How to retrieve a random records in ASP.NET

Recently i needed to pull some random records from the database. One of the proposed solutions was something like this:
<asp:sqldatasource id=”SqlDataSource1″ runat=”server” connectionstring=”Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=C:\MyName\MyDBfolder\DBfile.mdb” providername=”System.Data.OleDb” selectcommand=”SELECT TOP 1 *, Rnd([id]) AS Expr1 FROM Books ORDER BY Rnd([id]) DESC”></asp:sqldatasource>
This works in the query builder but not when you run the application.
The reason that this doesn’t work [...]

ASP.NET Best Practices for High Performance Applications

As i’m just starting to optimize my asp.net site, this article will help me building a simple checklist. Saved for personal reference
ASP.NET is much more powerful than classic ASP, however it is important to understand how to use that power to build highly efficient, reliable and robust applications. In this article, I tried [...]

Cool Free ASP.NET AJAX Rich Text Editor

Kannan Sundarajan has written Rich Text Editor control using ASP.NET AJAX and shared it under the MS-PL license on CodePlex. It has a very rich feature set and Kannan hopes to enhance it further in the future. Since it is a CodePlex project you can report issues and make feature requests.
Check out the live demo [...]

Highslide JS .NET

Highslide JS .NET is a .NET control to encapsulate the functionality of Torstein Honsi’s excellent Highslide JS library.
Highslide JS is an open source JavaScript software, offering a Web 2.0 approach to popup windows. It streamlines the use of thumbnail images and HTML popups on web pages. The library offers these features and advantages:

No plugins [...]

Why ASP.NET AJAX UpdatePanels are dangerous

Using Web methods instead full post backs…
Web methods allow ASP.NET AJAX pages to directly execute a page’s static methods, using JSON (JavaScript Object Notation). JSON is basically a minimalistic version of SOAP, which is perfectly suited for light weight communication between client and server. For more information about how to implement web methods and JSON, [...]

Are you making these 3 common ASP.NET AJAX mistakes?

Check out Dave Wards advice on Update Panels and Postabacks HERE
In this post, I’d like to point out a few of the problems I’ve seen developers running into and what you can keep in mind to avoid them:

Page events still fire during partial postbacks.
UpdatePanel events fire, even when not updating.
Control event handlers fire after [...]