I have published my first ever project to CodePlex. Media Mogul is a media manager which will be written in WPF using the Prism methodologies, and will have pluggable video and music modules. The core features of the application are written as command line applications to allow power users access to the feature sets without needing the front-end.

Diago.co.za recieved a face-lift after realizing some key components where missing from the stylesheet. The end result is a slighlty nicer and softer interface along with a more streamlined navigation system. jQuery has also been integrated into the site.

I struggled for a while to find a way to remove the WebPart entries orphaned by the deactivation and rectraction process in SharePoint, and found a neat way to this using the SPFeatureReceiver. After some testing I posted an article about it in the SharePoint section.

I am more and more amazed lately by the lack of hardware, networking and general computer basics knowledge demonstrated by developers. I have always maintained that this is a very important part of a developers knowledge tools and in this article look at how this knowledge solved various problems in an asset management system I developed more then 2 years ago.

I wrote my first article on SubText skinning covering the steps required to split the SingleColumn control into smaller pieces when used in custom skin development.

I spent the Easter weekend redesigning the Diago.co.za website and am extremely proud of the new theme. I also cleaned up the site a bit and also added some new LiveWriter support to SubText. I cover in detail the changes made to SubText for the new design as well as some background on the changes and other blog engines investigated for possible replacement of SubText. However SubText proved to be able to provide the required features after all.

More and more often the last few weeks I have had developers ask me about setting up a Development Environment for SharePoint Server 2007. There is quite a huge amount of information about this topic on Google, however I find that a lot of it is not up to date. I posted a set of articles on this topic.

I follow RSS feeds religiously and also at times do research on some of the work or problems I encounter. Often I get asked where I get my info so I decided to post some of the links I found recently that are truly informative and helps with various problems, or just great information to know about.

Jeff Atwood has opened up the private beta for StackOverflow.com and I am extremely impressed by what they achieved. The new site is developed in ASP.Net Mvc with a host of features in the beta which makes the site extremely easy to use. The content is also proving to be valuable and accurate.

Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky is in the process of starting a new venture called StackOverflow. The first part of the project is a podcast they host weekly. Phil Haack has joined Microsoft but is stilll very actively involved in SubText.

With the help of some collegues I was able to build my first SharePoint WebPart and created an article outlining the process.

An introduction into SubVersion and CruiseControl.Net to provide a simple and free source control and continues integration solution for developers on to go.

Along with Ajax comes the Ajax Control Toolkit, a brilliant free tool providing prebuilt controls to use in website adding some awesome client side functionality. This is the future of .Net web development.

A detailed look at ASP.Net AJAX and how it can be used to improve web development experiences as well as provide users with an awesome visiting experience.

RDL is part of Microsoft SQL Reporting Services but it is also available for normal reporting without needing the full back-end services support. Some links are provided to brilliant RDL resources.

When developing windows services one of the major issues are the testing of these services. In this article we develop a C# Windows Service that supports command line parameters and debug mode allowing for easy testing in development and remote server environments.

Developing software often requires an individual to wear various different caps, the Project Manager, the Technical Writer, the Developer and the Tester. We look at these different roles and the concept of buttons and boxes for easy development used during the Bytes AMS project development.

"Commenting is a royal pain in the posterior" - "Comments are for weenies" - "I can understand my code quite well, thank you very much" - "Good code speaks for itself" - "No time for that, got to get that code out of the door". None of these is a good reason for not commenting source code properly. We will look at these arguments, discuss them and take a look at good commenting practice and its benefits.