ASP.NET AJAX is designed to be extended, and in this week’s ASP.NET AJAX videos we learn how to build both an AJAX extender control, and a custom server control that works with or without ASP.NET AJAX. Be sure to also view the CSS Friendly Control Adapters video.

This Article will show you how to Build an N-Tier Application in VB.NET

I had a short video that I needed to share with family this weekend so I thought I'd try out the Silverlight streaming service that's currently free. I started out with this guide Your Video to Silverlight Streaming 101 which seemed pretty straight forward....(read more)

Shows how a .NET based WebDAV server can be created by combining two open source projects. The example implementation returns files from a file system but you can extend it to return resources from any repository.

The section session I attended was entitled "People-Read Processes with SharePoint Workflows and Forms Services" and was presented by Christian Stark, a Senior Product Manager for Microsoft.

The presenter gave a survey at the beginning and hinted that, if you met a certain criteria (which I did) that you may not want to sit through the session as it would likely be familiar material. In retrospect, I should have listened and looked for another session. The presentation wasn't wasted, just not full of "new" material.

Christian divided the session into two main sections - the first of which was slides and discussion while the second half focused on demos.

During the theory section, he mentioned a few things that seemed to resonate with me (presented below in no particular order):

• Most end-users want to "do their job" without being "encumbered" (or, at least not overly so) with processes
• Most IT users have the exact opposite desire... we want to lock users into a very specific process so we get accurate, consistent data and can properly execute the workflow
• A successful implementation will be (at least partially) characterized by:
  • IT successfully exposing the workflow endpoints directly in interfaces that the end users are already comfortable with (i.e. MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint).
  • Making the processes task-driven rather than email-driven --> takeaway: if you are going to send nag mails as part of the workflow, make sure that the email is directly actionable (i.e. includes a link, form, or button against which the user can immediately execute).

Objectives/Responsibilities on IT

• Simplify the human interactivity aspects of the workflow
• Simplify the data collection
• Simplify the participation
• Simplify the process management and monitoring

If you are still using HTML <table> elements to create page layouts, Chris Pels shows you why you should start using Cascading Style Sheets and <div> elements. We then learn how to create a custom membership provider and a custom profile provider for your ASP.NET application.

BlogEngine.NET is a full-featured blogging engine built with simplicity as its primary goal. The software is free and open source, and can run against XML files or SQL Server. Use it as is, or use it as the basis of your own projects, all under the Microsoft Permissive License.

The ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit provides a set of AJAX controls to spice up your Web site, and as a shared-source project you can use its infrastructure to create your own cool controls and extenders. Be sure to grab the newest release of the Control Toolkit, as it contains a number of bug fixes.

In this week's videos you will learn how to use the ASP.NET validation controls for both server-side and client-side validation and the basics of building a custom user control that can be reused across multiple pages.

I'll be speaking at the ASP.NET Connections conference next week in Las Vegas and always like to post the slides and content for those that come (and those who can't come).  If you've never been it's a great conference that has a ton of in-depth content.  It's definitely my favorite conference.

I'll be giving a pre-conference workshop on Silverlight and two other regular talks:

• Learn How to Create Rich Silverlight Applications (3-hour workshop)
• Creating N-Layer ASP.NET 2.0 Applications
• Building Custom ASP.NET AJAX Controls

I'll post the slides and demos here after I give each talk so check back.

Learn how ASP.NET 2.0 makes it simple to implement Web site navigation by combining Menu and TreeView server controls with SiteMap data controls. Also discover how to associate client behavior with a server control using the ASP.NET AJAX extender framework.

Am 20.11. findet an Stelle des üblichen User-Treffens der Bonner .NET User Group ein Microsoft TechTalk mit dem Titel “Übersicht zum Expression Studio” in den Räumen der Comma Soft AG statt. Anders als sonst beginnt die Veranstaltung bereits um 18:00, auch ist dieses Mal eine (kostenlose) Anmeldung erforderlich.

Anmeldung und weitere Infos bei Microsoft, eine ausführliche Beschreibung der Anfahrt gibt es auf der Website von Bonn-to-Code.Net.

Also: Anmelden nicht vergessen!

Whether you want to jump-start your own web site or simply view the code of a complete ASP.NET application, an open-source project is a great place to start. Check out the My Web Pages starter kit, the Codeplex Club starter kit, and the ScrewTurn Wiki project.

Scott Mitchell presents five new tutorials covering a range of advanced data access scenarios, including taking a closer look at using stored procedures and user-defined functions, and protecting sensitive information in the Web.config file.

With .NET 3.5 being released about the end of the year at the same time as Visual Studio 2008 it's a good time to look around for any remaining .NET 1.0 or .NET 1.1 applications and consider upgrading them. How do you do it? Does it seem overwhelming?...(read more)

When writing more complex code you cannot really step through during debugging, it´s helpful to put stud it with statements tracing the execution flow. The .NET Framework provides for this purpose the System.Diagnostics namespace. But whenever I just quickly wanted to use it, it turned out to be a hassle to get the tracing running properly. That´s why I wrote down the following, to make it easier next time. How to instrument the code? In the code set up different System.Diagnostics.TraceSource objects...(read more)

For this week’s ASP.NET AJAX Videos Joe Stagner takes another look at implementing the Persistent Communications Pattern, this time using ASP.NET AJAX and Web services, and then provides further tips on using the UpdatePanel. We then see how Visual Studio Team System enables us to test production ASP.NET applications.

This article discusses how to create an HTML Editor server control for use within an ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 environment.

A solution for loading user controls asynchronously via AJAX with no custom JavaScript required.