July 2004 - Posts
YukonXML is a new site dedicated to SQL 2005.
I believe they will change their name soon or later :-)
If you aree interested by Python and .Net check the new IronPython project.
IronPython-0.6.zip released on July 28, 2004
If you can't wait Asp.Net 2.0 for an image map control, you can download this one (shareware)
Image Map Features
The image map controls allow you to define hot spots on an image and perform an action when a defined area is clicked. A Windows Forms and a web server image map control are included. Each contains a similar core set of features:
- All of the standard image types are supported (BMP, JPEG, GIF, etc).
- Support for animation is included for those image types that use it such as GIF.
- The image's display height and width can be customized.
- Image areas can be defined using rectangles, circles, or polygons of any shape defined by a set of points.
- Tab order and validation events are supported.
- Image areas can be triggered by clicking on them with the mouse or by tabbing to them and hitting the Enter key.
- Image areas support a Tag property so that you can associate user-defined information with each image area.
- Both provide full design-time support including a graphical image area selection tool that saves you from having to manually determine and type in the area coordinates.
Scott Watermasysk join Telligent Systems, and .Text becomes Community Server :: Blogs.
Personally I prefer .Text. The new name woul not be easy to fit in a logo :-)
Check this page for more infos. By the way ASP.Net Forums becomes guess... Community Server :: Forums (still not sure about the new name).
From their product page, you can download the new ASP.NET Forums Community Server :: Forums 2.0
PS: Scott on this page, I found one little mispelling for the forums name.
Always good to mention some godd case study.
Check AnandTech story and their migration from ColdFusion to .Net.
Reading Fritz Onion, I just discovered this nice module to help redirecting URLS using a config files.
The entries can use also regular expressions.
Read more
Download
I think that ASP.Net 2.0 will help newbies to embark on the .Net boat. But it surely not going to reduce our time. IMHO it would be unprofessional to let .Net doing everything without any tune up.
Fritz Onion show in this post how coding a login page offers different challenges between 1.0 and 2.0 versions. It's also a good introduction to the new providers model.
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Maxim Karpov posted a comment on my last blog entry that included the following statement regarding ASP.NET 2.0:
"To be honest with you, the idea of 70% less code does not sounds all that good. It will be easier to create bad application once again."
This is a reaction I find a fair number of developers have to the next release of ASP.NET. In fact, when I present ASP.NET 2.0 at talks these days, there are typically three standard reactions to the claim of 70% code reduction (and subsequent demonstrations showing why and how):
- Oh my gosh, I no longer have to write code to build my site - will I still have a job after this product ships?
- Excellent! Now I can stop building all of that drudgery code and focus on more important aspects of my application!
- Great, now everyone will think he/she can build a scalable web site with a database backend without writing a line of code. I'm going to have to spend the rest of my professional life fixing sites that claim to be efficient and scalable that were built with drag-and-drop sans code!
Where I think Maxim's reaction falls into category number 3. I personally am quite pleased with the direction they have taken in this next release, and thought it would be worth a blog entry trying to share with you my optimism.
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Very please to see that Microsoft has included more web controls in ASP.Net 2.0
Welcome to new members:
- ImageMap control. This is great, I can now dynamically manipulate different hotspots on an image. I imagine something like geographical database and interactive mapping.
- Gridview. This is an extension to the Datagrid, but with more flexibility and access to virtually any embedded element.
- Treeview. Finally an official TreeView. I know some third party components won't be please with this. But what's about a Tab control?
- View. Hold on, this must be the equivalent of a tab control or multipage like the one provided by the MS WebControls.
- Bulletedlist.
- Wizard. No it's not an open door for Harry Potter fans, but a control to display things like step by step installation on the page.This will be great for application settings.
- PanelStyle contains now all the attributes like Scrollbars, HorizontalAlign, etc... I wonder if one PanelStyle can be applied to many Panels ?
- ...Field like ButtonField HyperLinkField are there to transform a field automatically.
- Menu control . I think this will be one of the most seen on ASP.Net pages. A relief when you know all the thousands of easy to complex solutions to embed a navigation in a webpage. I wonder if the Menu control is downsizable automatically for mobile devices ?
- Sitemap. The joy of building nice sitemaps and breadcrumbs for a site. Thanks for that
- AdType. If you're a fan of AdRotator for your advertising, now you can choose how to render the ad, as a banner a popup or a popup under the current page (not sure about the last one; what's the point with hiding a banner ??)
I am sure I forgot some. Do you know that most of other controls has some of their methods or properties changed ? Take the type Table for example.
Not less than 19 new methods and properties !
A lot of changes happens because now mobile classes are part of the framework (example Phonelink to create a text-based, output-only control that represents a phone number to call).
Who say ASP.Net 2.0 is not a big upgrade :-)
Well this post is just my opinion, and I am sure this will not change Microsoft view on the subject.
I have some concerns on the choice made in ASP.Net 2.0 to set the code inline by default. I am ok with the new partial class feature, and I found this is a great idea.
But mixing the code and the HTML ring a bell in my mind about the old ASP time. Remember spaghetti code ?
So why this has to be the default ? You can expect that beginners (or lazy coders :-)) will jump on this new approach. I read this make the things easy to maintain with only one file, but are we sure it is so important ?
Just an example. Currently if a designer want to modify the ASPX page (with my authorisation of course), I don't have to worry too much about my code which is perfectly safe in its DLL.
Tomorrow if I use the 'by default' in Visual Studio, I will be to scare that by accident someone change anything in my code. Indeed I can use master pages and templates, but if I don't want ?
It's also true that with code behind, I can change some of my code, compile a new DLL and deploy. No need to touch my webpages.
I can see this move as an attempt to seduce web developers scared by real code. Well if it's the case, this is really wrong. Nothing much cleaner than a good separation between code and presentation.
As I wrote at the start, no way I can change Microsoft's mind. But between the two camp, I know already where I stand up.
I know it's in one year, and I still have a lot to do with the current version, but if you are interested or just curious, read this article on MSDN about the migration job required for the new version.
Useful reading !
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