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Unboxing the Microsoft Surface Pro - In Pictures

By steve on February 16, 2013. | 998 views, 8 today. | 1 page.

■ Everyone ■ Rate, Rank and Review ■ Hardware ■ Surface

My Surface Pro arrived yesterday. Does it stand up to the hype or fall flat? Here's an in depth visual look at what you can expect.

Rule #5 - Code for the Maintainer

By steve on February 07, 2013. | Updated on February 10, 2013. | 399 views, 2 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ The Programmer's Code

When I was four years old my kindergarten classmates were impulsive and didn't follow directions. Some developers are like this. If you want to be a great developer, what do you need to have that you could learn from a four year old?

Rule #4 - Be Explicit

By steve on January 16, 2013. | Updated on January 19, 2013. | 701 views, 2 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ The Programmer's Code ■ C# ■ Javascript

Should you ever use the var keyword in C#? What about Javascript? Being clear and precise is very important in legal contracts, but it's even more important in software. An unfortunate experience as a teenager helped crystallize the importance of being explicit in both legal matters and software.

Rule #3 - Never Write the Same Code Twice

By steve on June 11, 2012. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 1,685 views, 2 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ The Programmer's Code

Learn how duplicate code can turn your software projects into a circus and what Southwest Airlines can teach us about the benefits of avoiding duplicate code. Finally, Master Po and young Grasshopper bring us a few words of wisdom when it comes to perfectionism and practicality.

Rule #2 - Fail Fast and Hard

By steve on May 31, 2012. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 1,300 views, 3 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ The Programmer's Code

It's counter intuitive, but your programs will have fewer bugs and require less maintenance time if you do less (not more) error handling. Learn how focusing on making your programs fail is the better path toward more stable and more maintainable software.

Rule #1 - Be Consistent

By steve on May 28, 2012. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 1,103 views, 2 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ The Programmer's Code

Find out why "Be Consistent" earns the number one spot in The Programmer's Code and how it can be directly responsible for saving billions of dollars every year.

The Programmer's Code - 27 Rules to Code By

By steve on March 18, 2012. | Updated on February 10, 2013. | 1,522 views, 2 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ The Programmer's Code

The following 27 rules are the distilled wisdom of decades of software development in a huge variety of software environments. From CERN to Microsoft, from mission critical to puttering for the desktop. Follow even a fraction of these rules and you'll be in constant demand.

Photo Expedition in the Missouri River Bottoms with my Canon Rebel T3i

By steve on March 11, 2012. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 1,573 views, 0 today. | 1 page.

■ Everyone ■ Diversions

Yesterday I headed out to meet my brother in Lexington, Missouri and took my camera along to capture some shots. I stopped in Missouri City and at the Cooley Lake Conservation area along the Missouri River. The Canon T3i and Lightroom are two of the greatest tools I have for creating great shots.

Easily Build An Atom or RSS Feed With C# and the Syndication Namespace

By steve on January 13, 2012. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 7,385 views, 4 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ C# ■ ATOM ■ RSS

Learn how easy it can be to wireup a syndication feed for your site. The .NET framework allows you to build the feed content once and publish it using either the RSS or Atom protocol.

Page Goes Gold With One Million Views

By steve on December 12, 2011. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 2,476 views, 3 today. | 1 page.

■ Everyone ■ Cambia News

Our first article goes gold after receiving more than one million views.

URL Rewriter for .NET - Examples

By steve on November 09, 2011. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 2,599 views, 0 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Rate, Rank and Review ■ ASP.NET ■ Web

Many places document how to use URL Rewriter. Here we provide some practical examples of usage.

Convert String to Int in C#

By steve on November 05, 2011. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 6,455 views, 7 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ C#

Three different ways to convert a string to an integer in C# and the pros and cons of each.

And as for Writer's Block, I Don't Believe it Exists!

By steve on November 03, 2011. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 1,012 views, 0 today. | 1 page.

■ Everyone ■ Diversions ■ Writing

Four tricks you won't hear about anywhere else for dealing with writer's block. And yes, software developers can get writer's block, too. Didn't know that did you.

About Cambia Research

By steve on October 30, 2011. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 8,300 views, 6 today. | 1 page.

■ Everyone ■ Cambia News

How did Cambia Research start and who is its creator?

Online Random Number Tool

By steve on October 23, 2011. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 1,641 views, 1 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tools and Tables ■ Math

Generate lists of random numbers online. Choose from different types: boolean, int, decimal, date, time and more.

What is my User Agent?

By steve on October 23, 2011. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 2,485 views, 1 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tools and Tables ■ Browsers ■ Web

Use this online tool to determine the user agent of your browser.

What is my IP Address?

By steve on October 23, 2011. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 1,084 views, 3 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tools and Tables ■ Browsers ■ Internet

Use this online tool to see what your current IP address is.

Delegate Syntax and Usage in C#

By steve on September 01, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 21,739 views, 2 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ C#

How to create a delegate in C#.

Windows Explorer Opens Search Window When Clicking a Folder

By steve on September 01, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 16,120 views, 4 today. | 1 page.

