Archive for August, 2004

.net Framework 1.1 SP1 out

Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 Service Pack 1 is out. It's available in two variants: one for Windows 2000/XP and another for Windows Server 2003. Too bad the knowledge base links on the download pages don't work, so the fixes listing is a mystery so far. The overview says: "The primary focus of Microsoft .NET Framework […]

August 31, 2004 · Jouni Heikniemi · No Comments
Posted in: .NET

Bugzilla and bug numbering per product

Every couple of months somebody pops up in the netscape.public.mozilla.webtools newsgroup and asks if he can make his Bugzilla number bugs so that the first bug for each product is #1. Most of the time the reasoning goes along the lines of "If a customer files bug 100 now and bug 200 a week later, […]

August 29, 2004 · Jouni Heikniemi · 6 Comments
Posted in: Bugzilla

Gmail is (nothing but) a good webmail

The people at Google seem to have a golden touch. They create a positive media hype with almost everything they do, including Gmail. Every now and then they have lived up to the hype. But having used Gmail for some time now, I'm saying the biggest cool thing in it is the Google logo. Ok, […]

August 29, 2004 · Jouni Heikniemi · 9 Comments
Posted in: Web

Firefox as the default browser: opening issues

Firefox 0.9 has a bug that causes errors of style "The system cannot find the file specified" when urls are opened using the default browser (ie. just starting a new process with the url as programname). If you're using .net, System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("http://www.heikniemi.net/") nets you a System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception from System.Diagnostics.Process.StartWithShellExecuteEx. Scary, huh? Luckily it's just a Firefox bug, […]

August 27, 2004 · Jouni Heikniemi · No Comments
Posted in: Web

.net String vs. StringBuilder – concatenation performance

Most people have a gut feeling about when to use StringBuilder for concatenation and when to just add strings together with the + operator. But what are the exact situations in which each of the approaches is better? When the question gets asked, people often give out overly simple rules such as "5 catenations". Is […]

August 22, 2004 · Jouni Heikniemi · 29 Comments
Posted in: .NET

Money for bugs

Microsoft's Gunnar Kudrjavets mentions the Mozilla Security Bug Bounty (get $500 by finding and reporting a security bug) and ponders the effect of money in the bug reporting process. Naturally, Gunnar's concept of a bug-finding competition with some teams getting money and some not is pretty far from everyday life. In truth, few people search […]

August 21, 2004 · Jouni Heikniemi · Comments Closed
Posted in: Misc. programming

Trapping Enter key in Windows Forms TextBox

Suppose you want to do something special when the user hits enter in one of your Windows Forms app's TextBoxes? "Easy!", you say, thinking about hooking up a KeyDown event handler – until you try it and find out it doesn't actually work. And then you go Googling, just like I did earlier today. And […]

August 19, 2004 · Jouni Heikniemi · 25 Comments
Posted in: .NET

Continuous integration

Yet another article (this time by Martin Fowler) preaching on the benefits of continuous integration. For those of you not familiar with it, it's a software development principle that says you must have an automated build process that verifies the functionality of the source code several times a day. So, at all times, code in […]

August 16, 2004 · Jouni Heikniemi · No Comments
Posted in: Misc. programming

Spam in blog comments (on MovableType)

Gerv blogged about trouble with comment spam in his weblog. I think most of us have suffered from this at some point. IP blocks tend to help with one group of spammers, but also weed out some possible real commenters. Also, IP lists are a maintenance headache. Googling for other solutions (for the MovableType engine […]

August 15, 2004 · Jouni Heikniemi · 2 Comments
Posted in: Web

Browsing Whidbey assemblies

What's new in Windows Forms for Whidbey? What did they change for System.XML? How about the ASP.net object infrastructure? There's a good amount of Whidbey related news out there (particularly in the MS blogs), but for another kind of view try the .Net2TheMax .NET Browser. It's a web site that allows you to wander through […]

August 14, 2004 · Jouni Heikniemi · No Comments
Posted in: .NET