| DotNetKicks.com Links |
| How to Use the Facebook Developer Toolkit 2.0 ... The Facebook Developer Toolkit project has just released version 2.0 of their ASP.NET API into the wild, so let's go over the basics. In this article, we focus on creating an absolutely bare bones FBML application that leverages the API. Enjoy! | Go |
| MVC HtmlHelper for Gravatar ... Ryan plugs his Gravatar library into MVC in order to create a HTML view helper for building gravatar images. | Go |
| Review: Programming ASP.NET 3.5 ... Whenever I ask Elaine which book I should get about a random .NET topic, she says to "get the one that Jesse Liberty writes." So, I was happy the one he co-writes about ASP.NET along with Dan Hurwitz and Dan Maharry arrived in the mail yesterday. | Go |
| Preventing Double Form Posts ... Most posts on this topic focus on disabling the submit button that causes the post. This works fine when you only have one submit control. But, if you have multiple buttons and/or link buttons that can cause a post and want to avoid potential conflicts if a user clicks a second submit control before the first one has been processed then this is really simply approach. | Go |
| MVC: TextBoxFor(u => u.Name) - Unleash the power ... I figured I'd share my implementation of something Chad and Jeremy talked about: the TextBoxFor control. Now I don't know exactly how they implemented their version, and mine just provides the necessary basis to get started, but hopefully it'll help people bake some of this goodness within their own code. | Go |
| MySite - Part 2 - Theming Support ... I've modified an ASP.Net MVC project to allow for a better support for theming. This allows for a fallback to using views from a default theme, while still using other resources from the set theme. | Go |
| The two interceptors: - HttpModule and HttpHandlers ... Many times we want to implement pre-processing logic before a request hits the IIS resources. For instance you would like to apply security mechanism, URL rewriting, filter something in the request etc. ASP.NET has provided two types of interception HttpModule and HttpHandler. This article walks through it. | Go |
| HTTP Compression - A faster way to improve web site performance ... HTTP compression
- is a simple way to improve site performance and decrease bandwidth, with no configuration required on the client side.
- is a capability built into both web servers and web browsers, to make better use of available bandwidth.
- HTTP protocol data is compressed before it is sent from the server. | Go |
| Detecting Session Timeout and Redirect to Login Page in ASP.NET ... In this example i'll show how to detect the session timeout which occurs when user is idle for the time specified as Session.Timeout,using C# asp.NET and if it is than redirect the user to login page to login again, for this i've set time out value in web.config file to 1 minute
I've created three pages in this example , one is login page , when session expires , i redirect to this page , one is navigation page where i'll check if session is valid or not , if it is valid than only user will see this page other wise he gets redirected to login page | Go |
| Working With ASP.Net MVC Part 1 ... a quick look at building an application using the new ASP.Net MVC Beta, part one will handle the database | Go |
| How to debug an obscure IIS error ... ScottHa shows how you can get to the bottom of a clear (as mud) problem when starting IIS using Process Monitor and Process Explorer and a little bit of intuition. | Go |
| Building applications for Windows Azure ... This article walks through the steps to build an application from scratch on the recently released Windows Azure CTP, Microsoft's answer to cloud computing. | Go |
| Cloudship: Membership Provider for the Cloud ... Planning to move to the Azure Cloud, but already tied to the Membership API? This article guides you to build a complete Membership provider library which can be leveraged by existing application to link to Microsoft's cloud platform Windows Azure with no friction. | Go |
| Custom ASP.NET server control with embedded resources ... How to build Custom ASP.NET server control with embedded resources. Lets take as an example ColorPicker control that I recently made. | Go |
| Delicious tagged ASP.NET Links |
| ASP.NET Patterns | Go |
| Visual Web Developer Team Blog : Rich IntelliSense for jQuery | Go |
| Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - ASP.NET and jQuery | Go |
| Nov 6th Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET AJAX, jQuery, ASP.NET MVC, Silverlight ... | Go |
| Using Active Directory to authenticate users to your ASP.NET Web Site. | Go |
| Bin Deploying ASP.NET MVC | Go |
| The Official Microsoft ASP.NET Site | Go |
| ASP.NET MVC: A New Framework for Building Web Applications | pdc2008 | Channel 9 | Go |
| Scott Gu Blog Links |
