Dynamic Drive CSS Layouts

A great list of tableless, CSS-based page templates. They have many, many different types:

1. Two Columns
2. Three Columns
3. Fixed Columns
4. Fluid Columns
5. Fixed + Fluid Columns

http://www.dynamicdrive.com/style/layouts/

BTW, there are other goodies at their site too. Some examples include CSS Drop Shadows, CSS Tableless Form, and Curly Corner Container.

Links (10/30/2006)

.NET, C#, VB.NET

1. How to: Instantiate a class with a private constructor
2. .NET 2.0 Tip: Strongly Typing Configuration Settings
3. Dynamic Serialization vs. Xml Serialization
4. Reading data from a Text File using .NET
5. Showing a Connection String prompt in a Winforms application
6. Removing diacritics (accents) from strings
7. TrialBalance Build System (MSBuild post)
8. More on Generics and Factories in the Data Access Layer: IoC and Multiple Database Support
9. Get DataTable as HTML String in C#
10. Get DataSet as HTML String in C#

ASP.NET, Atlas, AJAX

1. Creating and writing ASP.NET 2.0 custom Configuration Sections
2. Tip/Trick: Handling Errors with the UpdatePanel control using ASP.NET AJAX
3. Client side Page Lifecycle with the UpdatePanel
4. Working MasterPage Samples
5. **** Implement Provider Design Pattern in ASP.NET
6. How to: Write controls compatible with UpdatePanel without linking to ASP.NET AJAX DLL
7. What's the deal with UpdatePanel?
8. Creating a Tag Cloud in ASP.NET
9. **** Speed up Web Services using the SoapDocumentMethod attribute
10. Management and Delegation of ASP.NET

Windows Workflow

1. Getting Started with Windows Communication Framework

Design

1. How to Make Design 2.0 (Web 2.0)

Links (10/29/2006)

.NET, C#, VB.NET

1. Neat trick with Extension Methods
2. SplitButton: an XP style dropdown split button
3. Escape characters to use reserved words as variable names in .NET
4. zeta .NET base libraries
5. Create a splash screen that runs without a message pump
6. Text parser for C#
7. Dave Donaldson gave another talk title "Power Programming with Attributes"
8. Concurrency and the impact of reusable libraries
9. Castle's ActiveRecord continues to impres (Shawn Carr)
10. A very simple .NET Model View Controller
11. SecureStrings are reversable
12. DataSet Watch 2.0
13. Automatically translate your .NET resource files with Google Translate
14. Secure TextBox Updated

ASP.NET, Atlas, AJAX

1. Creating DAL components using custom ASP.NET Build Providers and Compiler Techniques
2. Save ASP.NET View and Control State on the Server
3. Hint: Issues with calling Web Services and using Extenders in Templated/Repeater controls
4. How to create Themes in ASP.NET 2.0
5. Auto-Generating a comprehensive C# Data Access Layer (DAL)
6. Using the Microsoft Access Providers to replace the built-in SQL Server Providers
7. More on ASP.NET AJAX Web Service Proxies
8. Extending the Resource Provider Model
9. A better string control in ASP.NET
10. Dynamic cache substitution using Substitution Control
11. Search autocomplete with ASP.NET AJAX Extensions
12. Permissions for ASP.NET DB Services
13. Asynchronous Web Services in ASP.NET 2.0
14. CSS Control Adapters Update (Beta 3)
15. ListControl SelectedValue inconsistencies
16. GridView and BoundField DataFormat Strings with Dates
17. Getting data from a Web Service with Microsoft AJAX Beta
18. Persistent logins under ASP.NET 2.0
19. Thoughts on code in ASPX Pages

Delphi

1. Mixed-mode Delphi? Not for (Marco Cantu)
2. Delphi articles

Miscellaneous Software

1. How to get started with NHibernate
2. Dave Donaldson's talk on NHibernate
3. Query collections with NHibernate
4. Criticisms of SharePoint 2007
5. C# DotNetNuke
6. Top Firefox 2 config tweaks - now if I can only figure out how to have a link with a ptvw file extension (our product's file extension) open in our application instead of the only option being to save to cancel. FF 1.5 used to open.

