Hi,

Here is the news that I have been waiting for so long. The download of Orcas beta 2 is available now. The download comes with a go live licence also. The installation has some problem with the working of asp.net Ajax  side by side. Hence we also have to run a script(provided with the download) at the end of the download. The download supports only Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 2003 Server.

Here is the Link To the download
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa700831.aspx

That’s all for now. I have already started my download manager. What about you?

Vikram

Hi,

Yesterday I was working on a small page for helping one of my friends with a utility (I will update the small bit as a new Utility section in the site very soon). In the small bit of code I had to take a string convert it to a stream, and then read the stream one line each.

I was working with the stream class conversion of the stream and thought of posting the code. Here is the code for converting a string to a stream.

System.Text.ASCIIEncoding encoding = new System.Text.ASCIIEncoding();

Hi,

Yesterday I was playing around with some directories and a requirement came in where by I had to keep watch on the changes in the directory structure. My requirement was to update user as soon a there was a change in a file in the given directory.

I first thought of many ways to do it. By the end I found it was pretty easy to be done. We have to use the FileSystemWatcher class in the System.IO to get the job done.

Lets say we want a notification to be there when there is a change the D drive (D:\). If you want to also make the notification for sub directories then we need to set the IncludeSubdirectories to true. Here is a small code on how to use the component.

FileSystemWatcher watchFiles = new FileSystemWatcher(@"d:\\");

watchFiles.IncludeSubdirectories = true;

string dtCur = DateTime.Now.ToLongTimeString();

Hi,

A few days back I was creating a small utility program for myself. The program needed the user to select a file and then I would get all the file name recursively.

With Dot net framework this was pretty easy. To let the user select a particular file, We can use the inbuilt FolderBrowserDialog. The usage of the dialog is pretty easy.

We first have to create the object of the class. We can optionally give the first selected folder path with the help of the SelectedPath property. To show the dialog we use the following code.

DialogResult result = fbd1.ShowDialog();

Hi,

We have all talked about some of the new features in the Excel 2007. But there is one feature that has been missed in the heap of all the new big features. The features on the extensibility.

Excel 2003 had some restriction on the size of data it can work with (Believe me I have faced it when need to present reports with huge amount of data.). The amount of data that excel 2007 can take is much more than excel 2003. Here is a small comparison between the 2.

Hi

The control has some new argument over the dropdown list. There is a new property called DataGroupField. When we are binding the data then we need to asign the value of the group field. Also the data need to be sorted on the group itself otherwise the same group will be show twice (I have not added sorting of the data based on the group in the control as yet. But waiting to see if this will be required.).

You can also add the items one by one. In this case you need to provide the group of the item also. The add methods take and object of type OptionListItem. The optionListItem takes three argument, ItemName, Value and the group. (I know you will have the question why not the type ListItem. The reason is
                

Hi,

Here is a big update on my previous Post. I found this news at the Dave’s Blog and thought of sharing it.

The date 27 Feb 2008 has been kept for the release of the three big products (Visual studio 2008 Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008). This does not mean it will release on the same day. The release might be before that. According to the blog Microsoft is trying to make the release today itself. 

Thanks
Vikram

Hi,

A few days back, I was working with some FTP command. Then I realized that many people had asked me to provide some help on the FTP commands. Hence I decided to write a post on some of the common FTP commands for windows with their small explanation.

Hi,

Many a times we have a requirement where we are showing data in a dropdown list. Many of the times the data belongs to a particular group. But there is no way to show the group in the dropdown list. Hence there is no way for the user to know which group (or category) the data belongs to.

Most of the time we use two dropdown list to show the data. When the user selects the category dropdown we populate the sub category of the product itself. (We can also use Ajax to populate the second dropdown, but that’s not in the scope of this post). But this solution is still not the best as the user still cannot look at one list of products (or sub category) and understand which category it belongs to.

Hi

Mark the day 27 February 2007 in your calendar. If you are a dot net developer then this is one of the biggest day for you. Three of the major products to be launched in one day. It’s unbelievable. Windows Server 2008, Visual studio 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 all being scheduled to launch in one day. 

Thanks
Vikram

P.S. Also start hoping that they get it right and dont delay this release.

Hi,

Yes the nightmare is over. Yes My site is back Live. Yes there is not more of that "Site not available" message. And more importantly Yes I am keen on continuing it ahead.

It was a simple nightmarish time for me. First the site went down because of the over usage. Then the server had some problem getting it back. Then they gave me a new server for the site. By then My PC crashed. Yes the motherboard crashed. (And not to forget near flood situation because of the rain in Kolkata during this period.) I could not do anything till the PC was back up. Then the hosting provider had a big confusion on the change of DNS. I know it is becoming very long. But that’s what has been the story of the nightmare