| Styling a Silverlight Twitter Application with Expression Blend 2 ... Silverlight 2 provides a rich platform for building cross-browser/cross-platform RIA applications. One of the things that makes Silverlight so powerful is the ease with which developers and designers can collaborate together on projects. Developers can use Visual Studio to open and edit Silverlight 2 projects and get a powerful code-focused .NET development environment, and designers can use Expression Blend 2 SP1 to open and edit the exact same project and use a creative tool to sculpt and create optimal user experience designs. The WPF UI framework shipped in Silverlight further enables a great designer/developer workflow by supporting concepts like layout management, controls, styles, templates, and resources - which help avoid scenarios where designers and developers end up tripping over each other when integrating functionality, behavior and expressive design. Silverlight 2 Twitter Sample Last month I posted an in-depth blog tutorial on how to build a Silverlight 2 Digg application which you can read here . This tutorial was aimed primarily at developers, and focused on introducing the fundamental programming concepts involved when building a Silverlight 2 application. Today Celso Gomes and Peter Blois posted a cool 10 minute video tutorial that shows off using Expression Blend to stylize a Silverlight 2 Twitter Messenger application. You can watch the video here . You can download the source code for the completed Silverlight Twitter application here . The video does a nice job demonstrating how designers can re-style a Silverlight application without having to mess with the code behind it. In the process it shows some of the power and capability that Expression Blend 2 provides to build really rich user experiences. Celso starts with a developer version of the application, and then customizes and sculpts the UI to have a fun twitter character theme: The Application Model The Silverlight Twitter client is hosted within an ASP.NET server application that exposes a web service that enables the Silverlight Twitter application to communicate to the Twitter service (since Twitter does not allow direct access from client applications). Communication between the Silverlight client and the ASP.NET web server is done using Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). The client application uses a Model-View-Presenter (MVP) pattern (also known as the Model-View-ViewModel pattern) which is commonly used in large WPF applications. Even though this is a fairly simple application they wanted to take advantage of the flexibility that MVP allows and allow room for future growth. Maintaining the separation between the visuals and the application logic also enables designers to make fairly complex visual changes without impacting the basic application flow. The video goes through some examples of the styling flexibility this architecture facilitates. The Styling Process In the video, Celso highlights how Resources can help designers quickly change colors. A common Brush Resource, for example, can be used to change the color of all the text elements in the application: Celso shows how easy is to create new User Controls from graphics using Expression Blend 2 SP1 (just select multiple elements in the designer, right-click, and choose the "Make Control" menu option): And also how to create new states inside this new User Control (using the Visual State Manager feature - which is also now supported with WPF), to animate the bird (fly, blink, etc...) Celso also shows how to create animations for each state, changing advanced properties like Key Spline curves, and Repeat Behavior: He also shows how to create custom buttons from drawings (which can come from XAML or any other design tool like Photoshop or Illustrator). All the states of a Button Control are available out of the box. Expression Blend also enables you to easily change complex controls like List Boxes. Designers have acce | Go |
| Nov 6th Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET AJAX, jQuery, ASP.NET MVC, Silverlight and WPF ... Last week was our big PDC conference, and I've been busy catching up back at work this week. I'm hoping to publish a bunch of new posts soon (including some on the PDC announcements we made). Until then, 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 6 New ASP.NET Dynamic Data Videos : Joe Stagner has just published 6 new videos on the www.asp.net site that cover how to use the cool new ASP.NET Dynamic Data functionality introduced with .NET 3.5 SP1. Download Hotfix: False C# Compilation Errors for ASP.NET Code Behind Files with VS 2008 SP1 : The C# team added support for live semantic errors with background compilation in VS 2008 SP1. There were a few cases where this caused false errors to be shown with ASP.NET Web site projects. You can fix these either by disabling live semantic errors (tools->options allows you to disable this), or by downloading a recent hotfix patch which is now public. Omar Khan has a useful blog post with more details on it. Examining ASP.NET 2.0's Membership, Roles and Profile - Part 13 : Scott Mitchell has another post in his great series of ASP.NET security articles. This one covers how to create a login screen that allows admin users to log in as another user in the user database. For more on ASP.NET security, also check out Joe Stagner's recent ASP.NET Security Videos . ASP.NET Patterns Developers Should Know : Alex Homer from the Patterns and Practices (PAG) team at Microsoft has a nice article that introduces a number of common design patterns (MVC and MVP, Repository, Singleton, etc) and how you can apply them within ASP.NET applications. If you are interested in learning more about pattern based development I also highly recommend reading the Head First Design Patterns book (which has more than 250 positive reviews on Amazon). ASP.NET AJAX and jQuery Rich jQuery Intellisense with VS 2008 : Last