I'm in Barcelona this week for TechEd EMEA. The talk I gave today was about getting Windows Workflow Foundation hosted in ASP.NET. It was based on a quickstart sample that we built a couple of months ago and was recently updated to run on Visual Studio...(read more)

The ASP.NET AJAX Showcase demonstrates how businesses are using ASP.NET AJAX to add functionality and provide greater user experiences in their Web-based applications. The three exciting new additions include Foonance, Lottery Post and RoundPegs. If you too have created a cool Web site leveraging ASP.NET AJAX, please let us know.

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.

We've been using Visual Studio 2008 for a few months now at my job, and now we're launching our first .NET 3.5 web project. It's using a full LINQ (to SQL) backend for all of the data access needs. Other than the LINQ, there aren't many changes from a standard 2.0 web app (membership, profiles, roles, etc).

I have greatly appreciated the language features that come with C# 3.0 and .NET 3.5. Something I recommend you try out for your string validation (which is a must in web apps because everything comes across as strings) is to make a single "Extensions" class and add some extension methods (in C#3 and VB9). Because the application that I've been working on will deal with contractor information, I've had to build the standard "address" validation stuff... IsZipCode, IsPhoneNumber, etc. Here's what the code looks like to make those extension methods:

One of the things I love about extension methods is that you are garunteed to get an instance of the object that you are extended passed in. Meaning, I will NEVER have to check if "input" (the parameter passed in) is null. This is because extension methods add methods on to class instances.

Now, it is true that you could call your "IsZipCode" method and pass in the variable instead of calling "myString.IsZipCode()", but if you do that, then that's your own fault and I hope your code blows up :P)

.NET 3.5 and LINQ in Production

For those of you who are skeptical about .NET 3.5, LINQ, ASP.NET AJAX or WCF - I've been using these in production environments for a while now, and they're beautiful. As soon as things cool off at "work work", I plan on finishing the redesign of Eels using .NET 3.5, WCF (which is in 3.0), ASP.NET AJAX and LINQ. We have already added LINQ keyword highlighting in the article engine as we have had a few articles on LINQ so far.

I'll keep you all posted!

 Paul Vick is once again supporting us VB.NET developers.  Seems VB.NET is the language of choice after all.

From Mark Jones, these should be required reading for all SharePoint development team leads, project managers and architects:

Architecture and Design Lessons Learned

SharePoint Development and Engineering Practices

 

Well it's Tuesday afternoon, nearing 3 O'clock and coming up on the end of the first day of sessions for OpenForce07. I don't think this will be my last post, but I am taking a short break and sitting in the speaker room to type this up. So far things have been moving along really well. After Shaun's Keynote I went to his session entitles "DotNetNuke Business Opportunities". At the presentation he gave an overview of the various ways that an individual or business can make money by utilizing DNN...(read more)

An article about Template Method Design Pattern and C# 3.0 (Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5) Functional Programming and Lambda Expressions.

We just completed the .NET Framework 3.5 update to the Commonly Used Types and Namespaces poster. Here's a link to the PDF if you want to grab it now and be the first on your block to get it on your wall. We'll be using it at a variety of places, if you...(read more)

Liron asked via the Contact link (long enough ago that the point about not sending me time sensitive questions is likely clearer than it had to be):

Hey Michael,

I've read a lot about the subject of keyboard layouts, being interested in the programming side along with the linguistic side, and since I'm pretty sure you have the most intimate knowledge of the subject, and since this question requires insight, I think you're the man to ask:

I want to be able to find out which physical key a user is pressing, in Javascript. The "closest" I get to scancodes is virtual keys, that I can get from keyup and keydown events, but I have no way to tell if the user is using QWERTY, AZERTY, QWERTZ, Dvorak, or who knows what.

I actually only need "sane" options that 99% of the people use, so I'd settle for QWERTY, QWERTZ and AZERTY (And please correct me if this assertion is wrong)...

I thought that maybe I could try to match the VK I get with the text the browser sends in response (For example, if VK_Y sends ט then I can assume it's QWERTY because that's a character that's only mapped to the QWERTY Y key, in any mapping), but that leaves me hanging in German, for example, where I can't tell if VK_Z+"z" came from QWERTY's Y key or Z key location.

Short of asking the user to hit some specific keys before starting, is there any way you can think of to get this data? Ultimately, I want to be able to map each keystroke to its physical location (=scancode, for my purposes)...

Thank you for your time, and good day,
Liron.

Unfortunately, there is no great answer here. I usually look to references like Jan Wolter's JavaScript Madness: Keyboard Events and the like, which spend a lot of time showing the differences between browsers and platforms.

As you can see from that document, there is no readily accessible way of getting at keyboard scan codes. It makes a lot more sense to go with the VK values (and as that page indicates, not even them for lots of the punctuation characters).

Or better yet, if you need a bunch of characters in a specific layout on the keyboard, then you can do the work to configure the keys for the application (let the user type to assign the keys they want to use, and then you know what they decided and can take advantage of it....

Now in some specific script hosts, more information is provided, but in general these are even less consistent than the core language, which is itself not consistent with very much!

 

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It´s now possible to add a Windows Live Messenger control to your blog.

For more info about how to implement it, please check this out:

ANNOUNCMENT: Windows Live Messenger IM Control & Presence API - conversations from Web to Client & querying presence

Awesomeness: High

Intersoft Solutions Corp., the industry’s leading WebUI component provider announces the next generation of WebUI components codename “Sirius”. “Sirius” is going to be the industry’s first commercial Web User Interface components built upon the officially released Silverlight 1.0 technology. The “Sirius” and Silverlight together enable a richer Web experience never possible before using DHTML technology, such as seamlessly combining core animation and visual effects in many elements of the user interface...(read more)

Three Implementations of Model-View-Presenter in ASP.NET 2.0

This article provides a quick and comprehensive overview of ASP.NET and ATL Web Services

With the release of ASP.NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008 just around the corner, now is the time to discover the new features that will empower your Web development and make building great Web sites easier than ever.

You can now find the open-source projects on one Starter Kits and Community Projects page. Check out the newly listed DinnerNow.net and Umbraco CMS for examples of building a connected application and a fast, flexible content management system