This article will Expalin you how to embed/Access javascript ,css and images to server control’s assembly.

We now have a French language version of the .NET Framework namespaces and types poster available for download ....(read more)

18 - 20/12/07 - MS AJAX & Silverlight from A to Z Course (TOC)

ASP.NET Ajax is the framework you need to know to build rich interactive web based applications. This deep dive day session includes intensive information on the main mechanisms in the framework: Object orientation with ajax, authoring custom controls and extenders, deep dive into the networking and serialization frameworks in ajax, tips and optimization tricks regarding the UpdatePanel control, overview over the ajax control toolkit and the powerful animation framework.

Silverlight is a code name for a new Web presentation technology that is created to run on a variety of platforms. It enables the creation of rich, visually stunning, and interactive experiences that can run everywhere; within browsers and on multiple devices and desktop operating systems (such as the Apple Macintosh). In accordance with Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), eXtensible Application Markup Language (XAML) is the foundation for Silverlight presentation capability. XAML is the presentation technology in Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 (Windows programming infrastructure).

 

26 - 27/12/07 - CAB & SCSF Course (TOC)

For the past few years we all hear about SOA – Service Oriented Architecture and the benefit it will bring to tour organization, we hear about Agile Development and the quick time to market it enables, but what about the User Interface (UI)?
We all would like to build our applications with a rich and friendly UI although the applications become more and more complex, connectivity to legacy systems required. How can we develop agile UI with reusable components?
With the release of Visual Studio 2005 Microsoft Patterns & Practices introduce a new UI concept based on the Smart Client approach: Composite User Interface Application Block - CAB.
The CAB Infrastructure is designed for building complex user interface while having the ability to communicate between the different UI components that might be dependent or independent, reusing the building blocks you already created in a new system you design.
In this Course we'll learn the how the CAB is composed and what will be the better way of using it as our UI framework. We will have hands-on on how to use the CAB and how to build quickly and efficiency the next generation of User Interface.

 

15 - 17/01/08 -  WCF Internal & Extensibility Course (TOC)

WCF is powerful infrastructures that be expend and adjust according to the organization or project specific needs. In this course we will examine all the area in which WCF can be extended in order to get better performance, additional Routing options and much more. This session is intended for people familiar with WCF and want to have a better understanding of how WCF does it magic underneath the hood.

My colleague Jens Schaller has released a new version of his free Visual Studio add-in SonicFileFinder which I regard as a personal must-have on my development machines (along with GhostDoc, obviously).

Version 1.9 fixes two bugs (regarding C++ projects and debugging of websites) and adds search for folder names. More information in this blog bost.

How to export an jpeg image from Flash using ASP.NET

jMVC.NET is an ASP.NET control to help you build UIs that change dynamically without postbacks, AJAX or tricky event handling.

I read on MSDN Forums that it is not possible to use other configuration than Release and Debug. This is wrong.

I am using it for Tech Head Brothers Portal, what you have to take care of is how you set your configuration. On the following picture you see how I defined a new Staging configuration and set the Web Deployment Project WebApplication.csproj_deploy to build using this configuration.

Then you are able to use it this way in your MSBuild:

<PropertyGroup Condition=" '$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Staging|AnyCPU' ">
    <DebugSymbols>true</DebugSymbols>
    <OutputPath>.\Staging</OutputPath>
    <EnableUpdateable>true</EnableUpdateable>
    <UseMerge>true</UseMerge>
    <SingleAssemblyName>THB.Portal</SingleAssemblyName>
</PropertyGroup>

NewsTrust.net, which rates news stories’ credibility instead of their popularity, plans to add a left-wing-right-wing breakdown in 2008.

Just a quick plug to the community.  I've gotten to the Alpha release of my AuctionSite Starterkit and have published a release on Codeplex

http://www.codeplex.com/auctionsk

It's designed and produced in .net 3.5 utilizing some cool features like LINQ, the new Listview, the .NET membership, full CSS design and some other goodies like some Ajax sections.  It's freely available for download, take it - use it - abuse it.  Its designed to give users a good start in the LINQ world, with a real world application on a smaller scale.  It's database is extensible, and pages have been intentionally kept simple and straight forward, so they can be modified, tailored.

I'll be continuing to update it it through a stable release, then refactoring some of the "goofier" sections.

Have Fun!

There are a number of new features in TestDriven.Net 2.10 that I want to highlight (apart from the VS 2008 crash workaround). The one I'm going to focus on here is subtle, but significant I believe - especially for people working with large solutions.

Smart build is a new optimization that allows you to skip the build step before test execution when there are no source code changes. Anyone working on a solution with a large number of projects will know how time consuming the build can be before any tests can be executed. Somewhat surprisingly this remains true even when no actual source code edits have been made and nothing needs to be compiled. I've had reports of the build check taking as long as 45 seconds before any tests could be executed! (Thanks to Brian Genisio in particular for bringing this to my attention)

The new smart build feature overcomes this particular problem by monitoring your solution for source code edits and automatically skipping the build step if there is nothing new to compile. This can significantly improve performance when running multiple tests in the same solution. For example there is now no penalty for choosing to execute all tests in a fixture after an individual test starts to pass: a common usage pattern.

I will elaborate further on other new features in future posts. In the meantime you can read the latest release notes and download TestDriven.Net 2.10 from here. If you find any issues, please don't hesitate to contact me.

I took the opportunity to sit the WCF Beta exam a few days ago and I must say, it was very hard. Being beta, I don't find out the results until about 8 weeks later, but I reckon I didn't fare too well.

I did book the test a little impulsively, however I saw the opportunity to do it, and only had a free day to do the test that was a few days later than when I booked it, so my preparation time was very small.

Having said that, I still think it was a hard exam. There were a wide variety of questions there and the preparation guide listed here doesn't really do the broad range of topics justice as there were still items/topic in the exam that were not listed in the prep guide.

If I do the exam when its released, then I think I'll prepare for the exam for around 2 months before sitting it again. Note that I have worked with WCF a reasonable amount and have also taken Juval Lowy's WCF Masterclass course but I would still allocate around 2 months prep time on top of that.

One of the things that did irritate me about the test (and its not specific to this test either) is when you are tested on your knowledge of things like enum values. One of the questions had code samples that differed only in the value of an enum being specified. Now admittedly, if I had worked a lot with the aspect of WCF, I would probably know it, however questions like these assume you dont have the services of a compiler at hand. Even if I didn't know it, practically, it would take a around 5 seconds to see this error when compiling and fix it, and still achieve a quality WCF implementation. I just don't see those types of questions of having any real practical value.

Anyway, if your thinking of sitting the WCF beta exam, or waiting for its proper release. Allocate a  decent amount of preparation time, as it is quite hard.

Basic Calendar Control of ASP.NET 2.0 can be extended to cater one of most frequent requirement of tracking events, project milestones, history, schedule etc.

 

I've done an update to the starterkit today, and figured it might be a good idea to get some screenshots in front of people, as well as a demo site up - so I've done both. :)

The demo site is available at

http://ask.proessent.com/default.aspx

Feel free to register a username and look around.  If you don't want to register a username you may use

Username: Testing

Password: testing!

 

 

 

 

note: the website may be going up and down as I make changes and perform updates.  Please be patient. :)