week we published a new jQuery intellisense file for VS 2008 that delivers super-rich and accurate javascript intellisense when using jQuery. Jeff's article describes how to download and start using it today. ASP.NET and jQuery : Stephen Walther delivered an awesome talk on using jQuery with ASP.NET at the PDC conference last week. You can now watch it online for free. Click here to download his code samples and powerpoint presentation. jQuery Primer Part 1 and Part 2 : Karl Seguin has two nice posts that provide a quick overview of some of the basics of how to use jQuery. Also check out Rick Strahl's longer Introduction to jQuery article (which I've previously linked to) for a longer jQuery tutorial. ASP.NET AJAX Futures: Bertrand Le Roy delivered an awesome talk on the new ASP.NET AJAX features coming soon at the PDC conference last week. You can now watch it online for free as well as download his slides and code-samples. Working with ADO.NET Data Services with ASP.NET AJAX : Jim Wang has a nice blog post that demonstrates how to take advantage of the new ASP.NET AJAX features (client templating, ADO.NET data service support, etc) to build a data driven AJAX solution. ASP.NET MVC Bin Deployable ASP.NET MVC: Phil Haack has a useful blog post that describes step-by-step how to enable \bin directory deployment of ASP.NET MVC. This enables you to deploy ASP.NET MVC based applications on remote hosting servers that do not have ASP.NET MVC already installed (which means you don't need them to run any setup or do extra steps for your application to work). Donut Caching in ASP.NET MVC : Phil Haack has a great blog post that talks about how to implement substitution output caching with ASP.NET MVC. I coined the name "donut caching" for this technique with a previous blog post I did on using substitution output caching with ASP.NET Web Forms. Phil cove | Go |
| October 22nd Links: ASP.NET, Visual Studio, WPF and Silverlight ... Here is the latest in my link-listing series . Also check out my ASP.NET Tips, Tricks and Tutorials page and Silverlight Tutorials page for links to popular articles I've done myself in the past. ASP.NET Building a Great ASP.NET AJAX Application from Scratch : Brad Abrams has a nice end to end application tutorial that shows off building an ASP.NET AJAX application from scratch. It covers ASP.NET, LINQ, Server and Client-side AJAX, the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit, jQuery and more. A great end to end read. A Guide to Learning the ASP.NET MVC Beta : Stephen Walther has a great set of links with some good videos and tutorials you can follow to learn more about the recent ASP.NET MVC beta release. ASP.NET MVC and the new IIS7 URL Rewriting Module : Scott Hanselman has a great post that shows off using the new IIS7 Rewriitng Module (which is free and very, very cool) to deliver great SEO (search engine optimization) for sites built with ASP.NET and specifically ASP.NET MVC. 7 of my Favorite jQuery plugins for use with ASP.NET : Dave Ward has a nice blog post that talks about 7 of his favorite jQuery plugins and how he uses them with ASP.NET. Using jQuery to display a modal ASP.NET UpdatePanel confirmation : Dave Ward has another nice blog post that talks about how to use jQuery with the ASP.NET AJAX UpdatePanel control. Using jQuery Load with the ASP.NET MVC Framework : Jason has a nice simple sample that demonstrates how to use jQuery to load an ASP.NET MVC view remotely and populate a page on the client. Visual Studio Essential Visual Studio Tips & Tricks that Every Developer Should Know : Stephen Walther has a fantastic article with 11 cool tips and tricks that you should make sure you know and use with Visual Studio. VS 2008 Snippet Designer : A cool utility that enables you to quickly create re-usable Visual Studio snippets. Very handy for automating common tasks. Silverlight and WPF XAML Power Toys Released for WPF and Silverlight : Karl Shifflett has released an awesome update to his XAML Power Toys download. This is a must-have download if you are doing WPF or Silverlight development, and provides a bunch of great wizards and tools that help automating application development. Very, very cool stuff. WPF Pixel Shader Effects Library on CodePlex : .NET 3.5 SP1 added Pixel Shader support to WPF - which enables you to add cool DirectX optimized visual effects to any WPF control or surface. This article from Jamie points to a nice new CodePlex project that is available that delivers a bunch of pre-built effects you can use. Silverlight 2 UI Templates : Tim Heuer writes about some cool new UI templates available for the recently released Silverlight 2. Viewing Design Time Data in VS 2008 WPF and Silverlight Designers : Karl Shifflett has another nice article that talks about some techniques you can use to see sample data in the VS 2008 WPF and Silverlight designers when building applications. Hope this helps, Scott | Go |
| 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.com Community Links |
| ASP.NET 3.5 URL Routing ... Introduction
This post speaks about basics of URL Routing and how URL Routing related to building a ASP.NET MVC Application. You can also use the URL Routing with the ASP.NET Web application if install the Visual Studio 2008 service pack1. This post specifically speaks about how URL Routing is used in ASP.NET MVC Application.
URL Routing is critical element in the ASP.NET MVC Application.
