| DotNetKicks.com Links |
| ASP.NET MVC and Json.NET ... Bringing Json.NET to ASP.NET MVC | Go |
| Partial Output Caching in ASP.NET MVC ... Unfortunately, the [OutputCache] filter that ships with ASP.NET MVC is merely a thin wrapper around ASP.NET output caching. The MVC team have explained that they're aware of the issues, but it's very difficult to make ASP.NET output caching fit into MVC's design, and they are focusing on other things first.
We can quite easily create a new caching filter that captures actions' output and uses ASP.NET's data caching facility to store it for next time. This filter will fit properly into the MVC pipeline, not strangely bypassing authorization or other earlier filters (it will run at the right time in whatever ordered set of filters you've using). | Go |
| ASP.NET MVC Generator - First Cut ... A simple Rails like code generator for ASP.NET MVC sites. | Go |
| Fluent hierarchical construction ... Building a hierarchy of objects doesn't happen that often in code, but when it does, it can get pretty ugly. Most of the time, the hierarchy will come out of the database. Recently, we had a hierarchy that needed to be built straight in code. We had something like this going on: | Go |
| Global.asax? Use HttpModules Instead! ... Explanation of using HttpModules instead of using gobal.asax | Go |
| ALT.NET Podcast Episode 12: More jQuery in ASP.NET ... In this episode Chris Brandsma, Rick Strahl, Dave Ward, Bertrand Le Roy, and Scott Koon conclude their discussion of Microsoft's jQuery in ASP.NET announcement. Continuation or Episode 12. | Go |
| ASP.net MVC goes Beta ... Hot on the heels of Silverlight, MVC is out of preview and into Beta today. | Go |
| HTML Encoding ... In this article the author showed the different ways to show the illegal characters in HTML | Go |
| Help! I am being blocked by Google!? ... google blocking searches on asp.net... can this be true? | Go |
| Don't run production ASP.NET Applications with debug="true" enabled ... One of the things you want to avoid when deploying an ASP.NET application into production is to accidentally (or deliberately) leave the <compilation debug="true"/> switch on within the application's web.config file. | Go |
| ASP.net global exception handling and custom error page ... This is a post about the usage of global exception handling. Here you can find a short piece of code which does exactly what it promises, and also makes use of a custom error page which shows exceptions in great detail. | Go |
| Server.Transfer() in an UpdatePanel ... This is a short explanation why you can't use a Server.Transfer() call within an event fired by a control in an UpdatePanel.
The reason why you can't use a Server.Transfer() in an UpdatePanel is more and more obvious when you think about what AJAX is. We only request small pieces of markup which replace little portions of a page, the whole point of AJAX is to avoid downloading the whole page again. ... | Go |
| Combining independent widgets on ASP.NET MVC pages ... As great as ASP.NET MVC is, it doesn't have such an easy way to set up reusable controls or "widgets". Steven Sanderson explains a technique similar to MVC Contrib's "subcontrollers", but much simpler. | Go |
| Introduction to ASP.NET MVC for VISUG - Presentation materials ... Yesterday evening, I did a presentation on the ASP.NET MVC framework for VISUG (Visual Studio User Group Belgium). I really hope everyone got a good feel on what the ASP.NET MVC framework is all about and what it takes to build an ASP.NET MVC application. Thank you Pieter Gheysens for inviting me for this talk! And thank you audience for being interested for over an hour and a half!
