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Site News

Ultimate Coder Challenge

I am a bandit for gadgets and the latest batch of Ultrabooks are over the top. Laptops that have touchscreens, accelerometers, gyros, proximity and ambient sensors - it's like they finally took my advice and crammed every unlikely feature they could lay their hands on and crammed them into one device. I love it.

For 6 weeks, myself and 3 other lucky ones are judging the Intel Ultimate Coder Challenge. 6 developers have 6 weeks to write an app on the latest and greatest Intel Ultrabook to put it through its paces. To follow the progress read my blog or check out the Ultimate Coder Challenge page.

Android Programming Challenge: $25,000 - grand prize

Reading about what other developers are doing is one thing, but actually firing up a compiler and doing it yourself is even better. Our Android App contest is looking for the best Android game and has a very, very serious grand prize attached. Enter your app, be it big or small, simple or complex, serious or frivolous. Every app that's entered has a chance at this prize.

Best articles of last month

To continue the theme. The top authors of last month have been voted for by you. Congratulations to:

Best Mobile article of July 2012
Colin Eberhardt - A Gesture-Driven Windows Phone To-Do List
Prizes:	Code Project Mug; Code Project Mousepad; The latest Mobile books from informIT; ComponentOne Studio Enterprise;

Best VB.NET article of July 2012
Meshack Musundi - Metro: Shuffle
Prizes:	Shell MegaPack.Net 2010; SmartOutline 2010; Crypto Logger For .Net; The latest VB.NET books from informIT;

Best C# article of July 2012
Kanasz Robert - Design Patterns 1 of 3 - Creational Design Patterns
Prizes:	Shell MegaPack.Net 2010; SmartOutline 2010; Crypto Obfuscator For .Net - Enterprise Edition; The latest C# books from informIT; ActiveReports 7;

Best C++ article of July 2012
Woong Gyu La - How to replace recursive functions using stack and while-loop to avoid the stack-overflow
Prizes:	Codejock Xtreme ToolkitPro; SmartOutline 2010; CryptoLicensing For MFC - Enterprise Edition; The latest C++ books from informIT;

Best Web Dev article of July 2012
Florian Rappl - Practical ASP.NET MVC (3) tips
Prizes:	SmartOutline 2010; The latest Web Dev books from informIT; Spread WPF-Silverlight;

Best overall article of July 2012
Kanasz Robert - Design Patterns 1 of 3 - Creational Design Patterns
Prizes:	Code Project Mug; Hyper Build; Spread .NET;

cheers,
Chris Maunder

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Weekly Poll Results

This week's survey: Do you find Windows 8 simple to use?

Most popular new articles

• Time Period Library for .NET - Jani Giannoudis
  
• A fast and performing gauge - A.J.Bauer
  
• Difference between On clause and Where clause when used with left join in SQL Server - Hafiz Muhammad Suleman
  
• Number crunching: Why you should never, ever, EVER use linked-list in your code again - KjellKod.cc
  
• The XML Parsing Article That Should (Not) Be Written! - Wong Shao Voon
  

Latest Additions

92 articles overall. 28 new, 64 updated.

New articles added

Hardware & System

• Frequency Divider with VHDL - Programnation
  This brief article describes a frequency divider with VHDL along with the process of calculating the scaling factor.
  
  

Interviews

• A Coder Interview With Graham Lee - The Code Project, Graham Lee
  Welcome to our continuing series of Code Project interviews in which we talk to developers about their backgrounds, projects, interests and pet peeves. In this installment we talk to Graham Lee.
  
  

Miscellaneous

• Custom Spider or Radar Chart Control - Erik Vullings
  An easy to use WPF spider (radar) chart control.
  
  

SharePoint Server

• List and AllowDelete Property - Jean Paul V.A
  How to protect a list by disabling the Delete list option using Visual Studio and PowerShell.
  
  

Windows Presentation Foundation

• Visual Studio 2012 Metro Styles for WPF - Winfried Lötzsch
  Black Metro Styles for Button, ListBox, Menu, ScrollBar, TabControl and TextBox
  
  

Articles updated

.NET Framework

• Extending Visual Studio Part 2 - Creating Addins - Dave Kerr
  Create an amazingly useful 'Switch' addin to switch between cpp/h, designer/code, XAML/codebehind and more!
  
