Everything else is pretty straight forward.

    private void BindBlogFeed()
    {
        XDocument doc = XDocument.Load("http://blogworkseverytime.wordpress.com/feed/");
        XNamespace content = "http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/";
        XNamespace media = "http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/";

        var query = (from feed in doc.Descendants("item")
                     orderby DateTime.Parse(feed.Element("pubDate").Value) descending
                     select new
                     {
                         Title = feed.Element("title").Value,
                         Description = HttpUtility.HtmlDecode(feed.Element("description").Value),
                         Content = HttpUtility.HtmlDecode(feed.Element(content.GetName("encoded")).Value),
                         Image = (from img in feed.Elements(media.GetName("content"))
                                  where img.Attribute("url").Value.Contains("gravatar") == false
                                  select img.Attribute("url").Value).FirstOrDefault() ?? "",
                         Link = feed.Element("link").Value,
                         Date = DateTime.Parse(feed.Element("pubDate").Value).ToShortDateString()
                     });

        lvFirstBlogFeed.DataSource = query.Take(1).ToList();
        lvFirstBlogFeed.DataBind();

        lvRemainingBlogFeed.DataSource = query.Skip(1).ToList();
        lvRemainingBlogFeed.DataBind();
    }

Here’s how its done.

private void SendEmail(long customerID)
{
	Customer customer = CustomerData.GetCustomer(customerID);

	MailDefinition mailDefinition = new MailDefinition();
	mailDefinition.BodyFileName = "~/Email-Templates/Order-Confirmation.html";
	mailDefinition.From = "no-reply@my-site.com";

	//Create a key-value collection of all the tokens you want to replace in your template...
	ListDictionary ldReplacements = new ListDictionary();
	ldReplacements.Add("<%FirstName%>", customer.FirstName);
	ldReplacements.Add("<%LastName%>", customer.LastName);
	ldReplacements.Add("<%Address1%>", customer.Address1);
	ldReplacements.Add("<%Address2%>", customer.Address2);
	ldReplacements.Add("<%City%>", customer.City);
	ldReplacements.Add("<%State%>", customer.State);
	ldReplacements.Add("<%Zip%>", customer.Zip);

	string mailTo = string.Format("{0} {1} <{2}>", customer.FirstName, customer.LastName, customer.EmailAddress);
	MailMessage mailMessage = mailDefinition.CreateMailMessage(mailTo, ldReplacements, this);
	mailMessage.From = new MailAddress("no-reply@my-site.com", "My Site");
	mailMessage.IsBodyHtml = true;
	mailMessage.Subject = "Order Confirmation";

	SmtpClient smtpClient = new SmtpClient(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["SMTPServer"].ToString(), 25);
	smtpClient.Send(mailMessage);
}

Your email template could be of any extension (txt, html, etc) as long as its in a text format. I personally like to keep it in HTML format so that we can preview the email template in a browser. Basically it’ll looks something like this -

Hello <%FirstName%> <%LastName%>,

Thank you for creating an account with us. Here are your details:

<%Address1%>,
<%Address2%>
<%City%>, <%State%> <%Zip%>

Thank You,
My Site

The Controls collection cannot be modified because the control contains code blocks (i.e. <% … %>).

I spent quite some time trying to figure it out. Finally after hours of searching I found out that Code Blocks Inside Master Pages Cause Trouble.

I was using code blocks inside the head tag of all the MasterPages to resolve paths at runtime:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="<%= ResolveUrl("~/myStyleSheet.css") %>" type="text/css" />
<script type="text/javascript" src="<%= ResolveUrl("~/myJavaScript.js") %>"></script>

Fortunately Milan Negovan proposed a quick workaround which saved a lot of time.

Basically, the workaround is to change the code blocks to data binding expressions (<%# ... %>).

<link rel="stylesheet" href="<%# ResolveUrl("~/myStyleSheet.css") %>" type="text/css" />
<script type="text/javascript" src="<%# ResolveUrl("~/myJavaScript.js") %>"></script>

and adding this to the master page code behind:

protected override void OnLoad (EventArgs e)
{
  base.OnLoad (e);
  Page.Header.DataBind ();
}

Since HtmlHead ultimately derives from Control and everything that derives from Control has a DataBind() method, adding that one line above would force the header to resolve data binding expressions.

Thats it, that does the trick!

