Microsoft Exam 070-536

I will be taking the Application Development Foundation test in 3 days (2-5-10). You can find Microsoft's information about the test on their learning page. I get scared when I read the audience of the test,

"Candidates for this exam work on a team in a medium-sized or large development environment that uses Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 Enterprise Developer, Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, or Microsoft Visual Studio 2008. Candidates should have at least two to three years of experience developing Web-based, Windows-based, or distributed applications by using the Microsoft .NET Framework 1.0, the .NET Framework 1.1, the .NET Framework 2.0, or the .NET Framework 3.5. Candidates should have a working knowledge of Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 or Visual Studio 2008."

The 2-3 years scares me. I am sure they mean working most days developing in VS, like what I have been doing for 4 months.

I am not expecting to pass the first time and I am okay with that. It will be a good experience and I will have a better understanding on what type/style of questions to focus on.

If you are interested in what I used to study here is the shortlist:

MCTS: Self Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-536)

C# Online.Net Study Guide

Color Detector

Have you ever wanted to copy an exact color from another website to use on yours? There is a great tool I found recently that will give you the hex number or the RGB code of the color just by putting your mouse over the color. Color Detector 2.0.

It's a free download, so get your colors right now!

How to show code and not have Blogger interpret it

I had issues with my previous blog and getting both the HTML and the code behind to show correctly (and nicely).

I was able to get the code behind to come out nice and color coded by downloading and using Copy Source As HTML

That covered the code behind, but was not helpful for the HTML. After a bit of research I found that if I use character entities, I am able to display my code (although it is not color coded).

Example: The code used to make this statement bold
is:

<b>The code used to make this statement bold is </b>

To do this, you will need this table converter of the most common conversions:


So, everywhere there is a Less Than symbol, you need to replace it with its equivalent entity name. You can find a complete listing of entity names at the w3schools web page.

You can do a find and replace in Notepad, or you can paste your code into This Web Page and it will convert it all for you. There is a slight usage disclaimer on the bottom of the page, but I read that after I used it.

System.ServiceModel.Syndication

After posting my last blog about the ultra-sweet rss toolkit I found, I was informed that with the release of .Net Framework 3.5, they included that feature. After a bit of research of System.ServiceModel.Syndication namespace, I took the same project that I used the toolkit on and applied some .Net 3.5 to it.

The Results: It was actually easier to code than the toolkit.

How to use:

1. add reference to System.ServiceModel.Web assembly

2. Choose where you want your rss to display. Add a Label and a DataList.

3. Here is the template for the markup

<asp:DataList ID="DataList1" runat="server" Height="445px" Width="215px">
<ItemTemplate>
<asp:HyperLink ID="Hyperlink1" runat="server"
Text='<%# Eval("Title.Text") %>'
Font-Bold="true"
NavigateUrl='<%# Eval("Links[0].Uri.AbsoluteUri") %>'>
</asp:HyperLink>
<br />

<br />
</ItemTemplate>
</asp:DataList>4. Place the following in the Page_Load

32 XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create

33 ("http://URLofYourBlog");

34

35 Rss20FeedFormatter formatter =

36 new Rss20FeedFormatter();

37 formatter.ReadFrom(reader);

38 reader.Close();

39

40 DataList1.DataSource = formatter.Feed.Items;

41 DataList1.DataBind();

5. I was getting a Dtd security error and fixed it by adding

27 XmlReaderSettings settings = new XmlReaderSettings();

28 settings.ProhibitDtd = false;

To the beginning of the event holder.

6. Good luck debugging for your specific project!!

RSS Reader toolkit

So, I came across this sweet tool while researching how to get an RSS feed displayed on a website. This guy made a toolbox tool for VS, has several samples on how to use it, and has a word document that has step-by-step directions.

Here is the link to the guys blog where you can download it. Dmitryr's blog

It is very scalable to your needs as well.

I used it today, and so far I am impressed with its ease of use and functionality.

Publishing Sketchflow

1. Create a folder for your project on the server

2. In your IIS, create a new virtual directory with the same name as the folder in step.1

3. In Sketchflow, File --> Package Sketchflow Project

4. Copy the list of files it produces and paste them into the folder you created on the server

5. Go back into your IIS and find your virtual directory. Add TestPage.html to Default Documents.

In theory it should work!

New Blog starts here!!

Let's try this again!!

This blog is here to talk about ANYTHING .Net related (or even somewhat related). You can post questions, findings, stories, links to articles, whatever.

Please feel free to pass to friends so they may post too.