| DotNetKicks.com Links |
| Creating JavaScript Components and ASP.NET Controls ... Most people think you need Prototype, jQuery, or ASP.NET AJAX framework in order to create reusable JavaScript components. This isn't true. You already have everything you need to create extensible JavaScript components in ASP.NET controls without any framework dependency. | Go |
| GridView with fixed row height - FIXED! ... How can something that should be so easy, be so damned difficult ???
If you have tried to use a Gridview, where some of the columns contains a lot of text. You maybe know what I am talking about ...
You get some very high rows who are destroying the entire design of your page. | Go |
| Templated User Controls in ASP.NET ... Good design repeats itself, good code does not.
With interface development, you face the conflict above over and over again. You get a design that (rightly) reuses the same concepts over and over, and you need to implement them in code that makes you write the same logic only once. Templated User Controls fills works great in solving this issue. | Go |
| Authorization in ASP.Net MVC using XML Configuration ... A simple application to demonstrate how you can xml based configuration to apply authorization in MVC application | Go |
| Implementing Windows Desktop Search with ASP.NET ... Windows Search provides an easy and comprehensive desktop solution for finding content, whether it's on your PC, in an e-mail message or attachment, on a remote file share, or on the Web. In this article, we will see how to access the indexed data using ASP.NET as the programming language. | Go |
| C#:- Usage of As Keyword in C# ... This article show a little hidden keyword in C# called "As" its usage when it is benificial to use it and when its not. | Go |
| The 3 Musketeers-Model, View and Controller using ASP.NET MVC - Part 1 ... This is my second article in MVC. In my previous article we had discussed how we can develop MVC application in ASP.NET using HttpHandler. In case you have missed the first part I have given the link below. I am sure Httphandler is a tough way to implement MVC, but if you have understood the concept then you have understood the basics of implementing MVC. Ok, now good news in VS 2008 we have a something readymade given by Microsoft ASP.NET community the ASP.NET MVC. In this section we will discuss step by step how we can use the ASP.NET MVC to build the three Musketeer's Model, View and Controller. It's a clean approach and easy to build upon as it encapsulates the HttpHandler implementation for MVC, thus bringing in simplicity. | Go |
| Tips & Tricks when working with jQuery and ASP.NET AJAX ... Tips & Tricks when working with jQuery and ASP.NET AJAX: I posted about how to build and extender control using ASP.NET AJAX with jQuery. During my work I fall into few issues that I resolved and wished to share them with you | Go |
| ASP.NET Connection Session Slides and Samples Posted ... I've published my session slides and samples from the Fall 2008 ASP.NET Connections conference. The sessions include: jQuery and ASP.NET, WCF REST and JSON with ASP.NET and Dealing with Long Running Requests in ASP.NET. | Go |
| ASP.NET Connection Session Slides and Samples Posted ... I've published my session slides and samples from the Fall 2008 ASP.NET Connections conference. The sessions include: jQuery and ASP.NET, WCF REST and JSON with ASP.NET and Dealing with Long Running Requests in ASP.NET. | Go |
| The 3 Musketeers: - Model, View and Controller using ASP.NET MVC - Par ... This is my second article in MVC. In my previous article we had discussed how we can develop MVC application in ASP.NET using HttpHandler. In case you have missed the first part I have given the link below. I am sure Httphandler is a tough way to implement MVC, but if you have understood the concept then you have understood the basics of implementing MVC. Ok, now good news in VS 2008 we have a something readymade given by Microsoft ASP.NET community the ASP.NET MVC. In this section we will discuss step by step how we can use the ASP.NET MVC to build the three Musketeer's Model, View and Controller. It's a clean approach and easy to build upon as it encapsulates the HttpHandler implementation for MVC, thus bringing in simplicity. | Go |
| Gzip vs Deflate: Which is the faster HTTP compression method? ... Gzip and Deflate are two popular HTTP compression methods. I ran a test in C# to figure out which one is faster and by how much. Read this article to see which won the speed test and how to implement Gzip and Deflate HTTP compression on your ASP.NET website. | Go |
| Using Lightbox in an ASP.NET Application (C#) ... The article describes Lightbox as, "... a simple, unobtrusive script used to overlay images on the current page." It delivers a nice, professional looking method for displaying images as overlays through the use of hyperlinks. | Go |
| RenderPartial to String and Rails-like RJS for ASP.NET MVC Beta ... This is an article about how you can go about Rendering a View (or usercontrol) to a string in your controller methods. Something you cannot do out of the box in MVC Beta. It also provides a framework, similar to Rails RJS, that allows you to build up dynamic javascript from the server-side in a very elegant fashion! | Go |
