Gottlieb.NET

Customize Your Experience - Custom Controls in ASP.NET - Huntsville, AL

dgottlieb — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 14:49:00 GMT

I am going to be heading back up to Huntsville in April to do a seminar on custom controls. They are a great group and I'm excited to go up there again. If you are in the area on April 12, try to make it up there. It should be a good time. The details are below:

Title: Customize Your Experience - Custom Controls in ASP.NET

Description:

One of the great advantages of the .NET framework is its flexibility. Its feature set is packed with functionality that is extremely scalable and extendible.
However, one of the greatest features is customization. Using object oriented concepts such as inheritance, we can take this robust functionality and extend it in any way we need.
In this session, we will discuss the need for custom controls in ASP.NET; how they are created, when they are necessary and a couple of examples to get you on your way.
By the end of this session, you will be fully geared up to create your own custom controls utilizing the rich functionality that the .NET framework provides us.

Date - April 12, 2005 6:00 PM

Hope to see you there!

My Thoughts On Richard Grimes' Article

dgottlieb — Sat, 19 Feb 2005 05:39:00 GMT

Richard Grimes is a huge influential in the .NET community. He is a well respected individual that has spread the gospel of .NET and people respect him for that. I am extremely disappointed in his recent article he has posted on why he is leaving the .NET community and why he feels that what Microsoft has done was a mistake.

The one thing about this article that I really don't understand is why he thinks that VB.NET should never have been created and should have been left out. Honestly, I feel that this was a brilliant idea by Microsoft. I mean come on, if you were trying to introduce a technology that you thought was going to change the world of software architecture wouldn't you do what ever it takes to get everyone to adopt this technology? Absolutely! And that is what Microsoft has done. They released VB.NET simply because if they didn't, the acceptance that .NET has today would be NOTHING with out it. I know I would have never even looked at it if VB.NET was not included. Or at least not as quick as I did. At the time, a programming language with the letter “C” in it frankly intimidated me since I really have had no experience with C languages. But, I have used VB and when I saw that they had a version of that in the new framework, I was overjoyed. It made life so much easier for me in that understanding the framework and how things actually worked was made a bit easier. Now, it wasn't the most OO compliant thing I've ever seen but it was a darn good way to get me into the swing of things and to start using this incredible technology that they had released. It wasn't 1 or 2 months later before I was chin deep in C#. I loved it. It was easy to adopt and sooo much cleaner. But if it weren't for VB.NET, I wouldn't even have considered .NET at the time. As Mr. Grimes stated, it seems as if there was more marketing thought put into the initial release of .NET than there was quality. Again, if you were trying to get everyone to adopt a technology that you were passionate about wouldn't you want to provide a good marketing scheme for it? And besides, that's the beauty of the CLR; who the hell cares! If you don't like VB.NET, don't use it! Use C#, J#, C++ or what ever. It doesn't matter because in the end, it all gets compiled into the same MSIL anyway. So even if you couldn't stand VB.NET, another shop could hand you assembly completely written in VB.NET and you might never know. It will perform the same and you'll be able to treat it like any other C# assembly that you've written. Yeah yeah yeah. I know. I am rambling on and on but I really feel strong about this and find it hard to believe that someone could think what Microsoft had done was a bad idea.

I think that Microsoft feels very strongly about .NET and they also feel that it is going to continue to rule the field of IT and software architecture. In my personal opinion, .NET is not going away. It's great to see a web development community discuss OOP concepts, design patterns and drawing out UML documents on how they are going to design their web class library. You really didn't see that when ASP 3.0 was around because there really wasn't an architecture and you really couldn't use design patterns and OOP concepts. You can now put a couple of software architects in a room along with some web developers and actually understand what each other is talking about. This is a great thing because not only are you bringing two sets of genius minds together, you are providing a means of exchanging ideas that could result in some unbelievable products and developments.

Take what I say with a grain of salt. This is only my opinion and I am extremely biased because .NET has worked wonders for me and has brought me extremely far in my career. I'd like to hear your thoughts.

Ok. Now I've Got Tons of Gmail Invites

dgottlieb — Wed, 02 Feb 2005 20:50:00 GMT

I've got 50 GMail invites now. Please take them off of my hands. As my friend Francesco says, “You know you're a geek when you have more GMail invites than friends.”

Presentation At Central Mississippi .NET Users Group

dgottlieb — Sat, 22 Jan 2005 23:11:00 GMT

I'll be giving my Object Oriented Concepts and Best Practices presentation for the Central Mississippi .NET Users Group on March 10, 2005. If you are in the area, come on by.

