| DotNetKicks.com Links |
| Save and Retrieve Images from the Database using ASP.NET ... At some point or the other, we as ASP.NET developers, face the requirement of reading and writing images to the database. Check this link to explore how to store images in the database as well as use an Http handler to display the image in an ASP.NET server control along with other controls. | Go |
| SubSonic BlogProvider for BlogEngine.net ... Here is a new BlogProvider for BlogEngine.net which uses a SubSonic generated data access layer. It uses the same schema as the existing MSSQLBlogProvider. SubSonic + BlogEngine.net = .net Open Source goodness! | Go |
| Timeline .NET ... Timeline .NET is the most complete ASP.NET WebControl which wraps the MIT Simile Timeline API. | Go |
| Extending DataPager: Creating a google analytics data pager ... The GooglePagerField webcontrol extends the DataPager webcontrol to create a google analytics pager looks like. | Go |
| Hangs and how to solve them - part 2 - Queuing ... Debugging hangs due to ASP.NET Queuing | Go |
| C# html table builder ... The purpose of this class is to simplify the generation of basic HTML tables. | Go |
| Fixing an ASP.NET 2.0 App after upgrading to 3.5 ... When you first open an ASP.NET 2.0 website in Visual Web Developer / Visual Studio 2008, VS asks you if you want to upgrade the project to 3.5. As some of you who are using Microsoft AJAX and who say YES to upgrade to 3.5 have noticed, when you go to run your newly upgraded application (which worked fine before the upgrade), you get build errors !!! | Go |
| ASP.NET and SOS ... Want feedback on the SOS debugger extension. | Go |
| What is wrong with the ASP.NET Community ... Dan Hounshell expounds on the state of the ASP.Net community. Weigh in using his commenting system with your own thoughts. | Go |
| inline asp.net tags... sorting them all out (<%$, <%=, <%, <%#, etc.) ... There are all sorts of different inline tags, and I haven't found a place that explains them all in one place, so here is the quick and dirty... | Go |
| Improving ASP.NET Session State database performance by reducing block ... On a recent project, we encountered significant performance issues with their ASP.NET session state database. We had a combination of both large session state and a large number of concurrent sessions. They were regularly experiencing command timeouts on that database.
In my investigation, curiously I found that a DELETE statement was the culprit. I tracked it to the DeleteExpiredSessions stored procedure. Looking at it, it seems tame enough: | Go |
| OnLoad vs. Page_Load vs. Load event ... Is it better to override a virtual method on the page or control in question (OnLoad, OnInit, OnPreRender, etc), or to hook into the corresponding event. For page development you have yet another choice; that magical Page_Load method. | Go |
| GridView with Select All CheckBox using JQuery ... GridView with Select All CheckBox using JQuery
One of the handy features that one might with to put on GridView is the Select All checkbox which is similar to the one on Hotmail and Yahoo | Go |
| Where's my .NET 3.5 (on IIS), Dude? ... Can't find .NET 3.5 on the IIS ASP.NET Tab runtime tab? You're not the first to wonder why recent versions of the .NET runtime don't show up on the ASP.NET tab. | Go |
| Delicious tagged ASP.NET Links |
| ASP.NET - Home | Go |
| ASP.NET MVC In-Depth: The Life of an ASP.NET MVC Request - Stephen Walther's Blog | Go |
| 10 AJAX Effects to Boost Your Website’s Fanciness Factor | Six Revisions : Web Development and Design | Go |
| ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview : The Official Microsoft ASP.NET Site | Go |
| CodeProject: ASP.NET MVC - Part 1. Free source code and programming help | Go |
| ASP.NET MVC: Building Web Apps without Web Forms | Go |
| .NET - How to open popup windows in IE/Firefox and return values using ASP.NET and Javascript | Go |
| More on GZip compression with ASP.NET Content - Rick Strahl's Web Log | Go |
| WatiN | Go |
| Scott Gu Blog Links |
| New Log Reporting, Database Management, and other cool admin modules for IIS 7 ... One of the core priorities we focused on when building IIS 7 was to enable a rich .NET extensibility model that provides developers with the hooks to easily plug-in and extend the web server. These extensibility hooks are provided in the web-server pipeline (enabling scenarios like the new IIS7 Bit Rate Throttler ), within the configuration system (enabling developers to create new web.config schema settings), within the health monitoring system (enabling developers to add custom trace events), and within the admin tool (enabling developers to plug-in new admin UI modules). We added these extensibility hooks so that anyone can easily extend and enhance the web server using .NET. We also selfishly wanted them so that we can ship regular feature packs that add additional features to the core web server. IIS 7 Admin Pack Preview 1 Released Last week the IIS team shipped the first technical preview of some really cool administration modules that I think web developers will find super useful. This preview adds several new features to the IIS7 Admin Tool: Database Manager : Built-in SQL Server database management, including the ability to create, delete, and edit tables and indexes, create/edit SPROCs and execute custom queries. Because it is integrated in the IIS administration tool it all works over HTTP/SSL - which means you can use the module to remotely manage your hosted applications (even with low-cost shared hosting accounts), without having to expose your database directly on the Internet. Log Reports : Built-in report visualization with charting support for log files data. Full range selection and custom chart creation is supported, as well as the ability to print or save reports. Like the database manager you can use this module remotely over HTTP/SSL - which means it works in remote shared hosting scenarios. Configuration Editor: This is a power module that provides complete control over editing all web.config settings within the admin tool. You can configure it to track the changes you make using the UI and have it auto-generate configuration change scripts that you can then save and tweak to re-run later in an automated way. Request Filtering UI: This admin module provides more control over the new request filtering feature in IIS7. Check out Carlos' blog post here for details on how to use it. .NET Authorization: This admin module provides a custom authorization rules editor which allows you to more easily manage the ASP.NET <authorization> configuration section. FastCGI UI: This admin module provides more support for editing all the new <fastCGI> settings (for when you use FastCGI modules with IIS7 like PHP). Below are some screen-shots and simple walkthroughs of the Log Reporting and Database Manager administration UI modules: Log Reporting Admin Module Have you ever deployed a web application onto a server and wondered how much load it is getting?, what the average response time from the server is?, or whether many server errors are occurring (and if so on what URLs)? All of these settings are carefully logged by IIS in a text based log file. Today most people use command-line tools like the IIS Log Parser utility to query and analyze these files. The IIS 7 Admin Pack and the new "IIS Reports" admin module now enable you to also query and chart your reports graphically within the IIS admin tool: Out of the box the "IIS Reports" admin module comes with a bunch of pre-built logparser-based reports that you can easily run on your sites and applications: Below is a simple graphical report we could pull up that looks at the HTTP status codes being returned by my "TestSite" application (note how we are using the "bar graph" visualization option): Reports can optionally be filtered using a date range. You can also push the print or save buttons within the report page to generate a printer or a local saved version of the report. The IIS7 Admin To | Go |
| ASP.NET MVC Source Code Now Available ... Last month I blogged about our ASP.NET MVC Roadmap . Two weeks ago we shipped the ASP.NET Preview 2 Release . Phil Haack from the ASP.NET team published a good blog post about the release here . Scott Hanselman has created a bunch of great ASP.NET MVC tutorial videos that you can watch to learn more about it here .
One of the things I mentioned in my MVC roadmap post was that we would be publishing the source code for the ASP.NET MVC Framework, and enable it to be easily built, debugged, and patched (so that you can work around any bugs you encounter without having to wait for the next preview refresh release).
Today we opened up a new ASP.NET CodePlex project that we'll be using to share buildable source for multiple upcoming ASP.NET releases. You can now directly download buildable source and project files for the ASP.NET MVC Preview 2 release here .
Building the ASP.NET MVC Framework
You can download a .zip file containing the source code for the ASP.NET MVC Framework for the release page here . When you extract the .zip file you can drill into its "MVC" sub-folder to find a VS 2008 solution file for the project:
Double-clicking it will open the MVC project containing the MVC source within VS 2008:
When you do a build it will compile the project and output a System.Web.Mvc.dll assembly under a \bin directory at the top of the .zip directory. You can then copy this assembly into a project or application and use it.
Note: the license doesn't enable you to redistribute your custom binary version of ASP.NET MVC (we want to avoid having multiple incompatible ASP.NET MVC versions floating around and colliding with each other). But it does enable you to make fixes to the code, rebuild it, and avoid getting blocked by an interim bug you can't work around.
