The past several days, I've been preparing my company's websites and connecting applications for our upcomming name change. I've never realized how much of a pain it is to change sites layout, colors, etc. until I had to modify a .NET application of ours we released a few months ago.  I had to manually touch, at least, 50 various .ASPX and .ASCX files to get the new look and feel to propogate throughout the entire application. Talk about a pain in the butt.

So, I decided to create the new website using Metabuilders Master Pages control (site seems to be down, btw).  Let me tell you, one application I moved over (that I put together about 2 weeks ago using MP) was easily migrated to the new look and feel within an hour, rather than several days.  Master Pages is definately one of the biggest things I'm looking forward to having in ASP.NET 2.0, as it will make websites easier to manage when these sort of things come up.

Thanks for a great free control Andy!

There is one thing in ADO.NET that just irks me, and well its not by .NET design.  During a lot of our Business Logic methods in our projects at work, we have to call Insert, Update, and Select procedures from SQL Server.  Of course, the proper way of doing this is by wrapping your logic in a transactional support manner... no biggie, we've got this working, and I might add, it works SUPERBLY!  Well, that is, if you remember that each call to the database while in a transaction must use the same connection and transaction.

I'm not really sure how many times I've done this, but there's been a few that I'm aware of, one of which was today.  The BLL method calls some Inserts, some Updates, then it needs to retrieve some data to do more Inserts and Updates.  Well, for that 1 select query I ran, I forgot to pass in the connection and transaction objects.  I couldn't figure out why the app was just hanging time and time again until it dawned on me. Yup, thats right...it was a good smack my head kinda realization.

So I guess the point of this rant is if you're using .NET transactional support with databases, make sure that every call to the database has the same connection and transaction object, otherwise you'll spend a good half hour to hour banging your head against the wall and blaming the SQL Architect that his Stored Procedure is causing the problems...only to find out, you're missing a few extra parameters!  Arrh!

Tonight I had to make the hard decision to shut my free online family album service down.  I decided that since it has had very little usage over the last few months, that I'm wasting money on hosting fees.  For those who have never been to http://www.webfa.com, this site - dubbed WebFA - was my senior multi-media project I created in Oct-Dec. of 2002.  It was a GREAT learning tool, as .NET 1.0 was in its infancy stages, and a GREAT way to show off my skills to my professor.  The site was fun, to both use and build...however pulling the plug was the right thing. 

If you would like a copy of the source code...well, too bad.  After several server, and workstation rebuilds, I lost all code to the site...thus making any updates impossible.  I do, however, have the SQL code (well its still on the database) as well as HTML markup...but without the good 'ol VB.NET code behinds, the sites useless.  If you would like a working copy, I can give you what I have...however, I suggest going to something like nGallery, as it has code.

So long, fair well...(song fading as you see the website fading into the horizon).

I've been given a task of researching if I can retrieve POP3 email and store it to Exchange.  Now, before you go giving me a ton of links to POP3 to Exchange products, read further.  I've already found a ton of these products, and the way we need this process to work, those products will not work.  I have, however, found a .NET component from DevMail .NET that will allow me to contact a POP3 server, download email, and save the emails as *.eml.

Now, heres where you come in...does anyone know of any components or have any reference to source code that will give me an idea if taking that saved EML file and saving it to a directory on the exchange server will work?  Better yet, if anyone can give me an idea of the storage system behind Exchange, that would be helpful as well.

Just came across this new site named <uber:ASP.NET>.  It looks promising, so lets see where it goes.

Paschal points out a good problem when using the Datagrid. I personally would like to see a new Template where the developer could decide if nothing is displayed or a message is displayed.  As I stated in my comments, I don't know how many times we've had to create 2 panels, 1 for showing the data, and 1 for displaying a message saying they'res no data.  How about it Microsoft?  Can this be done?

Hello to everyone!  My name is Matt Hawley and I'm the sole developer at Excentrics World producing those wonderful controls we all love.  I wanted to take a second and thank Scott for giving me some blogspace over here and give you a brief history of me. 

I've been working with .NET since late Beta 2, and have loved every minute of it.  Just recently I passed my last test to obtain MCAD for Microsoft .NET, and it only took me 8 months to do it -- I just couldn't get myself to pull through the Windows Test.  Over the last year I've found my prime passion, building Custom Server Controls.  It all started with CalendarPopup, and I just started finding more useful controls that everyone has a passion to use, but no time to ever build. 

Hopefully my stay here at Weblogs @ ASP.NET will produce more popularity for my controls and future endeavors and help me build a more robust set of controls.  So, if you haven't been by to check out my controls, do so now, and enjoy the cost - FREE!