| DotNetKicks.com Links |
| Loadind and previewing fonts from file in ASP.NET ... Use the PrivateFontCollectionClass to load and preview files in ASP.NET | Go |
| Creating Model Classes with LINQ to SQL ... great tutorial about the new ASP.NET MVC Framework. Stephen Walther explains how to create Model classes for Linq to Sql. He also introduces the repository pattern for a better encapsulation of your data layer and a better testability of the application. Very interesting. | Go |
| Project Management FAQ ... In this section we will run through a quick FAQ for schedule management of software projects. We will run through WBS , how do we allocate resources, network diagrams like CPM and Pert, EST,LST,EFT,LFT, calculate deviations , monte-carlo , GANTT chart and lot. We are sure after this FAQ you will at least understand different project management concept in terms of schedule management. | Go |
| Crystal and Reporting Services FAQ Part 2 ... This FAQ will give you a quick start for two report giant's crystal and reporting services. | Go |
| Crystal and Reporting Services FAQ Part 1 ... This FAQ will give you a quick start for two report giant's crystal and reporting services. | Go |
| (WPF) Windows Presentation Foundation FAQ ... In this section we will make a quick walkthrough of WPF which will help you understand WPF instantly. | Go |
| How to Prepare Quotation Using Use Case Points ... You can not plan if you can not measure, and if you fail to plan, you have planned to fail."
Quotation: It's a financial document send from supplier to customer regarding service to be provided. It's also called as temporary financial document for negotiations. "A statement of price, terms of sale, and description of goods or services offered by a supplier to a prospective purchaser, a bid. When given in response to an inquiry, a quotation often is considered an offer to sell." | Go |
| Using function point to quote a software ... Software Industry, an industry which sells logical things. The advantage of buying a software is automation, better analyzing of business, thus making life easier. As we are into logical selling, it makes difficult to come with a costing to an accurate level. Customer can see the benefits of buying only when he uses the software for quiet a period of time and then says 'Aah its worth of it'. When customer sees accountants performing better, invoices been made with least errors etc., customer gets convinced. So to convince the customer at the primary stage is really a big nut to crack. If you give more quote you lose the project, if you give less quote you will end up doing social service to clients and probably also loss. In this tutorial, we will discuss mainly "Function Point" from practical point of view. | Go |
| Aspect Oriented Programming in .NET ... I just completed my second book ".NET Interview questions" and now on my third book "SQL Server 2005 Interview questions". Had a decent time in between to update my skills and be in tune with new developments. Thanks to my publisher for giving me a free pass for the Aspect Oriented Programming seminar in Mumbai, that's what has inspired me to write this article. A lot has been written about AOP (Aspect Oriented Programming) on the Web, but none of the articles cover how to implement it practically in C#.
Let's start with a small definition on AOP first:
"Aspect Oriented Programming is a methodology to separate cross cut code across different modules in a software system."
In short all the cross cut code is moved to a separate module, thus increasing more modularity and bringing in ease of maintenance. Okay, that was a theoretical definition, let's try to understand why we really need AOP when we have decent methodologies like "Object Oriented Programming" and "Procedural Oriented Programming".
"Aspect oriented programming is not introduced in order to replace OOP, but assists it to remove its short comings. I see AOP as a brother of OOP". | Go |
| SQL Server Interview Questions - Part 1 ... In this article we will go through the most basic and frequently asked interview questions on SQL Server. Please do not think that I am writing this article to show shortcuts to candidates who are searching for jobs on SQL Server. But I think no matter how much experience you have, an interview is a different ball game. A good project executioner can get knocked off on simple SQL Server questions. This article will be a complete series, so here's my first from the series - SQL Server Interview Questions Part 1. | Go |
| Dynamic validation according to logged in user ... Many times we want certain set of validation to fire for some user and certain set of validation to fire for some other user. In the section we will see how we can achieve the same using Microsoft enterprise validation blocks. | Go |
| Place a StackOverflow badge on your website ... I was thinking it would be cool if you could place a StackOverflow "badge" on your website or blog showing your current Reputation score with a link to your profile. So I look into it, and it actually wasn't that difficult to "scrape" the information off the StackOverflow.com website. Here's a simple ASP.NET User Control that does the job. | Go |
| Getting .NET 3.5 apps to run on 2.0 hosting ... Getting a .NET 3.5 based web-application to run on a hosting only supporting .NET 2.0 | Go |
| Keys To Web 3.0 Design and Development When Using ASP.NET ... Ten rules to consider for hard-core agile and beautiful ASP.NET development. | Go |
| Delicious tagged ASP.NET Links |
| Best practices for creating websites in IIS 6.0 - Omar AL Zabir blog on ASP.NET Ajax and .NET 3.5 | Go |
| CodeProject: Exploring Caching in ASP.NET. Free source code and ... | Go |
| Using jQuery to enhance ASP.NET AJAX progress indication | Encosia | Go |
| ASP.NET website Continuous Integration+Deployment using CruiseControl.NET, Subversion, MSBuild and Robocopy - Omar AL Zabir blog on ASP.NET Ajax and .NET 3.5 | Go |
| Adding OpenID to your web site in conjunction with ASP.NET Membership - Digging My Blog - Dan Hounshell | Go |
| An Introduction to jQuery - Part 1: The Client Side | Go |
| Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - Plug-In Hybrids: ASP.NET WebForms and ... | Go |
| IIS 6 Compression - quickest and effective way to do it for ASP.NET compression - Omar AL Zabir blog on ASP.NET Ajax and .NET 3.5 | Go |
| Microsoft Web Platform | Go |
| jQuery and Microsoft - ScottGu's Blog | Go |
| Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - ASP.NET MVC and the new IIS7 Rewrite Module | Go |
| Scott Gu Blog Links |
| October 10th Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET AJAX, jQuery, IIS ... Here is the latest in my link-listing series . Also check out my ASP.NET Tips, Tricks and Tutorials page and Silverlight Tutorials page for links to popular articles I've done myself in the past. ASP.NET Best Practices for Creating ASP.NET websites with IIS 6.0 : Omar Al Zabir, author of the excellent Building a Web 2.0 Portal with ASP.NET 3.5 book , has a great article that details best practices to follow when setting up a site on IIS 6.0. Definitely worth reading and book-marking. ASP.NET Dynamic Data Videos using VB: Bill Burrows has put together an awesome series of videos that show off how to use the new ASP.NET Dynamic Data support provided in .NET 3.5 SP1. You can find more links to ASP.NET Dynamic Data tutorials in my last link post here . Exploring Caching in ASP.NET : Abhijit Jana has a nice article that discusses caching options with ASP.NET. If you are interested in another nice (but not well known) caching technique, you might also want to check out my prior Tip/Trick post on "Donut Caching" using the ASP.NET 2.0 Output Cache Substitution feature . Routing with WebForms : Wally McClure has a nice podcast that describes how to use the new ASP.NET routing infrastructure in .NET 3.5 SP1 with Web Forms based pages. A lot of people mistakenly think this feature only works with ASP.NET MVC applications - when in reality it also works with web forms pages (in fact all ASP.NET Dynamic Data sites use it). ASP.NET Continuous Integration and Deployment using CruiseControl.NET, Subversion, MSBuild and Robocopy : Omar Al Zabir has another great article - this time on implementing continuous integration with ASP.NET. ASP.NET AJAX and jQuery An Introduction to jQuery (Part 1) : Rick Strahl has posted an excellent article that introduces jQuery, and walks-through how to take advantage of it within ASP.NET pages. New AJAX Support for Data-Driven Web Apps : Bertrand Le Roy has written a great MSDN article that describes some of the new ASP.NET AJAX features available in preview form today. Also check out his blog posts here and here to learn more about how the new client-side data templating feature support. Using jQuery to enhance ASP.NET AJAX progress indication : Dave Ward has a cool article that describes how to integrate jQuery functionality with the ASP.NET AJAX UpdatePanel control to enable better progress indication status. ASP.NET AJAX: Enabling Bookmarking and the Browser's Back Button : Scott Mitchell continues his excellent series on ASP.NET AJAX and discusses how to add history points to an AJAX-enabled web page so that visitors can bookmark it, as well as to enable back/forward browser navigation. This is a new feature added to ASP.NET in .NET 3.5 SP1. 46 ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit Tutorials : Christian Wenz has published 46 super useful tutorials in both VB and C# that show of how to perform common scenarios with the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit. Microsoft Web Platform Web Platform Installer: Make it easy to setup for web development : Scott Hanselman has a nice post that shows off the new "Microsoft Web Platform Installer" we are building that provides an easy way to quickly install every Microsoft web component out there - and quickly get a machine ready for web development. Hope this helps, Scott | Go |