Next Steps
Our plans are to release regular drops of the source code going forward. We'll release source updates every time we do official preview drops. We will also release interim source refreshes in between the preview drops if you want to be able to track and build the source more frequently.
We are also hoping to ship our unit test suite for ASP.NET MVC in the future as well (right now we use an internal mocking framework within our tests, and we are still doing some work to refactor this dependency before shipping them as well).
Hope this helps,
Scott | Go |
| IIS 7.0 Bit Rate Throttling Module Released ... Video on the web is now one of those common scenarios that every user takes for granted, and increasingly every major site is incorporating in some form (product videos, training videos, richer advertising scenarios, user generated content, customer testimonials, etc).
One of the challenges when adding video to a site, though, is delivering it in a way that doesn't cost a fortune. Network bandwidth costs a lot of money, and the cost of high quality video usage can quickly add up.
The blog post below provides a quick overview of some of the options you can use to reduce the cost of delivering video, and discusses a new free download - the IIS 7.0 Bit Rate Throttling Module - that was released a few days ago and which enables you to easily save money when serving video from an IIS web server using any video technology (including Silverlight, Windows Media Player and even Flash).
Option 1: Using a Video Hosting Service
One approach you can take to reduce video bandwidth costs is to use a video hosting service like YouTube or the free Microsoft Silverlight Streaming Service . This allows you to use someone else's network to deliver the video content, and avoid having to pay the bandwidth costs yourself.
If you aren't familiar with the Silverlight Streaming service, it allows you to upload up to 10GB of videos and download 5 Terabytes/month of video content (at up to a 1.4 Mbps bit-rate) for free. You can build any custom Silverlight client player application you want to embed the video within it. This means it doesn't require a specific video player look and feel, nor a service logo/watermark to play the video. This allows you to fully integrate the video into your site and use whatever UI you want to host it.
Option 2: Hosting Video on Your Own Servers
Sometimes using a video hosting service doesn't make sense (for example: you want to use custom authentication to grant/deny user's access, you want to play really long video segments, or you want to serve up custom ads in your videos). Instead you might want to serve the video up from your own servers and have complete control over it.
There are typically two options you can use to deliver the video from your servers: using a streaming approach or a progressive video download approach:
Streaming Server Scenario
In a streaming scenario a client (like Silverlight, Windows Media Player, Flash or Real Networks) connects to a streaming server. The streaming server then sends down the video stream to watch, and typically enables a user to dynamically skip ahead/behind, pause or stop the video stream. When the user closes the browser or navigates away from the page the video stream automatically stops transmitting.
Windows Media Services (WMS) is a free streaming server download available for Windows, and can stream video to both Windows Media Player and cross-platform Silverlight browser clients. It is generally regarded as the most server scalable and cost effective way to enable video streaming on the web, and handles both on-demand file streaming scenarios (for example: streaming a .wmv file) as well as live stream scenarios (for example: a sporting event like the Olympics that is happening live in real time).
Windows Media Services can be used on any version of Windows Server - including the new Windows Server 2008 Web Server edition (which only costs $469, enables up to 4 processors and 32GB of RAM, and supports IIS, ASP.NET, SharePoint, and Windows Media Services).
Progressive Download Scenario
In a progressive download scenario a client (like Flash or Silverlight) downloads a video directly off of a web-server, and begins playing it once enough video is downloaded for it to play smoothly.
The benefit of using a progressive download approach is that it is super easy to setup on a web-server. Just copy/ftp a video up to a web-server, obtain a URL to it, and you can wire it up to a video client player. It doesn't require any custom web-server configurat | Go |
| March 14th Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET AJAX, ASP.NET MVC and .NET ... I'm slowly recovering from keynoting at MIX last week, and have been digging my way out of backlogged email the last few days. I'm going to try and finish catching up on blog comments this weekend - apologies for the delay in getting back to some of your questions. To kick-start my blogging again I thought I'd post a new link-listing series . Today's post is mostly focused on ASP.NET and web related links. I'm going to be doing more Silverlight and WPF posts soon. ASP.NET Tag Cloud Filters with ASP.NET 3.5's LinqDataSource and ListView Controls : Matt Berseth has a cool post that shows off using LINQ to SQL and ASP.NET 3.5 to build a tag-cloud navigation UI. Five New ASP.NET Security Tutorials Now Available : Scott Mitchell continues his great ASP.NET security tutorials . These 5 new ones (all in both VB and C#) cover using the ASP.NET membership system. Building a Vista Style Folder Browser with ASP.NET 3.5 and a Custom Hierarchical DataSource Control: Matt Berseth continues his great posts with a nice one that shows how to build a custom HierarchicalDataSourceControl to implement file browsing functionality using ASP.NET. ASP.NET AJAX New ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit Release: David Anson blogs about a new ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit release that the team made right before MIX. This release includes a number of patches (including a bunch from the community) with bug fixes and improvements in a bunch of areas. LinkedIn Style Theme for the ASP.NET AJAX Tab Container Control: Matt Berseth posts some cool new themes you can use with the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit's tab control. ASP.NET AJAX In-Depth: Object Inheritance : Stephen Walther, author of the recently published ASP.NET 3.5 Unleashed book , posts an incredibly in-depth article about how object inheritance is handled with ASP.NET AJAX. ASP.NET AJAX In-Depth: Creating JavaScript Properties: Stephen Walther continues his series with an in-depth article discussing how JavaScript Properties are handled with ASP.NET AJAX. ASP.NET AJAX In-Depth: Application Events : Yes another Stephen Walther article discussing how application events are handled with ASP.NET AJAX. ASP.NET AJAX Localization Slides and Code: Joel Rumerman has a nice post with samples + slides about how the localization features in ASP.NET AJAX work. JScript Intellisense: working with Ext JS : The VS web tools team enabled JQuery intellisense last month with the VS 2008 Web Development hot fix . In this more recent post they talk about enabling intellisense support for Ext JS (another popular JavaScript framework). VS 2008 Intellisense support for Prototype is coming in the next few weeks. JavaScript Intellisense for the Virtual Earth Map Control: Marc Schweigert is driving a project to add great VS 2008 JavaScript intellisense support for the Virtual Earth Map Control. Check out his video and visit his codeplex project to learn more. ASP.NET MVC ASP.NET MVC Preview 2: Last week at MIX the ASP.NET team shipped a second preview release of the ASP.NET MVC framework. This release has a number of improvements in it (see my earlier MVC roadmap post that covers some of them). Watch the Scott Hanselman videos on the http://www.asp.net/mvc page, as well as the quickstart samples to learn more. Thoughts on ASP.NET MVC Preview 2 and Beyond : Phil Haack from the ASP.NET team has a great post where he talks about the ASP.NET MVC Preview 2 release, as well as some of the features and work that will show up in the next preview drop. One of the major focuses in Preview 3 will be improvements to the testing workflow of controllers. Cheesy Northwind Sample Code: Scott Hanselman has posted a sample application that shows building a simple data driven application using the ASP.NET MVC Framework and the Northwind sample database. Securing Your Controller Actions : Rob Conery shows how to use the new ASP.NET MVC ActionFilterAttribute feature to apply declarative secu | Go |
| My Presentations in Arizona this Tuesday ... Update: You can now download the slides + demos I used during my talks. Click here for the Silverlight Talk . Click here for the MVC Talk .
This week I'm visiting Scottsdale Arizona and will be presenting at a free user group event during the day. I'm presenting two sessions myself:
1) Developing Applications using Silverlight 2 : This will be a drill-down into the new Silverlight 2 Beta1 release, and how you can build applications with it using VS 2008 and Expression Blend. You'll leave this session with a good understanding of the basics of Silverlight programming and how to start building applications with it.
2) Developing Applications using ASP.NET MVC : This session will be a drill-down into the new ASP.NET Model-View-Controller framework option (which last week was updated . You'll leave this session with a good understanding of what it is, how it works, and how to start building ASP.NET web applications with it.
In addition to my sessions above, there will also be great sessions at the event from Microsoft employees on "Consuming Web Services with Microsoft Silverlight", "Encoding Video for Microsoft Silverlight", and "Serving Applications with Microsoft Silverlight Streaming".
You can sign up and attend the sessions for free. Click here for more details on the events, and click here to register online to attend.