1.Open IIS by double-clicking on Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Internet Information Services

2.Right Click on Web Sites->Default Web Site

3.Click on Properties->Home Directory and choose the location of your website

Now lets give the ASPNET account the appropriate permissions to access that directory…

4. Using My Computer or the Windows Explorer, navigate to the folder containing the website you choose in the previous step

5. Right click on the folder and and go to Properties->Security

5. On the Security tab, click on Add to locate the ASPNET account

6. Click on Locations and select the local machine

7. Click on Advanced->Find Now to list all the user accounts on your local machine

8. Choose ASPNET and click on OK. (If you don’t see ASPNET account in there, go to step 11)

9. Return to the security tab. Select the ASPNET user account and check the Full Control checkbox under the allow column. Click OK.

10. Thats it! You should now be able to go to http://localhost/ in your browser window and see your website.

If you don’t see an ASP.NET account in Step 8 then…

11. Run “C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\ aspnet_regiis.exe -i -enable” in the command line window and then repeat steps 1 through 10.

Following steps are optional. They help you configure your web project to automatically reference the local web-server when you run or debug a site instead of launching the built-in web-server itself…

12. Open Visual Studio and select your web-project in the solution explorer, right click and select Property pages.

13. Select the Start Options from the left navigation, and under Server change the radio button value from ‘Use default Web server’ to ‘Use custom server’. Then set the Base URL value to be: http://localhost/

Now, when you click on any page in the app and then hit F5 or Ctrl-F5, the IDE will use the local web-server instead of popping up its own.

public partial class _Controls_MyControl : System.Web.UI.UserControl
{
    private string _myProperty;

    public string MyProperty
    {
        get { return _myProperty; }
        set { _myProperty = value; }
    }

    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {

    }
}

Now register this control in the web.config

<pages>
  <controls>
    <add tagPrefix="uc" tagName="MyControl" src="~/_Controls/MyControl.ascx"/>
  </controls>
</pages>

Now this is the most important part, you have to reference your user control in the .aspx page to be able to access its partial class members -

<%@ Reference Control="~/_Controls/MyControl.ascx" %>

Now finally lets instantiate and load the control from the code behind…

_Controls_MyControl myControl = (_Controls_MyControl)LoadControl("~/_Controls/MyControl.ascx");
myControl.MyProperty = "Hello World!!";
Page.Controls.Add(myControl);

That’s it

<% … %>

The most basic inline tag, basically runs normal code:

<% if (User.IsInRole(“admin”)) { %>
You can see this
<% } else { %>
You are no admin fool!
<%} %>

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178135(vs.80).aspx

<%= … %>

Used for small chunks of information, usually from objects and single pieces of information like a single string or int variable:

The Date is now <%= DateTime.Now.ToShortDateString() %>
The value of string1 is <%= string1 %>

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/6dwsdcf5(VS.71).aspx

*note: <%= is the equivalent of Response.Write() -  Courtesy of Adam from the US,thanks!

<%# .. %>

Used for Binding Expressions; such as Eval and Bind, most often found in data controls like GridView, Repeater, etc.:

<asp:Repeater ID=”rptMeetings” DataSourceID=”meetings” runat=”server”>
<ItemTemplate>
<%# Eval(“MeetingName”) %>
</ItemTemplate>
</asp:Repeater>

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178366.aspx

<%$ … %>

Used for expressions, not code; often seen with DataSources:

<asp:SqlDataSource ID=”party” runat=”server” ConnectionString=”<%$ ConnectionStrings:letsParty %>” SelectCommand=”SELECT * FROM [table]” />

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/d5bd1tad.aspx

<%@ … %>

This is for directive syntax; basically the stuff you see at the top your your aspx pages like control registration and page declaration:

<%@ Page Language=”C#” MasterPageFile=”~/MasterPage.master” AutoEventWireup=”true” CodeFile=”Default.aspx.cs” Inherits=”_Default” Title=”Untitled Page” %>
<%@ Register TagPrefix=”wp” Namespace=”CustomWebParts” %>

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/xz702w3e(VS.80).aspx

<%– … –%>

This is a server side comment, stuff you don’t want anyone without code access to see:

<asp:Label ID=”lblAwesome” runat=”server” />
<%– sometimes end users make me angry –%>
<asp:LinkButton ID=”lbEdit” Text=”Edit” OnClick=”Edit_Click” runat=”server” />

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/4acf8afk.aspx

And that’s that.

Source: Naspinski

1) Combine scripts

<ajaxToolkit:ToolkitScriptManager ID="TSM1" runat="Server"
EnablePartialRendering="true"
CombineScriptsHandlerUrl="~/CombineScriptsHandler.ashx" />

As the name of the property suggests, it will pretty much combine all the needed JS files into one which in turn will reduce the number of requests sent to the server. You can find a detailed discussion about this here.

It is pretty easy to implement; instead of using the regular ScriptManager, just switch to the ToolkitScriptManager which comes with the AjaxToolkit and then set its CombineScriptsHandlerUrl property as shown above and throw the CombineScriptsHandler.ashx (included in the “SampleWebSite” directory of AjaxControlToolkit’s release package) into the root.