Development/Architecture/Design/Tools

1. Pragmatic Architecture: Layering
2. 8 Golden Rules to develop and design quickly
3. Tips for becoming a more effective developer
4. Web API Design - Keep some of it simple, stupid
5. Becoming a better OO Architect: Thirteen reasons for creating a class
6. Questions to ask yourself before you write your own framework
7. 10 business reasons to use AJAX
8. 14 tips to speed up your web pages
9. Welcome the White Space: Web site design
10. Building Section 508 Compatible Applications - a webcast
11. Few CSS tricks you may not know
12. Ten more CSS tricks you may not know
13. The Complete List of Visual Studio Add-ins and Tools
14. **** The Complete List of CSS Tools
15. The Complete List of AJAX Tools
16. One cool Web Design Tool - Browsershots

ASP.NET 2.0 Web Part Books

I have been spending a significant amount of time recently learning the ASP.NET 2.0 Web Part Framework. I have been very impressed with what is offered. I could not have gotten to this point without some good resources. I have already wrote up previous posts on different web Web Part sources here and here. Tonight I am going to list some of the books I have used to learn from.

1. Professional Web Parts and Custom Controls with ASP.NET 2.0 (Peter Vogel) - This is a very good introduction book to Web Parts. It starts from the beginning and builds from there. It covers a range wide areas of subjects such as custom controls, viewstate, developer tools, adding business functionality, and advanced functionality. It covers advanced techniques such as programmatic web part connections, moving web parts, and personalization but misses some techniques such as creating custom editorparts and catalogparts. (4 / 5)
2. Professional ASP.NET 2.0 Server Control and Component Development (Shahram Khosravi) - This is an excellent book all around. The main thrust of this book is building custom controls, which will help you build Web Parts. There are a few chapters on Web Parts (4 chapters and ~170 pages). It covers introduction, developing custom web parts, editorparts, catalogparts, and webpartzones. Also covered is webpartmanager, web part communications, and data-bound web part controls. This book is definitely expert. As someone who is fairly new to .NET, I find myself bouncing between some of my other books to get a background on a subject and then return to this book for the more advanced functionality. (4.5 / 5)
3. ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts in Action: Building Dynamic Web Portals (Darren Neimke) - Darren has written a very good book on Web Parts. This book covers different areas of the Web Part framework and the author does a very good job of explaining the subject in a clear manner. Darren starts at the beginning and moves to more advanced areas. Darren also covers areas such as SharePoint, AJAX (Shahram covers building AJAX controls), and discussing other portals such as Live.com (including how to build a gadget). I did run into a few issues with the book's source code but after posting the issues on the book's forum, Darren had a fix for me within 12 hours. This book also covers some areas which I have not seen before such as splitting out the catalog into a separate web page. There are numerous functional areas discussed where I said out loud: "I didn't know it could do that!". (4.5 / 5)

My two cents: In most tech books, the source code is split out into a single project by chapter. Sometimes it is not easy following source code when the project contains multiple functionaly areas. It would be easier if a separate functional area was split out into a separate project. This opinion is not just for these three books but across most tech books I have read. Also, having database projects is sometimes frustrating. For some reason I cannot seem to get most database examples working against SQL Server Express. I get errors galore. In some cases I have been able to change the web.config to make it work but sometimes even that doesn't work. If it is a database project, I typically just try to pull out the code I am interested in. I need to find a SQL Server expert to have them get me going.

I hope to write up a few posts on different functional areas. The one functional area I have been really spending time on is communication between Web Parts. There are three types: static, declarative, and programmatic. Very nice.

Another area is building custom editorparts. I even have an example of a custom editor part communicating to another web part using the custom editorpart's Web Part as a proxy. This is used to load up controls in the custom editorpart.

Look for these posts in the coming days/weeks.