| October 2nd Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Dynamic Data ... Here is the latest in my link-listing series . Also check out my ASP.NET Tips, Tricks and Tutorials page and Silverlight Tutorials page for links to popular articles I've done myself in the past. ASP.NET Amazon EC2 Support for Windows and ASP.NET: Big news announced this week: Amazon will be offering Windows Server 2008 as an option in their EC2 service. This enables you to use ASP.NET, IIS7 and SQL Server in the cloud. Using ASP.NET WebForms, MVC and Dynamic Data in a Single Application : Scott Hanselman has a nice post that demonstrates how you can have a single ASP.NET application that uses ASP.NET WebForms, MVC, WebServices and Dynamic Data. You have the flexibility to mix and match them however you want, which allows you to always use the right tool depending on the specific job. Modifying Data with the ListView's EditItemTemplate : Matt Berseth has a great post that talks about how to use the ASP.NET 3.5 ListView control to enable in-place editing scenarios - with total html markup control. 4 New Grouping Grid Skins: Vista, Bold, Win2k3 and Soft : Matt Berseth has another nice post that demonstrates how to skin the ASP.NET ListView control to enable some sweet data grouping scenarios. Unlocking and Approving User Accounts : Scott Mitchell posts another in his great series of articles on ASP.NET security (click here for all the articles in the series). This article talks about how you can setup administration pages that allow admins to lock out and approve user accounts using the ASP.NET Membership system. Adding OpenID to you website in conjunction to ASP.NET Membership : Dan Hounshell has a nice article that discusses how to add OpenID authentication support to your web-site, and use it in conjunction to ASP.NET's built-in membership system. ASP.NET MVC MVC Membership with Preview 5 : Troy Goode posts an update of his popular MVC Membership template that works with ASP.NET MVC Preview 5. It provides a set of administration pages you can use for user/role management, as well as adds support for OpenID and Windows LiveID. MVC Flickr Xplorer : Mehfuz Hossain has a cool ASP.NET MVC sample application posted that enables a nice picture explorer for FlickR photos. ASP.NET Dynamic Data Simple 5 Table Northwind Example : Matt Berseth kicks off his ASP.NET Dynamic Data tutorial series with a nice post that shows how to build a simple 5 table application using ASP.NET Dynamic Data with .NET 3.5 SP1. Dynamic Data And Custom Metadata Providers : Matt continues the series and covers the MetadataType attribute, and how you can use it to annotate your entities with additional metadata. Dynamic Menu for your Dynamic Data: Matt continues and covers how to add a data-driven menu to the site. Customizing the Delete Confirmation Dialog : Matt continues and demonstrates how to build a nice UI experience when deleting records in a dynamic data application. Experimenting with YUI's DataTable and DataSource Controls : Matt experiments with how to use client-side AJAX components together with dynamic data. Hope this helps, Scott | Go |
| jQuery and Microsoft ... jQuery is a lightweight open source JavaScript library (only 15kb in size) that in a relatively short span of time has become one of the most popular libraries on the web. A big part of the appeal of jQuery is that it allows you to elegantly (and efficiently) find and manipulate HTML elements with minimum lines of code. jQuery supports this via a nice "selector" API that allows developers to query for HTML elements, and then apply "commands" to them. One of the characteristics of jQuery commands is that they can be "chained" together - so that the result of one command can feed into another. jQuery also includes a built-in set of animation APIs that can be used as commands. The combination allows you to do some really cool things with only a few keystrokes. For example, the below JavaScript uses jQuery to find all <div> elements within a page that have a CSS class of "product", and then animate them to slowly disappear: As another example, the JavaScript below uses jQuery to find a specific <table> on the page with an id of "datagrid1", then retrieves every other <tr> row within the datagrid, and sets those <tr> elements to have a CSS class of "even" - which could be used to alternate the background color of each row: [Note: both of these samples were adapted from code snippets in the excellent jQuery in Action book] Providing the ability to perform selection and animation operations like above is something that a lot of developers have asked us to add to ASP.NET AJAX, and this support was something we listed as a proposed feature in the ASP.NET AJAX Roadmap we published a few months ago. As the team started to investigate building it, though, they quickly realized that the jQuery support for these scenarios is already excellent, and that there is a huge ecosystem and community built up around it already. The jQuery library also works well on the same page with ASP.NET AJAX and the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit. Rather than duplicate functionality, we thought, wouldn't it be great to just use jQuery as-is, and add it as a standard, supported, library in VS/ASP.NET, and then focus our energy building new features that took advantage of it? We sent mail the jQuery team to gauge their interest in this, and quickly heard back that they thought that it sounded like an interesting idea too. Supporting jQuery I'm excited today to announce that Microsoft will be shipping jQuery with Visual Studio going forward. We will distribute the jQuery JavaScript library as-is, and will not be forking or changing the source from the main jQuery branch. The files will continue to use and ship under the existing jQuery MIT license. We will also distribute intellisense-annotated versions that provide great Visual Studio intellisense and help-integration at design-time. For example: and with a chained command: The jQuery intellisense annotation support will be available as a free web-download in a few weeks (and will work great with VS 2008 SP1 and the free Visual Web Developer 2008 Express SP1). The new ASP.NET MVC download will also distribute it, and add the jQuery library by default to all new projects. We will also extend Microsoft product support to jQuery beginning later this year, which will enable developers and enterprises to call and open jQuery support cases 24x7 with Microsoft PSS. Going forward we'll use jQuery as one of the libraries used to implement higher-level controls in the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit, as well as to implement new Ajax server-side helper methods for ASP.NET MVC. New features we add to ASP.NET AJAX (like the new client template support ) will be designed to integrate nicely with jQuery as well. We also plan to contribute tests, bug fixes, and patches back to the jQuery open source project. These will all go through the standard jQuery patch review process. Summary We are really excited to be able to partner w | Go |
| Silverlight 2 Release Candidate Now Available ... This evening we published the first public release candidate of Silverlight 2. There are still a small handful of bugs fixes that we plan to make before we finally ship. We are releasing today's build, though, so that developers can start to update their existing Silverlight Beta2 applications so that they'll work the day the final release ships, as well as to enable developers to report any last minute showstopper issues that we haven't found internally (please report any of these on the www.silverlight.net forums). Important: We are releasing only the Silverlight Developer Runtime edition (as well as the VS and Blend tools to support it) today, and are not releasing the regular end-user edition of Silverlight. This is because we want to give existing developers a short amount of time to update their applications to work with the final Silverlight 2 APIs before sites are allowed to go live with it. There are some breaking changes between Beta2 and this RC, and we want to make sure that existing sites can update to the final release quickly once the final release is out. As such, you can only use the RC for development right now - you can't go live with the new APIs until the final release is shipped (which will be soon though). You can download today's Silverlight Release Candidate and accompanying VS and Blend support for it here . Note that Expression Blend support for Silverlight 2 is now provided using Blend 2.0 SP1. You will need to install Blend 2.0 before applying the SP1 service pack that adds Silverlight 2 support. If you don't already have Blend 2.0 installed you can download a free trial of it here . Beta2->RC API Updates Today's release candidate includes a ton of bug fix and some significant performance optimization work. Today's release candidate also includes a number of final API tweaks designed to fix differences between Silverlight and the full .NET Framework. Most of these changes are relatively small (order of parameters, renames of methods/properties, movement of types across namespaces, etc) although there are a number of them. You can read this blog post and download this document to get a listing of the known API breaking changes made from the Beta2 release. We have updated the styles of the controls shipped with Silverlight, and have also modified some of the state groups and control template names they use. When upgrading from Beta2 you might find it useful to temporarily remove any custom style templates you've defined, and get your application functionality working using the RC first - and then after that works add back in the styles one style definition at a time to catch any rename/behavior change issues with them. If you find yourself stuck with an question/issue moving from Beta2 to the RC, please report it on the www.silverlight.net forums (Silverlight team members will be on there helping folks). If after a day or two you aren't getting an answer please send me email (scottgu@microsoft.com ) and I can help or connect you with someone who knows the answer. New Controls Today's release candidate includes a bunch of feature additions and tweaks across Silverlight 2, as well as in the VS and Blend tools targeting it. In general you'll find a number of nice improvements across the controls, networking, data caching, layout, rendering, media stack, and other components and sub-systems. Over the next few months we will be releasing a lot of new Silverlight 2 controls (more details on these soon). Today's release candidate includes three new core controls - ComboBox, ProgressBar, and PasswordBox - that we are adding directly to the core Silverlight runtime download (which is still only 4.6MB in size, and only takes a few seconds to install): At runtime these controls by default look like: The ComboBox in Silverlight 2 supports standard DropDownList semantics. In addition to statically defining items like above, you | Go |