2) Run in release mode

The debug versions of the AJAX library have their source formatting preserved, as well as some debug asserts. By running it in release mode you can shave off some bytes off your requests.

<ajaxToolkit:ToolkitScriptManager ID="TSM1" runat="Server" 
EnablePartialRendering="true" ScriptMode="Release" />

Although, its important to note that some versions of Safari don’t seem to be compatible with this and could cause many strange side effects as this person and I have experienced in the past.

On a side note, ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit officially does not support Macs with PowerPC processors, its good to know that piece of information if a client ever demands an explanation as for why AJAX powered functionality seems to be broken or not functioning as expected in that environment.

3) Enable script caching and compression in web.config

<system.web.extensions>

  <scripting>

    <scriptResourceHandler enableCompression="true"
     enableCaching="true"/>

  </scripting>

</system.web.extensions>

This will compress and cache all the script files which are embedded as resources in an assembly, localization objects, and scripts that are served by the script resource handler.

But like the previous tip, there is a exception to this one too. Some versions of IE6 have a bug where they cant’t handle GZIP’d script files correctly. The RTM version of ASP.NET AJAX works around this by explicitly not compressing files for these versions of IE. Although if you are still having a problem, it just might be a safe bet to explicitly set the enableCompression property to false in the web.config.

You’ll have to add the following code in the section of your web.config file:

<!-- This section is used by Request.Browser.Crawler property to detect search engine crawlers -->
<browserCaps>
  <filter>
    <!-- SEARCH ENGINES GROUP -->
    <!-- check Google (Yahoo uses this as well) -->
    <case match="^Googlebot(\-Image)?/(?'version'(?'major'\d+)(?'minor'\.\d+)).*">
      browser=Google
      version=${version}
      majorversion=${major}
      minorversion=${minor}
      crawler=true
    </case>
    <!-- check Alta Vista (Scooter) -->
    <case match="^Scooter(/|-)(?'version'(?'major'\d+)(?'minor'\.\d+)).*">
      browser=AltaVista
      version=${version}
      majorversion=${major}
      minorversion=${minor}
      crawler=true
    </case>
    <!-- check Alta Vista (Mercator) -->
    <case match="Mercator">
      browser=AltaVista
      crawler=true
    </case>
    <!-- check Slurp (Yahoo uses this as well) -->
    <case match="Slurp">
      browser=Slurp
      crawler=true
    </case>
    <!-- check MSN -->
    <case match="MSNBOT">
      browser=MSN
      crawler=true
    </case>
    <!-- check Northern Light -->
    <case match="^Gulliver/(?'version'(?'major'\d+)(?'minor'\.\d+)).*">
      browser=NorthernLight
      version=${version}
      majorversion=${major}
      minorversion=${minor}
      crawler=true
    </case>
    <!-- check Excite -->
    <case match="ArchitextSpider">
      browser=Excite
      crawler=true
    </case>
    <!-- Lycos -->
    <case match="Lycos_Spider">
      browser=Lycos
      crawler=true
    </case>
    <!-- Ask Jeeves -->
    <case match="Ask Jeeves">
      browser=AskJeaves
      crawler=true
    </case>
    <!-- check Fast -->
    <case match="^FAST-WebCrawler/(?'version'(?'major'\d+)(?'minor'\.\d+)).*">
      browser=Fast
      version=${version}
      majorversion=${major}
      minorversion=${minor}
      crawler=true
    </case>
    <!-- IBM Research Web Crawler -->
    <case match="http\:\/\/www\.almaden.ibm.com\/cs\/crawler">
      browser=IBMResearchWebCrawler
      crawler=true
    </case>
  </filter>
</browserCaps>

Now what does it all mean? Well, IIS uses that information in the <browserCaps> section of your config file to detect whether the client browser is a crawler or not. If you look at it closely, its basically a regular expression filter. I presume you could add more filters in a similar format to detect other kinds of crawlers.