The reason for this is URL Routing determines incoming request to get mapped to the MVC Controller. | Go |
| Display Master-Detail Data with the ModalPopup Extender and GridView ... In the past we have often used the combination of the GridView and DetailsView to display Master-Detail data. Developers have also used pop-ups to depict similar scenarios where a user clicks on a ‘master’ row and the details are displayed in a pop-up window. I was recently exploring the ModalPopup extender control which allows a page to display content to the user in a "modal" manner. I thought of trying out the Master-Details scenario using the ModalPopup Extender. This article discusses how to do so. | Go |
| ASP.NET 3.5 MVC Application ... Introduction
This post gives you the basic overview on ASP.NET Models, Views and Controllers. It explains how all parts in MVC Application work together and discuss how the Architecture of an ASP.NET MVC application differs from an ASP.NET Web Forms application. | Go |
| ASP.NET MVC Tip: Ajax and Validations using jQuery ... This post demonstrate how to integrate jQuery with ASP.NET MVC and explaining how to send Ajax requests to Controller and also provides partial rendering with the help of a user control. This post also discussing client-side validation using jQuery. | Go |
| AJAX-Enabled Comment Form in ASP.NET and C# ... In this article, we will be looking at how we can use Visual Studio to create a comment form, or guestbook to allow visitors of our web site to leave messages, in ASP.NET with the added functionality of AJAX. This means that the comments will almost immediately by added to a SQL database and displayed on the page without postback - the whole page will not be reloaded. | Go |
| Spice Up Your Ad Reports - Using the ASP.NET Repeater Control to Group Data and Add Totals ... The Repeater control is truly amazing. Being template driven, it gives you a lot of flexibility to manipulate and render the final output. In this article, we will exploit this flexibility of the ASP.NET Repeater and build a sample to demonstrate how to use the templates to group and display data. We will also use a little code to ‘total’/sum up our data and display it on the fly. | Go |
| LINQ to SQL Paging using GridView in C# and ASP.NET 3.5 ... This tutorial will show you how we can extend the LINQ to SQL Class and create methods that will allow us to page data from a SQL database. C# version. | Go |
| Access JavaScript variables on PostBack using ASP.NET Code ... In this article, we will see how to pass javascript values on postback and then access these values in your server side code using ASP.NET. This article will primarily showcase two techniques of doing so. One using Hidden variables and the other using the __doPostBack() javascript method. | Go |
| Using AutoComplete in the AJAX Toolkit in C# ... In this tutorial, you will learn how to implement something similar using the AutoComplete AJAX Control and a Web Method.
We will be using a SQL database to match the typed text against and retrieve matches to the user. | Go |
| ASP.NET Client Side State Management ... The article discuss the client side state management techniques and when to choose client side state management over server side state management. | Go |
| CodeProject.com ASP Links |
| A Query Builder Class For Visual Basic 2005 Hand Coders ... Most programmers prefers hand coding database queries. This is a class that automates query building, while the code is as readable as the program logic. | Go |
| Crystal and Reporting Services FAQ Part 1 ... Crystal and Reporting Services FAQ Part 1 | Go |
| Ajax quick start FAQ ... Ajax quick start FAQ | Go |
| jQuery Based Ajax.Net library ... jQuery Based Ajax.Net library | Go |
| The two interceptors: - HttpModule and HttpHandlers ... The two interceptors: - HttpModule and HttpHandlers | Go |
| How to Load images in Crystal Reports dynamically Using Visual Studio 2005 ... How to Load images in Crystal Reports dynamically in Asp.net, working with Typed DataSet | Go |
| Send Emails in ASP.NET using Gmail Credentials ... This article contains code to send email using Gmail accounts. | Go |
| Agile Development Part 2 ... Agile Development Part 2 | Go |
| Unit Testing ASP.NET Data Caching ... A class for unit testing ASP.NET data caching when using SQL Server. | Go |
| A. R. Live Support: XML based Customer Support Chat Solution ... Customer Support chat solution build using ASP.net(2.0) with c# and XML as a database. | Go |
| AxiomaticTokenizer ... Financial security with one-time tokens | Go |
| Web User Forms ... Design and Publish custom ASP.NET Web Forms | Go |
| Automatically Create Data Access Layers and Business Layers From Microsoft Access or SQL Server Databases ... How to automatically create data access layers and business layers from a Microsoft Access or a SQL Server database | Go |
| C# Code reviews using StyleCop – Detailed Article ... C# Code reviews using StyleCop – Detailed Article | Go |
| DotNetSlackers.com Links |
| Section 508: Enable Support In ALL DevExpress ASP.NET Controls ... Support for Section 508 and even the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 is now available in all DevExpress ASP.NET controls. Starting with the 2008 Volume 3 release of the DXperience Subscription, your DevExpress ASP.NET projects will be Section 508 compliant. What is Section 508? Section 508 and the web accessibility guidelines make Web content accessible to people with disabilities or those that are technically limited. In the US and several other countries, these guidelines are a software... Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here . | Go |