Hope to see some of you there,
Scott | Go |
| First Look at Using Expression Blend with Silverlight 2 ... Last week I did a First Look at Silverlight 2 post that talked about the upcoming Silverlight 2 Beta1 release. In the post I linked to some end-to-end tutorials I've written that walk through some of the fundamental programming concepts behind Silverlight and WPF, and demonstrate how to use them to build a "Digg Search Client" application using Silverlight: Part 1: Creating "Hello World" with Silverlight 2 and VS 2008 Part 2: Using Layout Management Part 3: Using Networking to Retrieve Data and Populate a DataGrid Part 4: Using Style Elements to Better Encapsulate Look and Feel Part 5: Using the ListBox and DataBinding to Display List Data Part 6: Using User Controls to Implement Master/Details Scenarios Part 7: Using Templates to Customize Control Look and Feel Part 8: Creating a Digg Desktop Version of our Application using WPF In this first set of Silverlight tutorials I didn't use a visual design tool to build the UI, and instead focused on showing the underlying XAML UI markup (which I think helps to explain the core programming concepts better). Now that we've finished covering the basics - let's explore some of the tools we can use to be even more productive. Expression Blend Support for Silverlight In addition to releasing the upcoming Beta1 of Silverlight 2, we are also going to ship Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Studio tool support for targeting it. These tools will offer a ton of power for building RIA solutions, and are designed to enable developers and designers to easily work on projects together. In today's post I'm going to introduce some of the features in the upcoming Expression Blend 2.5 March preview. After demonstrating some of the basics of how Blend works, we are going to use it to build a cross-platform, cross-browser Silverlight IM chat client: The above screen-shot shows what the application looks like at runtime on a Mac. Below is a screen-shot of what it looks like at design-time within Expression Blend: We'll use Expression Blend to graphically construct all of the UI for the application, as well as use it to cleanly data-bind the UI to .NET classes that represent our chat session and chat messages. All of the controls we'll use to build the chat application are built into Beta1 of Silverlight 2. Disclaimer: I am not a designer (nor am I cool) Let me say up front that I am a developer and not a designer. I'm also not very cool. While I understand the techniques to create UI, I sometimes choose bad colors and fonts when putting it together (only after I did all the screen-shots for this post did a co-worker helpfully point out that there is actually a site dedicated to banning some of the fonts and colors I used . Ouch). For those of you with artistic skill out there - please be gentle with me and focus your attention on the features and techniques I demonstrate below, rather than on the font and color choices I use. :-) Getting Started: Creating a new Silverlight 2 Project Expression Blend and Visual Studio 2008 share the same solution/project file format, which means that you can create a new Silverlight project in VS 2008 and then open it in Expression Blend, or you can create a new Silverlight project in Expression Blend and open it in VS. You can also have both Expression Blend and VS 2008 open and editing the same project as the same time. Since in my previous Silverlight tutorial series I already showed how to create a new Silverlight project using VS 2008, let's use this post to show how to create a new Silverlight application using Expression Blend. To do this, simply choose File->New Project in Expression Blend, select the "Silverlight 2 Application" icon, and click ok: This will create a new (VS-compatible) solution file and Silverlight application project: Blend includes a full WYSIWYG designer for Silverlight 2 applications. When opening Silverlight pages and controls you can switch the design-surface to be in design vie | Go |
| First Look at Silverlight 2 ... Last September we shipped Silverlight 1.0 for Mac and Windows , and announced our plans to deliver Silverlight on Linux. Silverlight 1.0 focused on enabling rich media scenarios in a browser, and supports a JavaScript/AJAX programming model.
We are shortly going to release the first public beta of Silverlight 2, which will be a major update of Silverlight that focuses on enabling Rich Internet Application (RIA) development. This is the first of several blog posts I'll be doing over the weeks and months ahead that talk in more depth about it.
Cross Platform / Cross Browser .NET Development
Silverlight 2 includes a cross-platform, cross-browser version of the .NET Framework, and enables a rich .NET development platform that runs in the browser. Developers can write Silverlight applications using any .NET language (including VB, C#, JavaScript, IronPython and IronRuby). We will ship Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Studio tool support that enables great developer / designer workflow and integration when building Silverlight applications.
This upcoming Beta1 release of Silverlight 2 provides a rich set of features for RIA application development. These include:
WPF UI Framework : Silverlight 2 includes a rich WPF-based 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. This upcoming Beta1 release includes core form controls (TextBox, CheckBox, RadioButton, 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). The built-in 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). Beta1 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 also 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.
Silverlight 2 does not require the .NET Framework to be installed on a computer in order to run. The Silverlight setup download includes everything necessary to enable all the above features (and more we'll be talking about shortly) on a vanilla Mac OSX or Windows machine.
The Beta1 release of Silverlight 2 is 4.3MB in size, and takes 4-10 seconds to install on a machine that doesn't already have it. Once Silverlight 2 is installed you can browse the Web and automatically run rich Silverlight applications within your browser of choice (IE, FireFox, Safari, etc).
Silverlight 2 Tutorials: Building A Simple Digg Client
To help people come up to speed with Silverlight 2, I wrote a Silverlight application and put to | Go |
| .NET 3.5 Client Product Roadmap ... A few months ago I did a .NET Web Product Roadmap blog post where I outlined some of the product plans we have to build on top of the web development features we’ve shipped with Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5. Over the next few months we will also be releasing a number of enhancements specific to client development as well. We have put a lot of effort into addressing some of the biggest areas of customer feedback, while also trying to really push the envelope on the capabilities developers have when building Windows applications. All of these improvements build on top of VS 2008 and .NET 3.5, and will make .NET client development even better going forward. Below is a roadmap of some of the upcoming releases we have planned for the months ahead: Improved .NET Framework Setup for Client Applications One of the biggest asks we’ve had over the years from customers and ISVs building client applications is to make the setup and installation of the .NET Framework easier and faster. This summer we are going to ship a new setup framework for .NET that makes it easier to build optimized setup packages for client applications. This setup framework can be integrated with existing installation frameworks (for example: products like InstallShield), and enables a smaller and faster end-user setup experience of the .NET Framework. Windows Forms and WPF client applications will be able to use this setup framework to cleanly “bootstrap” getting the .NET Framework installed onto machines. The setup “bootstrap” utility will support automatically downloading the minimal set of .NET Framework packages needed to enable .NET 3.5 client applications on a machine. For example, if a user already has .NET 2.0 installed on their machine, setup will be smart enough to automatically download only the upgrade patches necessary to update .NET 2.0 to 3.5 (and not have to re-download the components already provided by .NET 2.0). This will significantly shrink the payload size of client setup programs, and speed up the installation experience. We’ll also be delivering improvements that enable a more integrated application install experience for both MSI and ClickOnce based solutions, and support a more consumer friendly user experience that is easy to build. Improved Working Set and Startup Improvements for .NET Client Applications One of the other common asks we receive is to enable .NET client applications to launch faster in “cold startup” scenarios. “Cold startup” scenarios occur when no other .NET client applications are running (or have recently run) on a machine, and require the OS to load lots of pages (code, static data, registry, etc) from disk. If you are loading a large .NET client application or library, or are using a slow disk, these cold startup scenarios can require many seconds for your application to start. This summer we are going to ship a servicing update to the CLR that makes some significant internal optimizations in how we optimize our data structures to cut down on disk IO and improve memory layout when loading and running applications. Among many other benefits, this work will significantly improve the working set and cold startup performance of .NET 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5 applications and will dramatically improve end-user experiences with .NET-based client applications. Depending on the size of the application, we expect .NET applications to realize a cold startup performance improvement of between 25-40%. Applications do not need to change any code, nor be recompiled, in order to take advantage of these improvements so the benefits are automatic. WPF Performance Improvements This summer we are also planning to release a servicing update to WPF that includes a bunch of performance optimizations that improve its text, graphics, media and data stack. These include: - Moving the DropShadow and Blur bitmap effects, which are currently software rendered, to be hardware acc | Go |
