Rion Williams - Rion.IO (Page 5)

Using Visual Studio AutoRecover to Avoid Losing Your Work (and your Mind)

If you have ever worked in an environment that may not have been the most reliable or you are simply a worry-wart when it comes to possible data loss, then this might be for you. When discussing a recurring issue with another developer, he complained that his older computer frequently

nuget tools

Using the NuGet Package Explorer to Create, Explore and Publish Packages

Although there is often some debate regarding its pronunciation, I believe that most of us can agree that NuGet is pretty great. In the past few years, NuGet has become one of the easily and most commonly used tools within a .NET Developers bag of tricks and rightfully so. Long

random

An Interesting List of Development Stuff (June 2014)

This month’s installment of the Interesting List of Development Stuff is really all over the place. There are articles and posts detailing some of the larger happenings from two major conferences that went down in the month of June, a bevy of interview-related resources, pretty algorithms, technology education, developer

javascript

Calculating Business Hours in Javascript

Time is money, especially when that time is spent handling things like calculating hours worked and filling out time-sheets. Recently, a user on the forums posed a question about how to go about calculating the number of hours worked between two specified dates. The request required that it must be

asp.net asp.net mvc

The Circle of Life…cycle of MVC Applications

One of the common challenges for developers migrating from the Web Forms environment to MVC is learning how to adjust to a different application life-cycle. Web Forms had a very well defined chain of events that would be triggered prior to a page being rendered, however the lines aren’t

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An Interesting List of Development Stuff (May 2014)

In this month’s installment of the Interesting List of Development Stuff, we will take a look at all of the exciting announcements from Microsoft’s TechEd 2014 event as well as the usual collection of all sorts of other development-related news. Exciting things are ahead! How Scott Hanselman Changed

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An Interesting List of Development Stuff (April 2014)

In this month’s installment of the Interesting List of Development Stuff, we take a look a quite a few announcements that were made at Microsoft’s Build conference [http://www.buildwindows.com/], articles to help you figure out if you are over-thinking your development projects or if you are

asp.net tools

Debugging Deeper through Reference Source

A little over a month ago, the ASP.NET team announced several changes and updates to the .NET Reference Source and in this post we are going to discuss how to actually integrate it into Visual Studio so that you can step into the actual .NET Framework source when debugging

community

No April Fooling: Officially a Microsoft MVP.

April 1st is a day that is frequently dedicated to pranks, bogus news and tomfoolery. Generally keeps everyone’s shields of skepticism on high alert and I consider myself to fall into this category. So I have to say that when I received an e-mail from Microsoft with the tagline

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An Interesting List of Development Stuff (March 2014)

In this St. Patrick’s day installment of an Interesting List of Development, we dive into a more .NET-centric approach (with a majority of the topics at least being in the realm of .NET) but as usual, there should be something for everyone. The Roslyn compiler continues to make waves

visual-studio tools

Introducing Bing Code Search, an easy way to find code samples from within Visual Studio 2013

Time is valuable and sometimes taking the time to open up a new browser tab to search for an example of code to do something can be a pain (because we can also be lazy). Thankfully, Microsoft’s Language Experience team created a product just for you: Bing Code Search.

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An Interesting List of Development Stuff (February 2014)

In this installment of my monthly treasure trove of development stuff, we take a slightly more .NET-oriented approach by covering several ASP.NET specific topics, resources and more. But there are quite a few other things that may be applicable to just about any kind of developers (and especially those

asp.net asp.net mvc signalr

When MVC5, SignalR and NuGet Just Won’t Get Along

Sometimes things just blow up. If you have recently attempted to create a new ASP.NET MVC5 project (or any new Web Project within Visual Studio 2013) and decided that you wanted some of that sweet SignalR magic in your application, then you may have encountered the following error : >

asp.net c# visual-basic

But How Do I Learn ASP.NET?

> “How do I learn ASP.NET?” > “What is the best way to learn ASP.NET?” These are two questions that I am asked on nearly daily basis. The answers are quite subjective and as everyone should know, there is never any “best” way to learn, but I thought

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An Interesting List of Development Stuff (January 2014)

Software development is a fascinating thing. With a scope so vast and so many languages, topics and general cool things that people are doing, it can be difficult to keep up. So I have decided to start compiling a few of the links, resources, blog posts and other projects that

community

A Year of Giving Back to the Development Community

Earlier this year I began this blog as part of a News Years resolution to give back [http://rion.io/2013/02/11/a-resolution-to-give-back/] to all of the communities that have helped me become a successful developer and I am proud to say that it was a resolution that I

asp.net asp.net mvc visual-studio

Using ASP.NET MVC5 within Visual Studio 2012

It’s always nice to be using the latest and greatest of things, however not everyone really enjoys “change” (especially with regard to their development environments). So this quick article will cover how to go about creating and using ASP.NET MVC5 applications within Visual Studio 2012 for those out

asp.net tools

The Newest Fiddle Sibling : .NET Fiddle!

Earlier this year, I wrote a short post [http://rion.io/2013/03/10/a-few-tools-for-helping-others-online/] that covered different tools that you can use from the comfort of your favorite browser to help create examples, prototypes and just tinker in general. This post serves to introduce the newest member of the

asp.net asp.net mvc web-forms

Welcome to the Family, One ASP.NET

Prior to the introduction of ASP.NET MVC into the .NET Framework in 2009, a .NET developer that needed to create a site or web application had one choice : Web Forms. When MVC came along however, the water became a bit muddled and developers had a major choice to make

asp.net asp.net mvc c#

Applying Conditional Attributes in ASP.NET MVC Views

If you have attempted to handle any kind of conditional logic within MVC Views before, you know that the process can often be tricky to get everything to work just right. A feature is present in newer versions of ASP.NET MVC provides support for handling conditional attributes, which might

tools

Semantic Merge Emerges (from Beta)

In an earlier blog post [http://rion.io/2013/07/07/merge-smarter-with-semantic-merge/]this year I provided a brief overview of Semantic Merge [http://www.semanticmerge.com/], which is an incredibly tool from PlasticSCM [http://www.plasticscm.com/] that makes the process of merging code both smarter and “prettier” through easy-to-understand

asp.net performance

Remove Slow Startups and Enjoy Less “Suspense” through .NET 4.5.1’s App Suspend Feature

It's always nice when you can just either install something or flip a switch and experience dramatic improvements within your application performance. This article covers one of those switches that you might be interested in flipping, the App Suspend feature, which is available in .NET 4.5.1

asp.net asp.net mvc

Web Forms, MVC and Web Pages! Oh my!

Learning .NET, C# or any of the Microsoft development environments can seem a bit daunting when you are just getting started in the development world. You’ll receive a ton of advice about what you should be using and people will often recommend the latest and greatest tools that frankly,

regular-expressions

Validating Social Security Numbers through Regular Expressions

Regular Expressions are often used to handle all sorts of validation : * E-mail Addresses * Postal Codes * Telephone Numbers * Dates and Times * Social Security Numbers This blog post focuses on validating the last of those : Social Security Numbers and why they may be a bit deceivingly more difficult to validate than you

html css

Common Approaches to Responsive Design

A commonly encountered issue that I address quite often begins with one of the following paraphrased sentences : * "How do I make my application work on mobile devices?" * "What do I need to do to make my website look good on all platforms, phones and tablets?" * "