| Delicious tagged ASP.NET Links |
| Build a Shopping Cart in ASP.NET - NETTUTS | Go |
| ASP.NET Patterns every developer should know - developerFusion - the global developer community | Go |
| Scott Gu Blog Links |
| Update on Silverlight 2 - and a glimpse of Silverlight 3 ... We shipped Silverlight 2 last month. Over the last 4 weeks, the final release of Silverlight 2 has been downloaded and installed on more than 100 million consumer machines. It has also recently been published to corporate administrators via the Microsoft SMS and Microsoft Update programs to enable them to automatically deploy across enterprises. Over 1 in 4 computers on the Internet now have some version of Silverlight installed. Silverlight 2 was a major release, and delivered an impressive set of cross-browser, cross-platform functionality for Media and Rich Internet Application experiences. It has been great watching new sites launch using it. Media Experiences Silverlight 2 enables the highest quality video on the web, and delivers it with the lowest TCO of any media platform. One of the capabilities built-into Silverlight 2 is its support for "adaptive streaming" - which enables video to be delivered at multiple bitrates (for example: 400Kbits, 800Kbits, 1.5Mbits, 2Mbits) with Silverlight dynamically choosing the optimal bitrate to use depending on the network bandwidth and CPU capability of the client (it can also automatically switch bitrates seamlessly if conditions change later). Silverlight's adaptive streaming support is extensible. Move Networks (who helped pioneer the concept of adaptive streaming) have already integrated their adaptive streaming solution with Silverlight. Silverlight 2 and Move were used to stream the Democratic National Convention live on the web this summer. Last month we announced that Microsoft will be adding adaptive streaming support as a free feature of our IIS7 web-server. IIS Smooth Streaming will provide an integrated way to deliver HD quality adaptive video over the web. Visit Akamai's www.smoothhd.com site to see some awesome examples of Silverlight 2 and IIS Smooth Streaming in action (with adaptive streaming up to 2.5Mbits). The NBC Olympics site used Silverlight 2 to serve more than 3,500 hours of live and on-demand Olympic coverage to over 60 million unique visitors this summer. Visitors to the site watched an average of 27 minutes of video - which is stunningly high for online video. The site used the new Silverlight adaptive streaming capability to support 1.5Mbit bitrates - which helped deliver an awesome video experience: In addition to powering the Olympics experience in the US, Silverlight was also used in France (by FranceTV ), the Netherlands (by NOS ), Russia (by Sportbox.ru ) and Italy (by RAI ). In addition to video quality, a big reason behind these broadcasters decision to use Silverlight was the TCO and streaming cost difference Silverlight provided. In the August 2008 edition of Web Designer Magazine (a Dutch publication) a NOS representative reported that they were able to serve 100,000 concurrent users using Silverlight and 40 Windows Media Servers, whereas it would have required 270 servers if they had used Flash Media Servers. Over the last month we've seen several major new deployments of Silverlight for media scenarios. For example: CBS College Sports is now using Silverlight to stream NCAA events from its 170 partner colleges and university. Blockbuster is replacing Flash with Silverlight for its MovieLink application. And Netflix two weeks ago rolled out its new Instant Watch service using Silverlight. Rich Internet Applications (RIA) Experiences Silverlight 2 delivers a cross-browser, cross-platform subset of the .NET Framework, and enables developers to build Rich Internet Applications. Developers can use either VS 2008 or the free Visual Web Developer 2008 Express to open and edit Silverlight 2 projects, and get a powerful code-focused .NET development environment. Designers can use Expression Blend 2 SP1 to open and edit the same projects and use a creative tool to sculpt and create rich user experiences. I recently blogged about the nice dev | Go |
| 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.com Community Links |
| Ajax rounded corners control ... There is a very good control in AJAX to make rounded type shape. We can create rounded shape in many design by using Corners property of this control. | Go |
| Authorization in ASP.Net MVC using XML Configuration. ... Doing authorization in a clean way is always tricky, You want a delicate balance between an extreme abstraction and something like embedding roles in-side your compiled code, I have always preferred simple abstraction either using roles and their corresponding mappings in the database or using simple xml file to store action to role mappings. | Go |
| Using HoverMenuExtender with ASP.NET ListView to Update, Delete and Insert Records ... In this article, we will explore how to associate a HoverMenuExtender with a ListView control to update and delete records. The Listview control in this sample will also contain the functionality to add new records. | Go |
