Atlas - Clever Software » .Net

Two new websites launched

simon — Wed, 25 May 2011 08:20:00 +0000

We’re delighted to announce the launch of two new amazing websites this May.

First up is a new WordPress website for our friend Rich Simmons over at Art is the Cure. Rich needed the ability to pull content from the wide range of platforms he uses to spread the word about the AITC movement. We decided to take advantage of WordPress for this, applying a really cool custom skin to the site to compliment the vast amount of information we pull in using a range of off the shelf and custom plugins. Check it out at http://www.artisthecure.com.

Next up is Educating Together. Educating Together is a brand new start up offering the highest quality resources and advice to parents to ensure that their children flourish at school. The site was a custom designed bespoke build using the latest Microsoft technologies including ASP.Net 4.0 MVC with a SQL 2008 database. We’ve also used jQuery and Flash to provide a neat and easy to navigate user experience. If you have children in school we highly recommend that you check it out at https://www.educatingtogether.co.uk/.

Check back soon for more updates on the amazing new projects we’re currently working on…

How to install ELMAH, a .Net exception handler

simon — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 14:24:28 +0000

ELMAH is an incredibly neat web development tool that attaches quickly and easily to any .Net website without needing to recompile the source and gives an incredibly useful overview of all unhandled exceptions that have occured on the site. Other errors such as 404′s are also displayed.

To get started with ELMAH follow these simple steps:

Download ELMAH from http://code.google.com/p/elmah/
Extract the contents and run the SQL script located in the db folder against your project database
Open the Web.config.template folder which is located in samplesDemo. This gives you an overview of the changes you need to make to your web.config file for ELMAH to work.
When you’re done configuring your web.config copy the Elmah.dll for your version of .Net in to your bin folder. Then attempt to load your website.
Any errors displayed will almost certainly be as a result of errors in your web.config changes.
If your site loaded successfully, chances are ELMAH is working. Navigate to http://yoursite/elmah.axd and you should see the default ELMAH log page.
Yourmay wish to hide your elmah page by either securing it using web.config or simply moving the location of the elmah page away from the default location. This is easily done by updating the path attribute your web.config line:
ELMAH provides a configuration section and setting to enable or disable remote access to the error log display and feeds. When disabled (the default), only local access to the error log display and feeds is allowed. The snippet below shows how to enable remote access: �
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We recommend using the RSS feeds and built in e-mail notifications to ensure that you’re always one step ahead of those pesky exceptions!

Useful colour picker utility

simon — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:03:25 +0000

Often when working on your latest Windows or web app you’ll come across a situation that involves identifying the colour of a button, icon or some other control in your application. This process often involves taking a screen shot of your app, loading it in to Photoshop and using the eye dropper tool to identify your colour. This is long winded and frankly boring.

We’ve made this process much easier using a neat little .Net system tray application we’ve created. The app runs in your system tray, you click and hold your mouse on its icon, drag over the top of the colour you wish to grab, and then let go to copy the hexadecimal code of your selected colour to your clipboard. It couldn’t be easier.