| Feb 17th Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET AJAX, Visual Studio, .NET ... Here is the latest in my link-listing series . Also check out my ASP.NET Tips, Tricks and Tutorials page for links to popular articles I've done myself in the past. ASP.NET Top 10 Best Practices for Production ASP.NET Applications : Kyle has a nice post that summarizes a number of good best practices to follow when deploying your ASP.NET applications into production. Paging Through Data with the ASP.NET 3.5 ListView and DataPager Controls : Scott Mitchell continues his excellent series on the new ASP.NET 3.5 data control features. In this latest article he shows how to page using the ListView and DataPager controls. ASP.NET AJAX How to install and use the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit in VS : Nannette Thacker has a nice post that details step-by-step how to install and use the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit controls within Visual Studio or Visual Web Developer. JavaScript Stack Traces in ASP.NET AJAX and JavaScript Error Publishing using ASP.NET AJAX : Joel Rumerman has put together two nice posts that detail some god ways to capture JavaScript stack trace information, as well as to report JavaScript errors using ASP.NET AJAX. ASP.NET AJAX History Tutorials : Jonathan Carter has published a good series of tutorials that demonstrate how to use the new ASP.NET AJAX History support that we'll be shipping later this year (it is currently available in the ASP.NET Extensions CTP download). This enables you to add forward/back button navigation support within AJAX applications. Using JQuery with VS 2008 JavaScript Intellisense : One of the improvements we shipped in our recent VS 2008 Hotfix Roll-Up last week was to address issues with JavaScript intellisense support for JQuery (another popular AJAX framework). Brennan Stehling, James Hart, and Lance Fisher have done blog posts recently that discuss how to enable even richer JQuery intellisense inside VS 2008 using intellisense-friendly JQuery libraries that are referenced while coding (and then swapped out for the real library at runtime). You can read their blog posts about how this works here and here and here . ASP.NET MVC Tip: Submitting an AJAX Form with JQuery : While on the subject of JQuery, I thought I'd link to a post in Mike Bosch's ASP.NET MVC series that shows how you can integrate JQuery in the browser on the client with the ASP.NET MVC framework on the server. Visual Studio Visual Studio Programmer Themes Gallery: Visual Studio enables you to customize the color settings of the text editor and IDE, as well as to export and import the settings (use the Tools->Import and Export Settings menu to do this). Scott Hanselman has a great post that provides previews of a bunch of cool pre-built themes that people have published that you can download and use for free. Did you know: the Solution Explorer Supports Type-Ahead Selection : Sara Ford has another nice post in her series on Visual Studio tips and tricks. This post talks about a shortcut you can use to quickly select files in the solution explorer. Code Profiler Analysis in VS 2008 : Maarten Balliauw has a nice post that describes how to use the code profiling features in the Developer edition of Visual Studio Team System to analyze code performance. Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition Power Tools : Greg Duncan posts about the new power tools download that has been released by Microsoft and which delivers a bunch of cool new database development features for the Database editions of Visual Studio Team System. Japanese Release of VS 2008 Web Deployment Projects : Late last month I announced the release of the VS 2008 Web Deployment Project support. This past week the team also released a localized Japanese version of it. Note: you can read a Japanese translated version of my blog here (thanks Chica!). .NET LINQ to JSON , LINQ to SharePoint , LINQ to Active Directory , LINQ to TerraServer , LINQ to FlickR : Just a few of the new LINQ providers now available | Go |
| ASP.NET MVC Framework Road-Map Update ... This past December we released the first preview of a new ASP.NET MVC Framework as part of the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions CTP Release . I also wrote a number of blog posts that provide more detail on what the ASP.NET MVC framework is and how you can optionally use it: Introducing the ASP.NET MVC Framework ASP.NET MVC Tutorial (Part 1) ASP.NET MVC Tutorial (Part 2: Url Routing) ASP.NET MVC Tutorial (Part 3: Passing ViewData from Controllers to Views) ASP.NET MVC Tutorial (Part 4: Handling Form Edit and Post Scenarios) We've had great feedback on the framework since then, and had a ton of downloads and excitement around it. One of the common questions people have asked me recently is "when will a new build be released and what will be in it?". The below post provides a few updates on what the ASP.NET MVC feature team has been working on, and some of the new features that will be available soon. I'm going to do a separate blog post in the future that will cover the new ASP.NET Dynamic Data and ASP.NET AJAX feature work that is progressing along nicely as well. All of these features (ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Dynamic Data, and the new ASP.NET AJAX improvements) will ship later this year and work with VS 2008 and .NET 3.5. Upcoming ASP.NET MVC MIX Preview Release We are planning to release the next public preview of ASP.NET MVC at the MIX 08 conference in a few weeks. This build will be available for anyone on the web to download (you do not need to attend MIX to get it). We have incorporated a lot of early adopter feedback into this release. Below are some of the improvements that will appear with this next preview release: 1) The ASP.NET MVC Framework can be deployed in the \bin directory of an app and work in partial trust The first ASP.NET MVC preview release required a setup program to be run on machines in order for the System.Web.Mvc.dll assembly to be registered in the machine's GAC (global assembly cache). Starting with this upcoming preview release we will enable applications to instead directly reference the System.Web.Mvc.dll assembly from the application's \bin directory. This means that no setup programs need to be run on a sever to use the ASP.NET MVC Framework - you can instead just copy your application onto a remote ASP.NET server and have it run (no registration or extra configuration steps required). We are also doing work to enable the ASP.NET MVC framework to run in "partial/medium trust" hosting scenarios. This will enable you to use it with low-cost shared hosting accounts - without requiring the hosting provider to-do anything to enable it (just FTP your application up and and it will be good to run - they don't need to install anything). 2) Significantly enhanced routing features and infrastructure One of the most powerful features of the ASP.NET MVC framework is its URL routing engine (I covered some of these features here ). This upcoming ASP.NET MVC preview release contains even more URL routing features and enhancements. You can now use named routes (enabling explicit referencing of route rules), use flexible routing wildcard rules (enabling custom CMS based urls), and derive and declare custom route rules (enabling scenarios like REST resources mappings, etc). We have also factored out the URL routing infrastructure from the rest of the MVC framework with this preview, which enables us to use it for other non-MVC features in ASP.NET (including ASP.NET Dynamic Data and ASP.NET Web Forms). 3) Improved VS 2008 Tool Support The first ASP.NET MVC preview had only minimal VS 2008 support (basically just simple project template support). This upcoming ASP.NET MVC preview release will ship with improved VS 2008 integration. This includes better project item templates, automatic project default settings, etc. We are also adding a built-in "Test Framework" wizard that will automatically run when you create a new ASP.NET MVC Project via the File->New Pr | Go |
| VS 2008 Web Development Hot-Fix Roll-Up Available ... One of the things we are trying to do with VS 2008 is to more frequently release public patches that roll-up bug-fixes of commonly reported problems. Today we are shipping a hot-fix roll-up that addresses several issues that we've seen reported with VS 2008 and Visual Web Developer Express 2008 web scenarios. Hot Fix Details You can download this hot-fix roll-up for free here (it is a 2.6MB download). Below is a list of the issues it fixes: HTML Source view performance Source editor freezes for a few seconds when typing in a page with a custom control that has more than two levels of sub-properties. “View Code” right-click context menu command takes a long time to appear with web application projects. Visual Studio has very slow behavior when opening large HTML documents. Visual Studio has responsiveness issues when working with big HTML files with certain markup. The Tab/Shift-Tab (Indent/Un-indent) operation is slow with large HTML selections. Design view performance Slow typing in design view with certain page markup configurations. HTML editing Quotes are not inserted after Class or CssClass attribute even when the option is enabled. Visual Studio crashes when ServiceReference element points back to the current web page. JavaScript editing When opening a JavaScript file, colorization of the client script is sometimes delayed several seconds. JavaScript IntelliSense does not work if an empty string property is encountered before the current line of editing. JavaScript IntelliSense does not work when jQuery is used. Web Site build performance Build is very slow when Bin folder contains large number of assemblies and .refresh files with web-site projects. Installation Notes For more information on how to download and install the above patch, please read this blog post here . In particular, if you are using Windows Vista with UAC enabled, make sure to extract the patch to a directory other than "c:\" (otherwise you'll see an access denied error). To verify that this hot-fix patch successfully installed, launch VS 2008 and select the Help->About menu item. Make sure that there is an entry that says ‘Hotfix for Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite – ENU (KB946581)’. If you ever want to remove the patch, go to Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs and select “Hotfix for Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 – KB946581” under Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 (or Visual Web Developer Express 2008) and click “Remove". Summary Obviously it goes without saying that we would have liked to have shipped without any bugs. Hopefully this hot-fix enables you to quickly solve them if you are encountering them. Thank you to those who helped us identify the causes of these issues, as well as to the group of customers who have helped us verify the above fixes the last few weeks. Note: If you do encounter issues with VS 2008 features for web development in the future, I recommend always asking for help in the VS 2008 Forum on www.asp.net . The VS Web Tools team actively monitors this forum and can provide help. Hope this helps, Scott | Go |