Update: For the most accurate and updated version of browserCaps and other useful browser testing/detection resources you can go to one of these sites:

http://slingfive.com/pages/code/browserCaps/

http://ocean.accesswa.net/browsercaps/

http://browsers.garykeith.com/downloads.asp

First lets start by adding the following to the web.config:

<appSettings>
<add key="LogUnhandledExceptions" value="true"/>
</appSettings>

Second, we add the following bit inside the Application_Error event of the Global.asax file. This will capture all the unhandled exceptions and log them into the database:

private static bool logUnhandledExceptions = Convert.ToBoolean(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["LogUnhandledExceptions"]);
.
.
.
void Application_Error(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    if (logUnhandledExceptions)
    {
        if (Context != null)
        {
            if (Server.GetLastError() != null)
            {
                //Get reference to the source of the exception chain
                Exception ex = Context.Server.GetLastError().GetBaseException();

                YourCompany.Helpers.ExceptionHandler.Log(ex);
            }
        }
    }
}

And now finally the main part. This is the class which will log all the relavent information related to the exception in the DB.

using System;
using System.Data;
using System.Configuration;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Security;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Data.SqlClient;
using System.Web.Configuration;

namespace YourCompany.Helpers
{
    public static class ExceptionHandler
    {
        public static void Log(Exception ex)
        {
            if (ex.GetBaseException() != null)
            {
                try
                {
                    HttpContext context = HttpContext.Current;
                    HttpBrowserCapabilities browser = context.Request.Browser;

                    string referer = String.Empty;

                    if (context.Request.UrlReferrer != null)
                    {
                        referer = context.Request.UrlReferrer.ToString();
                    }

                    using (SqlConnection sqlConnection = new SqlConnection(WebConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["ConnectionString"].ConnectionString))
                    {
                        using (SqlCommand sqlCommand = new SqlCommand())
                        {
                            sqlCommand.Connection = sqlConnection;
                            sqlCommand.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure;
                            sqlCommand.CommandText = "EventLog_Insert";

                            sqlCommand.Parameters.Add("@Source", SqlDbType.NVarChar).Value = ex.Source;
                            sqlCommand.Parameters.Add("@Message", SqlDbType.NVarChar).Value = ex.Message;
                            sqlCommand.Parameters.Add("@Form", SqlDbType.NVarChar).Value = context.Request.Form.ToString();
                            sqlCommand.Parameters.Add("@Path", SqlDbType.NVarChar).Value = context.Request.Path.ToString();
                            sqlCommand.Parameters.Add("@QueryString", SqlDbType.NVarChar).Value = context.Request.QueryString.ToString();
                            sqlCommand.Parameters.Add("@TargetSite", SqlDbType.NVarChar).Value = ex.TargetSite.ToString();
                            sqlCommand.Parameters.Add("@StackTrace", SqlDbType.NVarChar).Value = ex.StackTrace.ToString();
                            sqlCommand.Parameters.Add("@Referer", SqlDbType.NVarChar).Value = referer;
                            sqlCommand.Parameters.Add("@MachineName", SqlDbType.NVarChar).Value = context.Server.MachineName.ToString();
                            sqlCommand.Parameters.Add("@IPAddress", SqlDbType.NVarChar).Value = context.Request.UserHostAddress;
                            sqlCommand.Parameters.Add("@BrowserType", SqlDbType.NVarChar).Value = browser.Type;
                            sqlCommand.Parameters.Add("@BrowserName", SqlDbType.NVarChar).Value = browser.Browser;
                            sqlCommand.Parameters.Add("@BrowserVersion", SqlDbType.NVarChar).Value = browser.Version;
                            sqlCommand.Parameters.Add("@BrowserPlatform", SqlDbType.NVarChar).Value = browser.Platform;
                            sqlCommand.Parameters.Add("@SupportsCookies", SqlDbType.Bit).Value = browser.Cookies;
                            sqlCommand.Parameters.Add("@IsCrawler", SqlDbType.Bit).Value = browser.Crawler;

                            sqlConnection.Open();

                            sqlCommand.ExecuteNonQuery();
                        }
                    }
                }
                catch
                {
                    // database error, not much you can do here except logging the error in the windows event log
                    EventLog.WriteEntry(ex.Source, "Database Error From Exception Handler!", EventLogEntryType.Error);
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Finally I figured out what the problem was. I was encapulatning the Bitmap and Graphics objects inside a “using” statement. So the Bitmap object was being prematurely disposed before I returned it back to the caller.

So in the end my solution looked like this. I just god rid of the “usings”.

public Bitmap CropImage(Image image, Rectangle cropRect)
{
    Bitmap bitmap = new Bitmap(cropRect.Width, cropRect.Height, PixelFormat.Format24bppRgb);
    bitmap.SetResolution(image.HorizontalResolution, image.VerticalResolution);
    Graphics graphics = Graphics.FromImage(bitmap);
    graphics.DrawImage(image, 0, 0, cropRect, GraphicsUnit.Pixel);
    return bitmap;
}

Usage -

Bitmap croppedBmp = CropImage(“~/uploads/test.jpg”, new Rectangle(x, y, width, height));
croppedBmp.Save();

Moral of the story: If you are getting this error while calling Bitmap.Save() then make sure you are not disposing your Bitmap object prematurely. Hope this helps.