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Welcome to this week's newsletter from The Code Project.

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Site News

First, it's with sadness and a brave heart that we say farewell to Elina Blank, our longest serving developer who is leaving us this week in order to be closer to her family. Elina has coded more code, designed more designs, squashed more bugs and swore more swear words than anyone else I've brought on to our team and she will be sorely missed. We wish you all the best in your new, calmer and quieter life.

Our AppInnovation contest is coming to a close, with this Wednesday marking the last day you can submit your entry to the Intel AppUp store in time for voting on Dec 1. Please get your entries submitted soon!

On a related note, the Ultimate Coder Challenge is looking for more challengers. The original challenge pitted 6 teams against each other to show what they could do with a 3rd gen Ultrabook. I can't tell you what the latest challenge will be, but if you have some time, don't mind SDKs with C++ APIs and are familiar with Unity then send me an email with your details with the subject line "Ultimate Coder Challenge II" in the subject line.

And speaking of a challenge, CodeProject is looking for Rails developers in Toronto. Yes, Ruby on Rails. We have some work if you have the time, or if you just want a free beer then join us at the Rails Pub night in Toronto this evening.

Finally, Happy Thanksgiving to all those south of our border. This means It's around 6 weeks until the end of the year. 6 weeks. Wow.

cheers,
Chris Maunder

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Weekly Poll Results

This week's survey: On what size displays do you typically read technical material?

Most popular new articles

• A Simple C# Wrapper for the AviFile Library - Corinna John
  
• fastJSON - Mehdi Gholam
  
• XML: Include a Flexible Parser in Your C++ Applications - Michael Chourdakis
  
• HowTo: Export C++ classes from a DLL - Alex Blekhman
  
• Changing Your Life and Well-Being - VectorX
  

Latest Additions

110 articles overall. 44 new, 66 updated.

New articles added

Algorithms & Recipes

• Delaunay Triangulation For Fast Mesh Generation - HoshiKata
  Practical on the fly fast mesh generation from arbitrary points.
  
  

Applications & Tools

• Simple Survey Application - Srinivasu Pemma
  This kind of requirement is useful in many applications originally posted on http://www.srinetinfo.com/search/label/Survey%20Application
  
  
• Transform between IEEE, IBM or VAX floating point number formats and bytes expressions - Alan Churchill
  This is an alternative for "Transform between IEEE, IBM or VAX floating point number formats and bytes expressions"
  
  

ASP.NET

• Understanding MVP (WCSF) Over ASP.NET Web Forms - Chamila Ranasinghe
  The usage of Web Client Software Factory (WCSF) in developing enterprise web applicaitons.
  
  

Book Chapters

• CSS Transitions - Manning
  A chapter excerpt from Hello! HTML5 & CSS3
  
  

C / C++ Language

• Smart pointers for single owners and their aliases - john morrison leon
  The missing link for complete memory and pointer safety in C++
  
  

C#

• Ez SQL, An easy to use query editor with many useful features - TG_Cid
  Query editor to execute scripts against Microsoft SQL Server (tested on 2008 and 2012, although it should work well in 2005).
  
  

Custom Controls

• VisualJS.NET custom control development - artur.ur
  How to use custom JavaScript controls under VisualJS.NET.
  
  

Design and Architecture

• Understanding and Implementing Chain of Responsibility Pattern in C# - Rahul Rajat Singh
  This article talks about the Chain of responsibility pattern.
  
  
• Understanding and Implementing Proxy Pattern in C# - Rahul Rajat Singh
  This article talks about Proxy pattern, when should we use proxy pattern and what are the benefits of using the Proxy pattern.
  
  
• Design Pattern: Conflation with minimal contention for the writer - Satish Natu1
  The article shows a conflation algorithm with minimal contention overhead for the data producer.
  
  

Files and Folders

• C# - Using Rijindael Algorithm & Recursion to Implement a File Encrypting\Archiving Tool - Mr.DDD Ibraheem AlKilanny
  Demonstrating the use of System.Security.Cryptography.Rijindael class to powerfully encrypt strings and files along with basic file archiving method.
  
