sano the super geek

the endeavors of a professional geek at microsoft.

Microsoft Build Sidekick

The folks at Trivium Technologies have released the first version of their MSBuild Sidekick, a GUI...

Author: csano Date: 07/13/2006

Custom Windows Forms Controls: ColorPicker.NET, Part 2

It took them a long time, but the folks at MSDN finally got around to publishing the second part of...

Author: csano Date: 06/29/2006

Changing the default sort order of your sortable columns on the ASP.NET GridView

One of the great things about the new ASP.NET GridView control is that it allows you to implement...

Author: csano Date: 06/29/2006

Incorrect syntax near '[Insert Arbitrary Column Name]'

I ran into a rather mysterious error when working with some SQL code today. Incorrect syntax near...

Author: csano Date: 01/18/2006

Passing values between two IHttpHandlers within the same HttpContext

My latest ASP.NET coding endeavor required that I perform a postback and then transfer control over...

Author: csano Date: 12/14/2005

Windows Vista UX Guidelines

Microsoft recently posted the preliminary Windows Vista UX guidelines. These guidelines contain...

Author: csano Date: 09/15/2005

XAMLShare

I just came across XAMLShare, a public wiki dedicated to providing various Windows Presentation...

Author: csano Date: 08/20/2005

Getting away from Application.DoEvents

Another great blog entry by Jessica Fosler: Keeping your UI Responsive and the Dangers of...

Author: csano Date: 08/14/2005

Wrapping text in DataGrid cells

One of the most common questions I've been asked in recent weeks has been in regards to creating a...

Author: csano Date: 07/14/2005

ColorPicker.NET v0.1.1

I had a few cycles today so I spent some time fixing some bugs in ColorPicker.NET.

Author: csano Date: 07/13/2005

Transcripts for MSDN Designing .NET Class Libraries

The transcripts for the MSDN Designing .NET Class Libraries class that Brad Abrams coordinated a few...

Author: csano Date: 07/11/2005

What the heck is this error and how do I fix it?

If you've frustratingly encountered the "<UICulture> should be set in the project file in...

Author: csano Date: 07/10/2005

Emulating the OSX taskbar in Avalon

Amir Khella shows how easy it is to create stunning visual effects in Avalon in his Playing Around...

Author: csano Date: 07/05/2005

Strings in .NET v2.0

I just came across David Fetterman's article on MSDN covering the new recommendations for using...

Author: csano Date: 07/01/2005

ColorPicker.NET v0.2 preview

I'm working on finishing up the code for the next release of ColorPicker.NET. The main focus of this...

Author: csano Date: 06/29/2005

Nick Kramer on Avalon

Nick Kramer, one of the Program Manager leads over in Windows Client (Avalon) has been blogging...

Author: csano Date: 06/27/2005

Ian Griffiths interview on TheServerSide.net

via TheServerSide.net: Ian Griffiths on his upcoming Avalon book and more.

Author: csano Date: 06/24/2005

Windows Forms Tip: Ensure only one instance of your application is running at a time

via Paul Laudeman: Ensure that an user can run only one instance of your application at a time.

Author: csano Date: 06/22/2005

ColorPicker.NET v0.1 released!

After completing a three-month work-related project that devoured just about every minute of my...

Author: csano Date: 06/20/2005

DataGrid Q&A #2

Troy Simpson was nice enough to point out and provide a fix for some visual inconsistencies with the...

Author: csano Date: 06/17/2005

Creating icons for your Windows Forms applications

This is an excel lent resource that manifests optimal practices for designing icons for your Windows...

Author: csano Date: 06/16/2005

Dispose/Finalization Design Guidelines updated

Joe Duffy has posted an update to the Dispose, Finalization and Resource Management section of the...

Author: csano Date: 04/17/2005

ColorPicker.NET source update

Someone e-mailed me the other day and told me that the Sano.Utility project wasn't included with the...

Author: csano Date: 03/25/2005

Custom Windows Forms Controls: ColorPicker.NET

My latest article on MSDN discusses the functionality involved in some of the custom controls that...

Author: csano Date: 03/15/2005

ColorPicker.NET: Quick fix

I've fixed the problem with the cursor clipping region in ColorPicker.NET that was causing the...

Author: csano Date: 03/08/2005

ColorPicker.NET web page

I've created a simple web page to let people keep track of all of the changes that are made to...

Author: csano Date: 02/02/2005

ColorPicker.NET Update #2

I’ve uploaded the most recent binaries for ColorPicker.NET. A lot of changes have been made to the...

Author: csano Date: 01/31/2005

Handling Keyboard User Input in Windows Forms

If you ever find yourself in a situation where you think you might need to override the default...

Author: csano Date: 01/24/2005

ColorPicker.NET update

Thanks to everyone who provided comments on the binaries that I released the other day. I spent a...

Author: csano Date: 01/21/2005

DataGrid Q&A #2

Q: How do I extend the DataGrid's furthest right column so that the column (or, at least, the column...

Author: csano Date: 01/18/2005

DataGrid Q&A

I received an e-mail today that contained a question that I've seen posted across several different...

Author: csano Date: 01/17/2005

Styling With the DataGridColumnStyle, Part 2

The second part of my two-part article on customizing the Windows Forms DataGrid control has been...

Author: csano Date: 01/07/2005

Dragging and Dropping DataGrid Columns article updated

I've updated my Dragging and Dropping DataGrid Columns article to include a VB.NET sample of the...

Author: csano Date: 12/15/2004

Styling With the DataGridColumnStyle, Part 1

I wrote a two-part article that takes a look at leveraging the adaptability of the Windows Forms...

Author: csano Date: 12/09/2004

Some GDI/GDI+ fun with the WinForms DataGrid control

I've published a new article on MSDN that details how you can add some nifty visual effects to the...

Author: csano Date: 08/03/2004

Technical Writing

Someone forwarded me a link to one of Jean-Luc David's blog entries in which he lists a few techical...

Author: csano Date: 06/22/2004

The difficulties of language design

Phil Haack just posted an excellent blog entry on the difficulties of language design.

Author: csano Date: 06/01/2004

Dispose/Finalize notes

When to implement a finalizer: You should only implement a finalizer when you are implying that that...

Author: csano Date: 05/24/2004

Singleton Design Pattern

https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnbda/html/singletondespatt.asp...

Author: csano Date: 05/19/2004

Windows Forms FAQ

George Shepherd's Windows Forms FAQ contains an aggregation of questions and answers from a variety...

Author: csano Date: 04/23/2004

PInvoke.net

Duncan (and a few other MS bloggers) have mentioned the new PInvoke.net site that surfaced recently....

Author: csano Date: 04/19/2004

DirectX

If you're trying to learn DirectX, what has been the most frustrating part of the learning process?...

Author: csano Date: 03/10/2004