Tips

Need your server and your site up and running quick? Let Greg Larsen show you what you need to know to get SQL Server running and configured.

Explore an Undo/Redo framework for editing controls in a Windows application.

The new Windows 7 user interface features can offer Web developers significant productivity gains in terms of organizing, finding, and navigating to commonly used resources. This article introduces you to the improvements which can cut significant time from otherwise mundane daily workflow tasks.

What order should the OK and Cancel buttons appear? Should it be like Windows or like the Mac? Are there any "rule of thumb" as to when certain standard should be followed or is it just a matter of taste?

Visual Basic developers will be happy with the new simple feature coming to Visual Basic - a feature languages like C# have had all along....

Few projects end up having too much time. Successfully completing a project often depends on tackling core, significant, and risky aspects of any custom solution first—like the long hard march up hill—and finishing with the trim, or cosmetic work, last.

When handed a crate of lemons, make lemonade. Success in a tough economic climate is about perspective and attitude.

Wisdom is figuring out whether every time you encounter a pointy-headed manager you are going to roll over and save your sanity (and possibly your job) or stand up, be counted, and risk greatness or the guillotine. There is a temporary sense of safety in staying with the herd, but all herd-roads lead to the butcher.

If a person or group does something successfully one time, ten times, or a hundred times, there is an increasingly better chance that group will succeed again. All of the books in the world won't turn a ten year old kid into Gordy Howe or Wayne Gretzky. There is an element of talent. Find the talent.

Build your applications with built-in "mock types" (aka "services stubs") to facilitate continued development and unit testing even when essential systems services are unavailable.

Successful software projects have to begin with the premise that a fixed price, time, and project that is accurate may be a fantasy because there are too many unknowns—people sometimes being the worst offenders. Fix a time and price to what can be fixed and pay for what must be paid for.

Discover a few points to keep in mind during and after the creation of your web site, such as form referrer check, URL canonization, and so forth.

A Monday morning quarterback is a person who, after the event, offers advice or criticism concerning decisions made by others; or, one who second guesses. Too many Monday morning quarterbacks on Sunday evening can screw up your Focus IQ. Learn what "Focus IQ" is, why you want the score as high as possible, and how to get it there.

Learn how to estimate projects (the tangible and intangibles) effectively in the real world to ensure success.

.NET programmers can become a little lazy when it comes to performance optimization. Discover a few easy tips to keep performance at a peak!

Knowledge, flexibility, and the discretion of smart individuals beats a one-size fits all rule book any day.

Participating in your local .NET users group can lead to greater job satisfaction, money, and prestige. Don't doubt it; the author is living proof.

Dare to enter the world of approximate string matching with this introduction, tutorial, and Access 2000 database demo with a 99% precision/recall.

Study the effect of the dollar sign on reducing the size of Visual Basic 6.0 applications.

Software projects fail because some critical management principles remain largely ignored. Find out what the prerequisites are for building software as quickly as humanly possible.

Paul Kimmel says tests are impersonal, impractical, and inefficient for evaluating potential. Worst of all, they promote laziness in personnel departments that use them as the determining factor for hiring.

You know the problems that you face when working with Crystal Reports due to its poor and confusing documentation. See ready-to-go code to access reports developed in Crystal Reports 9 (with or without RAS 9) using ASP.NET.

Paul Kimmel speaks out on behalf of all the mistreated contractors out there.

Open a URL or send an e-mail with a click of a button from within a VB application.

Learn how a common procedure can be written in VB to generate Excel pivot reports using COM.