wrightin.gs

Things I Learned Today - Textbox.KeyPress Event Not Fired When AutoComplete

I was working on a Windows Forms application today in .NET 2.0.  I set up a Textbox with an AutoCompleteMode set to append.  I then set up an event handler for the KeyPress event so that I could capture when the user pressed the enter key so I could add their selection to a list.  After running a quick test, I noticed that the Textbox was not recieving the KeyPress event when the enter key was pressed.  I changed the AutoCompleteMode to None and voila, it captured the event again.  Bug!  The obvious work around is to use the KeyUp event.

What I Leaned Today: The Beta 2 of Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX Extensions are not compatible with the old AjaxControlToolkit

Morale was down today.  After looking into the problem, I found that the issue was that my web host installed the beta 2 of the Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX Extensions which was released in early November.  This new version is not compatible with the AjaxControlToolkit that I had installed.  The new beta required changes the AnimationExtender base class.

To fix the issue, I needed to download and compile the new AjaxControlToolkit and reference that version in my web application.  I also needed to add an http handler to the web.config file.  You need to add the following line under the httphandlers section in the web.config file:

<add validate="false" type="Microsoft.Web.Handlers.ScriptResourceHandler" path="ScriptResource.axd" verb="GET"></add>

This will clear any of the javascript errors that state: "'Sys' is not defined".  I hope this helps anyone out there.  I wish my web hosting company would let me know before they install stuff in the GAC on the server.  One more of those and I will be searching for a new web hosting service.

Things I Learned Today in .NET - defaultbutton in ASP.NET 2.0

I have been doing a lot of web programming lately as I have been trying to develop a front end for Morale.  This is the first time I have done any programming in ASP.NET 2.0 for things that are going to be consumed by the public.  I have been mostly been programming .NET 2.0 using Windows Forms....Anyway, I wanted to do one of the most common things that web programmers want to do.  That is have a default button that is clicked when the user fills out a form and presses enter on the keyboard.  So I started doing this "the old way" by coding up some javascript.  You know the code by know:

onkeydown="if event.key == 13.........".  I found that there is now a very easy way to do this in .NET 2.0.  That is add the attribute defaultbutton="<ControlID>" to the form tag on your form.  This adds the following code to your form:

onkeypress="javascript:return WebForm_FireDefaultButton(event, '<ControlID>')"

This calls a new ASP.NET 2.0 client side library.  Easy sh*&%.

Things I Learned Today in .NET - ImageList is being depreciated

I am going to start a new string of posts that are very brief.  These posts are meant to spread small little nuggets of information that I have picked up during the course of the day.  My first is going to be with .NET development.  I want them to be a way for developers to find small things that are hard to find on the net or not many people have talked about before.  Here is my first one.

The company I am doing work for has been using Syncfusion 3.0 Windows forms controls for some of their UI elements.  Since upgrading to .NET 2.0 we have been trying to remove some of the unnecessary controls since they are now available in .NET 2.0 or they have been enhanced.

One of these controls is the tool strip and menu strip items.  Since I refactoring some of the UI within a section of this Windows forms application, I wanted to remove these Syncfusion menu controls.  So I drop a new ToolStrip control on the form, add some buttons, and then I go to change the images on those controls.  I look for the ImageList property off of the ToolStrip and find it is not available in the designer.  I noticed that it is still a property off of the control but the Windows Forms team must of marked it with a Browsable(false) attribute in .NET 2.0.  It looks like it is going to be depreciated in future releases.  Instead, each tool bar item has an image property.  This has a designer that allows you to choose it from a resource file.  It looks like Microsoft is taking the approach of puttingn these things in resource files instead of controls.  I like this new approach, it is just that it added a little complexity of removing these Syncfusion controls.