Thought I'd do a quick summary of the demos I've published on my site over the last few months so here goes: ASP.NET AJAX TravelNews (a simple mashup app showing road traffic information from the BBC using ASP.NET AJAX and Virtual Earth. See...

Sooo many people have asked for my AJAX demos from the Roadshow and I haven't posted them mainly because of their dependence on the stock web service. For one thing I didn't write the wrapper so I'd need permission to share it and for another it means...

SlickRun has to be my all time favourite "helper" utility. It hangs around in the background and, when required, responds to a set of "magic words" that might do things like start Visual Studio, show the Internet Options dialogue or lookup something on...

Ravi contacted me yesterday about a new user group he's setting up called Vista Squad focusing on Microsoft Vista and .Net FX 3.0. I managed to get a plug in for him at the Roadshow yesterday and he's very kindly put a link to my sponsorship page on the...

Microsoft unveils the Xbox 360 Elite I must admit I've not been getting the same use out of my Xbox 360 that I did when I was young, free and single but I am eagerly awaiting my copy of Crackdown. Actually my problem is I need a bigger house so we can...

I've come to know a little bit more about that vulnerable part of our anatomy known as the Achilles Tendon over the last couple of weeks. I've also found lots of new ways to stretch, strengthen and generally mobilise it as well. But the one thing I've...

Ye gawds it was about time . I think the keys had nearly worn through on the old one. Trouble is, Mike and hardware don't always get on too well (just ask him about his PhatNoise) and it seems he's already running into trouble . Me, I got a Dell D820...

A question from the London Roadshow this time - why is it this code works: <%@ Page Language="C#" %> < html > < script runat ="server" > protected override void OnLoad(EventArgs e) { Label1.Text = new Random().Next(1, 100...

Clearly I'm missing something obvious here but last night's episode of Dragons' Den when everyone wanted to save the planet with a standby saver has me troubled... The Standby Saver (or whatever it was called) claims to save the (significant amount of...

A interesting article here on ASP.NET AJAX vs open source where Brad (Abrams) argues that the Cathedral & the Bazaar analogy doesn't work when it comes to AJAX. The article (quoting Brad) makes some really good points about how we've got things right...

I put this here partly for my own benefit so I can find it easily again - a great article on the changes you need to make to get F5 debugging support on ASP.NET applications on IIS7 / Vista. Fix problems with Visual Studio F5 debugging of ASP.NET applications...

This is the second time I've done this recently and promptly kicked myself. If you're going to leave the domain (shouting to myself) MAKE SURE YOU: [A] HAVE A LOCAL USER ACCOUNT WITH ADMIN PRIVILEGES ENABLED [B] KNOW THE PASSWORD Twice in the last few...

Another question today - can you nest UpdatePanel controls? Well I hadn't tried so off I jolly well went and did so... <%@ Page Language="C#" %> <! DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR...

Another question from an event - this time today's MSDN event at the Microsoft London offices. Can I create and add UpdatePanels to my page dynamically? Mais ouis! The code below shows a simple example. Create an UpdatePanel instance then create your...

My sadistic physio has said that I *will* do the marathon no matter what it takes and insists I've been slacking by not training due to my achilles injury. So back to the gym it was last night for some achilles-friendly exercise. I thought I'd do some...

And how do you hook up the button in my previous post to give the user the option to cancel a long-running operation? You simply need to call a JavaScript function ( CancelAsyncPostBack() in my case) as follows: <script language= "JavaScript" type...

A couple of people have asked how I achieve the effect I show on the roadshow demo when my UpdateProgress control "dims" the page and my dialogue appears in "front" - a bit like this: The ProgressTemplate of the UpdateProgress control is surfaced...

Someone asked me in Glasgow how they could take advantage of ASP.NET AJAX on their site but still maintain their advertising banners which refresh on postback. Fewer postbacks = fewer refreshes = fewer payments (I was surprised to learn that revenue was...

I was troubled by some viewstate questions this morning (you know when you think you know how something works and then you either write some code or, in my case, use Reflector to read some code that promptly contradicts your safe and comfortable knowledge...

Well apart from deciding to close the motorway slip road from the airport resulting in mass gridlock through Paisley. And damaging my achilles tendon running to Milngavie reservoir and back (and twice around it). And my Dell laptop PSU popping during...

Gemma was ribbing me last night over this story in Metro . Essentially researchers as Microsoft Cambridge have come up with a machine that can receive text messages and print them onto clear labels so you can stick them on a calendar ( as per the photo...

I stated below "And, as I understand it, much improved performance switching between Design and Source views, a unified undo/redo stack and full access to features like the properties dialogue in source view". Having downloaded and fired up the VPC I...

Ian has a number of updates on his blog with details of how you'll be informed if you're a winner and when you'll receive the software. Note that if you had your Microsoft contact preferences set to "Do not receive emails" then no email would have been...

I'm just downloading now (I know, I'm a little behind but I've been gallivanting around the country for the last week) and I'm super excited * about it. This is the first CTP with the VWD bits in so we get: New ASP.NET WebForms design-surface with advanced...

Just put down the gazebo and keep your hands where I can see them...