Developer News

Why? Language Archaeology … and Metaprogramming I showed up at

July 3, 2009 – 11:00 am

Why? Language Archaeology … and Metaprogramming
I showed up at the organizational meeting for the ANSI/ISO C++ standards committee because Bjarne Stroustrup asked me to. I knew him from my early C++ work and from conferences, and I suspect he considered me a friendly influence.

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Why No Top-Level Functions in C# I’ve speculated for a

July 3, 2009 – 4:01 am

Why No Top-Level Functions in C#
I’ve speculated for a long time about why C# doesn’t have top-level functions, for example in this post, where the solution to the problem is rather ugly because the static functions have to be qualified by their class name, i.e. instead of this: Rgx.Expr e = Rgx.Seq(Rgx.Char(’c'), Rgx.Seq(Rgx.Plus(Rgx.Alt(Rgx.Char(’a'), Rgx.Char(’d'))), Rgx.Char(’r'))); It would have been nicer to write this: Expr e = Seq(Char(’c'), Seq(Plus(Alt(Char(’a'), Char(’d'))),

How do i make a form that doesn’t open the e-mail client?
i’ve made a website with a contact form, but everytime you click the send button it opens the computer default e-mail client. i know there is a way of doing this, but i dont know how. I think it involves php and if it does can somebody show me how to do it, in simple terms (because i’m new to…

Outlook HTML is better broken and safe, than rich and dangerous
The campaign at fixoutlook.org is brilliant. Outlook 2010 will have broken HTML support, it says, because it will use Word to render HTML: Microsoft has confirmed they plan on using the Word rendering engine to display HTML emails in Outlook 2010. This means for the next 5 years your email designs will need tables for layout, have no support for CSS like float and position, no background images and lots more.

EU responds to questions on Microsoft?s plans for Windows 7
Events in the EU?s case against browser bundling in Windows have taken an odd twist. The case was brought originally by Opera, which complained that it couldn?t sell its browser because IE came free with Windows. Other interested parties such as Google and Mozilla joined in.

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The Adventures of a Pythonista in Schemeland: Macros and Lexical

July 2, 2009 – 9:00 pm

The Adventures of a Pythonista in Schemeland: Macros and Lexical Context
In this episode I explain how to break hygiene in Scheme macros by using datum->syntax. I discuss how you can play with the lexical context. Finally, I spend some time on non-hygienic macro systems versus hygienic systems.

See you at @media09? Tickets are still available
Lauren and I set off for London later to today. It?s @media time again and I?ve been looking forward to this for a while. As usual Patrick Griffiths has lined up a fantastic group of really inspirational speakers and, whilst smaller in the light of the current climate, I have no doubts that it will be useful. I?ve been to every @media since it started and I?ve always had a great time. If you have the time, I?d urge you to make this year the sell-out it?s been in the past!

Using the Silverlight HeaderedContentControl
This article examines the Silverlight HeaderedContentControl class, which displays content with a header and content pane. It takes a look at the various ways Silverlight can use this control.
Brian Mains

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The Morning Brew #375 A lot of video content in

July 2, 2009 – 2:01 pm

The Morning Brew #375
A lot of video content in today?s edition? Software Still on the Windows 7 Beta? - John McClelland shares a timely reminder about the expiry of the Windows 7 Beta release - only a few days before it goes into 2 hour shutdown mode. Velocity Administration Console - Gil Fink announces a nice little project to create a […]

Online card payment: ASP.Net
Hi everyone! I am developing an accommodation reservation system in ASP.Net. And it’s my first project in this area. So my question is how can I implement online payment into my ASP.Net form? So that the users when booking a room should be able to pay for the accommodation online (Visa card,…

Drag Repositioning
The very essence of docking windows is the ability to drag and drop content into new positions quickly and easily. Showing such a dynamic feature in pictures is a little difficult but you can see here that I have implemented the drop indicators. In this example I am dragging the floating window by using the caption […]

Docking DropDown
The operation of the docking windows is designed to closely mimic the way that Visual Studio 2010 Beta operates and not the current VS2008. So if the following does not look or feel quite right that is most likely because you have not played around with VS2010. Each docking window has a drop down button […]

