Pavel Donchev's blog on Software Technologies

Find and open a file in Visual Studio.

2012-01-18T04:47:00.000-08:00

I remember that a collegue of mine used that a lot. I forgot it so I will just post it here so anyone (including me can benefit of it).In order to find a file / class in Visual Studio - use the "Find In Files" toolbar combobox. You will however need to write a magic word before it starts searching, just type "> of" before the file name, like "> of User". VS will help you with some of the files

Scroll event not fired in some Telerik Windows Forms Controls (maybe WPF as well)

2011-11-23T06:25:00.001-08:00

First of all - this is not quite an issue.Since the Telerik controls are compound controls (for example the list view has Root Element, List Element, things like that), what scroll are you subscribing to?Do you subscribe to the whole control?Do you subscribe to the RootElement? To the ListView?To remove that kind of questions, Telerik came up with the idea that it will be better to rise the

Kindle Fire is comming! Amazon is taking orders on the new Kindle In Color (Kindle Fire)

2011-09-29T01:42:00.000-07:00

Are you ready to get one?Lot's of rumors that this little thing will be one of the main competitors to the Apple iPad. No one knows yet. With date of release set to 15 november, the Kindle Fire is a long awaited addition to the old Kindle.Here is the old one (I have one and I'm pretty happy with it):and here is the new, shiny tablet that Amazon will offer at the end of this year:Honestly, I am

LinkedIn API - request failed with 401 - unauthorized (cause #1 of N)

2011-09-02T05:36:00.000-07:00

If you experience that, make sure you are encoding your request properly. For example http://api.linkedin.com/v1/people-search:(people:(id,first-name,last-name,picture-url,headline,location:(name)),num-results)?keyword=" + HttpUtility.UrlPathEncode(user.FullName). In the above example if the user full name is Pavel Donchev, if you use HttpUtility.UrlEncode(user.FullName) the result will be

SQL Server–have another instance redirecting to existing SQL Server

2011-08-16T22:14:00.001-07:00

I was in a need to have an SQL instance renamed. This is because I have SQL instance on my server and wanted to have it on other computers as well so I don’t need to change the Connection Strings each time I deploy. I first tried to rename it but to no avail. Then I found this little neat trick to have another instance that can “redirect” to the original server (e.g. you have (local)\Instance and

A book is born!!!

2011-08-09T03:10:00.001-07:00

As most of you know, I was involved in writing a book about C# programming (we were 30 authors, each had to write a chapter and edit a chapter).You can click on its cover in order to be taken to download the PDF version: Hope you will enjoy it. Oh, almost forgot – it is in BULGARIAN . There were some plans to have it translated but as I am not a part of telerik anymore, I don’t have any

Application suddenly becomes slow

2011-07-14T21:44:00.000-07:00

I experienced this while I was developing my application in Visual Studio.It happened for no apparent reason (I didn't remember to make any signifficant changes in this application).It was really frustrating. The thought that I may need to rething the whole application was a nightmare.I was in panic and started to think what the problem for this sudden degradation might be.And guess what?It

SVN Server - problem connecting to the SVN server

2011-07-13T02:09:00.000-07:00

I had a problem today connecting my laptop to the SVN Server on my PC (a.k.a the Server).The Tortoise SVN was saying something like "OPTIONS:" and then a long message saying the remote server didn't returned the information it needed.I tried to browse with Internet explorer and instead a folder structure of my SVN repositories, I got a white page.After a while of wondering I identified the

Sitefinity E-Commerce module is out (in Beta)!

2011-07-12T00:51:00.000-07:00

There was a lot of passion about this module.Some of the partners may not be really happy (those that offer their own E-Commerce modules).Others will be as they will not need to worry which 3rd party module they need to buy and integrate and what head aches will there be while integrating.Anyway - Telerik announced the availabillity of the long awaited E-Commerce module.It is currently in

Me, Telerik, Introduction To C# programming book (some personal updates)

2011-07-07T21:29:00.000-07:00

Ok, lot's of things happened recently.First of all - I quit Telerik and got back to Veliko Tyrnovo.A brave decision I have chosen in order to try to deliver more than it was expected from me ;).This one was really though to decide as I really enjoyed being part of Telerik. A LOT!Anyway, sometimes we need to sacrifice things in order to try to get to the next level.And the next level for me is to

Awesome Presentation Framework from Telerik Silverlight Divisions

2011-07-01T02:04:00.000-07:00

For LOB applications it is important that the users have their preferences saved (and later - loaded) once they have them set.Telerik is now addressing this issue by unveiling awesome Persistance framework for the Silverlight Controls.More information can in the Telerik Presentation Framework blogpost by the Silverlight Division.Ofcourse it was possible to achieve that before, but it tooks way

Visual Studio AddIn - never put dots in a command.

