Month: September 2008

This morning I have put live the new design for my blog.  For ages I have been unhappy with the look and feel of my blog, but as I know my limits :), I was struggling to come up with something to replace the default choice of theme.  I am pleased to announce now and start using, a great new design, courtesy of my colleague Peter Mitchell at Canford.  I am NOT a designer I am a DEVELOPER and therefore I know what I can and can’t achieve.  I can often picture what I’d like to see but to create … Continue reading New Blog Design and Updated Content

I have been using Internet Explorer 8.0 since the release of Beta 1.  IE 8 requires more standards compliance in the code of web pages for them to display correctly.  Today I was catching up on my RSS Feeds and came across this very useful article – Configuring IIS to work around webpage display issues in Internet Explorer 8.0 and this article discusses the use of adding a HTTP Response Header which then informs IE to run in IE Compatibility mode, therefore rendering the page as it would render in Internet Explorer 7. The article gives complete details of how … Continue reading Handling Webpage Display Issues in Internet Explorer 8.0 using IIS

In follow up to my previous post, Students!!! – Get MS Office Ultimate 2007 for 39 Quid! An Absolute Steal!!, I was reminded this morning about Dreamspark which is a great offer for Students to get hold of some excellent development and design software.  On offer for free to students who match the eligibility requirements are: Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition Microsoft Expression Studio XNA Games Studio 2.0 Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition – shortly to be updated to Windows Server 2008 (which includes IIS 7 ;)) This is an excellent offer … Continue reading More Great Software for Free to Students From Microsoft

I was recently reminded of this great offer which Microsoft have for Students, Office Ultimate 2007 is available for £38.95 which is an absolute steal!  I was reminded of this offer as my Brother is about to start a degree course at the University of Sunderland.  This is an excellent offer for any student out there!  For full details and eligibility details go to the Ultimate Steal Website this offer is also available in other countries too!

Last night Alan Dean came up to VBUG in Newcastle to speak on ASP.Net MVC Framework.  One of the discussion points we had was any potential issues for hosting sites on IIS due to the routing and url rewrite elements of the MVC Framework.  I wasn’t clear on the implications, and I hadn’t seen much traffic personally on the issue.  So with a task of downloading ASP.Net MVC Framework Preview 5 so I could have a good look at it and understand it all as an alternative to Webforms, and looking into the implications and workarounds for hosting within versions … Continue reading Tutorial for Using ASP.Net MVC Framework on Different Versions of IIS

This week I have been working on a server control for a site I’m working on which reads in an XML file containing some product information and then using an XSL/T file transforms the output into correctly formatted XHTML.  One problem which occurred with the development of the server control was that a colleague of mine who was making modifications to the XSL/T File was unable to save the changes whilst viewing the resultant XHTML in their browser.  At first hand it would appear that it would be a permissions issue, and after much checking of the permissions to confirm … Continue reading Can’t Save your XSL/T File? Have You Closed Your XMLReader?

On Sunday 5th October 2008 I will be taking part in the BUPA Great North Run and I am hoping to raise a sum of money to be donated to the Guide Dogs for the Blind Why The Great North Run? Why not is my response :). It’s so easy to sit at home and watch these events and say wouldn’t it be great to do that! So I decided around December 2007 last year to investigate how to enter and submitted my entry form in January and paid my entrance fee, then I waited on tenterhooks to see if … Continue reading Please Help Me Help Others – BUPA Great North Run 2008 and the Guide Dogs for the Blind

Craig Murphy via Twitter has just alerted me to the fact that session voting is now open for DDD7, go to the website now and select up to 10 sessions that you would like to see on the agenda for DDD7 – http://www.developerday.co.uk/ddd/votesessions.asp

Ready Steady Speak is back for the RemixUK Event in Brighton on Thursday 18th and Friday 19th of September 2008.  Are you a budding speaker? A Designer with a passion for what you do who would like to educate us Developers in how it’s done or some other aspect of design which we really don’t get?  Are you a Developer who wants to get his message across to designers about just how cool the latest features in Web Development Technologies are or do you just want to share your knowledge with your fellow designers and developers?  If so then Ready … Continue reading RemixUK – Ready Steady Speak Competition! – Win an XBOX 360!