I found a problem with String.Format across cultures, when the {0} parameters within the strings weren't being properly replaced. The article is located here.

Here's just a little helper for you if you want to Remote Desktop through firewalls. There's a lot of info out there on this subject, but it's often quite hectic. The only port the remote desktop protocol (RDP) needs is TCP port 3389 in and out. Many routers do port forwarding so if you have a machine on a LAN behind a firewall you can get to it via this protocol. For example, at home I have an Inventel Livebox from Orange. Using the config site for the router, I opened 3389 and pushed it through to my main server viathe LAN IP. Now I can just connect to my internet IP or hostname using Remo... [More]

I don't know about you, but I've had an utter nightmare trying to debug .NET 2.0 web applications across domains. Despite literally every trick in the book (such as creating local users with same username/password) I just could not get breakpoints to be hit. Using native (no auth) debugging, I could attach to the worker processes but symbols just were not loaded, no matter what I did. It was when I found myself in the depths of dcomcnfg mucking around that I eventually decided that there must be an easier way. Then it hit me. I'd been so busy trying to go across domains (I could not change th... [More]

After running an FxCop through one of my projects, I recently noticed that there was a newer entry for exception handling, detailing that I should no longer use the ApplicationException as it has become "useless". This contradicts my article on Exception handling which has been updated accordingly. Read this article for more information: http://blogs.msdn.com/kcwalina/archive/2006/06/23/644822.aspx

Interesting to see that the authors, Tony Northrup, Shawn Wildermuth et.al., insist on referring to the 'using' statement as the 'include' statement throughout the book. Leastways, the eBook does, the print version seems to be corrected. My edition is anyway. Look at page 383 - Thread lab. Evidently we have developers of the C rather than VB background here ;)

Its very easy to send an email using .NET 2.0 and you can choose to send HTML and/or plain text using the AlternateView collection on the MailMessage class. However until reading about it in my MCTS exam book i didn't realise that you could embed images (well anything i guess) into the email, i assumed you were limited to having to have them on a public website and then having a link to them... resulting in most email clients (gmail/outlook that i use) not downloading the images by default for security reasons. I'm sure you'll agree this is annoying, especially if you've spent time and mon... [More]

I was recently involved in a project where the filename was named depending on one of the distinguished fields in the XML. The code I  used was similar to: OutboundMessage(FILE.ReceivedFileName) = InboundDespatch.InnerSchema1.Property1.ToString() + ".txt"; This caused a compilation error stating: 'System.Xml.XmlDocument' does not contain a definition for 'Property1' It turns out that the generated code does not like the .ToString() method. To get around this, you can use the convert methods to convert it: OutboundMessage(FILE.ReceivedFileName) = System.Convert.ToString(Inboun... [More]

It's easy to set the tooltip on a RadioButtonList control, but what if you want to set a different tooltip for each of the individual radio buttons? (actually ListItems as far as .NET is concerned). Well its fairly simple, but undocumented, take this example which will set the text of each item to be it's tooltip:   List<string> ds = new List<string>();  ds.Add("Radio 1");  ds.Add("Radio 2");  ds.Add("Radio 3");  RadioButtonList rbList = new RadioButtonList();  rbList.DataSource = ds;  rbList.DataBind();  foreach (ListItem item in rbList.Items)  {      item.Attri... [More]

...and straight off I have something to share with you :) If you're installing using EPiServer manager and using SQL Server 2005 Express, you need to be aware of the following, otherwise you get all sorts of 'SQL Server unavailable' and user authentication errors: 1) Make sure you NAME THE INSTANCE in the install, otherwise it will install on your default instance (which in my case, stupidly, was an MSDE instance!) 2) Make sure you have both Shared Memory and TCP/IP turned on in your SQL2005 Configuration. The installation uses Shared Memory, but the site itself uses TCP/IP. 3) Make sure m... [More]

OK, so I'm back again from my enforced travels, and being thrown straight into some EPiServer work. Business & Decision are EPiServer partners, which is good news for me because now that MCMS has been ditched, we see a gap in the market for SMEs who only want CMS and feel that MOSS would be a sledgehammer to crack a nut (and at approx 30k entry license, they'd be right!). I think it's going to be interesting working on this project, and as usual if I find interesting tidbits I'll post them up here.