Scott Hanselman's ComputerZen.com

Had a nice chat with Clemens on IM today and I snarfed a gem of a quote from him with regards to his recent declaration of jihad against WSDL.  I mentioned that he may have to wait a while to see the death of WSDL and the proliferation of a newer better way...

"I will live longer than WSDL. So, I can wait.  It makes web services hard.  It makes the world hard. die die die." - Clemens Vasters

Fritz hits one out of the park [Don Box]

It's twue, it's twue...this book does kick extreme ass.  So often you buy a .NET book and look at only chapters 19 and 20 and the rest is fodder.  This book is NOT like that.

As you look at the Table of Contents, you notice right away this book is not structured like a typical ASP.NET book (as Fritz is not structured like a typical programmer, this is to be expected). 

It begins with Architecture (a nice first chapter) and chapter 4 gets right into the HTTP Pipeline.  The Table of Contents reads like a directory of What's Misunderstood in ASP.NET - which is exactly how it should.  It is now carried under my arm with pride, I recommend you pick up a copy.

Steven Frank (who I had the pleasure of going to college with, as well as buying Apple Newton together) has recorded "Ben & Mena," a blogging anthem if ever there was one...

"It relays the epic saga of a lonely everyblogger who dreams of finding the ultimate link that will catapult his puny blog into the limelight."

Here's some sample lyrics:

Blank page, nothin' to say
Just pictures of my cats today
Thought about the war a bunch
Now let me tell you what I had for lunch

Boys all hate me, my girlfriend dumped me
They're bombing Iraq, my oatmeal's lumpy
Wi-Fi networks in Central Park
Funny Photoshops up on Fark

Semantic web, RSS, and e-mail
Single white guy seeks athletic female
I'm busy building the digital commons
Cook me up another bowl of ramen

Referers say no-one came today...

I wanna be Ben, I wanna be Mena
The master of my domain
So send me a ping, send me a trackback
I promise I won't complain

Check it out, it's up at ~stevenf.

Has anyone given any thought on how to programmatically modify/add the dir= attribute to the HTML or BODY tags when the Thread's Culture in ASP.NET is a Right To Left language?

This doesn't work reliablity, as ASP.NET may batch up controls into an HtmlLiteralControl...often, not always, the body (or html) tag can't be found.  This depends on how ASP.NET decided to parse the control tree for a particular page.  Additionally, there doesn't seem to be anything in CultureInfo that would help me decide what languages are right to left...

If I can reliably get ahold of the HTML control and BODY tags and add this attribute, I'm good.

/* Doesn't work reliably */

I've been out of the office and all over the country of late, up to Redmond 3 times this month and as far from Portland as Raleigh, North Carolina.  Consequently, I've not blogged.  However, I did get an "A" in Physics/Calculus, so thanks for asking. ;)  Turns out my graduation is June 6th, so looks like it will interfere with TechEd.   I'll probably give my presentation and immediately jump on a plane to make it to commencement in time.  (For those of you who don't know, I've managed to squeeze my undergrad into the last eleven years.  Currently I'm Chief Architect at Corillian Corporation, but on Tues, Thurs and Friday nights, I'm just a snot-nosed tyro trying to get through my Physics exams on electromagnetism.  Ah, my life.)

Also, lately I've been up to my ears in ASP.NET, today working on Internationalizing multi-lingual ASP.NET web sites in a performance way, while still using the .NET Resource Manager. 

In the process, I've collected these links on Globalization/Internationalization:

• Globalization & Localization Best Practices for Windows 2000 Compliant Software
• The Best Localization Directory - Dozens of great links and software
• Microsoft Global Development Portal
• Authoring HTML for Middle-Eastern Content
• Bidirectional Layout in the HTML 4.0 Spec (ÇåáÇ æ ÓåáÇ ãä ÇáÔÑ Þ Çáà æ ÓØ.)
• Microsoft Localization (Globalization) Toolkit - For Developing Localized ASP.NET Applications (Database Driven)
  I started by looking at this unsupported Microsoft tool with great interest.  It will sure teach you lots about how ASP.NET render controls.  It uses a database and reflection, overriding PreRender and Render and replacing keys with localized text.  It is very CPU intensive, but this can be mitigated by judicious use of the Output Cache directive.  However, for my sites, this isn't possible since each page is rendered specifically for each user.  I'm instead using a base class "LocalizedPage" with an optional virtual function "ApplyCulture" and some utilities to allow the user to localized controls.  Since pages are designed in the "local" language, only the 10% of (for example) Spanish users would cause increased CPU on a 90% English site.  More on this in the future...