How To
 

Licensing
 How to Install a Product License Key Overview
 Overview or quick guide on how to install a Blayd Software product license key. License keys are emailed to the address specified when the license is purchased. Once you have received your key you will need to install it to activate the full functionality of your product and to continue using the product beyond the evaluation period.
 read article...
 
 How to Locate and Retrieve a Product License Key Overview
 Overview or quick guide on how to locate and retrieve a copy of a Blayd Software product's license key. You will be required to specify your, existing product, license key when buying a discounted upgrade license on the website.
 read article...
 
 How to Locate and Retrieve a Product Serial Number Overview
 Overview or quick guide on how to locate and retrieve a copy of a Blayd Software product's serial number. You will be required to specify your serial number when buying a license on the website.
 read article...
 
 How to Install a Product License Key (2.5.2000.0)
 Explains how to install your Blayd Software product license key. License keys are emailed to the address specified when the license is purchased. Once you have received your key you will need to install it to activate the full functionality of your product and to continue using the product beyond the evaluation period. Relates to .Net Framework version 2.0 products that use License Manager Console version 2.5.2000.0.
 read article...
 
 How to Locate and Retrieve a Product License Key (v2.5.2000.0)
 Explains how to locate and retrieve a copy of a Blayd Software product's license key. Relates to .Net Framework version 2.0 products that use License Manager Console version 2.5.2000.0. You will be required to specify your, existing product, license key when buying a discounted upgrade license on the website.
 read article...
 
 How to Locate and Retrieve a Product Serial Number (v2.5.2000.0)
 Explains how to locate and retrieve a copy of a Blayd Software product's serial number. Relates to .Net Framework version 2.0 products that use License Manager Console version 2.5.2000.0. You will be required to specify your serial number when buying a license on the website.
 read article...
 
 How to Install a Product License Key (v1.0.2000.0 and v2.1.2000.0)
 Explains how to install your Blayd Software product license key. License keys are emailed to the address specified when the license is purchased. Once you have received your key you will need to install it to activate the full functionality of your product and to continue using the product beyond the evaluation period. Relates to .Net Framework version 1.1 and 2.0 products that use License Manager Console version 1.0.2000.0 or 2.1.2000.0.
 read article...
 
 How to Locate and Retrieve a Product License Key (v1.0.2000.0 and v2.1.2000.0)
 Explains how to locate and retrieve a copy of a Blayd Software product's license key. Relates to .Net Framework version 1.1 and 2.0 products that use License Manager Console version 1.0.2000.0 or 2.1.2000.0. You will be required to specify your, existing product, license key when buying a discounted upgrade license on the website.
 read article...
 
 How to Locate and Retrieve a Product Serial Number (v1.0.2000.0 and v2.1.2000.0)
 Explains how to locate and retrieve a copy of a Blayd Software product's serial number. Relates to .Net Framework version 1.1 and 2.0 products that use License Manager Console version 1.0.2000.0 or 2.1.2000.0. You will be required to specify your serial number when buying a license on the website.
 read article...
 

Tutorials
 

File System UI
 File System UI Tutorial
 A step-by-step guide covering some of the common task relating to the use of the components and controls contained in the Blayd File System UI library. Design time initialization is explained together with design time data binding and linking and synchronizing the data source components. Using the data source components from code is discussed and demonstrated with sample code.
 read article...
 
 

Configuration Protector
 Configuration Protector Tutorial
 A step-by-step guide to using Configuration Protector to encrypt and decrypt configuration section data, create an RSA key container and create and save custom attributes for a named RSA protected configuration provider instance.
 read article...
 
 

Unit Tester
 Unit Tester Tutorial
 This tutorial provides a step by step guide to using the Blayd Software Unit Tester component. We describe how to use the testing framework to create, manage and run your unit tests and how to analyse the test results to pinpoint problems in the component being tested.
 read article...
 
 

Collection Generator
 Collection Generator Tutorial
 This tutorial provides a step by step guide through the process of generating the source code for a type-safe collection class using the Blayd Software Collection Generator component.
 read article...
 

Products
 

File System UI
 File System UI Product Tour
 The Blayd File System UI library contains components and controls that provide a user interface representation of file system devices, folders and files. Developers can use the components and controls in their Windows Forms applications to easily display file system information to the user. The data source components, when data bound to the user interface controls, provide the developer with a significant level of functionality within the designer and a lot can be achieved without writing any code. The product tour describes, in detail, some of the key features of each user interface control and file system data source component.
 read article...
 
 

Configuration Protector
 Configuration Protector Product Tour
 Configuration Protector is a developer tool designed to simplify the tasks of encrypting and decrypting configuration file sections and managing RSA key containers and their keys during application development. Configuration Protector provides a graphical user interface that enables configuration sections to be encrypted and decrypted using a point and click technique that reduces typing and therefore mistakes and speeds up the whole process. It also provides a simple and intuitive graphical user interface for managing RSA key containers and their keys.
 read article...
 
 

Unit Tester
 Unit Tester Product Tour
 The Blayd Software Unit Tester component provides a small, simple to use, unit testing framework that can be used with all flavours of Visual Studio and with other .Net Framework development environments.
 read article...
 
 

Collection Generator
 Collection Generator Product Tour
 Generate the .Net source code for collection classes with the Collection Generator component from Blayd Software. No more typing of boilerplate code or copying and pasting existing class code and then doing a search and replace to change the collected class type name. Produce consistent collection class source code in seconds with the easy to use Collection Generator wizard based user interface.
 read article...
 

Technologies
 

File System
 Working With Files In .Net
 An article that discusses in detail and demonstrates, with sample code, how to use the .Net Framework File and FileInfo classes in your own projects to create, copy, move, rename and delete files.
 read article...
 
 Working With Directories In .Net
 An article that discusses in detail and demonstrates, with sample code, how to use the .Net Framework Directory and DirectoryInfo classes in your own projects to create, copy, move, rename and delete directories.
 read article...
 
 Working With Drives In .Net
 An article that discusses in detail and demonstrates, with sample code, how to use the .Net Framework DriveInfo class in your own projects to display information about a machine’s drives to the user.
 read article...
 
 Accessing The File System From .Net
 An introduction to a series of articles on accessing and managing file system drives, directories and files from .Net code. The introduction discusses and demonstrates, with sample code, the common base classes, utility classes and access control and audit security. The series includes detailed articles that discuss and demonstrate, with sample code, how to access and manage file system drives, directories and files.
 read article...
 
 Using The Recycle Bin From CSharp
 An article that demonstrates how to perform file system folder and file copy, delete and move operations from CSharp code with progress reporting and system Recycle Bin support. The article demonstrates how to use existing managed .Net Framework functionality rather than resorting directly to unmanaged Windows API calls to send deleted folders and files to the Recycle Bin. It also demonstrates how to display full progress reporting with an option to cancel when copying or moving file system folders and files. The full demonstration CSharp source code used in the article is available as an optional download.
 read article...
 
 

Windows Forms
 Sorting .Net Collections
 An article demonstrating the development of a generic comparer class and its use in a custom collection class to provide binary search and sorting capabilities. The article demonstrates a minimalist approach, without a full-blown IBindingList implementation, to developing a collection class with advanced searching and sorting capabilities. The collection class can be used from code and can also be used, by application developers, to data bind to user interface components and/or controls with full support for sorting a business object on any of its properties.
 read article...
 
 DataSource and BindingList
 An article demonstrating techniques for providing data from a middle tier business or server component to which user interface components and controls can data bind. The article demonstrates the development of a DataSource class that supplies a BindingList derived list of the Windows Services installed on the machine. Application developers can use the DataSource class and the BindingList derived class at design time to bind the Windows Service data to a user interface component and/or control.
 read article...
 
 Windows Forms Threading
 An article explaining various techniques for developing multithreaded .Net Framework Windows Forms applications. The article demonstrates the use of the Thread, ThreadPool and BackgroundWorker classes and shows how to make user interface control updates in a thread-safe manner. Asynchronous methods, the IAsyncResult Design Pattern and the Event Based Asynchronous Design Pattern are discussed and demonstrated. You can also download the source code used in the article which includes the AsyncComponent class, a component base class with built in support for asynchronous methods.
 read article...
 
 

Configuration
 Configuration Section Handlers
 An article examining .Net Framework configuration section handlers. The article discusses the use of configuration section handler classes and demonstrates how to declare your own configuration sections and handler classes. The main configuration section handler classes that ship with the .Net Framework are discussed and the declaration and use of the NameValueSectionHandler is demonstrated. The development of custom configuration section handler classes is discussed and both the declarative and programmatic model of custom configuration section handler class development are demonstrated in detail with full source code listings.
 read article...
 
 User Application Settings
 An article explaining the concept of user application settings for .Net Framework Windows Forms applications. The article demonstrates how to create, serialize and deserialize application settings and how to develop your own custom application settings provider. The functionality of an application settings provider that supports the encryption of user application settings is discussed and you can also download the CSharp or Visual Basic source code for the settings provider.
 read article...
 
 Protected Configuration
 An article looking at the technology used in the .Net Framework to protect sensitive configuration file settings data. The article discusses the provider model design pattern in general and protected configuration providers and their use in detail.
 read article...
 
 

Class Libraries
 Generating .Net Source Code
 An article that demonstrates how to build a, language-independent, Code Document Object Model (CodeDOM) using the types in the System.CodeDom namespace to generate source code in any, supported, .Net Framework language. The article discusses and demonstrates, with sample code, how to generate types i.e. class, enum, interface, struct, type members e.g. events, fields, properties, methods, etc. and code expressions and statements. Language-specific code providers are discussed and demonstrated and the source code output generated by the CSharp and Visual Basic code providers is shown for each of the CodeDOM generation code samples.
 read article...
 
 Provider Based Services
 An article that demonstrates how to implement the Provider Design Pattern in a Windows Forms system. The provider model is used to develop a line of business system in which the client application is decoupled from the business logic and data services to create a system that is inherently flexible and easy to extend. The article demonstrates how to extend the ProviderBase abstract base class to develop feature specific provider base classes and how to use the base classes in a loosely coupled satellite class library assembly. Component dependencies, provider design and development, provider configuration, loading and initialization are all discussed and demonstrated with source code listings. The full sample source code used in the article is available in CSharp and Visual Basic as an optional download.
 read article...