A recorded version of this presentation will be available later, for the moment you'll have to do with the presentation materials. The download contains the slides, the Hello World application and the testing demo. The CarTrackr application can be found on CodePlex. | 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 |
| An Introduction to jQuery - Part 1: The Client Side | Go |
| Exploring Caching in ASP.NET | 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 |
| Using jQuery to enhance ASP.NET AJAX progress indication | Go |
| Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - ASP.NET MVC and the new IIS7 Rewrite Module | Go |
| jQuery and Microsoft - ScottGu's Blog | Go |
| Scott Gu Blog Links |
| Silverlight 2 Released ... Today we shipped the final release of Silverlight 2. You can download Silverlight 2, as well the Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Blend 2 tool support to target it, here . Cross Platform / Cross Browser .NET Development Silverlight 2 is a cross-platform browser plugin that enables rich media experiences and .NET RIAs (Rich Internet Applications) within the browser. Silverlight 2 is small in size (4.6MB) and takes only 4-10 seconds to install on a machine that doesn't already have it. It does not require the .NET Framework to be installed on a computer to run - the Silverlight setup download includes everything necessary to play video or run applications. Developers can write Silverlight applications using any .NET language (including VB, C#, JavaScript, IronPython and IronRuby). Silverlight provides a rich set of features for development including: WPF UI Framework : Silverlight 2 includes a rich UI framework that makes building rich Web applications much easier. In includes a powerful graphics and animation engine, as well as rich support for higher-level UI capabilities like controls, layout management, data-binding, styles, and template skinning. The WPF UI Framework in Silverlight is a compatible subset of the WPF UI Framework features in the full .NET Framework, and enables developers to re-use skills, controls, code and content to build both rich cross browser web applications, as well as rich desktop Windows applications. Rich Controls : Silverlight 2 includes a rich set of built-in controls that developers and designers can use to quickly build applications. The Silverlight 2 release includes core form controls (TextBox, CheckBox, RadioButton, ComboBox, etc), built-in layout management panels (StackPanel, Grid, Panel, etc), common functionality controls (Slider, ScrollViewer, Calendar, DatePicker, etc), and data manipulation controls (DataGrid, ListBox, etc). All Silverlight controls support a rich control templating model, which enables developers and designers to collaborate together to build highly polished solutions. Rich Networking Support : Silverlight 2 includes rich networking support. It includes out of the box support for calling REST, WS*/SOAP, POX, RSS, and standard HTTP services. It supports cross domain network access (enabling Silverlight clients to directly access resources and data from resources on the web). It also includes built-in sockets networking support. Rich Base Class Library : Silverlight 2 includes a rich .NET base class library of functionality (collections, IO, generics, threading, globalization, XML, local storage, etc). It includes rich APIs that enable HTML DOM/JavaScript integration with .NET code. It includes LINQ and LINQ to XML library support (enabling easy transformation and querying of data), as well as local data caching and storage support. The .NET APIs in Silverlight are a compatible subset of the full .NET Framework. Rich Media Support : Silverlight 2 includes built-in video codecs for playing high definition video, as well as for streaming it over the web (including both live and on-demand support). Silverlight includes support for adaptively switching video bitrates on the fly based on network conditions (enabling users to avoid seeing the dreaded "buffering..." message), placing and metering ads within video streams, as well as enabling content protection. The final Silverlight 2 release delivers a tremendous amount of power and flexibility that enables you to really push the boundaries of what can be done in a browser, and enable great end user experiences. Silverlight Customers Over the last few months a number of very high profile sites have successfully launched using the beta releases of Silverlight 2. In August, NBC hosted the Olympics live on nbcolympics.com and served up 1.3 billion page views, 70 million video streams, and 600 million minutes of video content - makin | Go |
| 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 |
