Visual Studio 2008 had several issues in its first release of slowing down or even freezing temporarily when developing web applications, especially large ones.

This hotfix addresses some fo these issues.

A readme file included in the download details every issue covered in this hotfix.

For more details check out Scott Guthrie's post on this release.

You can find the direct download here.

I noticed this section recently in MSDN on how to accomplish certain tasks shown in brief 2 - 15 minute videos. There are many categories that range from ASP.NET to SilverLight to Visual Studio, etc. and each category contains a many topics.

This is a link I will definitively store in my favorourites.

Especially useful for those of us sometimes too lazy to read...

Check it out: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/...

Visual Studio 2005 is probably one of the most complex pieces of software ever developed. It has so many features, so many tools to (try to) satisfy every developer that is trying to accomplish such a wide variety of tasks, that it is easy to see how a product lile that could become very bloated and sluggish.

So, how do I speed it up? Here are some tips I have collected over time:

• Disable the Splash Screen
  Add the following parameter to your VS2005 shortcut: "C:\Program Files\...\devenv.exe" -nosplash
  Note: the same trick applies to Business Intellgience Managment Studio and SQL Management Studio....
  
• Install Visual Studio Service Pack 1
  get it here.
  
• Turn off any IDE animated windows
  Go to Tools | Options | Environment and uncheck Animate environment tools.
  
• Get a faster hard drive - seriously
  Scott Gu writes: "What you are much more likely to block on is the Seek and I/O speed capacity with which your computer accesses your hard drive.  If you are using an application that needs to read/write a lot of files, it is not atypical for your CPU processor utilization to be really low - since the application might be spending most of its time just waiting for the disk operations to complete."
  
• Disable Startup Page
  Visual Studio tries to download the MSDN rss feed from the Internet at startup. Turn this feature off. Go to Tools | Options | General | Startup | Download content every and uncheck the box. 
  
• Set the Environment to empty at startup
  Go to Tools | Options | General | Startup | select Show Empty Environment
  
• Disable Navigation Bar
  If you are using ReSharper, you don't need VS2005 to update the list of methods and fields at the top of the file (CTRL-F12 does this nicely). Go to Tools | Options | Text Editor | C# and uncheck Navigation bar.
  
• Turn off Track Changes
  Go to Tools | Options | Text Editor and uncheck Track changes. This will reduce overhead and speeds up IDE response.
• Turn off Track Active item
  This will turn off jumping in the explorer whenever you select different files in different projects. Go to Tools | Options | Projects and Solutions and uncheck Track Active Item in Solution Explore. This will ensure that if you are moving across files in different projects, left pane will still be steady instead of jumping around.
  
• Turn off AutoToolboxPopulate
  There is an option in VS 2005 that will cause VS to automatically populate the toolbox with any controls you compile as part of your solution. This is a useful feature when developing controls since it updates them when you build, but it can cause VS to end up taking a long time in some circumstances. To disable this option, select the Tools | Options | Windows Forms Designer and then set AutoToolboxPopulate to False.
  
• Install the Public Hotfix Patch
  for VS 2005 F5 Debugging Performance Issue with ASP.NET. You can get it here.
  
• Keep MRU Lists Under Control.
  One sure way to slow down the startup of Visual Studio is to have a lot of files and projects in the recent file and recent project lists. This is especially apparent if you have any projects in the MRU list that are located on a networkshare. consider this handy MRU cleaner add-in.

Credits to [Scott Gu, DotNetTipOfTheDay, O'Reilly and thekua]

One of the most important features I look for in an enterprise application is the ability for a developer to take the products and customize it to fit and fill the business need. In simple words, it needs to be extensible and it needs to be able to integrate with other existing applications.

SharePoint 2007 has greatly enhanced its capabilies in these two fields with something called SharePoint Features. In essence, "SharePoint Features" is a plug-in framework, that allows a developer to extend SharePoint in any way that he wants to.

In this tutorial we will be walking through the entire process from the very beginning in easily explained terms.

Read more: http://www.miguelmoreno.net/sandbox/...

I had to do some simple form validation the other day and thought to myself that, in our current Web 2.0 world, I should do it with AJAX since it is really everywhere and it didn't even cross my mind todo it the old fashioned way with plain Javascript, which might do the job just a good. 

So, I stumbled upon Live Validation which offers a lightweight, open source javascript library to do just that: realtime form validation with some very useful features. They have some excellent examples here and the code is decently commented. Definitively a must have in my toolbox!

Read more: http://www.livevalidation.com/

Resizing an image is nothing new, and if you maintain the aspect ratio, it will look exactly the same but smaller or larger: smaller, you'll see less of it and larger, you'll distort the image.

But what if you could in some way, intelligently resize an image without distorting the content of it...? What if that intelligent technology could identify the less important background pixels in an image and delete those to shrink the image without touching the main object in the middle?

That sounds crazy, but that is exactly what this technology will offer. (Imagine this technology built into your browser...)

"Amazon Flexible Payments Service (Amazon FPS) is the first payments service designed from the ground up specifically for developers.

The set of web services APIs allows the movement of money between any two entities, humans or computers. It is built on top of Amazon's reliable and scalable payment infrastructure."

It seems very flexible (hence the name, I guess...) and the pricing is surpisingly decent as well.

There are several companies out there doing this this, PayPal being one of them, but I think this will offer some serious competition.

Read more:  http://www.amazon.com/...

