I shocked when I found that I couldn’t access Umbraco control panel of one of the most important websites that my client has. It threw “Object reference not set to an instance of an object” error once I successfully logged in to the control panel.

After making backup and small research I found a way to recover from that annoying thing. The workaround was recycling the Application Pool that the website use.

asp.net · Umbraco

Simple way to know whether SQL Server is 32-bit or 64-bit is by executing the following script:

select SERVERPROPERTY(‘edition’)

It will then return the Edition of SQL Server installed. If it’s 32-bit it will just return the Edition name.

If it’s 64-bit then it will have (64-bit) added after the Edition name.

sql server

To get the Table Cell or Text Box value in SSRS you can do like this:

ReportItems![Text Box name].Value

Note: replace the [Text Box name] with the name of Text Box you want to access.

asp.net · ReportViewer · SSRS

To get a media (i.e.: image)  in code-behind you can do it like this.

var currentPage = umbraco.presentation.nodeFactory.Node.GetCurrent();
var media = new umbraco.cms.businesslogic.media.Media(
            Convert.ToInt32(currentPage.GetProperty("[property]").Value)
    );
string imageUrl = media.getProperty("umbracoFile").Value.ToString();

asp.net · how to · Umbraco

It’s a great news that now jQuery is supporting Mobile web.

Here is the official announcement:
http://jquerymobile.com/2010/08/announcing-the-jquery-mobile-project/

And the project site:
http://jquerymobile.com/

Less hassles in creating interactive Mobile web, I love it!

jQuery · mobile

Earlier this month (August 2010) Microsoft has introduced a new Visual Studio family member, it’s Visual Studio LightSwitch.

Visual Studio LightSwitch is RAD (Rapid Application Development) tool that can be used to build WPF and Silverlight applications in an easy way.

Don’t expect me to explain the features in this post, it will be too long instead please watch the following videos:

• http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Dan/Jay-Schmelzer-Introducing-Visual-Studio-LightSwitch/
• http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/funkyonex/Visual-Studio-LightSwitch-Beyond-the-Basics/

Okay, done watching?

This kind of tool is not new. Many 3rd party software companies has built similar tool and my favorite was Iron Speed Designer but the output is ASP.NET website rather than WPF or Silverlight.

Iron Speed Designer was great. I used that tool in 2007 to 2009 because it was the main dev tool at the company I used to work. But the downside is the cost. It’s too expensive to get the full features. For a single seat of Enterprise Edition it cost $3,975.

This Visual Studio LightSwitch is absolutely a great tool and it absolutely has good market prospect. It’s a very good decision from Microsoft to develop this tool.

I hope Microsoft can release this tool in an affordable price. If that will happen, I can  say “Visual Studio LightSwitch is Iron Speed Designer KILLER”

PS: The free public beta will be available on 23 August 2010.

Iron Speed Designer · LightSwitch · Silverlight · Visual Studio · WPF

Changing default browser used in debugging ASP.NET MVC 2 is a bit tricky in Visual Studio 2010. To use ScottGu’s steps, you will need to add new ASPX page first. But unfortunately if you delete the page then close the application, anytime you rerun the application then the change you did will lost (it backs to use the default browser set in OS).

In my case I have Firefox set as my default browser but I need to use Internet Explorer as default browser for debugging. The trick I do is by doing these:

1. Open the project properties
2. Go to Web tab
3. Set the Start Action to use Start external program and then pass the Internet Explorer executable path and the url as Command line arguments.
4. Set the Servers’ specific port to the same port set in the url in step 3.

(click to view the image in original size)

asp.net · asp.net mvc · Tips & Tricks · VS2010 · VS2010-Tips

I must admit that the ASP.NET MVC team is so consistent in developing ASP.NET MVC framework to be better and better. Just few months after the release of ASP.NET MVC 2, now the Preview 1 of ASP.NET MVC 3 has been released.

Yes, Preview 1 maybe not interesting for some of you but it’s a good time to evaluate the framework and provides feedbacks. Tell them what you like and don’t like, this is a good time for it.

To download ASP.NET MVC 3 Preview 1 release please visit:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=157073

New features delivered in this Preview 1 are:

• Razor View Engine – a new http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/07/02/introducing-razor.aspx.
• Multiple View Engine Support – Add View dialog now supports choosing a view engine and adding custom view engines.
• Validation Improvements – Support for more validation attributes such as the new ones introduced in ASP.NET 4.
• Dependency Injection at all levels – Opened up seams for applying the dependency injection when instantiating components of the framework. This allows developers to hook into the creation of models during model binding, action filters, etc.
• Dynamic View and ViewModel Properties – These dynamic properties provide syntactic sugar to setting and accessing ViewData values making controller and view
• Global Action Filters – allows registering action filters that apply to all ASP.NET MVC requests. This removes the need to apply a filter attribute on every controller.
• Support for Permanent Redirects – Added new overloads for permanent redirects which issue a 301 HTTP status code instead of a 302.

The following Scott Guthrie’s blog post will guide you to get an overview of those features:

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/07/27/introducing-asp-net-mvc-3-preview-1.aspx

And… yup I said feedback to them. You can use ASP.NET MVC forum to post any feedback you have.

asp.net · asp.net mvc · razor

Microsoft has just release the Beta version of Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools. It includes:

• Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone Beta
• Windows Phone Emulator Beta
• Silverlight for Windows Phone Beta
• Microsoft Expression Blend for Windows Phone Beta
• XNA Game Studio 4.0 Beta

Here is the download link:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c8496c2a-54d9-4b11-9491-a1bfaf32f2e3&displaylang=en

To get more information on it please read ScottGu’s post:
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/07/12/windows-phone-7-developer-tools-beta-released.aspx

Windows Phone · Windows Phone 7

If this is the first time you hear about Microsoft WebMatrix, I suggest you to read my previous post WebMatrix – Introduction and WebMatrix – Installation before continue reading this post.

On first-time run of Microsoft WebMatrix, below screen will be the default screen on WebMatrix.

if you don’t like it you can disable it by giving “Do not show this screen on start-up” a check mark. It will then run My Sites as default screen and open the last site you’re working with.

Later you want the Quick Start screen to get back you can close the opened site it will bring you the Quick Start screen and you can remove the check mark if you want.

Okay let’s try the menu item one by one.

My Sites

It will open a dialog with all sites you ever worked with in the list. Select a site and click OK button to open, or you can just double click the site.

I found that there is no way to remove a site from the list at this Beta version. Maybe it will be added in the newer version… let’s hope… err suggest to them

Site From Web Gallery

This option will open a dialog to select a website or application from Web Gallery. This is the same as installing community website or application using Web PI but in this Microsoft WebMatrix the website or application will not be installed in IIS but rather they will be stored in %user%\Documents\My Web Sites folder and will be run in IIS Developer Express by default when you’re working with the site on WebMatrix. (if you want you can also add the website or application to your computer IIS manually)

Site From Template

This is where all funs will start. You can create your own site from online templates listed there.

When you create a new site from template, you will find that there are new extensions .cshtml and .vbhtml – yep they are new extension introduced by Microsoft as ASP.NET Web Page and  it supports Razor Syntax.

If you want to learn more about them, you can visit this page:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b7937c34-3b53-47b7-ae17-5a72fa700472&displaylang=en

Site From Folder

This option will let you choose a folder in your computer where a site (or even nothing) is stored. The folder will be then be the root directory of the site you will work with.

webmatrix