Rick Strahl's Web Log

Recent Weblog Posts

jQuery Form Serialization without ASP.NET ViewState
Thursday @ 2:31 am

When building AJAX applications that send client form content to the server, ViewState and EventValidation fields can get in the way. Using jQuery you can make short work skipping over these fields and send only the raw POST data to the server.

8 comments

DataTable JSON Serialization in JSON.NET and JavaScriptSerializer
Wednesday @ 1:22 pm

I've recently made a switch to JSON.NET for my JavaScript parsing which has been a great move for flexibility. One thing missing from JSON.NET though that I had previously running is DataTable serialization I have in use in a few older apps. In this post I describe how to use JSON.ENT and how to add a custom DataTable/Row/Set converters. For completeness sake I've also provided similar Converter classes for JavaScriptSerializer.

Watch out for Date Kind in JSON Deserialization
Wednesday @ 1:54 am

If you're working with dates in JSON serialization make sure you carefully normally dates returned from JSON deserialization. Reason is that especially the Microsoft Serializers return dates as Utc dates which can produce some unexpected and often missed results.

FireFox 3 and Static File Caching Problems
August 31, 2008 @ 2:12 pm

FireFox 3.0 apparently is much more aggressive in caching content than previous versions of FireFox. While this is good for performance in many situations I've noticed that this is seriously becoming a problem in some of my applications where support files like scripts and CSS files get updated in applications and FireFox doesn't recognize those changes. The problem appears to be that FireFox is...

26 comments

Unable to debug Web Site with Top Level Location
August 28, 2008 @ 3:05 am

Ran into another fun little problem a few days ago. Working on my root Web site which is rather large and contains a huge number of sub-webs. The root site is very light in terms of ASP.NET functionality used - primarily stuff like cookie tracking and logging tasks, serving banners etc and a few utility applications. Most of the heavy lifting on the site and 'real' applications are managed in...

2 comments

Lost (and found) Visual Studio Templates in Web Project
August 27, 2008 @ 7:04 pm

So I just lost all of my project templates in Web projects. I've been working on a small utility page on my site that generates help documentation on the fly. I've been working happily along on this site when all of a sudden when I needed to add a config file to control debugging and authentication on this page/app. could not find a part of the path 'C:\programs\vs2008\ Common...

1 comment

Accessing a SafeArray Result from a COM Call in C#
August 26, 2008 @ 6:18 am

I'm calling a COM object from managed code that's returning a binary response, which is returned as a SafeArray of bytes from the COM server. The problem is the SafeArray is not exactly easily accessed in .NET and the debugger provides some misleading information for the returned COM type. Here's how to access the SafeArray from C# code.

3 comments

EXE COM Server Invokation leaking Handles
August 24, 2008 @ 5:46 pm

Last week I started looking into a problem that causes my IIS Worker processes to have errors on shutdown. After some mind numbing debugging I finally seem to have traced the problem down to COM object invokation and a handle leak that results because of it. What I ran into here though is very odd as it appears to be not specific to my code but a general handle leak when instantiating EXE...

7 comments

ISAPI Module Crashing on Application Pool Shutdown
August 22, 2008 @ 2:37 pm

So I have an odd issue with an ISAPI DLL that one of my products uses. The ISAPI interface provides a gateway interface to application servers and the actual module itself works fine without any problems. The problem is that the module is apparently crashing occasionally when the Application Pool is shutting down, but it's crashing after any of the DLL code has long stopped running. However, on...

7 comments

A simple jQuery Client Centering Plugin
August 21, 2008 @ 9:30 am

Centering content is a useful client side UI feature especially when working with pop ups or popup windows when displayed for the first time. Here's a little jQuery plug in that handles centering in the window and in other container elements easily.

5 comments

Sql 2008 Management Tools: Can't save changes that require Recreation of Database
August 16, 2008 @ 6:31 pm

Ah here's a silly new default in SQL Server's Management Tools: When you design a table in a database and then try to make a change to a table structure that requires the table to be recreated, the management tools will not allow you to save the changes. Instead you'll be greeted by this friendly dialog: Notice that there's no option to save the changes - it's a hard rule that is applied and you...

6 comments

Monitoring Html Element CSS Changes in JavaScript
August 15, 2008 @ 1:17 am

I have the need to monitor movement of elements in an HTML document via JavaScript. Unfortunatey there are no events that fire if HTML elements are moved around the document either via dragging or by programmatic location changes. As a workaround I created a jQuery CSS monitoring plugin that fires event when a given CSS property changes.

