Steve Sharrock

Run a Long Process from an ASP.NET Web Page

I've always wanted a simple method to start a long process from a web page, and return to the client before the process completes. Once again, XML web services came to my rescue--requiring only that I insert a one-line attribute in then web service defination.

There is a full article with details of this at ASPAlliance.com...

http://aspalliance.com/329

JavaScript Page Transitions

I'm building a little brochure site for a friend that uses page transitions with the following meta tag:

from within an IFRAME to “fade” quotes into a header on each page. You can see the effect I'm looking for by viewing the site at:

http://www.Doris4Dance.com 

I don't like the fact that each “quote” page-load requires a little post back, or that most IE browsers are setup to make the clicking sound during page loads.

I guess I'm looking for the JavaScript that would provide some kind of transition effect, or better yet, a .NET component that would take, say,  and XML list of quotes to roll thru. If I can figure out the JavaScript, perhaps I'll write a component.

--- After the first few responses, I should have added that I would prefer to keep this “text based” (rather than animated gifs) so my friend can maintain the messages with a little content editor. Currently they have a “admin” page that lets them update the messages that are persisted to XML. Also, I'd like to extend this, and use it as a learning subproject. Thanks for the responses. 

SDForum .NET Month

The Silicon Valley's SDForum is having it's .NET month with a panel speaking on the topic of “18 Months and Counting--Lesson Learned”. Yours truly (Steve Sharrock) will be speaking at this event. I hope to see some of you there.

Panelists:

• Yitzchak Ehrlich, Software Engineer - Dynamic Ventures Inc.
• Howard Lee, Senior Consultant - CreaTelliSoft
• Heinrich Gantenbein, .NET Consultant - IDesign Inc.
• Steve Sharrock, President - Stephen Sharrock Consulting, Inc.

Presentation Overview

.NET celebrates its 18 month birthday in October. Come hear what your peers have to share about their experiences with Microsoft's "bet the company" operating platform. You'll hear how local managers, architects, designers, and developers are grappling with the opportunities and challenges presented by .NET. This is guaranteed to be a no-holds-barred discussion about real world experiences from local .NET pioneers. Learn from their experiences; celebrate their victories; feel their pain.

Date: October 1, 2003

Location:

• Cubberly Community Center
• 4000 Middlefield Road, Room H-1
• Palo Alto, CA 94105

Directions

Agenda:

• 6:30-7:00pm registration/networking/open forum/pizza
• 7:00-7:15pm announcements
• 7:15-9:00pm presentation

ASP.NET FTP Deployment Tool

It's been a long time without a blog, but I said I would never complain about too much work--ever again.

With a short break from my consulting gig, I've finally been able to work on the first release of the ASP.NET Deployment Tool (AND+FTP). This product has been in beta for several months with about 100 kind souls testing it. This tool allows you to deploy your Visual Studio ASP.NET applications from your local workstation to a remote FTP site in much the same way Visual Studio allows you to deploy using FrontPage extension or File share.

The beta will still be available until the end of August, 2003 and can be downloaded from:

http://www.dotnetftp.com

Beta testers signing up before the end of this period will receive the first production release without charge; although, the price is going to be pretty minimal anyway.

Thanks go to all of the beta testers so far. Your feedback has been great.

Sams ASP.NET Developer's Cookbook by Steven A. Smith and Rob Howard

I just returned from my local Barnes & Noble book store and had the opportunity to see Sam's latest title from our very own Steven A. Smith, and that guy from Microsoft to which we all owe so much. I must admit it was quite a little ego boost to see my very own name listed as one of the contributing authors.

I'm sure this will become one of the well known resources for ASP.NET developers. I'm looking forward to a complete read with a book review to follow.

Best of luck with the publication, and keep up the good work--to both Steven and Rob.

ASP.NET DatePicker

Not surprisingly, my client was very disappointed with the ASP.NET Calendar control. I searched a bit for a good substitute. Without going into too much detail hear, I would like to pass on my choice of about 12 that I reviewed.

Peter Blum has a very professional (albeit a bit expensive) suite available at:

www.peterblum.com

DataGrids and JavaScript--A Slippery Slop

After reviewing a few of the rich client-side grid components, my client has decided on Infragistic's UltraWebGrid2. This is actually a very nice component that helps my client keep the look-and-feel of the desktop applications we're converting to ASP.NET. But as we all know, there are no silver bullets when using the browser for presentation--in the end it's all HTML and JavaScript.

There are a ton-o-hooks for client-side JavaScript within this component, and I was hoping to avoid most of them. But when you're 99% there (in your client's view), and you can tweak the presentation with just a little client-side script, what the heck--go ahead and step back into that all to familiar world of JavaScript.

So what if there are no compile time errors; you'll discover run-time failures. It takes a real man to embrace a language who's syntax and semantics' change based on the run-time client's browser.

My point? I started to add "just a few" of those features that required JavaScript... you can guess where that is heading. I'm going to make a major pitch to my client within the next few days to end this madness. My feeling is that client-side script will produce a very rich user experience; but, the script should be generated by components, not by the application programmer.

More on this later.

JavaScript Debugging

1. Clear the "disable script debugging" checkbox in Internet Explorer's advanced properties.
2. Add the keyword "debugger" somewhere within your JavaScript.

A Ghostly Experience

A few days ago I began hearing the death rattle clicking sound of a dying disk drive. Sure enough, the event log verified several retry attempts on the drive. As a veteran of the operating system wars, I've always maintained that is was easier to reinstall the OS and all applications from scratch (following a disk format), rather than trying to recover from a disaster. I maintain all data backups, and I've done this many times in the past.

But to prove that this old dog can learn something new, I decided to attempt a recovery using Symantec's Norton Ghost. I borrowed a friend's external USB drive to aid in the transfer and purchased a replacement for the ailing disk. I can honestly say I've never seen a commercial package that is less intuitive to use, and more poorly documented than Norton Ghost. While the USB drive worked fine with the OS, it was not recognized by the Ghost loader. Neither did attempts to Ghost using the local network ever yield success. But eventually I discovered I could simply add the new disk to the existing workstation as a secondary drive and Ghost to it directly. This may be obvious to others; but, it took me several hours of investigating alternatives before figuring it out. From past experiences with tools of this type, I thought I first needed to create an "image" file of some sort on some other media.

The bottom line is I now have a new (faster) hard disk on my development workstation, and it seems to be working fine. By Ghosting, I probably saved myself a full day of reloading software. Unfortunately, I took me almost a full day to learn how to Ghost. But I'll be ready the next time.

Another Hidden Jewel--System.Windows.Forms.PropertyGrid

I was just writing my 10-millionth option settings dialog for a WinForm application when I discovered the wonderous PropertyGrid. We've all used this control within Visual Studio to set the properties of controls and other aspects of our project. I just didn't know it was a control we could add to our toolbox and, voila-instant object property settings--presented in a very consistant manner.

The key method of the PropertyGrid class is SelectedObject, which sets the object for which you wish to view/set its properties. A great little sample is a hello-world WinForm application that contains the PropertyGrid in the main form. Set the grid's SelectedObjet=this (the form itself) and you see all of the forms public properties. Be careful not to set Enabled=false--you'll be unable to continue since your main form is no longer enabled.

I don't remember discovering so many useful widgets when I worked with MFC/C++ for so many years--another testimony to the richness of the Framework classes.