The new Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 is ready to be downloaded.  You can get it here: 

Visual Studio 2008 (formerly called "Orcas") is Microsoft's new flagship software development product for computer programmers. With features like multi-targeting support, Javascript Intellisense, AJAX support and LINQ, it sure promises to be a fully featured and exciting release. You can find the complete feature list in this white paper.

Read more: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/...

I read a post somewhere (truly can't remember where...) about the tools one uses to develop software and thought to myself: do the software tools or programs we use identify us?

I think it would it be safe to say that you can tell a lot from a person from what he is wearing or which software products he/she uses. Would you think doifferent of someone who told you they used x application...? maybe because you preferred another one?

Interesting questions, but I'd thought I'd post some of my own tools I use on a daily basis...

Here they are:

1. Visual Studio 2005 (IDE)
   
2. SQL 2005 Management Studio (Database)
   
3. Virtual PC / VMWare (PC Virtualization)
   
4. Winmerge (File/Folder differencing)
5. Fireworks / Paint.NET (Image editor)
6. Dispatch (VS FTP add-in)
7. SyncBack (FTP Syncronization)
8. Fiddler (HTTP debugger)
9. Axosoft Ontime (VS bug track add-in)

Most of the times when I have to make the choice it really depends on the case...maybe I have only to check one or two cases, in which case, I choose if/else.

However, I knew there was some sort of performance issue with one over the other, but never really knew the details. Well, the folks at BlackWasp have doen some extensive research and determined the pro's and con's, in terms of speed, of each of these two approaches.

The .NET framework and the C# language provide two methods for conditional processing where multiple discrete values can be selected from. The switch statement is less flexible than the if-else-if ladder but is generally considered to be more efficient.

Read more: http://www.blackwasp.co.uk/...

When needing a particular Javascript function, I know where to find it....usually Google it or any of my many reference books. However, Googling it may not return the most accurate results and my reference books have many other topics, which may make it difficult to find.

I keep a collection of links to many topics with useful tips, tricks and frequently used functions. This here is a large collection of quick How-To's of you most common Javascript questions.

Read more: http://www.faqts.com/...

I Stumbled across this article by Ali Khan with some good guidelines for developing fast and efficient ASP.NET applications.

Some I knew, others I did not, but nonetheless a comprehensive guide to things to keep in mind writing your next web application.

Read more: http://www.codeproject.com/...

Lets face it, unless you have a photographic memory, no developer can remember all the different functions, options, tags, etc. that exist. Documentation can be cumbersome at times, that's why I like cheat sheets.

They are quick references that feature the most commonly forgotten things on a specific topic. You can print them out and hang them on your wall, or just keep them handy in your bookmarks for quick reference.

Here are over 30 cheatsheets that developers might find useful...

Read more: http://www.petefreitag.com/...

A recent article by CNet hints that Microsoft is building software, code-named Atlas, that provides developers with tools designed to ease creation of AJAX-style applications. "Developers can use the Atlas software through Microsoft's Visual Studio 2005 development tools and the Web development framework ASP.Net 2.0, both of which are expected to ship in November." But....then there is this comment from the folks at MSDN product feedback in reply to a suggestion of officially adding AJAX support to Whidbey/ASP.NET 2.0: "Thank you for your suggestion. AJAX is defininitely gaining attention and is something that the team has given thought to.

Considering where we are in the product cycle, I hope you'll understand that it wouldn't be possible to do this in Whidbey but we'll evaluate the suggestion for a future release" So, what is it? Will the AJAX support be a separate piece that somehow will still work with Visual Studio 2005 to create ASP.NET 2.0 applications?

Read more: http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/...

Ever wondered what coding standards are used at Microsoft?

Brad Abrams has posted Microsoft's own internal coding guidelines.

The guide and the posted comments are an interesting read.

Read more: Brad Abrams Blog

In this experiment I show how to take an URL of a regular image and then return a manipulated image with the looks of a polaroid picture. In other words, it requires retrieving and loading the image provided in the textbox into memory, convert the text provided in the textbox into a graphic, load a background image into memory and then putting it all together. Finally, rotate the finished image in memory and return to the browser as a binary stream.

All this on the fly...

Read more: http://www.miguelmoreno.net/...

Not sure how I got to this page, but if you are stuck with ASP.NET or simply need to reference a particular topic, check out this large, large list of ASP.NET articles. There simply has GOT to be something to help you out.

The ASP.NET website is a large community site where you can find tons of information on anything regarding this popular technology.

There is also a page for quickstart tutorials that I keep bookmarked as well.

Read more: http://www.asp.net/Modules/MoreArticles.aspx

Writing a Web application with ASP.NET is relatively easy. So easy, many developers don't take the time to structure their applications for great performance.

This article presents 10 tips for writing high-performance Web apps. It is not the definitive guide for performance tuning Web applications; an entire book could easily be devoted to that. Instead, think of this as a good place to start.

read more: http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/...

Excellent article on writing quality code. The author describes simple and straightforward rules to prove false the presumption that it takes teams to develop quality software.

Read the article, follow the rules and you'll be inspired to write code that will earn you the full respect of your colleagues as a solid coder.

read more: A question of quality.

The default DataGrid-WebControl shipping with the .NET-Framework already is a powerful control to display and edit data in table form. But when trying to implement the DataGrid in a fixed layout site the sizing behavior of the DataGrid becomes a problem: the number of rows and with it the height of the DataGrid may vary depending on the number of records to be displayed. Workaround in this good article by Alexander Zeitler.

read more: http://www.aspheute.com/english/20030909.asp