Paul Edwards's Blog

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SharePoint & ASP.NET 2.0 WebParts.

Sometimes when you think you need a portal, it doesn't always warrant deploying something like Plumtree or SharePoint. The cost of these, although reasonable in some circumstances, can be quite high in situations when all you need to do is aggregate a couple of other sites for a smaller number of users.

In this instance, writing a ASP.NET portal from scratch seems a reasonable thing to do especially with the ease at which you can use role-based security. With the introduction of WebParts (basically server controls) in ASP.NET 2.0, thereby allowing you to host web parts in a non-SharePoint application, I thought ingenious. But hang on..... What I (and a lot of people probably thought) was that how cool it would be to use all those web parts we've written for SharePoint in standard ASP.NET Applications, and also, this the coolest bit, use some of the built in web parts (My Inbox, My Calendar, etc) in the same ASP.NET application thus providing some good value add for customers without having to really write any more lines of code.

But, alas, no we can't. I can't quite understand why they're called web parts in ASP.NET 2.0 if they can't be hosted in SharePoint and vice-versa. It seems another one of those marketing ideas that just doesn't really provide us with anything extra on top of what we have already.

I just don't get it?

Technorati Tag Test

My attempt to get more exposure - Technorati Profile

Note to Self : A better attempt would be to write useful and meaningly posts rather than to use gimmicks!

How Nerdy am I?

Being of a slightly bored disposition at the moment, I felt strangely inclined to find out. I'm actually nerdier (is that a real word!) than I thought.

RSS Bandit

I'm a big user of SharpReader for reading blogs, I thought perhaps it's time to have a look at one of the others to see what they now offer.

I looked at RSSBandit about 6 months ago and wasn't convinced it gave me anything that SharpReader didn't. Then, over the last few days I read Steve's entry about the latest version, so I thought that today was as good a day as any, so I downloaded the latest preview release. After installing it I couldn't get the proxy stuff to work (also found that it didn't seem to remember the proxy settings I had entered in between starts), so uninstalled it and went to the previous version.

So, at the moment I have version 1.2.0.117 and it seems ok so far. Have got the proxy stuff working on this one, so must have been broken in the latest version (or it's me!). So will give it a few weeks of use before I go straight back to SharpReader.

One thing that struck me was a utility to convert the SharpReader cache rss files into RSSBandit cache files would be useful as I use the filtering on SharpReader quite a lot as I have about 41000 entries at the moment and there a lot of very useful information in there that's a shame to lose just because of a change of aggregator.

If anyone knows of such a tool, let me know please.

Cheers.

Gmail Invites?

My previous post offering GMail invites seems to have turned into a bit of a forum of it's own. In the comments there are numerous people offering invites if anyone wants one.

Mine are all gone, so please don't mail me.

Cheers.

Dot Net Rocks

Listened to DotNetRocks for the first time today. It was the one with Julie Lerman and was quite amusing. Her big secret was quite surprising.

Definitely worth a listen to.

w.Bloggar Settings...

IanG - What power he has!

Ian moaned, Microsoft listened, it got fixed.  Satisfying day at the office today then Ian?

GMail Invites?

Seems that some people are still after GMail invites.

First 6 to leave a comment will get one.  Don't forget to leave your email address.

**Update** - 3 left now.

**Update** - 2 left now.

**Update** - 1 left now.

Sorry, all gone now plus comments closed.

Virtual Server

Anyone know when we are likely to get Virtual Server on the Subscriber Downloads.  I can't wait any longer.

Where have I been...

Its about time I either got into blogging reasonably regular or I forget it and simply carried on with my regular reading of others blogs.

I had hoped I would blog a bit more often that I do at present, but found that a lot of the things I do at work recently are pre-sales (I'm based in the UK working for a large outsourcing company) to support bids, therefore can't really discuss them.

However, I've decided this is my last chance to get blogging, so hopefully, you may hear more from me.

Mobile Dev in VS.NET Book?

Does anyone have any decent book suggestions for mobile application development in Visual Studio.Net particularly targetting PDAs running Pocket PC 2003?

World66

Thought I would join in and plot the countries I have visited on World66, even just to show that I really need to get out more often.  It would be nice though in a few years, now I have this entry, to see if I have managed to enrich my life and venture further into the, at present, unknown.

Thanks for the link Joe.

create your own visited country map or write about it on the open travel guide

Arise Sir Bill...

According the the Telegraph, Bill Gates is going to receive an honorary knighthood from the Queen.

Virtual PC 2004 RTM

A notable entry from Sam talks about Virtual PC 2004 going RTM next week. 

Longhorn & Whidbey...perhaps not!

Having not been able to get to the PDC, I was pleasantly surprised that Microsoft had made a DVD available containing Longhorn, Whidbey, etc available to MSDN subscribers.  Excited at this prospect, I hastily ordered my copy.

However, since ordering this I have noticed a few posts start to appear about problems with Virtual PC 2004 (also on the DVD) which seem to suggest it being very slow, coupled with the fact that Longhorn itself isn't the quickest beast in the world (yes, I know its beta (or even pre-beta, I'm not sure)) and one post that even seemed to mention an installation time of about 7-8 hours for Longhorn followed by Whidbey.

All this seems to have done is dampen my enthusiasm a touch.  Anyone have any good experiences in performance or usability so far?

Metrics in .Net?

Has anyone any examples of metrics/function points achieved in .Net development? 

I'm interested from an impacting for new work point of view as we have relatively few projects complete at present to really get an idea of what is achievable in the wider sense.  My first impressions seem to point to better productivity than my Java counterparts on similar projects.

Cool Shirt

Jim points out a very cool T-Shirt.

Gotta get me one of those.

What would you like to see in Whidbey!

Eric Gunnerson has an interesting post about some possible changes Microsoft are considering for Whidbey.  Eric Says: 

"In VS 2002, whenever you double-click on a form file in solution explorer, the project system always opens the form designer on that file.  We are considering modifying the behavior in Whidbey so that the project system will track the most-recently-viewed state for the file. If you had most recently looked at the code view, double-clicking would take you to the code view. If you had most recently looked at the design view, double-clicking would take you to the design view. This state would not be persisted across closing and reopening the project."

Some interesting points in the comments.  Something to keep an eye on I think as I can see it turning into a 'What would you like to see in Whidbey" thread.