One of the basic but important security issues in web development that you should pay attention to is SQL Injection. Recently HP released a free tool called Scrawlr to test such vulnerabilities.

This tool checks your pages using a simple crawler or Google query and find any SQL Injection problems. This tool can only check issues on GET parameters.

You can check up to 1500 URL in each web site using this free tool.

Download: https://download.spidynamics.com/Products/scrawlr/

 

A few days ago, I found some free time to study some articles and documentation about .netTiers. I tested it on some of my previous projects and result was great. Professional software architecture in generated code, smart code generation based on database tables and columns, ease of use, etc. are amazing features of this open source template for CodeSmith.

.netTiers official website has a documenation you can read online but how I searched, I couldn't find any offline version of this documentation to download. So I saved all documentation sections as HTML files and also created PDF version of each page. You can download this documentation in a compress file here (3.7 MB).

 

BlogEngine.NET 1.2 released. As you may know it's a free blog tool written in C# and ASP.NET 2.0 and they added many features to this release which you can see here.

In this release BlogEngine supports 26 language packages including Persian language which I had translated its resources for them.

Although, I don't use BlogEngine at present (and I'm using dasBlog), I'm thinking about migration to BlogEngine because of more features. In this version BlogEngline also supports BlogML for import/export (Thanks Keyvan!).

More on BlogEngline.NET: Download Latest Release | Documents | Hosters that offer BlogEngine.NET | Complete Features List | Some Videos.

 

Today I found an article on ASP.NET official website introducing a custom control to show weather on your website.

Milan Negovan has talked about his control and features in this article. I know it's two easy to write some lines of code to use a customized RSS feed from Yahoo! Weather (RSS example for Tehran current weather) or other websites and display it in an appropriate format in our websites, but as a ready-to-use tool you can just download this control and drop it in your client projects as an extra feature! Before download you can see a live demo here.

For those who want to challenge more with technical issues: This article describes how to use NOAA Weather WebService to show a customized look weather report.

 

asp.netPRO Magazine recently published 3 latest issues in PDF format as a free download. You can download July, August and September issues here.

 

Scott Hanselman, like past years, introduced a 2007 list of developer and power users tools for Windows. If you are familiar with his cool lists you can enjoy his fresh 2007 version of it and if you didn't hear anything about his list before its time to take a look at it.

In addition to those tools I've ever been using, I downloaded these tools in my first look at list and I will read list exactly later!: Query Express, CollectionGen, Code Style Enforcer, Microsoft BPA, Resource Refactor.

Thanks Scott, you are an angel!

 

Are you tired of commercial expensive anti-virus softwares which you should buy and be charged for update subscriptions every year? Yesterday I was looking for a free and good anti-virus software to install on my laptop. After I googled a while, finally I reached ALWIL Software web site.

This company offers an anti-virus software called avast! that is a good tool to substitute softwares like Norton or McAfee.

Fortunately, avast! has a free edition for non-commercial uses. avast! 4 Home Edition is for home users who do not use their computer for profit. You can download its setup file and install it on your PC. In order to use this free edition, you should register it (for free!) to receive a serial number. Then you can enjoy this powerful, modern anti-virus software.

This edition will give you real-time protection, complete auto update from Internet, Web, IM, Email protection and etc.. Also you can use it on 64-bit systems.

User interface is available in these languages: English, Bulgarian, Czech, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Japanese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Turkish.

Do you believe?!!


Download: English Version (around 10 MB) | Other Languages
Register: Right Here!

 

You have seen a file named "AssemblyInfo.cs (or .vb according to your programming language)" in your projects. This file contains information about the output assembly of your project such as Author's Name, Copyright Notice, ... and Assembly Version. By default assembly version is set to 1.0.0.0. This version declaration shows major.minor.build.revision numbers of your assembly. Two first numbers are commonly constant e.g. 2.0. Third number follows YYMMDD rule (of build date) and the last number is build counter.

It is a good idea to change assembly version and use it in your application. For example you can show Application Version to the end user. It's so easy, take a look:

Assembly assembly = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly();
string version = assembly.GetName().Version.ToString();

 But one thing that I was interested in was "How to tell Visual Studio 2005 change assembly version in an auto increment behavior?"

After I googled this issue I found a solution on MSBuild Team Blog. They built an AssemblyInfoTask on GotDotNet.com. It's so easy to be integrated in your project. Just download the required package and run it. It will install AssemblyInfoTask in your GAC or Application Data folder (depending on your choice). Then you should add this single line of code to your project file after last <Import> tag:

<Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Microsoft\AssemblyInfoTask\Microsoft.VersionNumber.targets"/>

or this one (if you installed it in Data Application folder):

<Import Project="$(APPDATA)\Microsoft\MSBuild\AssemblyInfoTask\Microsoft.VersionNumber.Targets"/>

Everything is done now! Your Assembly Version will change automatically based on the rules I said before.

Because Setup file and updated help file of this project are located on GotDotNet.com and you should login to this site and also join this project to download them, I uploaded Setup package and updated Help file for you. Find them below:

Downlod: Setup Package | Updated Help File

 

Microsoft released beta 1.1 version of CSS friendly ASP.NET 2.0 control adapters Beta 1.1. This is a free tool let you force your server side controls render html output as you like based on CSS technology. As is read on its web site:

"ASP.NET is a great technology for building web sites but it would be even better if it rendered different HTML. For example, the Menu control makes it simple to add a menu to a web site but it would be better if it didn't create <table> tags and was easier to style using CSS. Happily, it's easy to "teach" the Menu control how to generate the kind of HTML that you prefer. Indeed, you can modify any ASP.NET control so it produces better HTML.