Guantanamo: The Game, The Controversy
Moazzam Begg, former Guantanamo Bay detainee, is set to go back to the now closed suspected terrorist prison camp. But this time his stay will be purely virtual, on the Xbox 360. As strange as it might sound, a new computer game is being developed based upon life in Guantanamo Bay according to reports. 41 year old Brit Begg spent the best part of two years there, detained as a terror suspect. He was eventually released without charge. Game play will not, however, revolve around lengthy political campaigning, nor indeed water boarding or other torture activity. There is no word on whether…

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TestDriven.Net 2.19: Release NotesWhich Test Runner? The latest version of

July 2, 2009 – 9:01 am

TestDriven.Net 2.19: Release Notes

Which Test Runner?

The latest version of TestDriven.Net will display the name of the test runner used in the test results summary. If the target project doesn t reference a known test framework assembly, TestDriven.Net will use the Ad hoc test runner to quickly execute the target method.

You can see the above method has been executed using the Ad hoc test runner. If this happens when targeting real unit test, the chances are a test runner to handle the target test type or version hasn t been registered.

NUnit 2.5 Beta 2 Support

This version includes support for NUnit 2.5 Beta 2. The previous version had a bug that caused tests that threw an exception to show as skipped rather than failed.

Test With > .NET 1.1 on a 64-bit OS

If the .NET 1.1 SDK is installed and you re using Visual Studio 2005, you will have the option to Test With > .NET 1.1 . Under the covers this functionality builds your project using MSBee before executing your tests using .NET 1.1. This will now work when executed on a 64-bit OS.

I d be interested to hear if there s any demand for this feature on Visual Studio 2008.

Visual Studio 2003 Support

This version once again works on Visual Studio 2003. Only one person noticed this was broken on the previous beta. Are there many projects still being developed using Visual Studio 2003? I m using MSBee for all my legacy .NET 1.1 support.

Running xUnit tests on a 64-bit OS

Some people have been experiencing problems registering the xUnit test runner on a 64-bit OS. It turns out the problem was due to xUnit sometimes registering itself under HKLM and sometimes under HKCU depending on what was previously installed. If you re experiencing this problem, try re-registering xUnit (using xunit.installer.exe) after installing this version.

Clear Error List Before Build

Failed tests will now be removed from the error list when a new build starts. This prevents failed tests from becoming mixed up with build errors. I think this is the correct default behavior.

Download

You can find the release notes here and download here.

Expression Design Resources
Following on from my post about the Expression family, I said I?d follow up with some more details on Expression Design. Someone commented on my other post that Expression Design is ?too basic? and I suppose for many people that will be a fair criticism. For someone like me, who?s not a graphic designer, I find it strikes a good balance between functionality and complexity (and I use some other tools to achieve things Design is not so suited to such as manipulating bitmap images ? Paint.

Guantanamo: The Game, The Controversy
Moazzam Begg, former Guantanamo Bay detainee, is set to go back to the now closed suspected terrorist prison camp. But this time his stay will be purely virtual, on the Xbox 360. As strange as it might sound, a new computer game is being developed based upon life in Guantanamo Bay according to reports. 41 year old Brit Begg spent the best part of two years there, detained as a terror suspect. He was eventually released without charge. Game play will not, however, revolve around lengthy political campaigning, nor indeed water boarding or other torture activity. There is no word on whether…

See you at @media09? Tickets are still available
Lauren and I set off for London later to today. It?s @media time again and I?ve been looking forward to this for a while. As usual Patrick Griffiths has lined up a fantastic group of really inspirational speakers and, whilst smaller in the light of the current climate, I have no doubts that it will be useful. I?ve been to every @media since it started and I?ve always had a great time. If you have the time, I?d urge you to make this year the sell-out it?s been in the past!

TestDriven.Net Options Pane

In the latest version of TestDriven.Net you will find a new options pane. The options are as follows:

Hide trace/debug output when running all tests in project/solution

In the past this setting has always been hardwired to true. It means you can add trace information to a test without cluttering up the Test output pane when all tests are executed. An alternative way to ensure a message will always appear in the output is to use Console.WriteLine rather than Trace.WriteLine . This also means the verbose Gallio/MbUnit test run output will show up when executing all tests in a project.