  

Algorithms & Recipes

• The XML Parsing Article That Should (Not) Be Written! - Wong Shao Voon
  The C++ XML parsing article which should have been written since the advent of XML! This article defines a new Elmax abstraction model over the DOM model.
  
  
• Your Digital Fountain - Omar Gamil
  Reliable transmission of bulk data over lossy connection without worrying about packets loss
  
  
• Finding prime numbers - Kenneth Haugland
  Different schemas for finding prime numbers explained with code
  
  
• Beyond Bresenham: New Algorithms for Drawing Line Segments - _beauw_
  Offers novel techniques designed to exploit contemporary hardware
  
  

ASP.NET

• An Introduction to ASP.NET Dynamic Data from a Beginner's Perspective - Rahul Rajat Singh
  An introduction to ASP.NET dynamic data websites.
  
  
• Creating ASP.NET Applications with N-Tier Architecture - Rahul Rajat Singh
  This article describes how to build ASP.NET applications using n-tier architecture.
  
  
• ASP.NET - reCAPTCHA Mailhide - Don V Adams
  How to use reCAPTCHA Mailhide in your ASP.NET website.
  
  
• How to manipulate master page controls in ASP.NET when output caching is enabled - Rahman Masudur
  This short article shows how to manipulate master page controls in ASP.NET when output caching is enabled.
  
  
• Using the Entity Framework in ASP.NET MVC - Peter Carrasco
  This article describes how to use the Entity Framework in your application for database access.
  
  
• Project Build: Web.config transformation - Ken C. Len
  Web.Config Xml Transformation
  
  

Audio and Video

• Play or Capture Audio Sound: Send and Receive as Multicast (RTP) - Banjoo
  Play sound, capture sound, repeat sound from sound device to sound device. Read and write Wav-Files. Send and receive Ulaw RTP-streams. Using the WaveIn WaveOut functions of the WMM API.
  
  

C / C++ Language

• Number crunching: Why you should never, ever, EVER use linked-list in your code again - KjellKod.cc
  Most programming resources are wrong when comparing linked-list to vector. Here you can read and understand how they are wrong and why linked-list is (mostly) to be avoided.
  
  

C#

• C# and VB.NET Code Searcher - Using Roslyn - woutercx
  A fast C# and VB.NET code searcher using Roslyn.
  
  
• Inline MSIL in C#/VB.NET and Generic Pointers - roylawliet
  Discusses inline-IL in C#, benefits and uses, and how to achieve it.
  
  
• Escaping in C#: characters, strings, string formats, keywords, identifiers - Andreas Gieriet
  Different possibilities to escape literals and names/keywords.
  
  
• An indepth look at structures in C# - roylawliet
  Takes an indepth look at structures in C# and how their underlying mechanics work and what impacts they may have.
  
  
• Demystify http.sys with HttpSysManager - Nicolas Dorier
  Configure the HTTP traffic on your local machine. A nice alternative for netsh http.
  
  
• C# Native Interop: Methods and Performance - Debdatta Basu
  Introduction to c#/c++ interoperability, and a performance evaluation.
  
  
• PInvoke pointer safety: Replacing IntPtr with unsafe struct pointers - David Jeske
  Replacing IntPtr with unsafe struct pointers.
  
  
• Fast List Sort in C# - Dan Randolph
  How to get faster sorting in List(T) string collections
  
  
• MP3 Rearrange - John Orendt
  Prepares play list elements for burning to CD or DVD or loading onto a MP3 player.
  
  

Charts, Graphs and Images

• ASP.NET Plotter Toolkit - HTML5 Charting for all - Akram El Assas
  ASP.NET Plotter Toolkit makes the process of creating ASP.NET charting controls much simpler and much easier. The toolkit comes with extendable HTML5 charting controls for plotting time series and dense data sets.
  
  

Database

• Difference between On clause and Where clause when used with left join in SQL Server - Hafiz Muhammad Suleman
  This article will clear the differences between the On cluase and Where clause when used with left join.
  