2011-06-28T11:29:00.000-07:00

I was following an article on how to create a command and add it to the Code Window context menu, it was going really well until some point.I ran the code and Visual Studio was crying with E_INVALID_ARGS error on the this._applicationObject.DTE.Commands.AddNamedCommandThis one is widelly used and pretty standard method so I thought the problem is somewhere in my code.I realized that almost all

WebForm_InitCallback is not defined error (and some resolutions)

2011-06-28T05:05:00.000-07:00

I was happilly working while all the sudden I started to get this message.It took some googlin' in order to understand what is going on.It was because my development server date was wrong (few months in the past).Synchronizing it resolved the issue.Also I read you may experience this problem in case you are changing the current thread culture.Hope this helps ...

Sitefinity 4.1 SP2 is out!

2011-06-21T01:27:00.001-07:00

A service pack for my favourite CMS has just been released.The list of features and bugfixes can be found at:http://www.sitefinity.com/devnet/forums/sitefinity-4-x/general-discussions/sitefinity-4-1-sp2-is-released.aspxCan't wait to finish my ongoing work in order to get some time and try it.

Convert string to a known type (using its default converter)

2011-06-10T01:25:00.000-07:00

I was in a need to get a type, instantiate it and then fill its properties (I'm currently doing an engine that will give me an instant CRUD UI).So what I basically needed was to be able to fill a new object instance out of a Hashtable (the key is the name of the property and the value is its string representation).I wanted to be able to convert that string value into the type it needs to be.Here

Get the underlying type out of a Nullable

2011-06-09T06:40:00.001-07:00

It appeared to be really simple actually, this post title suggest the solution:Type nonNullableType = null;if (property.PropertyType.IsGenericType && property.PropertyType.GetGenericTypeDefinition() == typeof(Nullable<>)) nonNullableType = new NullableConverter(property.PropertyType).UnderlyingType;else nonNullableType = property.PropertyType;What we actually do is to check if the type is

Check if a type is Nullable or not

2011-06-09T06:05:00.000-07:00

I was in a need to determine if the type of PropertyInfo is a nullable or not.Here is what I've found on MSDN about this:property.PropertyType.IsGenericType && property.PropertyType.GetGenericTypeDefinition() == typeof(Nullable<>)So you basically need to determine if the type is generic (makes sense as nullable is a type that takes T (Nullable)) and then to check if the type is a Nullable then.

Programming - Rule #1 follow your data from the UI to the Database and back

2011-05-27T16:39:00.000-07:00

It can save you a lot of time :). I had to fix a bug with a value not updating on the UI. I attached with the debugger and followed the code to the Save() method of the manager. Then I started looking for some problems in the database (asynchronous triggers failing etc.). I wasn't quite sure where the problem is for a while. Then I decided to hit F11 on the Save() method of the manager

Serializing object to JSON returns empty string?

2011-05-26T06:06:00.001-07:00

Consider the following code: string JSONObject = string.Empty; DataContractJsonSerializer serializer = new DataContractJsonSerializer(this.GetType()); using (MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream()) { serializer.WriteObject(ms, this); // Donchev - we need to reset because the write has gone to the end of the stream // and the StreamReader.ReadToEnd() won't seek to the

Silverlight 4 - catching uncaught exceptions from external components

2011-05-23T22:19:00.000-07:00

I was playing with an external component in Silverlight 4 and got an unhandled exception while debugging. The problem was that I wasn't able to see what's going on because the debugger won't show anything (it doesn't have the source of the exception) and because the exception was triggered internally in event in the component trying to catch it to see what is the exception had no effect as

Tip : how to identify which dll to reference?

2011-05-19T12:02:00.000-07:00

I had a bad experience today.I was moving a project from one PC to another, it was referencing dlls from my old PC.I started to remove references one by one and adding them again, this time from a common location.I missed on of them (deleted it from the project without first remembering which one it was).So lesson number one - you can create a screenshot before deleting the references so you can

Server Explorer is not responding in Visual Studio 2010 (as well?)

2011-05-10T02:30:00.001-07:00

I think this problem was present in the previous versions of Visual Studio as well, anyway, here is what happens: 1. You have some connections / servers in Visual Studio 2010 Server Explorer. 2. Something changes for example server was renamed / removed, or a connection no longer works, not quite sure what exactly should happen… 3. When you try to select the server or connection in

Very old stuff – convert System.Drawing.Color to HTML.

2011-05-09T06:20:00.001-07:00

When I was with Delphi, I wrote utility to do this myself (I mean Delphi in its early days) as I wasn’t aware for built-in mechanism to achieve that. Now with .NET there is utility to do this for you but I often forgot which class has static method to convert System.Drawing.Color to Html string. Here it is: System.Drawing.ColorTranslator.ToHtml(color) I think wouldn’t it be smarter to have an

Have WCF Service hosted on windows service.

