MSDN Magazine April 2002

Article
10/23/2019

April 2002

Windows Forms: Developing Compelling User Controls that Target Forms in the .NET Framework

In the beginning, writing controls meant dealing with Windows messages. Then came Visual Basic controls, which introduced methods, properties, and events. Later, ActiveX controls, which ran atop COM, became popular. While each innovation in control writing brought more flexibility, nothing has matched the versatility of the new .NET Windows Forms controls and Web Forms controls. This article, the first of a two-part series, introduces the reader to Windows Forms, beginning with their inheritance from one of the .NET CLR base classes, which makes control creation much faster than before. Control programming is illustrated through the development of a login control. The equally flexible Web Forms controls will be covered in Part 2. David S. Platt

ASP.NET Security: An Introductory Guide to Building and Deploying More Secure Sites with ASP.NET and IIS

ASP.NET and Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) work together to make building secure Web sites a breeze. But to do it right, you have to know how the two interrelate and what options they provide for securing access to a Web site's resources. This article, the first in a two-part series, explains the ABCs of Web security as seen through the eyes of ASP.NET and includes a hands-on tutorial demonstrating Windows authentication and ACL authorizations. A range of security measures and authentication methods are discussed, including basic authentication, digest authentication, and role-based security. Jeff Prosise

COM+ 1.5: Discover Powerful Low-Level Programming in Windows XP with New COM+ APIs

The new version of COM+ that ships as part of Windows XP includes APIs for low-level context programming. These functions allow you to create contexts that use COM+ runtime services, independent of objects and without registering anything in the COM+ Catalog. Designed for advanced COM+ developers who understand the COM+ context model, these APIs make it easy to integrate runtime services with code in nonstandard ways. This article explains how these low-level context APIs work, discusses when you'd want to use them, and provides a .NET-based wrapper to make it simpler to use the APIs from C#. Craig Andera and Tim Ewald

Virus Hunting: Track and Report Server Attacks Quickly and Easily with the .NET Networking Classes

To help stop the spread of worms, viruses, and other hostile activity, it is important to track down and report the servers used in these attacks along with those used to send spam. Many Web administrators, however, don't take the time to track them because the manual process can be quite cumbersome. The Microsoft .NET Framework comes to the rescue with several networking classes, including the Dns class and the TcpClient class, that abstract away the complexity of performing DNS and WHOIS lookups. These classes make it easy to create a simple, straightforward ASP.NET-based utility for performing these lookups and automating this very important task. G. Andrew Duthie

SOAP: Using ATL Server to Build an Asynchronous SOAP Client in Unmanaged C++

SOAP opens up a new world of Web Services, letting you make function calls across a network or the Internet. But this flexibility creates new problems when your app needs to wait for calls to return from halfway around the world. What you need is an asynchronous SOAP client that takes advantage of threading to continue execution while waiting for calls over the wire. This article covers the basics of building such a client with ATL. Pranish Kumar and Bogdan Crivat

ASP.NET: Selectively Enable Form Validation When Using ASP.NET Web Controls

Sometimes the extra controls that come with Visual Studio .NET can be a bit inflexible or they just don't provide enough functionality or flexibility for all situations. The ASP.NET form validation controls, while powerful and easy to use, require that the entire page be valid before it's submitted back to the server. Through the use of the new object-oriented features of Visual Basic .NET, it is possible to extend their functionality to overcome this limitation. This article tells you how and helps you decide when it's a good idea to keep validation on the client and when you'd be better off disabling it. James M. Venglarik II

SharePoint Portal Server 2001: Search and Access Disparate Data Repositories in Your Enterprise

The knowledge worker is greatly empowered if she is able to access information across the enterprise from a central access point. With the SharePoint Portal Server 2001 Search Service you can catalogue information stored in Exchange public folders, on the Web, in the file system, and even in Lotus Notes databases. This article discusses the use of ActiveX Data Objects and the Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning protocol for creating search solutions based on SharePoint Portal Server 2001. Kayode Dada

Editor's Note: Pop-up Stopper Stops Pop-ups in their Tracks

New Stuff: Resources for Your Developer Toolbox

Theresa W. Carey

Web Q&A: Auto Downloads, Accessing XML, Opening Multiple Windows, and More

Edited by Nancy Michell

The XML Files: A Quick Guide to XML Schema

Aaron Skonnard

Cutting Edge: Building a DataNavigator Control

Dino Esposito

Advanced Basics: Visual Studio .NET, Debugging .NET Applications, and More

Ken Spencer

.NET Column: Run-time Serialization