| Feb 6th Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET AJAX, Visual Studio, .NET, WPF ... Here is the latest in my link-listing series . Also check out my ASP.NET Tips, Tricks and Tutorials page for links to popular articles I've done myself in the past. ASP.NET ASP.NET Security Tutorial Series : Scott Mitchell (who wrote the excellent Data Access Tutorial Series for us last year), has recently begun a new free tutorial series focused on ASP.NET Security. Today we published the first three article in the series on the www.asp.net site: ASP.NET Security Basics , Overview of Forms Authentication , and Forms Authentication Configuration and Advanced Topics . For even more ASP.NET Security Information, please check out the security tutorials I've also done on my ASP.NET Tips, Tricks and Tutorials page . 10 ASP.NET Performance and Scalability Secrets : Omar Al Zabir, the CTO and co-founder of www.pageflakes.com (a Web 2.0 portal site built with ASP.NET), has written another in his excellent series of articles on ASP.NET and ASP.NET AJAX. This article discusses tips and tricks to maximize ASP.NET performance and scalability. To learn even more about how to build great sites using ASP.NET and ASP.NET AJAX, make sure to read Omar's excellent new Building a Web 2.0 Portal with ASP.NET 3.5 book. .NET Debugging Demos Lab : Tess Ferrandez, who is an ASP.NET escalation engineer for Microsoft support and who also posts incredible articles on the art of debugging production ASP.NET applications, has started a new tutorial series that provides a sample "buggy" application and a series of questions/problems you can work through to learn how to debug problem applications in production environments. 4 Alternative View Engines for ASP.NET MVC : The open source MvcContrib project has been adding lots of cool goodness on top of the ASP.NET MVC Framework. Jeffrey Palermo posts about 4 alternative view rendering engines now in the project that you can use if you don't want to use the default .aspx based view engine. BTW - I'll be doing a new post on ASP.NET MVC within the next week talking about some of the cool new features coming soon with the next refresh. ASP.NET AJAX Boost ASP.NET Performance with Deferred Content Loading : Dave Ward continues his great articles on ASP.NET AJAX. This article talks about how you can improve the perceived load-time of a page by using an AJAX callback to retrieve HTML content once the page loads on the client. This approach is similar to the one I wrote about in my tip/trick post here . Build Yahoo UI Style Glowing Buttons with the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit GlowButtonExtender Control: Matt Berseth continues his excellent series on using ASP.NET AJAX. In this post he discusses how to create cool glowing button effects. Visual Studio Resolving Namespaces and Removing Unused Using Statements : David Hayden has a nice article that discusses a few Visual Studio code editing features that developers often overlook. Visual Studio 2008 Product Comparison : Several people have sent me email in the past asking for a page that describes the differences between the various Visual Studio 2008 editions (Standard, Professional, Visual Studio Team System, etc). This link is useful to bookmark if you want to learn more about this. Did you know...You can Shift+ESC to close a tool window: Sara Ford continues her excellent "Did you know..." VS 2008 tips and tricks series. I confess I didn't know this one. One productivity tip I always recommend is to really learn the keyboard shortcuts of your development tool environment well - since using them over time can yield significant productivity savings. Click here to download a VB 2008 key bindings poster, or click here to download the C# 2008 key bindings poster equivalent. Print them out and put them under your pillow to absorb them while you sleep. .NET The Power of Yield : Joshua Flanagan has a nice article on one of the coolest, yet underused, feature of C# in .NET 2.0 | Go |
| MIX08 ... MIX is a Microsoft web development conference we hold in Las Vegas each year. MIX tends to be a pretty fun event, both because it covers cutting edge content (we used MIX07 to announce our Silverlight plans), and also because it tends to attract a really diverse set of attendees (including both those who use Microsoft technology today, and a large % of attendees who don't). The conference structure includes a healthy blend of sessions and interactive panels, and the layout and organization is designed to facilitate great conversations. This year's MIX is being held March 5th-7th in Las Vegas. Ray Ozzie and I are both giving keynotes the first day of the event, and Steve Ballmer and Guy Kawasaki will be doing a keynote the second day of the event. The conference (and especially my keynote) is going to cover a lot of new web technology. Attendees will be able to attend sessions covering: IE 8 IIS 7.0 ASP.NET (including ASP.NET 3.5, ASP.NET AJAX, ASP.NET MVC, and ASP.NET Dynamic Data) VS 2008 and Expression Studio WPF Silverlight 2 And much more.... Channel 9 recently did an interview with me where I talked about some of these new technologies. In Part 1 of the interview I talked about IIS7, and in Part 2 of the interview I talked about ASP.NET, WPF and Silverlight 2. Register Soon Or You'll Miss Your Chance MIX is held at a smaller venue then some of our larger events like TechEd and PDC. This gives the conference a more intimate feel (which is fun). It also means that it sells out each year, and once it is sold out it is really sold out. Last year I received about 50 emails from people begging for tickets after it was full, and many people even flew to the event hoping to somehow be let in at the door (only to be unfortunately told they couldn't get in). Unfortunately because of size constraints (and fire marshal restrictions) once it is sold out there really are no more tickets to be had. Even my own team members get turned away if they haven't registered in time. This year's registration is filling up faster than any of the previous MIX conferences. If you want to attend I highly recommend registering really soon to ensure you can go. You can learn more about the event and register online here . Hope to see some of you there - it is going to be fun.... Scott | Go |
| VS 2008 Web Deployment Project Support Released ... This past Friday we released the final RTW (release to web) support for VS 2008 Web Deployment projects. You can learn more about it and download it for free here . Web Deployment projects can be used with either the "ASP.NET Web Site" or "ASP.NET Web Application Project" options built-into VS 2008, and provide a few additional build, packaging and deployment options for you to use. You can read an old tutorial post of mine here to learn more about they work. The VS 2008 Web Deployment Project version supports all of the existing features provided by the VS 2005 web deployment download. It also adds additional support for: Easily migrating VS 2005 Web Deployment Projects to VS 2008 Web Deployment Projects Replacing output only if web deployment builds succeed IIS7 Support This RTW (release to web) version fixes bugs and adds some small features that people requested in the December CTP version we released last month. Please make sure to run setup and uninstall any older version of the VS 2008 Web Deployment Project support you have installed before installing this final version. VS 2008 Web Deployment Projects can be installed side-by-side with VS 2005 Web Deployment Projects - so there is no need to uninstall the VS 2005 version if you are still using it with older projects. More Deployment Features In my last link-listing post I pointed at the new Web Deployment Tool being released by the IIS team. This tool works with both IIS6 and IIS7 and enables automated copy deployment, file synchronization, and migrating of applications onto web servers. If you are looking for a great way to automate the deployment of your ASP.NET applications onto remote servers then this tool is definitely one to check out. You can use VS 2008 Web Deployment Projects as a post-build step within your build environment to fix up last minute deployment settings - and then use the IIS Web Deployment tool to copy them remotely onto server machines. Alternatively you can also use the IIS Web Deployment Tool to copy vanilla "ASP.NET Web Site" or "ASP.NET Web Application" projects to remote machines (no VS 2008 Web Deployment Project required). To learn more about the new IIS Web Deployment tool, read the walkthroughs at the bottom of this page (in particular the "Introduction to MS Deploy" one). I will also be doing a blog post in the future that talks more about how to use it to automate your web server deployments. Hope this helps, Scott | Go |
| ASP.net.com Community Links |
| Supporting Complex Types in Property Window ... Whenever you set any property of a control in the property window, the property window needs to save this property value in the .aspx file. This process is known as code serialization. For properties that are of simple types (such as integer and string) this code serialization happens automatically. However, when property data types are user defined complex types then you need to do that work yourself. This is done via what is called as Type Converters. This article is going to examine what type converters are and how to create one for your custom control. | Go |
| Adding Multiple Rows in the GridView Control ... A while back an article was published on www.gridviewguy.com which explained how to add a single row at the bottom of the GridView control. You can read the article using this link. Many readers were interested in the idea of adding multiple rows to the GridView. This article explains how to add multiple rows to the GridView control. | Go |
| Building a Volta Control : A Flickr Widget ... This article illustrates how to create a Volta control around Flickr, the popular image hosting service. | Go |
| Extending the GridView to Include Sort Arrows ... While the GridView supports built-in, bi-directional sorting, it does not provide any visual feedback as to what column the grid is sorted by. This article looks at how to add an up or down arrow image to the header of the column the GridView is sorted by. | Go |
