January 2005 - Posts
In case you are unemployed or searching for some side revenues, I think I have a new job for you: AdSenser.
The idea is that now that contextual ads are so common, I guess someone could make a living just by proposing his services to optimize keywords used by programs such as Google AdWords. In order to make the best from such programs, keywords used to match ads with contexts have to be constantly updated and optimized. I think one could sell his expertise and monitor the AdWords administration site for others. The AdSenser would get a cut of the revenues for the service if it is successful.
With the availability of the new API for Google AdWords, this could become like a new trade market. Imagine the AdSenser (or should I say AdTrader) in front of multiple screens monitoring real-time ad performance reports for multiple sites, trading keywords, investing money on new ad campaigns...
Of course, whoever happens to make money from that idea should give me a cut of the revenues... ;-)
It seems
this will be
confirmed...
I'm pleased to introduce
sharpUrls, the first product proposed by
metaSapiens.
sharpUrls enables well-defined URLs for your ASP.NET sites and applications.
Linking to a web page is very easy, both in simple HTML and in ASP.NET. Linking to a page that really exists, passing the right parameters, and parsing these parameters, is a bit different.
sharpUrls takes care of your URLs. It proposes a solution to define structured URLs for each of your pages, as well as a clean and simple way to call them.
The idea is based on strict page inputs and declarative parameter binding. With
sharpUrls, each page exposes a set of methods that represent the different ways to call the page. All you have to do to start benefiting from sharp URLs is to add methods to your pages, and mark these methods with attributes provided by
sharpUrls.
Features include:
- Object-oriented approach for hyperlinks
- No concatenations of strings required anymore
- Strongly typed parameters
- Automated parameter handling
- Parameter validation
- Compile-time checks
- Code completion
- Integrated with Visual Studio .NET
Current stage is Beta 1. Beta 2 and the final release will probably be available quickly.
Learn more on the
dedicated site, where you'll find an introduction, a walkthrough tutorial, details about the features and benefits, and of course a page to download the product.
Don't forget to let me know what you think about the product, and what your experience with it is!
A new
meme is starting to make some buzzing noise.
Paul Wilson started to talk about
UI Mapping in July, and lately more and more people are talking about this concept.
Mats Helander has a complete series on various mappings (
1,
2,
3, and up to 6). Roger Johansson is also talking about the concept and even has a prototype implementation (
1,
2,
3).
Roughly, the idea is to use more mappings than just object-relational mapping, which is used to map your domain objects to a relational database. The first new mapping is between your domain objects and the presentation layer. This means we would have Relational Model <-> Domain Model <-> Presentation Model.
But I won't try to explain the concept,
Roger Johansson and
Mats Helander do this very well on their weblogs.
This goes towards a more declarative approach, and I think we need it because GUI code is the next pain in the neck after data access - a lot of code for nothing.
No need to say I'll follow this closely and even use it if possible.
The best solution I've seen for logging unhandled exceptions in ASP.NET is ELMAH (Error Logging Modules And Handlers).
It is easy to use, the code is clean and well documented.
But that's not all! The author published with Scott Mitchell an article about ELMAH on MSDN. This article is very good and detailed (as usual with Scott). It's also an occasion to see a good way to make use of HTTP Handlers and Modules.
Indispensable to every ASP.NET application!
Some things need to be repeated from time to time, again and again: "The data in a record depends on The Key to the record, The Whole Key, and Nothing But The Key, so help me Codd."
Random link about Normal Forms, a subject you absolutely need to know in order to design relational databases correctly.
By default ASP.NET 1.x downgrades its reponses to lower-level HTML with web browsers other than Internet Explorer 5+.
The result is that browsers like Mozilla, Firefox, Opera or Safari get a different HTML than IE 6, while they could handle it. As a developer this is a nightmare because when you develop a page with IE, and then test it with Firefox, it looks all broken and you start cursing the Mozilla team and the consortiums in charge of the standards. You end up having to do the work twice, once for IE, once for the other browsers.
But wait! The solution is simple and you can quickly get rid of all those problems!
ASP.NET relies on so called "browser caps" to know what HTML to render. The good news is that you can change these browser caps simply using your web.config file.
Rob Eberhardt did a great work and provides us with ready-to-use browser caps that you can integrate into your configuration files.
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