Web Development Helper

Web Development Helper is a free browser extension for Internet Explorer that provides a set of tools and utilities for the Web developer, esp. Ajax and ASP.NET developers. The tool provides features such as a DOM inspector, an HTTP tracing tool, and script diagnostics and immediate window. Web Development Helper works against IE6+, and requires the .NET Framework 2.0 or greater to be installed on the machine.

Very cool

.NET 3.5 Enhancements Training Kit

I was looking for some resources in order to learning something more about the .NET 3.5 extensions… after a little search I’ve discovered that just few days ago Microsoft has published the .NET 3.5 Enhancements Training Kit:

The .NET Framework 3.5 Enhancements Training Kit includes presentations, hands-on labs, and demos. This content is designed to help you learn how to utilize the .NET 3.5 Enhancement features including: ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Dynamic Data, ASP.NET AJAX History, ASP.NET Silverlight controls, ADO.NET Data Services and ADO.NET Entity Framework.

What can I say… Happy download

MVC support in ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview

The ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview is a new release that provides new functionality being added to ASP.NET 3.5 and ADO.NET in 2008. This release delivers a set of new features that target:

• MVC support
• Entity Framework
• ADO.NET Data Services
• ASP.NET Dynamic data
• TDD (Test Driven Development)
• Rich Clients creation  (Ajax and Silverlight controls for ASP.NET )

I’m particularly interested in ASP.NET MVC support to the existing ASP.NET 3.5 runtime, because it enables developers to more easily take advantage of design patterns. Benefits include the ability to achieve and maintain a clear separation of concerns, as well as facilitate test driven development (TDD).
A great new feature is that the designer now supports the Controllers. Moreover, by default our project contains structured folders like Content, Controllers, View. COOL!!!

Hyperbolic Tree in Javascript

Have you ever seen an hyperbolic tree in javascript?
Here you can find an interesting showcase description. Moreover, there’re useful informations to integrate it in your web apps. I don’t know if it’s the best solution to display large amount of inter-related data, but surely the result is very amazing!!!
P.S.: It seems not to work fine in IE , but greatly in Firefox and Safari.

 

How to create an ASP.NET 3.5 and Silverlight-enabled demo application

Steve Marx has recorded a 15 minute screencast to give you an idea of what’s possible with all the new ASP.NET 3.5 and SilverLight releases that came out last week.

Highlights:

• Searching and paging via ListView, DataPager, and LinqDataSource (all new ASP.NET controls with .NET 3.5).
• Video player via the Media control in the ASP.NET Futures July CTP (uses Silverlight 1.0 RC).
• Popup biographies and “more/less” collapsible details via the new .NET 3.5-compatible drop of the AJAX Control Toolkit.
• Back/forward buttons support via the History control in the ASP.NET Futures July CTP.

Resources:

• Video
• Code

AjaxControlToolkit v1.0.10606: strange behaviour of the ModalPopupExtender Control with DropShadow

I’d like to signal a strange behaviour of the latest version of the ModalPopupExtender control that I’ve just noticed. Let’s suppose we have this scenario: two ModalPopupExtender with different TargetControlID but same PopupControlID and DropShadow=”true”. Well, with the latest version of the control, when you click on one of the two controls TargetControlID, the client-side framework throws the following exception:

“Sys.InvalidOperationException: Two components with the same id ’<PopupControlID>$DropShadowBehaviour’ can’t be added to the application”

As you can notice immediately, it seems a problem concerning the DropShadow property of the ModalPopuExtender. In fact, if you set it to “false”, magically everything works fine. I’m very disappointed about this seeming bug because in the previous version of AjaxControlToolkit this control worked regularly in this simple scenario.

