Problem: Static resources declaration order *matter* !!! So you should not declare the instance of your DataTemplateSelector before actually declaring DataTemplates (see code sample below).

<!-- data template selector NOT HERE-->
<local:CustomDataTemplateSelector
	x:Key="_customDataTemplateSelector"
	FirstDataTemplate="{StaticResource _firstDataTemplate}"
	SecondDataTemplate="{StaticResource _secondDataTemplate}"
	ThirdDataTemplate="{StaticResource _thirdDataTemplate}"
/>

<DataTemplate x:Key="_firstDataTemplate">
	<TextBlock Text="dataTemplate 1"/>
</DataTemplate> 

<DataTemplate x:Key="_secondDataTemplate">
	<TextBlock Text="dataTemplate 2"/>
</DataTemplate> 

<DataTemplate x:Key="_thirdDataTemplate">
	<TextBlock Text="dataTemplate 3"/>
</DataTemplate> 

<!-- data template selector -->
<local:CustomDataTemplateSelector
	x:Key="_customDataTemplateSelector"
	FirstDataTemplate="{StaticResource _firstDataTemplate}"
	SecondDataTemplate="{StaticResource _secondDataTemplate}"
	ThirdDataTemplate="{StaticResource _thirdDataTemplate}"
/>

This class, as the name suggests, allows the developer to run a synchronous or asynchronous job in a separate thread. It offers quite a few advantages in comparison with other well known classes like the now old BackgroundWorker like the possibility to cancel a task and the possibility to create sub-tasks and many others. In exchange what you see in BackgroundWorker and you don’t see in Task class is progress reporting. Fortunately this is a functionality that is easily implementable also using a Task class. See this nice post for how to do it. You can also find there an equivalent implementation using BackgroundWorker.

Task class is found inside System.Threading.Tasks namespace. This class and related types are part of a set of public types called TPL (Task Parallel Library) and it is a new programming model introduced by Microsoft in it’s framework mainly for parallel programming.

For more information please visit MSDN page for TPL (Task Parallel Library).

Here’s a simple example (from MSDN) of code showing how you can manipulate a single Task instance:

using System;
using System.Threading;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {

        var tokenSource2 = new CancellationTokenSource();
        CancellationToken ct = tokenSource2.Token;

        var task = Task.Factory.StartNew(() =>
        {

            // Were we already canceled?
            ct.ThrowIfCancellationRequested();

            bool moreToDo = true;
            while (moreToDo)
            {
                // Poll on this property if you have to do
                // other cleanup before throwing.
                if (ct.IsCancellationRequested)
                {
                    // Clean up here, then...
                    ct.ThrowIfCancellationRequested();
                }

            }
        }, tokenSource2.Token); // Pass same token to StartNew.

        tokenSource2.Cancel();

        // Just continue on this thread, or Wait/WaitAll with try-catch:
        try
        {
            task.Wait();
        }
        catch (AggregateException e)
        {
            foreach (var v in e.InnerExceptions)
                Console.WriteLine(e.Message + " " + v.Message);
        }

        Console.ReadKey();
    }
}

Also Task integrates rather nicely with other existent API’s like IAsyncResult, AsyncWaitHandle etc making it easier to integrate into already developed applications.

Clearly the Task class is an evolution compared to everything we had and it should make life easier when dealing with a sequence of tasks that may have subtasks and that also support cancellation.

That being said, I tried to setup Eclipse and php. I just wanted to run and debug the code. Nothing complicated.

1. Try to create a php project and run it

So I downloaded WampServer (which includes Apache, Php and MySQL), then I downloaded Eclipse with php module. Then I created a php project and a php page called test.php. Trying to run it I got the “The webpage cannot be found” error.

2. Try to debug the project

Not being able to even run the project of course debugging wasn’t working either. Setting debug options fired up other errors like:

(this happens when choosing ‘Test debugger’ in Eclipse Run Configurations options dialog)

After almost a half a day trying to figure that out I still think Visual Studio is the best IDE out there. Of course I’m not giving up and I will make it work in the end.

If you have to generate reports then maybe Microsoft Reports or Crystal Reports would be better choices. Microsoft Reports comes with Visual Studio. Crystal Reports was included in Visual Studio until VS2008. If you want to use Crystal Reports in Visual Studio 2010 then go here.

For PDF printing there are several solutions out there.

So…here are a few of the products I ‘googled’ upon:

1) PDFsharp and MigraDoc Foundation (http://www.pdfsharp.net/Default.aspx)

Both, free open source library allowing any .NET language application to work with PDF format documents. Their features are enumerated here on their site.

