Month: October 2006

Windows Forms

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If you write Windows forms applications for a living then you will probably have visited the Windows Forms site before. If not, it has interesting articles, sample code, downloads and upcoming trends you should know about. Worth a visit.

Using ASP.NET 2.0: CompareValidator Controls

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You can use a <asp:CompareValidator> control to validate one control against another or against a fixed value. I spent an hour searching for a way to use one to validate a date that should be greater than or equal to today’s date. My initial attempt was

<asp:CompareValidator ID=”cvFromDate “ Text=” Date cannot be less than today’s date!” ControlToValidate=”txtFromDate” Type=”Date” Operator=”GreaterThanEqual” SetFocusOnError=”true” Display=”Dynamic” Runat=”server” ValueToCompare=”<%= DateTime.Today.ToShortDateString() %>“ />                       

 

But it did not like the fixed date value. Interestingly, several articles I found said this was possible, but I had no luck getting it to work (I suspect this is due to initialisation and binding event order?). The simple solution is to set this value during the page’s load event:

   if (!IsPostBack)

   {

       cvFromDate.ValueToCompare = DateTime.Now.ToShortDateString();

The final ASP.NET code which also includes a compare validator to check the same control for dates in valid formats is:

<asp:CompareValidator ID=”cvFromDate” Text=” Date cannot be less than today’s date!” ControlToValidate=”txtFromDate” Type=”Date” Operator=”GreaterThanEqual” SetFocusOnError=”true” Display=”Dynamic” Runat=”server” />  

 

<asp:CompareValidator id=”CompareValidator1″ Text=”Please enter a valid date format.” ControlToValidate=”txtFromDate” Display=”Dynamic” Type=”Date” Operator=”DataTypeCheck” SetFocusOnError=”true” runat=”server” />

Development Zen

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Any task that is repeatable is a candidate for automation

Any coding task that is repeatable is a candidate for code generation

Advanced Article on ASP.NET 2.0 Master Pages

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Whilst searching for the solution of referencing a control defined in a content page from JavaScript, I found this great article ASP.Net 2.0 – Master Pages: Tips, Tricks, and Traps by K. Scott Allen. It’s definitely one of the most comprehensive, in-depth articles I’ve come across (despite having bought two fairly advanced books on ASP.NET 2.0!). Scott Guthrie linked to this article a while ago here. The article describes how master pages and content pages are combined, event ordering, interacting between the master page and content pages and vice versa, JavaScript and naming containers, and name mangling (the bit that solved my particular problem).

Free E-Learning Courses:

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Microsoft Learning has several introductory courses currently being offered for free:

The Visual Studio section is also providing a series of free e-learning courses centred around .NET 3.0 (Collection 5134 : Developing Rich Experiences with Microsoft® .NET Framework 3.0 and Visual Studio® 2005). These courses introduce working with Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, and Windows Communication Foundation. They are aimed at experienced Developers and Software Architects who are looking to adopt Microsoft’s next generation technology:

Database Refactoring

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A post over on Larry O’Brien’s blog prompted me to put together this short list of resources that can assist with database factoring and understanding an unfamiliar database:

  • Visual Studio CTP for Database Professionals, you can download CTP 5 – Beta here.
  • Red-Gate’s SQL Dependency Tracker (14-day trial download available). Larry notes:

    “One limitation is that the tool does not have a “Print” capability. I would
    like to print out a (huge, wall-sized) poster of the dependency for study. It
    does, though, have an “Export to image…” capability. If you save to .PNG it
    does not preserve detail, but if you save to .EMF, you can import it into
    Illustrator and divvy it up there.”

  • The book “Refactoring Databases: Evolutionary Database Design” by Scott W. Ambler and Pramod Sadalage, has received excellent reviews (unfortunately mine is on order). There is a dedicated website here
  • Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is a comprehensive database design tool.

Having access to an A1 size plotter is also very useful!

CSS Layout Tools

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Saw this great tip via Eric Gunnerson’s blog post on two tools that can help with web page layout and design. I’m in Eric’s corner when it comes to CSS; I’m definitely no expert, and need all the help I can get!

CSSVista lets you see the effect on CSS changes in real-time:

CSSVista is a free Windows application for web developers which lets you edit
your CSS code live in both Internet Explorer and Firefox simultaneously. … This
is a very early version of the software. It probably won’t explode, but it may
not work perfectly 100% of the time.

The IE Developer Toolbar has a DOM viewer that lets you see a tree view of how a web page is structured.