10 comments

ASP.NET gets no Respect
August 14, 2008 @ 2:54 pm

As an ASP.NET developer I'm pretty much sold on ASP.NET as a platform. I've used ASP.NET since the beginning of the early .NET betas and while I originally had a tough time getting started with it, I eventually came to really enjoy the framework. But once I understood the platform and the flexibility it offers, it's now really hard to think of any other Web development platform that I'd rather be...

132 comments

Server Errors when updating live Web Applications online
August 11, 2008 @ 1:53 am

In the last few weeks I've been noticing some problems with site updates I've made to my live server. I have an application running locally and it's running fine without problems. The app is running as a Web Application Project (WAP) and so when I update the application most of the time I only update the BIN folder and possibly one or two of the ASPX markup pages. So I upload all files out of the...

25 comments

Recent SQL Injection Attacks against Server
August 09, 2008 @ 1:12 am

For the last couple of days I've noticed that my server's been inundated with a huge number of unwanted requests. The requests are firing what looks like SQL injection code against the server with a huge query string that tries to execute code on the server. Requests look something like this: ShowMsg.wwt...

19 comments

Editing Applicationhost.config on 64 bit Win2008
August 09, 2008 @ 12:05 am

Today I needed to edit ApplicationHost.config only to - well, not find the damn file anywhere on my machine. It turns out 64 bit Windows uses redirection in the System32 folder and while running with a 32 bit Explorer replacement and a 32 bit editor I was unable to find the file until I switch to the stock tools in Windows which are 64 bit.

6 comments

Moving my Site onto a 64 Bit Server
August 07, 2008 @ 10:39 am

I'm finally getting ready to install my new Server and after some back and forth and testing on Windows 2008 I decided to go ahead and bite the bullet and go with the 64 bit version of Server. I've had mixed feelings about installing 64 bit given that I have had exactly zero experience running under 64 bit. I've not really seen a compelling reason on the desktop to run a 64 bit OS especially...

10 comments

JSON Serializers in .NET - not there yet
August 04, 2008 @ 4:00 pm

.NET Framework 3.5 provides a couple of choices for JSON Serialization and Deserialization. Find out how you can use them and also some of the problems that both of these tools impose.

18 comments

The Big 1000
August 02, 2008 @ 4:36 pm

Woo hoo. I rolled over the magic 1000 Weblog post mark last night and didn't even notice until today when I was about to post another entry. Looking at the site this morning I realized the big fat triple 0's showing up on the Post count. It's been a little unceremonious I suppose - it's pure luck that I noticed since I rarely look at the actual post or comment counts these day. Heck I don't even...

5 comments

Getting rid of the useless Windows Shutdown Tracker Dialog
August 02, 2008 @ 1:23 am

If you install and run or manage a Windows Server OS you've probably run into the annoying shut down dialog. Maybe you have even been hit by walking away after restarting and forgetting about the damn dialog hanging the system before rebooting/restarting. Well, just did that on an install thank you very much. It's not a secret how to get around this and it's easy to fix, but buried deep enough that it's easy to not find it immediately and so not fix it. Here's how.

8 comments

jQuery with ASP.NET Presentation at Portland .NET User Group on Tuesday
August 01, 2008 @ 8:42 am

I'll be doing my annual presentation at the Portland Area .NET User Group (PADNUG). The topic this time around is Using jQuery with ASP.NET which is a fun presentation that covers JavaScript and specifically jQuery use with ASP.NET without using ASP.NET Ajax. Here's the presentation abstract: Using jQuery with ASP.NET jQuery is a compact and powerful JavaScript library that is quickly becoming...

7 comments

Back in the US
July 31, 2008 @ 10:28 pm

It's been a long summer of fun out of the country for me. Some time off, some time away from the 'usual' and a time to go a bit lighter on work and time in front of the computer - just what the doctor ordered. Now it's back to reality and the catching up which invariably is left behind by 3 months of physical absence and putting off some work related stuff. The time off's been well spent. As I...

1 comment

Forcing Client Windows to pop up as Windows in Tabbed Browsers
July 22, 2008 @ 1:05 pm

By default if you open a new window in Tab based browsers like FireFox 3 or IE 7 new windows pop up in new tabs. In most situations this is the desirable behavior, but sometimes it's in fact required to get a new window to pop up on the desktop and get it activated immediately.

