Editing any document directly from the Windows Explorer using Notepad plus plus

This is a very short post on the excellent integration of Notepad++ with Windows Explorer Shell. I don’t know about you, but quite often, I want to look at contents of various kinds of files e.g. a XAML file or HTML file or a visual studio project (csporj, vcproj) file. If you try to double […]

How to pass loop variables in a JavaScript callback

This is a common problem encountered i.e. if you are making ajax calls in a loop and you need access to the loop index in the AJAX callback, people often hit the JavaScript ‘reference’ behavior i.e. copying or assigning one variable to another merely makes a reference, not a full copy. This even holds for […]

ASP.NET MVC – Adding RequireJS/Backbone/Marionette to your solution

Recently, while build a website on Azure, I needed a quick, simple login mechanism. There is an ASP.NET forms based authentication template, so this was pretty straightforward. All you have to do is to create a website based on the template and viola!, you have a login. However, if only life is so simple. The […]

C++/Cx: Getting around the very limited DateTime object

You know, I have been writing a LOT of C++/Cx recently and I have hit a bunch of issues. This particular one is about the DateTime object in C++/Cx. If you look at the C# version of the DateTime object, it contains a ton of niceties. There are properties that will give you the Day, […]

WinRT in C++/Cx and registering and unregistering event handlers

Having to work in C++/Cx, every day I have new appreciation for C#. Things that I take for granted in C#, well, they are not straightforward C++. Take the example of event handlers. In C#, the usual way of registering and unregistering event handlers is pretty straight forward: e.g. Click += Button_click_handler and Click -= […]

Getting access to the UI dispatcher from a background thread (Win8/8.1)

I recently struggled quite a bit trying to get access to the UI dispatcher from a background thread. I had a scenario where when I receive a push notification, I had to update the XAML page UI. Obviously, I did not have access to the UI thread from the background thread so I binged quite […]

C# synchronization blocks containing await or how to lock a block with an await

Recently working on a project, I came across a scenario where I needed to lock a block so that only one thread could enter the block at a time. Simple Monitors, I thought. However as soon as I put the C# lock statement around my block, I noticed Visual Studio started complaining. The problem was […]

C#/XAML App suspend: Bug/Feature – OnNavigatedFrom called during app Suspend

Got hit by this bug in suspension manager (C# and XAML) and wanted to share it with you in case you ever hit this scenario. Recently, I have been coding an app with Azure backing and I got hit by a bunch of interesting scenarios that left me scratching my head, thinking, “Hmm, how do […]