| How to open popup windows in IE/Firefox and return values using ASP.NET and Javascript ... With the forums flooded with questions of opening a popup window, passing values to the popup window and then return values back to the parent page using both Internet Explorer and Firefox, I decided to take a plunge into the subject and experiment with an easy implementation. This article explains how to transfer values between the Parent page and a Pop-up window. The code has been tested against IE7 and Firefox. | Go |
| Creating Client And Server-Side Form Validation Using The Validator Toolkit For ASP.NET MVC ... This article describes how to validate a HTML form on client and server-side in conjunction with the jQuery JavaScript library. | Go |
| Extending Base Type Functionality with Extension Methods ... Extension methods allow a developer to tack on her own methods to an existing class in the .NET Framework. For example, imagine that our developer created a method named StripHtml, that strips HTML elements from a string using a regular expression. By associating this method with the System.String class, it could be called as if it was one of the System.String class's built-in methods | Go |
| Kigg - Building a Digg Clone with ASP.NET MVC Part - 1 ... Learn how to develop a Digg like application with ASP.NET MVC, LINQ to SQL and ASP.NET AJAX. | Go |
| iCallback & JSON Based JavaScript Serialization ... In this article, Muhammad examines how to accomplish JavaScript Serialization using ICallback and JSON. | Go |
| Export Crystal Reports to PDF file ... Explains how you can export crystal reports to PDF, Excel, Word and HTML formats with ASP.NET application. | Go |
| CodeProject.com ASP Links |
| Javascript to show Session timeout counter ... To display the remaining minutes as a counter for a Session to timeout on the webpage | Go |
| Extending DataPager: Creating a google analytics data pager ... The GooglePagerField webcontrol extends the DataPager webcontrol to create a google analytics pager looks like. | Go |
| A templated PleaseWait Button, introduction to template Control ... The purpose of this article is to present the construction of a templated control, working as a PleaseWait button | Go |
| SimpleZip ... Generate Zip archives without third-party support | Go |
| ASP.NET Internals: Request Architecture ... Explains in depth the ASP.NET request architecture | Go |
| ASP.NET Internals: Viewstate and Page Life Cycle ... Discusses asp.net viewstate and page life cycle in depth | Go |
| How To Make Anthem Ajax Work With Url ReWriting ... How To Make Anthem Ajax Work With Url ReWriting | Go |
| Schemaless C#-XML data binding with VTD-XML ... Agile, efficient XML data binding without schema | Go |
| Schedule your web tasks with WebTaskScheduler ... This tool provides easy web task scheduling, designed for ASP.NET and using Caching technique. | Go |
| ASP.NET MVC - Part 1 ... A look at the ASP.NET MVC Application in ASP.NET Extensions 3.5 | Go |
| Change Textbox/Input background color on focus ... Change the background color of asp.net textbox and listbox when selected. | Go |
| Rss Reader Web Control ... A simple to use, scrolling news reader web control | Go |
| Implementing ASP.NET XML providers - Part 1 (Persistance) ... In this series I'll go through the steps of my implementation of ASP.NET XmlProviders. | Go |
| How to Inspect a JavaScript Object ... List Javascript Object Properties, ordered by levels. | Go |
| DotNetSlackers.com Links |
| Porting Tutorials: ASP.NET and Windows.Forms ... These tutorials are quite popular to help developers that have a Windows.Forms or ASP.NET application port it to Unix. They walk you through the process of bringing your software to Linux, MacOS X or Solaris: Porting ASP.NET Applications Porting Windows.Forms Applications It is also useful to look at the general porting guidelines.... 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 |
| Compliments for ASP.NET 3.5 For Dummies ... I'm still trying to get www.asp.net to include ASP.NET 3.5 For Dummies in their Starter Books section. Not sure what's going on there. They list other Dummies books, so it can't be an anti-Dummies thing. In the meantime, here are a couple of kind reader...(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 |
| Fixing an ASP.NET 2.0 App after upgrading to 3.5 ... When you first open an ASP.NET 2.0 website in Visual Web Developer / Visual Studio 2008, VS asks you if you want to upgrade the project to 3.5. As some of you who are using Microsoft AJAX and who say YES to upgrade to 3.5 have noticed, when you go to run your newly upgraded application (which worked fine before the upgrade), you get build errors !!! The build error complains that it can't load System.Web.Extensions Version 1.0.61025.0 That's the OLD version of Web.Extensions (AJAX) ... 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 |
| State of the ASP.NET community ... Dan wrote a great piece on the state of the ASP.NET community and there is quite an interesting discussion happening now.... Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here . | Go |
| AutoFormats: Consistent and Preview ... Our ASP.NET controls now support a common set of visual styles across the entire library. You can now select from the 10 most popular styles. Click the link for a preview image of each style:
Default
Office Blue
Plastic Blue
Glass
Youthful
Office Silver
Office Olive
Red Wine
Black Glass
Soft Orange
Or you can preview these AutoFormats online using the demos. You'll now see a "Select Appearance" option at the... 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 |
| Schedule your web tasks with WebTaskScheduler ... This tool provides easy web task scheduling, designed for ASP.NET and using Caching technique.... 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 do you measure a technical blog? ... How to measure a successful blog? For the past 4 months my blog reader count haven’t increase or decrease, the traffic to my blog is without any doubt not going anywhere. I was thinking what could be the problem? Am I blogging to much about the iPhone? Opening the other blog at the asp.net site hurt me in anyway? Should I promote my blog? Should I go around asking other people to link by blog? Without any doubt that’s how you increase your blog view count for a short period of time,... 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 - Part 1 ... A look at the ASP.NET MVC Application in ASP.NET Extensions 3.5... 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 |
| Change Textbox/Input background color on focus ... Change the background color of asp.net textbox and listbox when selected.... 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 |
| Excel Reports in ASP.NET 2.0 ... In this article you will learn how to read data from Excel, generate report using the Response objects and to play with the Microsoft Excel 11.0 objects involved. Indeed, it is impossible to cover all features in this tutorial but many important techniques were covered to help you down the line. It is up to you to be creative and adapt the techniques to your scenarios. read more By Tushar Dabhi 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 |
| Implementing ASP.NET XML providers - Part 1 (Persistance) ... In this series I'll go through the steps of my implementation of ASP.NET XmlProviders.... 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 |
| So much easier to test plain ASP.NET MVC controllers!! ... I was having a hard time easily testing controller classes with the MVC Framework December CTP. Now it's easier. Consider the following controller: using System.Web.Mvc; namespace MvcApplication.Controllers{ public class HelloWorld1Controller : IController { public void Execute(ControllerContext controllerContext) { controllerContext.HttpContext.Response.Write( "<h1>Hello World1</h1>"); } }}
And... Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here . | Go |
| New online resources for the past three weeks (02/25/2008 - 03/16/2008) ... Below is a summary of the new online resources available for our ASP.NET controls/WinForm controls:
ASP.NET
RadEditor
Knowledge base articles
Error: Web.config registration missing! The Telerik dialogs require a HttpHandler registration in the web.config file:
http://www.telerik.com/support/kb/article/b454K-hek-b454T-ctb-b454c-ctb.aspx
RadEditor Content Not Saved After Ajax Update in Firefox:
http://www.telerik.com/support/kb/article/b454K-hee-b454T-ctb-b454c-ctb.aspx
Applying external stylesheet to the content of RadEditor in Preview mode
http://www.telerik.com/support/kb/article/b454K-hed-b454T-ctb-b454c-ctb.aspx
RadSpell
Knowledge base articles
RadSpell "Prometheus" for DNN - FormatException: Invalid length for a Base-64 char array:
http://www.telerik.com/support/kb/article/b454K-hdh-b454T-a-b454c-cbetemdget.aspx
RadTreeView
Knowledge base articles
Checking online single treeview node at a time:
http://www.telerik.com/support/kb/article/b454K-hdm-b454T-bgk-b454c-bgk.aspx
RadComboBox
Code library entries
RadComboBox AJAX - Allow only certain items to postback:
http://www.telerik.com/community/code-library/submission/b311D-bctaaa.aspx
RadControls
Knowledge base articles
Using RadConfirm to confirm item change in RadComboBox:
http://www.telerik.com/support/kb/article/b454K-heb-b454T-cec-b454c-cec.aspx
Code library entries
ContextMenu over a specified column in RadGrid:
http://www.telerik.com/community/code-library/submission/b311D-bckbch.aspx
WINFORMS
Knowledge base articles
Scroll view with predefined horizontal and vertical scrolling steps:
http://www.telerik.com/support/kb/article/b454K-tth-b454T-ckd-b454c-ckd.aspx
Inherit themes from RadControls:
http://www.telerik.com/support/kb/article/b454K-mhd-b454T-ckd-b454c-ckd.aspx
Optimizing RadComboBox and RadListBox performance:
http://www.telerik.com/support/kb/article/b454K-hcd-b454T-ckk-b454c-ckk.aspx
Using UI Virtualization in RadComboBox and RadListBox:
http://www.telerik.com/support/kb/article/b454K-hcc-b454T-ckk-b454c-ckk.aspx
Creating numeric textbox:
http://www.telerik.com/support/kb/article/b454K-hce-b454T-ckt-b454c-ckt.aspx
Videos
Using Project Update Utility:
http://www.telerik.com/support/videos/preview/b221i-bbd-b221c-kcd.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 |
| Task scheduler for websites ... Create scheduled tasks for your website (no 3rd party or heavy coding involved)... 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 |
| Tip: RowFilter with IN operator over a column of type Guid ... Case Apply a RowFilter on a DataView which filters a column of type System.Guid and can contain a variable number of values. Example: DataView dv = new DataView ();dv.RowFilter = "TypeId in ('<guid>', '<guid>', ...)";
where TypeId column is of System.Guid type. As the number of values is variable then it make perfect sense to use the in operator.