Links (10/24/2006)

.NET, C#, VB.NET

1. Nullable Types in C# 2.0
2. Optimizing Serialization in .NET (via Frans Bouma)
3. Get first and last elements in an Enum
4. How To: Execute (another class's) private methods
5. Using Predicates over Foreach in Arrays
6. Event Properties - Memory Efficient Events
7. Exception in Event Handler
8. A .NET State Machine Toolkit Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
9. A deep XmlSerializer, supporting complex classes, enumerations, structs, collections, and arrays
10. Event Accessors - "C# makes it very easy to create events on classes, simply by adding the keyword "event" to a delegate member variable declaration.However, it also allows a property-like syntax where add and remove accessors for the event can be implemented explicitly..."
11. C# Code Snippets - Charlie Calvert has some good information on code snippets

ASP.NET

1. **** Pragmatic OOP in JavaScript
2. NCache - "NCache is a clustered in-memory object cache for mission critical .NET applications. NCache also provides a highly scalable ASP.NET Clustered Session State solution for .NET applications running in server farms. Reduce expensive database trips by caching data close to your application."
3. Validate a Url using regular expressions
4. CSS Friendly ASP.NET 2.0 Control Adapter kit Beta 3 Announced - get the source here.
5. Using "debugger" to debug JavaScript
6. Dynamic Fragments in Cached Web Pages
7. Using AJAX in ASP.NET
8. Easy data access - run-time data accessor generation
9. Microsoft AJAX Library at the AJAX Experience - Brad Abrams has some good info
10. Cool UI Templating Technique to use with ASP.NET AJAX for non-UpdatePanel scenarios

Development/Design

1. Improving the Iterating Business Object
2. Why write methods when you can just describe them?

Software/Miscellaneous

1. Free Icons: FamFamFam (via Dave Donaldson)
2. Mapping Drives via Remote Desktop

Links (10/22/2006)

Happy Birthday Joe!

.NET, C#, VB.NET

1. RubyCLR
2. Splash Screens in Windows Forms
3. How to implement remote debugging in Visual Studio 2005
4. Managing state with the State Pattern
5. An Array Data Grid with sort and filter ability
6. Demo: Exec-Inline, an Add-in that executes the currently selected code, immediately
7. **** Fix: The source code editor for Visual Studio 2005 takes a long time to display characters when you edit large files in Visual Studio 2005
8. Bak2Basics: Threading: The problem of re-entrant code
9. Custom sorting with IComparable and IComparer
10. Naming variables using the variable type name
11. (Jean-Paul)'s favorite blog code highlighter
12. **** How to increase application scability using Plugin support
13. Generic DataGridView
14. dnrTV - Mark Miller on Events and Delegates - Mark made a small mistake which he clears up here.
15. Modify contents of SortedDictionary or Dictionary in foreach
16. Take advantage of the ?? operator
17. Let NHibernate be your data layer
18. C# implementation of Map with multicore support
19. IDataReader and IDataRecord
20. Give me one good reason not to mark a class public

ASP.NET, Atlas, SharePoint

1. Server-side and client-side caching in ASP.NET
2. Export a DataTable in ASP.NET
3. Maintain control state with ASP.NET
4. JavaScript management with ASP.NET
5. The Atlas UpdatePanel - webcast
6. Sending Mail with ASP.NET 2.0
7. Solving URL rewriting problems with themes and trailing slashes
8. **** Web Part Framework & SharePoint 2007 - Articles and Code and Starter Kit
9. ASP.NET AJAX Beta 1 Released - lots of stuff from Scott G.
10. Finally - ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit Released
11. Atlas Control Toolkit -> AJAX Control Toolkit Migration Guide
12. Components that use Web Services with ASP.NET AJAX v1.0 Beta
13. Managing nested GridView controls
14. Setting up a Web Service with the net Atlas Bits
15. First look and few thoughts on the Microsoft AJAX Beta - Rich Strahl's take. More MS AJAX pain.
16. Adding Master Pages to WSS v.3 Site Collections via Features
17. Custom Paging in the GridView Control
18. Static Data Helper - helper class to manage static data for dropdown lists with caching
19. Working with hierarchial information in flat relational database tables
20. Web Service calling - Microsoft AJAX Library and ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions
21. How to run Web Services and sites on the same box as SharePoint (avoiding "404 Page Not Found" errors)
22. ADO.NET Best Practices

