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It should be fixed now, sorry for the inconvenience.
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Thanks Chris and Kamil! I got the code in a zip file now.
"I've seen more information on a frickin' sticky note!" - Dave Kreskowiak
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Codeproject is great for writing and publishing article, github/git is great for hosting code.
Do you ever evaluated some sort of integration?
For example instead of manually uploading a zip file you can provide a way to pull it from a git repo. In this way updating the source code can be really fast and easy.
A similar solution can be provided for article text (a markdown file inside the repository?).
I say this because I hate to always keep up to date my articles on codeproject (cleaning the project, zip it, uploading it, modify the link, ...). Usually I simply put a header that point to the official github repository and I never update it on codeproject.
best regards
Davide
davide
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Recently I found about this. Really sad to hear that ....
And we want to see more new ideas from you people.
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We're now supporting MathJax[^] in articles, meaning you can include MathML or TeX (or even ASCII math) in your articles and the equations will be rendered as Thales of Miletus intended. More or less.
Take a look at Tips and Tricks for CodeProject.com[^] for a rundown.
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Cool.
What do you get when you cross a joke with a rhetorical question?
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One of the big issues with having 10M members is names. Everyone has a name, and most want to use their name, or at least something vaguely resembling it. The issue is that Real Names are messy, human things meant for messy human things, and are terrible as a way to label things in a way that makes it easy (for a programmer) to reference that name within text or in a URI. We can't have //www.codeproject.com/members/Chris Maunder because the HTTP spec doesn't allow spaces in URIs, nor can we confidently say Chris Maunder refers to me in text, because it could also refer to someone names Chris who is rambling incoherently[^].
So we have Display names as a way to label your content such as posts and articles, and we have usernames as a way to provide a human readable and programmer parsable handle to your account. //www.codeproject.com/members/chris-maunder as a link to you and @chris-maunder as a reference to you in messages.
You don't need to use @username and you can be safely ignore the feature if it bugs you. However, if you like the convenience then a member's username can be found on their profile page or in the popup that appears when you hover over their name in the forums (assuming you have "Profile Popups" enabled in the forums).
[Edit] OK, I caved! You can now do @[Display Name]. eg @[Chris Maunder]. Note, however, that if the user's display name contains HTML this won't work.
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We've finished reworking our caching of forums and articles and are happy to see load times for forums go from half-second to 6 milliseconds. That's beyond what we thought we'd get. Start diving deep into messages from the days of yore and load times don't appreciably change. We've essentially opened up the entire corpus of Forum postings for instant retrieval and slain a number of bugs, thrown out pages of code in the process and reduced our database load by a factor of three. It's almost idling now.
On the article side of things we've improved performance even more and have one final push, after which time we'll hunt down and nuke any remaining load issues.
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Welcome to the 20th Century.
For a decade we've been working against a local cache on each of the webservers. This meant that we either had to keep the time-to-live short, or we had to work out a sensible way of ensuring that when a member changes an article on one server, and is then directed to another server, they see their updated information - even though the local caches didn't talk to one another.
Yes: distributed caching is a solved problem but there weren't many canned solutions when we started, and we did end up doing some clever things to ensure it all looked sensible, give or take some "expected" caching issues such as a deleted article still occasionally being around for 10 or so minutes. "Expected" really comes does to what is forgiveable, and in this day and age even stuff like that stretches the friendship so we've finally had a chance to bite the bullet, plug up the local cache and add a couple of Redis [^] servers. We're using the ServiceStack Redis client[^] and implemented - fairly easily - a distributed cache that not just solves our cache-sync issues but speeds up application spool up time since the cache is off-server and independent of the webservers themselves. No need to recache on startup - the data's already there.
We are, obviously, seeing our cache load times go up since it's no longer a local cache but requires a network round trip plus serialisation, the overall database load is nicely down and our code is far cleaner.
Redis. Love ya work.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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I was sick of moving between computers, sick of the power outages in our building knocking me off my machine, and sick of having to Remote Desktop from home to my office machine to be productive. I'd setup various machines that would allow me to do the basics when I had to use them (eg for travel) but it's never the same. Like sleeping in someone's spare room - no matter how comfortable it's never quite the same.