The problem
When you are looking at this expression then you may think this should be working as expected, i.e. the result should only contain the data where TypeId is in the specified values. In fact, if you run it you will get the following exception:
Cannot perform '=' operation on System.Guid and System.String.
The Solution
To convert the String to Guid you should use the Convert(expression, type ) method like this:
dv.RowFilter = "TypeId in (Convert('<guid>', 'System.Guid'), Convert('<guid>', 'System.Guid'), ...)" ; | Go |
| New Log Reporting, Database Management, and other cool admin modules for IIS 7 ... One of the core priorities we focused on when building IIS 7 was to enable a rich .NET extensibility model that provides developers with the hooks to easily plug-in and extend the web server. These extensibility hooks are provided in the web-server pipeline (enabling scenarios like the new IIS7 Bit Rate Throttler ), within the configuration system (enabling developers to create new web.config schema settings), within the health monitoring system (enabling developers to add custom trace events), and within the admin tool (enabling developers to plug-in new admin UI modules). We added these extensibility hooks so that anyone can easily extend and enhance the web server using .NET. We also selfishly wanted them so that we can ship regular feature packs that add additional features to the core web server. IIS 7 Admin Pack Preview 1 Released Last week the IIS team shipped the first technical preview of some really cool administration modules that I think web developers will find super useful. This preview adds several new features to the IIS7 Admin Tool: Database Manager : Built-in SQL Server database management, including the ability to create, delete, and edit tables and indexes, create/edit SPROCs and execute custom queries. Because it is integrated in the IIS administration tool it all works over HTTP/SSL - which means you can use the module to remotely manage your hosted applications (even with low-cost shared hosting accounts), without having to expose your database directly on the Internet. Log Reports : Built-in report visualization with charting support for log files data. Full range selection and custom chart creation is supported, as well as the ability to print or save reports. Like the database manager you can use this module remotely over HTTP/SSL - which means it works in remote shared hosting scenarios. Configuration Editor: This is a power module that provides complete control over editing all web.config settings within the admin tool. You can configure it to track the changes you make using the UI and have it auto-generate configuration change scripts that you can then save and tweak to re-run later in an automated way. Request Filtering UI: This admin module provides more control over the new request filtering feature in IIS7. Check out Carlos' blog post here for details on how to use it. .NET Authorization: This admin module provides a custom authorization rules editor which allows you to more easily manage the ASP.NET <authorization> configuration section. FastCGI UI: This admin module provides more support for editing all the new <fastCGI> settings (for when you use FastCGI modules with IIS7 like PHP). Below are some screen-shots and simple walkthroughs of the Log Reporting and Database Manager administration UI modules: Log Reporting Admin Module Have you ever deployed a web application onto a server and wondered how much load it is getting?, what the average response time from the server is?, or whether many server errors are occurring (and if so on what URLs)? All of these settings are carefully logged by IIS in a text based log file. Today most people use command-line tools like the IIS Log Parser utility to query and analyze these files. The IIS 7 Admin Pack and the new "IIS Reports" admin module now enable you to also query and chart your reports graphically within the IIS admin tool: Out of the box the "IIS Reports" admin module comes with a bunch of pre-built logparser-based reports that you can easily run on your sites and applications: Below is a simple graphical report we could pull up that looks at the HTTP status codes being returned by my "TestSite" application (note how we are using the "bar graph" visualization option): Reports can optionally be filtered using a date range. You can also push the print or save buttons within the report page to generate a printer or a local saved version of the report. The IIS7 Admin To | Go |
| Timeline .NET ... My latest project over on CodePlex.com is Timeline .NET. The Project Description…
Timeline .NET is the most complete ASP.NET WebControl which wraps the MIT Simile Timeline API .
Control such things as the data feed which can come directly from an RSS feed or add Timeline Events directly with a fully managed API. You can also control the Height and Width of the Timeline itself; the Bubble Height and Width; full control over type different bands in use (HotZone, Original, Standard) and adding any number of Zones to each band, etc...
View the samples online here.
I wanted to put together a quick article on the usage of the control and some of its options. Usage
First off we will download the current release off of the Codeplex website, found at: http://www.codeplex.com/timelinenet/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx Right now I have made available a direct download to the DLL alone, named “TimelineNet.dll”.
Next create a new Web Application using Visual Studio. By the way, I’m using Visual Studio 2008 (and ASP.NET 2.0), so the dialogs might be slightly different if you are using 2005.
In this Web Application you will need to set a reference to the TimelineNet.dll which you previously downloaded. Right click the project in the solution explorer, and choose “Add Reference”. Browse until you find the DLL and then hit OK.
The next step that you might want to do is add it to the Toolbox in VS.NET. To do this right click the Toolbox and first add a new tab called “Timeline”. In that tab right click and choose “Choose Items”. Again browse for the TimelineNet.dll. You should now see the Timeline control in the Toolbox.
Drag the Timeline control onto the page and lets add in a few basic properties: < cc1 : Timeline DataSourceType ="rss" DataUrl ="http://weblogs.asp.net/rchartier/rss.aspx" Height ="300" Width ="100%" ID ="Timeline1" runat ="server" />
Notice that we are instructing the control to grab the RSS feed from my weblog. This will instruct the Ajax Handler (which we will get to in 2 seconds) to yank the RSS feed content and use it as the datasource for the events which will be rendered in the Timeline.
Now in order to actually load data into the timeline, the DLL contains a http module which we need to register in the web.config file. In your web.config file, find the < system.web > section and add: < httpHandlers > < add verb = "* " path = "*.ashx " type = "TimelineNet.TimelineAjaxHandler, TimelineNet " />
</ httpHandlers >
Once you have completed that, all you need now is to hit F5 and give the control a test. (If you get a dialog about modifying the web.config to enable debugging, just hit ok).
You should see something similar to:
A very basic timeline rendering events from the RSS feed you supplied.
Additional Usage
Once you managed to get the basic timeline rendering you will want to start to tweak the control. Here is the current complete list of properties available:
Property
Description
JSName
The name of the variable in javascript to represent our timeline. This should be set to a unique value per instance
LabelWidth
The width of the label
BubbleWidth
The typical width of the bubble
BubbleHeight
The typical height of the bubble
ParentElementID
The client side element to render the timeline into
LocalTimelineJSFolder
If you set the ScriptSourceLocation variable to local, you can set the root path to the timeline folder. Typically this will be the relative path from the root of the current applicaiton which contains the timeline-api.js file
ScriptSourceLocation
Allows you to choose remote vs local script source/ Remote location defaults to: http://simile.mit.edu/timeline/api/timeline-api.js
TimelineData
The root of our data source to add events to. This is your starting point for adding data.