| The Future of WebForms And ASP.NET MVC ... Ive heard a lot of concerns from people worried that the ASP.NET team will stop sparing resources and support for Web Forms in favor of ASP.NET MVC in the future. I thought I would try to address that concern in this post based on my own observations. At the PDC, a few people explicitly told me, not without a slight tinge of anger, that they dont get ASP.NET MVC and they like Web Forms just fine thank you very much. Hey man, thats totally cool with me! Please dont make me the poster boy for killing... 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 Exec Describes Azure Services Vision ... Microsoft executive David Treadwell today provided a few more details about the company's Azure Services Platform in a Webinar aimed at the investment community.... 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 General Overview ... How web forms (page design) compare to basic HTML forms... 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 Events ... What they are, how/when they are fired, how to use them, Event Procedure.... 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 Page Life Cycle ... This article will cover: GET vs. POST for beginners, Web.Config (how to set it up, etc.)... 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 User State ... This article discusses: Viewstate (what, why, when to use, when not to use), Caching, Session, Application Object, Cookies, Other methods (static variables, application variables, file storage, database storage)... 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 |
| Editable DropDownlist ... How to create and use editable dropdownlist 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 |
| Troubleshooting Website Problems by Examining the HTTP Traffic ... I started my career as a web developer with Microsoft's Active Server Pages (ASP), the predecessor to ASP.NET. ASP was a very simple scripting engine
and lacked the tools that ASP.NET developers today take for granted, most notably a debugger. Debugging an ASP script typically involved littering
the code with Response.Write statements to output the values of variables at different points in time of the script's life-cycle. Debugging
an ASP.NET page is so much easier thanks to the Visual Studio debugger, which allows you to set breakpoints, step through executing code, use Watch
windows to keep an eye on variable values as they change, and an Intermediate window to evaluate statements during debug time.
While the Visual Studio debugger has greatly improved the debugging story, there are certain scenarios where a server-side debugger is of little or no
help. In certain cases the problem is not in the server-side code but instead in what is being sent from the client to the server (or vice-a-versa).
These types of scenarios are quite common when creating AJAX-enabled web applications, as the data exchanged between the client and server during a
partial page postback affects the code executed on the server-side and how the page is updated on response. This technique is also quite useful when
debugging pages that perform different Response.Redirect s based on various parameters, or when trying to ascertain why images, videos,
or other external content is not properly loading on a web page.
Unlike debugging server-side code, examining the HTTP traffic sent between the client and the server is typically done on the client - namely, from
the browser rather than from within Visual Studio. Fiddler is a free, excellent tool for debugging HTTP traffic. This article provides an overview
of Fiddler and shows how to use Fiddler to assist with debugging. Read on to learn more!
Read 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 |
| Troubleshooting Website Problems by Examining the HTTP Traffic ... I started my career as a web developer with Microsoft's Active Server Pages (ASP), the predecessor to ASP.NET. ASP was a very simple scripting engine
and lacked the tools that ASP.NET developers today take for granted, most notably a debugger. Debugging an ASP script typically involved littering
the code with Response.Write statements to output the values of variables at different points in time of the script's life-cycle. Debugging
an ASP.NET page is so much easier thanks to the Visual Studio debugger,... 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 |
| Custom HTTP Module ... Article describing Custom HTTP Module Class.... 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 |
| Fluent Interfaces and Flowcharts ... In a previous post, I talked about modeling flowcharts with C# code. The flowcharts are designed, documented, and standardized by a non-profit organization charged with measuring the quality of patient care inside of hospitals. They do so by looking at common cases that every hospital will see, like heart failure and pneumonia patients. The logic inside each flowchart can determine if the hospital followed the best practices for treating each type of case. Some of the logic becomes quite... 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 |
| C# 4.0, ASP.NET4.0, Silverlight Toolkit, Rest Toolkit Oh My! ... On December 10th, 2008 (11-5) I'm speaking at an MSDN event in Phoenix. I'm excited to have an hour to talk about ASP.NET 4.0 and the new Silverlight Toolkit. Registration is required, because there is a fixed number of seats. Registration link. http://is.gd/6HJW And Here is an overview of the day ... What to expect with C# 4.0 (Joe Guadagno) Overview of REST in WCF and The WCF REST Starter Kit (Rob Bagby presenting his session at PDC ASP.NET 4.0 and the Silverlight Toolkit... 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 |
| How to Load images in Crystal Reports dynamically Using Visual Studio 2005 ... How to Load images in Crystal Reports dynamically in Asp.net, working with Typed DataSet... 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 |
| Styling a Silverlight Twitter Application with Expression Blend 2 ... Silverlight 2 provides a rich platform for building cross-browser/cross-platform RIA applications. One of the things that makes Silverlight so powerful is the ease with which developers and designers can collaborate together on projects. Developers can use Visual Studio to open and edit Silverlight 2 projects and get a powerful code-focused .NET development environment, and designers can use Expression Blend 2 SP1 to open and edit the exact same project and use a creative tool to sculpt and create optimal user experience designs. The WPF UI framework shipped in Silverlight further enables a great designer/developer workflow by supporting concepts like layout management, controls, styles, templates, and resources - which help avoid scenarios where designers and developers end up tripping over each other when integrating functionality, behavior and expressive design. Silverlight 2 Twitter Sample Last month I posted an in-depth blog tutorial on how to build a Silverlight 2 Digg application which you can read here . This tutorial was aimed primarily at developers, and focused on introducing the fundamental programming concepts involved when building a Silverlight 2 application. Today Celso Gomes and Peter Blois posted a cool 10 minute video