| ASP.NET MVC Preview 5 and Form Posting Scenarios ... This past Thursday the ASP.NET MVC feature team published a new "Preview 5" release of the ASP.NET MVC framework. You can download the new release here . This "Preview 5" release works with both .NET 3.5 and the recently released .NET 3.5 SP1. It can also now be used with both Visual Studio 2008 as well as (the free) Visual Web Developer 2008 Express SP1 edition (which now supports both class library and web application projects). Preview 5 includes a bunch of new features and refinements (these build on the additions in "Preview 4" ). You can read detailed "Preview 5" release notes that cover changes/additions here . In this blog post I'm going to cover one of the biggest areas of focus with this release: form posting scenarios. You can download a completed version of the application I'll build below here . Basic Form Post with a Web MVC Pattern Let's look at a simple form post scenario - adding a new product to a products database: The page above is returned when a user navigates to the "/Products/Create" URL in our application. The HTML form markup for this page looks like below: The markup above is standard HTML. We have two <input type="text"/> textboxes within a <form> element. We then have an HTML submit button at the bottom of the form. When pressed it will cause the form it is nested within to post the form inputs to the server. The form will post the contents to the URL indicated by its "action" attribute - in this case "/Products/Save". Using the previous "Preview 4" release of ASP.NET we might have implemented the above scenario using a ProductsController class like below that implements two action methods - "Create" and "Save": The "Create" action method above is responsible for returning an html view that displays our initial empty form. The "Save" action method then handles the scenario when the form is posted back to the server. The ASP.NET MVC framework automatically maps the "ProductName" and "UnitPrice" form post values to the method parameters on the Save method with the same names. The Save action then uses LINQ to SQL to create a new Product object, assigns its ProductName and UnitPrice values with the values posted by the end-user, and then attempts to save the new product in the database. If the product is successfully saved, the user is redirected to a "/ProductsAdded" URL that will display a success message. If there is an error we redisplay our "Create" html view again so that the user can fix the issue and retry. We could then implement a "Create" HTML view template like below that would work with the above ProductsController to generate the appropriate HTML. Note below that we are using the Html.TextBox helper methods to generate the <input type="text"/> elements for us (and automatically populate their value from the appropriate property in our Product model object that we passed to the view): Form Post Improvements with Preview 5 The above code works with the previous "Preview 4" release, and continues to work fine with "Preview 5". The "Preview 5" release, though, adds several additional features that will allow us to make this scenario even better. These new features include: The ability to publish a single action URL and dispatch it differently depending on the HTTP Verb Model Binders that allow rich parameter objects to be constructed from form input values and passed to action methods Helper methods that enable incoming form input values to be mapped to existing model object instances within action methods Improved support for handling input and validation errors (for example: automatically highlighting bad fields and preserving end-user entered form values when the form is redisplayed to the user) I'll use the remainder of this blog post to drill into each of these scenarios. [AcceptVerbs] and [ActionName] attributes In our sample above we implemented ou | Go |
| Quick Update ... I've received a number of (very nice) emails recently asking if I was ok - since my blog has been silent the last few weeks (and much of the summer). Just to address people's concerns - I'm alive and well. :-) I've just been on vacation the last 6 weeks, and have unfortunately not had free time to post (I've been changing a lot of diapers). I am still on vacation another week before I officially return to work. I did get a chance to write up a quick post this weekend that covers some of the new ASP.NET MVC Preview 5 features, though, that will hopefully provide some interim reading until I can resume a more regular posting schedule over the next month when I get back into the office. Thanks, Scott P.S. Somewhat to my embarrassment I started a Part1/Part2 post on "Preview 4" right before I left for vacation, and didn't have time to finish part 2 before "Preview 5" came out. I am going to post this lost segment (which covered AJAX) later this month and write it against the latest preview build. P.P.S. People often ask me whether I write my own blog. Yep - I actually really do write every single post. Hopefully my absence the last 6 weeks provides some evidence to support this. :-) | Go |
| ASP.NET MVC Preview 4 Release (Part 1) ... The ASP.NET MVC team is in the final stages of finishing up a new "Preview 4" release that they hope to ship later this week. The Preview 3 release focused on finishing up a lot of the underlying core APIs and extensibility points in ASP.NET MVC. Starting with Preview 4 this week you'll start to see more and more higher level features begin to appear that build on top of the core foundation and add nice productivity. There are a bunch of new features and capabilities in this new build - so much in fact that I decided I needed two posts to cover them all. This first post will cover the new Caching, Error Handling and Security features in Preview 4, as well as some testing improvements it brings. My next post will cover the new AJAX features being added with this release as well. Understanding Filter Interceptors Action Filter Attributes are a useful extensibility capability in ASP.NET MVC that was first added with the "Preview 2" release. These enable you to inject code interceptors into the request of a MVC controller that can execute before and after a Controller or its Action methods execute. This enables some nice encapsulation scenarios where you can easily package-up and re-use functionality in a clean declarative way. Below is an example of a super simple "ScottGuLog" filter that I could use to log details about exceptions raised during the execution of a request. Implementing a custom filter class is easy - just subclass the "ActionFilterAttribute" type and override the appropriate methods to run code before or after an Action method on the Controller is invoked, and/or before or after an ActionResult is processed into a response. Using a filter within a ASP.NET MVC Controller is easy - just declare it as an attribute on an Action method, or alternatively on the Controller class itself (in which case it will apply to all Action methods within the Controller): Above you can see an example of two filters being applied. I've indicated that I want my "ScottGuLog" to be applied to the "About" action method, and that I want the "HandleError" filter to be applied to all Action methods on the HomeController. Previous preview releases of ASP.NET MVC enabled this filter extensibility, but didn't ship with pre-built filters. ASP.NET Preview 4 now includes several useful filters for handling output caching, error handling and security scenarios. OutputCache Filter The [OutputCache] filter provides an easy way to integrate ASP.NET MVC with the output caching features of ASP.NET (with ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 you had to write code to achieve this). To try this out, modify the "Message" value set within the "Index" action method of the HomeController (created by the VS ASP.NET MVC project template) to display the current time: When you run your application you'll see that a timestamp updates each time you refresh the page: We can enable output caching for this URL by adding the [OutputCache] attribute to the our Action method. We'll configure it to cache the response for a 10 second duration using the declaration below: Now when you hit refresh on the page you'll see that the timestamp only updates every 10 seconds. This is because the action method is only being called once every 10 seconds - all requests between those time intervals are served out of the ASP.NET output cache (meaning no code needs to run - which makes it super fast). In addition to supporting time duration, the OutputCache attribute also supports the standard ASP.NET output cache vary options (vary by params, headers, content encoding, and custom logic). For example, the sample below would save different cached versions of the page depending on the value of an optional "PageIndex" QueryString parameter, and automatically render the correct version depending on the incoming URL's querystring value: You can also integrate with the ASP.NET Database Cache Invalidation feature - which allows you t | Go |