■ Everyone ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ Windows

Learn how to fix the problem where windows explorer opens a search window when you click a folder instead of the file listing. This was a thorny issue I ran into one day--thought I'd save you the trouble.

Partial Classes in .NET

By steve on May 26, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 35,609 views, 1 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Software Concepts ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ .NET ■ C#

Discover what partial classes are in .NET and what they're good for.

Where can I view the partial class with designer code in my ASP.NET project?

By steve on May 26, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 11,484 views, 2 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ ASP.NET

Ever wonder what happened to the designer file for your ASP.NET web page after you moved to .NET 2.0? Learn more here.

How to scrape or download a webpage using C#

By ktb on March 05, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 43,961 views, 10 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ C# ■ Web

A quick and dirty snippet for the basic approach to scraping the HTML content from a webpage programmatically.

Physics Funnies

By steve on February 28, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 7,492 views, 0 today. | 1 page.

■ Everyone ■ Diversions ■ Humor

A little levity to brighten your day. These physics test takers didn't know the answers, but they came up with some pretty clever answers of their own.

Change the Default Browser in Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Web Developer

By steve on February 19, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 31,220 views, 2 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ ASP.NET ■ Visual Studio ■ Browsers

How to change the default browser in Visual Studio. That's right, you aren't stuck with just Internet Explorer.

How Do I Read a File As an Array of Bytes in C#

By steve on February 16, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 69,136 views, 34 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ .NET ■ C#

Learn how to use a stream to read the byte content of a file. You can also use the new ReadAllBytes method on the File class.

How to Deliver a File From ASP.NET and Specify Its MIME Type

By steve on February 15, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 9,693 views, 1 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ ASP.NET ■ HTTP ■ MIME

Learn how to use ASP.NET to dynamically return a file to the user and the importance of MIME types in this process.

Online Random Number Generator

By steve on February 14, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 11,996 views, 2 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tools and Tables ■ C# ■ Math

Need random numbers? Learn more about our online generator of random numbers.

Visual Studio 2007 Preview!

By steve on February 13, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 19,746 views, 0 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tech News ■ .NET ■ Visual Studio

Visual Studio 2007 Preview

PathHelper - Convert File and Folder Paths and URLs in an ASP.NET Application

By steve on February 13, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 24,616 views, 1 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ ASP.NET ■ C#

Managing all the various types of paths in ASP.NET can be a chore. You have URLs, virtual paths, absolute paths, relative paths and application paths. This article helps you make sense of all of these while managing conversions and getting the type of path you need when you need it.

How do I get the application path in an ASP.NET application?

By steve on February 13, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 127,614 views, 16 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ ASP.NET ■ Web

A simple snippet to show you how to get the virtual application path which is relative to the root of the website.

Extract Keywords from a Search String in C#

By steve on January 27, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 32,719 views, 2 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ C# ■ Text

A better way than String.Split to extract words from a string.

Microsoft Releases AJAX Tool

By steve on January 27, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 6,210 views, 1 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tech News ■ Visual Studio

This article marks the official release of Microsoft's new support for AJAX, formerly codenamed ATLAS.

Microsoft Reports Record Revenue

By steve on January 27, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 5,624 views, 0 today. | 1 page.

■ Everyone ■ Tech News ■ Business

Microsoft Reports Record Revenue

Cambia Research Launches Developer Education Website

By steve on January 12, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 6,047 views, 0 today. | 1 page.

■ Everyone ■ Cambia News

Cambia Research has changed the focus of its website as of January 1, 2007. We are now devoted to developer eduction for Microsoft .NET developers.

Javascript Char Codes (Key Codes)

By steve on January 11, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 1,787,907 views, 729 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tools and Tables ■ Javascript

An interactive javascript key code reference for javascript developers. Includes an interative text box where you can type a key and see it's code along with a complete lookup table.

How Can I Use Javascript to Allow Only Numbers to Be Entered in a TextBox?

By steve on January 11, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 380,621 views, 52 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ Javascript

An easy javascript code snippet to allow only digits to be typed in a text box. Includes interactive demonstration.

How Do I Suppress a Keystroke in a Browser Input Box Using Javascript?

By steve on January 11, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 31,620 views, 2 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ Javascript ■ HTML

Learn how to use javascript to suppress a keystroke in a browser input box.

How Do I Keep My Website From Being Viewed In a Frame?

By steve on January 11, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 7,951 views, 0 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ Javascript ■ Browsers

Learn how to keep your website from being viewed in a frame. This is not necessarily good practice, but it's needed in some instances.

Apple Computer Changes Name to Apple Inc

By steve on January 10, 2007. | Updated on January 11, 2013. | 8,860 views, 1 today. | 1 page.

■ Everyone ■ Tech News ■ Business

Apple Computer changes its name to just Apple. Name changes often mark a transition in an industry or technology. Just think of horseless carriages and wireless phones. Eventually they became just cars and phones.

How Can I Easily Manage an XML Configuration File in .NET?

