Robert Robbins
A blog about using ASP.NET for web applications and my work experiences
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ASP.NET Does Not Exist For Web Designers
I've been exploring the world of the web designer and noticed that ASP.NET does not exist in that world. I've been reading web design blogs and browsing through articles on http://www.designfloat.com/, a sort of DIGG site for the design community, and I don't encounter any mention of ASP.NET at all.
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Automate MSSASI As A Shell Command
I have created an ASP.NET page to automate the Microsoft Source Code Analyzer for SQL Injection command line tool. It would be tedious to craft a command for every page in a large Classic ASP web site. I was unable to scan my entire site until I developed this ASP.NET page.
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Custom Web Service Test Page Design
You can customize the design of a web service's test page with a single line of code in the web.config file. But like most things in ASP.NET it is not that easy if you actually try it!
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File Download Progress Bar
Yesterday I added a progress bar to my ASP.NET page for downloading YouTube videos. There was no visual indication that the download was taking place because the page just appeared to be taking a long time to load. I would have to open the download file location to verify that something was being downloaded.
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SQL Injection Security Experiences
Last evening I tried out two of the tools that Joe Stagner wrote about in his blog post Tools to block and eradicate SQL injection. Since I manage a classic ASP web application that was completely lacking in security and potentially vulnerable to these attacks, I thought I'd share my experiences.
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Downloading Files With ASP.NET
Currently I'm using ASP.NET in an unconventional manner to write scripts that download files. Asynchronous tasks and the WebClient object's DownloadFile method are proving to be a very convenient combination of features which makes it easy to automate the process of downloading a lot of files.
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Creating Captcha Images Using The GD Library
I have found a random PHP script for creating captcha images using the GD Library and I've converted it to C# as promised in my previous blog post. I learned something new on this project. The first color in a new image will be the background color but only if the image is not using TrueColor.
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Dynamic Heading Generator
There is a PHP script on A List Apart for dynamically generating images for paragraph headings using fonts. I have successfully translated this script into C#.
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Asynchronous Video Downloader
I've been exploring asynchronous operations in ASP.NET 2.0 and while I don't have anything original to contribute you might find how I used this technique interesting. Even when the code is well documented it can be useful to know how it might be applicable to a specific problem.
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List Installed Fonts
Here is some simple code for creating a list of all your installed fonts in order to create a visual reference. It may be of more interest to a web designer. I suggest you print the web page so you can easily find an appropriate font. Some applications have font drop down menus that display font names using that font but I would rather have a handy print out.