Copyright 2012 Michael Knopf's BlogC#.net programming techniques, advice, and examplesI use drop down menus regularly. They are a very common control on most any website and often we are just getting a list of things out of a database and simply binding them to the drop down, but what if we need to add items to the drop down at runtime and ensure that the drop down items are also sorted?http://www.mknopf.com/articles/adding-sorted-items-to-dropdownmenus-at-runtime.htmlFri, 23 Sep 2011 13:42:25 GMT2011-09-23T13:42:25Learning all the ins-and-outs of how to set up your Silverlight project so that you can actually solve a real-world business problem just isn't easy. This post is all about connecting the dots between your business, data, web services, website, and Silverlight app so that they can all communicate the way they need to.http://www.mknopf.com/articles/connecting-the-dots-how-to-build-a-real-world-silverlight-app.htmlSat, 26 Mar 2011 00:00:00 GMT2011-03-26T00:00:00Over the year's I've continuosly refined how I set up and organize my applications and folder structure in Visual Studio when starting a new project. Its taken some time but I have finally found a...http://www.mknopf.com/articles/how-to-structure-new-projects-in-visual-studio.htmlTue, 22 Mar 2011 23:47:41 GMT2011-03-22T23:47:41Cross Site Scripting Attacks (XSS Attacks) are a real problem, don't make the mistake of thinking they aren't in widespread use or that you are not vulnerable. During the development of your project...http://www.mknopf.com/articles/using-a-generic-method-to-encode-string-properties-in-order-to-avoid-cross-site-scripting-attacks.htmlTue, 07 Dec 2010 14:21:12 GMT2010-12-07T14:21:12I came across this today and thought I'd share it, you can get sample source code and the answers to common questions for the the book Parallel Programming for .NET applications. It's definitely worth taking a look at since basically...http://www.mknopf.com/articles/free-resources-from-book-on-parallel-programming-for-dot-net.htmlWed, 15 Sep 2010 18:35:20 GMT2010-09-15T18:35:20Bing has release a Maps SDK for use in your Silverlight projects. In this white paper we will cover how to use the SDK to display weather conditions for cities across the United States. The real-time weather data will be retrieved using the WeatherBug API and shown on the map. We will animate the weather conditions (a glowing sun for Sunny conditions, a raining cloud for Rain, etc...) and cover some core concepts along the way, specifically use of a Controller mechanism in your Silverlight projects, parsing XML into your own data model that can be returned from a Web Service, and of course getting up to speed with the Bing Maps SDK for Silverlight.http://www.mknopf.com/articles/creating-a-weather-map-using-the-bing-silverlight-map-sdk-and-weatherbug.htmlWed, 23 Dec 2009 19:55:08 GMT2009-12-23T19:55:08Building Silverlight application takes time, effort, patients, and tools (yes, you have to have some tools). In this post we will cover: where to get the necessities and some useful additional tools, as well as straight talk about the awesomeness, disadvantages, and difficulties of building Silverlight applications. We will also cover the basics of XAML, referencing and using related assemblies, and the how Expression Blend and Visual Studio make it all happen.http://www.mknopf.com/articles/silverlight-straight-talk-the-awesomeness-disadvantages-and-difficulties-in-silverlight.htmlMon, 07 Sep 2009 20:03:27 GMT2009-09-07T20:03:27At some time in your career you will need to interview for a job, if you own your own consulting firm then you are most likely interviewing for jobs on a weekly basis (by pitching clients to contract you for work). Preparing for technical job interviews requires a great deal of research, work, and most of all patience. This article provides a list of questions and answers that I fielded while interviewing for senior level software development positions, it is a collection of my experiences during 17 different job interviews with 10 companies including NASA (who offered me a job)...http://www.mknopf.com/articles/preparing-for-technical-job-interviews.htmlFri, 27 Mar 2009 00:00:00 GMT2009-03-27T00:00:00Both Double and Float are calculated values, meaning they can result in “off by one” errors. What's an "off by one" error and why should i care? Both the Double and Float values in .NET will have their decimal points truncated results in precision errors. This really comes in to play when dealing with money of any kind, especially if you use the Math.Round() method...http://www.mknopf.com/articles/double-vs-decimal--why-you-need-to-know-the-difference.htmlMon, 04 Aug 2008 00:00:00 GMT2008-08-04T00:00:00http://www.mknopf.com/topics/c-coding.htmlSat, 18 Oct 2008 20:23:11 GMTen-us