If you are an ASP.NET Web Forms programmer making the switch to ASP.NET MVC – what’s the first thing you should learn? There are lots of candidates for the number one spot. Some people will say the first thing to do is learn and embrace the spirit of the MVC design pattern. Others might say you should learn how to unit test a controller, or learn how to use a view model. My answer is: Learn how to use an HTML <form>. Please excuse the ASP.NET web forms programmer who forgets about...

Every web browser has a default style sheet it uses when rendering content, and every web browser uses slightly different defaults. Perhaps a button will use an extra 2 pixels of width in one browser, but 3 fewer pixels in another. These differences are insignificant to many of us, but they worry some designers and keep them awake at night. This is where CSS reset style sheets come into play. The goal of a CSS reset style sheet is to set the default styling for all HTML elements into a known state. A good CSS reset will effectively “undo”...

Specifically IronPython and IronRuby. Consider this … IronPython got underway in July of 2004. Five years later it appears IronPython is still not a candidate to be a first class language in the .NET framework and tools. You can vote on this issue. Microsoft first released IronRuby at Mix in 2007. Nearly three years later it appears IronRuby is still not a candidate to be a first class language in the .NET framework and tools. You can vote on this issue. A first class language is deployed...

It was just a few weeks ago when I heard of LESS for Ruby, and now there a port for .NET developers: .less (dot less). One of the frustrating aspects of working with CSS (one of many, actually) is the amount of duplication in a .css file. CSS does allow us to separate content from presentation, but, if I had a nickel for every time I did a search and replace for some hexadecimal RGB code replicated 5 times in a CSS file, I’d buy each of you an interactive t-shirt. .less help to keep your...

A few people have asked me how to improve their  JavaScript ability. Not just learn about syntax and crazy stuff like closures, but how to apply the same design skills they have in their primary language(s) to the code they stuff into .js files. I think the key is to submerse yourself in JavaScript for an extended period of time. So often in web development we context-switch into JavaScript mode to bang out a few client-side event handlers, then jump right back into the server code. I’m not suggesting you try to write all the JavaScript code for...

I had some data on a Cruzer flash drive I wanted to protect, and I just discovered how easy it use to use BitLocker on a flash drive (thanks to Hanselman, who pointed this out in one sentence at the end of a post). BitLocker is another Windows 7 feature that has been around since Vista, but BitLocker To Go (encryption for removable drives) is new.  I believe it is only available on Win7 Ultimate and Enterprise. Once the drive is inserted, right-click the drive in Windows Explorer and select “Turn on BitLocker…”. Windows will ask...