This is a follow up post to Basic Sample - How To Keep ASP.NET ViewState On The Server

ASP.NET 2.0 offers much easier built-in mechanism to save ViewState on the server in Session using SessionPageStatePersister. Thanks to Russ who pointed me to this feature available in ASP.NET 2.0 via comments in the previous post.

The details can be found here ASP.NET 2.0 Page State Persister [thanks go to Eddie from our own ACE team for the pointer].

Short analysis. Using SessionPageStatePersister to store VIewState is very convenient as there is no code needed, almost. The down side is that this approach allows storing ViewState only in Session while the approach described in previous post allows routing ViewState to any storage of your choice – Session, Cache, DB, Web Services – up to your imagination. This can be important when considering scalability aspects of the solution that kazlak pointed out in the comments for the previous post.

To commentators. Big-thank-you for leaving your insightful comments. Sharing your insights helps me to improve and I am sure it also enriches this blog readers experience – THANKS! Please comment more and leave your web sites/blogs so I can link back to you and give you full credit to your insights.

Customize Guidance Explorer Inside Outlook 2007 – Find Tech Gold Nuggets Instantly

In previous post I showed how to configure Outlook 2007 to consume patterns&practices Guidance Explorer online store via RSS.

Guidance Explorer online store exposes close to 4000 items as I write this. Main categories are security, performance, and Visual Studio. Navigating fast through this haystack and finding the needle is not simple task. Outlook 2007 searching capabilities to the rescue! In this post I will show how to configure it for easier searches using Outlook’s 2007 built-in functionality.

Summary of steps

• Step #1 – Create search folders.
• Step #2 – Configure Favorites.
• Step #3 – Use Outlook 2007’s instant search – free text.
• Step #4 – Use Outlook 2007’s instant search – GE’s attributes.

Following section explains each step in details

• Step #1 – Create search folders. Expand GE folder [the one that was created in Step 2 - Consume patterns&practices Guidance Explorer Via RSS Using Outlook 2007]. Right click on Search Folders node and choose “New Search Folder…”. In the dialog choose “Create a Custom Search Folder” found in the very bottom of the dialog under “Custom” category:
• Hit “Choose…” button. Specify “Performance” as the name for the Search Folder, hit “Criteria…” button. Specify “Topic: Performance” in “Search for the word(s):” field – including the quotes. Specify to search in both “subject field and message body” in “In:” filed and hit OK button.
• Step #2 – Configure Favorites. Configure the same way 2 more Search Folders - one for Security and another for Visual Studio. Drag the resulting Search folders into “Favorites Folders” window inside Outlook 2007.
• Step #3 – Use Outlook 2007’s instant search – free text. Choose Security Search Folder in Favorites Folders while in Outlook 2007. Type RSA in instant search as a search criteria for the subject. You should instantly get all items that have RSA in their subjects:
   
• Step #4 – Use Outlook 2007’s instant search – GE’s attributes. Each GE item has attributes in the bottom. Refine the search shown in Step #3 by copying one or more attributes from the GE item and pasting it as another search criteria. For example this is how it will look if I paste “Category: Configuration” attribute as another search criteria

Enjoy and start finding your next security or performance solution to your problem instantly.

My related posts

• Consume patterns&practices Guidance Explorer Via RSS Using Outlook 2007
• How to Use Outlook 2007 RSS To Effectively Aggregate And Distill Information

Related resources

• JD Meier on Guidance Explorer
• A GTD Approach to Organizing and Reading Your Feeds

patterns&practices recently released new version of Guidance Explorer [GE]. One of the most important addition was enabling RSS on the online GE store. What does that mean? It means you can consume distilled security, performance, and Visual Studio wisdom in any RSS reader of your choice. It means you can leverage familiar environment to consume close to 4000 technical gold nuggets.

This post describes how to set up RSS feed inside Outlook 2007 to read GE’s content.

Summary of steps

• Step 1 – Download latest GE bits
• Step 2 – Create designated offline PST file
• Step 3 – Subscribe to GE’s RSS feed in Outlook 2007
• Step 4 – Test drive GE’s content using Outlook 2007

Next section describes each step in detail

• Step 1 – Download latest GE bits. Navigate to GE’s releases page and review latest release notes. Also review GE’s FAQ’s. Download latest release – it appears in upper right corner of the page. Extract downloaded zip file and navigate to bin folder. Double click GuidanceExplorer.exe file. GE appears on your screen.
• Step 2 – Create designated offline PST file. Switch to Outlook 2007. Open “Data File Management…” found in “File” menu. Click “Add…” in “Data Files” tab to create new PST file. Name it GE [or whatever you like]. Saving GE’s items in dedicated offline PST file will keep your Outlook’s online store from overflowing and it is easier to back up too.
• Step 3 – Subscribe to GE’s RSS feed in Outlook 2007. Switch to GE. Right click on “patterns & practices Library” node in GE and choose subscribe to RSS feed:
  
  Internet Explorer will open and will try to display the feed. Do not get scared by the message telling you that IE cannot show the feed as follows:
  
  Just grab the URL from the address bar – highlight it and copy it to clipboard [ctrl+C]. Switch to Outlook 2007. Right click “RSS Subscriptions” node and choose “Add a New RSS Feed” as depicted below:
  
  Paste [ctrl+V] the URL from the clip board into the dialog and hit OK. Hit “Advanced…” button in the next dialog box and configure the feed to sore the items inside the newly created PST file:
  
  
• Step 4 – Test drive GE’s content using Outlook 2007. After Outlook 2007 finishes downloading the items you can test drive familiar functionality such as instant searching or forwarding the items as an emails.

Heaven.

My related posts

• How to Use Outlook 2007 RSS To Effectively Aggregate And Distill Information
• Generate Documents Out Of Mail Items Directly From Outlook 2007
• Security .Net Code Inspection Using Outlook 2007
• Back Up, Back Up, Back Up
• My Pipeline Is My Inbox

Related materials

• JD Meier on Guidance Explorer