Ask Kathleen


Windows Workflow Changes Direction

Learn how Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) 4.0 changes everything you thought you knew about workflow. Also, learn why using string primary keys is a bad idea; find out where to get a data grid for Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF); overcome the annoying issue of files not loading at runtime; and copy files into the executable directory.

What C# Devs Should Know About VB Programming

VB and C# share many similarities, but also have a handful of significant differences; learn what you need to know to program effectively in VB as a C# programmer.

Control Exceptions

Take control of casting exceptions, determine whether parent records have children in LINQ to SQL, and resolve cref references in XML comments.

Understand Your Code Better

Visual Studio Team System's Code Metrics feature isn't perfect, but if you understand what it's measuring and how, you can use it to gain insight into your apps' overall complexity and to spot potential problem areas.

Customize Code Generation in EF

Learn how to exclude attributes from the code that Entity Framework generates for you automatically.

Customize Your Application Startup

Customize your application startup screen and add log-in functionality; learn how to view derived types in your projects; check for improper GUIDs; and drill down on extension methods.

Return Double Values in Excel

Learn how to work around a couple bugs in Excel to return double values; drill down on lists with anonymous types; and learn the difference between Build and Rebuild.

Use Recursion to Clear out Textboxes

Clear out textboxes using recursion and LINQ; use VB literals to transform an XML document; and eliminate an annoying artifact of VB internals.

Extend Your Apps with External Add-ins

Take advantage of the System.AddIn namespace to handle logic external to your application; don't get caught by Excel's one-based indexes; and make LINQ extension methods work with ArrayLists.

Capture Variables with Closures

Learn to pass anonymous types outside the method in which they're created; take advantage of closures when working with lambda expressions; drilldown on overloading; initialize static fields properly; and see where KeyedCollections improve performance.

Bugs, Workarounds, And Gotchas in VS 2008

Kathleen discovers a bug in the Visual Basic 9.0 compiler. Also, resolving recursion problems; binding properties in the Workflow designer; some guidelines on using extension methods; moving to .NET 3.5, and more.

Share Resources Between Projects

Learn how to share resources among several projects across project boundaries in Visual Studio 2005 and VS 2008. Also, learn about Microsoft's inclusion of IDataErrorInfo in the .NET 3.5 additions to WPF and drill down on how to handle non-standard searches in dictionary classes.

Banish UAC Issues

User Account Control (UAC) issues usually result from improperly allowing administrator-level access in your applications. Learn how UAC works and make such problems a thing of the past.

Enable the Application Framework in VB

Learn what enabling the application framework in VB actually does and what an invariant culture is and how you take advantage of it.

Serialize Data to the Clipboard

Learn how to copy all the custom data formats in objects to the clipboard and determine which ones are appropriate when you paste.

Subscribe on YouTube