The key is to use something that may be new to you: control adapters. These are little chunks of logic that you add to your web site to effectively "teach" an ASP.NET control how to render better HTML."

You can download it for ASP.NET 2.0 here. Also you can find a complete guide and some live examples here.

 

Recently Apress has offered one of his amazing books as a free eBook for download. This books is "Google, Amazon, and Beyond: Creating and Consuming Web Services". If you like you can download a PDF version of this eBook here (Download Size: 2.1 MB).

Update: Looking for some other free eBooks from Apress?! It's here!

 

A few days ago I was searching the web and specially download.com web site for a RAM manager and optimizer software. There were many commercial softwares for this purpose but I was looking for a free version! Finally I reached BySoft.com web site. They offer a free software called FreeRAM. Its installation file is only 505 KB. When you install and run it, FreeRAM will place an icon on your tray showing current available memory. It has quick shortcuts that let you free your memory to a desired amount easily. Also you can specify a RAM Alarm so that when your available memory becomes less than this number, software automatically frees your RAM.

For my personal use it helps me alot. Now that I'm writing this post my available memory is 27 MB... and after I ordered FreeRAM free my memory, my available memory is 94 MB now!!

Highly Recomended!

BySoft FreeRam: Web Site | Download

 

Microsoft released Anti-Cross Site Scripting (XSS) Library V1.0 for .NET framework [Details]

I think after SQL Injection, XSS is the second vulnerability which many web sites are infected to and so this tool can help (and awake!) many developers control this danger in their codes.

As said on download page of this library, current downloadable package only contains .NET 2.0 binaries and 1.x versions are due to release in future (Bad news :(( I still have to use 1.x version in some projects).

More information about XSS can be found here.

UPDATE: Library updated! Now it supports both .NET 2.0 and 1.x.

 

Brian Goldfarb has collected a list of must see "How Do I" video series for ASP.NET 2.0. (Total download size: 198 MB)

 

MSDN Magazine Special Issue: Visual Studio 2005 Guided Tour.

Download: PDF (21.1 MB) | CHM | Code

 

Yesterday, I was talking to Nima about some new web development tools he has found out these days. One of amazing open-source tools he introduced to me was Rico. Today morning I saw a link to Rico at del.icio.us too. So you can guess how popular it became! (Many links have been made, you see!).

As seen on Rico's web site, Rico in an open-source JavaScript library for creating rich internet applications. It provides full Ajax support, darg 'n drop management and a cinematic effects library.

To see how Rico can reduce your time, take a look at one of its demos here. You have a colored box built using a DIV tag and want to round its corners. Use complicated CSS? Use four images at the corners? Other solutions...? Rico answers: new Rico.Effect.Round( tagName, className, options). Yes, finished!

Many other effects are available too and you can use it in you own applications. Save your time!

Rico: Home | Demos | Features | Download

 

Microsoft released PetShop 4.0. As you may know, PetShop is a web application designed to show the best practices for building enterprise, n-tier web solutions using Microsoft .NET technology. The previous version (PetShop 3.0) was a major different release because Microsoft team intoruced a model for PetShop that both SQL Server 2000 and Oracle databases were supported.

In this new version PetShop uses Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and Oracle 10g Database.

It's a few months that I am using PetShop coding and project model in my own web applications and I think that this model gives all web developers a better feel to develop their projects.

As you can read here, PetShop 4.0 is a good practice for those who want to migrate from ASP.NET 1.x to 2.0 and want to keep their coding style as modern as possible.

If you used PetShop 3.0 before and want to migrate your .NET Framework I suggest you download it right now!

Microsoft PetShop 4.0: Information | Download

 

Today I have 2 useful free components for ASP.NET 2.0 (and one of them for 1.x as well) to introduce:

• Code Highligher for ASP.NET 2.0 (Also compatible with .NET Framework v.1.x)
  This component is a source code syntax highlighting tool that can help you make your source codes more readable for your visitors. This component supports C#, CSS, HTML, INI files, Java, JScript, Perl, PHP, Python, SQL, VB.NET, VBScript, and XML and ... It's FREE!
  Home | Sample | Download
• Flash Control for ASP.NET 2.0
  This component will help you add Macromedia Flash files (with .swf extension) to your web pages using a server side control. You will have full VS 2005 Designer support. The generated code validates XHTML 1.0 strict. You can download and use this control in your projects for free but also source code is available for 199 USD.
  Home | Features | Download
  [UPDATE]: Looking for a similar control for ASP.NET 1.x? Try AIxtend AI Flash'In.

 

Microsoft released Beta 2 version of Internet Explorer 7: Home | Download | Tour | Blog.

 

Have you ever used Yahoo! Widget? Today while I was seeking for something else on Yahoo.com I found this amazing tool from Yahoo!.

Let's take a look at what Yahoo said about it:

"The Yahoo! Widget Engine (formerly known as Konfabulator) is a JavaScript runtime engine for Windows and Mac OS X that lets you run little files called Widgets that can do pretty much whatever you want them to. Widgets can be alarm clocks, calculators, can tell you your WiFi signal strength, will fetch the latest stock quotes for your preferred symbols, and even give your current local weather..."

In fact you can install Widget Engine from widget.yahoo.com and add as many widgets as you like. Many ready-to-use widgets are provided by Yahoo itself and some others are built by third party companies and users.

One point that was so interesting to me is the speed of these widgets. You may not be aware that these tiny tools would decrease your system performance and speed. They sit on your desktop and don't disturb you!

I suggest you download Yahoo Widget and use its useful widgets to organize your works and access required daily information like weather, stock report, notepad, ...

Yahoo! Widget: Home | Widget Gallery | Download (for Windows)