Theme
The theme which will be used to render the timeline. Default is the ClassicTheme
EnableSearc | Go |
| Pointers to good concurrent programming information ... A coworker asked me if I knew of any good books on .Net multithreaded programming. The only one I knew of was .NET Multithreading which is weak in some areas and getting a little bit long in the tooth. One of the best sources of info is Joe Duffy's blog . Start with Concurrency and the impact on reusable libraries , keep an eye out for his book, Concurrent Programming on Windows , and consider a Safari rough cuts subscription . | Go |
| Powershell CmdLet for LiveContacts Get-WindowsLiveContact ... The Windows Live ID Client SDK documentation shows you quite well how to sign in silently or with the built-in dialog - yet there is a small problem if you want to use this within a Powershell cmdlet, because the threading model has to be set to Single Threaded Apartment State (STA). The Powershell Team Blog has a good entry on how to change the threading model. To use the Windows Live Client SDK library within a powershell cmdlet you have to start another thread and set the apartmentstate to STA, here's how to do it: ExecutionResult class: internal class ExecutionResult
{
private object output;
private Exception error;
public Object Output
{
get { return output; }
set { output = value ; }
}
public Exception Error
{
get { return error; }
set { error = value ; }
}
}
PerformWindowsLiveClientLogin:
private void PerformWindowsLiveClientLogin(object outputToWriteTo)
{
ExecutionResult result = (ExecutionResult)outputToWriteTo;
WindowsLiveClientLogin(result);
if (null != waitHandle)
{
waitHandle.Set();
}
}
WindowsLiveClientLogin:
private void WindowsLiveClientLogin(ExecutionResult result)
{
try
{
oIDMgr =
IdentityManager.CreateInstance(
"Peter Schneider;ps@ugwa.net;Windows Live Powershell CmdLets" ,
"Windows Live Powershell CmdLets" );
}
catch (WLLogOnException wlex) { result.Error = wlex; }
try
{
oID = oIDMgr.CreateIdentity(defaultUserName);
}
catch (WLLogOnException wlex) { result.Error = wlex; }
if (oID != null )
{
if (oID.SavedCredentials == CredentialType.UserNameAndPassword)
{
try
{
if (oID.Authenticate(AuthenticationType.Silent))
{
// User authenticated successfully
}
else
{
// Show Windows Live Client Login Dialog
oID.Authenticate();
}
}
catch (WLLogOnException wlex) { result.Error = wlex; }
}
else
{
// Insufficient credentials saved for user,
// show Windows Live Client Login Dialog
oID.Authenticate();
}
}
try
{
ticket = oID.GetTicket("https://cumulus.services.live.com/"
+ oID.UserName, "MBI" , true );
}
catch (WLLogOnException wlex) { result.Error = wlex; }
}
BeginProcessing:
protected override void BeginProcessing()
{
ExecutionResult result = new ExecutionResult();
Thread executionThread =
new Thread(new ParameterizedThreadStart(PerformWindowsLiveClientLogin));
executionThread.SetApartmentState(ApartmentState.STA);
waitHandle = new ManualResetEvent(false );
executionThread.Start(result);
waitHandle.WaitOne();
string uri = @"https://cumulus.services.live.com/" +oID.UserName+"/LiveContacts/Contacts" ;
HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(uri);
request.Headers.Add("Authorization" , "WLID1.0 t=\"" + ticket +"\"" );
request.AllowAutoRedirect = false ;
request.UserAgent = "WindowsLive.Contacts Powershell CmdLets" ;
request.ContentType = "text/xml" ;
request.Pipelined = false ;
request.ProtocolVersion = HttpVersion.Version10;
request.Method = "GET" ;
HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
XmlDocument contacts = new XmlDocument();
contacts.LoadXml(new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream()).ReadToEnd());
WriteObject(contacts);
}
You can download the whole source for the CmdLet here:
Install the Windows Live Client SDK , compile the cmdlet and afterwards use:
installutil /i WindowsLive.Contacts
add-pssnapin WindowsLive.Contacts
to use the cmdlet in powershell. If installing on Vista, please remember to run powershell as Administrator.
Here are some sample scripts to get started:
Enumerate all WindowsLive Contacts using Windows Live Client SDK Login Dialog:
$result = get-windowslivecontact
$result.Contacts.Contact | select WindowsLiveId
Enumerate all WindowsLive Contacts using Silent Login:
| Go |
| Compliments for ASP.NET 3.5 For Dummies ... I'm still trying to get www.asp.net to include ASP.NET 3.5 For Dummies in their Starter Books section. Not sure what's going on there. They list other Dummies books, so it can't be an anti-Dummies thing. In the meantime, here are a couple of kind reader comments that made my day! "I just read your book cover to cover. It was one of the best written books I have ever read. The amount of work you put into it must have been massive. I loved it!" --MW "The book is very well written &...(read more ) | Go |
| Fixing an ASP.NET 2.0 App after upgrading to 3.5 ... When you first open an ASP.NET 2.0 website in Visual Web Developer / Visual Studio 2008, VS asks you if you want to upgrade the project to 3.5. As some of you who are using Microsoft AJAX and who say YES to upgrade to 3.5 have noticed, when you go to run your newly upgraded application (which worked fine before the upgrade), you get build errors !!! The build error complains that it can't load System.Web.Extensions Version 1.0.61025.0 That's the OLD version of Web.Extensions (AJAX) that works with ASP.NET 2.0. You'll note a number of references in your web.config file to this old version. Since before the 2008 release wave, MS AJAX was loaded via separate assemblies and since it is now "baked in" to ASP.NET, it's hard for the upgrade tool to know that you don't need the referenced version. So..... In your web.config change all the 1.0.61025.0 version references to 3.5.0.0 (unless you are using some CTP or Futures Version) If you are using the AJAX Control Toolkit there is still a bit of work to do. You will now get this error on your Toolkit Control instances. Download the version of the AJAX Control Toolkit that is built for ASP.NET 3.5 Note: There are separate versions for ASP.NET 2.0 projects and ASP.NET 3.5 projects. If your are running Windows Vista, Right-Click the .zip file, select properties, and "Unblock" the file. Then unzip the files to the location of your choice. Make sure the Visual Studio Toolbox Tab that you create for the controls is with the 3.5 version. Now you need to upgrade your project to use the new tool kit. The easiest way to do this is to let Visual Studio do it for you. SWITCH TO SOURCE VIEW and drag and drop any Ajax Control Toolkit control into your page. When you get this dialog SELECT APPLY TO ALL ITEMS and click yes. Then delete the control you just added. Visual Studio will have updated your controls reference and you should now be good to go ! | Go |
| LINQ to SQL - TOP 5 + 1 of problems ... Anko Duizer is spot on with his post on the top 5 problems with LINQ to SQL . I’d like to take this opportunity to express my biggest concern with LINQ to SQL.
#6 LINQ to SQL is intended for direct 1-1 mapping of a Microsoft SQL server database to .NET classes. LINQ to SQL is not a natural fit in typical enterprise scenarios. | Go |
| ASP.NET and SOS ... I would like to hear from you! I want to know what your thoughts are around the SOS.dll and using it to troubleshoot problems. Are there functions in the sos.dll that ships with the debugger, that only works with .NET 1.x, that you are missing for Read More......(read more ) | Go |
| My AJAX World Downloads - AJAX Security & AJAX Patterns Code and PowerPoints ... AJAX World was a great confirmation for me. AJAX, RIA, or whatever term you use to describe this "new" way of building web applications is here to stay. Relative to Microsoft, here are a few of my big take-a-ways. Security matters even MORE than it has to date. Web Development frameworks like ASP.NET that facilitate secure development are crucial. Interest in Microsoft Silverlight is reaching a feverish level ! Alpha Geeks (even the ones who aren't exactly MS fans) are digging the new stuff in IE 8, especially the developer features. Thanks to everyone who attended my sessions. Having spent so much of the last 10 years focused on web security it's great to see the interest and awareness continue to grow. Below are links to both my PowerPoint decks and all my code, including all the security code I showed you. I don't think I've ever released the security stuff before. WARNING: This code is NOT finished code. I don't even suggest it's "good" code. It's stuff I assembled for illustrative purposes. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK and don't include it in your production applications. All standard disclaimers apply ! :) ASP.NET AJAX Security [Demo Code ] [PowerPoint Deck ] ASP.NET AJAX Patterns [Demo Code ] [PowerPoint Deck ] | Go |
