In this Wrox Blox, you learn how to create a custom button to generate a special HTML hyperlink. The hyperlink contains extra information to show the relationship between two individuals. This type of data is called the XHTML Friends Network (XFN), a specific type of microformat. A microformat is a Web-based formatting approach that aims to use existing XHTML tools (such as element attributes and classes) to describe data, ... Read More

This Wrox Blox explains how to create different types of custom modules for ASP.NET web sites. Custom ASP.NET Modules are a great way to program advanced features to your web site. This Wrox blox discusses the difference between a custom httpModule and the Global.asax file. It also covers the steps in the ASP.NET pipeline. The examples include using a custom module to configure a site’s initial settings, ... Read More

This Wrox Blox covers how to get from ASP.NET 2.0 to ASP.NET 3.5 from three of the most respected ASP.NET experts: Bill Evjen, Scott Hanselman, and Devin Rader. It contains more than 200 pages from 5 chapters, and 1 appendix, of their new book: Professional ASP.NET 3.5. These selected chapters feature the key new ASP.NET 3.5 functionality, including LINQ, ASP.NET with IIS7, CSS in ASP.NET, and ASP.NET AJAX, ... Read More

This Wrox Blox shows you how to add graphics to Visual Basic 2008 applications by explaining fundamental graphics techniques such as: drawing shapes with different colors and line styles; filling areas with colors, gradients, and patterns; drawing text that is properly aligned, sized, and clipped exactly where you want it; manipulating images and saving results in bitmap, JPEG, and other types of files. ... Read More

This Wrox Blox illustrates a CD Player application built with WPF and DirectSound using C# and Visual Studio 2008, and is targeted at the intermediate-level programmer who is familiar with C#, WPF, and .NET interoperability with native Windows APIs, and the Visual Studio development environment. This application provides basic control capabilities such as Play, Pause, Stop, and Eject, and also displays the duration of the disk and each track as ... Read More

This Wrox Blox shows how to communicate with SQL Server using SQL Management Objects instantiated on-the-fly in Windows PowerShell scripts. Topics include how to create Windows PowerShell scripts that use SQL Management Objects (SMO) to manage and program SQL Server. In addition, you will learn about areas of potential difficulty and see how to avoid them—for example, the use of '$' in instance name, ... Read More

In this Wrox Blox, you'll see the code and layers used to add an ASP.NET blog to your site. After working through the blog design and installation, you'll also get a chance to modify the blog application further using a three-layer n-tier design. The three layers are the presentation layer, business layer, and data access layer. A blog is a great addition to any ASP.NET content site. Thanks to ASP.NET 2.0, ... Read More

This Wrox Blox provides you the information you need to use the classes provided from Google. The core classes within Google Gears include Factory, Database, HttpRequest, LocalServer, Timer, and WorkerPool. This Wrox Blox shows how to determine when to use the different classes provided by Google Gears. The Factory allows you to instantiate instances of all of the other classes. The Database allows you to store browser based data on the client computer. ... Read More

This Wrox Blox introduces you to Language Integrated Query (LINQ), a .NET 3.5 application programming interface (API) and set of extensions to the Visual Basic and C# languages. First, you get acquainted with LINQ’s Standard Query Operators (SQOs) and new keywords that define the language. Then you use the SQOs to write LINQ expressions in C# 3.0 and VB 9.0 that let you query diverse data types with a single syntax that’s similar to Structured ... Read More