FULL DISCLOSURE: I was inspired to write this mini review because of an offer by the maker of this software for a free license for blogging about their software (the offer is posted on the front page of their web site). Below is an unbiased review (you’ll have to take my word for it).
I was looking through the programming section of Digg today and came across Dispatch for ASP.NET by Yellow Cup. Having found myself frequently frustrated with Visual Studio 2005’s “Copy Web Site” function, I thought I’d give it a try.
The Good
Setup was straightforward and painless. Dispatch adds a tab to your Visual Studio environment and lists the projects in your solution. After entering FTP information to configure the site for deployment, you’ll see all the files in your web site. Checking the box next to a file marks it for upload. By default, it will also mark any changed files for upload as well. There’s built-in filtering to ignore files you don’t want uploaded (e.g. solution/project files, etc.). The integration into VS is seemless and intuitive. The “Remote View Overlay” feature is excellent for showing you what does and doesn’t exist locally and remotely (in my opinion, this feature should be on by default).
The Bad
Accessing some of the features isn’t exactly clear at first (you have to right click on the site…toolbar buttons would make more sense and be more discoverable). If you run a compare and a large number of items get checked and you try to uncheck them from the top level, it can take awhile and there’s no status update so it looks like VS is hung up. The “Compare Against Local” and “Compare Against Server” functions seem redundant when Remote View Overlay is on (and are poorly named). And lastly, there’s no support for precompiled sites (ala Web Development Projects which is my typical deployment method).
Conclusion
If you want a better FTP function right in Visual Studio 2005 and you don’t precompile your sites before deployment, I’d give Dispatch a try. It’s currently in beta and will cost $14.95 when the final version is released.
If you can’t tell, I love cheat sheets. I’ve come across another excellent one. This one is produced by Microsoft and contains the default keybindings for Visual C#. You can view the PDF here. The poster is 24×18″ but is still readable when printed on a single 8.5×11″ page.
I’ve added the link to my permanent .NET Cheat Sheets page as well.
UPDATE: Here’s one for Visual Basic 2005 as well. Download PDF.
[via Ats]
I love using the keyboard to get around my computer. I live and die with the Windows-X shortcuts, still remember the old cut and paste commands (Shift/Ctrl-Insert) and can generally get anywhere in Windows without taking my hands off the keyboard. To me, all good software has a useful set of keyboard shortcuts (Visual Studio 2005 excels in this area for example).
Windows-R is great for getting to the run dialog, but its functionality is limited. Enter Enso Launcher� (site may or may not be available because of high traffic). Here’s how it works. Hold caps lock, enter command. That’s it. The commands are straightforward, work from anywhere in Windows� and there are plans for supporting custom commands. You can calculate numbers on the fly, change text case, launch programs, close programs, etc. The design and implemention is nearly flawless.
There are a few downsides that I found in my quick test this morning (I tried sending these in to Humanized, but their site was having some difficulties). First, no custom commands yet. The video on their web site says its in the works however. Second, you can’t customize existing commands. Entering ‘google search term‘ to search is too long for me. I’d like to be able to just do ‘g search term‘. Third, there needs to be a quick way to launch URLs. I suggested just launching any valid URL entered. And lastly, I would personally prefer that to start a command you just hit caps lock and didn’t have to hold it down. Holding caps limits what I can type quickly. RAM usage is a little high too (hovering around 35MB).
Humanized is definitely on the right track with Enso Launcher. They have a related product called Enso Words for universal spell checking and lookups. They also have plans for other future products. I’d definitely keep an eye on Humanized.
UPDATE: Andrew over at Humanized got back to me in regards to a few of the issues I had. They address the “sticky caps” issue on their web site. I’m still not sold though. Too much finger gymnastics. He also suggested using the tab key for autocomplete, but again, try hitting tab while holding caps and typing a command quickly. For custom commands, check out the ‘learn as open” command for launching any folder, document or program.
[via 37Signals]
There’s a lot of documentation out there for the ASP.NET 2.0Â Page Life Cycle including this excellent diagram. Unfortunately the diagram lacks descriptions of each stage. I’ve put together this one-page cheat sheet with the following information:
- General Page Life-cycle Stages
- Common Life-cycle Events
- Data Binding Events for Data-Bound Controls
Download the PDF cheat sheet and let me know if you have any feedback in the comments below.
Apple FINALLY released the iPhone today and it’s pretty. I’m currently a Sidekick 3 user so I’m definitely intrigued. So far, from what i’ve read about, I can see a few issues that would prevent me from converting.
First off, I’m stuck in a ridiculously long contract with about 19 months left on it. To get out of it, it would cost me $200. Add $500 to that for the phone and that’s a pretty pricey gadget. Then I’m stuck with another two-year contract (quick rant: its bogus that they can lock you into contracts that long with devices that barely “live” that long…if you want to tie me up for two years, at least support the device the length of the contract). If Apple makes the device carrier-independent (which they can’t because of the integration with the network for things like “Visual Voicemail”), I’d be all over it in a heartbeat. While I wanted a lower price for the device, my current equivalents (SK3 & iPod 20GB Color) ran me about $550 combined so it’s right in the neighborhood. As my buddy Jeff (a fellow SK user and Apple fan)� pointed out, by the time our contracts run out we’ll be able to afford the phone. They will probably have released a few revisions and worked out the initial bugs by then, so this isn’t all bad. Especially considering…
No iChat?!?! Are you kidding me? Giving SMS an iChat interface just doesn’t do it for me. The device needs instant messaging. This is the killer feature for my Sidekick. Only providing SMS for real-time messaging is inadequate. Without presence management and contact with external networks (i.e. anyone you want to chat with not using a cell phone), the iPhone is incomplete. Considering the data network they need to have for web browsing and such is already in place,� this seems like a gross oversight to me.
I’m also not sold on the touchscreen keyboard. I have heard through a friend of a friend that works at Apple that you have to see it to believe it (remember, we were all skeptical of the iPod’s scroll wheel interface when it was launched). So until I do, I’ll reserve judgement. I would have loved to have seen it as a slider, but again I could be wrong.
OK, despite those few hang ups, the iPhone looks wicked awesome. I’d kill to be able to get down to one device for phone, IM/email/web and� music. The form factor is unbelievable. Downright sexy. The touchscreen interface is genius. The software looks� spectacular. Without ever using it I’m going to say the web browser is already the best browser on a mobile device. The email app looks solid as well. There are endless good things to say about it. And probably best of all, every phone maker is going to have to try to compete, which only bodes well for all of us gadget lovers.
I ran into a problem deploying a web site the other day with the latest Microsoft AJAX.NET release candidate. Turns out the RC doesn’t work with sites that have been marked ‘non-updateable’. If you use Web Deployment Projects or Visual Studio’s Publish Site feature, make sure to check out this thread on the ASP.NET forums.
Microsoft is providing a fix for this issue, but only to those that send an email requesting it (scroll down to the post by HaoK). Once you install the fix (which is just the latest MS internal build), make sure to restart IIS to clear the GAC.
A few people have reported incompatibilities between the fix and the AJAX Control Toolkit, so check with the thread for the latest on that issue.
Since I first posted the .NET Format String Quick Reference a few days ago, I’ve had over 750 unique visitors to my blog (thanks DotNetKicks)! Due to the popularity of that cheat sheet, I’ve created another one for VS2005’s built-in C# code snippets. This one is only a page long. I’ve also made some minor tweaks to the format string cheat sheet as well. Download one or both cheat sheets and let me know what you think in the comments below.
I’m definitely not a college football fan, but I can get excited over pretty much any major sports championship. But, ugh, what an awful waste of an evening watching that game. Hanging out with friends is pretty much the only thing that made it bearable.
I found a theme I liked, made a bunch of changes and implemented it on the site. Thanks to Ericulous for his initial work.
I do a lot of ASP.NET development at my day job and at my company RIM Systems and I frequently have to format dates and numbers with .NET’s String.Format, .ToString(), etc. Well I can never seem to keep the links to the reference on hand. Last time I was looking at the reference I decided to make a cheat sheet for the .NET formatting codes and I’ve posted a copy for you to download.
Here’s what’s included:
- Standard DateTime Format Strings
- Custom DateTime Format Strings
- Standard Number Format Strings (with examples)
- Custom Number Format Strings (with examples)
I don’t know if you can still call it a cheat sheet if its six pages long, but I’m going with it. I’ve provided some links to my favorite cheat sheets as well. I can think of a few other .NET topics that could use them and if I get some time, will whip them up later.