| ASP.net.com Community Links |
| ASP.NET Client Side State Management - Control State ... The article explains what is the control state and how to use it as a part of the ASP.NET client side state management. | Go |
| Building on demand Master/Detail grouping Grid with GridView and ASP.NET AJAX toolkit CollapsiblePanelExtender ... Building on demand Master\Details data with GridView, CollapsiblePanelExtender and ASP.NET AJAX PageMethods | Go |
| Building Custom Paging with LINQ, ListView, DataPager and ObjectDataSource ... Custom paging applied using LINQ and Extension Methods. The used with ObjectDataSource, ListView and DataPager. | Go |
| Building DAC with Execution Time in ASP.NET 3.5 and C# ... This tutorial will show you how to build your own Data Access Component and how to retrieve the time taken to execute. C# version. | Go |
| DataTable - Adding, Modifying, Deleting, Filtering, Sorting rows & Reading/Writing from/to Xml ... In this article, I am going to explain how to Add, Modify, Delete, Sort, Filter rows of the DataTable also writing data to xml as well as loading data from xml. Apart from this, I will also talk about writing/reading Schema of the DataTable. | Go |
| 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 |
| CodeProject.com ASP Links |
| Windows Communication Foundation FAQ quick starter Part 1 ... Windows Communication Foundation FAQ quick starter Part 1 | Go |
| Flexible ASP.NET Web Part UI Pattern ... A pattern for building a templated UI for Web parts | Go |
| DynamicData Many to Many FieldTemplate ... Edit control for 'n to n' or 'many to many' table relations for DynamicData | Go |
| Client side validation using Validation Application blocks ... Client side validation using Validation Application blocks | Go |
| A Library for Writing/Building Scripts in C# ... Designed to make it easier to write scripts such as JavaScript in C# | Go |
| Send emails in ASP.NET using Gmail credentials ... This article contains code to send email using Gmail accounts. | Go |
| Design pattern – Inversion of control and Dependency injection ... Design pattern – Inversion of control and Dependency injection | Go |
| Software Architecture Interview Questions Part 3 State Pattern, Stratergy pattern,Visitor pattern, Adapter and fly weight ... Software Architecture Interview Questions Part 3 - Design patterns State Pattern, Stratergy pattern,Visitor pattern, Adapter and fly weight | Go |
| Project Management Costing FAQ ... Project Management Costing FAQ | Go |
| Crystal and Reporting Services FAQ Part 2 ... Crystal and Reporting Services FAQ Part 2 | Go |
| Crystal and Reporting Services FAQ Part 1 ... Crystal and Reporting Services FAQ Part 1 | Go |
| Project Management FAQ ... Project Management FAQ | Go |
| Selectable GridView with WaitBox ... This article describes how to implement a selectable GridView control in ASP.NET. | Go |
| Use XpathNavigator to navigate and edit XML data ... Use the XPathNavigator to edit and read XML. This article demonstrates how you can do, using conditions. | Go |
| DotNetSlackers.com Links |
| ASP.NET MVC Beta ... Nothing is better than hearing the news of Beta release of ASP.NET MVC immediately after arriving at home. Yes, while there is no official announcement about the release by MSFT and there isn’t any new build or download package available on ASP.NET workspace, ASP.NET MVC Beta download package is available to bring the noise to the community.
While there are several big announcements about Microsoft products on a regular basis (such as the recent Silverlight 2.0 release) but I’ve been... 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 |
| Microsoft Posts ASP.NET MVC Beta for Download ... Today Microsoft released the official beta for ASP.NET MVC, its model view controller architecture for Web applications based on the .NET 3.5 Framework.... 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 |
| DynamicData many to many FieldTemplate ... Edit control for 'n to n' or 'many to many' table relations for DynamicData... 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 |
| Building Web Sites with ASP.NET - Part 1 ... In this first part of the series, Brian delves into setting up an ASP.NET web application that makes use of object-oriented design patterns while making use of the latest and greatest technologies as they make sense. He begins with an overview of the project creation using Visual Studio 2008 including the coverage of the modal popups feature. Brian also examines the usage of themes and the implementation of searching with the help of screenshots and related source code. 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 |
