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Creating the illusion of a pen writing on paper is no easy software task. Fortunately, the .NET Framework hosts Tablet PC extensions, which lets you create ink-aware applications for the Tablet PC. This API allows applications to draw strokes on the screen and perform a variety of tasks including document markup, storage, and transmission.This article shows you how to handle a couple of inking events as used in the InkClipboard sample.

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Tablet PC: Achieve the Illusion of Handwriting on Paper When Using the Managed INK API

Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System is a new technology that brings the advanced features of Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework to apps built on Microsoft Word 2003 and Excel 2003. Now you can use Visual Basic .NET and C# to write document-centric, managed code solutions that run in-process with Word 2003 or Excel 2003, taking advantage of the rich object models they expose.

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Office 2003: Bring the Power of Visual Studio .NET to Business Solutions Built with Microsoft Office

Office InfoPath 2003 is a new Microsoft Office product that lets you design your own data collection forms that, when submitted, turn the user-entered data into XML for any XML-supporting process to use. With an InfoPath solution in place, you can convert all those commonly used paper forms into Microsoft Office-based forms and end the cycle of handwriting and reentering data into your systems. Today organizations are beginning to realize the value of the mountains of data they collect every day, how hard it is to access it, and are striving to mine it effectively

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InfoPath: Turn User Input into XML with Custom Forms Using Office InfoPath 2003

Coroutines are a powerful feature of many programming languages including CLU, Scheme, Python, Ruby, and ICON. Coroutines can save processor overhead and reduce redundancy because they allow you to stop execution of a procedure midstream, return a value, and resume exactly where the procedure left off.This article shows how coroutines can be implemented for the .NET Framework by using the Fiber API and Managed Extensions for C++, and how they can be easily used with other .NET-compliant languages. This article also shows a sophisticated use of the runtime host for running multiple managed threads on a single OS thread

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Coroutines: Implementing Coroutines for .NET by Wrapping the Unmanaged Fiber API

Code generation techniques using technologies such as XSLT are playing an increasingly important part in software projects as they support the development of a rapidly maintainable code base. This article discusses some of the benefits and possible applications of code generation.To demonstrate these techniques the author develops a Web Forms application that supports the maintenance of records in a SQL Server database, using the database’s own metadata to drive the generation process.

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XSLT: Simplify Development and Maintenance of Microsoft .NET Projects with Code Generation Techniques

Now that you’re writing managed code, you’ll certainly want to use your existing COM components, but you can’t simply call them directly. Instead, you have to wrap the COM component in a runtime-callable wrapper that acts as a proxy between the component and your managed code. While the CLR provides wrapper classes for this purpose, there will be times when you’ll want custom objects to wrap your COM components

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DCOM Interop: Generate Custom Managed C++ Wrappers for Easier COM Interoperation Using DCOMSuds

In an earlier article the authors showed how to build a custom WebMethods extension that provides XML Schema validation, a function that is lacking in ASP.NET. In the process they established a foundation for enforcing business rules during the deserialization of XML data. The technique, which is described in this article, uses declarative XPath assertions to test business rule compliance.In building this business rules validation engine, the authors integrate the validation descriptions into the WSDL file that is automatically generated by the WebMethod infrastructure.

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Web Services: Extend the ASP.NET WebMethod Framework with Business Rules Validation

Although most developers and APIs use the RGB scheme when working with colors, it’s not the only available way to represent or select colors. For instance, the standard Windows color-selection dialog box allows you to work with the HSL color scheme in an indirect way. In this article, the author describes several color selection schemes, and uses GDI+ (via the System.Drawing namespace) to create a component that makes it possible for your own applications to provide a simpler, friendlier color chooser

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GDI+: A Primer on Building a Color Picker User Control with GDI+ in Visual Basic .NET or C#

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), a W3C graphics standard built around XML, is one of several vector graphics technologies that allows fast, lightweight drawings such as charts and graphs to be rendered on the fly in an appropriate viewer. There are many advantages to such vector graphics, including conservation of bandwidth and storage media, and flexibility. This article explains these benefits and shows you how to easily add powerful, dynamic, interactive visual elements to your Web applications.

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Vector Graphics: Build Flexible, Lightweight XML-Based Images for ASP.NET Using Scalable Vector Graphics

Managing resources in C++ is not easy. When you’re unsuccessful, your app can leak all kinds of resources including file system handles, database connections, and, of course, memory. Even in garbage-collected languages like Managed C++, resource management is difficult because garbage collection only deals with memory management, not the other resources that cause performance problems.In this article, the author describes the SmartAny template library he created, which uses a policy-based approach to dynamic resource management.