| DropDownList asp.net Control problems and challanges faced using appenddatabound items and autopostbacks ... This tutorial will help you in appending data items to a dropdownlist control which already have some listitems from the markup.Sometimes in this there is a problem of duplicate items being appended every time the page refreshes.So here we will see how to workaround this situation. | Go |
| Implementing Cascading DropDownList in ASP.NET GridView ... In this article, we will explore how to implement Cascading DropDownList in a GridView without writing a single line of code. We will be using the Categories and Products table of the Northwind database to show the cascading effect | Go |
| 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 |
| CodeProject.com ASP Links |
| RFC Architecture for Finance Projects (The Invoicing Part) ... RFC Architecture for Finance Projects (The Invoicing Part) | Go |
| JavaScript Mathematical Expression Evaluator ... A mathematical expression evaluator in pure JavaScript, with support for user defined variables. | 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 |
| 16 steps to write flexible business validation in C# using validation blocks ... 16 steps to write flexible business validation in C# using validation blocks | Go |
| Beginner's Walk - Web Development ... This Table of Contents is editable by all Silver members and above. What we want you to do is replace the entries in the Table of Contents below with links to articles that represent the entries. | Go |
| UI Object Connector Implementation of Mediator Pattern ... UI Object Connector Implementation of Mediator Pattern | Go |
| FCKEditor Sharepoint Integration ... How to integrate FCKEditor with Sharepoint | Go |
| AxiomaticTokenizer ... Financial security with one-time tokens | Go |
| The 3 Musketeers: Model, View and Controller using HTTPHandler – Part 1 ... The 3 Musketeers: Model, View and Controller using HTTPHandler – Part 1 | Go |
| Design pattern – Inversion of control and Dependency injection ... Design pattern – Inversion of control and Dependency injection | Go |
| Load and Display Page Contents Asynchronously with Full Postback Support ... An AJAX UpdatePanel with less communication overhead and better performance | 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 |
| DotNetSlackers.com Links |
| Filter as you type and custom pager for the grid with client binding ... I've made small demo on how to filter as you type client bound grid with custom pager:
You can use the grid client-side DataBinding event to build your own filter expression:
and the grid client-side DataBound event to customize your already defined pager template:
[Live | Download ]
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 |
| eBook on ASP.NET 3.5 Service Pack 1 First Draft ... After much pain, agony, cussing, and fussing, I have shipped off the
first draft of an eBook on ASP.NET 3.5 Service Pack 1 to Wiley/Wrox.
In a moment of weakness foolishness back in September, I told Jim Minatel
at Wiley that I would write an eBook on the new features in ASP.NET 3.5
Service Pack 1. I wasn't able to start until October. I kinda
mistakenly glossed over the fact that I was speaking at VSLive in Last
Vegas, spent a week going through Ohio to do 7 talks, got sick for... 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 |
| 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.... 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 |
| RADactive I-Load 2008.R2 Image Upload Web Control ... RADactive I-Load is an ASP.NET web control (1.1, 2.0 and 3.5 compatible) which basically:Allows the final user to upload, crop, resize and rotate/flip images which must respect all the constraints of width, height, aspect ratio, file size and format that you need.Can automatically generate thumbnails (sometimes many) from the original uploaded image to serve various needs (preview, zoom, icons, etc).I-Load is cross-browser and does not require any client side software download !http://www.radactive.com/en/Products/ILoad/Image_Resize_Crop_Upload.aspx... 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 |
| Configurable indentation for NHaml ... NHaml, an alternative view engine for ASP.NET MVC written by Andrew Peters, uses indentation instead of opening and closing tags to identify code blocks. If you never saw something written in NHaml here is taste of it. If you want to loop over a list and put it inside a unordered list with webform you would write: <div class="list">
<ul>
<%foreach (var route in ViewData.Model) { %>
<li><%= route.Name %></li>
<% } %>
</ul>
</div>
... 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 |
| Training courseware for ASP.NET AJAX ... Among all the big announcements we had over the past couple of weeks you might have missed that we now have a brand new 800-page training courseware for ASP.NET AJAX . This is a step-by-step tutorial that covers all RadControls from the very basics to the more advanced topics. The learning guide includes tons of how-to's, tips and tricks, code samples and a real-life online exam application (called ActiveSkill) that you can build as you cover the chapters.