Cache test process between test runs

By default the external test process will be cached when the Run Test(s) command is used. This process appears in the tool tray as a rocket icon which can be used to kill the process. This is fine unless one of your tests starts leaking leaking native resources (such as leaving open a file handle). The best solution is to fix the resource leak, but you now have to option to work around the issue by killing the test process at the end of each test run. This can be useful if the resource leak is in a 3rd party DLL which can t be easily be changed.

Categories

This option supports the most common use of test categories; you can choose to include or exclude a selection of categories. This is useful if you want to exclude long running tests or if your machine isn t configured to execute integration tests. This feature is currently only supported by the NUnit runner that comes with TestDriven.Net, but I believe it will be supported by a a future version of Gallio.

You can specify your NUnit test categories like this:

    [Test, Category("LongRunning")] 
    public void LongRunning() 
    { 
        Thread.Sleep(10000); 
    } 

There are lots of features in TestDriven.Net that could be exposed as options. I ll try to resist this temptation as much as possible, but I m sure a few more will creep in.

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Integrity Testing for Software Professionals By Donna L. Davis Before

July 2, 2009 – 4:00 am

Integrity Testing for Software Professionals By Donna L. Davis
Before I became a supervisor, the very notion that someone might be monitoring my Internet usage was not only horrifying, but demoralizing. Didn t they trust me?
Click here for the full article.

IMS Locks Sample for VS DSL Tools 2010 Beta1
I see that Jean-Marc has just posted another sample on the DSL Tools Code Gallery landing page, this time about the new IMS Locks capability. This allows you to make some parts of your models read-only, which is good for situations where some users (say an architect) are allowed to make changes to some aspects of the model (say the core architecture components), and other users (say developers) are only allowed to make changes to other aspects (say the properties specifically focused on driving

gridview
Hi people, I am working on a asp.net c# project where i need a drop down list and check boxes in a grid view. can any one help me out how to do this. thanks in advance shireesha

TestDriven.Net 2.11: Parameterized NUnit Tests

TestDriven.Net has always supported parameterized test methods when used with the MbUnit testing framework. When using MbUnit, it is common for a single test method to execute multiple tests with different parameter inputs. The most famous of these test types is the MbUnit RowTest.

Until now there has been little reason to add support for executing parameterized tests using NUnit (historically NUnit has only supported parameterless test methods). However Andreas Schlapsi has recently written an implementation of MbUnit’s RowTest using NUnit 2.4’s Addin extensibility mechanism.

I’ve updated TestDriven.Net 2.11 to better support NUnit add-ins and enable the targeting of RowTests and other parameterized test types. This version also includes a workaround for a log4net related issue that was causing a noticeable delay when launching the NUnit 2.4 GUI. You can find the release notes for TestDriven.Net 2.11 here.

To install the RowTest Extension for NUnit you will need to do the following:

1. Download and install TestDriven.Net 2.11.
2. Download the RowTest Extension for NUnit 2.4.5 (Binary).
3. Create a directory called ‘addins’ in ‘%ProgramFiles%\TestDriven.NET 2.0\NUnit\2.4′.
4. Copy the ‘NUnitExtension.RowTest.AddIn.dll’ file into the ‘addins’ directory (don’t put any non-assembly files there).
5. Add a reference to ‘NUnitExtension.RowTest.dll’ from your NUnit test project.

 

You can then start writing and executing MbUnit style RowTests inside your NUnit projects! You can find Peli’s original RowTest example here.

To view your RowTests inside the NUnit GUI you will need to use ‘Test With > NUnit 2.4′. You will find this option on the ‘Solution Explorer’ project context menu.

Thanks to Wayne Brantley for letting me know about the RowTest Extension for NUnit.

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The Morning Brew #374 Software Spark View Engine - Release:

July 1, 2009 – 9:01 pm

The Morning Brew #374
Software Spark View Engine - Release: Spark v1.0 - The Spark View Engine reached a V1 final release last week. This release brings a few minor changes since the RC2 release, improvements to samples, the odd bugfix, the removal of dependencies on MVCContrib, and a new installer to name a few Announcing: Entity Framework Feature CTP […]

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