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.

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

Get your new RTM bits now. I'm running Visual Studio 2008 on my box Soma announced it here today. The final RTM bits for Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 are available. The trial editions of Visual Studio 2008 are online here . You can also get...(read more)

We just published a WF Hosting Quickstart sample today and it shows a common hosting model for building WF programs and running them in either of: ASP.NET and IIS Your NT Service A Console Host Okay the third is just a debugging convenience for the second....(read more)

Wow, this is a topic that I first visited more than three years ago, and it still comes up over and over. This time, it comes to light through this post (though I'm not calling out Frans, as he's just a messenger), and ultimately by this post. I just don't understand why people spend so much time trying to neatly categorize everyone and, in the process, imply some level of superiority. People who do that suck, and they're not fun to work with.

Personally, I think that 80% of software development is boring and mundane crap that most anyone can do. But the funny thing about most of the other 20% is that someone else has probably already figured out how to solve those problems, so with a little creativity and investigation, you can derive your own solutions. More to the point, you don't need to be a ninja, you need to be a problem solver who delivers quality work, on time. It's not more complicated than that.

The whole Linux and open source religion is like the DOS and Windows thing revisited. Some people thought they deserved some kind of trophy because they were able to do anything from a command prompt. If you're one of those people, hey, good for you, but I'm busy getting real work done.

Specific to the ASP.NET world, yes, visual tools can create a "crutch" of sorts, but who cares? If those crutches keep people walking and work gets done, whatever. Sure, these tools don't act as a free pass from understanding the underlying frameworks and performance implications, but so much of software development has no such implications to begin with.

The religion surrounding programmer types is a lot like platform religion. Sure, there are different levels of experience and such, but you use what's appropriate for the situation, just as you would use the appropriate platform. I can't understand people who waste time trying to categorize such things.

Command line jockeys are worthless when they can't even wrap their head around the business case for creating software in the first place.
 

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.

All the chapters of LINQ in Action have been sent to the publisher after several waves of reviews. During the last days, we tested all the code samples with Visual Studio 2008 to ensure everything is up-to-date.

The chapters are currently being typeset, which means that the printed book is close now. You can preorder it from Amazon or from Manning. The e-book is still avaible from Manning, of course. The coupon code offering you a 30% discount is still valid, but you have only 4 days left to use it.

  
Cross-posted from http://linqinaction.net

This afternoon we released an updated version of the Silverlight 1.1 Tools Alpha that works with the final release of Visual Studio 2008.  You can download it for free here.

The tools alpha refresh released today has the same feature-set as the Silverlight Tools Alpha add-on which was previously available for Visual Studio 2008 Beta2 (it has simply been updated to work with the final VS 2008 release).  This feature-set includes basic Silverlight 1.1 project system support, XAML markup editing and intellisense support, debugging support, Expression Blend project compatibility, and VB and C# code-behind intellisense.  You can find quickstart tutorials that detail how to use these features here.

The next public preview of Silverlight will include a ton of new runtime features, as well as a significantly enhanced VS 2008 tooling support.  I'll be blogging more details about this shortly.

Hope this helps,

Scott

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

I'm not focusing very well today. I've been staring at the DevTeach schedule for about 10 minutes and still not sure what I'm seeing. No, I'm not being figurative here. I mean I've been literally staring at the schedule for 10 minutes and can't make heads or tails out of where I want to go. I also don't know how I could be a bigger fan of Dave Woods. I'm not sure if it's the lack of sleep or the inability to read right now. It's certainly not the clarity of the schedule itself. That's pretty clear and straight forward.

Anywho, good news (or bad news if you were expecting to see someone else at DevTeach). I'm filling in a missing slot tomorrow in the Server Track. James Kovacs and I are going to pair up and do a session on source control best practices. Here's the abstract (cut me some slack as I wrote this at 3:05 last night):

Do you use source control? Does it work for you or do you work for it? Join Bil Simser and James Kovacs as we explore the wonderful world of source control and how it makes your source code sing and dance and sometimes do tricks. We’ll explore the ABCs of setting up your initial tree, managing code branches, dealing with evil merge scenarios, multiple users, conflicts, all the way to scaling up source control to large teams, integration with other tools, and generally making your life easier when dealing with this precious commodity in your Enterprise. In this session you’ll take away some best practices, tips and tricks, and new techniques you can bring to your teams.

Should be a blast. James and I are in the Port Hardy room at 3PM so check it out if that's your thing.

