.Net Web Toolkits/Frameworks

I was looking over Rick Strahl's blog post on ASP.NET GZip Encoding Caveats and came across this reference to the West Wind ASP.Net Web/AJAX Toolkit. While I'm not interested necessarily in starting to implement this framework, but wondered if you all had experiences with other frameworks around .Net Web development. One thing I found interesting in this one was their Data Binding, where it puts behind the scenes a TwoWay binding for data elements (so you have a selection list, when the value changes it automatically calls the application and updates in the DB instead of waiting for submit or coding your own Ajax.jQuery call for it). Also, the Business layer implementation is interesting, where it will take your EF model and build out stubs for CRUD operations in a business layer.

I also saw that Telerik seems to have a framework, but its not quite the same as some more simple, common utilities. DevExpress has their XAF framework which is around using the entire tool to build applications, but its pretty expensive, at $2K per developer (Telerik has similar pricing). Im not quite as worried about price, more just wondering what experiences you all might have had, or your thoughts on using them.

So, has anyone else used some .Net frameworks, and what do you think?

Sucks being duped.

I’m in a little bit of a mood today. It could be because my daughter beat on some kid and had to get sent home early, or it could just have been my irritation with a product which was too expensive to begin with.

I purchased the grammar checking tool WhiteSmoke about two months ago. This is essentially the Word grammar checker on steroids, and works in any text editor. Truly, it’s a pretty good tool. You highlight your text, hit F2 and it’ll open in an editor and either automatically fix errors, or show them and recommendations to fix. The recommendations are far better than Word recommends, and it’s great to have grammar and spell checking in every text box, no matter what program you use. There are only a few down sides I’ve seen:

1. It works in it’s own editor. I’d rather it let me edit directly in the text box.
2. It doesn’t work in Microsoft Word when track changes are on. It sees deleted/changed text as regular text, and messes up pasting and such. After contacting support the answer was they they don’t support it. Personally I’d rather it replaced my Word grammar checker.
3. They don’t support Windows 7. Again, contact support, I finally got it fixed myself by uninstalling and installing the newest version.
4. It requires Internet access. If I’m not on the Internet it doesn’t work since it gets the grammar rules and dictionary from there each time I need it. Essentially this is a client and the checking occurs online, which makes me wonder a little at the safety of grammar checking private or secure content. Though in general I do trust companies like this to not store any of the information.
5. Their ads are incredibly misleading. I ended up somewhat impulse buying this because I thought it was a big sale through a newsletter I read for just that day. Went back the next day, and the next, and even today, to see the same sale price that will expire at the end of the day “today” which I find incredibly misleading.
6. There’s no real way to write a review. I ended up buying it because I trusted all the other ads I’d seen in the newsletter and the CNN etc. reviews on their site, though I’ll be even more careful now.
7. It’s expensive. I got the executive version on sale for around $110 or something. But notice in the screen, it says clearly on the order page that purchases are one time purchases, good for a lifetime and include all updates. So if I never have to pay again, it’s probably worth it.

Overall I kind of regretted the purchase, but enjoyed having it, especially when writing Amazon reviews or other things online where the built in spell checker just doesn’t do it.

Then I got an email from them about WhiteSmoke Writer 2010, the new version. I popped online to get it since my “lifetime updates” covered the new features that were so great, though so far I haven’t seen anything to tell me the difference. I couldn’t get the download to come. I finally started a live “chat” which really just sent an email to support yesterday, and today got the call back just before a meeting. I couldn’t talk long, but the short answer was that “updates” is not the same as “upgrades.” So I get the grammar updates automatically, but if I want the next version I need to pay another $70 to upgrade… so there will likely be a new upgrade every year. Sorry, $70 a year plus the ~$120 up front is just ridiculous (and those were the sale prices, and this was within two months), and I have to think the reviewers were checking out a free version not knowing the cost. Also, that’s for one computer, the support person was happy to try and sell me, for $10, a license for a second computer, even before making clear the upgrade issue.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciated the somewhat quick call back, and the grammar checking is excellent. Functionally I only have a few minor gripes. But after the phone call with support I was more that a little ticked, and let him know quickly that I’m not paying for the upgrade and will be uninstalling what I have based on our conversation.

So I came off that call feeling entirely duped and a bit scammed.

