NDoc is dead. Long live NDoc! How to generate MSDN style documentation using Sand Castle on Visual Studio 2008. Read More...

Using field codes to replace values in content, templates, and reports allows users and designers a great deal of flexibility for creating and managing content and templates without requiring code changes.

This article is a summary of how to use field codes in content, templates, or reports and how to convert them to object property values and format and replace them when displayed or rendered.  This is based on a similar pattern that Microsoft Word uses when formatting fields.  It’s also commonly used in WordPress and WordPress themes.Read More...

What they needed

E3 Retail had some good looking products including Point of Sale, Enterprise promotions, Returns, and 4690 hardware migration. Which used Microsoft’s Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), to provide a visually rich user experience.  However, E3 Retail didn’t  have a comparable website to show them off. Read More...

With a little forethought and planning, it’s possible to create URLs that can be around the web for a long time and as Tim Berners-Lee pointed out cool URIs don't change.  Choose wisely though, you may have to live with the URLs for much longer than you think, or if your not careful, you may end up with too many URLs pointing to the same content. Read More...

Jessica Enders has an interesting article at A List Apart on Zebra Striping: Does it Really Help?

Her main points considered are does it increase accuracy, or speed.  The raw statistics don't show anything statistically significant.  The readers did report a 46% preference for zebra striping, but 36% said they didn't care.

I believe that anything that improves the readability, or visual appeal of information is going to be helpful to users.  I also believe that with wider screens and more space between columns, the striping is more helpful. Read More...

What size should your photos be when posting them to the web?  What are the common standard digital photo image sizes? 

Every site I looked at had different size images, but some common themes did emerge.  240 x 160 pixels was a very common small format. Larger images were typically around 460 pixels wide.  If you make your images larger than 460 pixels, most layouts in most blogs or site designs will have some difficulty fitting these sizes into the layout.

My Preferred Image Sizes

1. Very Large 800 pixels
2. Large 500 or 520 pixels
3. Medium 460 pixels
4. Medium-Small 320 pixels
5. Small 240 pixels
6. Thumbnail 100 pixels
7. Square Thumb 75 pixels

Read More...