August Reading Materials from .NETLand

People often ask me how I know so much. I tell them I am divinely inspired, but that is a lie. The truth is I read a lot. Possibly too much. And probably should get out more and see the sun or somesuch. But I hate the big blue room with a passion.

Part of the reason I read so much is that there are a lot of .NET resources on the web. But the signal to noise ratio can be a bit low at times. In any case, I thought I would share some recent items as well as some of the regular sources:

• I found a really awesome diagram of the ASP.NET 2.0 page lifecycle. I have been doing a lot of custom control development, and this image has been a lifesaver. There is a lot going on in the page lifecycle and this makes it very easy to figure out what is doing what to what next.
• Dave Reed gives us the most amazing explanation of the ViewState ever. Well, possibly aside from some as-yet-unpublished Microsoft memos. Read it, learn it, love it. Remember, the ViewState is your friend.
• Scott Guthrie’s ASP.NET tips, tricks gotchas and highlights page is pure signal. Scott happens to manage the ASP.NET team, amongst other key things. So when he speaks, he speaketh the truth. Subscribe to this feed now.
• Scott Mitchell’s 5-part dive into ASP.NET 2.0’s site navigation is a must read if you are, say, building a custom sitemap provider of the non-simple sort. And remember to subscribe to 4guysfromrolla’s RSS while you are there.
• Phil Haacked has an awesome post on how to implement the Model-View-Presenter pattern in ASP.NET. Very interesting reading for those who like things like testable UI logic. He is a frequent, and very good poster. So subscribe to this one today.
• Where do I stumble upon some of these things, you ask? Why, I just stumbled upon DotNetKicks.com. Its like digg for .NETLand, with a kick. Needless to say, check back early and often to if you, can, in fact, kick it.
• Also, knowing what not to do is probably as, if not more important, than what to do. So I keep an eye on The Daily WTF. Ok, I admit, it is pretty hilarious to see how “enterprise” people can make things.

So that’s what I’ve been reading recently. Enjoy. And kick me or something.