I figured that laptops these days were pretty damn powerful and after road testing[^] a couple of Ultrabooks I decided that anything Core i7 with 8GB RAM would be more than enough for me. All I needed was something that would let me install Windows 7, something that was light, and something that had a big, fast SSD.
Enter the mid-2013 Macbook Air. Core i7, 8GB RAM, and the fastest 256GB SSD around.
To cut to the chase: it's an excellent dev machine and is faster than my 4 year old quad i7 desktop. I'm seriously impressed. I'm now able to work on a single machine anywhere in the world without having to compromise by switching to a slower machine for travelling, and I have the added bonus that I no longer need a desktop for the office and a laptop for travel. A single unit does the trick.
The annoying bits
It's a Mac. Apple did not go out of their way to make the Bootcamp experience exceptional. The trackpad sucks in Windows, yet it's by far my favourite trackpad when in MacOS. It's brilliant. Trackpad++ sort of fixes this, though. [Update in Win10 the trackpad works perfectly]
I tried using parallels to create a VM from my Bootcamp partition in order to run VS while in the Mac environment. This was great, and you get the proper trackpad experience, but the big glaring issue was that I needed to use a USB DisplayLink adapater to hookup to an external monitor and installing DispalyLink drivers in bootcamp and then running it under Parallels causes the Windows VM to bluescreen. Parallels is aware of the issue and had no plans at the time to do anything about it.
So I stick to Bootcamp or MacOS and never the twain shall meet.
Docking stations became a big issue because I need a lot of screen real estate. I hate cable spaghetti, though, and tried a number of options before settling on an option that gives me almost everyhing for the (ironically) cheapest price: A thunderbolt display.
Thunderbolt displays are expensive. However, they come with a split thunderbolt / power adapter that plugs into the thunderbolt port on one side and provide a power cable to the laptop on the other side. Within the thunderbolt display are a pair of excellent speakers, a webcam, USB 3.0 ports, and gigabit ethernet. It's essentially a fully self-contained docking station built into one of the nicest monitors I've ever used, and with the 27" running 2560 x 1440, it allows me to run VS on one half and SQL MS or Chrome or anything else on the other half in the same manner that I'd previously been using two separate screens.
So factor in the cost of two 19" screens, a docking station ($250 - $300) plus speakers / external webcam + cables and you'll find that a refurbished 27" thunderbolt display is way cheaper, far more convenient and (for me at least) a much nicer experience.
The drawback is that Windows doesn't play well with thunderbolt and you may have to physically shut down your machine before unplugging the monitor if you have the monitor set as your primary display. Further, you need to plug the monitor in before you boot up a windows box because Windows only scans for thunderbolt on bootup. This is really, really annoying. [Update in Win10 the thunderbolt display works nicely]
The only other annoying bit is fan noise. I hammer that poor little laptop and in a quiet room at 2AM when you're building code and running a zillion unit tests then thing really winds up and gets a bit rowdy. I'm still waiting to see what Apple does with the 13" Macbook Pro since a quad core Haswell unit could have a little more headroom before it starts to get hot and bothered - or at the very least it'll be done with it's tasks sooner meaning noise for a shorter time. A retina display would be nice, but totally not needed, but the added weight is a real issue. Touchscreen - while something I've grown to love with the Ultrabooks - is a complete waste for me. The laptop sits by my monitor, closed, while I work. I have no desire to put finger prints all over my big display, and after my experiences with the Perceptual Computing Challenge I know how tired arms get after spending even short periods trying to navigate with your arms up.
Overall a 7/10. [Update 8.5/10 when used with Windows 10]
Pro
- single machine whereever I am in the world
- excellent setup with the external thunderbolt display
- built in UPS. Love it.
- Totally fast enough.
Con
Windows issues with thunderbolt connections- Noisy when hot and bothered
- Did I rally say a computer was "fast enough"? I lied. No such thing.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
modified 27-Jun-16 11:09am.
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We skipped VS2013 / .NET 4.5 and jumped straight over to VS 2013 / .NET 4.5.1 because, y'know, it's far more exciting running your production servers on beta software rather than on the boring "tested" stuff.
We're not using any of the fun stuff explicitly, yet, but Matthew has already been eyeing off a bunch of code that can do with some async action. The thing that's most immediate to me is the multi-core JIT and startup time; all cores are actually getting used, CPU usage is up where it should be, and the site spools up much, much nicer than it ever has. Simply getting the advantages of the framework improvements is (almost) enough for me.
