Thelly wrote:

I don't know what you are using for code editing but the VSS guy sounds like a Visual Studio user. You can try AnkhSVN (I don't like dev evnvironment integration all /that/ much but it is nice for renaming files

I actually highly recommend VisualSVN[^]. It handles renaming/deleting very well.

That's a fantastic book, as I remember.

No problems whatsoever with Beta 2 or RTM versions side by side with VS05 on Vista Ultimate.

After an exhaustive comparison study, we decided on Dundas Enterprise (as many have mentioned already). It's not cheap at all, but it is the best feature for feature. It's also reasonably easy to use (although the documentation isn't that great).

Try FEAR and Advent Rising. For something really different, Indigo Prophecy. Upcoming, check out Hellgate: London. You'd probably better pick up Halo 1 and 2. If you really want to soak up some time, go for an MMO like World of Warcraft or maybe Guild Wars for a more bite-size game.

Even though this post was meant as humorous, it's still basically correct. The real web developers don't use WYSIWYG tools to lay out sites. Yes, I mean lay out. That might start to change with Expression and VS08, but I doubt it. There's still no substitute for a good hand-written, standards-based, CSS-based web site. I actually don't allow my team to use a designer for their markup.

dan neely wrote:

for what its worth - One notes sharp is another notes flat ...except for when one notes sharp is another normal note.

Any note can have a flat, even if the flat is a "normal" note (white key on the piano). And don't even get started on double sharps and double flats... (OK, sorry for the topic hijack.)

Yep, it came out this afternoon. I'm installing it right now!

I also highly recommend CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions by Andy Budd.

That is no longer true. Even Microsoft recently redesigned MSDN, making it Firefox-compatible.

I was a restaurant manager (including lots of cooking) before I started programming professionally.

I'd like to also confirm that RAM is king for a development system. You should also definitely stick with your RAID 0 on at least two fast hard drives. RAM is #1 and disk access is #2 for speed. In addition, get a very large and fast USB thumb drive (8 GB) to use Vista's ReadyBoost feature. I've had great luck with my Corsair Flash Voyager.

This is absolutely the way to go if you have the money. Run Vista Ultimate on your machine and buy an X360 for the living room. The pair does an incredible and user-friendly job of it. The only (big) downside is, there is no DivX support without some major hacks. But you gain full DVR capabilities if you don't already have one in the house (and you have a capture card in your computer).

I typically go with fixed bids for small web sites. I clearly define the number of pages, what database access will be needed, everything. I make the client sign off on each step. A typical site will start between $1,000 and $2,500 depending on complexity. Any extras, like logo design, photography, illustration are charged per item or per hour. My base rate is $75/hour but that can go up for things like on-site server installations, custom database business rules, etc. I then typically charge a monthly rate for web site maintenance based on a set number of hours per month, slightly discounted from my normal $75/hour. Bug fixes are free, but once the project has been billed, everything else is always extra, or rolled up into the maintenance subscription.

I was actually 8 years old, splitting my time between a TRS-80 and an Intel 8086 (4.77 Mhz) using, like everyone else, BASIC on both systems. Boy things have changed since then.

I also work at home for a startup and we do the same thing. In addition to Remote Assistance, we also have a GoToMeeting subscription, and we use a second monitor to constantly see what the other person is doing if necessary. A lot of our work needs to be done side-by-side, so with Skype voice chat and GoToMeeting, it's just like working next to him (but more private).

Paul Watson wrote:

Or if you select an image to upload but then decide that no, you don't want and instead you just want to update the password. When you hit submit the image is uploaded even though you didn't want it to be.

That is a valid reason, if a slight corner case. To distill what you said, you're worried about posting back large amounts of unnecessary data on submit. In this case you would definitely have to design your application around it, like putting the upload on its own page, or inserting some client-side code to remove the image if the other submit button was pressed. Jeremy Fuller

I work full time as an ASP.NET developer working on some pretty big applications, and I've never encountered a time when I needed to have more than one

on the page. Are you trying to integrate non-.NET systems with the page? I could see how that could get dicey, but staying strictly in the ASP.NET realm, everything works well as designed. I agree that the it is by far the best thing to have come out for dynamic web applications. An earlier comment was made about ASP.NET making a web site stateful instead of stateless. This is exactly why you would have picked up ASP.NET to begin with. If you want a stateless web page, just write it in HTML.