The courseware is available to everyone for free download from our website:
PDF (51MB)
PDF with all code samples and Visual Studio projects (97MB)
Special thanks go to the whole team at Falafel Software for spending a lot of efforts on making this book the best RadControls self-paced training resource.
We continue to improve all support resources for all Telerik products and your feedback will be very welcome. Let us know what materials (demos, tutorials, samples, documentations, KBs, etc) you need and we will do our best to provide them.
Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here . | Go |
| Dynamic Data Templates in ASP.NET 3.5 ... Gayani gives an introduction to Dynamic Data Templates in ASP.NET 3.5 and explains how one can save a great deal of time and effort when building data-driven web sites by using them... Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here . | Go |
| The 3 Musketeers: - Model, View and Controller using ASP.NET MVC Part 2 ... The 3 Musketeers: - Model, View and Controller using ASP.NET MVC Part 2... 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 Connection Session Slides and Samples Posted ... Ive posted my session samples and slides from last weeks Fall 2008 DevConnection conference. As always the conference has been great fun and Ive been pretty happy with my presentations (except maybe the REST session which was just to short with the 15 minutes that were cut due to scheduling). This time around I had fairly easy sessions that Id done a few times before which always makes things a little easier and I think the sessions went very well. Judging from feedback it looks like they... 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 |
| Rendering A Single View Using Multiple ViewEngines ... One of the relatively obscure features of ASP.NET view rendering is that you can render a single view using multiple view engines. Brad Wilson actually mentioned this in his monster blog post about Partial Rendering and View Engines in ASP.NET MVC, but the implications may have been lost amongst all that information provided. One of the best features of this new system is that your partial views can use a different view engine than your views, and it doesnt require any coding gymnastics to make... 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 |
| Updated Attachments and Links ... I just went through and fixed all of the posts (mostly scripts I shared) which referred to attachments which weren't there anymore. When I migrated this site to the new software I'm using a couple months ago, the migration tool didn't migrate attachments. All of the attachments from before are now back where they were, just as normal links since this new software platform doesn't support attachments directly. I apologize for any inconvenience encountered if you found a broken link.... 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 binding with OpenAccessDataSource ... In the last post we saw how easy it is to reverse engineer a database schema. Let's now use the resulting persistent classes library to build the first website.
Let's do it again step by step:
Step 1: Use the resulting solution from the northwind reverse engineering post.
Step 2: Add a new web applicationby execution File->Add->New Web Site... from the Visual Studio Menu. Choose ASP.NET Web Site.
Step 3: Adda reference from the website to the class library. Select the website project in the Solution Explorer and execute Website->Add reference from the Visual Studio Menu. Select the class library project in the Projects tab.
All OpenAccess binding controls can open and manage the database by themselves. They only need a helper class that holds the code for database access. This class can be generated from the OpenAccess Enable Project Wizard. You can place this class directly in the persistent classes library or in a separate Data Access Layer assembly.
Step 4:Add the OpenAccess helper class to the persistent classes library. Select the class library project in the Solution Explorer and execute OpenAccess->Enable Project. Keep everything as it is, only on the second page check the 'Data Access code' checkbox.
Step 5: Compile everything so that the web page designers can work.
Now you have a perfect project for designing some ASP.NET pages as you are always doing.
Step 6: Drag and drop the gridof your choiceto the default.aspx file. Open the controls context menu. Select '<New data source>' from the controls 'Choose Data Source' combobox. Choose the OpenAccessDataSource which starts the wizard.
Dialog 1: Choose the helper classyou did generate and press Next.
Dialog 2: Select the type that you want to bind to the grid. In our case let's choose Order. And press Finish
Step 7: We are done and you can start your application.
You can now start to design your web pages as you always do.