Off to lunch, back later with some more stuff as the afternoon is full of Agile. David Laribee is doing a session on user stories, James Kovacs follows up with his PI Domain Model speak, and the day (for me) wraps up with Oren and ReSharper. Just hoping my eyes will be able to keep up with Oren and his ReSharper Kung-fu.

Also tomorrow should be cool as I'm going to be on the Agile Q&A session hosted by David Laribee so join Jeremy Miller, James Kovacs, myself, and others as we talk ALT.NET for an hour or so.

Speaking of ALT.NET, we're looking to get some some Rebel Alliance faction going Thursday night so ping me if you're down here (up here?) in Vancouver and we can get together for an informal ALT.NET chat.

On this day last year, my book - Community Server Quickly - was released Thanks to all readers who purchased my book from various sources. If you are one of them then my special thanks goes to you as well. Not Yet Purchased Please visit any one of the following websites and order the book today itself to enjoy my unique writing style. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1847190871 http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1847190871/ I am sure you will be impressed with the book....(read more)

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.

During November Microsoft’s Ron Cundiff will be presenting a series of four “Soup to Nuts” webcasts in which he discusses the basics of using ASP.NET to create your first Web applications. More advanced developers are encouraged to check out the Webcasts page to register for upcoming presentations on ASP.NET, AJAX, Silverlight, IIS, and SQL Server.

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.

Experience the latest release of the most productive and powerful development tool and user interface platform on the planet. Learn about the new features in Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5, from built-in ASP.NET AJAX support, to the new Visual Studio Web page designer, to the enhanced JavaScript support; then watch the ASP.NET 3.5 video series and the LINQ video series; and then download a free copy of Visual Web Developer 2008 to try it out yourself.

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.

Just sitting through David Laribee's talk on User Stories (well starting really). No code, just fluff. No wait, that's not right. There's no code but that's okay as we're talking User Stories however there's redemption as David isn't cracking open PowerPoint but rather using Keynote on his MacBook Pro.

How do you sell Agile (or User Stories) to your boss? If you're stuck in Waterfall land where there is a design phase, construction phase, testing phase (unit testing phase), and the be-all end-all deployment phase. Agile is about an alternative to getting away from the giant Gantt chart from hell where you're predicting what you're going to do 9 months from now. Projects can't work this way, babies can.

TDD, DDD, BDD, Patterns, etc. are all engineering practices. They're all good and needed. However if all you're doing is these practices then you're just doing a half-baked job. Let's go back to the Agile Manifesto of "Responding to change over following a plan". Agile does have planning and it can be hard, but it's the type of planning that alters the roadmap as you travel along the journey.

Just because you're doing iterative development, doesn't mean you're doing Agile development. There's a term called Scrumifall (and anti-Agile pattern) where you break up the waterfall approach into chunks. What you really want to achieve is more aligned to Analysis/Design/Code/Test/Deliver in each iteration. There is no design phase, there is no testing phase. At the end of the iteration, done is done and released to the customer (but not necessarily released to the public).

How do you work with stories or tasks? There was a good example by Oren on "As a User I want to search the CRM system". This seemed like an epic and for him, involved 3 developers for a month. That's pretty big so a technique is to break this down to smaller pieces (not tasks) so they're more digestible. One rule of thumb is that if your story is longer than your iteration, then it's probably too big on it's own and needs to be broken down.

User Stories have smells too. For example if you have a story like "As a manager I want to approve/reject a document so that...". You might want to stay away from CRUD like functions in your stories. If you've got a CRUD story, you might want to keep them together and not get them too small. Small, but not too small. It's more of an art than a science here.

David mentioned the Story Point Hall of Fame which is a cool idea. The idea is to take a real story where it really is a good example (in your organization) of a 1 point story. Or a 3 point. Or 10. Here's the idea. Put the idea up on a wall, cork board, whatever and tell everyone that this is a good, proven example of a 1 point story. Then other teams can come back and look at the wall to say "That's a good example" and model from it.

How do you deal with inter-dependent stories? A good practice for stories is to follow the INVEST principle (Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimatable, Small, Testable). When you're looking at your story where there's a dependent story the technique to remove the dependency is to fake it out (almost like a mock for user story but it's more of a fake or stub). David calls them connectors and they're basically get the dependency out and create a new story to handle the fake out.

An article describing how to do fast image rotation on the .NET Compact Framework

Visual Studio Add-in that uses JSLint to verify JavaScript files that are part of Solution