So, you want to use C# 6 language features and you’re working on an older project that’s still rocking .NET 4.5. Well, with some caveats, you can.

I’ve a love / hate relationship with Coded UI. Well hate / hate might be more accurate. Hate perhaps married with a very grudging respect still underpinned by a wary bitterness. Yes, that’s about the size of it. Why? Well, when Coded UI works, it’s fab. But it’s flaky as anything. Anybody who’s used the technology is presently nodding sagely and holding back the tears. It’s all a bit... tough.

This is a guide on how not to expose all your static files to the world at large when working with the ASP.Net Framework. How to move from a blocklisting approach to a allowlisting approach.

I've seen it go by many names; live reload, hot reload, browser sync... the list goes on. It's been the subject of a million demos. It's the focus of a thousand npm packages. Someone tweaks a file and... wait for it... doesn't have to refresh their browser to see the changes... The future is now!

I wrote a while ago about how I was using some different tools in a current project:

So there I was, tip-tapping away at my keyboard when I became aware of the slowly loudening noise of a debate. It wasn't about poverty, war, civil rights or anything like that. No; this was far more contentious. It was about the behaviour of <a href="https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/bb351562(v=vs.100).aspx">IQueryable&lt;T&gt;</a> when mixed with <a href="https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/9eekhta0(v=vs.100).aspx">IEnumerable&lt;T&gt;</a>. I know, right, how could I not get involved?

...to protect my wallet.

This is just a quick post - the tl;dr is this: jQuery Validation Globalize has been ported to Globalize 1.x. Yay! In one of those twists of fate I'm not actually using this plugin in my day job anymore but I thought it might be useful to other people. So here you go. You can read more about this plugin in an older post and you can see a demo of it in action here.

I'm a member of the Definitely Typed team - and hopefully I won't be kicked out for writing this. My point is this: .d.ts files should live with the package they provide typing information for, in npm / GitHub etc. Not separately.

Some people fear change. Most people actually. I'm not immune to that myself, but not in the key area of technology. Any developer that fears change when it comes to the tools and languages that he / she is using is in the wrong business. Because what you're using to cut code today will not last. The language will evolve, the tools and frameworks that you love will die out and be replaced by new ones that are different and strange. In time, the language you feel you write as a native will fall out of favour, replaced by a new upstart.

I was recently reading a post by Jaime González García which featured the following mind-bending proposition:

Globalize has hit 1.0. Anyone who reads my blog will likely be aware that I'm a long time user of Globalize 0.1.x. I've been a little daunted by the leap that the move from 0.1.x to 1.x represents. It appears to be the very definition of "breaking changes". :-) But hey, this is Semantic Versioning being used correctly so how could I complain? Either way, I've decided to write up the migration here as I'm not expecting this to be easy.

I don't know about you but I personally feel that the following sentence may well be the saddest in the English language:

Code First Migrations. They look a little like this in Visual Studio:

The Angular UI Bootstrap Datepicker is fan-dabby-dozy. But it has a ... pecularity. You can use the picker like this:

I thought as I start the NgValidationFor project I'd journal my progress. I'm writing this with someone particular in mind: me. Specifically, me in 2 years who will no doubt wonder why I made some of the choices I did. Everyone else, move along now - nothing to see. Unless the inner workings of someone else's mind are interesting to you... In which case: welcome!

So. You want to kick hash based routing to the kerb. You want real URLs. You've read the HTML5 mode section of the Angular $location docs and you're good to go. It's just a matter of dropping $locationProvider.html5Mode(true) into your app initialisation right?

Wrong.

Further posts on this topic​

A departure from from my normal content - I need to tell you about emoji! You'll probably already know about them - just imagine a emoticon but about 300,000 times better. They really add spice to to textual content. Oh and they're Japanese - which is also way cool.

In the name of DRY I found myself puzzling how one could take a PartialViewResult and render it as a string. Simple, right?