Last month I blogged about Y’ZDock. Take a look at StarDock’s ObjectDock. It’s about the same (its roots are YZDock) and it has a live community instead of only a download link or two.
May 062004
May 052004
Anders has the text of the README file to be included in the upcoming Delphi 7.1 update.
May 052004
The Open Source version of .NET has reached the beta stadium. Mono beta 1 it is labeled. Read the Release Notes or go to their Download page.
One of the big things about this release, is that it supports generics in both the C# compiler and the virtual machine. Also Mono has a Global Assembly Cache now and a gacutil-like tool to manage the GAC. Beta 1 contains preview functionality (alpha stage) of System.Windows.Forms as well.
If you need a free IDE to develop Mono programs (or .NET programs, whatever you like to call them), you can use MonoDevelop. It’s currently only at version 0.3, but it gets the job done. It has Code Completion, Class Management, an integrated debugger and built-in Help.
It so happened I installed version 0.31 (the previous version) yesterday, and played around with it. The executables it generates (executed on Linux or other non-Windows platforms within Mono) execute perfectly on Windows without calling Mono. I haven’t tested any difficult programs yet, but this is great.
Apache for Win32 with Mono will release us from IIS while maintaining .NET compatibility and without loosing our favorite Windows programs.
May 042004
Recently I’m getting the “too many users connected” error-message from ISS on a regular basis. That’s when you get when you put Windows XP to perform server-tasks: ISS is limited to 10 simultaneous connections.
Apache is a great webserver: I used it on my Linux machines and was very pleased with the configurability and the performance. But…how about server ASP.NET pages with it? The Mono project does such a thing, for non-Windows platforms, but isn’t there a way to have Apache on Win32 call the aspnet_isapi.dll via the mod_isapi.so extension? I’ve read that isapi extensions are bound to restrictions (no asynchronous I/O) as described on this page, but is it possible?
I tried the solution Apache for non-ASP.NET and a redirect to Cassini for ASP.NET some time ago, but couldn’t get everything to work, mainly because of the limited functionality of Cassini.
There must be a way to get the best of both worlds. Please comment.
May 032004
Lutz Roeder released version 4 of his Reflector, a (or should I say THE) class-browser for .NET. Here is the list of programs he made (Reflector on top), or jump to the Reflector 4 page immediately.
Yes, it supports Delphi syntax.
Apr 302004
Omar has a trick to get around Windows File Protection (not being able to replace files because they are “in use”, but actually are being protected for update by the OS). At least he can replace Notepad.exe with the brilliant Notepad2.exe (first renamed to Notepad.exe). It is tricky business, so follow instructions with care (and after reconsideration).
Apr 302004
And while we’re in the magazine department, why don’t you stop by Borland Developer News: .NET Edition?
Apr 292004
If you’re into developing with/for Microsoft, you can’t miss this one: MSDN Magazine May 2004.
Apr 292004
This guy has a Panda Joke each year. This is his latest:
A panda walks into a restaurant, sits down, and orders a sandwich. He eats the sandwich, pulls out a gun, and shoots the waiter dead. As the panda stands up to go, the manager shouts, “Hey! Where are you going? You just shot my waiter, and you didn’t even pay for your sandwich!”
“Hey, man, I’m a PANDA!” the panda shouts back. “Look it up!”
The manager opens his dictionary and reads:
Panda: A tree-dwelling marsupial of Asian origin, characterized by distinct black and white coloring. Eats shoots and leaves.
Apr 292004
I don’t know whether it works, but it’s worth the try: Spam Poison. Let me know what your findings are!