Delphi

1. Borland Developer Studio and Internet Explorer 7

Development

1. Privacy Guidelines for Developers

Software

1. ScrewTurn Wiki
2. 25 Best Free Quality Fonts (via Jim Holmes)

Links (10/18/2006)

.NET, C#, VB.NET

1. Design Patterns 101 - At the Cincinnati .NET User Group meeting last night, Mike Levy gave a presentation on Design Patterns. You can download the presentation here.
2. "StoryTeller" - A new .NET tool for FIT test management - StoryTeller is a new tool for efficient creation and management of automated testing of .Net code with the NFit/FitNesse engine. StoryTeller is specifically created to support an Acceptance Test Driven Development strategy. All existing .Net FitNesse and NFit tests will run under StoryTeller. Features will include editing, tagging, and integration with source control, CruiseControl.Net, NAnt and/or MSBuild, and support for application versioning.
3. XML serializer library
4. Code Analysis to the rescue
5. PipeStream, a memory efficient and thread-safe stream
6. A Deque class in C#
7. Rediscovering IEnumerable<T>
8. Show user-friendly enum translations
9. Guidance Explorer - Web Edition - from the Patterns and Practices team. At least for me, it didn't work in Firefox.
10. DataSets vs. Objects
11. Bak2Basics: All about threading in .NET
12. Bak2Basics: Threading - waiting for another thread to finish

ASP.NET

1. Coding a custom ClickBehavior with Atlas
2. Caching pages and application data using SqlCacheDependency
3. Creating a Composite Web Control
4. An easy approach to displaying a Message Box in ASP.NET 2.0
5. Database Provider-based ASP.NET Membership Provider (a mouthful)
6. ASP.NET Booking Calendar User Control
7. Binding to alternate data sources
8. Implementing nested functions in C#
9. Scrollable GridView in ASP.NET 2.0
10. **** Calling Web Services Asynchronously
11. Dynamically update portions of cached web pages with post-cache substitution
12. What can aspnet_compiler.exe do for me?
13. SiteMap Macro 2.0 - updated for Web Application Projects
14. Traditional developers vs. web developers vs. CSS
15. **** Set HTML header items programmatically in ASP.NET 2.0
16. Video on Using the Atlas Dynamic Populate Control
17. Packaging ASP.NET ASPX pages into a separate assembly
18. Data Types supported by XML Web Services created using ASP.NET

Delphi

1. Creating Windows Vista-ready applications with Delphi

Software

1. Top 30 Software Engineering Practices
2. Your Development Tools - good list of tools used by a web developer
3. Google Docs, pretty cool new application - I have been using it quite a bit this week. Very nice.
4. Show Shortcut Keys in Visual Studio

More ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts Resources

You can find my previous post on Web Parts resources here.

1. Display a DropDownList in a CatalogZone
2. An EditorZone which collapses its EditorParts in ASP.NET 2.0
3. ASP.NET Web Parts Connections Tutorial
4. Another ASP.NET Web Parts Connections Tutorial
5. ASP.NET Web Parts Connections Transformers Tutorial
6. ASP.NET Web Parts CatalogPart Sample - this tutorial shows how to add web parts defined in an external Xml file. I need to look at this more though. I received compile errors when returning the WebPartDescriptionCollection (does not all 3 parameters).
7. AJAX Enabling ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts with Atlas
8. ASP.NET 2.0: Personalize your portal with User Controls and Custom Web Parts
   

Links (10/15/2006)

Hope everyone is doing well after the earthquake in Hawaii, especially two of my favorite authors Larry O'Brien (SD Times) and Rick Strahl (Code Magazine - great ASP.NET stuff).

