Showing posts with label General. Show all posts

DevCurry completes One Year. Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! Today, it is exactly one year since I launched www.devcurry.com and what a journey it has been! Check my first post Why did I start a new Blog?

I can proudly say that in a years time, www.devcurry.com has grown to be a popular blog amongst developers. With one post a day, DevCurry had something new for its readers everyday. We published 365 posts last year and this would not have been possible alone. Malcolm Sheridan and Mahesh Sabnis also contributed posts to DevCurry and I thank them for their contributions.

Many of you have regularly written to me and shared your valuable feedback. Thanks for the same. Although I have not been able to reply to each one of them, I do make it a point to read them, as and when I find time. I hope to see many more rounds of interactions with my readers and look forward to another fun-filled year and also hope that I will be able to stick to my routine of posting one post everyday. Wish me luck!

You can keep up with the blog by Subscribing to the Feeds or Subscribing via Email.

Cheers and have a wonderful year ahead!

Website accessibility using NVDA

Website accessibility is a serious topic for all web developers these days, and if it isn’t, it should be. Making a website that is accessible is not that hard, but it does require you to think from a UI point of view instead of a pure coding thought process. One tool that is freely available for you to download is NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA). The website describes it as this:

“Providing feedback via synthetic speech and Braille, it enables blind or vision impaired people to access computers running Windows for no more cost than a sighted person”

This tool can help you diagnose accessibility issues your website may have for blind or vision impaired users. It can help you diagnose input fields that can’t be read, missing alternate text for images and a bunch of other things. You can download this great piece of free software from here.

Create PDF documents from .NET applications

I have seen a very common question in the forums – How can I create PDF documents from my .NET application?

Here are some of the OpenSouce and Paid libraries that allow you to do so:

Open Source

PDFSharp - PDFsharp is the Open Source library that easily creates PDF documents from any .NET language

iTextSharp – Library to create/manipulate PDF documents on-the-fly

Report.NET - generate PDF documents in a simple and flexible manner

PDFjet for .NET - royalty-free PDF library

Paid Libraries

PDF4NET - .NET library for adding PDF capabilities your .NET application

ABCpdf - Dynamically create Adobe PDF documents on the fly

DynamicPDF™ Generator for .NET - real-time creation of PDF documents based on dynamic data

4 Simple Tools to Find Broken Links in your Site

Broken links or a 404 error is a webmaster’s nightmare. The task of detecting linkrots becomes even more challenging when the website is huge. Here are 4 tools that can make this task easier for you, by detecting Broken Links in your Site.

W3C Link Checker – Checks and detects issues in links, anchors and referenced objects in Web pages or full Web sites. Enter the url or webpage address you want to check and click on the ‘Check’ Button. The tool takes sometime to analyze and detect the broken links. There are various other options given in the screenshot below that can be selected while checking links.

Xenu’s Link Slueth – Is a very popular desktop program that checks your websites for broken hyperlinks, images, frames, plug-ins, backgrounds, local image maps, style sheets, scripts and java applets.

Link Checker FireFox AddOn - Check the validity of links on any webpage. Once you have installed this Addon in FireFox, choose ‘Check Page Links’ in the ‘Tools’ menu or right-click on any webpage using FireFox, to invoke this tool.

Dead-Link-Checker – A simple web tool that requires JavaScript enabled to detect broken links

Other Link Checkers - http://linkchecker.sourceforge.net/other.html

Second Reminder - Become an MVP

If you have been actively contributing to the offline or online technical communities over the past year, here's your chance to get recognized and nominate yourself for the MVP Award

Nominate yourself today for this quarter's MVP Award. Last date 18th April 2009.

http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9658845

Check your system for issues before installing Windows 7 or IE8

The Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit - ACT 5.5 contains the functionality to evaluate and mitigate compatibility issues before you go ahead and deploy Windows 7, Windows Vista, any Windows Update, or for that matter IE8.

You can also use the same tool to do a compatibility test of your website against the new IE8 browser or with a security update of IE8.

You can check out the ACT 5 Step by Step Guides and Download ACT 5.5 over here

Stand out from the Rest. Get Recognised by Microsoft now!

If you have been actively contributing to the offline or online technical communities over the past year, here's your chance to get recognized.

Nominate yourself for the MVP Award - a program that recognizes exceptional technical community leaders from around the world who voluntarily share their high quality, real world expertise with others.

Nominate yourself today for this quarter's MVP Award. Last date 18th April 2009.

Mix09 Rocks! - Important Product and Technology Announcements at Mix09

Some important announcements were made at Mix 09, some of them we have been eagerly waiting for. Here's a quick tour of some annoucements made at Mix 09 and some links related to them:

Silverlight 3 - Most awaited! Check out the new features in the links given below

Silverlight 3 announced at Mix 09

All the New Features of Silverlight 3

What's New in Silverlight 3

Expression Blend 3 Preview - Compliments Silverlight 3!