Jan
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 call controllers in external assemblies in an ASP.NET MVC application ... If your ASP.NET MVC is growing large, its likely that you are partitioning your controllers in different namespaces, or maybe even in different assemblies, and it might happen that you have controllers with the same in different namespaces.
Phil Haack and Steve Sanderson wrote some great write-ups on how to partition an ASP.NET application down into Areas, a concept that exists in MonoRail but not in the core ASP.NET MVC framework. The two posts above allow grouping both the controllers and the views,... 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 In The Clouds ... Quick question? Whats higher than a kite? No, its not me nor Cheech and Chong. Its a cloud! Bad jokes (but funny video link) aside, Windows Azure, Microsofts foray into cloud computing, is getting a lot of attention right now. The basic idea behind cloud computing is you can host your application in the cloud and pay a monthly fee much like a utility such as paying for water and power. The benefit is you dont have to deal with the infrastructure work and maintenance and you get elastic scalability,... 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 |
| Nova Website Redesign ... With several weeks’ preparation, Nova finally launches its new updated website. The new website is aimed to enhance user experience and demonstrate a clearer picture of Nova’s expertise, service category etc. We have improved the site from two directions:
New site layout
With the help of our professional designer, the website has been furnished with a new color scheme and modern-style pictures accompanying the new content. The eye-catching design delivers a professional and trustful image which Nova always tends to build.
New site content
This part is the most important component of the updating task. In order to help prospective clients better understand our service and expertise, in the “What You Need” part, we adopted the Q &A style to elaborate what we deliver and where are our competencies. Also you can find the basic facts of Nova on the upper part of the home page. For those clients who are trying outsourcing for the first time, they will find the comparison chart between ODC and Fixed Price very helpful when formulating their outsourcing strategy.
Should you have any suggestions to this updated website, please feel free to contact us. Thanks in advance. | Go |
| CallQueue: Implementing a Sequential Web Service Call Queue for AJAX application ... In AJAX based applications its common that user might end up breaking your AJAX calls by clicking on numerous places in very short interval of time. Let us assume there is a page where there are several of hyperlinks which make WebService calls and do some stuffs on callback. If user clicks on five hyperlinks being impatient or may be just for fun, there will be five different WebService calls made. All of those calls had the same parameters or UI state while they were invoked. But on completion...(read more ) | Go |
| #1 Technical Blog, revisited ... A week ago, I said that my technical blog somehow comes up as
#1 technical blog on Google.
Several people pointed out that in my screenshot,
I was logged in to Google.
As you can see if you click on this screenshot,
I can reproduce this result even when I'm not signed in.
I'm still confounded by that ranking.
My content is good, but largely unremarkable—though
I'm unduly fond of A Use for Octal ;
my style is understated;
my traffic is uncongested;
and my top billing is undeserved.
But none of the technical blogs listed on that first page
are of the first order, except Mark Russinovich 's.
If I thought it made sense, I'd be flattered.
Alas, I cannot make it so. | Go |
| LogParser – Useful Logparser scripts ... Logparser is a powerful utility which comes handy for me whenever I’m helping my customers facing a problem with slow running pages, frequently hit pages, post mortem analysis to find what went wrong on IIS, et al. You can use Logparser to parse your IIS logs to health check the state of your server, and the requests it had served. Below are few LogParser scripts, and their corresponding output in chart format – you can choose your own format, but isn’t a picture worth a 1000 words? Note : change...(read more ) | Go |
| Consuming WebServices in JavaScript with Mootools ... As we all know, Visual Studio will have jQuery support for now on, which is a great thing. I use jQuery heavily at work when customizing CRM and also to develop other projects. However, I really enjoy Mootools, which is another great JavaScript framework. Long ago I've seen a post somewhere about calling ASP.NET Web Services. Back then, Mootools was on version 1.1 and now it's 1.2. A few things changed here and there since the last update. Now the core is completely separated from the UI/Animation/Extra features. As I really like this framework, I decided to create a sample project showing how it works on the current version. And how simple it is.
