Archives
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Video: First Look at Visual Studio .NET 2008 and the LinqDataSource
Visual Studio .NET 2008 provides many new features that will definitely enhance developer productivity. In this video tutorial I provide an introductory look at VS.NET 2008 and show a few features such as multi-targeting, split view, and the LinqDataSource control. In the video you'll see how to build an ASP.NET page that retrieves data from a data context object (created with the new LINQ to SQL designer) and binds it to various controls using the LinqDataSource control.
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VS.NET 2008 Beta 2 Now Available to Download
If you haven't heard already, VS.NET 2008 beta 2 is now available for downloading. I'm installing it right now. :-)
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Using the ASP.NET AJAX ScriptMethodAttribute to Return XML Data
Web Services provide a convenient way to pass data between AJAX applications and a server. ASP.NET AJAX provides an excellent infrastructure for Web Service integration into AJAX applications and makes it all cross-browser through incorporating JSON into the mix. While JSON is compact and a very good fit for AJAX applications, there may be times where it's easier or more convenient to pass back raw XML to an AJAX client for processing. This is especially true if the browser provides robust XML parsing APIs like Internet Explorer 5+. For example, you may have a Web Service that obtains RSS data and returns it as an XmlDocument or XmlElement object.
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Aborting AJAX Requests
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Updated: List of AJAX Automated Testing and Debugging Tools
While there are a lot of testing tools out there to look for bugs, test a Website's scalability and perform unit tests, precious few seem to handle automating the testing of AJAX applications. As a result, I wanted to start a list of tools that support automated testing of AJAX applications as well as debugging. If you have other tools or applications you know of or something listed is out of date please add a comment to the blog and I'll get the information added/updated.
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ASP.NET AJAX Health Care Toolkit Controls
Patrick Long recently blogged about some new ASP.NET (and WinForms) controls released on CodePlex that are specific to the health care industry. Several of the controls are AJAX-enabled (based upon the ASP.NET AJAX Extensions and the Toolkit) and as I went to download them I found an online demo available here. I wish I would've had some of these controls on past health care projects I worked on. An example of one of the more robust controls called MedicationGrid is shown below:
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Windows Live Mobile Search V2 Released!
The coolest program I have for my Windows Mobile phone (by far) is Windows Live Mobile Search V1. I use it daily to check how traffic looks as I'm driving to downtown Phoenix. V2 of the program has been released that adds the following new features (and I see there's even a beta for BlackBerry users...but iPhone users are out of luck): -
Book: Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Released
Wally McClure, Steve Smith and several others recently had their Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX book released. I hear that lines at book stores around the world were huge and people have been camping out for days to be the first ones to get it. :-) Congrats to everyone involved with writing it. I haven't seen it yet, but knowing several of the authors I'm sure it's excellent.
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Exchanging Binary Data with MTOM and Web Services
In the distributed computing class I'm teaching this week we're covering a few topics related to the Web Service Enhancements V3 (WSE3). One of the nice features of WSE3 (and WCF for that matter) is that it can be used to exchange binary data quite easily and in an efficient manner by using MTOM. I put together a demo project that shows how MTOM can be used to exchange binary data between a client and a Web Service.
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AJAX Rain
I was reading through Dave Ward's blog at http://encosia.com/ and came across a really cool AJAX Website he mentions called AJAX Rain. It contains links to all kinds of cool AJAX scripts to do just about anything on the client. It's definitely worth a look. -
Coping with Click-Happy AJAX Application Users
Users can be impatient while waiting for data to be returned to a page (I'll admit I'm guilty of this occasionally). Fortunately, ASP.NET AJAX makes it easy to handle cases where impatient users continually click a refresh button (or other type of button) in an ASP.NET AJAX page causing extra load to be placed on your server.
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Tracing in ASP.NET Application Classes
I'm a big fan of tracing in .NET and use it in every project I work on since it's a great way to find out why things aren't working properly. Tracing is especially useful when an application works in a test environment but not in production. My good buddy Michael Palermo recently wrote a nice post on how to dynamically grab the name of a method when using tracing which is a great idea. Mike's post made me think about a question I'm often asked: "How do you perform tracing in classes that don't have direct access to the ASP.NET TraceContext object?".
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.NET 2.0 Distributed Application Programming Sample Code
For those taking the Distributed Application Programming course this week with me (or anyone else who is interested), you can download some samples I put together below. You'll find samples of creating and consuming Web Services, creating remoting clients and servers, using MSMQ and securing SOAP messages using WSE 3.0.
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Using the ASP.NET AJAX PageRequestManager to Provide Visual Feedback
ASP.NET AJAX provides an UpdateProgress control that greatly simplifies the process of providing users with visual feedback as asynchronous postback operations occur in AJAX applications. By using the control you can easily show an image, Flash movie, Silverlight animation, etc. while an AJAX asynchronous postback operation is in process.
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Silverlight Game - Zero Gravity
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Understanding WS-This and WS-That Web Service Standards
If you have to create or consume Web Services then you've likely come across the WS-* protocols that exist in varying forms. Here's a few of them:
