News (17)

Visual Studio 2010 can replay bugs

Microsoft has revealed plans for the next version of its development suite, Visual Studio 2010, to be able to record testing sessions so that developers can reproduce and closely examine software bugs. Read more »

Microsoft Web services plan targets Java

The company aims to turn up the heat on Java rivals with plans for software that could simplify the creation of heavy-duty Web services applications. Read more »

UK Wikipedia censorship 'easy to evade'

The blocking mechanism used to censor Wikipedia in the UK has been described as "fragile" and "easy to evade" by Cambridge University security expert Richard Clayton. Read more »

Java blamed for Net banking lockout

The phase-out of Microsoft's Java virtual machine from Windows XP is being blamed for a user unable to access an Australian Internet banking site. Read more »

Linux.conf.au hits domain disaster

The website of Australia's annual Linux conference has become temporarily inaccessible scant months before the event because of policy confusion over whether or not it is allowed to use its long-standing domain name. Read more »

.NSW, .Uluru, .Oz, .footy domains coming in 2009?

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has voted to allow the creation of thousands of new domain names, from .paris to .Pepsi, in one of the biggest shake-ups in internet history, a French web official said. Read more »

25-year-old BSD bug found and fixed

A Unix developer has discovered and fixed a filesystem bug in Berkeley Software Distribution, a widely used, open-source, Unix-like operating system, discovering in the process that the bug was at least 25 years old. Read more »

Rapid app development hits Delphi for PHP 2.0

CodeGear has launched the Delphi for PHP 2.0 integrated development environment to improve its developer tools suite for building interactive Web applications. Read more »

Open specification promise is true: Microsoft

Microsoft has struck out at the Software Freedom Law Centre's (SFLC) claims that its Open Specification Promise is not as open as it should be. Read more »

Confusing .au.com domain threatens Aussie users

A US-based anti-spyware company has registered the ".com.au.com" domain name, which experts fear could be used by cybercriminals to create more convincing phishing attacks. Read more »

Features (186)

Send email alerts when errors are written to the event log

It is common for applications to write to the Windows Event Log when errors occur or a warning is issued, and with the advent of the .NET Framework, Microsoft has provided developers with built-in functionality to read and write data to or from the event log. Read more »

Reduce runtime errors through unit testing

The submission of C# and the CLR as standards has led to many open source projects based on the .NET platform. One such notable project is NUnit. Learn how to use it to effectively unit test your code. Read more »

Handle errors in the data tier with SQL Server

Exception handling is a standard part of every .NET application. The try/catch block allows you to catch exceptions and control application execution from that point. Many errors occur during database interaction, but a lot of developers are unaware of handling errors within the database tier. This week we examine error handling in your database code with SQL Server and T-SQL. Read more »

What is '.NET' anyway?

Are you little confused about what .NET really is? You're not the only one. This article from Builder.com sheds some light on what .NET is and isn't. Read more »

Use the FileSystemWatcher to monitor directory changes in C#

One of the more interesting objects included in the Microsoft .NET Framework class library is the System.IO.FileSystemWatcher. This object allows you to be notified when certain events occur in a directory, such as file creation, deletion, or modification. Read more »

Analyse your managed .NET code with FxCop

Check your .NET code for bugs and compare it against Microsoft's design guidelines via the freely available FxCop. Learn more about this code analysis tool. Read more »

Download files over the Web with .NET's WebClient class

The System.Net namespace includes the WebClient class for uploading and downloading files via HTTP. You can copy or read files with only a few lines of code. Read more »

Exception management in .NET

In this article, Builder.com looks at how exception management works in .NET. Find out how to architect systems that handle runtime errors properly. Read more »

Handle exceptions properly in C#

Developers often overlook the importance of exception handling to the detriment of their own code. Read more »

Case Study: Switching places from Lotus to .NET

For almost a decade, Sydney-based software developer Just OnePlace (J1P) had been a loyal devotee of the IBM/Lotus platform. But following the strategic review that commenced two years ago the company made a strategic switch to the rival Microsoft .NET camp. Read more »

Blog (3)

Try… Catch… Win!

David McAmis [blogs:theneteffect] -- As a .NET developer, there are a few “best practices” that you should always consider. And one of the biggest is that every application you write should include error trapping to trap critical and non-critical errors that may occur. And the .NET framework makes it easy to use “Try… Catch” statements to intercept any errors that occur and allow you to handle the exception. Read more »

InAccess: Querying .Net

Paul Ayre [blogs:controlaltdefeat] -- INAccess: Tales of woe revolving around the Access Database system Read more »

Mixed Emotions

Chris Duckett [blogs:betaliving] -- Betamax showed that technical superiority can be beaten with a good dose of distribution -- does the same fate await Silverlight? Read more »

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  • Staff A first look at Windows 7 beta

    In this week's Roundup we show you a preview of Windows 7 beta, cover news from the annual Macworld and more. Read more »

    -- posted by Staff

  • Staff Opera's new SDK: Better browsing on the Wii?

    Opera has thrown a little more love at device developers by announcing an updated version of its software development kit on Wednesday at CES. Read more »

    -- posted by Staff

  • Staff 2008: Time to call stumps

    It's another year down but some things never change. That was shown this week as Internet Explorer remained under fire from yet another zero-day exploit. In other news, we set a hard drive on fire and Apple cans its involvement with MacWorld. Read more »

    -- posted by Staff

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