2011-05-06T10:48:00.001-07:00

This one is quite old, anyway, as I am using my blog for adding notes to myself as well, I will repeat the solution so I can later find it :). Maybe you will find it useful as well. To host a WCF service on top of Windows service you need to do the following: 1. Create the windows service that will host the WCF Service. 2. In the windows service add references to the following assemblies:

Coding Practice : Always refresh the 2nd Visual Studio Solution :).

2011-05-06T03:49:00.001-07:00

I had a problem with some code in a Visual Studio, the errors were something like when you have a missing file, or a missing method or stuff like that. They were happening all the time and I was wondering what is going on. The problem was that I was having 2 Visual Studio instances running with different solutions loaded in them, I was coding in the first solution and touched a shared project (

Having column display name in RadGrid Column chooser but not in the header of the grid

2011-05-06T00:30:00.001-07:00

A little bit of background for this one. I had a Telerik RadGrid that was having few columns ... It had the column chooser enabled. Few of the columns were icons (for example “Answered”, “Rating”). I wanted to have them without header text so I added the Template column and everything was just fine. Until I right clicked on the header in order to show the column chooser. It was displaying the

Unable to start debugging on the server.

2011-04-17T07:47:00.000-07:00

Lot's of such errors, lots of resolutions.I had another one, the full message is:Unable to start debugging on the server. An authentication error occured while communicating with the web server. Please see Help for assistance.It looks like it is an issue with permissions but the problem is that I disabled the "HTTP Keep-Alive" signals for the web site.Hope this saves few minutes of research ;).

Copy XmlNode from one XmlDocument to another

2011-02-02T01:43:00.000-08:00

This one is more for the archive, but it is not widelly used so you may not know it.In case you need to copy XmlNode from one XmlDocument to another, you need to do two things.1. Import the XmlNode from the source XmlDocument to the target XmlDocument, using Import(XmlNode node, bool deep) method of the target node,2. Get the result from this method (it is XmlNode) and use AppendChild method of

Limit Microsoft SQL server memory usage

2011-01-21T05:05:00.000-08:00

I had to work with a fairly large database on my PC.It became very unresponsive so I checked what's going on.I clicked on the Performance tab in Windows Task Manager and noticed that the RAM was more then 7 GB (too much for a personal computer, don't you think?).I realized that 4 of those 7 GBs were used by the MSSQL server.I went to management studio, right clicked the server and choosed

The status code returned from the server was: 12031

2010-11-05T05:41:00.000-07:00

If you checked anything on your mind about this code, it may be because of StackOverflow exception rised within your code / or in .NET which is less possible.Just to let you know as it happened to me ;).

Rad Ajax controls Q3 2010 is now live!

2010-10-23T02:52:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post to let you know that you can download and play with the Q3 2010 version of Telerik's Asp.Net AJAX controls.What's new:1. RadTreeList, a control that is hybrid, combining treeview and a list view.2. RadButton - inherits the functionality of LinkButton, Button and ImageButton and ads more such as the abillity to combine text and image, toggle modes and more. Combined with rich

Internet Explorer 8 difference between CTRL + R / CTRL + F5 / F5 and enter in the address bar.

2010-10-12T03:26:00.000-07:00

I see there is some difference.We are currently having issue under IE in our site and we noticed that using any of the combinations will casue the Facebook Button to disappear.If you click in the address bar and then click enter you will see the facebook buttons appear.Very strange behavior.

A program in Fortran :)

2010-09-14T06:50:00.001-07:00

I am blogging from my university :).In case you need to write a program in Fortran to calculate the length of a line between tow points, there it is: program otsechka implicit none integer::p1x, p1y, p2x, p2y real:: resultX, resultY real::finalResult write(*,*)'P1 x : ' read(*,*)p1x write(*,*)'P1 y : ' read(*,*)p1y write(*,*)'P2 x : '

It's time to vote again!

2010-09-09T21:31:00.000-07:00

It is again time to vote for your best tools in the software development.Don't waste time, showing some love to one vendor or another will help that vendor push harder in the right direction.So click on the image and show some love to your favorite vendor.

Being more productive with command aliases in Visual Studio 2010

2010-08-09T23:54:00.000-07:00

We all know we are trying to cut the mouse usage to the lowest possible rate (are we getting back to DOS)? I think it is easier to hit few keystrokes instead navigating through 4-5 levels of menus.So here is a nice article on the Commands window usage in Visual Studio that may help you run faster through this:Understanding Commands: Aliases

Site is recycled + ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem

2010-07-19T00:57:00.000-07:00

Just to let you know that you may experience this issue.If you have an unhandled exception it may be because of a job queued using ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem method.Actually it appears that although the exception is not affecting the main thread (it was in another one) - the .NET will kill the running process (w3wp in our case).As far as I read this behavior is implemented since .NET Framework

Q2 2010 is comming!