| Silverlight 2 Beta2 Released ... Silverlight 2 Beta2 was released today. You can download both Silverlight 2 Beta2 and the Visual Studio and Expression Blend tools support to target it here . Beta2 adds a lot of new features (more details below), but is still a 4.6 MB download that takes less than 10 seconds to install on a machine. It does not require the .NET Framework or any other software to be installed for it to work, and all features work cross-browser on both Mac and Windows machines. These features will also be supported on Linux via the Moonlight 2 release. Silverlight 2 Beta2 supports a go-live license that allows you to start using and deploying Silverlight 2 for commercial applications. There will be some API changes between Beta2 and the final release, so you should expect that applications you write with Beta2 will need to make some updates when the final release comes out. But we think that these changes will be straight-forward and relatively easy, and that you can begin planning and starting commercial projects now. You can build Silverlight Beta2 applications using the VS 2008 Tools for Silverlight and Expression Blend 2.5 June Preview downloads. You can download both of them here . The VS 2008 Tools for Silverlight download works with both VS 2008 and the recent VS 2008 SP1 beta release. UI and Control Improvements Silverlight 2 Beta2 includes a bunch of work in the UI and Control space: More Built-in Controls In Beta 1 only a few controls were included with the core Silverlight setup. Most common controls (including Button, ListBox, Slider, etc) were shipped within separate assemblies that you had to bundle with your applications (which increased the app download size). Beta 2 now installs 30+ of the most common controls as part of the core Silverlight 2 download. This means that you can now build Silverlight 2 applications that use core controls that are as small as 3kb in size - making Silverlight application downloads small and startup time fast. In addition to the core controls included with the base Silverlight 2 setup, we are also this week shipping additional higher-level controls that are implemented in separate assemblies that you can then reference and include with your applications. This includes controls like DataGrid (more details on its new Beta2 features below), Calendar (now with multi-day selection and blackout date support in Beta2), and a TabPanel control (new in Beta2). We ultimately expect to ship over a 100 controls for Silverlight. Control Template Editing Support One of the most powerful features of the WPF and Silverlight programming model is the ability to completely customize the look and feel of controls. This allows developers and designers to sculpt the UI of controls in both subtle and dramatic ways, and enables a tremendous amount of flexibility. I covered these concepts a little in my previous Silverlight Control Templating blog post here . This week's Expression Blend 2.5 June Preview now adds designer support for editing control templates - which makes it easy for you to quickly change the look of any control without having to drop-down to XAML source to-do it. To see control template editing in action, just drag/drop two Slider controls onto the Expression Blend design surface: We might decide that the slider head in the default Slider control template is too large and wide for our application. To use control template editing to change it, we can right-click on one of the sliders in the designer and select the "Edit Control Parts" context menu item. We can choose to create a new empty control template for our slider (and start from scratch), or alternatively edit a copy of the built-in control template (and start from that and tweak it): After we choose to edit a copy of the existing control template, Blend will prompt us to create and name a re-usable style resource that we'll define our control template wit | Go |
| ASP.NET MVC Support with Visual Web Developer 2008 Express ... Last week I blogged about the ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 release . One important thing I forgot to mention about this release is that you can now use it with both Visual Studio 2008 as well as the free Visual Web Developer 2008 Express edition. The SP1 release of Visual Web Developer 2008 Express adds support for both class library projects as well as web application projects (previously only web site projects could be used with it). This new support is useful in itself, as well as in enabling both ASP.NET MVC and Silverlight project support with VWD Express. If you install the Visual Web Developer Express SP1 Beta you can start using ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 with it immediately. Important: ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 does not require SP1 to be installed if you are using Visual Studio 2008. ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 will work with both VS 2008 and VS 2008 SP1 just fine. You can learn more about the new VWD Express support for ASP.NET MVC from the VS Web Tools team blog here . This post also includes a free web download that provides ASP.NET MVC Test project support for NUnit-based unit tests. You can use these NUnit project templates with both Visual Studio 2008 as well as with Visual Web Developer Express 2008. Hope this helps, Scott | Go |
| ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 Release ... This morning we released the Preview 3 build of the ASP.NET MVC framework. I blogged details last month about an interim source release we did that included many of the changes with this Preview 3 release. Today's build includes some additional features not in last month's drop, some nice enhancements/refinements, as well as Visual Studio tool integration and documentation. You can download an integrated ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 setup package here . You can also optionally download the ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 framework source code and framework unit tests here . Controller Action Method Changes ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 includes the MVC Controller changes we first discussed and previewed with the April MVC source release , along with some additional tweaks and adjustments. You can continue to write controller action methods that return void and encapsulate all of their logic within the action method. For example: which would render the below HTML when run: Preview 3 also now supports using an approach where you return an "ActionResult" object that indicates the result of the action method, and enables deferred execution of it. This allows much easier unit testing of actions (without requiring the need to mock anything). It also enables much cleaner composition and overall execution control flow. For example, we could use LINQ to SQL within our Browse action method to retrieve a sequence of Product objects from our database and indicate that we want to render a View of them. The code below will cause three pieces of "ViewData" to be passed to the view - "Title" and "CategoryName" string values, and a strongly typed sequence of products (passed as the ViewData.Model object): One advantage of using the above ActionResult approach is that it makes unit testing Controller actions really easy (no mocking required). Below is a unit test that verifies the behavior of our Browse action method above: We can then author a "Browse" ViewPage within the \Views\Products sub-directory to render a response using the ViewData populated by our Browse action: When we hit the /Products/Browse/Beverages URL we'll then get an HTML response like below (with the three usages of ViewData circled in red): Note that in addition to support a "ViewResult" response (for indicating that a View should be rendered), ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 also adds support for returning "JsonResult" (for AJAX JSON serialization scenarios), "ContentResult" (for streaming content without a View), as well as HttpRedirect and RedirectToAction/Route results. The overall ActionResult approach is extensible (allowing you to create your own result types), and overtime you'll see us add several more built-in result types. Improved HTML Helper Methods The HTML helper methods have been updated with ASP.NET MVC Preview 3. In addition to a bunch of bug fixes, they also include a number of nice usability improvements. Automatic Value Lookup With previous preview releases you needed to always explicitly pass in the value to render when calling the Html helpers. For example: to include a value within a <input type="text" value="some value"/> element you would write: The above code continues to work - although now you can also just write: The HTML helpers will now by default check both the ViewData dictionary and any Model object passed to the view for a ProductName key or property value to use. SelectList and MultiSelectList ViewModels New SelectList and MultiSelectList View-Model classes are now included that provide a cleaner way to populate HTML dropdowns and multi-select listboxes (and manage things like current selection, etc). One approach that can make form scenarios cleaner is to instantiate and setup these View-Model objects in a controller action, and then pass them in the ViewData dictionary to the View to format/render. For example, below I'm creating a SelectList view-model class over the | Go |
