SteelBlue Solutions Publications

Protect your Downloadable Files Using HTTP Handlers

Miguel A. Castro — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 05:00:00 GMT

CoDe Magazine

So you finally have a product to sell, and a site to sell it on. But wait; how do you prevent unauthorized users from downloading your products? Forms Authentication is only part of the solution. In this article I’ll show how to prevent specific users from accessing specific files on your site; even by browsing directly to them.

Web Control Enhancements in ASP.NET 2.0

Miguel A. Castro — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 05:00:00 GMT

CoDe Magazine

I’m sure by now you’ve read more than your share of books and articles describing new ASP.NET 2.0 features. Master Pages, Themes, Providers, etc; but have you heard anything regarding custom web control development and what has changed in 2.0? Well that’s what I’m hear to tell you. For those of you that have become involved in control development, either through my articles or on your own, I’m here to describe some very cool enhancements that you can put to work right away in your controls using ASP.NET 2.0.

Web Control Templates Explained

Miguel A. Castro — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 05:00:00 GMT

Code Magazine

In my travels I’ve had a chance to spread the good word of Web control development to many around the country; and I’ve also had a chance to meet many programmers who have been writing controls for a while. While it’s awesome to get a chance to talk code with people who enjoy the same areas of .NET that I do, I notice that there is plenty in the Web control arena that they are not familiar with. Control templates are probably the quintessential example of this. I urge you to read this article and learn about what is probably the most important feature of custom Web control development that contributes to writing extensible controls.

Achieving Synchronicity: A Listbox Double-Feature

Miguel A. Castro — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 05:00:00 GMT

CoDe Magazine

Building complex Web controls with rich client-interfaces often requires the integration of some client-side JavaScript code with the control’s server-side code. While in some cases this does not have to become too complicated to achieve some pretty nifty results, it can often break the data synchronization between the control’s internal server code and the rendered client HTML code. This becomes a problem when the page posts back. In this article, I will build two very cool Web controls that are vulnerable to this problem and then show you how to fix it.

"State" Rights? Dear God! Is it a Confederacy All Over Again?

Miguel A. Castro — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 05:00:00 GMT

DevSource.com

This article covers state management using ViewState and the new ControlState. It describes the use of ViewState in server control properties as well as the state management methods and the IStateManager interface.

Bloated Designs, Over-Architecting, and Refactoring

Miguel A. Castro — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 06:00:00 GMT

CoDe Magazine

Some time ago, I posted a blog entry entitled, “Refactor as you Develop.” I did so, because a buddy of mine out in Chicago was stuck in Refactor-hell, as he put it. Now, Eric (my buddy’s name) and I share a lot of design ideas and techniques so I know his comment [and term] came from the frustration he was feeling at that moment. However, it was not the first time I heard the term refactor used in a negative connotation so I thought it merited some comments.

What? Callbacks are not just for Strings?!?

Miguel A. Castro — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 06:00:00 GMT

DevSource.com

This article explains how to use ASP.NET's Ajax implementation, Callbacks, right out of the box. It concentrates on demonstrating that complete server controls can be passed back to the client in the form of a string.

Custom Web Controls Demystified, Part 2

Miguel A. Castro — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 05:00:00 GMT

CoDe Magazine

Last issue I gave you a 'hit-the-ground-running' introduction to custom Web control development and showed you how to build a renered control and an inherited control. In this issue you'll complete your inherited control by adding styling, sizing capabilities, as well as instruct it how to raise events. Afterward you will jump into building the last control of the series, the EmailContact control, bringing together the previous two controls with some business functionality into a powrful composite Web control.

Custom Web Controls Demystified, Part 1

Miguel A. Castro — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 05:00:00 GMT

CoDe Magazine

When ASP.NET was released in 2002, it gave Web developers a whole new design paradigm to work with; one that varied greatly from the classic Active Server Pages that many Web developers worked with in the past. At the heart of this new way of developing Web applications are components known as Web controls. Though most Web developers use them while developing ASP.NET applications, many Web developers have not yet dived into the world of creating custom Web controls, even after all this time, and all .NET developers will soon face another release of .NET. In this article, I will attempt to give you a head-to-toe understanding of how Web controls work, and how to create them for yourself.

By the Skin of Your App

Miguel A. Castro — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 06:00:00 GMT

CoDe Magazine

Enable advanced skinning in your Web applications using an MVC pattern. MVC, or Model-View-Controller, is a design architecture that promotes separation among parts of an application, with particular focus on the presentation tier. The concept of MVC is inherent in the ASP.NET architecture and I'll show you how to take advantage of that in order to provide skinning or themes capability to your Web sites.

ASP.NET Development Through Web Controls and Declarative Programming

Miguel A. Castro — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 06:00:00 GMT

CoDe Magazine

ASP.NET WebControls do more than just allow you to write reusable components. They can provide an entire approach to Web application development, allowing you to bring a new level of OOP to the UI and letting you program declaratively. Lately I've come to notice that no other programming term has more definitions than declarative programming. In this article, I will attempt to explain it in terms of how it applies to .NET development, specifically ASP.NET through the use of WebControls. I'll do this by illustrating some real-world examples that I have used in my own projects. In the end, I hope to leave you with an understanding of what declarative programming is, how you can use it when developing ASP.NET Web applications, and how, with the help of WebControls, to use it as an approach to ASP.NET development.

'For-Each' Of My Own

Miguel A. Castro — Sun, 22 Aug 2004 05:00:00 GMT

CoDe Magazine

The .NET Framework provides many new collection classes that you can iterate (for-each) through.But did you know that you can also iterate through values in any of your classes, not just those that use or inherit from collections?

Async-Up Your Objects

Miguel A. Castro — Thu, 22 Apr 2004 05:00:00 GMT

CoDe Magazine

Encapsulate asynchronous functionality directly into your business objects. The .NET Framework facilitates calling object methods asynchronously through the use of delegates. You may already know how to do this using helper code, but there is a cleaner and much cooler way of packaging this kind of functionality right inside your business objects.