Experience with version 4 of .Net (No version 1.5 or 2.0

I saw an odd job listing today it wanted someone with the following:

• Experience with version 4 of .Net (No version 1.5 or 2);

I thought it was kind of odd.  Why do they prefer someone without 1.5 or 2.0 experience.  I did some Google and found a basic rundown of the differences.   The job post does not list WCF experience or LINQ or Entity Framework or MVC.

.Net 2.0
1.CLR Features
2.Delegates
3.Other basic concepts

.Net 3.0
1.WCF
2.WPF
3.WF

.Net 3.5 - Enhanced Feature of .Net 3.0
- LINQ

.Net 4.0 
1.Parallelism
2.Entity Framework

For more details you could always look through these but that is not really the point of my article.

.NET 4.0
.NET 3.5
.NET 2.0

At first I thought it was odd but then it clicked. This kind of reminds me of the article written by Ryan O'Connell about all the things you would have different opinions on.

if-you-were-born-in-the-90s

So I am guessing that rather than a technology requirement in as much as its a personality requirement.  If you started with .NET 4.0 you don't know any of the sloppy hacks we had to do regarding stuff as simple as reading the config file.  Remember the including of a separate DLLto read the web.config in 2.0 as opposed to 1.1 having it native in the DLL.  I guess if you remember that you don't qualify for this job.

I look forward to hearing other your comments.  I know I would prefer someone who has been through the trenches than one who just arrived as a new private but that is just my opinion how about you.

If you have more insight then please email me at chris.williams@threepointturn.com or dennis.augustine@threepointturn.com

Ever wonder what you would do without technology...

JJ Abrams does a decent job showing the results of technology disappearing. Yes its not 100% realistic but if it was NBC would not be able to show it.

However from watching this episode, it gives you an idea of what would happen to that rich guy at Google.

Check out the pilot episode available on NBC.

.NET Postback loads Internet Explorer 7 Stylesheet on Postback in Chrome or FireFox

When using the Telerik AJAX Panel, on postback you may find that the updated controls will use the wrong stylesheet. Here is an article detailing the issue:

.NET Postback makes other browsers load ie conditional comments

The article mentions no workaround, however, since you are working in a .NET environment you do have the option of server side browser detection and then push the proper CSS for the browser. This would bypass the bug in the conditional comments.

Another option which is recommended in the link above is using HeadJS which will detect browser and apply the correct styles.

If you have any tips, tricks or resources you would like to share with the Guild, please email them to Chris Williams at chrisw_88@hotmail.com and we will post them here.

Debugging on 64 bit Windows 2008 With Visual Studio 2010

When trying to attach to process in Windows 2008 R2 64 bit you may get breakpoints that say they do not have symbols or cannot load symbols. I found a forum article where someone lists the fix:

By the way, for anyone else finding this article based on the same error message (at least in my case) was to modify the app pool in IIS. Go to advanced settings, change "Enable 32-Bit Applications" to True. VS2010, Win 7 64 bit.

You can check out the actual forum post at :

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/708323/visual-studio-2008-with-asp-net-3-5-debuging-using-attach-to-process-is-not-work

New Dynamics CRM Blog

For those Guild Members who are looking at Dynamics CRM or are looking at revolutionary and out of the box ways of getting the most out of it, there is a new blog starting up that will be providing a wealth of information on just those topics.

The Dynamics CRM Unleashed Blog is written by someone with hands on experience working with large scale and cloud based CRM.

I know I will be reading it on a regular basis, so I thought I would pass it on to you as well.

If you have any tips, tricks or resources you would like to share with the Guild please email them to Susan Fischer at susan@clinchportal.com or Chris Williams at chrisw_88@hotmail.com

IIS Crashes and you get Could not load type System.ServiceModel.Activation.HttpModule

All the sudden IIS crashes and you get the following error:

Could not load type System.ServiceModel.Activation.HttpModule

The error does not tell you much however if you were playing with IIS sometime around the crash it may be as simple as a module you added that broke it. Here is an article on a possible solution for this error:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/wcf/thread/39571e42-aca7-469d-8c68-aa59c2da4fcc

Social Auth.NET - Platform supporting login using Social Media Apps

The library can be found at: http://code.google.com/p/socialauth-net/

If you require the source you can get it in in svn at: http://socialauth-net.googlecode.com/svn

When you access the login page and click one of the buttons to login you may get this error:

Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.IdentityModel, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

If you do please install the You will need to install the Windows Identity Foundation and reference the Microsoft.Identity.Model dll in your web application project.

