| DotNetKicks.com Links |
| ASP.NET MVC - View Model Inheritance ... If you are new to MVC web development it can initially be tricky to figure out how to handle UI features that will be used by multiple views. In WebForms you would simply create a control that encapsulated this element's look and function. In order to handle the common view elements I organized the hard typed view models into an inheritance hierarchy. | Go |
| Update to JSON Service Provider using ASP.NET MVC Beta and Templating ... Recently Microsoft has updated the ASP.NET MVC to Beta status, and along with that came code changes. One of the code changes to the IModelBinder and how it interacts with the Parameter bindings broke what I wrote on the last post (utilizing ASP.NET MVC as a JSON Service Provider, and coding the entire web site on the client side). Upon loading the Beta bits, I realized my AJAX Parameter function was infinite looping. The reason is that the Model Binder defaults to trying to bind Complex Types in the Action Parameter to the form values being passed back, however, since I am not doing a form postback, it could not bind that to the complex type, and could not run the ActionExecuting on the AjaxParameterAttribute I had set.
Here is the changes along with testing Dates and the Microsoft Client Side Ajax Templating Engine. | Go |
| Visual Studio/Intellisense Doesn't Recognize Web Controls & Code ... Intermittently at times, Visual Studio for some odd reason, refuses to recognize web controls or C# syntax during a build/compile that you know is fine. You've included all the right usings, assembly or project references, and the syntax you know worked before, but for some reason it just decides to piss you off when you try to compile by stating it is not familiar with the syntax or control. There are a slew of things one can try in order to sort of kick Visual Studio in the pants when you try to build, and it still can't seem to notice those web controls even when they are in the designer file and there are no conflicts or syntax issues. Today I has such an issue again. When you exhaust all the tricks of the trade, the next best thing to do is ultimately just recreate the file itself and paste back in your code. | Go |
| Save yourself thousands by creating your own "trust" seal in .Net ... Creating your own "certificate" or "trust seal" can save you thousands of pounds. This tutorial shows you how to write the day's date on top of your seal, just like the one from McAfee / Hackersafe. | Go |
| ASP.NET MVC Model Binding Example ... A quick example (bouncing from Scott Gu's original example) of ASP.NET MVC model bindng. | Go |
| Identity Impersonate at Code Level in ASP.Net ... There are scenarios where it is required to impersonate the asp.net thread to run on different identity for executing some specific operations. | Go |
| ASP.NET MVC Pro's and Con's ... Some of the main pro's and con's of the new style for building web applications (ASP.NET MVC). | Go |
| HTML Mangling with Literal Controls in the Head tag ... Ran into an odd problem with Literal controls in the head tag of the document causing HTML to get corrupted today. It appears that literal controls - and only literal controls - are causing some odd designer manglage that can result in broken HTML. | Go |
| 7 of my favorite jQuery plugins for use with ASP.NET ... Seven of my favorite jQuery plugins to use with ASP.NET and ASP.NET AJAX, based on my own successes and failures using them over the past year and a half. | Go |
| 7 of my favorite jQuery plugins for use with ASP.NET ... Seven of my favorite jQuery plugins to use with ASP.NET and ASP.NET AJAX, based on my own successes and failures using them over the past year and a half. | Go |
| WebParts Communication: How WebParts on a page communicate ... In this tutorial we will describe how to make WebParts on a WebParts Page communicate with each other. So will see how to use ConnectionsZone and how to enable WebParts to talk to each other by connecting them. | Go |
| Prevent ASP.NET ImageButtons from submitting twice! ... Hi there,
I'm currently rewriting some ASP.NET code, especially code that has to do with ASP.NET Buttons (and in my case: ASP.NET ImageButtons). The current situation allows users to click a lot of times on submit imagebuttons, which results in multiple submits and multiple calls to a webserver.
WE DON'T WANT THAT!!! Yell
In this article I don't want to go into the discussion that this should always be prevented by a developer (I agree with that!), but I still think there's a lot of code out there that still doesn't have this piece of functionality implemented. At least at my project it doesn't! Undecided. So we'll have to add an OnClientClick event to our ImageButton, preventing our users from submitting twice. After seeing Dave Ward's post, I thought that this was a simple solution:
<asp:Button runat="server" ID="BtnSubmit"
OnClientClick="this.disabled = true; this.value = 'Submitting...';"
UseSubmitBehavior="false"
OnClick="BtnSubmit_Click"
Text="Submit Me!" />
But then I immediately walked into problems. Since ASP.NET Imagebuttons don't have the UseSubmitBehaviour property like normal ASP.NET buttons do, we'll have to do the postback ourselves.