2010-07-14T07:53:00.000-07:00

Telerik RadControls for Asp.Net Ajax andTelerik Extensions for ASP.NET MVC are released.See this post for more information on the cool new things included!Enjoy!

Thread was being aborted. Exception on Response.Redirect()

2010-07-14T07:45:00.000-07:00

This is actually an old issue but I try to make sure I have most of the things that stopped me at some point so I can easilly search.So if you experience the "Thread was being aborted." exception on Response.Redirect(string Url), it is because this method internally calls Response.End().In order to prevent it to do so, you will need to use the overloaded version that requires another boolean

Go download Telerik Ultimate collection trial!

2010-07-08T05:45:00.001-07:00

We have the Ultimate collection uploaded @ telerik.com.You can reach it by using the green "Download"button at the top of the page.Included in the bundle you will find:1. RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX 2. Extensions for ASP.NET MVC 3. RadControls for Silverlight 4. RadControls for WPF 5. RadControls for WinForms 6. Telerik Reporting 7. Telerik OpenAccess ORM 8. JustCode 9. JustMock 10.

How does your manager make a coffee?

2010-06-18T00:48:00.000-07:00

I had an architectural problem yesterday.I was working on a methods and managers I won't disclose but will analogy instead.Imagine you have a coffee manager. Let's name it CoffeeManager.In my case not only I had coffee manager but also I had a SugarManager, a CupManager etc.In order to take a coffee without sugar in a plastic cup I should do something like:Sugar sugarObject =

Open Access Exception : Please reformulate the query so that the parameter appears on the right side.

2010-06-07T09:26:00.000-07:00

You may come up with this exception : Please reformulate the query so that the parameter appears on the right side. in Telerik Open AccessIf you have something like:query = query.Where(x => x.Positive == (positive ? 1 : -1));The bolded text is an iif expression that the Open Access Linq driver cannot evaluate.The solution is to use something like:int iPositive = positive ? 1 : -1This way the SQL

Telerik Open Access exception : The assembly 'xxx' does not have a config file with an openaccess node.

2010-06-02T04:48:00.000-07:00

In some old versions of Telerik Open Access you may come to this exception.I am not quite sure about the latest versions.However, I've found a forum post that explains that this exception occurs if your project wasn't yet enabled for Open Access.This wasn't my case so I tried some other things.At the end, it appeared that "The assembly 'xxx' does not have a config file with an openaccess node"

US courts website runs on sitefinity

2010-05-27T04:45:00.001-07:00

Just to inform you that the U.S. courts website was launched by DeepBlue. The site is using our CMS - Sitefinity.Some more information about the project may be available soon.Here is the site:http://www.uscourts.gov/Home.aspxHopefully we will see some more .gov sites to be using our precious CMS.

Cool MCP business card builder site

2010-05-20T06:03:00.001-07:00

I've build a simple business card for me at : https://www.mcpvirtualbusinesscard.com/VBCServer/b087303c-09bf-4832-9269-83483d5c2d35/profileYou can do this also. It takes 2-3 minutes.

Nice productivity feature in Visual Studio 2010

2010-04-28T21:34:00.000-07:00

I really like this multiline manipulation that comes out of the box with Visual Studio 2010:I think it will really speed the development. Especially when refactoring old code with lots of lines that need to be manipulated in the same way.By the way I am sure JustCode team will come out with lots of cool features based on this one ;)

Sitefinity 4.0 CTP is live!

2010-04-23T06:36:00.000-07:00

Kind of late but - check out Sitefinity 4.0 CTP. http://www.sitefinity.com/4.0/asp-net-features.aspx Have a great time playing with it!

String.Format

2010-04-15T02:20:00.000-07:00

Although very convenient for example for making templates and then replace with some values, it may cause tricky problems.I've reached a code where it was used to add some data to a javascript.So javascript uses a lot fo curly braces, which are at the same time used for string format to know where to put its values.There is a way to escape those braces, buy double them, so for example : function

Nasty shock when handling WCF service exceptions ....

2010-04-10T06:42:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to share a recent interesting experience while handling WCF service exceptions.Here is the case.Imagine you have to consume a WCF service. You need to handle if the service is gone and do some additional things (let's say you want to display a message).Let's have an example. Imagine you have the following service:http://someservice.com/CalculatorThis service is used to calculate

Meet the first web server in the world! ... and the first release for this year ;)

2010-03-13T00:12:00.000-08:00

I was browsing wikipedia to see some physical thinks about CERN and accidently found this image:According to wikipedia this is the first web server, that sir Tim Berners Lee used in CERN when he invented the HTML to allow physisists to exchange scientific information.Isn't this exciting?From that server it started to end up here:And this is not the end.This is just the beginning.How far can we go

Telerik OpenAccess ORM Q1 2010 will introduce its DSL Designer, Mapping Details Editor, new Schema Explorer, Update From DB Schema Wizard, Entity D...

