Author Archives: JohnHowell

About JohnHowell

I am a professional software developer with over 20 years of experience. I currently specialize in Microsoft technologies such as VS, TFS, C#, VB.Net, WCF, WPF, WW, etc.

JSON.NET Version 6.0 Release 4!

One of the best JSON libraries just got better.  James Newton-King just released version 6.0 release 4 of JSON.NET!   It came out on August 4th, but I just came across it.  This is not just a bug fix release.  Some … Continue reading

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Book on Bootstrap V3

Last night I purchased the Kindle book Bootstrap 3 by Ryan Flores.  It’s a small book and it does not attempt to be a ‘teach me how to do everything’ type of book.  It is written to help you do … Continue reading

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What’s new in WPF 4.5

This is yet another post about WPF.  We all know that WinForms is dead or dying, still used but anyone learning development should not spend time on it.  WPF was once thought to have had the door slammed shut on … Continue reading

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Provide value on ‘System.Windows.Baml2006.TypeConverterMarkupExtension’ error

Sometimes it blows me away to see an error message that is so confusing that I don’t wonder why people get frustrated with new technology. Take for instance this error you might see when building a WPF application. I had … Continue reading

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Oracle ODT x64 drivers for Visual Studio

As some of you know the Oracle drivers can be somewhat…..painful to say the least.  Oracle still hasn’t gotten the ‘universal’ driver install working consistently, but the x64 driver install does seem much more stable.  I played with the XCopy … Continue reading

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WPF – it’s still alive

When I do a posting, I try to do my research.  When I added my last post about WPF seemingly “disappearing” from MSDN, I wasn’t expecting the immediate response about how WPF is going strong.   Yes, what I said about … Continue reading

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Where in the world is WPF?

Subtly and quietly, Microsoft has been removing WPF resources from the MSDN site.  If you click on the link that used to take you to the WPF home, you will be directed to the general Visual Studio .Net Framework home. … Continue reading

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Responding to posts v/s Captcha

It’s become a sad state of affairs when technology works so hard to prevent malicious posting that it actually gets in the way of people and progress.  Take Captcha (please).  I respond to posts and every time there is a … Continue reading

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Not so much fun with NuGet

NuGet was a great idea and addition to Visual Studio.  That said, it can be a notorious pain in the ‘you know where’.  Things like not being able to see packages, not being able to download new packages, InvalidOperationExceptions in … Continue reading

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Finally IIF is coming to T-SQL!

After a long wait and many, many requests, the IIF function is finally coming to SQL Server 2012! If you aren’t familar with this function but yet you do use CASE statements, you’re going to love the IIF function.  Check … Continue reading

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