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)

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:

 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:

Yesterday, the Indy Tech Fest group put on yet another excellent event. These events certainly do not disappoint. My hat is off to everyone involved in arranging these events. Similar to last year we had a keynote by Buck Foley and Brad Jones. For those of you who have never seen Buck Foley, it truly is a great impression of Chris Farley with a tech spin. For the moment, I'm not able to remember Buck Foley's real name; nonetheless, he is a developer. And after a change of clothes he attends the event with the rest of the crowd. He is an excellent motivational speaker and top notch for developer jokes. Last year I remember his discussion of using LINQ to find a date. If you have the change to see him live, be sure to take advantage of it.

This year we had a range of topics from everyday Tip's n Tricks to, Database Optimization, Cloud and Green Computing, Robotics Studio, XNA Studio, SQL 2008, etc.  Certainly a lot to pack into a single day.  My only disappointment is that I was unable to attend a couple of sessions as I either had a conflict with my own presentation or another session I wanted to attend.

About 2 weeks ago I received an email asking if I would present at Indy Tech Fest on VB.NET Tip's and Tricks. In my usual manor I procrastinated and waited until the last minute. And like many of the presentations, I completed mine the morning of the event. I'll send my slide deck to the Indy Tech Fest guys so it can be posted to their site as well, but I wanted to post them here so it could be available sooner. I've posted the slide deck in both PowerPoint 2007 and 2003 versions

VB.NET Tips-n-Tricks PowerPoint 2007 Presentation
VB.NET Tips-n-Tricks PowerPoint 2003 Presentation

Thanks to those of you who attended my presentation.

One of the areas of programming I'm drawn to is in parallel processing. And for the past several years, I've looked for different techniques used for parallel processing. The primary method of parallel processing in .Net are simple threads. Although there is a Thread Pool available for each process it is not all that flexible, nor is it useful for small tasks such as loops. These problem are compounded when you start to look at the computers we use these days. We've begun the transition from a large single core process to smaller dual and quad core processors. This is only the beginning when you consider Intel has prototyped processors with 80 cores.

In order to accommodate this change in processing power as programmers we will need to adapt our programs. A interesting technology that is on the horizon from Microsoft .Net is the Parallel FX Library. It is currently available as a Customer Technology Preview (CTP). It implements a couple of variations on some techniques we use today, including For Each, Do and While loops.

So with the ability to perform parallel loops it allows the most basic of programs to take advantage of these additional processing cores. Of course we as programmers will still need to perform locking on the variables to prevent corruption. I'm definitely looking forward to see this library available for programming our every day apps. Below is a diagram of the Parallel FX Library on top of the .NET Framework 3.5.

Last week I was asked to participate in a charity event locally in Indianapolis, IN.  I've donated my time before for events, but not like this.  Recently I was on Church Counsel for a local United Methodist Church for the mainly because of my web skills.  I about fell out of my chair when I realized this event was primarily for developers.  The purpose for the event is to allow developers to build websites and other software apps for charities and non-profit organizations that could not other wise afford it.  The name of the event is Indy Give Camp.  

This event is being put on by the IndyNDA, otherwise known as the Indy .Net Association for developers.  I'm a member of the IndyNDA group and I have to say that the organization is really well run and overall the monthly meetings are top notch.

If you are a fellow developer and you have the chance, be sure to stop by one of the IndyNDA events.  Another event that is put on by IndyNDA is IndyCodeCamp.  This is a free day-long conference for developers on all sorts of topics in the developer space.  Last year I presented at IndyCodeCamp on the AJAX Control Toolkit.  As it turns out, I'm going to present again this year on Tip's and Trick's for VB.NET 9.  Should be an interesting event and I'm certainly looking forward to attending a couple of the sessions myself.