2010-03-05T04:45:00.000-08:00

A lot of tools I wanted to see live in this product. Finally, from Q1 2010 you can enjoy those really soon!I will also ;).Kudos to the team that made it all happen!Some screenshots from Telerik blog:The DSL Designer: Mapping details editor:Schema Explorer:Update From Database Model’ Wizard:Stay tuned ...

How do you unit test encryption?

2010-02-18T21:45:00.000-08:00

I wrote two extenders to be used on the string type.So you can say "test".Encrypt() and "encrpyptedtest".Decrypt().I was wondering how to unit test this thing.The first approach which was really obvious was to encrypt the string and then decrypt it, if you get the string before you do those two actions on it - the encryption is correct.The question in this approach is : What do you test? do you

Some telerriffic T-Shirts

2010-02-10T21:47:00.000-08:00

It's time telerik fans to pick up the T-Shirt they like the most.You can vote for the T-Shirt that you like most here : Telerik Facebook PageHere are all the variants you can choose from:Now go vote ;)

One more bar green :)

2010-02-09T00:21:00.000-08:00

I am just writing to inform you that I managed to make another bar green, yesterday I successfully passed the "Electronic devices" exam and I have two more exams before I get back to the software world :).It was obligatory for the exam to write some reports (not quite sure what is the real english word for this) - we had 10 practices during the session. Each one goal was to examine an electronic

Wish me luck :)

2010-02-04T11:30:00.000-08:00

I had some really long days. At telerik we are doing some nice but hard to do stuff, I have some university things to do. Some exams to take, some mathematics (Oh, my JustGod :(. My day is about 15-19 hours long (with few short breaks my brain is working all those long hours :).But I don't write this post to complain. Exactly the opposite - I am writing to share how happy I am to be so busy those

Take a time to watch those things. The future is comming ...

2010-01-24T00:19:00.000-08:00

I can't hide that I am very excited about what's happening with the technology.About one year ago (maybe a bit more) I found an open source project called Touchless SDK you can find the post and the video (here).I played a bit with the SDK back then and managed to do some trivial tasks - move my cursor with fingers, rotate an Open GL 3D globe etc.I had some great ideas about this, yet I didn't

Working faster with Visual Studio 2008 website

2010-01-22T03:10:00.001-08:00

I just wanted to share with you that you can actually start using the page and debug before all the actions that are known as a build are performed by Visual Studio 2008.You can actually skip the "Validating WebSite" part.Here is how I do it:1. Hit Build button2. View -> Output window3. Watch the output window, when it says "Validating website", check out your Errors List (View -> Errors List).

Unexpected fatal error -- Not enough storage is available to process this command. While building a project.

2010-01-19T11:41:00.000-08:00

It is very strange error.Anyway - if you experience it - deleting the events from the Application event log solved it for me should work for you to ...

Telerik is Red Herring Global 100 Winner

2010-01-19T04:00:00.000-08:00

Just to let you know that telerik is Red Herring Global 100 Winner.I hope this is just the beginning ;)See full list of Red Herring winners here:Red Herring Global 100 Winners

Public Issue tracking system launched today!

2010-01-18T05:29:00.000-08:00

If you haven't heard yet - we have a brand new Silverlight Public Issue tracking system.It was built to help you track your issues and features and be instantly informed about the new things we are doing here.You can also vote for your favourite feature, thus rising their priorities.The PITS is still tagged beta but it is very usable, so you can start using it right away.Are you still here?Click

Two-way binding is only supported for properties exception.

2010-01-16T10:56:00.000-08:00

That was very strange. I used #Bind in the markup of a user control in order to set a property value and got this nasty exception.It told me nothing. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with the property and what does it mean that the property is not valid.I did what every one of you will probably do ;)Google with the exception and found that if you convert the property from the type it has to

Do it worse!

2010-01-13T04:03:00.000-08:00

Here is a very interesting blog post a collegue of mine accidently found and posted to me:http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Utlimate-State-Selector.aspxIt is PHP but a regular web developer (even being ASP.NET developer) would realise the problem and the great mind behind this code :).Lesson learned - your code is great as there can always be a worse solution :).

The access to the path bin\ is forbidden exception while building - Visual Studio 2008 and TFS

2010-01-07T22:42:00.001-08:00

I had this strange error yesterday and it took me some time to understand what is going on.It appeared that the bin folder of the main project is under source control, so TFS was locking the folder, the subfolders and the files.In order to resolve it - checkout the bin folder in Visual Studio and then build.The build should be OK.Then you can Undo Changes on the folder and everything should work

Have you tried the Windows 7 God mode?