| Using GeoTwitter to track the fires in LA ... Every year before Halloween, the fires begin here in Southern California. Tonight I was using GeoTwitter GeoRSS Editor to track the fire to share it with my family and friends. The steps to create your georss feed is pretty simple, add as many lines, points and polygons into the map and press Save, after giving your feed a name, the system will provide you with a feed to share with your favorite viewer. You can see other users georss feeds bellowed saved by the system. What's... 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 |
| Web Platform Installer ... Ive used the term drinking from the fire hose when describing my first days at Microsoft. However, I believe that a lot of our customers feel this way when approaching the plethora of options for web application development on the Microsoft stack. This is feedback weve received from many sources and as Scott Hanselman pointed out, theres a concerted effort to make things easier to find and understand here. Much of these efforts will take time to see fruition, but some of them are happening now.... 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 |
| MVC: From Start to Blog ... I gave a talk this past weekend at the Philly.NET Code Camp 2008.3 . Ive uploaded my slide deck , project , and a few additional files (used in the demo) in case anyone would like to review again. I was also able to find another way to fake HttpContext. Check out Stephen Walthers blog post about faking the controller context . He also has a blog post about unit testing the views without a web server . I hope all that attended enjoyed my talk and I look forward to seeing you all again! 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 |
| Major input control Gotcha ... Short Story:
This will not work:
<ComponentArt:NumberInput runat="server" ID="NumberInput1" /><input type="button" value="+" onclick="NumberInput1.incrementValue();" /><input type="button" value="-" onclick="NumberInput1.decrementValue();" />
This is how to correct it:
<ComponentArt:NumberInput runat="server" ID="NumberInput1" /><input type="button" value="+"... 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 |
| Sitefinity Case Study on Telerik TV ... Carl Franklin and Telerik's own Gabe Sumner host another case study on Telerik TV . This month, they'll interview Mark Davidson from Netfinity as he shows off Fusion Car Audio , the official site for New Zealand's leading exporter of consumer electronics. If you use Sitefinity yourself or are just curious about Telerik's award-winning CMS, you won't want to miss this show. Fusion Car Audio was built with Sitefinity, making use of built-in multi-language and regional capabilities and then extended with some custom modules. The site is SEO friendly and uses extensive URL re-writing techniques to maximize content across multiple regions and languages. So be sure to drop by Telerik TV and watch as Mark shows how easy it was to built a feature-rich site with Sitefinity CMS.
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 |
| Flickr Xplorer - A Cool ASP.NET MVC Example ! ... Mehfuz Hossain has created a cool open source application based on ASP.NET MVC
The
CodePlex project can be found HERE !You can use the application LIVE
- HERE !... 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 |
| Data Binding Data Conversion ... One of the more interesting topics that arise in Data-binding is that of Data Conversion. So much can be accomplished without explicit conversion that it is easy to overlook until you hit the real world. To see this, I'll make a small modification to the code I wrote for the Silverlight Tutorial on Data Binding. The premise of this simplified example is that you are interacting with a bookstore or a library, displaying information about one book at a time. We assume that you get the book... 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 |
| Sitefinity reviewed for 2009 Web CMS Report ... Sitefinity was selected as 1 of only 42 Web Content Management Products to be reviewed for the 2009 Web CMS Report . This annual report provides a comprehensive overview of CMS products & best practices across 7 vendor categories and multiple platforms.
The CMS landscape contains hundreds of products; it is very exciting for Sitefinity to be selected as one of only a few to be reviewed
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 |
| Selectable GridView with WaitBox ... This article describes how to implement a selectable GridViewControl in 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 |
| VB Video Tutorials on ASP.Net Dynamic Data (Lisa Feigenbaum) ... Bill Burrows, VB MVP, has released some great videos on the ASP.Net Dynamic Data features that were added in VS2008 SP1. What is Dynamic Data?
