6 Tips to Improve Code Downloads for your Blog

Published 12 years ago

Don't you just hate it? You read an interesting programming related article on the web that comes with source code. You downloaded the source so you can look at it later. When you open the file later, you've long forgotten where you got the file, or which concept it was supposed to demonstrate. Worse, the download contains a gazillion files, making it pretty impossible to find the stuff you're looking for yourself. Rather than two or three files demonstrating the topics originally discussed in the article you read, you're faced with a gazillion ReSharper cache files, useless .suo and .user files, obj folder and more. Take, for example, this article "Using Dynamic Views In ASP.NET MVC 2" (note: I am not picking on the author here personally; it's just an example I ran into recently that shows most of the problems I face with code downloads; it's easy to come up with many other examples). The relevant code is only 18 lines long (7 in the View and another 11 in a controller class), yet when you unpack the zip file you get 79 files. Granted, some are needed to run the example as an MVC site, but with a bit of clean up, the number of files can easily be reduced to 27 plus 1 by following these simple tips.

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Release Candidate of new Imar.Spaanjaars.Com Online

Published 12 years ago

Update 6/6/2010: the MVC version is already live at http://imar.spaanjaars.com and the MVC subdomain is no longer available.
I just uploaded the release candidate of my new web site built with ASP.NET MVC to my server.

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Screwing Up Your System and Getting It Back On-Line in Minutes

Published 12 years ago

As a developer and a beta-software fanatic, I tend to install and try out a lot of software. Some of it works well and adds value to my "developer toolkit". However, quite often the software is too buggy to work with, has a negative impact on my system's performance or leaves traces when uninstalled. Additionally, just using Windows and the installed applications tends to slow down a system after some time as well. Since having a speedy and responsive system is important for a productive developer, you need to find ways to keep your machine as fast as possible.

Over the years I found a good way to minimize the impact of these applications and Windows usage, enabling me to get my machine back in a clean state in just a few minutes. How?

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Getting Separate Chapters from my Books as eBooks

Published 12 years ago

Since a few weeks, separate chapters from three of my books are available on eBookPie.com.

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Ding Dong.....

Published 12 years ago

They're here....

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Beginning ASP.NET 4 in C# and VB Now Available on Amazon

Published 12 years ago

Today I noticed that my new book Beginning ASP.NET 4 in C# and VB is now available on Amazon.

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Upgraded www.DotNetAttributes.com to .NET 4

Published 12 years ago

Almost a year ago I launched www.DotNetAttributes.com, the site that gives you detailed information about attributes in the .NET Framework. With the availability of the Release Candidate of Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET 4 Framework with a Go-Live license and the final release being close, I thought it was a good time to update the site to .NET 4.

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Using My N-Layer Architecture with ASP.NET MVC

Published 12 years ago

A number of people have asked me if I have written articles on using my N-Layer architecture together with ASP.NET MVC. I haven't written anything on MVC yet, but Mike Brind (also an ASP.NET MVP) has done a great job in covering MVC using an N-Layer approach.

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Beginning ASP.NET 4 in C# and VB is Ready!

Published 12 years ago

If you're following me on Twitter, this is old news. But if you don't, then I am happy to announce that I finished writing my latest book for Wrox: Beginning ASP.NET 4 in C# and VB.

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Starting Up a New Company

Published 12 years ago

As some of you may already know, I recently left the company Design IT where I worked as the Technical Director for the past couple of years. I am not entirely leaving Dynamicweb - the other company I worked for - but won't be working for it on a day-to-day basis anymore. Instead, I'll hang around "behind the scenes" and contribute what I can when necessary.

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