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Smart Cleanup: Achieve More Reliable Resource Management with Our Custom C++ Classes

Building a basic, reusable application framework can make development quicker and easier. This allows you to focus more on the problems at hand and less on the repetitive tasks involved in building any application. In this article, the author presents a framework that provides facilities to access the registry and an extensible framework for logging messages to a console window or the Event Viewer.

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Debugging Tool: Build a Logging and Event Viewing Library to Help Debug Your .NET Framework-based App

Developer’s machines can often be more vulnerable to viruses than the average corporate user because of their more frequent access to remote machines and shares, and the differing administrative privileges they maintain across mutiple machines. Reliance on antivirus software is fine as a first line of defense, but you need a basic arsenal of skills for securing the executables on your system and coping with viruses on your own.

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Virus Hunting: Understand Common Virus Attacks Before They Strike to Better Protect Your Apps

Design-time automation makes coding faster and ensures that all the procedures generated use the same naming conventions and structure. In an effort to improve their coding efficiency in a large SQL project, the authors wrote a set of design-time stored procedures that generate run-time stored procedures, and have used them in project after project ever since. Recently, the authors updated their procedures to make use of SQL Server 2000 features, including user-defined functions.

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Advanced T-SQL: Automate the Generation of Stored Procedures for Your Database

Implementing data access functionality is a core activity of most developers working with the .NET Framework, and the data access layers they build are an essential part of their applications. This article outlines five ideas to consider when building a data access layer with Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework. The tips include taking advantage of object-oriented techniques and the .NET Framework infrastructure by using base classes, making classes easily inheritable by following guidelines, and carefully examining your needs before deciding on a presentation method and external interface.

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Data Access: Implement a Data Access Layer for Your App with ADO.NET

Any time an upgrade of a favorite tool is released, questions about compatibility, versioning, and changes in methodology abound. The release of Visual Studio .NET 2003 is no exception. Developers will be relieved to learn that breaking changes have been kept to a minimum, and delighted to learn that important new features, like Visual J#, have been added

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Visual Studio .NET: What You Need to Know Today About the New and Upgraded Features in Visual Studio .NET 2003

With the much-anticipated release of the .NET Framework 1.1, developers are eager to know what’s been added to their programming bag of tricks. In this article, the author focuses on new developments in Windows Forms, such as namespace additions, support for hosting managed controls in unmanaged clients, and designer support for C++ and J#. Integrated access to the Compact Framework and new mobile code security settings also make this release noteworthy.

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Windows Forms: .NET Framework 1.1 Provides Expanded Namespace, Security, and Language Support for Your Projects

One way that Web sites and applications become better able to meet the needs of customers is by allowing them to personalize their experience. For Web sites, this means displaying the content as the user wants to see it. For rich-client applications, this often means allowing the user to choose the user interface through a technique known as skinning, which is similar to themes in Windows XP.

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Site Skinning: Rich XML Classes Let Users Personalize Their Visual Experience on Your ASP.NET Site

The .NET Framework can use contexts as an object’s execution scope and intercept calls going to and from the object, similar to the way COM+ provides component services. What is new with this mechanism is that the runtime allows developers to take part in the interception chain and add powerful services, thus extending existing component services. This in turn decouples the business logic from the system plumbing and simplifies long-term maintenance

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Contexts in .NET: Decouple Components by Injecting Custom Services into Your Object’s Interception Chain

Both the .NET Framework and Windows have some very interesting APIs for creating applications that are capable of updating themselves automatically over a network. There are many advantages to writing your application to update itself like Windows Update does, including convenience for your users, from easier maintenance to network administration. Automatic updates require attention to factors such as discovery, security, and file replacement.

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BITS: Write Auto-Updating Apps with .NET and the Background Intelligent Transfer Service API

Delegates, new in Visual Basic .NET, are type-safe, object-oriented references to methods. By using delegates, you make your methods accessible to others and therefore more extensible. This article provides an introduction to delegates, their benefits, and how they are used.Here the author shows you how to declare, create, and use delegates to invoke instance and shared methods at run time, and how to implement delegates as properties

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Delegates in .NET: A Primer on Creating Type-Safe References to Methods in Visual Basic .NET