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Global themes not in ASP.NET Beta1

I noticed this last week but it came up again on a recent thread... the global Theme styles which had been in the ASP.NET V2 alpha's have disappeared in Beta 1. 

    http://www.asp.net/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?tabindex=1&PostID=648690

In the alpha's there had been 2 of them: BasicBlue and SmokeAndGlass. These were located in (WINDOWS)\Microsoft.Net\Framework\(VERSION)\ASP.NETClientFiles\Themes.  It was my understanding that the ASP team had intended to add more themes so I'm not sure as to why they are not in the Beta. 

Of course, if you still have the themes from the Alpha's you can simply add them to a Themes dir. in your applications and I presume that you could still manually add them to the global dir. and have them work too.

Lots of reading going on

My life is all about reading at the moment :-) Last week I received an ASP.NET V2 book and I'm also in the middle of reviewing a new book on Regular Expressions.

As if all that wasn't enough, I've ordered a couple of new books today:

How to use the ASP Page Framework

I had a couple of e-mail requests asking me how to use the Classic ASP Page Framework which I discussed in my last blog entry so I thought that I'd make a couple of notes in an attempt to try an clear things up a bit.  First, the code for the Framework can be found here:

    http://flws.com.au/AuthenticateModel.html

To use it you include the code in each page as a server-side include and configure the security.

To configure security you just create a comma-delimited string of pages which should be secured like so:

   Application( "MIU_PAGES_TO_SECURE" ) = "Foo.asp, Bar.asp, etc"

Whenever a user browses to one of those pages they are automagically taken to the login page (if they are not already authenticated). You set the login page via an Application variable too:

    Application( "MIU_LOGIN_PATH" ) = "Login.asp"

If a user successfully logs in they are automagically redirected back to the page that they came from:

    ElseIf Me.Page.IsAuthenticationPage And Not Me.User.IsAuthenticated() Then
        FormsAuthentication.RedirectUrl = Request.QueryString( "RedirectUrl" )
    End If

When a user logs out you can specify which page they should be re-directed to:

    Application( "MIU_DEFAULT_ENTRY_PATH" ) = "Default.asp"

The framework also has some for RoleBased authentication which you can query off of the current user at anytime like so:

    If User.IsInRole( "admin" ) Then
        ' do something based on the admin role
    End If

Classic ASP Page Framework

The other day I asked a question on a list about the perf. Implications of using VBScript classes in classic ASP applications.  After participating in that thread I was reminded that, a while back I actually wrote an object oriented, event-driven classic ASP Page model which mimics some of the services which are built into the ASP.NET pages - such as Authentication, Users/Identities and Page properties.  The page automagically serializes it's state (which could be abstracted by implementing a Provider model).  The model also contained an in-built AuthenticationProvider which handles re-directs when secured resources are requested.

The whole framework weighed in at less than 350 lines of code!  You can see the code for it here:

    http://flws.com.au/AuthenticateModel.html

For me one of the big things about abstracting things into object models is that, because people relate to objects well object - such as Person.MiddleName - they enable you to easily build robust frameworks by pushing essential services down a layer.  It's only through building reliable frameworks that you can achieve true manageability - especially when project sizes need to be be scalable.

Certification and a new RegexLib.com feature

Last week I finally sat the 310 exam (Services: Remoting, Windows Services, Web Services and Enterprise Services).  It's the first exam that I geniunely thought that I could fail.  Thankfully I passed it with relative ease due - I suspect - to some late night cramming.  I'm now an MCAD and I only have the “Defining Requirements” exam to go until I'm MCSD!

     Certifications Overview

On another note, I added a feature to RegexLib.com tonight which should allow me to provide better reporting on inefficient patterns; I blog'ged about it here:

      http://blogs.regexadvice.com/dneimke/archive/2004/07/27/1391.aspx

If you don't know why you would need such a feature, try answering the little challenge that I posted on Justin's blog:

      http://weblogs.asp.net/justin_rogers/archive/2004/05/22/139337.aspx#197006

:-)

Justin's PokerDemo is up

As Justin blogged earlier, the code for his PokerDemo is now online:

     http://www.games4dotnet.com/Downloads/PokerDemo1.zip

It's a C# Express solution and demonstrates how to build a cool little app using Whidbey. 

Essential Community Services Templates

Got some quality time with Whidbey on the weekend and came across some of the new enterprise template stuff - man these things have incredible designer integration.

I started by creating a "Traffic System Controller Service" and adding it to a new blank "Essential Community Services Template" project. I then dragged on a Community component and named it: "Los Angles" (Note: You have to manully set the CommunityToControlType to "LargeUrban"; this is a beta glitch and should be sorted out by the time the product goes into release candidate.)

I also had to set the startup permissions to "Administrator" so that I could get it to run in my debugger - I think that this is also a beta issue.

Finally, deploying the solution is a no-brainer. You will need to get a username/password to CitySiteServiceServer (CSSS) for the city or organisation that you are deploying to. These credentials are included in a license file stored in the new \Community folder and gets compiled into your assembly along with your strong named key at compile time.

To test my project I deployed to the Microsoft CSSS testing server and gave it some startup code:

protected void override OnStart() {
    base.OnStart() ;
    ICityService cityService = new LATrafficController() ;
    List<Traffic> t = Traffic.GetTraffic( Traffic.AllInboundAndOutbound, true ) ;
    this.Targets = t ;
}

If you are running the beta of Community Testbed 2.0 you will immediately see a panoramic view of the randomized traffic patterns being controlled by your controller project.

Manual Express Downloads are now live

This is great news!!! 

http://weblogs.asp.net/express/archive/2004/07/09/178691.aspx

Thanks for listening :-)

Generics Whitepaper for VB 2005

Just saw a reference to a new Msdn article on Generics in VB on Duncan MacKenzie's and Paul Vick's blog:

Snipped from Paul's blog...

We now also have a generics whitepaper on MSDN, written by the developer who's been implementing a lot of the generics support in VB! I know a lot of people still think that VB 2005 isn't going to support generics, but here's the real deal...

WebCasts : Building end-to-end applications with C# Express

I noticed that Dan Fernandez just blogged about an upcoming series of chats which revolve around creating applications using Visual C# Express 2005.  Get all the details here:

    http://weblogs.asp.net/danielfe/archive/2004/07/07/175814.aspx

These are "not to be missed" because they link in with a forthcoming Sams Publishing title on C# Express, and involve creating cool apps such as "Creating an Instant Messaging Application".