NOTE: If you are using XP then you cannot use the Microsoft Identity Foundation.

MVC Razor Engine

The Razor engine is a new engine for MVC.  Here is an article I found on it.  As I research it I will be putting more information here on it.

Scott Gu's Blog: Introducing Razor
Razor Engine Codeplex

By The Way, If you use Sitecore, be sure to check out Glass  recently it has beta support for the Razor Engine.

If you have any tips, tricks or gotchas related to Razor Engine please share them with the Guild.

Sitecore Guild

I would like to take this opportunity to invite the Sitecore Guild to the family.

You can access the Sitecore Guild at:

http://sitecoreguild.blogspot.com

You may also follow them on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/SitecoreGuild

Sitecore is an amazing CMS built on ASP.NET. It is flexible as it includes full source code but is also easy for an end user to edit and publish content. For those who have not checked it out yet you need to. You will be amazed.

The next user group meeting for Sitecore in Toronto is in February. Check out the Sitecore Guild often for information on the next user group and for tips on using Sitecore.

If you have any tips, tricks or resources you would like to share please email Susan Fischer at susan@clinchportal.com

Login and Registration Tips and Tricks

Although this is not specific to porting, this link provides tips and best practices for creating

user management pages for your sites. Since this blog is about asp.net I thought you might find it useful.

http://www.getelastic.com/registration-usability-tips-ecommerce/

Session keeps timing out when debugging iis7

I found out why this is happening. In IIS7 on the Application Pool, there are ping settings that will kill a session if it gets not response. This is great for production as it keeps iis running slim but when debugging in Visual Studio and stopping on a breakpoint that is nasty.

I found an article that explains how to disable the ping or extend the timeout period.

Application Pool Ping setting in IIS
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc725836.aspx

If you come across any tips, tricks or resource you think the group will find helpful please email them to Susan Fischer at susan@clinchportal.com and we will post them here.

Required permissions cannot be acquired

If you get the following error message then this link provides you with the step by step to resolve it

http://marcoscavaleiro.blogspot.com/2006/11/failed-to-grant-minimum-permission.html

An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current
web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error
and where it originated in the code. Exception Details:
System.Security.Policy.PolicyException: Required permissions
cannot be acquired. Source Error: An unhandled exception was generated during
the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and
location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace
below. Stack Trace: [PolicyException: Required permissions cannot be
acquired.]
System.Security.SecurityManager.ResolvePolicy(Evidence evidence,
PermissionSet
reqdPset, PermissionSet optPset, PermissionSet denyPset,
PermissionSet&
denied, Boolean checkExecutionPermission) +2770052
System.Security.SecurityManager.ResolvePolicy(Evidence evidence,
PermissionSet
reqdPset, PermissionSet optPset, PermissionSet denyPset,
PermissionSet&
denied, Int32& securitySpecialFlags, Boolean
checkExecutionPermission) +57
[FileLoadException: Could not load file or
assembly
'Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Data.Configuration.Design,
Version=3.1.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' or one of its
dependencies. Failed to grant minimum permission requests. (Exception from
HRESULT: 0x80131417)] System.Reflection.Assembly._nLoad(AssemblyName
fileName,
String codeBase, Evidence assemblySecurity, Assembly locationHint,
StackCrawlMark& stackMark, Boolean throwOnFileNotFound, Boolean
forIntrospection) +0

If you have any tips, tricks or resources that you think would assist the group please email them to Susan Fischer at susan@clinchportal.com and we will post them here.

Do NOT use Response.Close unless you really need to

I found out the hard way with a bug I was getting. A JSON call was truncating on me and it turns out a Response.Close was intermittantly removing the last character.

Here is the article: http://forums.iis.net/t/1152058.aspx

If you have any tips, tricks, resources you would like to share with the group, please email them to Susan Fischer at susan@clinchportal.com

component art menu control. Object reference not set to an instance of object at ComponentArt.Web.UI.BaseNavigator.LoadClientXmlNodeProperties

If you get the following error odds are the menu or submenu text fields is not filled in properly.
The odd thing is it only happens on postback.