| May 20th Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET AJAX, .NET, Visual Studio, Silverlight, WPF ... Apologies for the sparseness of my posting the last few weeks - work and life have been busy here lately. Below is a new post in my link-listing series to help kick things up a little. Also check out my ASP.NET Tips, Tricks and Tutorials page and Silverlight Tutorials page for links to popular articles I've done myself in the past. ASP.NET Bulk Inserting Data with the ListView Control : Matt Berseth continues his awesome posts with one that shows how to handle bulk-editing of data using the ASP.NET ListView control in .NET 3.5. Master-Detail with the GridView, DetailsView, and ModalPopup Controls : Another great post from Matt that describes how to cleanly handle a common data entry scenario. Creating Great Thumbnail Images in ASP.NET : A really nice blog post by a different Matt that details an approach that generates high quality (and small) thumbnail images. Warning the User when Caps-Lock is on : Scott Mitchell has a nice article that describes how to automatically detect and warn users in login pages when the caps-lock button is on. ASP.NET Perf Issue: Large numbers of application-restarts due to virus scanners : Tess Ferrandez has a great post that details a debug session to determine why an ASP.NET application was restarting frequently (causing performance slowdowns). The issue was a virus scanner that was causing files to be constantly updated. Make sure to check out the logging code you can add to your application to identify restart causes like this. ASP.NET AJAX ASP.NET AJAX Progress Bar Control : Matt Berseth has another great article that describes his new ASP.NET AJAX Progress Bar control. Faster Page Loading By Combining Multiple JavaScript files in Batch : Omar Al Zabir (founder of PageFlakes.com and author of the great Building a Web 2.0 Portal with ASP.NET 3.5 book) has a good article that describes the performance benefit of merging multiple JavaScript file downloads. Note that .NET 3.5 SP1 will include a new script combiner feature that helps make doing this even easier. Create ASP.NET AJAX Server Controls using the ScriptControl base class : Chris Pietschmann has a nice article that talks about how to build new ASP.NET AJAX server controls by deriving from the built-in ScriptControl base class. Inline Edit Box and Postback Ritalin Beta : Dave Ward and Mike Davis have created a new CodePlex project for their popular Inline Edit Box and PostBack Ritalin ASP.NET AJAX controls. .NET 7 Ways to Simplify your code with LINQ : Igor Ostrovsky has a great blog post that talks about new code techniques you can use to improve your code using .NET 3.5 and the new language and LINQ features in it. Visual LINQ Query Builder for LINQ to SQL : Mitsu Furuta has created a cool Visual Studio designer that allows you to graphically construct LINQ to SQL queries. Also make sure to download download the latest LINQPad utility - which is invaluable for learning LINQ and trying out LINQ queries. DataContracts without Attributes (POCO support): Aaron Skonnard has a good post that talks about a nice usability change with .NET 3.5 SP1 that allows you to serialize POCO (plain old objects) using the WCF serializers. Ukadc.Diagnostics : Josh Twist pointed me at a new CodePlex project he is working on that extends the System.Diagnostics features in .NET to include richer logging features (SQL trace support, email support, etc). Visual Studio 11 More VS Short Cuts you Should Know : A great post that talks about a bunch of useful shortcuts to print out and remember when using Visual Studio. Did you know you can show extension methods in the object browser?: Sara Ford continues her excellent "Did you know" series. I confess I didn't know this one. Silverlight 50 New Silverlight 2 Beta 1 Screencasts: Mike Taulty and Mike Ormond have put together 50 nice tutorial screen-casts that cover Silverlight 2 - all in their "spare time". Wow. AutoComplete for Silverlight TextBoxes : Nikhil Kothari has a | Go |
| Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 Beta ... Earlier today we shipped a public beta of our upcoming .NET 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 releases. These servicing updates provide a roll-up of bug fixes and performance improvements for issues reported since we released the products last November. They also contain a number of feature additions and enhancements that make building .NET applications better (see below for details on some of them).
We plan to ship the final release of both .NET 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 this summer as free updates. You can download and install the beta here .
Important: SP1 Beta Installation Notes
The SP1 beta released today is still in beta form - so you should be careful about installing it on critical machines. There are a few important SP1 Beta installation notes to be aware of:
1) If you are running Windows Vista you should make sure you have Vista SP1 installed before trying to install .NET 3.5 SP1 Beta. There are some setup issues with .NET 3.5 SP1 when running on the Vista RTM release. These issues will be fixed for the final .NET 3.5 SP1 release - until then please make sure to have Vista SP1 installed before trying to install .NET 3.5 SP1 beta.
2) If you have installed the VS 2008 Tools for Silverlight 2 Beta1 package on your machine, you must uninstall it - as well as uninstall the KB949325 update for VS 2008 - before installing VS 2008 SP1 Beta (otherwise you will get a setup failure). You can find more details on the exact steps to follow here (note: you must uninstall two separate things). It is fine to have the Silverlight 2 runtime on your machine with .NET 3.5 SP1 - the component that needs to be uninstalled is the VS 2008 Tools for Silverlight 2 package. We will release an updated VS 2008 Tools for Silverlight package in a few weeks that works with the VS 2008 SP1 beta.
3) There is a change in behavior in the .NET 3.5 SP1 beta that causes a problem with the shipping versions of Expression Blend. This behavior change is being reverted for the final .NET 3.5 SP1 release, at which time all versions of Blend will have no problems running. Until then, you need to download this recently updated version of Blend 2.5 to work around this issue.
Important Update : If you previously installed a VS 2008 Hotfix, you must run the HotFix Cleanup Utility before installing the VS 2008 SP1 Beta. Click here to download and run this.
Improvements for Web Development
.NET 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 contain a bunch of feature improvements targeted at web application development.
The VS Web Dev Tools team has more details (including specific bug fix details) on some of the VS specific work here . Below are more details on some of the work in the web-space:
ASP.NET Data Scaffolding Support (ASP.NET Dynamic Data)
.NET 3.5 SP1 adds support for a rich ASP.NET data "scaffolding" framework that enables you to quickly build functional data-driven web application. With the ASP.NET Dynamic Data feature you can automatically build web UI (with full CRUD - create, read, update, delete - support) against a variety of data object models (including LINQ to SQL, LINQ to Entities, REST Services, and any other ORM or object model with a dynamic data provider).
SP1 adds this new functionality to the existing GridView, ListView, DetailsView and FormView controls in ASP.NET, and enables smart validation and flexible data templating options. It also delivers new smart filtering server controls, as well as adds support for automatically traversing primary-key/foreign-key relationships and displaying friendly foreign key names - all of which saves you from having to write a ton of code.
You can learn more more about this feature from Scott Hanselman's videos and tutorials here .
ASP.NET Routing Engine (System.Web.Routing)
.NET 3.5 SP1 includes a flexible new URL routing engine that allows you to map incoming URLs to route handlers. It includes support for both parsing parameters from clean URLs (for example: /Products/Browse/Beverages), as well as supp | Go |
| Professional ASP.NET 3.5 Book (only $16 on Amazon for a short time) ... One of the things I like to track are book sales on Amazon.com, which provides a useful data point to monitor what developers are interested in on any given day. I use the www.TitleZ.com site (which is built using ASP.NET) to track specific titles I want to watch - it then generates a report showing real-time Amazon sales ranking data, as well as 7 day, 30 day and 90 day sales ranking averages. This morning I pulled up my report and saw the usual books near the top of my list, and was about to navigate away when I noticed the eye-popping amazon ranking of the top book -"Professional ASP.NET 3.5: In C# and VB " by Bill Evjen, Scott Hanselman and Devin Rader. Its Amazon sales rank was a stunning #95 (of all books on Amazon), which meant it was outselling even Harry Potter (which is pretty much unheard of for any technology book). It turns out that Amazon is holding a special price promotion for a short time on a few books - and this was one that was selected. Instead of the usual $54 price, you can buy it for a short time for a ridiculous $16.49. I'm not sure how long this promotion will last - but if you are looking for a great ASP.NET 3.5 book this might be something you might want to take advantage of: The book is a great ASP.NET 3.5 book and an excellent end to end resource. It has been on the best seller list for programming books since it came out in March (usually in the top 5 of all programming titles), and has received glowing reviews (I posted a review of it on Amazon a few weeks ago and gave it 5 stars). If you are in the market for a good ASP.NET book, you might want to consider taking Amazon up on this offer before it closes (and apologies in advance if the price changes before you read this). Hope this helps, Scott P.S. If you are looking for other good .NET 3.5 and VS 2008 books - I also recommend: C# 3.0 In a Nutshell , LINQ in Action , and Pro LINQ: Language Integrated Query in C# 2008 (all of which average a 5 star rating on Amazon). | Go |