The other obvious timesaver is build time: much, much faster than VS2010, even when bogged down with all the other stuff I have open. I'm developing, testing, and running the site on my Macbook Air on Win7. There's the VS IDE, SQL Server Management Studio, IIS running the actual site, Outlook groaning under the weight of a 23Gb pst, various Word docs and spreadsheets, 6 remote desktop windows and half a dozen browser windows and it's all humming along nicely.
Although sometimes (especially during compile time) the humming sounds suspiciously like the Mac's fan is about to attempt takeoff. It gets disturbingly loud.
I'm still not taken with the new VS look - a little harsh, a little lacking on warmth, but it's way faster and, so far, more stable than my old creaking install of VS2010.
As to my experiment with moving my developer life onto a tiny, ultralight laptop: the jury's still out. 7/10 so far.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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So you skipped and went to VS2013 at the same time? *Mind Blown*
Keep Clam And Proofread
--
√(-1) 23 ∑ π...
And it was delicious.
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Relax. I spend a good 5 - maybe even 10 - minutes testing before deploying.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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I got sick of typing URLs for members and so, well, I coded.
To provide a link to another member just use the tried and true @username syntax, where the username is the username generated from their name (or manually modified) in the form first-last. Everyone's profile shows the username just under their profile image.
So if I want to shout out to a ray of sunshine I can just go @Michael-Martin (no link - just type that literally) and when the message is saved the link is generated.
Obviously this is opening a can of worms and I know the next two requests. Yes, soon.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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Let's see how messy it gets. I've just added, in order to increase the noise, email notifications for when you are mentioned (eg via @ProgramFOX) in a message.
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Chris Maunder wrote: I've just added, in order to increase the noise, email notifications for when you are mentioned
That's a good idea, but I got two notifications just for one reply. Perhaps it's a better idea to give just one notification if you got a reply and you're mentioned in that reply.
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Chris Maunder wrote: Obviously this is opening a can of worms and I know the next two requests. Yes, soon.
Aaah, the public API and hashtags.
Well, do all of us a favor and turn the hashtag feature down in order to avoid "#Urgenzz #plzz #sent #gimme #codezz #yolo #swag" - Questions.
Marco@CodeProject $ fake-identity -make "Anthony DiNozzo" Success - Created fake Identity: Anthony DiNozzo Marco@CodeProject $
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Adam, our latest addition to our Dev team, has completed a feature I've wanted for, oh, about 10 years (no that it was available 10 years ago...)
Drag and drop file uploads for the submissions wizard.
When posting an article just drag the files you want to add onto the dotted box and they will be uploaded and ready to be included in your article.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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The mobile version of CodeProject has been updated a little to help those with fat fingers (ie me). It's by no means perfect, but we've aimed for a simplified UI, easy to read fonts and easy to touch buttons while still maintaining as much browsing and reading functionality as we can.
We have, however, limited some actions (eg voting) for a subsequent rev. We'd rather focus on providing a nice UI to read articles than worry that fat fingers (looking in the mirror again) will accidentally hit the down (or up) vote button while trying to read the next article.
Suggestions and bugs always welcome[^].
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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The Essential Guide to Mobile App Testing[^] should be required reading for devs and those who pruport to manage devs who are involved in mobile app development. It's a rare, rare day that I promote a specific whitepaper but as part of our new Research Library[^] we've been working incredibly hard to find companies that have spent the time to create research material that helps you make decisions instead of simply showing you powerpoint slides of their product.
I take my hat off to uTest. Very, very nice.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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In the spirit over avoiding real work I've been playing around with an idea that is ridiculously simple but may provide a little entertainment for our members: Stylable member profiles.
Go to your settings page[^] and hit the Customisation tab and you'll see a text area for entering in styles augment or override our basic styles.
This is fraught with peril on so many levels. Firstly, you might break our page. Secondly, when we update our styles or page layout, we may break your styling. Thirdly, things could just get messy. Really messy.
But that's what life's all about, isn't it. So enjoy.
Secondly. we've introduced a new article type called "Reference". This will be fleshed out a little more soon, but for now we wanted to provide a place for things that I've wanted to post for eons: tables and reference sheets. What's ASCII value of X? What's the HTML entity for Y? Stuff like that. Let's start simple and work our way up.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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Chris Maunder wrote: Stylable member profiles
I love it!