2010-01-06T01:43:00.000-08:00

I did and it really exists :DIn order to try it:1. Create new folder under Windows 72. Name it : "GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}" (without the quotes).3. The folder will change its icon, double click it ...Source : CNet

My chapter in the C# book is almost done!

2010-01-05T21:50:00.000-08:00

I am about 80% ready with the first chapter of the book "Introduction to programming with C#" (this one was assigned to me on the initial meeting).Lot's of things borrowed from the Java version of the book, still lot of things are new.In the first chapter I teach the reader what he / she needs in order to create a simple console application.Both ways are shown - using simple text editor (notepad

2012 and some other stuff

2010-01-04T12:31:00.000-08:00

I just couldn't resist to take a few minutes of my time and post this picture just to make you stop working for a minute or two :DI accidently found this picture:It is kind of mix of Y2K problem but for the next "end of the world" :).You can take a look at http://bizarrocomic.blogspot.com/, you may find some more funny pics.Good night :)

Happy holidays from telerik :)

2009-12-28T06:23:00.000-08:00

Posted by Stephen Forte, here are some greetings from telerik offices:http://www.stephenforte.net/PermaLink,guid,d29db13e-a239-49e6-b620-b72e8980c662.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+StephenFortesBlog+(Stephen+Forte`s+Blog)&utm_content=Google+Reader:).

Introduction to programming with C#

2009-12-03T22:51:00.000-08:00

As Vesko Kolev stated in his blog - a new bulgarian book about C# programming is in progress.I decided to take part because it seems very interesting. I haven't much experience in publishing so it will be very beneficial for me to work on this.Actually I was author in a software magazine few years ago (as far as I remember I was about 17 years old so it must have been about 6 years ago). It

The specified service has been marked for deletion error message when removing a service

2009-12-03T05:36:00.000-08:00

If you receive this message while trying to delete a windows service - check if the Services.msc application is open.You will need to restart in order to delete the service, but you will know to first close the Services.msc application the next time PRIOR uninstalling the service (using installutil /u service_exe_name).Hope this helps someone outthere...Edit : I found another scenario when this

Limiting your Internet connection speed with Fiddler.

2009-11-24T10:17:00.000-08:00

In some cases you may need to limit your connection for testing purposes.This is / should be extremely easy using Fiddler.Here is a simple walkthrough on how to do this:1. Go to Fiddler site and download Fiddler latest version (http://www.fiddler2.com/fiddler2/)2. Install it and start it.3. Click on Rules -> Customize Rules:4. An instance of notepad should open. Find the line that says something

Telerik after few days of work

2009-09-08T14:41:00.000-07:00

I wasn't blogging for a while but I was concentrated at my new work ;).Actually I had forgotten that I have blog but few collegues were joking with me that I suddenly put my blog posts (especially those focussed on radControls) on hold. They also asked me if I am going to stop writing about telerik :).So I decided to write about telerik ;). This time from other prospect.I was thinking a lot about

First day at Telerik

2009-08-31T11:55:00.000-07:00

Just to update you that tomorrow is my first day at Telerik.Wish me luck!

A nice sentence I read recently

2009-08-27T22:01:00.001-07:00

This one is from the asp.net forums:"Where there is a will, there is a way. And where there is a team there is more then one way."

Determine if your site is running under IIS or Casini

2009-08-25T04:37:00.001-07:00

For the people who don't know - Casini is the built in Visual Studio server which is by default running when you debug ASP.NET project.You can use the following to check if the site is running under IIS:bool isUnderIIS = this.Request.ServerVariables["SERVER_SOFTWARE"].IndexOf("IIS") > -1;Not the most clever thing I've ever done but seems to be the only way at the moment.If you know a better way -

A nice DOM property I bet most of you have missed ...

2009-08-10T23:49:00.001-07:00

In my previous post on this topic I mentioned the properties you can use to detect changes in HTML input controls:http://donchevp.blogspot.com/2009/08/nice-dom-property-i-bet-most-of-you.htmlNow I want to inform you that I have found an article which has all the controls included with the property you can use to track for changes:http://www.codestore.net/store.nsf/unid/DOMM-4UTKE6The first thing

A nice DOM property I bet most of you have missed ...

2009-08-05T23:39:00.001-07:00

Have you ever heard about the defaultValue and the defaultChecked properties?They seems to be a standard DOM properties so the major browsers seem to support them.What they do?The defaultValue property is about textboxes (input type="text") and it will contain the value which the textbox has at the time it was rendered on the page.The defaultChecked property is almost the same, it is about a

Join the W3C feature suggestions group in Facebook!