BDC Meta Man

BDC Meta Man is the first application that provides the ability to create Application Definitions for the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) Business Data Catalog (BDC) without writing a line of code.  No programming experience is required to take full advantage of the BDC Meta Man. 
BDC Meta Man makes generating Application Definitions easy due to the many features it offers:
- Visual design tools speed up your development efforts!
- Easily browse through your data sources.
- Visually inspect your application definition and edit any part of it.
- No need to know how to write XML or SQL
- Integrated Shared Service Provider administration web site makes deploying Application Definitions a fluid experience.
- Saves amounts of time and effort

“How Do I?” with ASP.NET AJAX Videos

On this page you will find dozens of videos designed for all ASP.NET developers, from the novice to the professional. If you are new to ASP.NET, you can learn the basics of how to create dynamic web applications with ASP.NET 2.0 and Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition, using either Visual Basic or C#. If you have a bit of development experience, you will learn how to employ some of the great new features introduced in ASP.NET 2.0.  If you haven’t watched these videos before, I highly recommend checking them out.  They are short, focused, videos that drill in on a specific topic and are designed to help master common scenarios when using the product.

ASP.NET 2.0 CSS Friendly Control Adapters

ASP.NET is a great technology for building web sites but it would be even better if it provided more flexibility for customizing the rendered HTML. For example, the Menu control makes it simple to add a menu to a web site, but it would be better if it didn’t create <table> tags and was easier to style using CSS. Happily, it’s easy to customize and adapt the Menu control to generate better HTML. Indeed, you can modify any ASP.NET control so it produces exactly the HTML you want. The key is to use something that may be new to you: control adapters. These are little chunks of logic that you add to your web site to effectively “adapt” an ASP.NET control to render the HTML you prefer. The ASP.NET 2.0 CSS Friendly Control Adapters kit provides pre-built control adapters that you can easily use to generate CSS friendly markup from some of the more commonly used ASP.NET controls.
Here are a few links to articles on MSDN about how it works:

• Architecture Overview of Adapters
• Browser Definition Files
• Sample code to a simple adapter in the ASP.NET 2.0 QuickStarts

Zope Behind IIS6… SCRIPT WAR!!!

Some days ago I started configuring Zope for Plone. When I was ready for deploying, I found a Windows Server 2003 SP1 based production environment with IIS6 as Web Server. I knew there is a script which forwards IIS requests to Zope (much like ProxyPass does for Apache), using Virtual Host Monster to generate correct dynamic URLs, just setting IIS5 to handle 404/405 (Not Found) errors with it.
Well, I didn’t know IIS6 breaks POST methods used in the forms inside Zope/Plone. I bang my head on the screen for a while, after a 6 hour hard-coding session, when I find a discussion in the Zope Community about my problem!!!
At the moment, a proposed “open” solution involves a Java Proxy for host-header analyzing, requesting data from Zope, and returning it back to the client.  
Well, waiting for other solutions, If you want to to speed up your Plone site by integrating it with IIS, you can still purchase Enfold Proxy…

ASP.NET AJAX v1.0 Released!!!

Finally, ASP.NET AJAX v1.0 Released!!!
This technology enable a developer to create next-generation interfaces with reusable AJAX components. Moreover, it enhances existing Web pages using powerful AJAX controls with support for all modern browsers such as IE, Firefox and Opera.
You can continue using Visual Studio 2005 to take your ASP.NET 2.0 sites to the next level and access remote services and data directly from the browser without writing complicated script.
Downloads:
ASP.NET AJAX consists of the two essential downloads shown below. In the ASP.NET AJAX Downloads Page You’ll also find related downloads on this page including the Futures CTP, the sample applications, and the Microsoft AJAX Library for development on non-Windows platforms.

• ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions 1.0
• ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit (a shared-source community project from CodePlex consisting of samples and components that make it easier to work with AJAX-enabled controls and extenders. The Control Toolkit provides both ready-to-run samples and a SDK to simplify creating custom ASP.NET AJAX controls and extenders. Make sure you install ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 first!)

Mojax beta Developer Network

Mojax is one of the worlds first Mobile AJAX Application Frameworks. Unlike traditional AJAX Web Frameworks, mojax Moblets do not run within a browser and are not subject to the availability and quality of a network connection. Also, unlike a web application running on a mobile device, a mojax moblet has access to lower level device features such as Camera API, Push Messaging, Bluetooth, Location Services, Contacts and more. mojax is currently in private beta. If you would like to join the beta please subscribe to our user group and give a brief description of what your interest is in mojax.