10 comments

DevMaven Ads on the Web Log
July 21, 2008 @ 1:56 am

If you've been visiting here for a while, you may have noted that the advertising on this Web log has been cut down quite a bit recently. At the beginning of the month I decided to switch off from the mish mash of advertising that I was running previously, which included Google Adsense, Steven Smith's Lake Quincy Network, James Avery's The Lounge Network network and some of my own ads....

7 comments

Buying a new Server
July 19, 2008 @ 2:07 pm

It's time to retire my existing Web Server which is going on 7 years now. The box that this site is running on currently is an old style 2ghz Pentium 4 box with 1 gig of memory and it's starting to creak at the edges pretty hard with a few off and on failures to power and the system board components (lthe clock seized to work a few weeks ago). As of late the box has been locking up on a few...

31 comments

West Wind Ajax Toolkit updated
July 15, 2008 @ 12:46 pm

I've finally had some time to update the West Wind Ajax Toolkit to version 1.90. A number of these changes I've written about and have updated previously, but this update finalizes a number of these updates into a full release. There are a number of enhancements to the existing functionality as well as a few new helper components that I'm finding very useful these days. As always you can grab the...

6 comments

Static Singletons for ASP.NET Controls
July 11, 2008 @ 12:19 am

When building generic ASP.NET Server controls that also provide a sort of API service to other custom controls or page level code, it's often necessary to ensure that only a single instance of a control exists, and that only that single instance of this control or component can be accessed in the context of an ASP.NET request. Using HttpContext and it's Item collection makes it easy to create reusable, cacheable instances and ensure you're only running a Singleton instance of it.

8 comments

Inclusion of JavaScript Files
July 07, 2008 @ 4:05 am

I find myself struggling with effectively managing JavaScript scripts across multiple projects. Between version changes and updates to my own components I spend a lot of time comparing versions and trying to sync up files. There are a number of different ways to load and manage script resources, and in this post I show a few with their pro's and con's, but none of them seem ultimately satisfying. What are you using to manage 'Script File Hell?'

25 comments

Permissions Denied to get Property location.toString in FireFox 3
July 02, 2008 @ 1:31 pm

Since installing FireFox 3 I've been getting errors showing up on a host of sites - including until recently my own. While the errors seem harmless engough and don't actually cause any problems on pages they do show up in Firebug as shown in the following screen shot: The above screen shot is from Yahoo's news page to a linked item and is clearly related to Flash components. Until recently I've...

3 comments

Customers and POs from Hell
June 29, 2008 @ 2:42 am

I do most of my business with credit cards and while I realize that the CC companies and merchant banks are making a killing off my sales with merchant percentages, the convenience of having credit card processing fully automated to the point that I often have to do absolutely nothing other than review orders is well worth the extra expense.Credit card processing (or PayPal processing for that...

15 comments

Updated jQuery and WCF 3.5 JSON Samples posted
June 25, 2008 @ 5:58 am

I've updated my slides and samples for last spring's Devconnection's sessions to reflect some of the recent updates in jQuery and jQuery.ui, which now have been updated to release versions. In addition there have been a few bug fixes and better configuration documentation for the samples.

Crashing WCF 3.5 JSON Services with DateTime.MinValue
June 23, 2008 @ 5:53 am

Ran into some odd issues with WCF 3.5 and HTTP JSON services hanging up an ASP.NET application. It appears that there are a couple of problems with null serialization and small date value serialization that are causing this problem.

2 comments

What makes a Guru?
June 20, 2008 @ 2:19 am

Somebody called me a 'Guru' in recent conversation and I was well a bit embarrassed. What the heck is a guru or what makes one think of somebody else as a Guru?

21 comments

A jQuery Client Status Bar
June 13, 2008 @ 2:29 am

Status bars are very useful in client applications to display well status information and having a reusable and easily callable and configured status component to display messages is extremely handy. Here's an implementation that uses jQuery plus a bit of CSS to make short work of displaying status content.

9 comments

jQuery Code Magazine Editorial Posted
June 09, 2008 @ 4:45 pm

My jQuery editorial for the Code Magazine Newsletter went live today. It turned into a rather lengthy affair (what else is new?) even though it's a high level editorial and so doesn't show code. The piece discusses jQuery's functionality, benefits and some considerations for ASP.NET integration, but keep in mind that this is an editorial discussion rather than a 'how to article' (which will...

14 comments

Unwanted Padding in IE Image Rendering in div Tag
June 05, 2008 @ 7:17 am

I've repeatedly run into an issue where putting an image inside of a div tag as its only content causes IE to render a bit of padding that shouldn't be there. No problem in other browsers, but definitely an issue in IE.

15 comments