Book Excerpt: Smart Client Deployment with ClickOnce: Deploying Windows Forms Applications with ClickOnce   04 Jan 2007 22:04 GMT
ClickOnce is a major step forward in delivering desktop applications, letting users not only download and install applications from a URI, but also providing developers and organizations with an automated way to update those applications from a central location.
Source: DevX

ClickOnce: Delivering .NET Applications Via the Net   03 Jan 2007 01:12 GMT
With ClickOnce, Microsoft delivers a client-side application deployment and updating solution that offers a glimpse into the future, where centrally-located and managed applications delivered via the Web don't have to run in interface-challenged browsers.
Source: DevX

Examining ASP.NET 2.0's Membership, Roles, and Profile - Part 8   03 Jan 2007 00:00 GMT

Part 1 - learn about how the membership features make providing user accounts on your website a breeze. This article covers the basics of membership, including why it is needed, along with a look at the SqlMembershipProvider and the security Web controls.

Part 2 - master how to create roles and assign users to roles. This article shows how to setup roles, using role-based authorization, and displaying output on a page depending upon the visitor's roles.

Part 3 - see how to add the membership-related schemas to an existing database using the ASP.NET SQL Server Registration Tool (aspnet_regsql.exe).

Part 4 - improve the login experience by showing more informative messages for users who log on with invalid credentials; also, see how to keep a log of invalid login attempts.

Part 5 - learn how to customize the Login control. Adjust its appearance using properties and templates; customize the authentication logic to include a CAPTCHA.

Part 6 - capture additional user-specific information using the Profile system. Learn about the built-in SqlProfileProvider.

Part 7 - the Membership, Roles, and Profile systems are all build using the provider model, which allows for their implementations to be highly customized. Learn how to create a custom Profile provider that persists user-specific settings to XML files.

Part 8 - learn how to use the Microsoft Access-based providers for the Membership, Roles, and Profile systems. With these providers, you can use an Access database instead of SQL Server.

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A Multipart Series on ASP.NET 2.0's Membership, Roles, and Profile
This article is one in a series of articles on ASP.NET 2.0's membership, roles, and profile functionality.

One of the main challenges of building a programming framework is balancing the desires to create a standardized, straightforward API for accomplishing common tasks and providing flexibility and customizability so that developers using the framework can mold the framework to fit their applications rather than having to bend their applications to fit the framework. With the .NET Framework 2.0, Microsoft implemented this delicate balance with the provider model. The provider model allows for a standardized API to be defined within the framework, but enables developers to design their own concrete implementation and plug that implementation into their systems at runtime. In Part 7 of this article series we saw how the Membership, Roles, and Provider pieces examined throughout this series all utilize the provider model. Moreover, in Part 7 we created a custom XML provider for the Profile system.

I recently worked on a website that primarily contained static content. The client, however, had a particular page that needed to display data from a simple database with just one table. Additionally, a web page was needed to allow a set of administrators to add, update, and delete data from this table. With ASP.NET 2.0's data source controls and Membership system, this functionality is typically a breeze, but there was a catch - the web hosting company didn't support SQL Server databases, so Microsoft Access databases needed to be used instead. The challenge here is that the .NET Framework BCL only contains a Membership provider for Microsoft SQL Server.

Fortunately, Microsoft provides an Access database template and providers for using Membership, Roles, and Profile with Access. In this article, we'll look at how to get these Access-based providers and how to use the provider in an ASP.NET 2.0 web application. Read on to learn more!
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Source: 4GuysFromRolla

Take Advantage of VS.NET's Permanent Clipboard   02 Jan 2007 22:53 GMT
Did you know that the VS.NET IDE offers a permanent clipboard? Using involved only a simple drag-and-drop operation.
Source: DevX