Earlier this week I blogged about IIS Express , and discussed some of the work we are doing to make ASP.NET development easier from a Web Server perspective. In today’s blog post I’m going to continue the simplicity theme, and discuss some of the work we are also doing to enable developers to quickly get going with database development.  In particular, I’m pleased to announce that we’ve just completed the engineering work that enables Microsoft’s free SQL Server Compact Edition (SQL CE) database to work within ASP.NET applications.  This enables a light-weight, easy to use, database option that now works great for ASP.NET web development. Introducing SQL Server Compact Edition 4 SQL CE is a free, embedded, database engine that enables...

When I posted my RIA Services and Authentication post earlier in the week (which I highly recommend checking out first if you haven't), the first comments/tweets I saw indicated people also want to see roles working in the application. So I decided to add this bit of functionality, both in the Book Club application and the supporting functionality in the RIAEssentials framework, so you can use it easily in your own applications as well. From a scenario perspective, what I am going to do is require an Admin role to browse and add book club members. Adding and Using Roles The first step is to update the AuthenticationService implementation I showed earlier to add roles into the authentication process. It only requires quite literally a couple...

I’ve turned comments back on (please feel free to comment.) Thanks to @Meligy for the reminder. I had to turn them off after several days an automated comment span attack. :( Read More...

I’m working on a couple of demo application in ASP.NET Web Forms and I noticed that, like in many themes I encounter, Button objects don’t match the theme and lack mouseover effects. So here is how you make your ASP.NET Button control instances match other “clickable” objects in the default ASP.NET Web Site template (like the menu tab). Open the Site.css file in the Styles folder of your solution and add the following 2 CSS classes. Code Snippet .button { color : White ; background-color : #465C71 ; border : 1px solid ; border-color : Gray ; } .buttonhover { color : White ; background-color : #BFCBD6 ; border : 1px solid ; border-color : Gray ; } Now when you add an ASP.NET Button Control to your page, set the CssClass...

Three months ago at MIX we announced and first demoed the Silverlight PivotViewer control. The Silverlight PivotViewer control enables you to visualize thousands of objects at once, and sort and browse data in a way that helps you see trends and quickly find what you’re looking for. It’s ability to compare information, and navigate it in a way that feels natural and fast, is really unrivaled in the market today.  PivotViewer is one of those technologies that’s way better experienced than described.  Below are a few cool examples of large information sets published on the web using it with Silverlight 4: Netflix Instant Watch Movies This Netflix Instant Watch collection is hosted on Windows Azure and was built by a member of the Windows...

The larger group that I'm in, Server and Tools Online in the developer division, supports a large number of properties. One of our largest is MSDN. Scratch that. MSDN is enormous . It provides support for every single developer tool we offer. You'll find full documentation, samples, aggregated blog posts, articles, community content, forums, videos and more. I've never seen another learning resource that has the breadth of MSDN. Ok, maybe wikipedia has a few more pages; I haven't counted. Over the past months, we've been working on making MSDN even easier to navigate. Specifically, we're working on making the "get started" experience go more smoothly. We knew we could do better. You spoke. We listened. We appreciate...

The www.asp.net content team ahs pushed 5 more of my Tailspin Spyworks sample application videos live for your viewing pleasure. TailSpin SpyWorks - Adding Items to the Shopping Cart TailSpin SpyWorks - Display Shopping Cart TailSpin SpyWorks - Update the Shopping Cart TailSpin SpyWorks - Migrate the Shopping Cart TailSpin SpyWorks - Final Check Out   Work continues ……. Read More...

The first post in this series can be found here: http://weblogs.asp.net/bleroy/archive/2010/06/16/how-i-understood-monads-part-1-2-sleepless-and-self-loathing-in-seattle.aspx Last time , I tried to explain how beer and Lou helped me finally understand monads. I gave a couple of trivial examples. Hopefully now that you have this new functional hammer, everything will start looking like a nail. So let’s have a look at a few screws this time. Like last time, I’ll be pretty liberal with the definition of a monad as long as the spirit of monads seems to be preserved. Feel free to nitpick in the comments ;) Oh yeah, jQuery is a monad In jQuery, you first create a wrapped set of HTML elements and then execute operations on it, the result of which is...

Developers today build and test ASP.NET sites and applications using one of two web-servers: The ASP.NET Development Server that comes built-into Visual Studio The IIS Web Server that comes built-into Windows Both of the above options have their pros and cons, and many ASP.NET developers have told us: “I wish I could have the ease of use of the ASP.NET Development Server, but still have all the power and features of IIS”.  Today I’m happy to announce a new, free option that we are enabling – IIS Express - that combines the best characteristics of both, and which will make it easier to build and run ASP.NET sites and applications. IIS Express will work with VS 2010 and Visual Web Developer 2010 Express, will run on Windows XP and higher...

My son and I returned from a week long vacation to visit my parents in Anchorage Alaska last night. Apparently, having the boys out of the house was quite the vacation for my wife as well. :) We had a great time watching the World Cup and going on outings to the zoo as well as hiking. Well, at least one of us was hiking while another was just enjoying the ride. We hiked up a trail to Flattop which has spectacular views of Anchorage. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it all the way to the top as the trail became a bit too much while carrying a toddler who was more interested in watching Go, Diego, Go episodes on his iPod. Funny how all that “hiking” works up an appetite. Also, while in Alaska I gave a talk on ASP.NET MVC 2 to the local .NET User...