Chris L. Bennett

father, author, software consultant, C# .net developer, tea snob ;), etc

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Getting Started With Microsoft Chart Control for .NET Framework 3.5 (Codeguru.com - 4/22/2010)
Are you in need of charting capabilities in your ASP.NET Site, but you don't want to purchase a set of 3rd party controls? Check out the full-featured Microsoft Chart Control for the .NET Framework 3.5.
Getting Started With Windows Phone 7 Series Development (Codeguru.com - 3/24/2010)
Are you ready to start developing applications using the new Windows Phone 7 Series? In this article I will explain the tools available today and walk through creating a basic application.
Perform JavaScript Functions After An ASP.NET UpdatePanel Refresh Using the ASP.NET AJAX Client Library (Codeguru.com - 3/19/2010)
Do you find yourself in need of performing JavaScript operations in cooperation with ASP.NET UpdatePanels? With the ASP.NET AJAX Client Library it is very easy to add JavaScript functions after a refresh.
Using LINQ with Dynamic Where Clauses (Codeguru.com - 2/12/2010)

Do you need to create Dynamic Where Clauses at runtime? No need to use string concatenation with SQL, LINQ is fully capable of performing the same task.
Learn How to Create Dual Mode Windows Services (Codeguru.com - 2/8/2010)
Learn how to create a dual mode service so you can run your services as either console apps or through Windows Services.
Spruce up your next application with the WPF Ribbon (Developer.com - 12/28/2009)
Tired of the same old look for your application? Try using the new Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) Ribbon. This is the same ribbon as used in Office 2007 and many new Windows 7 applications.
Take Advantage of the Windows 7 Taskbar in your next project. (Developer.com - 10/29/2009)
Windows 7 brings many enhancements over past versions of windows. The redesign of the Windows Taskbar is a significant area of change. The Taskbar brings multiple new capabilities for developers including progress bar, including Jump Lists, Progress and Overlays. In this article I plan to show how to start using the Windows 7 API Code Pack and start taking advantage of the new Taskbar.
Performance impact of using Spring.Net in .Net projects. (Developer.com - 8/10/2009)
Now that the popular Java Spring Framework has been ported over to .Net architects are starting to look at including Sprint.Net into projects. To date Spring.Net is a relatively unknown quantity in the .Net space. While it is considered stable little is available in relation to the performance impact of incorporating Spring.Net in applications. In this article intend to create a series of control applications and spring.net applications. Using these two sets of applications I will how the actual performance impact in several common areas such as spring loaded data layers, injected singleton objects, etc.
Getting started with Apache NMS Framework and Apache ActiveMQ (Developer.com - 6/9/2009)
The Apache ActiveMQ queue system is very powerful system and is perfectly capable of being used within .Net applications. Unfortunately, documentation and examples are sparse unless you intend to use the Spring.Net framework in your project. In this article I intend to show first how to setup a development Apache ActiveMQ server. Then create publish and receiving application examples using the Apache .Net Messaging System (NMS) API.
Using the ASP.NET ScriptServices with popular JavaScript frameworks (Developer.com - 5/18/2009)
ASP.NET ScriptServices were released in .Net 3.5; however, they are not used very often outside of the ASP.NET AJAX Extensions. The ScriptService is similar to WebServices; however, rather than use SOAP and XML it is designed to be used with JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) . Since it works with JSON, ScriptServices can be utilized very easily with popular JavaScript frameworks including jQuery, Prototype, etc. In this article, I plan to show how to create ScriptServices and how they can be utilized from both the jQuery and Prototype frameworks.
Improve the speed of your site by using CSS Sprites (Developer.com - 3/4/2009)
In styling Web Application we often have the need to use complex borders such as rounded corners. Since the we don't have a native way to accomplish this we revert to using individual images for the rounded corners, border lines, headers, etc. By doing this we drastically increase the number of 1k images the browser must download to render the page. By converting to use CSS Sprites we can reduce the number of requests and combine all of these individual images into one or more images very small images. Thus allowing the page to download and render faster.
Take the pain out of creating Word Documents in Using XML and C# (Developer.com - 1/23/2009)
When a project calls for the need to programmatically create a Word Document, the solution usually involves a 3rd party control. However, it is entirely possible to create a Word 2003/2007 Document using only the XML functions built into .NET. In this article I plan to show how to first create a Word Document as a template. Then save the Document into the Word XML format. Next we will create an XSL from the Word XML file. And finally create a simple C# app to create the XML input file, perform the XSL transformation and output the Word XML file populated with the desired information.
Adding Standard Deviation to LINQ (Developer.com - 1/5/2009)
As useful as LINQ is it is missing one crucial function needed for data analysis, Standard Deviation. It is unfortunate that this aggregator is not provided for LINQ to SQL; however, it is possible to create simple function to perform the standard deviation in C#. In this article I plan to show the user how to create a simple standard deviation function. Then, I will include sample LINQ queries using the standard deviation function.
Create your own Thread Pool (Developer.com - 11/10/2008)
One of the main problems with the existing Thread Pool is that there is only one of them. It is also not possible to prioritize items in the queue. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to create a couple of small Thread Pools for different uses in your application such as Network Packet Processing? This article I plan to show how to create your own small thread pool with the ability to prioritize items in the thread pool and make it easy to create an application that can be scaled based on load and the machine it is installed upon.

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Chris@ChrisLBennett.com