I ran into a weird bug recently that I hope no one else ever experiences.  I use Telerik’s Rad Controls for ASP.NET AJAX because they’re powerful, pretty and developer friendly.  I recommend them to ALL .NET developers.  I had just put together a server control that used several of Telerik’s controls and my own Rounded DIV Container control as well.  It looked great in all browsers.  I was happy.   I added another Rounded DIV to the page.  When I refreshed the page, all of my styles were gone.  I know the CSS is good, because I was using the control elsewhere.  Was it possible I had an unclosed tag somewhere?  I tried the page in Firefox…perfect, then Safari…perfect, then Google Chrome…perfect.

Scratching head…

At this point, I know it’s a browser issue, but I’m still not sure what’s causing it.  After digging around and playing with the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar, I noticed that the page seemed to lose it’s style whenever there were more than 30 registers resources on a page (i.e. CSS & JavaScript file references).  I probably had too many CSS files as it was.  On top of that, I was dynamically referencing js files.  Telerik also register javascript and css files via the WebResource.axd (embedded .NET resources).

Here’s how you can check how many resources are registered for a given page:

1. Check your markup
   1. Look for all instances of registered resources (CSS, JS, etc)
      <link id=”cssStyleSheet” rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” runat=”server” /> — each one of these counts as 1
   2. If you’ve got a lot of these, consider consolidating into fewer resources
2. Use the IE Developer Toolbar, ChromeBug (Google Chrome) or FireBug (the best) to check for registered resources in WebResource.axd
   1. Firebug (ChromeBug is similar)
      1. Once the page is loaded, highlight the CSS tab and click the resource drop down list just below it
         
      2. Do the same thing on the “Script” tab (ASP.NET is close to 30! Watch out! )
         
   2. IE Developer Toolbar
      1. In IE, press F12 to bring up the Developer Tools
      2. Click on CSS and count the items in the drop down list
      3. Do the same for Script
         

I hope you don’t have this many registered resources.   But if you do, and things look weird in IE 7 and IE 8, now you know why.  Time to consolidate!

I needed a list of all checked-out files in TFS today.  This page came in handy! Thanks Clay!  Here’s what he had to say (slightly modified for VS 2008)

tf.exe status $/MyProject /user:* /s:http://MyTfs:8080 /recursive

tf.exe status /user:mark /s:http://MyTfs:8080

tf.exe status /user:* /s:http://MyTfs:8080 > c:\tfsCheckedOut.txt

I used to run very small business on the side called “MJ Consulting”. I provided basic IT services to mom & pop shop businesses in my area; making sure that it did not conflict with any interests at my real job with Wachter. It was so small that I barely made enough to pay for the business license, domain name and a couple trips through the Wendy’s drive-thru.

Well I haven’t done anything in that name for about a year, so I shut down the site. However, I had some .NET controls there. One was a Weather Channel control and another was a rounded corner “div” container. Typical “drag n drop” server controls. If you came here looking for those, you can find them using the links below. Shoot me an email if you have any questions or find a bug. Happy coding!

Download Rounded Div Control 3.2 Updated 02/27/2010
Download Weather Control 2.2 Updated 02/27/2010

Full source is now available on CodePlex.com for both controls.Visit http://WeatherForecast.Codeplex.com or http://RoundCorners.Codeplex.com for more details.