2) iTextSharp (http://itextpdf.com/)

iText# (iTextSharp) is a port of the iText open source java library for PDF generation written entirely in C# for the .NET platform. Personally I think this component is pretty cool.

Binaries and examples can be found at http://sourceforge.net/projects/itextsharp/files/.

Links:

iSharp in Action 2nd Edition Examples (http://kuujinbo.info/iTextInAction2Ed/index.aspx)
Code Examples (http://www.ujihara.jp/iTextdotNET/en/examples.html)
Application sample (http://www.codeproject.com/KB/graphics/iTextSharpTutorial.aspx)
iTextSharp tutorial (http://www.mikesdotnetting.com/Article/80/Create-PDFs-in-ASP.NET-getting-started-with-iTextSharp)

3) AspPDF.NET (http://www.asppdf.net/)

Commercial product, AspPDF is an ActiveX server component for dynamically creating, reading and modifying Portable Document Format (PDF) files.

4) EVO HTML to PDF Converter v2.0 (http://www.evopdf.com/download.aspx)

Commercial product, converts HTML to PDF. It supports C# and VB.NET for ASP.NET, Windows Forms and Windows Azure Cloud.

5) easyPDF SDK (http://www.pdfonline.com/easypdf/pdf-server/automatic-create-pdf-server.htm)

Commercial product, apparently easy to use ActiveX server component allowing to generate PDF documents.

6) Essential PDF (http://www.syncfusion.com/products/reporting-edition/pdf)

Of course, when talking about .NET technologies SynchFusion cannot be missed out. So Essential PDF is a commercial product from SyncFusion, a .NET library that can produce Adobe PDF files from your data. It features a full-fledged object model allowing for the easy creation of PDF files using any .NET language. It does not have any external dependencies.

I haven’t tried it but I think that, as usual, components developed by SyncFusion are of pretty good quality.

7) Dynamic PDF Generator for .NET (http://www.cete.com/Products/DynamicPDFForNET/Generator/)

Commercial product, DynamicPDF Generator for .NET is an award winning product used for the real-time creation of PDF documents based on dynamic data.

HTML to PDF Converter for .NET (http://www.winnovative-software.com/)

Commercial product, the HTML to PDF Converter for .NET is a library that can be used in any type of .NET application, either ASP.NET web sites or Windows Forms and WPF applications, to convert URLs, HTML strings and streams to PDF or to image. The library is compatible with .NET 2.0, .NET 3.5 and .NET 4.0.

9) Aspose.Pdf.Kit for .NET (http://www.aspose.com/categories/.net-components/aspose.pdf.kit-for-.net/default.aspx)

Commercial product, Aspose.Pdf.Kit for .NET is a PDF document manipulation component that enables .NET developers to manage and manipulate existing PDF files as well as manage form fields embedded within PDF files.

10) ABCpdf (http://www.websupergoo.com/abcpdf-1.htm)

Commercial product, ABCpdf PDF is a server/client component used to dynamically read and write Adobe PDF documents on the fly.

11) ASP.NET PDF creator (http://www.novapdf.com/kb/asp-net-pdf-creator-181.html)

Commercial product, ASP.NET PDF creator refers to a computer program that installs as a virtual PDF printer driver (PDF creator) and is programmatically accessed from an ASP.NET-based web application.

http://blog.james-carr.org/2006/11/03/tdd-anti-patterns/

Discusses a very interesting subject of different abuses that are done by developers in their ‘everyday programming’. Useful to read and definitely useful to apply. Good reading!

(posting date: 2011.02.23)

Actually in %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Web Platform Installer\logs there are logs which are created each time your start Web PI. And in those logs I saw that Web PI loads data at startup from a cached files located at %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Web Platform Installer.

Solution: just delete all those files located at %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Web Platform Installer and restart Web PI. It worked in my case.

KISS Principle – Keep It Simple, Stupid

DRY Principle – Don’t Repeat Yourself

Doing a simple google search gave this answer:

Label is a more complex control than TextBlock and it has features like access keys (mnemonics) and target controls. So when you hit Alt-Key than the target control get focus (e.g. a label and a textbox).

This difference resides in the fact that TextBlock, even though it is included in Windows.System.Controls namespace, it is not a control. It inherits FrameworkElement class not the Control class. Label on the other hand it inherits from Control class.

For more details I would suggest a post on “John Smith On WPF” blog:

http://joshsmithonwpf.wordpress.com/2007/07/04/differences-between-label-and-textblock/

1) HP boot disk utility.

2) A folder containing MS DOS system files.

Command line I used:

HPUSBF I:  -FS:FAT32 -V:MYDEV -B:c:\usbdos

‘C:\USBDOS’ folder contains dos system files: command.com, io.sys, msdos.sys