Moving Your Legacy Hardware Code to Visual Basic 2005   29 Dec 2005 00:10 GMT
Bill Sempf shows you what's new with serial and parallel communication in Visual Basic 2005 and what it takes to migrate your legacy Visual Basic 6.0 hardware code to Visual Basic 2005.
Source: MSDN

The Perfect Service - Part 1   29 Dec 2005 00:00 GMT
In this article, Ambrose illustrates how to use a drag-n-drop/xcopy .NET Windows services manager that can make your life a lot easier if you find yourself needing to implement multiple Windows services in your enterprise. The next article in the series goes into some depth, exploring how the service manager works so that you can take those concepts and apply them in your own development.
Source: AspAlliance

Examining ASP.NET 2.0's Site Navigation - Part 3   28 Dec 2005 00:00 GMT

Part 1 - shows how to create a simple site map using the default XML-based site map provider and how to display a TreeView and SiteMapPath (breadcrumb) based on the site map data.

Part 2 - explores programmatically accessing site map data through the SiteMap class; includes a thorough discussion of the SiteMapPath (breadcrumb) control.

Part 3 - examines how to use base the site map's contents on the currently logged in user and the authorization rules defined for the pages in the site map.

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A Multipart Series on ASP.NET 2.0's Site Navigation
This article is one in a series of articles on ASP.NET 2.0's site navigation functionality.

In addition to this article series on ASP.NET 2.0's site navigation, I am also currently authoring an article series on ASP.NET 2.0's membership, roles, and profile. The membership system in ASP.NET provides a programmatic API for creating and managing user accounts, whereas the roles piece enables a developer to define a set of roles and to associate users with roles. A website that provides user accounts typically has certain sections of the site that are accessible only to certain users, only to authenticated users, or to users that belong to a particular role.

For example, a website might have a set of pages that allow a trusted user to edit the content of the website, or manage the existing users. Rather than simply trying to hide this page and hope no one accidentally stumbles across it, or hard coding authorization rights to only allow in a single user, a more robust and secure approach is to define an Administrator role that is then assigned to a select handful of trusted users. These administrative web pages can then be configured to allow access only to those users in the Administrator role. Similarly, the website may contain a set of pages that only authenticated users can access.

Since certain sections of the site might only be accessible by certain users this leaves us in a delimma with site navigation. Do we include those pages that only authorized users can access in the website's site map? If we do, then all users will see the restricted pages in the site's Menu or TreeView. Why show the links to these pages for users who can't access them? If we leave out the restricted pages from the site map altogether, then those users that are authorized to view those pages can't easily navigate to them because they're not part of the site map and therefore don't appear in the site's TreeView or Menu!

Thankfully, ASP.NET 2.0's site navigation provides a feature called security trimming. When obtaining site map information with security trimming enabled, only those site map nodes that the currently logged on user has authorization to visit are available. That means the site's TreeView or Menu will contain just those sections accessible by the currently logged in user. Read on to learn how to configure site navigation to support security trimming!
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Source: 4GuysFromRolla

Custom Web Controls Demystified, Part 2   24 Dec 2005 00:47 GMT
In Part 1 you learned how to build a custom rendered control. In Part 2 you'll learn how to build a composite control.
Source: DevX

ASP.NET 2.0 Page State Persister   22 Dec 2005 23:41 GMT
ASP.NET 2.0 adds support for altering where ViewState data is stored for your pages. This article looks at how a new class can be created and used to store ViewState information in Session rather than the default hidden field.
Source: MSDN

Combine Microsoft Project and Visual Studio Team System for a One-two Punch of Productivity   22 Dec 2005 20:10 GMT
Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) provides centralized storage of work item tracking features while MS Project provides rich planning and tracking features. By using them together, you can improve team productivity, minimize data conflicts, and reduce administrative overhead.
Source: DevX

Review: PeterBlum.com Validation and More Controls   22 Dec 2005 00:00 GMT
In this review, Steve Smith details what you get in the box with Peter Blum's Validation and More controls, presents and example, and proffers his opinion on the matter.
Source: AspAlliance

Take the Pain Out of Deployments with ClickOnce   21 Dec 2005 22:06 GMT
Deploying Windows applications in the age of client-server computing has never been easy. But smart client architecture offers a revolution that makes deployments and maintenance stress-free. Find out how to use the ClickOnce technology to turn your clients into smart clients.
Source: DevX

The Baker's Dozen: 13 Reasons to Upgrade to Visual Studio 2005   21 Dec 2005 02:03 GMT
Visual Studio 2005 offers new capabilities in many different areas, such as data access, language enhancements, IDE productivity features, deployment, Office integration, XML, and many others!
Source: DevX

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 - Update to the Web Project Conversion Wizard   21 Dec 2005 01:08 GMT
The Web project conversion wizard in Visual Studio 2005 has been updated. This release will makes it easier for developers to convert their Visual Studio .Net 2003 web projects to the new Visual Studio 2005 Web Site project model.
Source: MSDN