Chris L. Bennett

For some time, I’ve struggled with topics for my Articles or for my Blog.  I get ideas all of the time; however, I publish Articles for Cogeguru.com and given the contract I’m not able to publish the topics from Articles on my Blog.  However, I continuously have the urge to write on my Blog.  Earlier today, I watched a couple videos from Scott Hanselman. on Channel 9.  The videos were titled “Every Developer needs a Blog”.  Here are the two videos …

Part #1

Part #2

A very good set of videos, I’d have to say.  Right now I would like to jump in and start writing blog posts about my latest endeavor into ASP.Net MVC 2.0.  And I do have a few videos/articles in the works to cover it.  I will have to figure out how to keep the two separate …

A while back I created a DotNetNuke Article module to use on my Article page.  The main purpose behind the module is that I didn’t want to have a text block that I just kept adding to over and over as the number of articles grew.  The Article Module which I called CLB Article Module uses a table in the database to store the Title, URL, Date, Description, etc.  This is a fairly simple DNN module.  Nonetheless, it is released under the Apache 2.0 License and is currently available on Codeplex. 

The mode itself was created using the Code Endeavors DotNetNuke Templates for C# and VB.Net.  The template drastically simplifies the process of creating a DotNetNuke module and all of the wire up necessary for testing and creating Private Assemblies (PA) using C# code. 

I you have never been on Codeplex, I highly recommend taking a peek.  If you wish to see some of the other stuff I’m working on check out my Codeplex profile.

I almost forgot, I have a couple new things I'm going to push out for the Article module very soon. The couple I have planned are:

• Paging
• Templates
• Ability to specify type (of an article)

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Over the last couple weeks, I was able to acquire an inexpensive HD video camera.  I ran a couple test videos which I was fairly happy with, not as good in low light, but overall not bad.  Which means I’ll need more light when I shoot the video, not a problem.  And I have a basic opening sequence that was created in Blender.   The opening sequence needs a bit of work; however its not bad as a starter.  Next I need to find some Creative Commons music for the video. 

That covers the camera; however, on the website I have a couple different things I’m in the process of doing.  First I’ve replaced the OpenWebStudio module I used previously on my Article page which a custom DNN module I was able to create in C#.  Next, I’m creating a new module from scratch to be used to house the video blog itself.  Basically the video blog/podcast module will provide the ability to create one or more podcasts each one with multiple formats to handle high/low res or audio only file formats.  The module will also take care of the heavy lifting when it comes to generating all of the RSS and allowing the user to browse through the podcasts.  I would also allow the module to be able to be compatible with iTunes.

Anyways, that is where I’m at.  Slow and steady progress ….

I'm currently in the process of putting together a new video podcast which is centered around software development.  As I'm not that much of a blogger, I'm going to switch over to doing a video series.  I'm thinking the video podcast will be about 10-15 minutes per episode and will focus on .Net, ASP.Net and websites in general.  In the next couple of weeks I we should have something up on the site and ready to go ...

For some time, I’ve always had an interest in performance optimizations and just better ways to do things.  I look at both the code behind as well as optimizations to improve the browsing experience, such as using CSS sprites.  The other day, I started wondering if a) this module already exists and b) if not, would it be possible to create.  Basically, my idea would be to create an ASP.Net Module which would be used to provide a starting point to optimize both the JavaScript and CSS files for a site on the fly. 

To start with, the module would be used to cut down on the number of requests needed by combing all JavaScript and CSS references on the page down to a single request each.  If you’ve used something like Yahoo User Interface (YUI) or even jQuery the number of files needed for the base library plus all of the code for the site start to impact the experience for the user.  After reducing the number of requests, made by the browser, we would add code to utilize a minify tool such as JSMIN or the new Google Closure compiler to reduce the code size.  I’m thinking it would be a good idea to provide flexibility to allow for swapping out of the minify engine used for flexibility.  So in the end, it would cut down on the number of requests and reduced the bandwidth necessary to transfer them.  Depending on the design and the complexity of the site, this can have a huge impact. 