So thinking writing the following logic would make some sense:
<asp:ImageButton runat="server" ID="bevestigImageButton" ImageUrl="/images/discussie-bevestig.png" OnClick="bevestigImageButton_Click" OnClientClick="javascript: this.disabled = true;__doPostBack('bevestigImageButton','')" />
Since my page (actually it is an UserControl) has ASP.NET Validation Controls on it (RequiredFieldValidators), the ASP.NET Required Field Validators will fire, but still the ASP.NET ImageButton get's submitted. AAAARGGG Frown.
So by first checking if the Page was valid by making use of the Page_ClientValidate method, we can prevent the page from submitting. Once the page is valid, we disable the ImageButton that was clicked on and do a full PostBack to the server. This results in the following code, which works for me!
<asp:ImageButton runat="server" ID="bevestigImageButton" ImageUrl="/images/discussie-bevestig.png" OnClick="bevestigImageButton_Click" OnClientClick="javascript: Submit(this);" />
<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">
function Submit(source){
Page_ClientValidate();
if (Page_IsValid){
source.disabled = true
__doPostBack(source.name, '');
}
return Page_IsValid;
}
</script | Go |
| A Simple Multi-File Upload Form ... A nifty form you can use to upload multiple files from an ASPX page to your web server. | Go |
| Microsoft Web Application Installer(Beta) ... The Microsoft Web Application Installer (Web AI) allows you to install Web applications for IIS from other sources. Web AI identifies available applications and the originating Web sites, and asks you to select the application that you want to install. | Go |
| Delicious tagged ASP.NET Links |
| ASP.NET MVC Beta Released - ScottGu's Blog | Go |
| Best practices for creating websites in IIS 6.0 - Omar AL Zabir blog on ASP.NET Ajax and .NET 3.5 | Go |
| 7 of my favorite jQuery plugins for use with ASP.NET | Encosia | Go |
| ASP.NET MVC : The Official Microsoft ASP.NET Site | Go |
| Steve Sanderson's blog " Blog Archive " Partial Requests in ASP.NET MVC | Go |
| A Guide to Learning ASP.NET MVC Beta 1 - Stephen Walther on ASP.NET MVC | Go |
| An Introduction to jQuery - Part 1: The Client Side | Go |
| CodeProject: Exploring Caching in ASP.NET. Free source code and programming help | Go |
| Microsoft Web Platform Application Installer | Go |
| Microsoft Web Application Installer - Open Source Web Apps Delivered and Installed | Go |
| Silverlight 2 Released | Go |
| Scott Gu Blog Links |
| ASP.NET MVC Beta Released ... Today we released a beta of the new ASP.NET MVC framework. Click here to download it. You can also visit www.asp.net/mvc to explore tutorials , quickstarts , and videos to learn more. The ASP.NET MVC Beta works with both .NET 3.5 and .NET 3.5 SP1, and supports both VS 2008 and Visual Web Developer 2008 Express SP1 (which is free - and now supports class libraries and web application project types). Today's ASP.NET MVC Beta release comes with an explicit "go-live" license that allows you to deploy it in production environments. The previous preview releases also allowed go-live deployments, but did so by not denying permission to deploy as opposed to explicitly granting it (which was a common source of confusion). Today's release is clearer about this in the license. The beta release is getting close to V1 feature complete, although there are still a few more features that will be added before the final "V1" release (including several VS tooling enhancements). The team decided to call this release a "beta", though, because the quality and testing of it is higher than the previous previews (a lot of bug fixes and performance tuning work went into it), and they feel that the core features that are in it are now "baked enough" that there won't be major changes from this release to the final product. This post contains a quick summary of some of the new features and changes in this build compared to the previous "Preview 5" release: New "Add View" Menu in Visual Studio New \Scripts directory and jQuery Support Built-in Model Binder Support for Complex Types Refactored Model Binder Infrastructure Strongly Typed UpdateModel and TryUpdateModel WhiteList Filtering Improved Unit Testing of UpdateModel and TryUpdateModel Scenarios Strongly Typed [AcceptVerbs] attribute Better Validation Error Messages HTML Helper Cleanup and Refactoring Silverlight / ASP.NET MVC Project Integration ASP.NET MVC Futures Assembly \Bin and GAC Assembly Deployment I am also planning to publish a few end to end tutorials in the weeks ahead that explain ASP.NET MVC concepts in more depth for folks who have not looked at it before, and who want a "from the beginning" set of tutorials on how to get started. New "Add View" Menu in Visual Studio With previous ASP.NET MVC preview releases you had to manually add views through the Project->Add New Item dialog in VS, and creating and wiring up everything required several manual steps (making sure the directory/file structure is right, going into the code-behind file to specify the strongly typed ViewData model type, etc). Today's