Creating the SOAP Envelope
Basically, to call a Web Service in ASP.NET, we have to create a header with a SOAP envelope and other attributes. Usually, .NET handles it for us. But for this post, I’d like to show how to perform the requests without .NET help. A SOAP Envelope, is an xml with the necessary parameters to a request, as well as the method's name and it's namespace. Let's say we have a Web Service with a method called GetBooks which receives two string parameters. We could create something like this:
GetSOAPEnvelope : function(WebMethod, Namespace, paramHash) { var envelope = ''; envelope += '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>\n'; envelope += '<soap:Envelope xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance " xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema " xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">\n' ; envelope += ' <soap:Body>\n'; if(paramHash.getKeys().length > 0) { envelope += ' <' + WebMethod + ' xmlns="' + Namespace + '">\n'; paramHash.each(function(value, key){ envelope += ' <' + key + '>' + value + '</' + key + '>\n'; }); envelope += ' </' + WebMethod + '>\n'; } else { envelope += ' <' + WebMethod + ' xmlns="' + Namespace + '" />\n'; } envelope += ' </soap:Body>\n'; envelope += '</soap:Envelope>'; return envelope;}The method above returns us a string with our Envelope. Something like this:<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><soap:Envelope xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance " xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema " xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/ "> <soap:Body> <GetBooks xmlns="http://coolest.namespace.ever/ "> <criteria>string</criteria> <keyword>string</keyword> </GetBooks> </soap:Body></soap:Envelope>
Note that on the GetSOAPEnvelope signature, we're passing paramHash, which is Mootools' implementation to hash. So before we call the method we should create a hash like this:var criteria = "genre"; var keyword="fantasy";var params = new Hash({criteria:criteria, keyword:keyword});
And finally call the GetSOAPEnvelope Method:var theEnvelope = GetSOAPEnvelope('GetBooks', 'http://coolest.namespace.ever/', params);Calling the Web Service
On Mootools 1.2, we have a Request object (docs ) which allows us to perform asynchronous calls. To perform a call to a Web Service, we need an instance of this object and we need to inform the service url, the method, the header and the soap envelope. Also, we need to inform what to do in case of sucess or failure. Something like this: var ajax = new Request({ url: webservice_address, data: theEnvelope, method: 'post', headers: { 'Content-Type': 'text/xml; charset="utf-8"', 'SOAPAction': 'http://coolest.namespace.ever/GetBooks' }, onComplete: function(responseXML) { // some action }, onFailure: function(instance) { // some action }});// then we executeajax.send();There are more things you should take care of to put an application running with Web Serice calls from JavaScript. I'm not going to details on this post, but you should take care of security for sure. Please take a look on the sample which has a simple application for reference (hopefully it will work).Please visit Mootools WebSite , User Group or the Forum to get more resour | Go |
| IIS7 – ASP.NET on Windows Server 2008 Server Core R2 ... " If you are a Server Core fan, and wished you could host ASP.NET websites in Server Core, then feel better, you wish had come true. Windows Server 2008 R2’s Server Core will have .NET Framework which means, ASP.NET too. This is a big news for all those wanted to deploy Server Core, but stopped because .NET Fx wasn’t there in the RTM release. Windows Server 2008 R2’s blog details this: “Added the following as optional features: Subset of .NET Framework 2.0 Subset of .NET Framework 3.0 and 3.5 – WCF, WF, and LINQ Windows PowerShell ASP.NET and additional IIS support – the only IIS feature not available in Server Core is the management GUI FSRM" You can read this here too. You can also view the PDC announcement, and few more interesting things here . But, you have to live with appcmd for all IIS configuration changes as there is no GUI IIS manager would be available – after all Server Core fans don’t expect that to be available. Happy Server Core deployments, wait for the R2 release! " via : rakkimk's blog | Go |
| * Captions Language Interface Pack for Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 ... " Now you can read the captions in Visual Studio in following languages: Arabic, Czech, Hebrew, Hindi, Malayalam, Oriya, Polish, Tamil and Turkish. The Microsoft Captions Language Interface Pack (CLIP) is a simple language translation solution that uses tooltip captions to display translations for English user interface terms. CLIP is designed for those Visual Studio users who are not very fluent in English. CLIP can help those users learn and use Visual Studio 2008 by providing translation for the most common user interface elements of the Visual Studio Integrated Development Environment (IDE). CLIP is the result of the close collaboration between Microsoft and local academic communities. To use, simply move your mouse around the screen and halt briefly over any text you want translated. Users can also add their own translations and copy and paste any translation results. Download CLIP for VS 2008 " Via : http://dotnetwithme.blogspot.com/2008/11/captions-language-interface-pack-for.html | Go |
| Installing Remote Desktop, Remotely ... Have you ever needed to connect to a PC using Remote Desktop to either check something out or to install a better remote connectivity software like VNC? A couple years ago, IntelliAdmin created an application to install remote desktop from a remote PC. I’ve used it several times and it has come in quite handy. Download it at http://www.intelliadmin.com . | Go |
| Rownumber in Silverlight Datagrid or Listbox ... My next sample uses a converter to show a line number within a datalist. I am not really satisfied with the solution, perhaps I will find in future a better way. But the concept is quite interesting and it works. First we need a TextBlock to display the row number. The content is controlled by databinding. Unique data (here [daten]) is needed as parameter for later converting. < ListBox x:Name ="lstFields" SelectionChanged ="lstFields_SelectionChanged" Height ="60" VerticalAlignment ="Top" >
< ListBox.ItemTemplate >
< DataTemplate >
< StackPanel Orientation ="Horizontal" x:Name ="stack1" >
< TextBlock Text ="{Binding daten, Converter={StaticResource rownumberconverter} }" ></ TextBlock >
The converter needs to be declared as resource.