  
• MySqlBackup.NET - MySQL Backup Solution for C#, VB.NET, ASP.NET - adriancs
  Unicode, UTF8 character backup and restore of MySQL database in C#, VB.NET, ASP.NET
  
  

Date and Time

• Time Period Library for .NET - Jani Giannoudis
  Extensive time period calculations and individual calendar periods.
  
  

Design and Architecture

• A N-Tier Architecture Sample with ASP.NET MVC3, WCF and Entity Framework - Wh5
  This article tries to introduce a decoupled, unit-testable, deployment-flexible, implementation-efficient and validation-flexible N-Tier architecture in .NET
  
  
• A Graphical Documentation System for C/C++ projects - Alesiani Marco
  A concept-tool to create interactive documentations for C/C++ projects
  
  

General Graphics

• Haar-feature Object Detection in C# - César de Souza
  A description of how it was possible to achieve real-time face detection with some clever ideas back in 2001.
  
  

Hardware & System

• Driver to hide files in Linux OS - Apriorit Inc
  Simple driver for Linux OS that performs hiding of the selected files from the system
  
  

HTML / CSS

• Canvas Control Library and New Forms Based System for building Web Pages and Websites - Akshay Srinivasan2
  Canvas Control Library provides highly customizable controls using the HTML5 Canvas element. Also includes a New Forms Based system which is a new way to build your web pages and websites.
  
  

Internet / Network

• Send Lotus Notes Email Using C# - kheaton1111
  How to send email to Lotus Notes from C#.
  
  

iPhone

• Visual Studio debug console for iPhone - Jaime Olivares
  An architectural proposal to integrate mobile and .Net applications
  
  

Libraries

• Razor 2.0 template engine, supporting layouts - Jaap Lamfers
  Razor 2.0 template engine that works outside MVC and that supports layouts (masterpages) and _ViewStart, like Asp.Net MVC.
  
  

Localisation

• .NET Resource (.resx file) Translator - Kumar, Ravikant INDIA Bangalore
  A .NET resource (.resx file) translator. English to any other language.
  
  
• Automatically localizing applications with Google Translate - Chip VonBurg
  Localizing your apps with Google Translate
  
  

Miscellaneous

• A fast and performing gauge - A.J.Bauer
  This article shows you how to write a performing control using .NET 2.0 and GDI+.
  
  

Mobile Development

• Box 2d vehicles - part 1 - PavolSatala
  How to create nice car using box2d?
  
  

PHP

• Token Manager - VectorX
  The Token Manager allows web developers to program PHP, HTML, CSS and JavaScript into tokens that can be used throughout WordPress.
  
  

Programming Tips

• Global Shortcuts in WinForm and WPF - geekbond
  This article shows how to register and manage System-Global hotkeys in WinForm and WPF applications.
  
  

SharePoint Server

• SharePoint 2010 Built-in Web Parts - Jean Paul V.A
  The built-in WebParts in SharePoint 2010.
  
  
• Global Event Receiver to Block Malicious Files - Jean Paul V.A
  In this article we have explored the problems with updating multiple web configuration files.
  
  

Third Party Products and Tools

• How to create a Custom Data reference in PI AF for access to historical data - Anumeha Shukla
  To get the Historical values within a requested Time Range from AF Table
  
  

Threads, Processes & IPC

• Thread Synchronization Queue with Boost - yux_315
  Implement a thread synchronization queue with STL and boost.
  
  

VB.NET

• Android-Style (Toast) Notification for .NET - John Espiritu
  An android-style notification component for .NET Framework.
  
  

Windows Communication Foundation

• Implementing WCF Service Behaviors - Vinod Viswanath
  Here we will try to implement different service behaviors to increase service performance
  
  

Windows Phone 7

• Property Finder - a Cross-Platform HTML5 Mobile App - Colin Eberhardt
  This article describes the development of a cross-platform HTML5 application for Windows Phone and iPhone.
  