"ASP.Net Dynamic Data provides a framework that enables you to quickly build a functional data-driven application, based on a LINQ to SQL or Entity Framework data model. It also adds great flexibility and functionality to the DetailsView, FormView, GridView, and ListView controls in the form of smart validaton and the ability to easily change the display of... 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 has reached beta stage ... Last night I reviewed Twitter, as usual, and one tweet take my attention. Kevin Dente posted this status : I jumped immediately on this link and downloaded readme and binaries of ASP.NET MVC beta release. What was strange, MSFT-ies are completely silent regarding this, although I tried to tweet to @Haacked and @Scottgal and to get more info on this. It seems that @hanselman demoed some beta bits on VSLive in Las Vegas. This morning, there are some new articles that describe possible source of this information: From DotNetSlackers I found a link to this article on VS Magazine that outlines Robert Shelton as possible source of this DL link. Beta… I tried this beta last night – updated my UG demo from P5 to beta. Changes are not so big, and I’ll only list some of biggest: Binaries are now GAC-deployed . Binaries are now both in GAC and saved in %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft ASP.NET\ASP.NET MVC Beta and they are not automatically saved to Bin folder inside MVC web app. However, you can change this behavior by setting Copy Local property to TRUE for all 3 binaries HTML Helpers are in separate namespace similarly to AJAX Helpers. You need to reference both System.Web.Mvc.Ajax and System.Web.Mvc.Html namespaces in your web.config Microsoft.Web.Mvc.dll is not included . As part of MVC team to make this beta as close to RTM, they’ve decided not to include MVC Futures binaries in this release. However, you can use them when by downloading from www.codeplex.com/aspnet Form helper method is renamed to BeginForm . Scripts now reside under root folder instead of Content, and jquery is included in project template in both .js and .min.js(minified) versions. Besides that, there are improvements in VS template from which I already outlined some in my UG presentation: Add View from controller code Add View in Views folder Readme file is listed on Download page . It contains very useful information about changes in this release, and I recommend reading it. Dragan Follow me on Twitter: @panjkov | Go |
| ASP.NET MVC Beta Released ... Microsoft has released the official beta for ASP.NET MVC. You can download the Beta version from here . The Beta installer installs the ASP.NET MVC assemblies (System.Web.Mvc.dll, System.Web.Routing.dll, and System.Web.Abstractions.dll) into the GAC. In previous previews, these were not installed into the GAC. Because of this change, the default project templates do not automatically copy the assembly into the Bin directory of your application. If you haven't looked at ASP.NET MVC before, this is the time to start to learn ASP.NET MVC. Below are some of my previous articles. ASP.net MVC Vs ASP.net Web Form ASP.NET MVC Grid View using MVCContrib ASP.NET MVC Tip: Ajax and Validations using jQuery ASP.NET MVC Tip: Dependency Injection with StructureMap | Go |
| Microsoft ASP.NET MVC Beta Released! ... Another release I thought would come during the PDC has been released:
Microsoft ASP.NET MVC Beta
Click the link above to go to the Microsoft download page.
Some points about the release (Headings taken from the What's New section):
MvcFutures.dll is not included in the beta (as it wouldn't be included in the final release)
The Beta installer installs the ASP.NET MVC assemblies (System.Web.Mvc.dll, System.Web.Routing.dll, and System.Web.Abstractions.dll) into the GAC.
New Simple Membership Features in the Default Project Template
New Filter Types for Authorization and Exception Handling
New Output Cache Filter
Changes for ASP.NET AJAX
Namespaces in Routes
New Interface for Enhanced Testability of TempData
ActionInvoker Extensibility Improvements
ViewDataDictionary (minor change)
ViewEngine Improvements
Helper Improvements
Controller and Filter Improvements
Bug fixes:
Fixed a bug in which the ignore-routes setting (created by using the IgnoreRoute extension method) affected URL generation.
Fixed a view engine caching bug when the application is not in debug mode (that is, when debug="false" is set in the Web.config file). This bug occurred if different action methods in different controllers had the same name. In that case, an action method could render the view for the wrong controller.
Fixed a bug in OutputCacheAttribute in which cached authenticated content did not require authentication. Even though the content is cached, if it requires authentication, the user should be required to authenticate first before seeing the cached content.
Fixed a bug in which RenderPartial does not work when tracing is turned on.
Fixed a bug in the Html.TextArea helper method in which an overload was not looking in ViewData for its value when the provided value is null.
