How to Close the Browser Window from a Silverlight Application

All secured sites ask you to close your browser window after you sign out from a web application. This is a security measure which actually removes all session details from the browser cache.

If you are developing a secured site and want to close the browser window just after the user logs out from the application, this small tip will help you. If you want to develop the same behavior in your Silverlight application, this is how we can do the trick.

Use  the "System.Windows.Browser.HtmlPage.Window.Invoke()" method to call the Close() method of the browser window, as shown in the below code snippet:

private void OnWindowCloseClick(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)

{

    System.Windows.Browser.HtmlPage.Window.Invoke("close");

}

The above code when called will close the browser window where your Silverlight application is hosted. If it is a tab, it will close the Window tab instead. If you are using it inside Internet Explorer, it will ask you whether you really want to close the browser. If you press "No", it will remain in that page, and clicking "Yes" will close the browser tab/window

Tips for Cross Browser Compatibility

Cross-browser compatibility is one of the most time consuming tasks for any web designer. We’ve seen many different articles over the net describing common problems and fixes. There are some things you should consider for Safari and Firefox also, and IE isn’t always the culprit for your CSS woes. Here is a quick summary of How to get Cross Browser Compatibility Every Time:

• Always use strict doctype and standards-compliant HTML/CSS
• Always use a reset at the start of your css
• Use -moz-opacity:0.99 on text elements to clean up rendering in Firefox, and text-shadow: #000 0 0 0 in Safari
• Never resize images in the CSS or HTML
• Check font rendering in every browser. Don’t use Lucida
• Size text as a % in the body, and as em’s throughout
• All layout divs that are floated should include display:inline and overflow:hidden
• Containers should have overflow:auto and trigger hasLayout via a width or height
• Don’t use any fancy CSS3 selectors
• Don’t use transparent PNG’s unless you have loaded the alpha

Keyboard Shortcuts: SQL Server Management Studio

SQL Server Management Studio offers users two keyboard schemes. By default, it uses the Standard scheme, with keyboard shortcuts based on Microsoft Visual Studio. A second scheme, called SQL Server 2000, closely resembles the tools from SQL Server 2000, in particular the keyboard shortcuts from the Query Analyzer. In a few cases, SQL Server Management Studio cannot offer the keyboard shortcuts from Query Analyzer. To change the keyboard scheme or add additional keyboard shortcuts, on the Tools menu, click Options. Select the desired keyboard scheme on the Environment, Keyboard page.

For Shortcuts page. Click here to navigate.

How to: Dummy Credit card # for Testing

Here are list of credit card numbers which we can use for testing purpose. You can use this numbers and give other details like year and month and cvv as dummy ones. These  works for testing purpose.

Credit Card Type	Credit Card Number
American Express	378282246310005
American Express	371449635398431
AMEX Corporate	378734493671000
Diners Club	30569309025904
Diners Club	38520000023237
Discover	6011111111111117
Discover	6011000990139424
JCB	3530111333300000
JCB	3566002020360505
MasterCard	5555555555554444
MasterCard	5105105105105100
Visa	4111111111111111
Visa	4012888888881881

Difference Between Add Service Reference And Web Reference?

Service References or WCF comes from VS 2008 and above with an extension as .svc and Web References are their from the beginning as .asmx.

The main difference between WCF service and Webservice while consuming, we need to add them in solution as reference to access them.

Add Web Reference is a wrapper over wsdl.exe and can be used to create proxies for .NET 1.1 or 2.0 clients. This means we are pointing to a WCF service you have to be pointing to an endpoint that uses basicHttpBinding.

Add Service Reference is a wrapper over svcutil.exe and also creates clients proxies (and additionally web.config entries). These proxies, however, can only be consumed by .NET 3.0+ clients.

Below image will show you how to add web reference from Service Reference. Right click theService References from solution explorer, then select advance button on Add Services windowyou will get to the form as in below image and then will be able to add Web Reference via Addweb Reference window..

But there is some things which changed in VS2010 about adding web references to a class library. So in VS 2010 you cannot add Web Reference directly.  Here is how you need to do it.

From Project -> Add Service Reference ..., (From Solution Explorer, Right Click on Project, From the drop down Menu, Select Add Service Reference)

This window will appear, Click advanced,

On Add Service Settings window, Now click on Add Web Reference

This will open add Web reference window from where we can add web service. Hope this helps. Good luck.