| April 28th Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET AJAX, ASP.NET MVC, Silverlight ... Here is the latest in my link-listing series . Also check out my ASP.NET Tips, Tricks and Tutorials page and Silverlight Tutorials page for links to popular articles I've done myself in the past. ASP.NET Displaying the Number of Active Users on an ASP.NET Site : Scott Mitchell continues his excellent series on ASP.NET's membership, roles, and profile support. In this article he discusses how to use ASP.NET's Membership features to estimate and display the number of active users currently visiting a site. ASP.NET Dynamic Data Update : The ASP.NET team last week released an update of the new ASP.NET Dynamic Data feature. This update adds several new features including cleaner URL support using the same URL routing feature that ASP.NET MVC uses, as well as better confirmation, foreign-key, and template support. ASP.NET Testing with Ivonna : Travis Illig blogs about a new testing framework named Ivonna that enables unit testing of ASP.NET web forms. ASP.NET AJAX ASP.NET AJAX UI Templates : Nikhil Kothari from the ASP.NET team has a cool post that shows off a prototype he has been working on that enables clean client-side AJAX templating of UI. ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit TabContainer Theme Gallery : Matt Berseth has another of his excellent posts - this one shows off a bunch of cool themes you can use to style the TabContainer control in the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit. Reducing Page Load Times with UpdatePanels and Timers : Paul Glavich posts of a cool trick you can use with tab controls to asynchronously load their content in the background in order to improve perceived page load time. Why do ASP.NET AJAX page methods have to be static? Dave Ward has a useful article that talks about the page methods feature in ASP.NET AJAX, and explains why they are static methods. JQuery Intellisense in VS 2008 : Brad Vincent posts about using the VS 2008 Web Development Hot-Fix we released in February to get a nice JavaScript intellisense experience in Visual Studio 2008 when using the JQuery AJAX library. ASP.NET MVC Inversion of Control, ASP.NET MVC and Unit Testing : Fredrik Kalseth has a cool article that talks about the concepts behind inversion of control (IOC) and how you can use this with ASP.NET MVC to better isolate dependencies and enable better unit testing of your code. Stephen Walther's ASP.NET MVC Talk: Stephen Walther delivered a many-hour ASP.NET MVC post conference talk at ASP.NET Connections last week. You can download his slides + demos for free. Also check out his previous posts on Unit Tests with Visual Studio 2008 and TDD with Rhino Mocks . MVC Contrib Project Update : Eric Hexter blogs about some of the latest updates to the open source MvcContrib project to work with the latest ASP.NET MVC interim source release . Testing Action Results with ASP.NET MVC : Jeremy Skinner blogs about some cool extension method helpers he has added to MvcContrib to enable pretty sweet testing of Controller actions. MVC Membership Starter Kit - 1.2 Release : Troy Goode has posted an update to his excellent MVC Membership Starter Kit. This version works with the interim ASP.NET MVC source release. Silverlight Defining Silverlight DataGrid Columns at Runtime : Scott Morrison from the Silverlight team has a cool blog post that talks about how to define Silverlight DataGrid Columns via code at runtime. Visit my Silverlight links page for more DataGrid posts. Silverlight HTTP Networking Stack (Part 1 ), (Part 2 ), (Part 3 ): Karen Corby from the Silverlight team has a great three part blog series that talks about the new Silverlight 2 networking stack and how cross domain security works with it. Pushing Data to a Silverlight Client with Sockets (Part 1) and (Part 2) : Dan Wahlin demonstrates how to implement a "GameStream" socket server and connect to it from a Silverlight client using Silverlight 2's built-in network sockets support. Silverlight - the Song : Spike Xavier and Dan Wa | Go |
| ASP.net.com Community Links |
| ASP.NET Client Side State Management - Query Strings ... The article discuss the query strings state management technique and how to use it. | Go |
| Using UpdatePanel Triggers in C# ... In this example, we will look at how we can specify different controls to refresh the whole page, and parts of the page. We will create two UpdatePanels and see how we can refresh each of them as well as refresh the whole page with the triggers. C# version. | Go |
| Creating a Dynamic Data Web site using Scaffolding ... This post explains how to create a basic Web Site that uses ASP.NET Dynamic Data. ASP.NET Dynamic Data provides the Web application scaffolding that enables you to build rich data-driven Web applications.
scaffolding is mechanism that enhance the functionality of the existing ASP.NET Framework by adding the ability to dynamically display pages based on the data model of the database. | Go |
| ListView Control with DropDownExtender and Menu ... This article describes how to display the Context Menu on each row of the ListView Control using DropDownExtender and Menu control. | Go |
| Using jQuery with ASP.NET MVC ... The Microsoft ASP.NET MVC Framework has been getting talked about more and more lately. The power and flexibility of ASP.NET MVC allows for developers to use libraries other than those include in the box. The popular JavaScript framework, jQuery, is no exception. | Go |
| URL Rewriting in ASP.NET using URLRewriter.Net ... Learn to use search engine friendly URLs for your ASP.NET pages | Go |
| Using ASP.NET 3.5 History Control in ASP.NET 2.0 ... As ASP.NET 2.0 does not provide built in support for Back button functionality in AJAX Update Panel,
This post will show you how to use ASP.NET 3.5 Ajax ControlToolKit History control with ASP.NET 2.0, to achieve the back button functionality in ASP.NET 2.0 | Go |
| Using AJAX, LINQ and XML in C# ... AJAX and LINQ are two of the main focuses of Microsoft right now; and no wonder - both have huge potential and power behind them.
In this example, we will show how we can use AJAX coupled with LINQ and XML to create a Web Application that we can use to view stored data instantaneously, as well as add to it in the same way | Go |
| Forms Authentication in ASP.NET with C#: Advance ... This article describe how to create Roles based sccurity using Forms Authentication in easy to follow steps. | Go |
| MVC Preview 5 - Create Dynamic Action Links ... Explains how to add new views to sample project and create dynamic action links on the data coming from database ? Also explains how to use these dynamic actions links to perform database actions.
Sample Videos To Explains All these in action | Go |
| CodeProject.com ASP Links |
| Vacation Request 2.0 - Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and DotNetNuke™ ... A DotNetNuke module communicating with a WF workflow hosted in the Open Source project IWebWF | Go |
| ASP.NET GridView Image Command Button Problem (Multiple PostBacks) ... This article describes workarounds to solve the problem of multiple postbacks when using a command button of type image in an ASP.NET GridView (Internet Explorer). | Go |
| Dynamic validation according to logged in user ... Dynamic validation according to logged in user | Go |
| An ASP.NET Data Layer base class for LINQ disconnected mode ... Quickly and easily implement your LINQ Data Layer with this abstract class. | Go |
| How to generate a WPF image and render it in a Webpage ... WPF Image generation | Go |
| Function Overloading in Web Services ... How to perform function overloading in Web Services | Go |
| Sortable GridView using jQuery's TableSorter ... A client side sortable grid view using jQuery's plugin Tablesorter | Go |
| 16 steps to write flexible business validation in C# using validation blocks ... 16 steps to write flexible business validation in C# using validation blocks | Go |
| Image manipulation and reading and writing to a database ... This code allows you to read/write from a database and change image dimensions, size, and quality. | Go |
| Create and display funnel charts on a web page ... How to create and display funnel charts on a web page with C# and ASP.NET. | Go |
| Send emails in ASP.NET using Gmail credentials ... This article contains code to send email using Gmail accounts. | Go |
| ServerComponents HTTP Handlers ... By using only configuration, create and customize HTTP handlers that do a lot of tasks. | Go |
| Agile Development Part 2 ... Agile Development Part 2 | Go |
| How to use Microsoft Silverlight in Oracle Weblogic Portal 10gR3 ... Step-by-step instructions on how to use the Microsoft Silverlight 1.0 Software Development Kit in Oracle Weblogic Portal10gR3. | Go |
| DotNetSlackers.com Links |
| ASP.NET GridView Image Command Button Problem (multiple PostBacks) ... This article describes work arounds to solve the problem of multiple postbacks when using a command button of type image in an ASP.NET GridView (Internet Explorer).... Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here . | Go |
| An Introduction to the Microsoft Web Platform Installer ... Getting a new ASP.NET Web development machine up and running isn't hard, but there are a lot of steps involved and it takes a fair amount of time. That's why Microsoft is working on a new tool called the Microsoft Web Platform Installer. It provides a single interface for installation of the tools needed to start developing Web applications on the Microsoft platform.... Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here . | Go |
| New Visualizations at Work: Moving to Silverlight Clients ... Microsoft's tools for building rich Internet applications (RIAs)-ASP.NET AJAX and Silverlight 2-promise to help take the "developer ugly" out of line-of-business software.... Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here . | Go |
| Intersoft Updates WebUI Studio.NET Components ... Indonesian component maker Intersoft Solutions Corp. last month released a new version of its controls and components suite for ASP.NET -- and Silverlight-based Web development.... Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here . | Go |
| PARTNER DEVELOPER DINNER: Introduction to ASP.NET Model View Controller (MVC) ... Microsoft Developer Dinner Series for Partners Presenting Introduction to ASP.NET Model View Controller (MVC) The "Same Event" on different days in DC and Virginia, pick one! Where Date/Time Registration Link Address DC Wed. October 15th (6:30-8:30PM) Register... Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here . | Go |
| Gaining an Advantage with Application Roles ... Youve seen them, but have you really ever used them?... Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here . | Go |
| Practical ASP.NET: Looking (Suspiciously) at SP1 ... What's in SP1 for ASP.NET developers? At least one bug fix, a couple of enhancements and -- perhaps -- something that will change your life. But Peter is suspicious.... Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here . | Go |
| ASP.NET MVP Award and MVC ... I still don't have a chance to blog about my personal achievement recently - I got my MVP status renewed on Oct 1! Yes, it's a great news for myself and I enjoyed it so much since 2001.