Fixed the OutputCacheAttribute.CacheProfile property so that it works in Medium Trust.
If you haven't looked at ASP.NET MVC before because it was a preview I would have a look at this release to see if ASP.NET MVC is for you (or your current/future project at least :D). Thanks to Tomoharo Nagasawa for spotting this. John | Go |
| More relaxing jobs are more dangerous: Economic Slowdown, JOB CUTs and Software Developer. ... There are serious economic meltdown in worldwide and everybody is affected. As a software developer we are also in same boat. We all are now thinking about Dos and Don'ts so that we can avoid or at least minimize the damage . While writing the article I am not sure (and cannot be in any case ;) ) what going to happened tomorrow morning or in next couple of weeks or months. But while thinking about all these horrible things I feel following things should be taken care for avoid damage. The only think which can save the job in this kind of environment is "Your Criticality " in your task/project/assignments. More critical responsibility means more stable jobs and even when all goes well in future then more promotions, hikes etc. If you are not having any critical tasks/assignments/project in your bucket then tries to grab it as soon as possible. Some tips to be Critical Resource 1. Try to do participate in some extra curriculum activities of business (Do help in business guys to grab the project). 2. Do some techno social service in the project of next cubical (other teams). 3. Don't miss any opportunity to show off your technical skills to your manager. 4. Always try to finish your task within estimated time frame at least if not before. 5. Don't give any indication that you are not having interest in your current project (due to some maintains work, old technology, less learning opportunity, not happy with manager/pears/juniors etc.) 6. Don't even think to change your current job . Apart from your criticality followings are important tips for personal improvement so that if anything goes wrong you can minimize the risk of not to have job. 1. Try to improve your technical skills (as .NET developer we can see lots of things are happening around like ASP.NET MVC, LINQ, Functional programming, JQuery etc. also getting idea about other programming language can also help as lot like Ruby on Rails) 2. Try to study some team management stuffs specially Agile, Scrum etc. 3. Do some original blog post , so that recruiters can have idea about your technical skills. It also improves your technical skills (In one of my interview, the recruiter asked most of the questions from my blog posts). All these tips are just ideas which I normally have in my mind when I think about messy economic recursion now days. This is late a late night post, might be I am not able to edit it properly. Please put your comments to improve this post so that maximum people can get benefited in tough time. Good night and have sweet dreams. | Go |
| Groove groups on FaceBook ... As of now, there are two groups on FaceBook - Global Groove User Group Promoting networking of Microsoft Office Groove developers, administrators, users and partners - http://www.new.facebook.com/groups.php#/group.php?gid=3981508934 Microsoft Office Groove Partners Microsoft Partners that have a Microsoft Office Groove capability - http://www.new.facebook.com/groups.php#/group.php?gid=28634975113 There are a few Groove Developer workspaces - pick up the invitations from here: http://ctdotnet.org/Groove.aspx | Go |
| Coding Best Practices Using DateTime in the .NET Framework ... The Rules Calculations and comparisons of DateTime instances are only meaningful when the instances being compared or used are representations of points in time from the same time-zone perspective. A developer is responsible for keeping track of time-zone information associated with a DateTime value via some external mechanism. Typically this is accomplished by defining another field or variable that you use to record time-zone information when you store a DateTime value type. This approach (storing the time-zone sense alongside the DateTime value) is the most accurate and allows different developers at different points in a program's lifecycle to always have a clear understanding of the meaning of a DateTime value. Another common approach is to make it a "rule" in your design that all time values are stored in a specific time-zone context. This approach does not require additional storage to save a user's view of the time-zone context, but introduces the risk that a time value will be misinterpreted or stored incorrectly down the road by a developer that isn't aware of the