Blog Changes
November 27th, 2008 // 2:07 pm @ Amar
While recently migrating hosting servers, I got an opportunity to re-examine my choice of a blogging engine. I had stopped blogging for a while, and hence was tempted to start anew, however had some good past content which I wanted to preserve for myself.
I initially started blogging with Wordpress, and went thru a painful process to migrate all content to Community Server a few years ago. It was a good system. It still is, but it is meant for very large blogging networks, and not very suitable for a single blog. They do have a new product called Grafitti, however, both suffer from one major problem. A lack of free plugins, themes and tools available from the community. Wordpress on the other has is a fantastic blogging platform, very easy to use and has an abundance of free support to a small blogger like me.
One more major turning point towards Wordpress was the launch of Windows 2008 and IIS7. It now supports URL Rewriting, and hence via Fast CGI it can use mod rewrite to create pretty URL’s 
Have a look at this post URL. Am a .NET developer and hence I always host on Windows servers. This was one of the reasons why I had left Wordpress in the first place. So it’s great to be back with Wordpress.
Lookout for more regular posts soon.
Configure ASP.NET Websites to output XHTML to W3C Validator
November 12th, 2008 // 12:15 pm @ Amar
In my previous blog entry, I showed how to configure ASP.NET to output XHTML to the browsers. However, when the W3C Validator checks the page, ASP.NET does not know the W3C user agent and hence sends out non compliant code. The trick is in the w3cvalidator.browser file available on idunno.org. Just drop the file in your App_Browsers folder and ASP.NET will send out XHTML compliant code to the Validator.
Category : dotNet
Making ASP.NET XHTML Compliant
November 12th, 2008 // 8:48 am @ Amar
ASP.NET by default does not emit XHTML compliant code. Consider this scenario. You have carefully created an XHTML compliant design. Created your pages using ASP.NET and when you try to validate your page, it fails with the error :
Line x, Column y: there is no attribute “name”.
<form name="aspnetForm" method="post" action="Default.aspx" id="aspnetForm">This leaves you a bit stunned, as ASP.NET adds the name tag to the form on compile and you don’t have any control over it. However, don’t worry. There is a solution.
Just add to following under system.web in your web.config file.
<
xhtmlConformance mode=“Strict” />
ASP.NET should generate compliant code now, and you should see the following in your rendered output.
<form method="post" action="default.aspx" id="aspnetForm">As you see, it does not render the name tag anymore. Problem solved. Time to display the W3C Validated icons on your page with pride
Category : dotNet
Free CodeRush Xpress
November 10th, 2008 // 3:29 pm @ Amar
Just came across this page from Microsoft about an announcement for the availability of a free version of CodeRush called CodeRush Xpress. Might be worth looking into for faster development and refactoring. Definitely worth having a look if you have never used CodeRush before. Good news for those who have been in the sidelines due to the cost involved. Now you get a chance to use some functionality of CodeRush for free.
Category : General
Windows 2008 as a Workstation
November 9th, 2008 // 10:15 am @ Amar
This is definitley old news, however I have using the steps outlined on this site to configure my Windows Server 2008 x64 environment to run as a workstation. It’s been over 2 months since I have been running it and it is just fantastic. Everything works beautifully.
Definitely a great resource in you want to use Windows Server 2008 on your development laptop. Recommended.
Category : Windows Server 2008
Hyper-V Gadget for Windows Sidebar
November 8th, 2008 // 10:06 am @ Amar
One of the pains I have with Hyper-V is that evertime I want to launch my VM, I have to open the Hyper-V Manager ( accept the UAC prompt ) and then launch my VM. I found a very nice gadget called the Hyper-V Monitor Gadget for Windows Sidebar written by Tore Lervik. It resides on the Windows Sidebar and shows the satus of all the VM’s. Also provides single click interfaces ( with any UAC prompt ) to start / stop / pause VM’s and also to open the Virtual Machine Connection for quick connection to the VM with just a double click.
For those who are wondering how to get Windows Sidebar running with Windows Server 2008, check out this article.
Category : Windows & Windows Server 2008
Umbraco
November 3rd, 2008 // 2:49 pm @ Amar
During last month, I have been playing with a lot of open source / free CMS systems. I particularly liked Umbraco a lot and am really impressed at their approach. If you are looking for a CMS system to base your next website on, I would definitely suggest you to have a look at Umbraco.
Category : Umbraco CMS