Tech Tips, Tricks & Trivia

Top 10 reasons why VB.NET is better than C# AND C# is better than VB.NET

...from Dino's MSDN Mag article . The GDI+ subsystem is a native component of the Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 operating systems that is available to 32-bit and 64-bit Windows-based apps. ..the core services of GDI+ are still in unmanaged code. The classes in the .NET Framework are merely wrappers around them. This is something that is expected to change in the upcoming version of Windows, code-named Longhorn. In the .NET Framework, GDI+ functions are defined in the System.Drawing namespace. The namespace includes three child namespaces, which encompass 2D drawing,imaging, and text manipulation. In System.Drawing you find the basic drawing primitives to handle fonts, brushes, pens, and bitmaps. Advanced 2D and vector graphics effects are provided by the classes in System.Drawing.Drawing2D.In particular, you'll find gradients, blending, paths, and regions. Image rendering, color manipulation, and metafile support is available in System.Drawing.Imaging. ...

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GDI is a Microsoft Windows standard for representing graphical objects and transmitting them to output devices such as monitors and printers. GDI+ is a wrapper-library for traditional GDI. Unlike GDI, GDI+ text layout is resolution independent , and forms built with GDI+ text look the same at all resolutions and when printed This nifty snippet places text dynamically on an image using GDI+ in ASP.NET. View the output first and change the querystring value to notice how neat it is. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 script runat="server"> 12 private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e) 13 { 14 Bitmap bitmap = new Bitmap(Server.MapPath("josh.bmp")); 15 MemoryStream memStream = new MemoryStream(); 16 17 // generate image 18 19 // Create a graphics object for drawing. 20 Graphics g = Graphics.FromImage(bitmap); 21 g.SmoothingMode = SmoothingMode.AntiAlias; 22 23 int width = bitmap.Width; 24 int height = bitmap.Height; 25 26 string familyName = "Tahoma"...

Geocoding is the process that assigns a latitude-longitude coordinate to an address. Once a latitude-longitude coordinate is assigned, the address can be displayed on a map or used in a spatial search. Innovative geocoding web applications powered by Microsoft's MapPoint , Yahoo & Google Maps have come up for locating cheap gas & home rentals , getting driving directions , identifying real-time traffic and weather conditions in a selected geographic area.

To View > (HTML) Source of a web page in IE in EditPlus (if that is your preferred editor), go to Tools > Preferences and in the General category, check the box that says "Use EditPlus in Internet Explorer 5"

T-SQL Debugger is a convenient tool for debugging stored procedures.

High memory is when you see that your Aspnet_wp.exe process (Internet Information Services (IIS) 5.0) or W3wp process (IIS 6.0) memory is consistently increasing and is not returning to a comfortable level (under 600 MB in the default 2 GB user memory address space). Quick things to check when you experience high memory levels in ASP.NET - Application set up for debugging? Disable debugging & tracing in web.config on moving app to Production server String concatenation - use System.Text.StringBuilder class Not yet running the .NET Framework 1.1 Service Pack 1 (SP1) ? Install it. Recycle periodically - For some applications, it's a pretty good idea to just restart the worker process every couple of days or so, at a convenient time.

Fiddler is a HTTP debugger (with a neater UI than the Firefox extension LiveHTTPheaders ) that lets you see incoming and outgoing HTTP traffic in a meaningful way . It runs on port 8888 and any program that can be configured to use an HTTP proxy on a port can be set to use Fiddler.

The Opera Voice feature in Opera 8.0 allows the user to control the interface by talking and to have documents read aloud. The three main new concepts of voice-enabled Opera are * voice browser * screen reader * CSS3 Speech

^An exhaustive compilation of XMLHTTP resources...