beta makes the steps much easier. You can now just move your source editor cursor to be within a Controller action method in the source editor, and then right-click and select a new "Add View" context menu item (alternatively you can type the Ctrl-M Ctrl-V keyboard shortcut to invoke this without having to take your hands off the keyboard): This will bring up a new "Add View" dialog that allows you to specify the name of the view you want to create, its master page, and optionally its strongly typed ViewData "Model" type: Visual Studio will automatically pre-populate the view name based on the action method your cursor is within (you can then override this if you want). For example, if our cursor had been within an "Edit" action method when we selected "add view" it would have pre-populated the view name textbox with "Edit" instead of "Browse". The strongly typed ViewData "model" for a view can be selected from an editable ComboBox that lists all classes in (or referenced) from the MVC project: You can either select a type from the list, or manually type one in the ComboBox. You can also optionally pick an initial type from the list and then tweak it. For example, we could select the "Product" class from the list and then use the ComboBox editing support to wrap it as an IEnumerable<Product> - meaning a sequence of pr | Go |
| 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 |
| ASP.net.com Community Links |
| Building Sharepoint List Style GridView with Ajax Control Toolkit ... In this article, we will implement a sharepoint list style GridView with the help of DropDownExtender control in Ajax Control Toolkit. | Go |
| Data Access Component - Deleting Data in C# and AJAX ... This tutorial will show you how to use C# and AJAX to create a Data Access Component that will display data from a SQL database and also allow you to delete records from the database. | Go |
| Using JavaScript and UpdatePanels in VB.NET ... We all know that AJAX utilizes JavaScript, but what if we want to use our own JavaScript calls in conjunction with AJAX? This tutorial will show you how we can call JavaScript ourselves whilst using AJAX. We will be making use of the Alert method in JavaScript when the user clicks a button. | Go |
| Web Voting System using AJAX, XML and LINQ in VB.NET ... This tutorial will teach you how to develop a poll system that will allow any user to cast their vote for the poll, and also view the results. | Go |
| 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 |
| CodeProject.com ASP Links |
| State Machine Complier And Asp.net ... This article demonstrate the implementation of State Machine Compiler in .NET. This is small proof of concept for developing state machine workflow activity. | Go |
| Exception handling using Enterprise application block ... Exception handling using Enterprise application block | Go |
| Writing Your Own RTF Converter ... An article on how to write a custom RTF parser and converter | Go |
| Sorting Gridview using Jquery with ASP.NET ... This article demonstrate flexible client-side table sorting | Go |
| Getting started with Reporting Services ... A simple way to get started with using reporting services | Go |
| Plug & play architecture using policy application blocks ... Plug & play architecture using policy application blocks | Go |
| Architecture FAQ for Localization and Globalization Part 1 ... Architecture FAQ for Localization and Globalization Part 1 | Go |
| Lucene.net in asp.net simple example ... How to use lucene.net api from c# in asp.net enviroment | Go |
| Introducing SilverlightDesktop.net ... SilverlightDesktop.net is a Open-Source ASP.NET framework that allows you to dynamically load Silverlight modules into resizable draggable windows. | Go |
| Deploying Web Sites Using Visual Studio 2005 ... This Article Describe Various Way To Deploy Your ASP.Net Sites On IIS using Visual Studio 2005 IDE | Go |
| A better way to implement exclusive login, the account can only be used by one person at the same time. ... This article brings a better approach to implement the exclusive login in ASP.Net | Go |
| MenuApart.Net based on a ListApart ... A XML listbased browser independent ASP.NET Menu | Go |
| Maintain GridView Scroll Position and Header Inside Update Panel ... This article describes how to maintain the scroll position and Freezing header at the time of postback inside Update panel. | Go |
| Customise VisualSVN Server browser view ... How to... Customise VisualSVN Server browser view | Go |
| DotNetSlackers.com Links |
| Sorting Gridview using Jquery with ASP.NET ... This article demonstrate flexible client-side table sorting... 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 |
| Build an AJAX Based ASP.NET Web Tag Application - Part 1 ... In this first part of the series, Xianzhong Zhu examines the construction of a Google Notebook, like Web 2.0, application with the help of the two famous Ajax frameworks - Prototype and script.aculo.us. He begins with a short introduction to Web Tags and Prototype. He then examines the various steps required to build the application with the help of source codes and relevant screenshots and also provides a short overview of the database design, stored procedures and System Design. 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 |
