What I have come to realize is that there are a variety of problems with today’s computer software. There are the obvious problems that are caused by individual developers. But there are also major problems with premises we use to design our user interfaces.   lees meer...

INI files and the registry are generally things of the past for .NET applications. But what to use instead? XML seems appropiate, but one look at System.XML is enough to scare most developers off, especially if you just want to store a few fields. Fortunately there is a very easy way in .NET to solve this, but one that is usually not seen by developers. In this article I'll explain how you can easily store and retrieve your application settings with just a few lines of code.   lees meer...

The POP3 protocol (Post Office Protocol, version 3) is the most commonly used protocol for retrieving mail. The SMTP protocol is only used for sending mail, a separate protocol such as POP3 is required to retrieve mail. In this article Chad describes the POP3 protocol and how Indy handles it.   lees meer...

A basic introduction to the SMTP protocol, accompanied with some demo code in C# and Delphi. SMTP is the Simple Mail Transport Protocol. SMTP is used only for sending mail, not for receiving.   lees meer...

This installment I will cover resource protection. This is a subject that mainly applies to servers, but is also a key in writing threaded clients. In a threaded environment resources must be protected, so that resources are not corrupted by allowing access by more than one thread at a given time. The process of protection of such resources is referred to as resource protection.   lees meer...