2009-08-03T03:54:00.001-07:00

You want to see a feature as a part of the W3C standard?Join the W3C feature suggestions group in facebook:http://www.facebook.com/srch.php#/group.php?gid=111306074563You may find the feature already included or find a workaround ...

Work in a cooperation with your compiler. Always tell the truth about your datatypes!

2009-08-02T03:16:00.001-07:00

When you have a cast you should avoid asking the compiler to figure out what kind of data should be returned. This is more about objects and the string data type.For example I've seen (and to be honest I myself did the following mistake when getting data from DataSet. Don't laugh in .NET 1.1 and 2.0 there was no Linq :)foreach (DataRow row in dsReportSource.Tables[0].Rows){ string strName = row["

W3C Zoom CSS property. I really want this feature included!!!

2009-08-02T02:24:00.001-07:00

Lot's of people are discussing this.And the designers are often saying something like:"I cannot imagine a scenario where you will need to use the Zoom CSS property."To the readers that haven't yet hit this problem - the CSS Zoom property seems to be proprietary and to be working for IE (I think version 6 and above).To all those designers - there ARE scenarios where you will want to let the user

Why your HttpHandler has the Session set to NULL?

2009-08-01T23:56:00.001-07:00

I was in a need to create HttpHandler. I also needed to use the session.Here is my first attempt: public class ChbHandler : IHttpHandler { #region IHttpHandler Members public bool IsReusable { get { return true; } } public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context) { HttpRequest req = context.Request; HttpResponse resp = context.Response;

Insignifficant inconvience in telerik radReports

2009-08-01T01:08:00.001-07:00

This one is not a big deal but it would be good if there is a workaround.When you create a new report and choose to create a new datasouce (Database in my case) - the classes will be created in the project root and not where the report is created.I tried to find some option or something in order to be able to place the datasource in a different folder in my project but with no luck. The

radTextBox - get the client ID of the TextBox ...

2009-07-29T05:33:00.001-07:00

As the radTextBox should be changing its behaviour depending on the mode in which the developer put it. It doesn't return the ID of the TextBox (I mean the input type="text" id) when you call something like:rtb.ClientID.So if you have a radTextBox with the name of rtbNameYou will need to say:string.Format("{0}_text", rtbName.ClientID);At least I couldn't find a property to return this information

telerik radReporting, am I missing something?

2009-07-29T00:05:00.001-07:00

I was playing with the radReporting tool. I had a datasource with 1 master item, which has about 2500 child data items.I was trying to generate a master / detail report with the telerik radReporting. Here is what I have so far.First of all - using their videos is a great help. I had everything I needed in order to start.Second - the designer is really great. I am not designer and it really pisses

Nice example on the Sieve of Eratosthenes algorithm

2009-07-12T23:18:00.001-07:00

On the following address you can find a good example on how the Sieve of Eratosthenes works on the first 100 numbers.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Animation_Sieve_of_Eratosth-2.gifBrief Explanation of the picture:1. Take the first number (2), it has 2 divisors - 1 and 2 itself. So mark all the numbers that divide by 2 (the red color).2. Take the next number (3), that is not marked by the

Telerik Style Builder

2009-06-03T05:44:00.001-07:00

It is available, yes.You can test it on the following address:Telerik Style BuilderI think this is a great service, that will help the collaboration between designers and developers a lot.Currently only few of the controls have the fine tune interface implemented but I think it is a very good start.

radGrid - check if there was a row selected, before selecting another one [2]

2009-06-03T00:00:00.001-07:00

The previous post on this topic was about pointing some solution, which doesn't always work.I think I was able to identify the problem for this issue.It is becasue the chain of events is the following when you select a new row:1. RowDeselected.2. RowSelecting.3. RowClick.3. RowSelected.I am not quite able to find the logic here.I think in normal english I should be able to say:"I am clicking on a

radGrid - check if there was a row selected, before selecting another one.

2009-06-02T05:59:00.001-07:00

Okay, we had the radGrid with AllowMultiRowSelection property turned off.But we needed to check if there is already a selection in the grid (on the client side), then get the item and do some calculations.So far so good.But it appeared that it is very difficult to get the previous item selected in a grid when selecting a new one.The OnRowSelected event as you may suspect is raised too late in

telerik radGrid - be careful with the virtual scrolling under Firefox

2009-05-29T04:29:00.001-07:00

Again some issues under Firefox.We have found a great example of how to populate on demand a radGrid (when scrolling grid scrollbar down to the end it will make ajaxRequest and ask for some more items to fill in the grid with).We loved this feature and decided to incorporate it into one of our projects.Unfortunatelly I discovered it won't work pretty well under the FireFox browser.Let me briefly

Firefox with Plugins may lead to some problems with telerik controls

2009-05-29T01:03:00.001-07:00

I had an issue with the telerik radTabStrip control.It wouldn't switch the tabs. In some cases you are only able to navigate between the first and the last tab, in some cases you may not be able to change tabs at all.I was very surprised as telerik is famous for supporting cross browser functionality for all the controls.I thought the problem may be in my TV but wasn't able to find anything.A

Some casing problems I experienced.