| HTML Mangling with Literal Controls in the <head> tag ... Last week I was doing 2 days of training for my West Wind Web Connection product. The tool is a continuation of a long running FoxPro Web development tool that also integrates with Visual Studio and uses the same designer layout and markup features that ASP.NET uses. So although the product is based on FoxPro, the design time process is essentially similar to ASP.NET in that I use Visual Studio for layout of HTML and controls. During the course of the two days of training I was having major, major... 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 Interview Question Part 3 ... Asp.Net Interview Question Part 3... 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 |
| MenuApart.Net based on a ListApart ... A XML listbased browser independent ASP.NET Menu... 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 |
| Maintain GridView Scroll Position and Header Inside Update Panel ... This Article Described that how to maintain the scroll position and Freezing header at the time of postback inside Update panel.... 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 Releases ASP.NET MVC 1 Beta ... Last evening, Scott Guthrie announced that ASP.NET MVC beta has been pushed out. Theres a ton of really cool, new features that have been added. Be sure to check out Scotts book, err I mean post to read up on what new has been added. As Scott has mentioned in his post, click here to download it. You can also visit asp.net/mvc to explore tutorials , quick starts , and videos to learn more. 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 |
| Fiddler for Firefox ... In my tools talk at DevReach earlier this week I mentioned that I use Fiddler with IE and FireBug with Firefox to see HTTP traffic involved in loading and working with a given web page/site. I said in the talk that Fiddler only works with IE, but that's not entirely true as Ivo Evtimov was kind enough to point out to me. You can configure Firefox to work with Fiddler, but you have to do so manually each time you want to do it (whereas Fiddler just works with IE, and Firebug just works with FF). In order to configure FF to work with Fiddler, you have to set it up as a proxy server. You'll find this under FireFox's options, which in FF3 is under Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Network. Next go to Settings. And configure it to use 127.0.0.1 and port 8888 by default. You can check which port Fiddler is listening on by going to Fiddler's Tools -> Fiddler Options menu and looking at its Listen Port. I have mine set to 8889 because I have other web sites using 8888. Just be sure they match. Once you have these set up, you can make requests in FireFox or IE and have all of the traffic captured within Fiddler. However, when you shut down Fiddler you'll need to manually reset your proxy to No Proxy in FireFox. Also note that if you're trying to test something on localhost, remove that from the No Proxy For list in FireFox's settings. Thanks again to Ivo Evtimov for following up on this! 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 Releases ASP.NET MVC 1 Beta ... Last evening, Scott Guthrie announced that ASP.NET MVC beta has been pushed out. Theres a ton of really cool, new features that have been added. Be sure to check out Scotts book, err I mean post to read up on what new has been added. As Scott has mentioned in his post, click here to download it. You can also visit asp.net/mvc to explore tutorials , quick starts , and videos to learn more. 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 |
| Telerik.Charting in RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX Q3 2008 ... There is no Telerik.Charting.dll anymore. It is now merged into Telerik.Web.UI. You will no more have to worry about its version and its registration in Web.config or replacing it in GAC when new version is out. Here are the steps you need to take when upgrading your applications from RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX version prior to Q3 2008 to RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX Q3 2008 and later:
If you have Telerik.Charting installed in GAC (this used to be the default RadControls installer action) replace the following Register directive
< % Register Assembly ="Telerik.Charting, Version=2.0.5.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=d14f3dcc8e3e8763" Namespace ="Telerik.Charting" TagPrefix ="telerik" % >
with this one:
< %@ Register Assembly ="Telerik.Web.UI" Namespace ="Telerik.Charting" TagPrefix ="telerik" % >
You will also need to remove the Telerik.Charting registration from your web.config file. In the <system.web> <compilation> <assemblies> section you will find this line:
< add assembly ="Telerik.Charting, Version=2.0.5.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=D14F3DCC8E3E8763"/>
Simply remove it.