tutorial that shows off using Expression Blend to stylize a Silverlight 2 Twitter Messenger application. You can watch the video here . You can download the source code for the completed Silverlight Twitter application here . The video does a nice job demonstrating how designers can re-style a Silverlight application without having to mess with the code behind it. In the process it shows some of the power and capability that Expression Blend 2 provides to build really rich user experiences. Celso starts with a developer version of the application, and then customizes and sculpts the UI to have a fun twitter character theme: The Application Model The Silverlight Twitter client is hosted within an ASP.NET server application that exposes a web service that enables the Silverlight Twitter application to communicate to the Twitter service (since Twitter does not allow direct access from client applications). Communication between the Silverlight client and the ASP.NET web server is done using Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). The client application uses a Model-View-Presenter (MVP) pattern (also known as the Model-View-ViewModel pattern) which is commonly used in large WPF applications. Even though this is a fairly simple application they wanted to take advantage of the flexibility that MVP allows and allow room for future growth. Maintaining the separation between the visuals and the application logic also enables designers to make fairly complex visual changes without impacting the basic application flow. The video goes through some examples of the styling flexibility this architecture facilitates. The Styling Process In the video, Celso highlights how Resources can help designers quickly change colors. A common Brush Resource, for example, can be used to change the color of all the text elements in the application: Celso shows how easy is to create new User Controls from graphics using Expression Blend 2 SP1 (just select multiple elements in the designer, right-click, and choose the "Make Control" menu option): And also how to create new states inside this new User Control (using the Visual State Manager feature - which is also now supported with WPF), to animate the bird (fly, blink, etc...) Celso also shows how to create animations for each state, changing advanced properties like Key Spline curves, and Repeat Behavior: He also shows how to create custom buttons from drawings (which can come from XAML or any other design tool like Photoshop or Illustrator). All the states of a Button Control are available out of the box. Expression Blend also enables you to easily change complex controls like List Boxes. Designers have acce | Go |
| You shape it – a new Microsoft tech portal ... Microsoft has a new web site to start the excitement on his new dev technologies: IE8, WPF, Silverlight and Windows Mobile. It is called {You shape} it and focus on Design, Development and IT Management in a nice claymotion Silverlight UI. http://www.microsoft.com/youshapeit/ MSDN is part of this portal (www.microsoft.com/youshapeit/msdn ) and I am a contributor as I wrote the article on IE8 development “IE8: Improve the Browsing Experience ” that shows how to build Accelerators and Web Slice, check it out! | Go |
| Cloudship: Membership Provider for the Cloud ... Planning to move to the Azure Cloud, but already tied to the Membership API? I have recently written an article on Windows Azure which guides you to build a complete Membership provider library which can be leveraged by existing application to link to Microsoft’s cloud platform Windows Azure with no friction. Goals of this project were to be able to use regular ASP.NET Login controls, existing Membership code e.g. Membersip.UpadateUser(), MembershipUser.ChangePassword(). Last, but not least...(read more ) | Go |
| IIS7 Request Routing and Load Balancer Release Candidate Available for Download ... I’m excited to announce that IIS has released a Release Candidate of the new IIS7 Application Request Routing (ARR) extension! ARR enables Web server administrators to easily scale-out Web applications and improve reliability through HTTP-level, rule-based routing and load balancing. Read more about the cool new features in this new release and check out the updated documentation . Download the RC release: Microsoft Application Request Routing for IIS 7 RC x86 Microsoft Application Request...(read more ) | Go |
| Interesting Finds: 2008.11.12~2008.11.14 ... .NET Mobile MVC Framework - for mobile devices running .NET Compact Framework 3.5 XSLT Debugging with .NET Code Contracts and runtime rewriting Writing Tests to Catch Memory Leaks in .NET Breaking changes to the String class Where did CLR 3.0 Go? Web JxLib: New Browser UI Toolkit - a javascript library for creating graphical user interaces based on the fabulous MooTools library - download The New Yahoo! Front Page and YUI 3.0 Time Picker UI - very cool The Future of WebForms And ASP.NET MVC Encrypt your AJAX traffic using Microsoft Silverlight and Ajax.NET Professional HTML Stripping Challenge Silverlight FAQ from TechDays Other ReSharper Nightly Builds 4.1.943.5 - solve the exception of JetBrains.Util.LoggerException ,thanks Eugene Pasynkov | Go |
| New VWG wizard wrapper announcement ... We are happy to announce Visual WebGui new ASP.NET wizard wrapper incorporated into 6.2.1 stabilization version. The new wrapper enables easy and straightforward wrapping of ASP.NET controls such as those of Infragistics, Devexpress, Telerik and others. It lets you developer an opportunity to enrich Visual WebGui environment. As always we will appreciate community member's feedback. Here is a more detailed version description: Issue Summary New feature Asp.Net Wrapper wizard added to Visual WebGui...(read more ) | Go |
| Code from My ASP.NET Connections Talks ... I finished up my talks at ASP.NET Connections yesterday and wanted to get the code posted as well as links for the additional topics covered in the Silverlight animation session. Here they are: Building N-Tier ASP.NET Applications with LINQ Code Silverlight 2 Animations Code SilverlightFX Farseer Physics Engine for Silverlight 2 Thanks to everyone that attended my sessions. It was a lot of fun! | Go |
| New ASP.net Technologies, What to Do? ... I have spent the last two weeks researching the latest ASP.net technologies and I have to admit, my mind's been swimming with the mass amount of new things out there to learn.