First Look at Expression Blend 3

Expression Web 3 and Expression Web Super Preview - Announced by The 'Gu' (Scott Guthrie) with his pre-preps

Expression Web 3 and Super Preview

Expression Web Super Preview

ASP.NET MVC 1.0 RTW

ASP.NET MVC 1.0 RTW (Release to Web) Announced

ASP.NET MVC 1 with Phil Haack

Commerce Server 2009

Power of Commerce Server 2009

Web Platform Installer

Subtext 2.1.1 Available Via the Web Platform Installer

IIS Announcements at MIX 09

Check out a lot more at :

http://visitmix.com/Search?Tag=MIX09

http://on10.net/blogs/sarahintampa/Microsoft-Web-Technology-Announcements-from-MIX09/

A Lap Around MIX09 Annoucements

After recieving the NDA share of annoucements at the MVP Summit 09, and now with the annoucements at MIX09, I can only say that I am overwhelmed! Go Techie Go!

Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 RC Service Pack 2

Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 Release Candidate Service Pack 2 was released to the public through the Customer Preview Program last week. This release along with fixes to bugs also incorportates feedbacks submitted by customers and partners.

You can download the Service Pack 2 Release Candidate over here

A few other important links:

Frequently Asked Questions: Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 RC and Windows Vista Service Pack 2 RC

Release Notes, Deployment and Other things to know about this release

Reset Windows Live ID and Password

If you have lost the password of your Windows Live ID, here's a couple of things you can do to get it back:

1. Go to the Reset Password . However to be able to complete this process, you need to remember either your secret answer or your alternate email id. Also make sure that your alternate email id is different from the mail id, whose password you do not remember. A lot of people keep the alternate email id the same as the mail id. So you keep getting the password reset instructions on the same email id you lost access to.

2. If you are unable to retrieve the password using the above method, check out the Windows Live ID Validation Page. This page contains key questions about your account whose answers supposedly, only you know. Make sure you answer the questions carefully as this helps the Support Agents validate your identity through the answers. The support team is very active and usually get back to you within 24 hours. So be patient and be nice to them :)

More details : http://windowslivehelp.com/solutions/accounts/archive/2008/10/27/how-do-i-reset-my-password.aspx

Why did I start a new Blog?

A New Blog at New Year's eve 2009 sounds exciting! After dotnetcurry.com and sqlservercurry.com, this is my third blog and I feel proud :).

Why did I start a new Blog?

dotnetcurry.com is doing quite well. In the past one and half years we posted over 230 articles around different Microsoft technologies like ASP.NET, AJAX, LINQ, Windows Forms, VSTS, Silverlight, jQuery, Interview Questions, Vista, Expression Web, Office 2007 etc. We also got the support of a strong and loyal visitor base who gave us very valuable feedback from time to time.

Believe me this new blog idea came to my mind after some of you contacted me for videos and general technology stuff, which is not covered at dotnetcurry.com. For example, I rarely announced new products or spoke about different developer tools at dotnetcurry.com. That was deliberate as dotnetcurry.com is a website and focuses on .NET and MS technology articles.

Now since this is a pure blog, I will feel free to post technology stuff that inspires me and others! Moreover, I do not have to restrict myself to just Microsoft technologies. I will write anything and everything that's related to the technology world.

What do I plan to cover here?

Almost everything related to the technology and developer community. I will be writing .NET code snippets, talk about javascript, fiddle with jQuery, cover new product releases, write about new technologies as I encounter them, new tools and I could go on and on..

One of the most important things I plan to cover in this blog is to record screencasts and post them here.

Does that mean you will contribute less to dotnetcurry.com or sqlservercurry.com?
Not at all! Infact I will be contributing to all the three blogs regularly. I plan to dedicate a lot more time to blogging.

Can we help you out?
Yes you can. All you need to do is to provide me the same feedback and support as you did in dotnetcurry.com. Use the comments section below and write back to me.

You can keep up with the blog by Subscribing to the Feeds or Subscribing via Email.
Cheers!

About Me

Suprotim Agarwal, ASP.NET Architecture MVP, MCDBA, MCSD, MCAD, MCSE, works as a Technical Architect and provides consultancy on how to design and develop .NET centric Database solutions. Suprotim also holds a degree in Masters in Computer Management. He has been working with Web and .NET technologies ever since its 1.0 beta release, way back in 2000.

Suprotim is the founder and primary contributor to http://www.dotnetcurry.com/ and http://www.sqlservercurry.com/. His passion for SQL Server has kept him focused on databases. Along with Web Technologies, SQL Server has been in his technology basket from quiet some time and he continues to make an effort to try and transfer his knowledge to the SQL Server community via his website http://www.sqlservercurry.com/

Suprotim has authored two books on jQuery Development at www.jquerycookbook.com .

Suprotim is also the Editor of the DNC Magazine, a popular Developer magazine for .NET and JavaScript Developers. You can contact him via email at suprotimagarwal[attherate]dotnetcurry.com[donotspam].