.NET, C#, VB.NET

1. InRule.NET - Jim Holmes has recommended this rule engine.
2. Questions you should ask before using a callback/delegate
3. Introducting Perf+, A better perfmon - written by Roy Osherove
4. How to change screen resolution in C#
5. Monitor internet connection state
6. **** The .NET file format
7. **** A Textbox with Outlook 2007-style prompt
8. Security tips for temporary file usage in applications
9. RegexToXml regular expression to XML converter
10. Concepts behind the C# 3.0 language
11. Framing the framework conversation - notes and additional links on application framework design
12. Free E-Learning: Using .NET Framework 3.0 with Visual Studio 2005

ASP.NET, Atlas

1. Creating a Composite Web Control - new base class in ASP.NET 2.0
2. Another Simple Wait Page
3. How to return a user defined object from a Web Service
4. URL Mapping in ASP.NET 2.0
5. HttpWatch
6. Call a Web Service using Atlas
7. **** Zero to Professional Web Site in Two Days using Microsoft's Visual Studio Design Templates
8. Property overriding the Width property of Web Control?
9. ASP.NET 2.0 - Investigating .NET exceptions with WinDbg (Compilation and Load Exceptions)
10. LosFormatter for easy Serialization
11. Reading Xml fast
12. **** Creating a Project Status Dashboard using ASP.NET
13. Creating a custom Extender control with Atlas Control Toolkit
14. Decreasing load time of web pages (via Jason Haley)
15. Call a Web Service with ASP.NET AJAX without writing client-side scripts
16. Http troubleshooting tools (via Jason Haley)
17. **** Application Domains in .NET
18. Book Store application using ASP.NET - always good to see application code samples
19. User confirmation before deleting items in ASP.NET 2.0
20. Custom AutoCompleteExtender with multiple word suggestions
21. DropDownList and ListBox ASP.NET controls with autosearch and popup tooltip
22. Preventing Multiple Logins in ASP.NET

Delphi

1. The alternative Delphi roadmap to success - Simon Kissel has a written an open letter to the Borland/Delphi community which is receiving lots of attention.

ORM

1. ORM vs. your own DAL with everything in Stored Procedures - lots of links on ActiveRecord
2. Peter Bell has tons of posts on ORM

Links (10/11/2006)

.NET, C#, VB.NET

1. GetWeekNum - code snippet to get the week number
2. Adding a custom control to a ToolStripDrownDownButton
3. A fast equivalent for System.Random
4. An Aqua Button Control Written in C#
5. Multithreading Example
6. Create a simple hourglass/wait dialog
7. Generic Enum to List convertor (C#)
8. DataView for objects: Implementation Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5
   
9. Friend Assembly - make internal type visible to other assemblies
10. Difference between a Struct and Class
11. **** Optimizing C# String Performance

ASP.NET, Atlas

1. Creating and using your own events
2. Asynchronous ASP.NET 2.0 Page Processing
3. Check if Url is Available - code snippet
4. Tables vs. CSS for layout of web forms
5. Layouting Formview without tables and use CSS
6. Atlas Extender Crash Course - Part 1: Introduction Part 2: Page Methods
7. Embedding XMLs in Assembly as resources
8. .NET Framework 2.0 System.Web.Dll Security Update
9. Themes vs. Cascading Style Sheets
10. Usage of <%@ Reference> Directive - "...wanted to access another user control on the page from another user control..."
11. **** It's good to be a control freak - Mads has good information on creating custom controls. Nice and clean. Always looking for good examples from smart folks.

"Live From Redmond" Webcasts

Microsoft is putting together another series of webcasts. This series covers Smart Clients and Web. I missed the first series - in the process of downloading the on-demand webcasts.

Link

Mike Wood's Take on Patterns and Practices Summit

Mike Wood has put together many posts on different sessions on the Patterns and Practices Summit West 2006. Good stuff!