Please see what I've done![^] (hint: look at the Editor and Enquirer points) I changed the color to platinum , but I've undone this. Perhaps you should limit the possibilities.
modified 10-Jun-13 12:04pm.
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This morning I had an experience that provided such a classic picture of the entire IT industry for me right now:
I went into the Microsoft store and was looking at an Acer Aspire S7. It looked nice and said on the blurb "128GB SSD". So I took a peek at the Computer's properties and saw "57.9GB free of 79.8GB" on drive C - the only drive visible.
I asked the sales guy where the 128 - 80 = 48GB was. He told me the missing space was used by the OS, which I politely disagreed with because the OS was currently on Drive C and was using about 22GB of space. He then tells me that the demo software they have installed that's using up the space (I again disagree), and then tells me it's the recovery partition that's using the space, so I ask him to show me this 48GB recovery partition. He hits Window-C, the (HD) screen totally fills with Control panel applets and he types in "Disk management" but nothing appears. He scans the list of applets briefly then gives up and then right-swipes to get the settings but again gives up, and after fumbling around finds a list of partitions, but is unable to get me the size of any of them. He then turns to me and says "this is really outside of a sales thing - I need to get you my tech guy".
He clearly didn't know what he was doing, but he had a good enough clue to be able to navigate around better than most people I've seen who have used Win8. Yet he couldn't answer a simple question relating to what the tag says and what's actually on sale, and said it was a technical, not a sale question. I left the store feeling the same way you feel when you leave a mechanics who tells you you need to get the air in your tyres exchanged at the beginning and end of Winter and that'll be $149.99, please.
I felt lost when he was going all over the place trying to answer the question (and I've used win8 an awful lot) and then I felt like my question was unimportant to them, that I shouldn't be asking it, and that the answers I got were made up (which they were).
It felt complicated, It felt confusing, and it was impossible to make a choice on laptops because there were no answers, and that the answers I would get I couldn't trust anyway.
I wander 3 doors down to the Apple store, look at the properties of a 1TB iMac and ask to see the actual size of the HDD. The sales dude does a single right-click, Get info and shows me that of 999.4GB, there is 978.7GB free. We're done.
There's 1 keyboard layout. You can have light (11" or 13") and medium powered with OK screens or heavier, thicker, more powerful with retina displays (13" or 15"). It's easy - except that I want a retina display on an Air. Not because any other laptop I've ever seen as a retina display: only because the Macbook Pro's have a retina display. I don't actually, in isolation, want a retina display, I just don't want to feel like I'm missing out on something.
When I look at Tablets I see the iPad, Android or Surface devices and they are all fairly simply to use. Phones, be it Android, Win Phone 8, iPhone or Blackerry are all simple to use. They are in fact simpler to use than ever, with only Feature phones being simpler (but many of them were tear the hair out annoying).
Yet Laptops and PCs seem to have increasing their complexity and choice and confusion making the buying decision complicated and intimidating. Windows 8 has made actually using a laptop confusing and complicated. Put these together and you have a sales nightmare: you don't know which one to buy and while trying to decide you don't know how to actually use the thing you think you need to buy.
And then you wander over to Apple and you think "My God this is so simple" and you have limited choice, and you feel you have a chance at making a decision.
Previously, however, the decision would come down to "Do I pay a 30%-50% premium on essentially the same hardware just to get an Apple". For me this has always been game over - I'm simply not willing to pay that much. Yet today I'm looking at a complicated Windows 8 machine that was more expensive than the simple Apple machine.
Buying a PC or laptop/Ultrabook is no longer easy or as cheap as it was a year or so ago. Win8 is (to me anyway) a technically better and more secure operating system than MacOS ruined by an awful UI. Apple has a still-maturing OS that is staring to acknowledge that security is important but still crashes, still locks up and still can't seem to work out how to handle network calls on a background thread. But it's simple, the machines will never offend anyone with their looks, you get what you pay for, and they are now in the same price bracket (or below) many of the Ultrabooks.
I can understand why PC sales have fallen, and for me it's not just tablets. What I don't understand is why Apple hasn't gone for the jugular like they did on Windows Vista.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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