2009-05-20T00:50:00.001-07:00

As far as I understand, the settings for the code format are in the following Visual Studio menu:Tools -> Options ->Text EditorThere you have the ability to change things.I was having some problems reguarding the way my markup is formatted (few of the tags are made lowercase when I hit CTRL + K + D (format whole document)).So I think the settings for this should be under the HTML -> Format, or

5 minutes C# - get windows special folders path

2009-05-19T07:56:00.001-07:00

Just a two lines of code in order to retrieve the path to a special folder of your choice (My Documents, ApplicationData etc):string strAppData = Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData);DirectoryInfo diMyDocuments = new DirectoryInfo(strAppData);Here is the Environment.SpecialFolder Enum:Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData - the data which some applications

telerik radGrid - select a row without using select links / buttons and allow it to postback

2009-05-19T07:27:00.001-07:00

I was in a need to enable the user to select a row by clicking on it (not by clicking on some Select link or image or button).I also wanted this click to postback so I can do some processing on the server side.It is not so hard to achieve, but I was puzzled for quite a while so I decided to share it.In order to allow the grid to select a row by clicking on the row, you need to add the

Visual Studio Tips & Tricks 1- Re-register the controls in the .designer.cs file (recovering .designer.cs file)

2009-05-15T07:33:00.001-07:00

Okay, I suppose all of you know what the .designer.cs file is, but I will shortly explain...When you add a control to the page (via the markup editor), this control is also registered in the .designer.cs file, so you can have a reference to it in the code behind class (.cs).So if you have a page Test.aspx, you will have a group of 3 files in it:1. Test.aspx - this is the markup code, containing

Nice tool to help you build IE ready sites

2009-05-13T06:48:00.000-07:00

I found accidently this tool:It can help you make your site run smoother under all versions of IE.It's name is DebugBar go to the official site here.

MindFusion Diagramming Trick 1 - Create transparent brush

2009-05-12T22:03:00.001-07:00

As I wasn't able to find a way to create a transparent brush for the mindfusion diagrams, I thought this may be helpful for someone struggling to do the same thing.Here is a code you can use in the code behind to create a transparent brush (in the following example I am setting the brushes for all tables to be transparent).Here is the magic line:DiagramView1.Diagram.TableBrush = DiagramView1.

MindFusion diagramming Part 5 - Changing pen colors with JavaScript (ClientMode)

2009-05-12T00:58:00.001-07:00

In order to change the pen (borders) of a shape you first need to instantiate a pen class.It is in the com.mindfusion.diagramming namespace (Java class).So you need to do the following:var pen = new Packages.com.mindfusion.diagramming.Pen();Now, to set the color of the pen we need a java.awt.Color instance. Luckily there are static properties which will return a color instance for the most used

Instantiate Java class in JavaScript

2009-04-30T03:53:00.001-07:00

I know I am mostly writing about C# and .NET and so on and you may wonder way do I write about java but I found this interesting and useful even in .NET projects.I was playing with the mindfusion diagram latelly (you can check my posts under the Mind Fusion Diagramming in the blog categories) and found myself in a situation where I needed to instantiate a class from the mindfusion package (i

Operation could not be completed message when trying to open Linq to SQL (dbml) designer

2009-04-23T12:17:00.001-07:00

That was really strange.The annoying Operation could not be completed error message appeared each time I tried to open the dbml designer.I did some search and found that I need to start the Visual Studio 2008 Command prompt and type the following command:devenv/resetskippgsBut this didn't helped a lot. The annoying message was still appearing.Then I found something which made me laugh. It was so

To shim or not to shim, or why telerik radContextMenu will not show over applet in FireFox?

2009-04-16T07:34:00.001-07:00

It was a nightmare last night.I have a Java applet in my pages and needed to display telerik context menu over it when the user right clicks it. So far so good, the component had nice JS events to attach to. I was able to atach to its Click event, find the telerik radContextMenu and call it's showAt(x, y) method. It worked like a charm. I was very happy to have done this in less than 20 minutes

MindFusion diagramming Part 4 - Cancel link creation between specific kinds of shapes

2009-04-13T03:29:00.001-07:00

You can check between what kind of shapes the link is created and remove it if you need to do so. I will give you an example on how to cancel the connection between Actor and Actor shapes.First - add LinkCreatedScript to your diagram and make it point a JavaScript function, here is mine declaration: The thing you need to obey here is to give the diagram overview control