Microsoft MapPoint Web Service SDK v4.1

The MapPoint Web Service is a programmable web service hosted by Microsoft and used by enterprises and independent software developers to integrate location-based services such as maps, driving directions and proximity searches into software applications and business processes. By using the MapPoint Web Service, companies can improve business results through better discoverability of store locations and business assets trough powerful server-based mapping, including street-level address lookups, point-to-point directions, and other features that you’ve become accustomed to on many mapping or retail portals.

MapPoint Web Service Features
The MapPoint Web Service includes several features like

• Finding Addressable and Non-addressable places (rivers, landmarks etc.) in North America, South America and Europe.
• Reverse Geocoding by listing geographic entities that are associated with a particular coordinate.
• Finding Nearby Places: Points of interest (POI) based on the proximity to a selected location (also along a specified route). Customers can upload custom POI datasets as well.
• Customizing Locations: geocode and storing of custom databases to be used with MapPoint Web Service applications. Customers can include up to 300 searchable attributes for each record such as types of services and hours of operation.
• Routing by optimized driving directions with step-by-step instructions. Worldwide City-to-City Routing is possible as well.
• Polygons: you can define and render a region on a map and then use this region to find relations to other polygons, point data sources, addresses, and specific geographic locations for defining neighborhoods, delivery areas, cell phone coverage and territories. The MapPoint Web Service offers a polygon creation tool and several command line tools for converting existing ESRI, MapInfo, Autodesk, Intergraph and GML files to the MWS polygon file format. It also offers a COM Add-in for MapPoint 2006 North America and MapPoint 2004 Europe which allows you to draw your own polygons and save them to the MapPoint Web Service polygon XML file format.
• Real-Time Traffic Incidents (accidents, congestion, or construction) for over 70 major metropolitan areas in the United States. Data about the traffic incident include the severity, traffic flow diversion, the expected duration and the expected delay.
• Map Rendering in many different styles and font sizes, optimized for a wide variety of devices and applications, including Line Drive, Night Time and Urban Inset Maps.

MapPoint Web Service Developer Account
Before using the MapPoint Web Service SDK, you need to sign up for a MapPoint Web Service Developer Account and start building location-enabled solutions. With a Developer Account, you get full access to the rich set of MapPoint Web Service APIs that allow you to integrate maps, driving directions and proximity searches into a wide range of solutions. A free Developer Account also gives you access to the MapPoint Web Service staging environment , which you can use to build applications for trial, demonstration, and proof-of-concept purposes.

MapPoint Web Service Downloads
The MapPoint Web Service SDK v 4.1 includes detailed documentation and describes the basic services, requirements, development guidelines, object model and comprehensive reference information for the MapPoint Web Service. It also includes sample code demonstrating common uses of MapPoint. You can also browse the MapPoint Web Service SDK on MSDN.

MapPoint Web Service Object Model
MapPoint Web Service is an XML Web service with a SOAP API. You can use MapPoint Web Service to add location-based functionality to your applications, including high-quality maps, location finding, and routing capabilities. MapPoint Web Service consists of four constituent services: common, find, render, and route. A second XML Web Service, called “Customer Data Service”, allows you to upload, download, and manage custom data sources, including points-of-interest and polygon data. You can find the reference documentation for the MapPoint Web Service and Customer Data Service class libraries here.

A Complete List of Ajax Tools

Ajax has really taken off over the last two years. With the advancement of Ajax, new frameworks, utilities, and software packages have been built to make the production of Ajax web sites much easier. I’ve found a list of these tools, and the only list you will ever need !!!!

MonoRail on ASP.NET

I’ve recently joined a meeting on MonoRail (former Castle on Rails) is a MVC web framework inspired by Action Pack. The Action Pack way of development is extremely productive , very intuitive and easily testable. MonoRail differs from the standard WebForms way of development as it enforces separation of concerns; controllers just handle application flow, models represent the data, and the view is just concerned about presentation logic. Consequently, you write less code and end up with a more maintainable application.
Monorail is an intelligent port of Ruby on Rails to .NET framework. It attempts to simplify web development and address some of ASP.NET webforms issues. It’s built on top of ASP.NET infrastructure so a lot of ASP.NET features (i.e. session control) are still available to the Monorail. There are both advantages and disadvantages to using Monorail. We always attempt to minimize the latter, but it will be hard (if not impossible) to eliminate all of the cons .