Aug 9 2008
Fantastic .Net Design Pattern Examples
Design patterns are recurring solutions to software design problems you find again and again in real-world application development. Patterns are about design and interaction of objects, as well as providing a communication platform concerning elegant, reusable solutions to commonly encountered programming challenges.
The Gang of Four (GoF) patterns are generally considered the foundation for all other patterns, and the website contains an awesome set of .Net examples for each of the patterns.
Aug 9 2008
How To Create a Pop-up Control in .NET?
Ever wanted a pop-up control like:ample application using a custom pop-up control:
Or using a custom tooltip...
... and a more complex pop-up that can be resized:
Well check this out from CodeProject.
Jan 21 2006
Automatic Update – Yeah!
Cross-posted from the Particls blog.
I got the auto update library and executable working tonight for the (currently somewhat unstable) "experimental" build of Touchstone. It’s well overdue because our little application is getting quite complex now and laying in new features can be a tricky process. Now we have a mechanism to automatically and non-invasively update users with new versions - making adoption and user updates quick, seamless and easy.
Now perhaps Chris won’t kick my ass so hard when a Private Alpha release starts throwing those ugly “object not set to reference of an object” exceptions.
Now all I need to write is a program which automatically updates the blog for me, and I’ll be right!
Nov 21 2005
I just did something very stupid but Chris still loves me
Cross-posted from the Particls blog.
I just opened a .vb file from another project, and upon closing the window (and subsequently not saving) I realised all too late, that Visual Studio had in fact oped the file inside the Touchstone project. You can probably guess the outcome. So off I go again, recoding the complete structure of the BagItAndTagItParser class – be assured that I wont be opening any “stray” .vb files for the rest of the day! Chris is ok with this though, because we just implimented the first ticker system and its actually reasonably functional!
It’s interesting, starting this project has opened my eyes to a whole subculture of RSS, which I was previously unaware of. I think that reading the excellent intellect of Nick (from FeedDemon) and others regarding some sort of solution to the growing ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) is inspired.
With the rapid expansion of content sources, the more ways we can think of to manage this content without hindering productivity (I am a pragmatist after all) is where we need to redouble our efforts. This is the philosophy behind Touchstone – and I’m coding as fast as I can. Aside from the heavy setback today, I should have the Bag it and Tag It Parser complete before the coding marathon tonight. If you feel inspired enough to chat with us through comments on this blog, please do – we like to feel popular.