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Process.Start() and ShellExecute() fails with URLs on Windows 8
Since I installed Windows 8 I've noticed that a number of my applications appear to have problems opening URLs. That is when I click on a link inside of a Windows application, either nothing happens or...
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Building a better .NET Application Configuration Class - revisited
Many years ago, when I was just starting out with .NET (in the 1.0 days - now nearly 10 years ago), I wrote an article about an Application Configuration component I created to improve application...
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Basic Spatial Data with SQL Server and Entity Framework 5.0
Spatial data has been available for a while in SQL Server, but if you wanted to use it with Entiry Framework you had to jump through some hoops. In this post I show how basic SQL Spatial data works and...
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.NET HTML Sanitation for rich HTML Input
If you need to sanitize raw HTML for display in Web applications, the job at hand is scary for .NET backends. Unfortunately it seems there aren't a lot of tools available to help in this formidable...
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Where does ASP.NET Web API Fit?
With the pending release of ASP.NET Web API we're finally getting a good HTTP Service solution 'in the box ' in ASP.NET. Web API provides many needed and cool features, but it's not always clear...
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Mapping UrlEncoded POST Values in ASP.NET Web API
Surprsingly Web API does not support POST value mapping to multiple simple parameters on a Web API endpoint. While you can map POST values with model binding or the FormDataCollection native parameter...
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An Introduction to ASP.NET Web API
This article is a hands on tour of ASP.NET Web Api. It covers a fair variety of functionality and goes beyond the most basic introductions by digging into some of the mundane details you're likely to...
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.NET 3.5 Installation Problems in Windows 8
I ran into a major headache with getting .NET 3.5 properly on my Windows 8 install - although installed SP1 was missing and wouldn't properly install. Here's what happened, how to check for the version...
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Using JSON.NET for dynamic JSON parsing
Parsing JSON dynamically rather than statically serializing into objects is becoming much more common with today's applications consuming many services of varying complexity. Sometimes you don't need...
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ASP.NET Frameworks and Raw Throughput Performance
I got curious the other day: How do the various ASP.NET framework compare in raw throughput performance? With so many development choices on the ASP.NET stack available today it's interesting to take...
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Passing multiple simple POST Values to ASP.NET Web API
One feature conspicuously missing from ASP.NET Web API is the inability to map multiple urlencoded POST values to Web API method parameters. In this post I show a custom HttpParameterBinding that...
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Creating STA COM compatible ASP.NET Applications
When it comes to deploying STA COM components in ASP.NET only WebForms has native support for STA component. Other technologies like MVC, ASMX Web Services and WCF run only in MTA mode. If you need to...
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Visual Studio Web Publish Lockup? Check for invisible Window
Today, while sitting through the MVP 2013 sessions and watching Scott Gu's Azure demos I decided to finally try quickly setting up a free Azure Web site and publish it. The process is super easy....
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Sql Connection Strings in .Config Files vs. Source Control
One basic question that I see time and time again with source control is how to manage connection strings stored in .config files within source control. Such a small thing, but I see that as a...
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Using plUpload to upload Files with ASP.NET
Uploading files to a Web Server is a common task in Web applications these days. All sorts of Web applications require accepting media content, images, or zip attachments with various pieces of data...
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Text Editor Associations/Extensions in Visual Studio getting lost
Here's something that's coming up frequently since I maintain a framework that requires custom script map extensions: So you create a custom script map for your application and then map that script map...
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Firing an Entity Framework Database Initializer from within DbContext
One thing about Entity Framework that bugs me are how database initializers work. Database Initializers are used to initialize the database and determine the behavior of how the Entity Framework model...
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Experimenting with Online Backups
For the last couple of weeks I finally decided that it's time to get an online backup plan of some sort to do 'live' backups of my data and work environment. I figured this process would be fairly...
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A small, intra-app Object to String Serializer
Here's a scenario that keeps popping up for me occasionally: In a number of situations I've needed to quickly and compactly serialize an object to a string. There are a million serializers out there...
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UNC Drive Mapping Failures: Network name cannot be found
Yesterday I was working with a customer on setting up a remote map from my machine to a VPN drive on a remote server on the VPN. Typically you can just map a drive or directly enter a UNC path to the...
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