EveryJoe » web development

Managing Session Parameters in Visual Web Developer Express 2008

Jason Bean — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 03:54:21 +0000

I continue to learn more and more about developing websites with additional features. I’ve chosen ASP.NET as my preferred language for building web applications for most of my larger corporate clients. A component I use frequently with this dynamic sites are Session Items in ASP.NET.

As I build more sites I start using more and more Session.Item(”ItemName”) identifiers in my code to pass parameters from page to page and data control to data control. There comes a point where you start not remembering exactly how you named something or even what Session Items you’ve stored in the first place.

I’d think it would be a helpful feature to be able to add the Session Items you’ve set and used in a website into a control panel like a snippet of code. I’d imagine it functioning similarly to how the Manage Styles panel displays the CSS styles that are available. Instead of the styles being listed each Session Item identifier would be listed.

Another nice feature to add to that would be a panel that would display the set values you’ve captured already in your code when testing or running the site in debug mode. What I’ve usually done to accomplish this is to place a hidden label for each Session Item that displays the set value if it exists. Sometimes I’ll make the font color on these labels white so they don’t show up to the site visitor, but if I drag my mouse over the area and the text and background colors reverse I can see the values clearly. If I’m not worried about the visitor seeing the values I’ll setup a CSS style that displays the label in a small font and very light gray or blue color.

Post from: EveryJoe

Managing Session Parameters in Visual Web Developer Express 2008

Download This Update – No You Don’t!

Jason Bean — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 03:37:00 +0000

I’ve been using Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition and previous versions for quite some time now. I’ve been very pleased with the functionality and the fact that I can accomplish what I can with a free piece of software like this is even more impressive to me.

I can’t remember what made me visit the Visual Web Developer Express website again, but I found out there was an update to the program available. As you can see from the image on the left, I was plainly invited to download the application with the new Service Pack 1 that fixed a few different bugs. As you can see, this is plainly available as a download from Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition.

The problem though is after downloading and attempting the install I got the error stating that a compatible version of product was not found on the computer?

What? Did I miss something? What’s going on?

Post from: EveryJoe

Download This Update – No You Don’t!

What’s In Your Start Menu?

Jason Bean — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 02:32:54 +0000

The b5 Tech Channel is having a little them post series and I thought of something that might be pretty interesting to share with everyone and we’ll get some responses back in the comments as well.

What’s in your Start Menu?

You’ve got the ability to pin a program you use frequently to your Start Menu so it’s readily available as soon as you need it right? The question is, what did you pin up there? Are you the type of person that keeps it simple and sparse, or do you load everything up there?

As you can see from my screen shot there to the right, I’ve got a few different programs arranged. Most of them are organized by usage group and frequency of use. Most frequently used programs are closer to the bottom.

Here’s what I’ve got going:

What do you have in your Start Menu? What could you not live without?

Post from: EveryJoe

What’s In Your Start Menu?