If you do not have Telerik.Charting installed in GAC (you use it from the local Bin folder) replace this Register directive
< %@ Register Assembly ="Telerik.Charting" Namespace ="Telerik.Charting" TagPrefix ="telerik" % >
with this one:
< %@ Register Assembly ="Telerik.Web.UI" Namespace ="Telerik.Charting" TagPrefix ="telerik" % >
That is, simply change the Assembly from Telerik.Charting to Telerik.Web.UI . You will also need to remove Telerik.Charting.dll from Bin folder.
In case you have a web application, you will need to remove the reference to Telerik.Charting.
This one-time effort will allow you to upgrade to future versions of Telerik.Web.UI by simply replacing the Telerik.Web.UI.dll without worrying about the fully qualified name of Telerik.Charting and whether the correct version is available in GAC or in the local Bin folder.
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 MVC Beta Released! ... Today we finally officially released the beta of ASP.NET MVC (go download it already!). True, the release has actually been available online since yesterday as it was announced in a Keynote at VSLive by Scott Hanselman, but that was intended to be a special treat for attendees in what ended up being the worst kept secret in .NET-dom. As usual, to get all the details, check out the latest epic installment on ScottGus blog. Scott Hanselman also has a great blog post with good coverage as well. As... 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 Unleashes Tool For Web Developers ... Web App Installer centralized management of ASP.NET and PHP-based open source Web apps.... 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 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 |
| NEW Web Application and Platform Installers from Microsoft.com/web. ... Do you know about Microsoft.com/web ?
Wanna get up and running quickly ?
Wanna auto install free ASP.NET or PHP Applications on your Windows Stack.
Then this is some real coolness for YOU !
Previews are below.
Hop over to http://www.microsoft.com/web to
download and be sure to check out the other cool news and resources !!!\
Microsoft Web Platform Installer
The Web Platform Installer Beta (Web PI) provides a single, free package for installing
and configuring Microsoft's entire Web 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 |
| ASP.NET.com Links |
| WPF Learnings - Animated Screen Glint Effect ... To learn some WPF I wrote this full screen editor called Writespace , which is now open source on Codeplex. I wanted to add some bling to the editor when it was loaded up, so I created a simple animated "screen glint" effect which is totally useless but looks kind of nice (IMHO). Basically it's a semi-transparent gradient, in a rectangle, on a canvas, the size of the screen, which animates over the screen from left to right. I had a question about the best way to do this over at Stackoverflow , so check it out if you want some sample code which produces the test-output you see above (which is in mid-animation :) | Go |
| Creando una aplicación con PopFly ... Recientemente en el MSDN Tour "Plataforma para la nueva generación de Software" di una pequeña demostración de Microsoft PopFly . Algunos amigos me han estado solicitando un How To (tutorial) de como hacer una aplicación con PopFly, por lo que a continuación les comparto este mini tutorial. Para hacer más ágil el proceso iremos describiendo por pasos las tareas: PASO 1: Ingresar a http://www.popfly.com y logearse con su cuento Live (La que usan en messenger). PASO 2: Ubicar la opción "Create a Mashup", en esta opción podremos crear nuestra aplicación. PASO 3: Estamos dentro del Mashup Creator, esta herramienta nos permite poder diseñar nuestra aplicación. De lado Izquierdo aparecerá una barra con el titulo "Blocks", esta contiene los posibles bloques de aplicaciones que podemos utilizar para construir nuestro Mashup. Seleccionen la categoría "News and Updated" y ubicamos el bloque "Flickr" y lo arrastramos al área de trabajo: Les aparecera el mensaje "Missing Key", esto se debe a que ustedes deberan obtener una llave a travez de la cual puedan acceder a la información que tienen compartida en Flickr. Click al mensaje "Missing Key", esto les abrira una ventana: Seleccionen la opción "Click here to sign up for a flickr key", sigan las intrucciones en la pagina de flickr y al obtener su llave copiarla a la casilla "API Key" y luego presionar el boton update. Ahora click al simbolo de la "llave para tuercas" (Encerrada en circulo rojo), esto los llevara a las propiedades personalizadas del servicio. En la opción "Operation" seleccionar "getUserPhotos", en el user name colocar su nombre de usuario y dejar el limite de fotos a 15 Presionamos el boton "Ok" PASO 4: Ahora ubicamos el grupo "Display" y seleccionamos el bloque "Carousel" y lo arrastramos al area de trabajo. El siguiente paso será asignarle al bloque "Carousel" su fuente, en este caso será el bloque "Flickr" que sera el que alimente con referencias de fotos el "Carousel" PASO 5: El siguiente paso será probra nuestra aplicación, para esto ubicamos el boton "Run" Esta opción les dará una vista previa de su aplicación. PASO 6: Guardar su Mash up, presionando el boton "Save" y luego le damos un nombre y una descripción a nuestro proyecto. PASO 7: Publicar en nuestro sitio la aplicación creada. Para este paso ubicaremos el boton "Share" y aqui tenemos dos opciones: La primera es usar un Gadget para presentar nuestra aplicacion en una red social o publicarla nosotros mismos seleccionando la opción "Embed". En mi caso utilizaré la segunda. El resultado es el siguiente: Bueno Amigos, espero que les sea de mucha ayuda y les recomiendo probar todas las opciones que les brinda Popfly. Ahhh y se me olvidaba, tambien pueden crear sus propios juegos. Increible !!! Saludos, Carlos A. Lone Etiquetas de Technorati: Popfly ,Silverlight | Go |
