time, he pays too much attention to sports and can frequently be found at the Silverlight User Group, the .Net User Group, Developer's Guild, Code Camp and any worthwhile conference that comes to town.

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Disclaimer

The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in anyway.