BTW, I'm very happy to meet few friends this week, including Greg Low and Phil Hacck. Greg is a SQL expert and I knew him for years in the space of INETA and online community personally. Phil is obviously a star and I really enjoy his presentation about introducing MVC at local TechEd today (even the session... Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here . | Go |
| Scott Guthrie will be on the PDC keynotes would he be at the PDC Underground? ... Gu will be at the PCD talking about Silverlight 2 and jQuery. Im guessing that a few news will come out on that presentation. Mr Guthrie likes to release the news. I would be missing the PDC this year. $2000 is an expense that I cant find a justification to give the wife. Im still trying to get a BluRay DVD player for the house. Yet for people like me that cannot make it to the PDC, there is a free event called The Underground PDC, I wonder if Scott Guthrie would be attending. You need to... Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here . | Go |
| Search Trends October 2008 ... PDC is fast approaching and Cloud Computing is the theme - and all the rage for everyone else in the Industry media. Amazon recently announced they'll be extending their compute cloud to support Windows and real databases. Here's a look at some recent trends in the tech industry, using Google Trends . Daylight Savings Time The topic of DST is likely of at least marginal interest to most software developers, as working with DateTime constructs is a frequent requirement for us (and often a source of frustration). I wanted to confirm when it was this year and that led to the rest of these trend searches (I once missed a flight due to a change in the date of DST that my alarm clock's auto adjustment failed to pick up). FYI: Daylight Savings Time in 2008 will Fall Back the first Sunday in November. Interesting (and expected) that twice a year folks become interested in this topic. Note that the main regions who care are US, Canada, Australia, and the UK. Most of the world doesn't observe DST. And contrary to what I thought I knew, Ben Franklin didn't invent DST and it only started in the early 1900s (according to the Source Of All Knowledge: Wikipedia ). Cloud Computing If I were a betting man, I'd bet on cloud computing to be a big upcoming trend in the next several years. It first hit the search term scene a little over a year ago, and it's gone up rather drastically since then. I'd look for it to peak in November this year after PDC and then to plateau or rise gently after that. Amazon's S3 and EC2 services have been around for a while - let's see how Microsoft compares thus far. Amazon Cloud vs. Microsoft Cloud I'd say Microsoft is going to catch and surpass Amazon by PDC time. Looking at another Microsoft event and announcement, let's see how Silverlight is doing in terms of interest. Silverlight Silverlight is still going strong. I predict it will go up steadily once Silverlight 2 is released, slated for later this year and most likely at PDC, I would say. So what about hosting? Is anyone looking for cloud hosting solutions? Compared to what? Let's look at two comparably small sets of terms. Cloud vs. Ruby Hosting Cloud hosting didn't exist as a trend before 2008 Q3 and now it's nearly as popular a search term as ruby hosting. Clearly Ruby Hosting isn't all that popular, but just how does it compare to say ASP.NET and PHP? Ruby vs. ASP.NET vs. PHP Hosting Clearly the trends for all three of these are heading downward, as I think the hosting marketplace has largely shaken out and become somewhat commoditized. With sites like GoDaddy offering cheap hosting along with about a million easy to use web publishing and blogging platforms, the need for hosting is obviously in decline. So what else is new? What about ASP.NET? Remember when it was Atlas? And what about this new jQuery thing that's not really new but is now going to ship with Visual Studio? Atlas vs. ASP.NET AJAX ... and jQuery How about data access technologies? Would it surprise you to learn that NHibernate has been a search trend since late 2004, with greater popularity than either LINQ to SQL or Entity Framework's high water mark since 2006 (that is, NH's 2006 and later popularity exceeds the best the others have ever achieved). I doubt this reflects adoption, but it's interesting nonetheless. Perhaps it reflects people searching for documentation... NHibernate vs. LINQ to SQL vs. Entity Framework How is interest in ASP.NET MVC coming along, with its hopeful release some time in 2008 as well? ASP.NET MVC Lastly, in the self-fulfilling prophecy department, how many people have been looking for a recession, since about a year ago? It certainly appears the popularity of a recession has gone up dramatically in the last 12 months. Recession Look up bailout as well, though the graph isn't terribly interesting since it's almost asymptotic... Fun times in the financial industry. Now back to more regularly scheduled geekdom. Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .ne | Go |
| Create and display funnel chart on a web page ... How to create and display funnel chart on a web page with c# and asp.net... Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here . | Go |
| MvcContrib latest release now with SubController support ... One of the items that many people I know have requested are subcontrollers. Most non-trivial web applications require many things happening on a single screen. Even if it's only the current shopping cart displayed on multiple screens, the MVC Framework needs a mechanism of screen decomposition so that web applications can scale with complexity. WebForms has the Control model where markup and logic live together and can be composed easily. With the MVC Framework CTP 5, a single... Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here . | Go |
| MvcContrib latest release now with SubController support ... One of the items that many people I know have requested are subcontrollers. Most non-trivial web applications require many things happening on a single screen. Even if it's only the current shopping cart displayed on multiple screens, the MVC Framework needs a mechanism of screen decomposition so that web applications can scale with complexity. WebForms has the Control model where markup and logic live together and can be composed easily. With the MVC Framework CTP 5, a single... Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here . | Go |
| In Love With Complexity ... I have just finished reading Simplexity
by Jeffrey Kluger, a senior editor and writer for Time magazine. The full title of the book is Simplexity: Why Simple Things Become Complex (and How Complex Things Can Be Made Simple). This is precisely the kind of question that’s been on my mind for a long time.
One of the arguments I’ve heard against offering simple solutions is that simple is not “professional.” The UI has to look sophisticated, rugged. With lots of buttons to click.... Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here . | Go |
| ASP.NET.com Links |
| ASP.NET MVC Tip: Dependency Injection with StructureMap ... Normal
0
false
false
false
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ansi-language:#0400;
mso-fareast-language:#0400;
mso-bidi-language:#0400;}
In this tip, I demonstrate how you can
use the dependency injection with StructureMap within an MVC application. StructureMap
is an open source Dependency Injection framework for the .NET platform and has
been in use since 2004 .StructureMap supports both setter and constructor
injection and also offers testing and diagnostic features such as logging,
tracing and wiring of mock objects. For download and more details visit http://structuremap.sourceforge.net/default.htm .
Jeremy D Miller’s (Creator of StructureMap) blog is a
great learning resource for StructureMap and good object oriented programming
thoughts.
If you are not familiar with Dependency
Injection (DI) and Inversion of Control (IoC), read Martin Fowler’s article Inversion of Control
Containers and the Dependency Injection pattern . A Dependency Injection
framework injects the dependencies into a class when the dependencies are
needed. Dependency Injection enables looser coupling between classes and their
dependencies and can be improve architectural qualities of an object oriented business
application.
Dependency Injection provides the
following advantages,
1) Enables looser coupling between
classes and their dependencies
2) It provides better testability of an
application
3) It removes the need for clients to
know about their dependencies and how to create them.
4) It avoid behind the problems of
creating factory classes, by moving construction responsibility to a framework.
