by Evan
29. July 2011 10:57
For any XAML developers, the XAML Power Toys VS plug-in is a really useful addition for building out pages. Using the automated features it provides has personally saved me a lot of time in development.
Take a look at some of the examples and hope this helps in your XAML development!
http://karlshifflett.wordpress.com/xaml-power-toys/
by Evan
22. March 2011 11:17
As a developer working mostly across multiple domains, I've found myself having to VPN in and out quite often in order to connect to different data sources. The first issue I dealt with was connecting to our TFS server while being VPN'd onto a domain. The work-around was simply right-clicking Visual Studio and selecting "Run As Administrator". This way I could connect to databases I have access to on a private domain along with our TFS server at the same time.
The next issue I had was debugging code that connected to data sources that needed Service Account credentials. Recently, I needed to create an SSIS package to connect to a data source that I did not have access to, however, I do have the service account credentials. One method of running the package was setting up a user/proxy in SSMS with the credentials and running the package as the proxy but this didn't allow me to debug locally.
The solution was using runas.exe to open Business Intelligence Dev Studio. This way I could run BIDS under the service account and access the data source locally! This helped dramtically in saving time debugging apps and allowed to run queries locally instead of RDP'ing onto other machines.
To run any app using the "runas" executable, first create a new shortcut and in the location box enter something similar to the following:
C:\Windows\System32\runas.exe /netonly /user:SERVICE_ACCOUNT_USERNAME "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe"
where we replace SERVICE_ACCOUNT_USERNAME with your service account name and "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe" with the location\filename of the app you'd like to run.
When you open the shortcut you'll get a command prompt asking for the service account password (I've removed the account name).
After entering the password the app will allow you to access secure data sources on the domain successfully. So far I've used this method with Visual Studio, SSMS and BIDS. A great tip for any developer who needs to work locally.
by Evan
3. March 2011 15:47
“Upgrading” to HTML5 can be as simple as changing your doctype. Previous versions of HTML defined many doctypes, and choosing the right one could be tricky. In HTML5, there is only one doctype:
<!DOCTYPE html>
Upgrading to the HTML5 doctype won’t break your existing markup, because all of the tags defined in HTML 4 are still supported in HTML5.
Meaningful Markup
In the past, designers worked with incorrect table-based layouts. Eventually, savvy designers embraced more semantically correct layout methods, structuring their pages with <div> elements instead of tables, and using external stylesheets for presentation. Unfortunately, complex designs require significant differentiation of underlying structural elements, which commonly results in the “<div>-soup” syndrome. Perhaps this looks familiar:
Lorem ipsum text blah blah blah.
Lorem ipsum text blah blah blah.
Lorem ipsum text blah blah blah.
Lorem ipsum text blah blah blah.
Lorem ipsum text blah blah blah.
Lorem ipsum text blah blah blah.
While slightly contrived, this example serves to illustrate the structural redundancy of designing complex layouts with HTML 4 (as well as XHTML 1.1). Fortunately, HTML 5 alleviates <div>-soup syndrome by giving us a new set of structural elements. These new HTML 5 elements replace meaningless <div>s with more semantically accurate definitions, and in doing so provide more “natural” CSS hooks with which to style the document. With HTML 5, our example evolves:
Lorem ipsum text blah blah blah.
Lorem ipsum text blah blah blah.
Lorem ipsum text blah blah blah.
As you can see, HTML 5 enables us to replace our multitude of <div>s with semantically meaningful structural elements. This semantic specificity not only improves the meaningfulness of our web pages, but also enables us to remove many of the class and id attributes that were previously required for targeting our CSS. In fact, CSS 3 makes it possible to eliminate virtually all class and id attributes.
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