rule. Performing date and time calculations on values that represent machine local time may not always yield the correct result. When performing calculations on time values in time-zone contexts that practice daylight savings time, you should convert values to universal time representations before performing date arithmetic calculations. For a specific list of operations and proper time-zone contexts, see the table in the Sorting out DateTime Methods section. A calculation on an instance of a DateTime value does not modify the value of the instance, thus a call to MyDateTime.ToLocalTime() does not modify the value of the instance of the DateTime. The methods associated with the Date (in Visual Basic®) and DateTime (in the .NET CLR) classes return new instances that represent the result of a calculation or operation. When using the .NET Framework version 1.0 and 1.1, DO NOT send a DateTime value that represents UCT time thru System.XML.Serialization . This goes for Date, Time and DateTime values. For Web services and other forms of serialization to XML involving System.DateTime, always make sure that the value in the DateTime value represents current machine local time. The serializer will properly decode an XML Schema-defined DateTime value that is encoded in GMT (offset value = 0), but it will decode it to the local machine time viewpoint. In general, if you are dealing with absolute elapsed time, such as measuring a timeout, performing arithmetic, or doing comparisons of different DateTime values, you should try and use a Universal time value if possible so that you get the best possible accuracy without effects of time zone and/or daylight savings having an impact. When dealing with high-level, user-facing concepts such as scheduling, and you can safely assume that each day has 24 hours from a user's perspective, it may be okay to counter Rule #6 by performing arithmetic, et cetera, on local times. Coding Best Practices Using DateTime in the .NET Framework This is very impressive article... Thanks, Suresh Behera | Go |
| ux series: el porqué del diseño y de la experiencia ... Tengo a medias varios post que tratan el tema, como dije en el post anterior, sobre experiencia de usuario. Pero antes debemos decir de qué vamos a hablar. El concepto de experiencia de usuario engloba toda la entrada y salida de un objeto. En este caso la entrada sería la interacción del usuario con el objejo y la salida el aspecto visual. Este concepto es realmente reciente, a pesar de que es algo que existe desde hace tiempo. Para poder realizar una interfaz de usuario hemos de necesitar de conociemientos de psicología y diseño. Un claro ejemplo en nuestro mundo informático es el siguiente: Ejemplo : Debemos realizar una aplicación que recoja los datos de unos asistentes en un evento que organiza una empresa para gente cercana de dicha empresa (pero no necesariamente empleados). Para ello debemos registrar el código de barras de la invitación, su nombre, su email y su edad. Por ello le pregunta a su departamento informático cual sería la mejor solución. Además ésta sería para el resto de eventos que organizase. Éste departamento propone dos soluciones: 1) Usar una hoja de cálculo donde se irán introduciendo los datos. 2) Crear una aplicación, que se podrá usar para más eventos (ya que la empresa hace más eventos), donde ir registrando todos los asistentes. La diferencia entre ambas soluciones es clara. La primera será mucho más rudo e incómodo que el segundo. No solo eso, los datos estarán no estarán organizados. Esto sería la misma comparativa que si incluímos en nuestra aplicación un DataGrid únicamente . En este caso la experiencia sería nula. La misma que en la hoja de cálculo. Una hoja de cálculo no está pensada para eso. Se puede usar, si. Igual que podemos usar una bicicleta como silla dentro de nuestra casa. Por lo tanto ahora debemos pensar qué debemos hacer con nuestra aplicación. Por un lado la presentación de datos debe ser mediante un DataGrid. Pero la filtración y la adhesión de nuevos elementos deben de ser diseñados siguiendo unos patrones en los que no solo el diseño (“lo bonito que sea”) entra en juego. Debemos aplicar principios de la psicología en cuanto a la interacción de los usuarios de tal forma que el flujo de nuestra aplicación sea coherente. Por otra parte debemos resaltar el foco de la aplicación. Así como alertar de la forma correcta los errores y advertencias. Por otra parte el contexto sociocultural también debe ser tenido en cuenta en el proceso de diseño de nuestra interfaz. Ya que, como pasa entre el español de España y el español latinoamericano, lo que a pesar de que ambos sean el mismo lenguaje sus variaciones pueden provocar que lo que en uno sea correcto en otro es soez o vulgar. En los próximos post hablaré sobre la interfaz de varias páginas web que me tienen muy impresionado tanto como diseñador de interfaces de usuario como programador de aplicaciones web. http://eugenioestrada.es/blog | Go |