| RESTFul Ruby on Rails Resource for ASP.NET MVC ideas ... I've been feverishly adapting and experimenting with the ASP.NET MVC Framework since the very first CTP. I must admit, it keeps getting better with every release. This past week was the official BETA release and I'm loving it. It has been a challenge for developers new to the concepts of MVC to find reference samples to help architect MVC web applications. For this, I've suggested to look towards more mature MVC frameworks such as Ruby on Rails for common patterns in MVC applications. RoR is not difficult to read and you'll certainly be able to follow the program logic. I've HIGHLY recommend you take a look at this white paper exploring RESTFul Rails and then see how you can apply it to ASP.NET MVC. | Go |
| Need a test SMTP server? Don't care to get thousands of emails from your tests? ... Ever needed an SMTP server to use for testing, but you really didn't care if the email actually went anywhere? If so, be sure to check out Neptune ( http://donovanbrown.com/post/2008/10/20/Neptune.aspx ) It's a cool little tool from a buddy of mine, Donovan Brown, that allows you to test SMTP functionality without having the SMTP actually relay the message further. I will definitely be putting this to use very soon myself. I don't know why someone didn't think of this earlier, hell I could have used...(read more ) | Go |
| Tips and tricks to rescue overdue projects ... One of my friends, who runs his own offshore development shop, was having nightmare situation with one of his customers. He's way overdue on a release, the customer is screaming everyday, he's paying his team from his own pocket, customer is sending an ever increasing list of changes and so on. Here's how we discussed some ideas to get out of such a situation and make sure it does not repeat in future: Kabir : Hey, can you help me? My customer is making us work for free for extra two months to fix bugs from our last delivery. We did what he said. But after he saw the output, he came up with hundred changes, which he somehow presents as bugs or missing features and make them look like they are all our fault and making us work for last two months for free. He is sending new changes every week. We have no idea when we will complete the iteration. Omar : I see. Did you get a signed list of requirements from customer before you started the development? Kabir : Of course, I did. He sent us a word document explaining what he wants and we sent him a task breakup with hour estimates and total duration of three months. Now after three months when we showed him the product, he said, it's no where close to what he had expected. Then he sent a gigantic list of things to change. Omar : All of those are bugs? Kabir : Of course not. Most of them are new features. Omar: Then why don't you say those are new features? You have the original word document to prove. Just ask him to show where in the word document did he said X needs to be done? Kabir : Well..., he's tricky. He somehow makes things look like it is obvious that X needs to be done and he's not going to accept a requirement as done until X is done. For example, he said there must be a complete login form in the homepage. So, we did a typical login form with user name, password and OK, Cancel button. Now he says where's the email verification thing? We said, you did not ask for it. He said, "this is obvious, every login form has a forgot password and email verification; I said *complete* login form, not half-baked login form". So, you see, we can't really argue to keep our image. Then, we did the login form exactly how he said. Now he says, where the client side validations of proper email address, username length, password confirmation? We said, you never asked for it! He says, "come on, every single website nowadays has AJAX enabled client side validation, do I have to tell you every single thing? Aren't you guys smart enough to figure this out? You are already doing this for the third time, can't you do it really well this time?" Omar : OK, stop. I see what's your problem. Some customer will always try to make you work more for less money. They will try to squeeze out every bit of development they can for their bucks. So, you have to be extra careful on how much you commit to them and make sure they cannot chip in more requirements while development is going on or when you deliver a version. Mockups are one good way to make sure things are crystal clear between you and customer. Did you not show him mockups of the features that you will be building and make him sign those mockups? Kabir : Yes, I made some mockups. But they were simple mockups. I did not show the validations or all those side jobs like sending verification emails. Omar : Did you run those mockups through your engineers? They could have told you about those details. Kabir : No, I did not because developers don't work on the project until I get a signoff from client. So, I prepare all the mockups myself to save cost. Omar : So, this is the first problem. The mockups were as ambiguous as the customer's word document. Basically the mockups just reflected the sentences in word document. Mockups did not really show all possible navigations (ok, cancel, forgot, signup), system messages, system actions behind the scene, workflows etc. Are you getting what I am saying? Kabir : Yes. Come on, I am not a developer. I can't | Go |
