Microsoft Web Platform Installer -- All in one.

Microsoft has published`"Microsoft Web Platform Installer Beta" an installation package that combines all services required to run an asp.net web application. The package includes IIS7, Visual web developer 2008 express edition and sqlserver 2008 express edition. The bad news is that the package run only on Windows Vista RTM, Windows Vista SP1, Windows Server 2008 which is normal since IIS7 runs on these platforms. However that would make the package more valuable for hosting companies than it's for developers.I think such packages should be targeted for beginner developers who are not yet aware of all components they need to start developing for dotnet and save them from setup hassle for many components.

Is't true that Asp.net gets no respect ?

Rick Strahl had a good article named ASP.NET gets no Respect regarding asp.net.The article discusses many points including :

- why many developers don't choose asp.net as their web technology?
- what makes asp.net a different web technology?
- Is asp.net is just being hated because it's a microsoft product?

The article is a great one to give you an insight on what is going on out there. Regardless of my loyalty to microsoft technologies I can't stop thinking of a question that every web developer maybe asking :

Do I need to learn a backup web technology?

I HAD A WAR WITH A checkbox

Have you created a gridview with a checkbox template field. sure you have if not just jumb to that nice article on how to do and that article to know how to implement Check All and Uncheck All functionality but don't forget to come back, am waiting.As you all know the main idea is to save round trips to the server by selecting multiple checkboxes and take an action on the selected rows.So why I had that war since everything seems just cool and under control.The problem was that each time I check the checkbox it returns false on the server side which drive me crazy "Why, why, why ....".However after many trials reviewing the javascript for attaching the event to the checkbox I found myself searching in the wrong part of the city so I got back to the server side where I found my terrible mistake "in that case off course". I was binding the Grodview control each time the page was loading "what was I thinking of, Nothing I guess and That was the problem :D". Anyway It seemed so natural why the checkbox always returned false since it had just been created.To Summary the long story The !IsPostBack check was the solution.

Bolggers need this

Are you a blogger ? Are you a technical blogger ? Have you faced difficulties pasting your code in to your post???

For me, all the above is just true. AS am using blogger I faced that problem when trying to paste some c# code into one of my posts.The problem came from the html validation that blogger makes.So whenever you have some html character like "<,> and &" you will need to html encode them otherwise you will get an error. Postable is a simple site allowing you to paste your code and generates a friendly output code by converting all the special characters to their HTML Encodes. After converting your code using Postable you would probably use the <code> tag to distinguish your post text from your code.