| Speaking on Silverlight 2 at the Hawaii .NET User Group ... I’ve had the opportunity to speak at a lot of cool places around the world but you can’t beat speaking in Hawaii! I’ve looked forward to this trip for quite awhile since I get to talk about a brand new technology in a really nice location. Thanks to everyone that attended. We had a great crowd with a lot of questions and interest in Silverlight 2. For those that made it (or for those of you who are interested) you’ll find the slides here and code samples here . The talk covered the following topics. - Creating Silverlight 2 Projects in Visual Studio 2008 - XAML Fundamentals - Using Silverlight 2 Layout and User Input Controls - Defining and Using Styles - Data Binding and Networking Support - Animation Features The content is based on a new Silverlight 2 class I wrote that we’ll be offering at Interface Technical Training . | Go |
| TSPUG October 22 Meeting: Distributed SharePoint Deployments ... Our next Toronto SharePoint User Group meeting will take place on Wednesday, October 22, 2008. This month’s speaker Jeffrey Wolff, Technical Director, Infonic, will discuss the benefits of deploying a distributed SharePoint environment, factors to consider when planning your environment, and possible problems distributed organizations faces as they architect an enterprise-wide SharePoint infrastructure. He will also review third-party solutions that can address these problems as well as the pros and cons of each. Jeffrey Wolff has been in the IT industry for the past 15 years and has spent the last three with Infonic. He mainly works with large enterprises primarily based in the US, such as the US Navy, in designing and implementing global and distributed SharePoint deployments. When: 6:00 pm, Wednesday, October 22, 2008. Where: Nexient Learning , 8th Floor, 2 Bloor Street West, Toronto, ON Pizza and conversation at 6:00, meeting at 6:30, presentation starts by 7:00, closing and prizes at 8:20. To RSVP, please email susie.ibbotson@cyberplex.com Look forward to seeing you next week! | Go |
| Creating DotNetNuke Modules using a Web Application Project (WAP) ... When creating a DNN module, you have the option to choose from the web site project (WSP), or a web application project (WAP). I prefer the web application project approach, and I'll explain it for developers who are new to module development, or unfamiliar with the WAP approach for developing modules. There are two major reasons why I feel WAP is generally better than WSP for DNN module development. 1. Conciseness - the project contains only your module's code, nothing more. Separating your module from the DNN web site itself in Visual Studio really helps with performance and maintainability. 2. Compiled - I like having the code compiled into an assembly. This makes it easier for me to build a module package and distribute. I like to use a NAnt script for each module that creates the packages for me. The WAP project style lends itself to this approach. If you'd like to give it a try - here are the steps involved. Create a new WAP project, or alternatively, use a C# DNN Module WAP Template Place the root of the project in the DesktopModules directory of your DNN development web site's file system (e.g. ..\DesktopModules\MyModule\) Set the project to build the assembly and place it in the "bin" directory of the DNN web site Set the project to launch your DNN web site (e.g. http://localhost/DotNetNuke ) when you F5/run. In order for Visual Studio to know about your development web site, make sure to set your project to use your IIS server, and set the Override application root URL to the root of your web site. When you do this, Visual Studio knows that paths starting with "~" are really pointing to the DNN web site, and not just to your project. This makes it possible to include controls from within the DNN site, like the DNN Label or URL control. After your module is set up, you can import it (by importing the .dnn manifest file) into your development site, and run any database scripts that the module may have. Your module is now fully integrated into your DNN site. TIP: to debug the module, you may find it helpful to "attach to process " in Visual Studio while you already have the web site running in a browser. This saves you from having to launch the web site multiple times. | Go |