| Groove User Group on LinkedIn ... Recently in a blog posting, I listed the Groove groups in FaceBook, there is one in LinkedIn also - Global Groove User Group . Join in. | Go |
| SRT to host PDC Keynote Remote Viewing ... Register now . Seating is limited. Thanks to Microsoft for sponsoring lunch! Here's the details: SRT Solutions will be hosting a remote viewing of the Ray Ozzie Keynotes, live from the PDC conference. Join SRT staff and other .NET developers from the community to watch the keynote live and to discuss it afterward. Microsoft is sponsoring lunch. Pre-registration is required. Please note that there are two keynote events, one on Monday and one on Tuesday. You must register for each one you plan on attending. And since seating is limited , please only register if you know you can make it. Technorati tags: PDC , SRT Solutions | Go |
| Production Tracking Tools and One In Three Minute Goof-Offs ... In May We Have Your Attention, Please?, Businessweek magazine recently reported that “Roughly once every three minutes, typical cubicle dwellers set aside whatever they're doing and start something else—anything else. It could be answering the phone, checking e-mail, responding to an instant message, clicking over to YouTube, or posting something amusing on Facebook… These distractions consume as much as 28% of the average U.S. worker's day, including recovery time, and sap productivity to the tune of $650 billion a year, according to Basex, a business research company in New York City.” Since it is indicated this is the typical cubicle dweller, I’m likely stepping on a lot of toes. If you're a goof off, you're going to hate me. I don't care. :)It's a shame that people just do not have self-motivation and common integrity to just do their jobs. If you receive distracting email forwards, reply to the person and ask them not to, because you feel it is inappropriate to read at work. In fact, I don’t give my work email out to anyone outside of work. What distractions have you seen at work? Through the years, I’ve seen numerous, which I’ll share in a bit.Tell yourself it is wrong to go to Youtube during work hours, or watch television shows over the web, or play games, or surf the web, or spend such an inordinant amount of time playing with your itunes, or chatting on the phone to family members, or IMing back and forth with non-work-related people, all of which I’ve seen on the job. I won’t even install an IM application on my computer at work or home. This is not a savings in anyone’s time. Simply send them an email or pick up the phone if it’s that urgent, or walk over to their cubicle. But opening yourself up to constant IM interruptions is not productive. And alt-tabbing when someone walks past your cubicle? Who are you fooling? If the boss walks past and sees you, they know you’re obviously visiting a site or doing something that you’re not supposed to be doing. Especially when you look over your shoulder sheepishly to see who it was that might have caught you. I'm not a saint, but I'm conscientious. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-social, and I have my moments when I share a good laugh with my cubicle mates, but it is about once or twice a week, not one minute out of three minutes. I listen as consultants take care of personal business on the phone; maybe they don’t log those hours, maybe they do. As a consultant, I simply don’t take care of personal business at work. I have flexible hours and will arrive an hour later to work and take care of it at home before I leave for the office. If family members call me, they’d better keep it short and to the point. But here are a few lengthy phone conversation’s I’ve heard: on two separate occasions, more than an hour of near-heated discussion with one’s spouse; on several occasions dealing with home-related business – phone interviews to hire someone to take care of home maintenance issues, dealing with taxes, banks; lengthy conversations with continual whispers, giggles, and laughing. I'm not talking about quick phone calls, I'm talking about calls that last a half an hour or more.What about the cigarette breaks? I once worked at a company where my office was put in a room that had been used for storage. Outside were these huge glass windows with a mirror finish, so I could see out, but no one could see in. Evidentally all the cigarette smokers would stand outside these windows to smoke. Maybe they thought this was the best place since it was outside a “storage room” and no one could see how often they wasted company time. I would see these smokers come outside with cell phones or note pads and of course their cigarettes. The people with notepads never actually did anything with them, just had them. And the funny thing was, these smoker visits weren’t just twice a day, they were all day long. I don’t know how these people ever got anything done! I would see some of these people ev | Go |
| Creating the Table Adapter Methods for GetUserByLogin, GetUserByUserName, and InsertUser ... As we continue this series...