  

Hardware Reviews

• Working Surface - tecgoblin
  Actually creating stuff with Surface RT (and Windows RT in general)
  
  

Interviews

• A Coder Interview With Cary Bran - The Code Project, Cary Bran
  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 Cary Bran, Senior Director of Advanced Software and Architecture at Plantronics.
  
  

Libraries

• Object Relational Mapping (ORM) using NHibernate - Part 7 of 8 Completing the Ecommerce Example - Anand Lakshminarasimhan
  A full series of 8 part articles to show One-To-One, Many-To-One, Many-To-Many associations mapping using NHibernate, Using Collections With NHibernate, Inheritance Relationships Using NHibernate, Lazy Initializations/Fetches Using NHibernate.
  
  

MFC

• Easy Command Line Service - Andy Bantly
  An easy DOS framework for creating and managing a service
  
  

Product Showcase

• The Windows Store App Lifecycle - Rachel Appel
  The Windows Store App Lifecycle.
  
  
• Indies, Bring Your Games to Windows 8 - Jesse_Freeman
  Indies, Bring Your Games to Windows 8.
  
  
• Ways You can Leverage Share Contracts in your Windows Store Game - Jeff Brand
  Ways You can Leverage Share Contracts in your Windows Store Game.
  
  

Testing and QA

• Security, security! But do you test it? - Karpov Andrey
  
  
  
• Reuse selenium webdriver solution - Mircea Sirghi
  This article describes how to reuse web driver when selenium test crashes or how to debug selenium scripts on the fly.
  
  

Threads, Processes & IPC

• Android Inspired C# AsyncTask - pip010
  Inspired by Android asynchronous callback mechanism for short lived background tasks.
  
  

Ultrabooks

• Signature - gokulsrg
  Handwritting recognition
  
  
• Ultra Buddy - TG1e
  Double-tap Notepad Launcher!
  
  

Windows Runtime

• Creationism: Dynamic Objects Using WinJS and XML - Caleb McElrath
  How-To: Create a JavaScript object during runtime based on an XML file.
  
  

Articles updated

.NET Framework

• Team Foundation Server 2012 RC – Install & Configure - kishore Gaddam
  In this post, we will walk through the process of Installing & Configuring Team Foundation Server (TFS)2012 on a Windows 8 machine that has Visual Studio 2012. If you are using TFS 2010 for the Scrum Process , see the blog post @ http://kishore1021.wordpress.com/2010/08/02/scrum-process-for-software
  
  

Ajax

• Unobtrusive AJAX Form Validation in ASP.NET MVC - Todd Sprang
  A complete step-by-step tutorial explaining how and why to use Unobtrusive AJAX to do forms validation in ASP.NET MVC.
  
  

Algorithms & Recipes

• XML: Include a Flexible Parser in Your C++ Applications - Michael Chourdakis
  Free, portable, compiler-independent XML library in C++
  
  
• Visualizing the Mandelbrot set - Andy Bantly
  Visualizing the Mandelbrot set using multiple threads of execution.
  
  
• Merge Sort algorithm developed with an Object Oriented approach - Livio Francescucci
  A clean version of merge sort algorithm, implemented with classes and objects instead of the usual, unreadable big function.
  
  

ASP.NET

• 4 ways of passing data between layers - Shivprasad koirala
  In this article we will explain about 4 ways of passing data between layers
  
  
• Singleton pattern in a multiple worker thread Application Pool - Wawrzyniec Wawro
  This article is about cross-"worker thread" solutions of implementing the Singleton Pattern in ASP.NET.
  
  
• Starting and Monitoring a Long Running Task Using Web Forms and AJAX - Nasir Darwish
  The article presents a web forms project that demonstrates some techniques for starting and monitoring a long running task using ASP.NET and AJAX.
  
  
• How to Query LDAP and display your domain's Global Address List using VB.NET - Robert E Campbell
  A quick run through of how to quickly query LDAP and how to use the resutls of that query.
  
  

ASP.NET Controls

• Custom ASP.NET Editable DropDownList - EricFaust
  A custom made DropDownList control for ASP.NET
  
  

Audio and Video

• A Simple C# Wrapper for the AviFile Library - Corinna John
  Edit AVI files in .NET.
  
  
• Speech recognition in C# - ProgramFOX
  An article about speech recognition in C#.
  
