So just as I had managed to justify not having to learn Test Driven Development, James Kovacs throws his hat into the ring. JP Boodhoo convinced me to at least be agnostic about the methodology some months ago. But James has made me feel downright guilty about not going into it further. Like Catholic-guilty.

Not to speak against JP's arguments, which are very good. This is more psychological. Some very interesting conversations aside, I know JP more by reputation. I hear he's a brilliant guy from many people and I assume that to be true. But I know first-hand that James is a brilliant guy (and a snappy dresser) so when he extols the virtues of a topic upon which I'm sittting on the fence, to paraphrase a billboard near Steinbach, MB, I can no longer be neutral. (If you're familiar with Steinbach, you can imagine what the context of that billboard is.)

So...ummm...that's the whole point of this post, I guess. That I should learn TDD and that other people are smart. Suppose I should point out some random technical junk to stave off a class action from my readership:

  • FeedBurner FlareItems don't work with the release version of dasBlog 1.8. Latest builds have support for it as does the upcoming 1.9. Error comes from a missing attribute in the RSS.
  • The following code will attach a TextboxWatermark Atlas Control Extender to an existing textbox using Javascript

var textbox = new Sys.UI.TextBox( $(<<ID of Textbox>>) );
var watermark = new AtlasControlToolkit.TextBoxWatermark( );
watermark.set_WatermarkText( "watermark text" );
watermark.set_WatermarkCssClass( "watermarked" );
textbox.get_behaviors( ).add( watermark );
watermark.initialize( );

You'll need to include reference to a lot of Atlas scripts if you haven't already included a ScriptManager. The scripts are most likely in: C:Program FilesMicrosoft ASP.NETAtlasv2.0.50727AtlasScriptLibrary on your machine. You'll also need a reference to AtlasControlExtender.js and TextboxWatermark.js from the latest Atlas Control Toolkit build. (NOTE: In the latest release, the AtlasControlExtender is still a compiled assembly; the latest build makes its source available.)