Since we are going to implement the ValidateUser, GetUser, and CreateUser methods, we will need queries for each. We will create 3 new queries to add to our adapter for these methods: GetUserByLogin, GetUserByUserName, and InsertUser.
Read more here... | Go |
| WinDBG: Memory II - Garbage Collector II ... Neste novo post vou apresentar um pouco da execução do Garbage Collector, o que já será suficiente para iniciarmos os posts sobre memory leaks. Geração? Pra que? Primeira coisa que temos que entender: por que existem as gerações? Através do último post foi possível entender o que são… mas pra quê? A razão de ter três gerações é a organização e performance. A geração 0 armazena objetos mais novos, que têm a tendência de serem removidos mais cedo do processamento. Este é o caso por exemplo de aplicações web em requisições por seus visitantes. Assim que a requisição termina, os objetos criados para atendê-la, em sua maioria, são marcados pelo GC como lixo. Como explicado anteriormente, o algoritmo do GC para verificação de objetos percorre cada um procurando por raízes, que provem que o objeto ainda está “vivo”. É muito mais performático percorrer apenas alguns objetos, aqueles com maior probabilidade de serem removidos, do que todos os objetos da memória. Esse é o objetivo das gerações :) Execução Ainda no conceito de gerações… quando criamos um objeto (new) , um espaço de memória é armazenado para que este objeto possa ser criado. Este espaço, muito provavelmente, será armazenado na geração 0, por ser um objeto novo. Mas vamos supor que não exista espaço na geração 0. Neste caso, o GC fará uma limpeza neste geração e apenas nela, com o objetivo de remover objetos não utilizados e liberar espaço. Depois de uma limpeza, como já apresentei, os objetos que sobrevivem em uma determinada geração são “promovidos” a uma outra. Portanto, uma limpeza na geração 0 marcará os objetos sobreviventes para a geração 1. http://grounding.co.za/blogs/brett/archive/2007/07/16/garbage-collection-basics.aspx ** No primeiro parágrafo do item Execução, eu citei que muito provavelmente um objeto novo será armazenado na geração 0. Devemos estar atento que objetos maiores que 85.000 bytes (85 Kb) serão armazenado diretamente em uma outra área, o Large Object Heap. Para o GC, todos os objetos são inicialmente garbage. Em outras palavras, ele irá percorrer os objetos para tentar provar o contrário. Em uma limpeza da geração 0 por exemplo, o GC percorre as raízes da aplicação até os objetos, construindo os grafos dos objetos. Se algum objeto, após esta construção, não tiver uma raiz correspondente, este objeto é considerado lixo, ou garbage . O passo seguinte é remover os objetos não utilizados e liberar o espaço de memória. Após esta ação, a memória apresentará espaços entre espaços alocados e outros não. Portanto, o GC copia os objetos ainda ativos para a geração 1 (um diferente espaço de memória), liberando e mantendo contínuo o espaço para a geração 0. Ver memcpy http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/clibrary/cstring/memcpy.html Portanto, podemos resumir os passos até agora em: O GC percorre os objetos através das raízes da aplicação; Através destes caminhos, o GC cria um grafo com os objetos que foram acessados de alguma maneira através destas raízes; Os objetos que ficaram fora deste grafo são considerados lixo; O GC remove estes objetos da memória e copia os outros objetos ativos para um outro endereço de memória (memcpy), compactando-os; O GC libera o espaço da geração 0 e deixa a memória de forma contínua; http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms973837.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/bb985010.aspx Lembrando que a limpeza ocorre quando o Heap está cheio; isto vale para a geração 0, geração 1 ou geração 2. Quando uma limpeza na geração 2 ocorre, chamamos de Full Garbage Collector, já que todas as gerações anteriores a ela são verificadas também. Além disso, o full garbage collector ocasiona uma limpeza do LOH (Large Object Heap), o que pode custar muito caro para o processamento. Quantos Heaps do .NET existem? Existem 2 por processador lógico, 1 para objetos pequenos (SOH) e outro para objetos grandes (LOH). Em uma máquina core 2 duo, por exemplo, existem 4, 2 SOH e 2 LOH, um grupo para cada processador lógico. A limpeza do Garbag | Go |