  

C / C++ Language

• HowTo: Export C++ classes from a DLL - Alex Blekhman
  The C++ programming language and Windows DLLs can live in peace after all.
  
  
• XONOR pointers: eXclusive Ownership & Non Owning Reference pointers - john morrison leon
  A smart pointer system for safe application development in C++.
  
  
• Windows Development in C++, working with menus - Espen Harlinn
  Windows API, menus, c++ lambda expressions, std::enable_shared_from_this
  
  
• How to create a Simple Lock Framework for C++ Synchronization - Woong Gyu La
  This article explains how to create your own simple Lock Framework for C++ Synchronization
  
  
• Windows Development in C++, COM API clients - Espen Harlinn
  Using the Facade Pattern to simplify development with COM based APIs'
  
  
• SmartObject Class (Objective-C like Memory Management) for C++ (a substitute of Smart Pointer maybe?) - Woong Gyu La
  This article explains Objective-C like C++ Memory Management Class, SmartObject.
  
  

C#

• Concurrent Observable Collection, Dictionary, and Sorted Dictionary - John Stewien
  Provides implementations of concurrent observable collection classes for binding to WPF controls so that the collections can be updated from a thread that isn't the WPF GUI thread
  
  

Custom Controls

• ASP.NET HTML Editor Control - Amir Jalilifard
  Creating a Useful ASP.NET Html Editor custom control
  
  

Database

• Code First Stored Procedures - aureolin
  Access Stored Procedures using Code First.
  
  
• Flexible numbering sequences in T-SQL - Michael Abramovitch
  A flexible way to generate unique numbers for things like invoice numbers.
  
  

Design and Architecture

• Data representation with functions in C# - Akram El Assas
  This article explains data representation with functions in C# through Algebra, Numbers, Euclidean Plane, and Fractals.
  
  
• From No Factory to Factory Method - Marla Sukesh
  This article will tell about the very known design pattern "Factory Pattern" used in the programming.
  
  
• Understanding and Implementing State Pattern in C# - Rahul Rajat Singh
  This article describes what is state pattern, when could we find state pattern useful and how to have a rudimentary implementation of state pattern in C#.
  
  
• Data representation with functions in JavaScript - Akram El Assas
  This article explains data representation with functions in JavaScript through Algebra, Numbers, Euclidean Plane, and Fractals.
  
  

Files and Folders

• ExpTreeLib Version 3 - Explorer-like Navigation and Operation for your Forms - Jim Parsells
  A Class Library for building Forms with a folder navigation TreeView and form specific ListViews that can be tailored for your application and behave like Windows Explorer. Full documentation.
  
  

Game Development

• Brick 2005 Game Engine (formerly Tetris 2005 Game Engine) - Mohit Soam
  A Game engine tutorial describes how to play the game and how to customize the game. The game is user friendly that lets you to change the view, difficulty, etc. without changing the VB code.
  
  

General Graphics

• ExifLib - A Fast Exif Data Extractor for .NET 2.0+ - Simon McKenzie
  Reads JPEG Exif data without the heavyweight and unnecessary instantiation of GDI+ objects.
  
  

Grid & Data Controls

• jqGrid MVC Html Helper - Ken C. Len
  MVC 3 jqGrid HTML Helper.
  
  

Installation

• SharePoint 2013: Setting-Up A Clean And Recoverable Development Virtual Machine - Ritchie Ponce Grijaldo
  My own way of setting-up a SharePoint 2013 development virtual machine wherein I wanted to have it clean and recoverable anytime just in case I made a mess trying out something.
  
  

Internet / Network

• fastJSON - Mehdi Gholam
  Smallest, fastest polymorphic JSON serializer (with Silverlight4 and MonoDroid support)
  
  
• WebScraping in CSharpDotNetTech - dot net tech
  Beginner to Advance - Multithreaded Web Scraping with Examples of WebBrowser, WebClient, HttpWebRequest/HttpWebResponse, Regex, BackgroundWorker.
  
  
• fastBinaryJSON - Mehdi Gholam
  A binary JSON serializer based on fastJSON (support for MonoDroid)
  
  
• EpServerEngine - A lightweight Template Server-Client Framework using C++ and Windows Winsock - Woong Gyu La
  How to create a server-client network quickly using template server-client framework, EpServerEngine (C++ and Windows Winsock)
  
  

iPhone

• Reusable collapsable table view for iOS - Bernhard Häussermann
  A set of source files that extends the UITableView so that it has sections that can be collapsed and expanded.
  