In creating the module, I think ASP.Net already has hooks available to make the JavaScript side easier to implement; however, I’m not 100% about the CSS side.  Even if they don’t exist, the module could pull out the appropriate tags, combine the results, through most likely a handler, and update the markup on the way to browser.  Ideally, it would be useful to keep the process transparent so the module could be used to improve existing code and the markup, allowing it to be used across a wide range of projects such as DotNetNuke.  Eventually, it may be possible to include inline JavaScript and CSS in the processing; however, that presents a far more complex algorithm to extract, minify and replace.

Telerik does have a control which can perform some of this by replacing the ScriptManager; however, since it is not transparent the source code needs to be modified to take advantage.  Not to mention the licensing cost.  I’m not sure if there are any other commercial and/or open source projects with close to this functionality.  If they do exist, can someone help out there?  And I’m thinking this would be a good Codeplex project for collaboration, and for visibility.

Let me know if you think this a good idea and or if you have any thoughts on the implementation.  If you would like to be involved, let me know as well.  If this looks like a good idea, per feedback, I don’t mind to create the Codeplex project and coordinate. 

Comments appreciated

 Earlier today, I realized that I missed the 2/9/2010 release of the DNN Blog Module.  The updated blog module is now one step closer to production with the new release candidate.  I went ahead and pulled the version and installed on myDNN Test site.  So, what is new in the Release Candidate?  Well according to the official release page on Codeplex, nothing.  From the lack of information, I would take from this that it is merely a bug fix release.  Which is not all that unusual since this is a release candidate.  However, if we take a look at the Version History it paints a different picture. Starting with the Beta 3 release on 1/10/2010, we can assemble a rough set of additions as listed below:

 A couple days ago, I decided it was time to move my CLB.DatabaseUpgrade Library from this website over to Codeplex.  Before I get too far you can get to the project by clicking here.  Let me start off by saying that the move to Codeplex was surprisingly easy.  Yes, this is a small project.  However, I didn’t simply copy over the executable download and source download, I moved the project into Codeplex source control.  I was very pleased to find out that source control in Codeplex is actually done using Team Foundation Server (TFS).  Since, I’m at home in Visual Studio and TFS this is great.  Codeplex also supports source control in Subversion and Mercurial.  It allows the project creator to choose TFS/Subversion or Mercurial. 

Anyways, it took me less than an hour, from never having a project there to having the opening page, documentation, release ready for download and source code imported.  Now that I have the project moved over to Codeplex, maybe I can create interfaces for other databases such as Microsoft SQL Compact Edition.  Hopefully, I’ll hear feedback on whether this library is useful to other developers.

 As I said in my last blog post, I put together a simple site with the new Blog 4.0.0 Beta 3 Module.  Took me a bit longer than I hoped; however, it seems like a very good module now that I've played with it for a bit.  I cannot wait to get the final version installed on this site.  

To get started, head over to the site http://dnn5test.chrislbennett.com/.  Then you need to go ahead and register.  No I'm not going to sell your email address or anything there of.  Once you're registered, you can jump into the Blog page and create yourself a blog.  You should then be able to create posts, comments, tags, categories, etc.  If you find something you would like to do and are not able to because of a permission on the site, then send me an email and I'll see what I can do ...

Please be kind, do not start doing inappropriate things on the site such as links to inappropriate content.  This is also not an opportunity for SEO.  If you want that, head over to blogspot, wordpress, etc.

And I almost forgot the link to the site ... http://dnn5test.chrislbennett.com

  For some time I’ve had problems with the base DNN Blog Module and I had just reached the point where I was ready to find or purchase a commercial module to replace it.  Of course, I checked out the ones available on Snowcovered  SunBlogNuke and NukePress.  I didn’t really want to drop $100, so I kept looking around.  I came across the News Article Module by Ventrain Systems.  I saw a couple different sites that used the module as well as other modules from Ventrain Systems.  And I was close to the point of paying the $30 to get access to the source code for 3 months. 

Since I’m a .Net developer I went back to the thoughts of just modifying the Blog Module to do what I wanted it to do.  Although, I can make the changes, I would really prefer not to touch it as I have other distractions on my time at the moment.  The thought also crossed my mind to switch to WordPress.  I do have several WordPress blogs on other topics; however, I just didn’t feel right to switch to WP.  I really wanted a CMS system not a Blog System.  So I have a choice …..

And then, I came across something a reference to updates on the way for the base DNN module.  Turns out, version 4.00.00 beta 3 was just released on 1/7/2010.  The list of enhancements looks quite impressive: