2010
jQuery fadeIn / fadeOut vs. IE ClearType Rendering
Fix your janky text already
jQuery makes fading html elements trivial, and ever day I see JavaScript fade in/out effects used all over the web. I've used this UI trick on a few of the sites I've been working with lately and like everyone, I've experienced the frustrating jagged text issue in IE. You know what I'm talking about if you use Facebook and have posted a comment on someone's wall post. After you make the comment it will show up inline in typical AJAX fashion and its font will look like it was rendered on a Commodore 64. There are a few posts like this one that address the issue with jQuery and CSS modifications, however I've not had much luck using this method and it's not very flexible. Fortunately there is an alternative commonly used by flash developers that I've found to be easier to implement, more reliable and most importantly works seamlessly across all modern browsers.
Alienware m15x Laptop
This laptop is pretty sweet
I ordered a new laptop from Alienware last Monday and found over the weekend that I'll be getting it over a week early! I'm really excited for it to arrive since it will replace my extremely aged Dell Inspiron 8600 and decouple me from my home built gaming workstation, and it will be nice to have a single machine for gaming and programming.
2009
You Think Your Data is Safe?
Pro-tip: It probably isn't
While working on some application security requirements for a client, I came across this little nugget about cracking pgp passwords using a cloud.
2008
Handling Unhandled ASP.NET Exceptions
Gain insight into your 500 errors
At some point in their career everyone who creates ASP.NET applications has had issues with their site throwing exceptions that aren't trapped. We end up displaying a friendly error page at best, and at worst display the yellow ASP.NET error screen of death. Generally speaking it's best practice to configure your ASP.NET application to use friendly error pages so that your users aren't presented with an exception and stack trace that are meaningless to them.
System.Nullable vs. TryParse Revisited
Navigating TryParse with nullable types
As a follow-up to my system.nullable vs. tryparse post, I've posted the source code for the nullable parser. I use this code in nearly all of my projects to help with parsing nullable values. It makes parsing nullable objects much easier, and mirrors the functionality of the existing TryParse methods that the framework has made us accustomed to.
Writing an Installer Class for a Visual Studio Addin
Easy Visual Studio addin installation
You've struggled through understanding commands and toolbars, pulled your hair out deciphering confusing API's, and scarred your neighborhood with red-faced screams of frustration as you debug unhandled exceptions that crash visual studio. After weeks, months or yes even years polishing an addin you still aren't finished until you create an installer program.
Visual Studio Options Pages
Configure visual studio addins
Like many addin developers I create options pages in visual studio to handle configuration of my software. While extremely simple to create these pages, it is not obvious how they should be configured to load with visual studio. Additionally, the documentation for creating options pages provided by Microsoft describes in detail how to create options pages, though neglects to describe how to make visual studio recognize your options page control.
Unhandled Addin Exceptions vs. Visual Studio
Keep your addin from crashing visual studio
One of the most frustrating things I've found when programming addins for visual studio is the inability to globally trap unhandled exceptions the way that you can when authoring a windows application. Essentially visual studio intercepts exceptions your addin throws that you neglect to handle. The worst part is that you don't get any information about the exception before visual studio crashes! Its great that Microsoft gets a dump of the crash, but you're left standing empty handed and scratching your head.
Visual Studio 2008 Extension Methods
This is excerpt about this blog post!
Now that visual studio.net 2008 has been released developers have a much improved development environment and framework to produce high quality code with. Extension methods are one of the new framework and IDE features that provides a powerful and clever method of extending objects that you do not have source code for or otherwise can't directly extend.
Nullable Types and ADO.NET Parameters
Hello there null coalescing operator
As most people are aware the .NET 2.0 framework supports nullable value types. There are many articles on this topic and a few that address the issues of using nullable types in combination with your ado.net code. However, most of these discuss the issue of using nullable types in combination with the DbDataReader objects, though few address the conflicts that arise when using a nullable type to set or get an ado.net parameter value.