5) Improve the architecture quality of
an object oriented system.
In this tip, I show how you can use the StructureMap to perform Dependency
Injection within an ASP.NET MVC application. In this tip, I will show you how to perform
constructor injection. Constructor Injection will push dependencies into a
concrete class through constructor arguments.
The below code listings show that a controller class and its
dependent classes.
Listing 1 – CategoryController
public class CategoryController
: Controller {
ICategoryService
_categoryService = null ;
public CategoryController (ICategoryService categoryService )
{
_categoryService = categoryService ;
}
public ActionResult
List (int ? page ) {
var categories = _categoryService .GetCategories (page ?? 0 , 10 );
return View ( "CategoryList" ,categories );
}
Listing 2 – ICategoryService
public interface ICategoryService
{
PagedList <Category >
GetCategories (int
pageIndex ,int
pageSize );
}
Listing 3 – CategoryService
public class CategoryService
: ICategoryService {
ICategoryRepository _repository
= null ;
public CategoryService (ICategoryRepository repository )
{
_repository = repository ;
if (_repository == null ) {
throw new InvalidOperationException ( "Repository cannot be null" );
}
public PagedList <Category > GetCategories (int pageIndex ,int pageSize ) {
return _repository .GetCategories ().ToPagedList <Category >(pageIndex ,
pageSize );
}
}
Listing 4 – ICategoryRepository
public interface ICategoryRepository
{
IQueryable <Category >
GetCategories ();
}
Normal
0
false
false
false
| Go |
| ASP.NET 2.0 x64 – You may get HTTP 400 Bad Request or Error as mentioned in KB 932552 or 826437 ... I’m sure you already know about this fix for ASP.NET which fixes an issue of “not a valid path” exception, and this fix for ASP.NET 1.1 for the same reason. If you receive this error now on your application, you might not need to apply the hotfix because your ASP.NET version might be higher than the one available with this hotfix, so verify the DLL versions before even requesting the hotfix from Microsoft. So, after installing the hotfix, you should do the below registry changes (not sure if the...(read more ) | Go |
| Wishing for dev10: Get rid of PLK, SLK, DLK and anything ?LK ... Today one very annoying thing you've to do when you want to deploy your Visual Studio Package extension is to get a PLK or "Package Load Key" from Microsoft. This is a painful process which can be divided into two equally painful parts: Pain #1: Get yourself a PLK For this you have to use a MS Website which used to be really bad at doing its job. For example, data you entered for your key was not available for reviewing later on and sometimes you never received the email with the requested key... we're talking very basic stuff, which was just not working properly. The good news is they replaced the old website (delete C:\QuickAndDirtyWebAppCodedInFiveMinutes\*.*) with this single page which besides being much more friendlier than the original website it also... works!! Pain #2: Debug your PLK So after struggling (if you had to use the old website) to get yourself a PLK you still were left with the job of debugging it. Which wouldn't be that bad if it wasn't because the really poor support offered by Visual Studio logging then attempting to load your packages which basically was reduced to: "Hey, I cannot load your package, sorry!". A package load failure could be caused for a variety of reasons which Visual Studio can currently detect but just logs them in an unfortunately generic way. This requires of some obscure PLK troubleshooting time (some of it very hard to guess as "Is the crypto service running?") that translates to wasted hours. And to add more to an already unfriendly process Visual Studio 2008 has three different kinds of Load Keys: 1) Package Load Key (PLK ) to deploy your VS packages to end users 2) Developer Load Key (DLK ) installed by the VS SDK so you can develop and run packages without a proper PLK in place 3) Shell Load Key (SLK ) to deploy your VS-Shell based applications My whishes for dev10 (or "Visual Studio 2010" if you like longer names) are the following: 1) Please don't invent a 4th ?LK to add to the previous three, there are more than enough already! 2) Please just kill the existing three key types and remove extensibility developers the need to go through this pain at all. | Go |
| New ASP.NET MVC Tutorials ... I created three new ASP.NET MVC tutorials that were just published at the www.ASP.net/mvc website. There are both C# and VB.NET versions of each tutorial. Here are the direct links and descriptions: Creating Custom HTML Helpers Create new HTML Helpers to make it easier to generate view content. Stephen Walther demonstrates two simple methods of creating new HTML Helpers. Creating Model Classes with LINQ to SQL Learn how to create data access classes by taking advantage of Microsoft LINQ to SQL. In this video tutorial, you learn how to use a LINQ to SQL DataContext class directly within a controller. You also learn how to use the Repository Pattern to create testable and flexible database-driven applications. Displaying a Table of Database Data Need to display a set of database records in an MVC view? Learn two methods of displaying records in an HTML table. You learn how to perform all of the formatting inline. You also learn how to create a template with an MVC partial. Please let me know if there are specific tutorials that you want to see in the future. | Go |
| ADO.NET Dataservices:This collection already contains an address with scheme http ... I have deployed a Silverlight 2 application which uses ADO.NET Dataservices to a IIS 6. Problem #1: you see nothing in Browser register MIME Type in IIS and restart IIS Problem #2: no data is sown in Silverlight In my case it was a 2nd hostheader entry in the Web site. Remove the 2nd hostheader, restart the service and call the ADO.NET Dataservice (svc) directly in Browser | Go |
| WCF BasicHttpBinding with Windows Authentication & a 2.0 Client ... Windows Authentication is a great way to provide authentication
security in your WCF services. With the WSHttpEndpoing and a .NET 3.0+
client Windows Authentication works right out of the box with WCF,
everything is just peachy. However, if you want to use the
BasicHttpBinding for .NET 2.0 client backward compatibility then it is
going to require a bit of configuration for both the clients &
server. [Read The Full Post Here] Aaron http://www.churchofficeonline.com | Go |
| [Vista]Visual Studio .NET 2003 on Windows Vista Issue List ... While browsing Visual Studio Developer Center at MSDN if found this interesting article which identifies the known issues you will face when using Visual Studio 2003 on Windows Vista. While Visual Studio 2003 is not supported on Windows Vista. Check the full issues list here | Go |
| SDN Conference 2008 ... The Software Development Conference 2008 was great. I gave two talks this year. The first was in a chalk & talk format titled “Understanding the ADO.NET Entity Framework Architecture and its Implications on your Application Architecture”. The audience gave me a pretty good workout. I promised that I’d share my whiteboard sketches on this blog. I’ll try to reproduce them and post an update somewhere next week.
The other talk was titled “Technology Deathmatch: LINQ to SQL vs. ADO.NET Entity Framework” together with Alex Thissen . Preparing and delivering this session together with Alex was a brilliant experience. With both technologies moving forward in future .NET versions we’ll definitely pick up the fight along the lines. Stay tuned :) or better Alex you’d better be prepared. | Go |
| Microsoft F# and TestDriven.Net 2.16 ... Now that F# is being officially productized , I thought it was time to make it a first class citizen inside TestDriven.Net . When learning a new language I like to experiment by writing ad-hoc tests and viewing my code inside .NET Reflector . My initial focus has been getting 'Go To Reflector' and the targeting of parameterless methods and properties working. You can get the latest release of F#, including the compiler, tools, and Visual Studio 2008 integration from the F# Developer Center . You will also need TestDriven.Net 2.16 or above. The F# team has put together a collection of F# sample code . The samples come with their own 'F# Micro Samples Explorer' application, but they are also ideal for running as ad-hoc tests. In particular have a look at the 'beginners.fs' and 'intermediate.fs' modules in the 'Samples101' project. To view the code using .NET Reflector, simply right click inside a method, property, module or project and 'Go To Reflector'. At the moment only parameterless methods and properties are supported. This is due to the way F# makes extensive use of type inferencing for parameters. Luckily it is parameterless methods and properties that it makes most sense to target for evaluation or running as unit tests. I'll talk more about unit testing F# code in a future post. | Go |
| XPerf: A CPU Sampler ... Seema just had a great about using XPerf to troubleshoot CPU issues when using Silverlight. This can also be used in the same way to troubleshoot ASP.NET or IIS. What can XPerf tell you? Seema answers that question, it can find out: Is my Read More......( read more ) Read More......(read more ) | Go |