  
• Augmented reality - XNA Models - Harald Heide Gundersen
  Geocoordinate positioned Xna model viewable thru Photocamera
  
  

Windows Presentation Foundation

• WPF: Webcam Control - Meshack Musundi
  A WPF UserControl for displaying and recording video from a webcam
  
  
• WPF TreeListView Control - Andrey Gliznetsov
  This article describes the usage of custom WPF TreeListView control comparing with basic TreeView
  
  
• Diagnostic Trace Display Using WPF - Don Kackman
  A WPF control and FlowDocument to display Trace output in a running application.
  
  

New Tips and Tricks added

C / C++ Language

• Preprocessor Iteration - Debdatta Basu
  Emulating iterative structures with the c++ preprocessor.
  
  

C#

• Store Generic Classes in Settings - m_Plb
  
  
  
• State Checking Objects - Kannan Ar
  This is a generic wrapper class to monitor and fix the internal state of its value.
  
  

Client side scripting

• Building the Random Image Loader and Random Quote Loader with jQuery - point64
  Two functions: 1. Loop through all images on a page and randomly display one of the images when the user clicks a button, 2. Extract a list of quotes and display a random quote.
  
  

Hardware & System

• Frequency Divider with VHDL - Programnation
  This brief article describes a frequency divider with VHDL along with the process to calculate the scaling factor.
  
  

Internet / Network

• Simple C# FTP Class - metastruct
  Easy to use class for downloading, uploading, and other FTP commands
  
  

Libraries

• SIP Stack (1 of 3) - Hatim Haidry
  SIP Stack Implementation on the basis of RFC SIP 3261 Specification
  
  

Programming Tips

• Minimalist Comments - gggustafson
  This tip suggests that extensively commented software flies in the face of good programming practice.
  
  
• Resolve DesignMode for a user control - Mika Wendelius
  The tip shows one way to resolve if a user control is in design mode.
  
  

SharePoint Server

• SharePoint 2010 Cumulative Updates Information - Jean Paul V.A
  Cumulative Update information on SharePoint 2010.
  
  

String handling

• Unicode to Krutidev, Krutidev to Unicode Convertor in C# - AnuragTripathi
  Convertor for Unicode to Krutidev and vice-versa.
  
  

Tips and Tricks updated

.NET Framework

• A list of useful articles from MSDN magazine - Espen Harlinn
  Stuff I've found useful and interesting
  
  

Algorithms & Recipes

• Math Parser NET C# - kirnbas
  This is light, fast and simple to understand mathematical parser, which receives as input a mathematical expression (string) and return the output value (double).
  
  

ASP.NET

• Auto-bind byte[] to asp:Image - Vitaly Tomilov
  Simplest and quickest way to automatically bind array of image bytes to asp:Image object.
  
  

Bugs & Workarounds

• Problem Steps Recorder Overview - Albert Holguin
  This is a quick overview of the Windows 7 Problem Steps Recorder utility.
  
  

C#

• String Comparison in C# - Doing it the right way - Rahul Rajat Singh
  This small Tip talks about the right way of comparing strings in a C# application.
  
  
• Using C# to Monitor Bandwidth For Wireless Devises Using NetworkInterface and .Net Linq - Tyronne Thomas
  Using C# to Monitor Bandwidth For Wireless Devises
  
  
• A look at marshalling delegates in .NET - roylawliet
  Discusses marshalling delegates in .NET and critques what .NET libraries have to offer
  
  
• Free Space Cleaner - Rich Turner
  Free Space cleaner to overwrite empty space on logical disks
  
  

Database

• SQL database backups by batch file (using SQL script and batch script) - Charitha Athukroala
  Creating SQL database backups through batch scripts and SQL scripts.
  