The server can't fulfill your request. (Error loading client data:
System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an
object. at
ComponentArt.Web.UI.BaseNavigator.LoadClientXmlNodeProperties(XmlNodeList
arXmlProperties, NavigationNode oNode) at
ComponentArt.Web.UI.BaseNavigator.LoadClientXmlNode(XmlNodeList arClientNodes,
XmlNodeList arXmlMembers) at
ComponentArt.Web.UI.BaseNavigator.LoadClientXmlNodes(XmlNodeList arClientNodes,
XmlNodeList arChildIndices, NavigationNodeCollection arNodes) at
ComponentArt.Web.UI.BaseNavigator.LoadClientXmlNode(XmlNodeList arClientNodes,
XmlNodeList arXmlMembers) at
ComponentArt.Web.UI.BaseNavigator.LoadClientXmlNodes(XmlNodeList arClientNodes,
Int32 iParentIndex, NavigationNodeCollection arNodes) at
ComponentArt.Web.UI.BaseNavigator.LoadClientData(String sData))Please contact
the server administrator.

The 'SelectedIndex' and 'SelectedValue' attributes are mutually exclusive

If you get this error its because you are setting the selectedvalue and selected index of a control in the same event. The following article explains it further.

http://forums.asp.net/t/1189510.aspx

If you have any tips, tricks, etc please email them to susan@clinchportal.com and I will post them here or if applicable on the c# guild or vb.net guild.

Telerik controls and IE 8 Beta

I came across this thread in case you are seeing breaks in some telerik controls in IE 8 as well.

Some of the comments mention using a compatability meta tag and placing it as the first meta tag:

< meta equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=7">

For more info please check out the thread at:

http://www.telerik.com/community/forums/thread/b311D-bcgamd.aspx

If you have any more tips, tricks, etc please email them to susan@clinchportal.com

IIS 7 - Adjusting to the huge change.

I was rudely awakened when we finally started using IIS 7 after using IIS 6 for so long.
I found I knew what I wanted to do but could not find where the option was. I came across this tutorial as a helper

Getting Started with IIS7 (Part 1)

http://www.dotnetbips.com/articles/df885319-19cc-47b8-8808-6ed462db1de5.aspx
http://www.dotnetbips.com/articles/8ae70f79-4df3-4592-bfa7-1b31643ab891.aspx

If you have any other tutorials or tips on how to configure IIS 7 please email them to Susan Fischer susan@clinchportal.com or post them as comments here and I will approve them.

Regular Expressions - Help!!!

If you are like me you find dealing with regular expressions both powerful and frustrating.I found a couple links that may help you on your journey to build regular expressions.

Roy Osherove has a few tools here that will be useful. The first is the Regulator that allows you to build regular expression with intellisense included. The second tool is the regulazy that allows you to typein text select it and via right click create your regular expression:

http://tools.osherove.com/Default.aspx?tabid=165

The third is not really a tool but a library that helps you find regular expressions that others have created for you:

http://regexlib.com/

This posting is also available at: http://csharpguild.blogspot.com/2008/05/regular-expressions-help.html You can check out this blog for additional information related to c#

If you find any regular expression tools or other tools you find useful please email them to me at susan@clinchportal.com

Perpetual Beginner

For those just learning some of the newer technologies such as subsonic, linq, mvc, etc this is going to be fast becoming the place to go. It is definitely a blog to keep an eye on. The perpetual beginner, Jesse Naiman, will soon be a name you will remember.

Here is the link to his blog: http://alt-net-guild.blogspot.com/

Free Source Control with Visual Studio Integration

My friend Jesse Naiman sent me a recommendation for free source control for a project I am working on. I thought about writing a recommendation myself but he words it perfectly. Here is his recommendation:

This site is awesome http://www.assembla.com/

You can setup a free SVN repository (up to 500MB), and you get an amazing amount project management tools.

A couple helpful hints on SVN in case you haven’t used it.

Install tortoisesvn which will allow you to manage source control through windows explorer.

Install AnkhSVN to get svn integrated into visual studio.