By steve on January 10, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 49,954 views, 3 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ C# ■ XML

.NET makes reading and writing XML as easy as pie. Use a class template and you never have to deal with XML at all.

How Do I Get Paths and URL fragments from the HttpRequest object?

By steve on January 09, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 117,434 views, 16 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ ASP.NET ■ C#

A reference for extracting URL and path information from the HttpRequest object in ASP.NET.

What is Request.AcceptTypes in ASP.NET

By steve on January 09, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 6,816 views, 0 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ ASP.NET ■ C# ■ Browsers

What the heck is Request.AcceptTypes in ASP.NET?

Using the HttpContext object

By steve on January 09, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 56,424 views, 1 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ ASP.NET ■ C# ■ Web

Learn how you can get access to the HttpContext object when you're not in the code-behind of an ASPX page?

Extract Hex Digits From a String

By steve on January 09, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 11,108 views, 0 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ C# ■ Text

Learn how to extract hex digits from a string using C#. Useful for cases where you have dirty hex information or extra characters.

Parsing Email Addresses with Regular Expressions

By steve on January 09, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 92,091 views, 4 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ C# ■ Email

Use C# to parse and validation email address. I present both a strict and lenient regular expression and discuss what constitutes a valid email address.

Parsing URLs with Regular Expressions and the Regex Object

By steve on January 09, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 55,257 views, 2 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ C# ■ Regular Expressions

Go in depth in understanding the structure of a URL or URI and see a single regular expression that can be used to extract the various pieces in one fell swoop.

Convert Integer To Enum Instance in C#

By steve on January 09, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 248,834 views, 8 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ C#

Sample C# code showing how to convert an integer to an instance of an enumeration.

Convert String to Enum Instance

By steve on January 09, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 235,752 views, 10 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ C#

C# code sample showing how to convert a string to an instance of an enumeration.

Convert Hex String to .NET Color

By steve on January 09, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 116,289 views, 6 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ C# ■ CSS ■ HTML

Learn an easy way and a hard way to convert a hex string to a .NET color using C#.

Convert .NET Color to Hex String

By steve on January 09, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 52,561 views, 3 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ .NET ■ C# ■ CSS ■ HTML

Learn how to convert a hex string to a .NET color using C#.

Set Initial Focus on an ASP.NET Page

By steve on January 09, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 22,185 views, 1 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ C# ■ Javascript ■ Web

Here's a C# snippet to set the initial focus when a page loads. It takes into account some of the quirks with different types of controls and HTML elements.

C# StyleHelper Class

By steve on January 09, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 14,688 views, 2 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ C# ■ CSS

While CSS is the preferred way to manage webpage styles these days, sometimes it's helpful to manage those styles programmatically.

C# RandomProvider Class

By steve on January 09, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 20,680 views, 4 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ .NET ■ C#

I provide a class, RandomProvider, which provides random numbers for several of the .NET data types and based on statistical distributions.

C# StopWatch Class

By steve on January 07, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 48,591 views, 2 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ .NET ■ C#

A high precision stop watch class for timing in your C# or .NET programs

Hexadecimal (Hex) to Decimal Lookup Table

By steve on January 07, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 254,409 views, 140 today. | 2 pages.

■ Developer ■ Tools and Tables ■ Math

Convert hex to decimal. Convert dec to hexadecimal. This handy lookup table is a lot easier than punching it into your calculator.

What are the ASP.NET/CSS Fonts?

By steve on January 07, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 16,798 views, 5 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tools and Tables ■ ASP.NET ■ CSS ■ Design

A reference for the built in ASP.NET fonts in a convenient list.

What are the ASP.NET Named Colors

By steve on January 07, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 20,768 views, 1 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tools and Tables ■ ASP.NET ■ CSS ■ Design

View the ASP.NET named colors by name, swatch and hexadecimal value

Custom HyperLink Column for DataGrid

By steve on January 07, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 49,752 views, 4 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ .NET Controls ■ C# ■ SQL Server

Detailed example with code showing how to add a custom link column to a datagrid.

Adding Columns to DataGrid Programmatically

By steve on January 01, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 99,189 views, 11 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ .NET Controls ■ ASP.NET ■ C# ■ SQL Server

Demonstration and code for programmatically adding a custom column to a DataGrid.

SFI: Simple, Flexible, Informative

By steve on January 01, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 3,550 views, 0 today. | 1 page.

■ Software Leader ■ Software Success ■ Software Design

My software philosophy breaks down to three things: simplicity, flexibility and information. I call it SFI.

What is an IP Address?

By steve on January 01, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 4,263 views, 0 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ Browsers ■ Internet

Are there enough IP addresses for the whole world? This article defines an IP address at the beginner level, what it is, what it does and what IPv4 is compared to IPv6.

What is a User Agent?

By steve on January 01, 2007. | Updated on January 12, 2013. | 5,993 views, 3 today. | 1 page.

■ Developer ■ Tips and Tutorials ■ Browsers ■ Web

What is a user agent?

Welcome to my blog about software development and the Microsoft stack.

I've been a full time .NET developer for ten years, but I didn't start my professional life as a programmer ... more

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