  

Hardware & System

• Uninstalling applications programmatically (with WMI) - programmerdon
  Uninstall applications with WMI
  
  

New Technical Blogs added

ASP.NET Controls

• ASP.NET GridView – OnRowDataBound vs OnRowCreated - cpsglauco
  This morning, while I was creating a simple ASP.NET page, I have fought a couple of hours versus a GridView that apparently worked in strange ways. Problem Description The problem I encountered seemed to be the wrong setting of the … Continue reading →
  
  

Code Generation

• Benchmark code blocks easy - Andrei Rinea
  Have you been testing code speed like this? Or maybe you’ve found the Stopwatch class and been happy with its superior time precision? Better, I’d say, but I’ve quite had it. Plus I needed to benchmark a local website and …Read more »
  
  

Database

• OUTPUT clause in UPDATE statements - Andrei Rinea
  Sometimes you need to update data in a table and then update data in another table but based on a filter condition found from the first table. Specifically have you had to do this in the past? This is not …Read more »
  
  

Date and Time

• Creating a multi-paged container control with design time support - Richard James Moss
  This article describes adding design time support for a TabControl-like component which renders the same way the Project Properties in Visual Studio 2012.This is the first time I've tried to make more advanced use of component designers so there are going to be areas that I'm not aware of or have no
  
  

Document / View

• Barcodes, document flow and 100 points identification on MS Dynamics CRM 2011 - Pavel Korsukov
  I have just finished Proof-of-Concept for one of our customers. The PoC was a demonstration of capabilities to automate paper document flow based on a custom solution for MS Dynamics CRM 2011. It involves barcodes generation, bulk document printing, scanning of paper documents and automatic recognit
  
  

Files and Folders

• A useful custom configuration section for inline unconstrained XML - Andrei Rinea
  As I was writing a small TCP server for serving a Silverlight local TCP policy, I came across a certain need. Inspired by Dan Wahlin’s server implementation, I chose to write a simplified version for myself. I needed to keep …Read more »
  
  

Game Development

• Modifying Quake 3 - part 2- Gamer inputs - Anup Shinde
  In the previous post, we saw how to compile and Q3 source code and some of details on Q3. In this post, I'll explain some basics on how Q3 works and we will create a mechanism to accept user input. In the last post, we will define the behavior of the homing-missile.
  
  

Internet / Network

• Intercept a raw SOAP message - Girish J Jain
  How to intercept a raw SOAP message.
  
  

Toolbars & Docking windows

• 5 Unforgivable Windows 8 RTM Problems - Sam Meacham
  I work with a couple of committees at Microsoft for developing the future “story” of some of their key technologies. So I’ve been able to participate in some fun closed focus groups for things like ASP.NET, WCF, Windows and Visual Studio 2012. The gist of it is that the guts of Win
  
  

Uncategorised Technical Blogs

• Character test utility - Andrei Rinea
  Every now and then I have to decide if a character satisfies a predicate (char.IsPunctuation, char.IsSymbol and so on) found on the System.Char class. The MSDN pages are of limited help plus I need to browse each predicate. Therefore I …Read more »
  
  
• Introducing Spring Batch, Part One - Lauren Fournier
  Have you ever heard someone say “Man I wish we had a toy like that when I was a kid! That would have been awesome!” For me, that’s usually when I’m wrapping the latest entry in Nerf’s arsenal for Christmas, someone’s birthday or any time my kids and I are running through the house attempting [...]
  
  

Windows Presentation Foundation

• WPF default binding format culture - Andrei Rinea
  WPF formats non-string objects to a string using a fixed/hardcoded culture (en-US) regardless of the current culture (as in Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture / CultureInfo.CurrentCulture). Suppose you have a simple DataContext (ViewModel) like so : Binding an instance of `Data` to a view, …R
  
  

Technical Blogs updated

ASP.NET

• A single file login page for asp.net - wullinkm
  Sometimes you might feel the need to simply protect a public directory on your webserver. Using IIS gives you several options to achieve this, but today we will discuss how to enable a simple login page that requires only one file and a few entries in web.config. First of all I used the login page c
  
  

C#

• Beware of switch - Andrei Rinea
  I am by no means against any of the instructions which exist in C#, including goto (wow, I said that). Each of them can have its place and its normal use in an application. However things can be abused and …Read more »
  
  

Uncategorised Technical Blogs

• Getting Started With Spring Batch, Part Two - Lauren Fournier
  Now that we’ve had a high level overview of some of the simple and basic features of Spring Batch, let’s dive into what it takes to get up and running. The main purpose of this quick and simple tutorial is to give you a starting point for exploring Spring Batch to see if you’d like [...]