Then I finally went to unsubscribe from a Six Flags mailing list, and got this “success” message:

You’ll notice I will “no longer knowingly receive future emails” which makes me wonder how they send the ones that I don’t know about, and why they might want to do that. Made me laugh, I was still a little irritated such a huge company let that slip.

Then I have this conversation:

Rachel: Daddy, could you stop typing so fast? Just push the letter that you need one at a time, one at a time, so you don’t do it so fast.

Me: That’s how I do it.

Rachel: Today try something different. Then you can do it slower. Here, I’ll show you.

At which point she typed the words “Me: That’s” over the period of about a minute, and it makes the day all better.

Peace,
+Tom

Rounding to quarter hours with a solution in SQL Server

A co-worker asked me the other day about an application where they want to sum values and round them to a quarter of a while number. In this case we had a time entry tool where users entered time in any format, not specifically quarter of hours, but it needed to be summed and rounded to the quarter hour.

For example, I have a number 6.6143 and it needs to be rounded to 6.5. Looking around I just couldn’t find an example where pure math was used, the best were some general rounding to different values using a case statement.

In the end I took this approach, throwing together a quick SQL Server function to get the results. the solution essentially takes the number, removes the whole digits, rounds to two decimals, then checks if those two decimals all in a range.

   1: -- =============================================

   2: -- Author:        Tom Leary

   3: -- Create date:   8/13/2009

   4: -- Description:   Rounds the given number to a quarter of an hour.

   5: -- =============================================

   6: CREATE FUNCTION dbo.GetRoundedTimePeriod

   7: (

   8:       @WholeValue decimal(20,4) -- TODO: Set this to your field type.

   9: )

  10: RETURNS decimal(20,2)

  11: AS

  12: BEGIN

  13:       -- Declare the return variable here

  14:       DECLARE @RoundedValue decimal(20,2)

  15:  

  16:       -- Add the T-SQL statements to compute the return value here

  17:       SET @RoundedValue = CASE 

  18:                               WHEN (Round(@WholeValue, 2) - Floor(@WholeValue)) BETWEEN 0 AND .12 THEN Floor(@WholeValue)

  19:                               WHEN (Round(@WholeValue, 2) - Floor(@WholeValue)) BETWEEN .13 AND .37 THEN Floor(@WholeValue) + 0.25

  20:                               WHEN (Round(@WholeValue, 2) - Floor(@WholeValue)) BETWEEN .38 AND .62 THEN Floor(@WholeValue) + 0.50

  21:                               WHEN (Round(@WholeValue, 2) - Floor(@WholeValue)) BETWEEN .63 AND .87 THEN Floor(@WholeValue) + 0.75

  22:                               ELSE Floor(@WholeValue) + 1

  23:                         END

  24:  

  25:       -- Return the result of the function

  26:       RETURN @RoundedValue

  27:  

  28: END

Once the function is implemented it can be used in any view or select statement with the following:

   1: SELECT

   2:       dbo.GetRoundedTimePeriod(SUM(EmployeeTime)) AS EmployeeTime

   3: FROM

   4:       EmployeeTimeSheet

Obviously this function could be implemented in .NET in some common utilities class as well, or really any language.

Any thoughts? If you know how to do this mathematically I’d love to hear it.

Peace,

+Tom

Zoho for SharePoint

Zoho, the online document collaboration tool, now has an add-on to SharePoint that will allow users to edit documents online, behind the network firewall without having to install separate software. It also allows users to edit documents collaboratively in real-time, though we have a lighter version of that using LiveMeeting.

It’s worth noting that while you edit documents behind the firewall, when they are opened, they are copied to the Zoho server during editing, then discarded. So it is clearly not for secret information, but that information shouldn’t be on an unsecured SharePoint in any case. The main benefit is that, when allowed by the agency, users can edit Office documents, and do that collaboratively, without installing the latest version of Office, though they will still need a Zoho license.

Check out some more details here: http://blogs.zoho.com/general/introducing-zoho-office-for-microsoft-sharepoint

Peace,
+Tom

Dropbox Limerick

It’s funny, but I never really get to rhyme much in my daily life. I remember a year or so ago having dinner with our extended family, aunts and uncles at Red Robin, and somehow deciding the rhyme everything I said during the entire meal. It’s pretty amazing how quickly you can come up with rhymes, though they sure aren’t immensely clever.