I purchased Visual Studio 2008 with framework 3.5 and SP1 and Windows Web Server 2008 Web Edition with IIS7 as well as SQL Server 2008 Web Edition on a Windows Vista Ultima OS. (See more info here on VS2008 and more info on SQL Server 2008 Web Edition ).
If that isn't enough new stuff to learn, now what direction do I go with development?
About 8 months ago, I went to the Heros Happen Here convention and was told to steer away from Table Adapters and start working with Linq To SQL for all new development. Now we're told there will be meager support for Linq to SQL and instead of using a Dynamic Data Web Application, to instead use Dynamic Data Entities Web Application (which not only supports ADO.net , but also Linq to SQL, but is called Linq to Entities -- so it's not like you've learned Linq to SQL for nothing).
Here is a Linq to Entities tutorial and more info on the ADO.Net Entity Framework .
Okay, now what about Model View Controller (MVC)? After a day walking through tutorials on that technology, I seemed weak and I was asking, what in the world is this? Back to HTML development? No runat server? What's the point? I'm sure someone knows, but I decided not to stay long enough to find out and move on to something more robust. It seemed like a step backward.
Well, after two weeks of researching all that's out there, I narrowed it down to these technologies:
1) To not reinvent the wheel on handling Microsoft's sql membership provider, I decided to purchase HeroCoder's Hero Membership product to handle all of my membership log in, registration, administration, password change, etc. The cost of the product is less than what I make in an hour, so it was a real bargain. I couldn't put that together in an hour.
2) To handle the admin pages for all of my tables, especially populating my "list" type tables like statuses, specialties, categories, you get it, I'd use the Dynamic Data generated admin screens. But not the Dynamic Data Web Application, but instead the ADO.net Dynamic Data Entities Web Application.
3) Now, should I use ADO.net to access the database, or Linq to Sql? I opted to go with Linq to Sql and use the LearnVisualStudio.net Linq to Sql 101 set of videos to learn the language.
4) Now what about Ajax and bells and whistles? I decided to go with the Telerik Toolset . It handles all my Ajax controls, and for a few bucks extra, I got the entire library including ASP.NET Ajax, Winforms, WPF, Silverlight, Reporing, and even OpenAccess ORM if I decide I need that down the road for a more robust database project.
You'll also want to take a look at forms authentication and other security videos.
So in a nutshell, there is two weeks of research you don't have to do to figure out what to use. However, I can't help you with actually reading the docs and watching the videos and learning the stuff.
May your dreams be in ASP.net!
