James Crowley

Fractional CTO | Sustainability, Climate & Impact

Author: james.crowley

  • CodeZone UK Launched

    For all you UK developers out there – CodeZone UK was officially launched during the TechEd Europe conference, after a lot of work on Microsoft’s part (with a little bit of help from community leaders to provide some initial content!) As of last Friday the site now indexes content from both Developer Fusion and DNJ online, and hopefully many more … Read more “CodeZone UK Launched”

  • Holiday!

    Well, I’m now off Uni for 3 months over the summer, which should mean I’ll finally get time to code my ASP.NET content management system for Developer Fusion…. write some articles in the process, plus squish a few bugs on the C#/VB.NET code converters!

    Attended a great talk by Scott Guthrie a few weeks ago on ASP.NET 2.0 at the … Read more “Holiday!”

  • Thames Valley User Group Kick-off Meeting

    Just thought I’d pass on the word about the first Thames Valley User Group meeting. It’s being held on 21st June at Microsoft Campus, Thames Valley Park (UK!). Speakers include Scott Guthrie (don’t think we need any introduction there…), and Andy Payne (technical architect at HP UK).

    Membership and attendance are totally free. For the full agenda, check out http://www.thamesvalleyusergroup.net/agenda.aspx. … Read more “Thames Valley User Group Kick-off Meeting”

  • Microsoft Error Messages

    Apologies to everyone in advance – this just made me laugh.

    There was once a young man who, in his youth, professed his desire to become a great writer.

    When asked to define “great” he said, “I want to write stuff that the whole world will read, stuff that people will react to on a truly emotional level, stuff that … Read more “Microsoft Error Messages”

  • Automatically convert VB.NET code to C#

    I’ve just launched another utility on Developer Fusion – this time, a converter from VB.NET to C#. This is the only VB.NET to C# converter that I’m aware of which is currently online.

    The code is very much a work-in-progress. As with the C# to VB.NET converter, the code is based on the great work of the #develop team. I’m … Read more “Automatically convert VB.NET code to C#”

  • Automatically Convert C# code to VB.NET

    I’ve just put up the first (of many) planned utilities on Developer Fusion – a conversion tool for automatically translating C# code into its VB.NET equivalent.

    http://www.developerfusion.com/utilities/convertcsharptovb.aspx

    Feel free to take a look, and let me know if you find any problems. The credit is 99.99% due to the guys behind #develop. I’ve simply made this tiny bit of their great application … Read more “Automatically Convert C# code to VB.NET”

  • Microsoft & the technical community

    A couple of days ago I was invited to a meeting of UK “technical community leaders” at Microsoft’s UK headquarters in Reading (to take place in a couple of weeks). Obviously, I’m delighted to be considered a technical community leader….!

    Anyway – the main point of the meeting is to discuss “what Microsoft can do to help support you and … Read more “Microsoft & the technical community”

  • Windows Installer XML goes live on SourceForge

    Microsoft has released the source code for the Windows Installer XML (WiX) developer tool to SourceForge earlier today under the IBM Common Public License as part of the Shared Source Initiative. This is the first SSI to go “public” on Source Forge rather than a Microsoft site, and the first to use an externally created “Open Source” license.

    There’s a discussion on … Read more “Windows Installer XML goes live on SourceForge”

  • The Coolest DHTML Grid Widget

    Came across another great DHTML Widget on SourceForge today (thanks to my good friend Thushan Fernando for pointing it out to me!). It’s a cross-browser grid called ActiveUI, complete with client-side sorting, resizable columns and icons! Very cool. Take a look at http://www.activeui.net/.

  • The Coolest DHTML Calendar Widget…

    Just came across a very cool DHTML Calender control that – guess what – allows you to select dates/times and stick them in an input field! Obviously its client-side, so its nice and fast, customizable, released under LGPL, and best of all works in almost any browser (Internet Explorer, Opera, Mozilla, Safari …).

    http://dynarch.com/mishoo/calendar.epl

    Definitely worth a look :,,)

  • New RSS Feed for Developer Fusion

    Well, I’ve finally gotten around to publishing an RSS feed for the articles on Developer Fusion . You can get it here – http://www.developerfusion.com/rss/contentrss.aspx?type=articles&language=all .

    For anyone who’s interested in the code behind it – I just wrote this simple helper class.

    /// <summary>/// Enables the generation of an RSS feed/// </summary>public class RSSFeedGenerator{    XmlTextWriter writer;    public RSSFeedGenerator(… Read more “New RSS Feed for Developer Fusion”

  • Windows IE exploit found after source code leak

    I must admit this happened much quicker than I thought it would :- see these articles on the Register and Security tracker – apparently an exploit for a buffer overrun problem in IE *5* has already been released – supposedly discovered by reading the leaked windows source code.

    I’m curious as to whether this source code leak will be a … Read more “Windows IE exploit found after source code leak”