I’ve been using Dropbox for a while now and fallen in love with it. Essentially you have a folder on your desktop and anything you put in it gets uploaded to a shared directory. You can share individual files, or make a public folder. While it’s a little less intuitive than YouSendIt for e-maling files, I’ve found I really prefer using Dropbox for simply copying a file to a folder and copying the public link, as well as having the file sit up there as long as I want. Plus I find YouSendIt to be pretty expensive for just e-mailing files.

To kick off them having a million users, and a new 50GB storage option, they opened a forum for people to win a 50GB storage, with bonus points to a limerick. I know you were wondering what rhyming had to do with Dropbox. So, here’s what I threw together.

One million users
is an amazing spree
while I'm but a lone soul
with no space left free.

While two gigs is far more
than my Apple IIGS could store,
I find it's not enough
since sharing huge files is tough.

Sharing my data and saving to the cloud
would make my family incredibly proud,
but how could I, with just one try,
ever hope I'd be a five in a million guy.

If you are looking for a simple online backup or sharing of your files, Dropbox is great. And they plan to release a iPhone/iPod touch app soon, even better. Oh, but let me know so I can refer you and get a little more free space.

Peace,
+Tom

RealWarriors

I got to work on a Web site recently called RealWarriors.net. This is probably one of the more interesting projects I’ve supported, where we built the site in about four days, and it really provides some value to people. It’s all about raising awareness and helping people connect who have mental wounds from serving in the military.

At this point its been featured on CNN and the Today Show (though we got a little shafted on the Today Show). While it serves a pretty specific audience, it was great to be able to manage this thing into reality.

Peace,
+Tom

Fanatics

I saw this comic today by Debbie Ridpath Ohi.

If you’re a writer, or just like books and reading, she is definitely one to follow, her comics are hilarious.

This reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend yesterday. We were talking about the things that we’re good at. She mentioned that I’ve always been really good ad keeping people in mind, considering their feelings and needs, even if I don’t have much reason to. For me it simply boils down to loving people, even if I don’t like them very much, and doing whatever I can to help them to have the best life possible.

I was also thinking about how my friend is incredibly good at pursuing excellence in whatever she does. She’s one of those people who, if they agree to do something, you know will be done better than you’d have ever done it yourself. You also know that once you give her the task you don’t need to look over her shoulder or check up on how it’s going. It’ll just get done, and she’ll even be pro-active and let you know how it’s going along the way. She simply wants to be the best.

But then, who of us doesn’t want to be the best? Sure, I know people who’ve decided to coast along in life, either in their career, family or friendships. They just roll along deciding, either openly or subconsciously, to make one of those three less of a priority than the others. We can’t be everything to everyone.

I know that the people I work with who really strive for excellence are also the ones I enjoy working with the most. They’re the people I’ll actively seek out first for any new, interesting project that I think they’ll enjoy.

The people who strive for excellence in parenting show’s pretty clearly through an innate brightness that comes from them and joy you feel from being around them. I may not be the best, but boy I strive to be seen as the best “dad” by the mom’s at Rachel’s daycare. It was great to get one kid (not mine) to finally eat his dinner, or all five kids sitting quietly outside while we waited for the other mom’s to get out of the restaurant to get their kids. I’m by no means perfect, you should see how frustrated I get with my own kids sometimes, especially when sleeps involved, but I do strive to make Erin proud of her husband for being a great dad.

While my friend really is excellent at everything, not all of us can quite get there. At the same time, we do all strive for excellence in some art of our world. So, I’m really curious, what things do you do where you really strive for excellence?

Mine are probably

• Knowing the most useful information about current and upcoming technologies, especially around programming and Microsoft stuff. I strive to be recognized as an expert in whatever technology I use, or have used.
• Delivering excellent products
• Being the manager that people want to come to when they have a problem or need advice without focus on the corporate bottom line
• Being the most envied dad by mom’s around me, or said another way, being someone Erin is proud to say she’s married too
• Looking at everything from a different perspective, and never becoming complacent in the normal
• Being an example of how others can live

Obviously, I fail miserably at ALL of these. But that never stops me from focusing everything I have on them. It’s really about prioritizing. But by making that list it’s also somewhat easy to see what I value. As my friend said earlier, it’s all about people and making people get what they expect, and more. Making their lives better.

How about you?

Peace,
+Tom