Nannette | Go |
| MSDN Developer Conference in Atlanta ... So,
you couldn’t make PDC this year? Watching recorded sessions not quite
doing it for you? Missing the interaction with Microsoft folks and
industry experts? Well, do we have a fantastic event for you! Come to
the Atlanta, GA MSDN Developer Conference
on December 16th at the Westin Peachtree Plaza. Right here in your own
backyard, you can catch some great sessions from awesome speakers
illustrating some of the amazing tools and technologies that were
announced at PDC. The Speakers Chad Brooks Jeff W. Barnes Wally McClure(we know everyone wants to listen to this guy *eyes roll*) Glen Gordon Mark Dunn Steve Porter Murray Gordon Todd Fine Jim Wooley Brian Hitney Keith Rome Todd Miranda Dave Scruggs Shawn Wildermuth Mickey Gousset Dan Waters Bruce Thomas Alan Stevens The Buzz The nature of software development is radically changing… Are you ready? Experience Microsoft’s Cloud Computing Platform Create applications that seamlessly bridge the gaps between PC, Web, and phone Be among the first to see Windows 7 See the latest advances in Multi-Touch Application Development Take your .NET skills to the next level See sessions on WPF 4.0, Silverlight 2, ASP.NET 4.0, Parallel Programming, Live Mesh and more The Cost? Just $99. And, did we mention that attendees will get some cool giveaways? The Sessions Cloud Services: Lap Around Cloud Services Developing and Deploying Your First Cloud Services(with Wally McClure) A Lap Around the Live Framework and Mesh Services Developing Applications Using Data Services Client and Presentation: Windows Presentation Framework (WPF) Roadmap Developing Data-centric Applications Using the WPF DataGrid and Ribbon Controls Building Business Focused Applications using Silverlight 2 ASP.NET 4.0 Roadmap Tools, Languages, and Framework: The Future of Managed Languages: F#, C#, and Visual Basic A Lap Around "Oslo" "Rosario": A Sprint with the Next Version of Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Parallel Programming for Managed Code Developers The Extras In addition to the sessions above, there will be tons of experts on hand for you to interact with and ask questions! The Online Community Find our tag cloud under #MSDNDevCon. MSDN Social Facebook - Join the group Twitter - follow the feed Flickr - post your MDC pictures del.icio.us - share your bookmarks Twemes - global twitter tags | Go |
| Encrypt your AJAX traffic using Microsoft Silverlight and Ajax.NET Professional ... Some of you maybe remember that I had added some security related features in Ajax.NET Professional . It is possible to put an AJAX token or to simple encrypt the data that gets over the lines. With Silverlight we get the System.Security.Cryptography namespace on the client – before it was not very easy to encrypt a string without any plug-in (well, there are some implementations of Blowfish available in JavaScript ). I have created a very simple demo that is showing how to implement cryptography in Ajax.NET Professional. First we have to create the encryption methods and implement an AjaxSecurityProvider : public override string Encrypt(string json)
{
return Security.Encrypt(Security.GetHashKey("hans" ), json);
}
public override string Decrypt(string jsoncrypt)
{
return Security.Decrypt(Security.GetHashKey("hans" ), jsoncrypt);
}
.csharpcode, .csharpcode pre
{
font-size: small;
color: black;
font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace;
background-color: #ffffff;
/*white-space: pre;*/
}
.csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; }
.csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; }
.csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; }
.csharpcode .str { color: #006080; }
.csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; }
.csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; }
.csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; }
.csharpcode .html { color: #800000; }
.csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; }
.csharpcode .alt
{
background-color: #f4f4f4;
width: 100%;
margin: 0em;
}
.csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; }
With Silverlight you’re able to use the html bridge between JavaScript and managed .NET code. You’ll find an example in the Silverlight Quickstarts . The Silverlight C# code looks likes this:
public class ScriptableManagedType
{
// Note: static methods are not allowed
[ScriptableMember]
public string Encrypt(string text)
{
return Security.Encrypt(Security.GetHashKey("hans" ), text);
}
[ScriptableMember]
public string Decrypt(string text)
{
return Security.Decrypt(Security.GetHashKey("hans" ), text);
}
}
.csharpcode, .csharpcode pre
{
font-size: small;
color: black;
font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace;
background-color: #ffffff;
/*white-space: pre;*/
}
.csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; }
.csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; }
.csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; }
.csharpcode .str { color: #006080; }
.csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; }
.csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; }
.csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; }
.csharpcode .html { color: #800000; }
.csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; }
.csharpcode .alt
{
background-color: #f4f4f4;
width: 100%;
margin: 0em;
}
.csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; }
With the html bridge and some client-side code you’re able to encrypt strings in JavaScript with the help of System.Security. In the AjaxSecurityProvider created above you have to override the ClientScript property to let Ajax.NET Professional encrypt the JSON strings using Silverlight:
public override string ClientScript
{
get
{
return @"AjaxPro.cryptProvider = {
encrypt : function(s) {
var SLPlugin = document.getElementById(" "Xaml1" ");
var strOut = SLPlugin.Content.SL_SMT.Encrypt(s);
return strOut;
},
decrypt : function(s) {
var SLPlugin = document.getElementById(" "Xaml1" ");
var strOut = SLPlugin.Content.SL_SMT.Decrypt(s);
return strOut;
}
};" ;
}
}
.csharpcode, .csharpcode pre
{
font-size: small;
color: black;
font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace;
background-color: #ffffff;
/*white-space: pre;*/
}
.csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; }
.csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; }
.csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; }
.csharpcode .str { color: #006080; }
.csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; }
.csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; }
.csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; }
.csharpcode .html { color: #800000; }
.csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; }
.csh | Go |