Link

Links (10/10/2006)

.NET, C#, VB.NET

1. C# 2.0 Test Driven Development
2. .NET 3.0 Crash Course - Rob Eisenberg has put together a good introduction. Part 1: Introduction, Part 2: WPF Intro, Part 3: Down and Dirty with Xaml, Part 4: WPF Layout
3. Free code translation tool (C# <-> VB.NET)
4. Measuring Time More Accurately - using the StopWatch class
5. Free C# Book - Salman Ahmed has put together a free C# Book.
6. Design Guidelines and Patterns and Practices Summit. Brad Abrams gave the keynote today. You can get the slides here. Mike Wood is also there and promises some summary posts.
7. Who wins in finally vs. return?
8. How do I send out simple debug messages to help with my debugging?
9. How can I easily log a message to a file for debugging purposes?

ASP.NET

1. CSSVista - CSSVista is a free Windows application for web developers which lets you edit your CSS code live in both Internet Explorer and Firefox simultaneously. (via Shawn Carr)
2. Creating a form using Placeholder Controls
3. Examine XML of Web Service Response
4. Fixing Overlaying Layer with Dropdown in IE
5. One click button control - avoid users clicking twice on submit button
6. ** Add variables to standard CSS stylesheets in ASP.NET
7. Recycling an ASP.NET application from within

Google Code Search and ConnectionStrings - Security Issue?

Shawn Carr was kind enough to email me today to let me know about a potential security issue with Google Code Search and ConnectionStrings. In Shawn's post, he shows how easy it is to search using Google Code Search on real working connection strings. Something to be aware of.

Thanks Shawn.

Link

Links (10/8/2006)

.NET, C#, VB.NET

1. A class to dynamically create delegates of functions at runtime
2. Passing parameters to C# Windows Services
3. Simple integration with SimpleInt
4. How to create a user defined collection
5. Add item to binded combo box
6. Using generics and anonymous delegates to populate a drop down list from a dictionary
7. Working with normal and static constructor in C# 2.0

ASP.NET

1. CSS Tools
2. Writing Custom Editors for Web Parts
3. Web User Control in ASP.NET in AJAX
4. Database factory using C# generics
5. Error Logging Modules & Handlers (ELMAH) - great review here
6. How to invoke a web service method declaratively with Atlas
7. Solution to Firefox port problem - Mads has some good advice on solving the "This address uses a network port which is normally used for purposes other than Web browsing. Firefox has cancelled the request for your protection." error.

Links (10/5/2006)

.NET, C#, VB.NET

1. CABpedia - Community site for Composite UI Application Block (via The Daily Grind)
2. Taskman, a powerful GUI-based scripting application - "An application that lets you write small programs or scripts to perform a list of tasks. Your script is created entirely within a drag and drop interface."
3. Bind better with INotifyPropertyChanged
4. Static keywork demystified
5. Creating and using Custom Collection Enumerations
6. Data Binding a Business Object to a UI Control (Text Box)
7. C# static readonly vs constant variables: when to use each
8. Introduction to XAML
9. Moving data between tiers

ASP.NET

1. Floating annotation for web-based applications - post-it notes
2. Formatting data in columns with ASP.NET's DataList control
3. Encrypting Connection Strings in ASP.NET 2.0
4. **** (Billy McCafferty)'s Default ASP.NET Architecture
5. Data Binding to Methods in ASP.NET
6. Share User Controls between applications in ASP.NET

Delphi

1. Delphi for .NET namespaces misunderstood? - Nick Hodges has some thoughts too.
2. Fourteen reasons why you should upgrade to BDS2006 - we have BDS2006 Pro in-house but still currently do all development in Delphi 7. Although I would love to upgrade, the two main reasons we haven't upgraded is comfort (Delphi 7 works for us and we are comfortable with it) and the cost and hassle of upgrading our 3rd party components to BDS2006.