  

Java

• Bowling Score Board Game in Java - Andre' Gardiner
  A java Bowling Score Board Game.
  
  

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.
  
  

LINQ

• Signum Framework Tutorials Part 1 – Southwind Entities - Olmo del Corral
  Tutorial focused in writing the entities using Signum Framework, a Win/Web LINQ-enabled framework for writing data-centric applications.
  
  
• Signum Framework Tutorials Part 2 – Southwind Logic - Olmo del Corral
  In this part, we will focus on writing business logic, LINQ queries and explain inheritance
  
  

Miscellaneous

• Using Bing Maps For Windows 8 Metro Apps - C# / JavaScript - Shai Raiten
  Building Windows 8 Metro Application using Bing Maps Control
  
  

Product Showcase

• HTML5 Imaging with LEADTOOLS - LEADTOOLS Support
  I’ll show how to add the HTML5 / JavaScript viewer control to a web page, load an image, and set some interactive modes
  
  

Progress Controls

• An External or Standalone ProgressBar - JerryBNewhouseJr
  Create a simple, flexible, standalone ProgressBar that can be added to any class with relative ease.
  
  

Scrapbook

• Changing Your Life and Well-Being - VectorX
  How to stay healthy and fit, while working a career that requires you to sit for long periods of time.
  
  
• Developing multi-lingual support as part of the development of Rashumon word processor - Michael Haephrati מיכאל האפרתי
  When I have devleoped Rashumon, there was no built in support for multi-lingual / bi-directional text and I had to develop such from scratch
  
  

Testing and QA

• Unit testing made easy Part 1: Repository Testing - Foyzul Karim
  Step by step to your first unit testing
  
  

Toolbars & Docking windows

• Understanding CDockablePane - Huzifa Terkawi
  A good reference for CDockablePane.
  
  

Tools and IDE

• Displaying a CodeDOM using WPF (Part 3) - KenBeckett
  Displaying a CodeDOM graphically using WPF
  
  

Ultrabooks

• WPF Touch Enabled Brick Ball Game - @AmitGajjar
  This is not a simple brick ball game but we need to concentrate on two balls at a time.
  
  
• Book tracker App - Maneesh Sharma
  Book tracker App keeps track of shared books with QR code/NFC tags
  
  
• World Clock - Vj_in
  World Clock is simple app to configure and view your world clocks in your ultrabook. Its designed so cool and elegant.
  
  
• Dashboard Ultra - michael belshaw
  This app, which harnesses the exciting sensor interface of the Ultrabook, will enable car driver to log and display in real-time there driving/racing activities
  
  

User Controls

• CheckBoxList(For) - A missing MVC extension - Mikhail Tsennykh
  Extends MVC HtmlHelper class so you can create POSTable checkbox list.
  
  

Windows Presentation Foundation

• WPF: Webcam Control - Meshack Musundi
  A WPF UserControl for displaying and recording video from a webcam
  
  
• Take MVC to the Next Level in .Net - Xomega Team
  How to quickly build reusable and flexible WPF, Silverlight or ASP.NET applications with the powerful Xomega Framework using the best MVVM principles.
  
  

XML

• XML Visualizer v.2 - Lars Hove Christiansen
  XML Visualizer v.2 improves the standard XML Visualizer in Visual Studio 2005, 2008, and 2010.
  
  

New Tips and Tricks added

C / C++ Language

• Splitting Up Class Template Declarations & Definitions - Gareth Jensen
  Tips on how to declare a class template in a header file and define a class template in a source file.
  
  
• Serialization implementation in C++ - srozban
  Serialization implementation in C++
  
  

C#

• Multiple partial definitions for a class - Mika Wendelius
  The tip shows an example for using multiple partial classes to define a single class.
  