Spam Running Rampant On Blogs

dgottlieb — Thu, 20 Jan 2005 19:06:00 GMT

I've been getting TONS of complaints that bloggers are getting their postings spammed. Well, in looking that the feedback some bloggers are receiving, this is obviously a major problem. So now, as you can see below this posting, I have implemented a CAPTCHA control on the blogs for the advice sites. Thanks to Miguel Jimenez, no more worries on blog spam for these sites because I don't know about you but receiving feedback on an article I wrote on tips and tricks for your web.config is quite annoying.

Smart Watch

dgottlieb — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 15:16:00 GMT

I got my new smart watch in the mail yesterday. This thing is too cool. I've got it set up to give me local weather updates, movie times from my local theaters, messages from people, local and national news and stock of my choosing. It's a little big for a watch but hey, it's ok for a geek to have a big watch. The most beneficial things about this watch is the ability to change watch faces and the atomic clock. That way, if I'm going to work, I can put on the geeky digital look. If I'm going out to dinner with my wife, I can put on the nice hand watch face.

For those of you who do have my MSN Messenger account, you can send me a message by right-clicking on my name and choose Send a Message To A MSN Direct Watch. That will send messages to my watch.

GMail Invites

dgottlieb — Sun, 09 Jan 2005 04:00:00 GMT

I've got to get rid of these Gmail invites.

I've got 6 invites. They will go out first come first serve. Come and get 'em!

I Am Not A Nerd

dgottlieb — Sun, 09 Jan 2005 03:59:00 GMT

I am actually surprised by the outcome of the nerd test I took:

What are you?

People Need Our Help

dgottlieb — Tue, 04 Jan 2005 17:30:00 GMT

A colleague of mine, Julie Lerman, has been dedicating 95% of her time to helping those in need as a result of the tsunami disaster. This is a great thing and I have nothing but respect for someone who does things like this. The organization she is working with is AcehAid.org. They are doing everything possible to get help and get help quick. Even if you give $5. Every little bit helps. Visit http://acehaid.org and give what you can.

Another Tsunami Video Worth Looking At

dgottlieb — Tue, 04 Jan 2005 16:48:00 GMT

The amount of water flooding in this place is just amazing. I can't believe this guy was filming.

http://www.downloaddungeon.com/mods/brevity/tsunami4445/tsunamiphuket.wmv

Tsunami Video

dgottlieb — Tue, 04 Jan 2005 16:26:00 GMT

Browsing the web last night, I ran into this video taken as the tsunami approaches. According to what I read, the wave that you will see is nothing compared to other sightings.

http://politiken.dk/media/wvx/3537.WVX

What an Honor. I Am Now A Microsoft MVP!

dgottlieb — Sat, 01 Jan 2005 04:35:00 GMT

I am incredibly honored and humbled by this award that has been presented to me. I have been awarded with the Microsoft MVP award. This is a great honor and I thank Microsoft and to those who supported me to get to this point. Thank you all and I look forward to working with you guys this new year!

For more information on the MVP program, click here.

Montgomery Seminar On Thursday

dgottlieb — Tue, 30 Nov 2004 00:09:00 GMT

I'll be down in Montgomery on Thursday, December 2. I hope to see you there if you can make it. For more information visit the Montgomery's usergroup web site http://www.simplifi.com/madev. The time posted on their site is incorrect. I am actually presenting from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM. It should be a good time with a good chance to learn a lot. Hope to see you there!!!

MSDN Webcast A Success!!!!

dgottlieb — Mon, 15 Nov 2004 21:29:00 GMT

I just got through presenting Object Oriented Programming Concepts and Best Practices via an MSDN Webcast. It was an interesting but great experience!

I had about 160 people attend which was a great turn out. I think everyone really enjoyed the content I had to offer. I hope to do more of these in the future.

For those of you visiting from the web cast looking for the powerpoint and code download, you can get those by going here.

If you have any questions or comments about the web cast, please don't hesititate to let me know by going to the contact me portion of my blog. I'll do what I can to help.

Thanks to all who attended. I hope you walked away with more knowledge of OOP and design patterns than you did walking in.

If you'd like to hear the web cast again, you can go here - http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032259776&Culture=en-US and listen to the recording.

***** UPDATE ******

Sorry guys. The zip file with the code was missing a few things out of the Readability zip file. I have fixed that and put it back out there. If you run into any more issues, let me know. Sorry about that.

Birmingham Talk Last Week

dgottlieb — Fri, 22 Oct 2004 20:50:00 GMT

I would have posted about this earlier but right after the talk in Birmingham last week, I headed for Hawaii for a week. I just got back today. I was so pleased with how this meeting went, I wanted to make it one of my first priorities when I got home to blog about it.

I would like to say that this talk, in my opinion, went incredibly well. I am extremely proud of how this talk went and was thrilled to do it right here in Birmingham. Thanks to Randall Sloan for getting everything set up and thanks to everyone who showed up. I think we had a great time and hopefully everyone got a lot out of it. I had a blast and can't wait to come talk to you guys again.