I've looked at used some of the online tools from 37signals, such as Writeboard, Ta-da List and Backpack, and so I was interested to learn that they've written a book about their philosophy and company ideas. The basic theme is how to start out in a new technology venture, using the contrarian approach of providing less, releasing early, and above all - staying small.

"All the cash, all the marketing, all the people in the world can't buy the agility you get from being small."

The book is available online here. You can also pay US$19 to get a copy in pdf or US$29 for a paperpack copy. The online content is exactly the same as the printed version, which I'm actually contemplating purchasing ... I always find it easier to make my notes directly in the book :)

"Keep it small. Keep it simple. Let it happen."

I've been meaning to look more into building a Sidebar Gadget in Vista for a while now. I just happened to come across a post from Nikhil Kothari's blog entitled Authoring Sidebar Gadgets in C#. I don't really have the time to the follow longer, in-depth tutorials you see around and was interested to see how his Script# project allowed the use of C# when building a Gadget. Worth a closer look I think.

As your solution grows, the number of assemblies you have will undoubtedly grow too. Updating the version numbers of all those assemblies by their projects AssemblyInfo.cs files can be a hassle. However, there is a way to change the version in just one file, but have that change affect all project assemblies!

By using a “link” file in your projects, you can include a file from a shared location that contains only the version information.

• Add a new file named VersionInfo.cs
• Add to this file only the version information from an existing AssemblyInfo.cs file
  <
• Add VersionInfo.cs as a solution item

Now, for each project that you wish to include this version information:

• Select “Add Existing Item…” on the project menu
• Browse to VersionInfo.cs file
• Click the down arrow on the “Add” button and choose “Add as Link”
  
  The file will have the shortcut icon when you look at the project files.
  
• Remove any version information from existing AssemblyInfo.cs

When then assembly is built it will essentially have the combined attribute values from the AssemblyInfo.cs and VersionInfo.cs file.

Now you only have to change the version in one place and all projects will get it

When using the GridView, you can specify an “EmptyDataTemplate” to display when there is no data specified in the DataSource. This is great, but the problem from my point of view is that the column headers are not displayed. I would like them to be displayed, even if there is no data.

In my search for the solution I found the following article which explains how to achieve this result by overriding CreateChildControls:

http://www.dotnetslackers.com/GridView/re-27953_Displaying_GridView_When_No_Data_Exists.aspx

To support Web Farms (multiple machines) or Web Gardens (multiple processors), changes to the ASP.NET configuration will need to be made. Thankfully this is just configuration; no code changes would need to be made.

The main thing to be aware of when setting up for a farm/garden is that a user's request can hit any processor or server. As such, the user's session needs to be available across the entire farm/garden and so session state cannot be held locally in memory, which is the default configuration.

The following links give further details on what can be involved:

Session-State modes: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178586.aspx
Web Garden Model: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnaspp/html/dngrfTheASPNETHTTPRuntime.asp

I was forwarded the following link to a pretty comprehensive list of online generators.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2006/11/09/online-generators/

It seems there’s one for any occasion. I particularly like the ColorBlender.com which will give you a colour matching palette based on a preferred starting color. Perfect for those of us not trained in Graphical Arts to produce something aesthetically pleasing!

It's not an error message that you see often when working with ASP.NET, but if you’re deploying to a new, clean machine, it can happen quite easily.

The problem comes around due to the order that components were installed on the machine, namely that The .NET Framework was installed before IIS. As a result, ASP.NET is not correctly configured to run. The easiest way to rectify this is to re-install ASP.NET with IIS.

aspnet_regiis –i

If you only require default settings then this is the easiest option. The Microsoft KB specified in the error message suggests the –ga switch, but that requires a little more knowledge of the Windows system as it requires you to specify the Windows User Account to run under (which is different between Windows 2000, XP, 2003, etc). Easier to simply use the –i switch!

I’ve been using NMock 1.0 as part of my normal TDD (Test Driven Development) routine for a while now. I’d heard that there was a new version available a couple of months ago, but I saw no benefit in making the switch. For a start, the syntax was radically different and I was reluctant to invest time in seeing how to use it.

Well, I finally got around to using NMock 2.0 and after much searching, found a link to the site: http://nmock.sourceforge.net.

That link was surprisingly difficult to track down I can tell you … numerous dead-links and empty websites all over the place! I had to cheat in the end and ask a friend for it (thanks Neil)!

The new syntax has grown on me after an initial distaste for it. It may look more complicated and cumbersome than previously, but it is actually more usable once you get into it. The only issue I have with it is that the failure messages are very verbose, which can make it a little difficult to see what is going on, but I guess you get used to that too.