  

Database

• Another reason for getting the error “A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server…” in MS SQL Server 2008 - Sadeque Sharif
  Another way to solve the issue of “A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server…”
  
  

Office Development

• MSAccess to MSWord - Mike Rosen
  Export OLEObject (Word Document) to Word Document
  
  

SharePoint Server

• SharePoint Number Column Without Commas - Eranda Ketawalage
  Avoiding thousand separator(Comma) in SharePoint Number field
  
  

Silverlight

• Cache system in Silverlight 5 RIA Application - Part 2 - Data write - Michele Ziparo
  An effective way to implement a caching system in Silverlight (MVVM) RIA
  
  

String handling

• RTF TO HTML - chanakamax
  Convert RTF TO HTML
  
  

Threads, Processes & IPC

• Performing the same task with and without threads - Anwaar Ahmed
  Performing the same task with and without using threads.
  
  

Tools and IDE

• Custom sorting for Crystal Report Cross-Tab - Chamila Ranasinghe
  Article describes how to apply a custom sorting for Cross-Tab
  
  

VB.NET

• Connecting to mysql databases using VB.NET - Hassantga
  
  
  

Web Security

• The Cost of Application Security - Member 2166139
  Will you kill yourself in self defense?
  
  

Tips and Tricks updated

Algorithms & Recipes

• Get the Nth Instance of a Weekday in the Specified Month - John Simmons / outlaw programmer
  Presenting a DateTime extension class that allows you to determine the actual date of the specified instance of the specified weekday within the specified month/year.
  
  

C#

• Start developing Windows Store apps - Dellai Houssem
  This article provides some tips you may need when developing Windows 8 applications.
  
  

Custom Controls

• ASP.NET DatePicker (Persian/Gregorian) - Ruhollah Heidarpour
  Just another ASP.NET Persian(Jalali/Shamsi/Solar) / Gregorian Datepicker
  
  

Date and Time

• NYC Exchange Holidays - xibao
  Code to produce holidays for NYC Stock Exchange.
  
  

Miscellaneous

• Run C# application on user logon (Windows Forms) - ProgramFOX
  A tip about how to run a C# application on Windows startup.
  
  

String handling

• Convert Arabic Number To Alphabet (التفقيط) تحويل الأرقام إلى حروف - ahmed_alashrafy
  تفقيط الأرقام العربيه
  
  

Windows Presentation Foundation

• LinesGrid control - An easy way to draw a grid in WPF - maximaximum
  The article describes how to draw a grid of vertical and horizontal lines in WPF.
  
  

New Technical Blogs added

Game Development

• 3D Game Math Primer 2: Multiple and Nested Coordinate Spaces - markFaction
  Multiple and nested coordinate spaces.
  
  
• 3D Game Math Primer 1: The 3-Dimensional Coordinate Space - markFaction
  The 3-dimensional co-ordinate space.
  
  

Libraries

• Box2D and JavaScript: Part 2 - Aniruddha Loya
  A basic setup for box2d based simulations and the next one will cover the integration with KineticJS library.
  
  
• NHibernate HiLo Identity Generator - Pete Sutcliffe
  Primary key generation is important and you should give thought to how it happens. HiLo is one of several useful strategies available, which should be evaluated to see which one best suits your requirements.
  
  
• Reflections in Scrum's Silver Mirror - Zac Gery
  Scrum is a popular incarnation of the Agile principles.
  
  

Windows Phone 7

• Windows Phone Theme Colors - marcofranssen
  The Color object doesn’t contain a color called Emerald. So I created a small class to help me out with this issue.
  
  

XML

• Read Xml with Descendants Method (XName) - Pranay Rana
  This post is about understanding Descendants and avoid misconception with this method.Recently I read one question on StackOverFlow  about reading xml using Linq To Xml to get node values. In that developer made use of Descendants Method to get the child node values.Let see the actual problem here
  
  

Technical Blogs updated

Hardware & System

• Using the service controller in VB.NET - ledtech3
  How to use the service controller in VB.NET.
  
  

Libraries

• Fluent API vs. Data Annotations Working with Configuration – Part 2 - Monjurul Habib
  Fluent API vs. Data Annotations working with configuration.
  
  

Threads, Processes & IPC

• A synchronous observer of asynchronous events - Orjan Westin
  In this article, we will write a simple multi-threaded example implementation of the Observer pattern, and show how to re-synchronise a past event to look current. Then we’ll demonstrate a technique to treat future events like they’re current, too.