Development

1. **** Google Code Search - looks interesting

Links (10/4/2006)

.NET, C#, VB.NET

1. **** Asynchronous Code Blocks
2. **** System.Timezone2 Starter Guide
3. DataGrid with built-in filter functionality
4. Anonymous Methods
5. Two handy tips for coding Windows Services
6. Predicates in C#
7. Specifying Authorization Rules for the Business Logic or Data Access Layers (BLL/DAL)
8. Adding Authorization Rules to Business and Data Layers using PrinciplePermissionAttributes
9. C# Generic Documentation Comment

ASP.NET, Atlas

1. Cross Page Postback in ASP.NET 2.0
2. Open Source Draggable ASP.NET Controls - very cool set of controls from Rob Walling of Microsoft.
3. Add a MicroSummary to any ASP.NET page
4. **** Debugging Failed because Authentifcation is not enabled - good tips on debugging in VS 2005 using IIS
5. Building ASP.NET 2.0 Web Sites using Web Standards
6. ASP.NET 2.0 Wizard Control
7. Model View Presenter mutated: Observable View
8. Atlas Extender Crash Course - Part 1: An Introduction
   

Microsoft

1. MSDN Nuggets - "Don't have the time to read a 10-page how-to article or watch a full length webcast? Try an MSDN Nugget, a webcast that takes you step-by-step to discovering new functionality or exploring a hot developer topic, all in 10-15 minutes. View them online now or download for later reference."

Delphi

1. The Tomes of Delphi: Algorithms and Data Structures - Julian Bucknall's book is now on sale on Lulu. Since I'm a tech book whore, I bought it when it was in print years ago. Well worth the read.
   

Links (10/1/2006)

.NET, C#, VB.NET

1. MSN Search Service
2. Top 10 Security Vulnerabilities in .NET Configuration Files
3. **** Write Faster Managed Code: Know What Things Cost
4. throw; vs. throw ex; Here's the difference
5. Annotating your code with simple tests
6. What should you dispose when using ADO.NET
7. Customizable Error Providers
8. Simple Password Manager using System.Security
9. Cabinet File (*.CAB) Compression and Extraction
10. The Backside of Exceptions - "illustrates the risks of exceptions being thrown where it is generally not expected, e.g., a library function or a finally block, and shows ways to prevent some insidious errors (such as inconsistency of program data or loss of exception information)" - Idea of the Clean Result - continuation of the previous article.
11. Operator overloading with generics - using inheritance to allow use of C# operators

ASP.NET

1. ASP.NET 2.0 WebPartChrome
2. Spreadsheets in ASP.NET
3. Creating a Password-Checking function
4. Fundamentals of SharePoint Web Parts (Part II, Deployment Methods)
5. ASP.NET / AJAX Page Loader Progress Bar / Splash Screen
6. XML membership provider for ASP.NET 2.0
7. Searching in a GridView control
8. GridView Property EnableSortingAndPagingCallbacks

Design, User Interfaces

1. My gameplan for starting a new project from scratch - Jeremy Miller's take

Xbox360

1. Xbox360 Resolution Upgrade to 1080p - Looks like a software update will be availabe later this year. Nice!

ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts Resources

I have been working on creating a prototype using the ASP.NET 2.0 Portal Framework (Web Parts). Below is a list of links I have found during my research. These links are more of the advanced. I'll be updating this as I find more links.

1. Copy and Paste Web Parts (ASP.NET 2.0 Portal Framework)
2. Drag and drop ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts in Firefox with Atlas
3. Completely Dynamic Web Parts with drag-drop & Atlas functionality
   
4. ASP.NET Forums (Web Parts and Personalization) - good help resource
5. WSS 3.0 - Discover Significant Developer Improvements in SharePoint Services
6. Dynamically adding Web Parts to the declaratively added Catalog Zone
7. Web Parts crash IE - I was running in the same issue. I set all of my WebPartZones to include WebPartVerbRenderMode="TitleBar" and so far IE has not crashed for me. Hopefully this continues. There was another link mentioned about a security fix (KB918899) which I do have but you need to call Microsoft to get it. I like the idea of controlling it myself, assuming the WebPartVerbRenderMode continues to work, since you can't control when users patch their systems. The issue did not occur in Firefox.
8. WebPart components - Fredrik Normén has put together some enhancements. These include: 1) Web Part personalization based on raw URLs 2) Web Part CustomPropertyEditorGrid 3) Web Part chrome templates 4) Marker for a drag surface. The CustomPropertyEditorGrid is an extended PropertyGridEditorPart where you can build your own editor control for the properties.