Free Microsoft E-Learning

For those of you who didn't know, Microsoft offers online training for just about every MS development platform you can think of. Granted, most of the you have to pay for (the average is about $300.00), but if you look closely, many of them are available for FREE!!!

Here is a sampling of some of the free courses:

• Clinic 5230 : Developing Enhanced Web Experiences with Microsoft® ASP.NET AJAX Extensions Clinic



• 5046: Inside Look at Building and Developing Solutions with Microsoft® Office SharePoint Server 2007



• Clinic 2806: Microsoft® Security Guidance Training for Developers

I just went to this page and did the keyboard command ctrl F" and typed in free, and it took me to each of the free courses. Go get um!!!

https://www.microsoftelearning.com/catalog/developer.aspx

P.S. --you will need your MS passport to sign in...but that's free too!!!

Cool Run Commands

I thought I would pass along this short list of run commands that I find to be useful.

IIS: inetmgrReset
IIS: iisresetServices: services.mscAdministrative
Tools: control admintools
Remote Desktop : mstsc
Performance Monitor : perfmon
Add/Remove Programs: appwiz.cpl
My Documents: My Documents
control Panel: control
Notepad: Notepad
Administrative Tools : control admintools
Calculator : calc
Task Manager : taskmgr
Internet Properties inetcpl.cpl
Internet Explorer: iexplore
Microsoft Word (if installed): winword

If you're hungry for more you can check out these links:

http://blogs.sqlxml.org/vinodkumar/archive/2006/01/19/4681.aspx

http://www.fixmyvista.com/content/view/23/26/

Shorten your URL's with TinyURL

Have you ever had a url that looked like this?

http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?ovi=1&mqmap.x=300&mqmap.y=75&mapdata=%252bKZmeiIh6N%252bIgpXRP3bylMaN0O4z8OOUkZWYe7NRH6ldDN96YFTIUmSH3Q6OzE5XVqcuc5zb%252fY5wy1MZwTnT2pu%252bNMjOjsHjvNlygTRMzqazPStrN%252f1YzA0oWEWLwkHdhVHeG9sG6cMrfXNJKHY6fML4o6Nb0SeQm75ET9jAjKelrmqBCNta%252bsKC9n8jslz%252fo188N4g3BvAJYuzx8J8r%252f1fPFWkPYg%252bT9Su5KoQ9YpNSj%252bmo0h0aEK%252bofj3f6vCP

Imagine trying to repeat it on the phone, or type it in a email...yikes!!!

Tiny Url to the rescue!!! Tiny Url is a FREE service that allows you to copy paste your url into textbox, click a button and turn the link above into this:

http://tinyurl.com/6

It works with any url and will not break in email, or ever expires. Even Visual Studio Magazine now uses it.

TinyUrl can be accessed at http://www.tinyurl.com/.

Lutz Roeder .Net Reflector

If you're as curious as I am and wonder what evil lurks in those .Net assemblies, you got to check out “.Net Relector”, by Lutz Roeder. Reflector is the class browser, explorer, analyzer and documentation viewer for .NET. Reflector allows you to easily view, navigate, search, decompile and analyze .NET assemblies in C#, Visual Basic and IL. It is especially useful with inadequately or incorrectly documented libraries. And best of all it’s FREE!!! An amazing gift to the .Net programming world…Thanks Lutz!!!

Download it at http://www.aisto.com/roeder/dotnet/

What Causes ASP.NET Application Restarts?

The ASP.Net runtime environment automatically restarts an application if any of the following scenarios occur:

• The maximum limit of dynamic compilations is reached
• The physical path of the Web Application has changed, or any directory under the Web application folder is renamed
• Changes occurred in the global.asax, machine.config, or web.config in the application root, or in the Bin directory or any of its sub directories
• Changes occurred in the code-access security policy file, if one exists
• Too many files are changed in one of the content directories (Typically, this happens if files are generated on the fly when requested)
• Changes occurred to setting that control the restart/shutdown of the ASP.NET worker process
• It is pragmatically restarted by calling HttpRuntime.UnloadAppDomain.