xmlns:c="clr-namespace:SilverlightApplication1test">
< UserControl.Resources >
< c:rowNumberConverter x:Key ="rownumberconverter" ></ c:rowNumberConverter >
</ UserControl.Resources >
.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; }
The converter is implemented as class which uses a special interface. The trick is to get a reference to the original data. As you can see I get a reference to application.current and cast it to the class, which is named page17. Page17 is the xaml page. There I can find my listbox named lstfields and get all items. The items are from type listboxdaten and have a property [daten]. If you compare the property with the value from the converter you get the index of the datarow.
Public Class rowNumberConverter
Implements IValueConverter
Public Function Convert(ByVal value As Object , ByVal targetType As System.Type,
ByVal parameter As Object , ByVal culture As System.Globalization.CultureInfo) As Object
Implements System.Windows.Data.IValueConverter.Convert
Dim mypage As page17 = CType (CType (Application.Current, App).RootVisual, page17)
For i = 0 To mypage.lstFields.Items.Count - 1
If CType (mypage.lstFields.Items(i), Listboxdaten).daten = value Then
Return i + 1
End If
Next
Return "nan" 'should never happen
End Function
Public Function ConvertBack(ByVal value As Object , ByVal targetType As System.Type,
ByVal parameter As Object , ByVal culture As System.Globalization.CultureInfo) As Object
Implements System.Windows.Data.IValueConverter.ConvertBack
Throw New NotImplementedException()
End Function
End Class
.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; }
.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: #008 | Go |
| Changing user password in Web.config ... Say you have your user credientials placed in your web.config . How do you change the passord for a user programatically. Less talk, more code.
Sample web.config in root folder:
< system.web >
< compilation debug = " true " />
< authentication mode = " Forms " >< forms loginUrl = " login.aspx " defaultUrl = " default.aspx " >
< credentials passwordFormat = " Clear " > < user name = " user " password = " user " />
< user name = " admin " password = " admin " /> </ credentials >
</ forms > </ authentication >
< authorization > < deny users = " ? " /> </ authorization >
</ system.web >
Code for changing Password:
Configuration webconfig = WebConfigurationManager .OpenWebConfiguration( "~" );
SystemWebSectionGroup sysweb = ( SystemWebSectionGroup )webconfig.GetSectionGroup( "system.web" );
AuthenticationSection authSection = sysweb.Authentication;
FormsAuthenticationUserCollection users = authSection.Forms.Credentials.Users; FormsAuthenticationUser user = users["UserName "]; //you can grab it from a textbox or User.Identity.Name ~ current LoggedIn User
user.Password = "newPassword " //you can grab it from a textbox......
webconfig.Save();
Namespaces added:
using System.Configuration;
using System.Web.Configuration;
Points to Note:
Configuration webconfig = WebConfigurationManager .OpenWebConfiguration( "~" );
I got an exception : “System.InvalidOperationException: ConfigurationSection properties cannot be edited when locked” when tried to use Configuration webconfig = WebConfigurationManager .OpenWebConfiguration( "~//web.config" );
Permissions to web.config
Make sure to grant Modify/Write permission to ASPNET useraccount (or the user account which is going to perform this action). | Go |
