I just finished my first talk at TechDays Sweden 2011 on jQuery. As promised, you can find the slides and demos here.

I hope you enjoyed the session (sadly not everyone could get in the room) although it was extremely hot in the room. If you have any comments/questions, please send them to me.

Slides: http://cid-bd64f22e01fad982.office.live.com/view.aspx/Public/jQuery.pptx
Demos: http://cid-bd64f22e01fad982.office.live.com/self.aspx/Public/jQueryDemos.zip 

Enjoy!

On January 24th, the first Belgian Web Camp takes place. Some updates have been done to the agenda, including another speaker being added.

This is the final agenda:

8:30 - 9:00 Welcome and registration

9:00 - 11:00 Opening Keynote – What’s new in the Microsoft Web Platform (Scott Hanselman, Principle Program Manager, Microsoft)
Just recently, Microsoft have released a bunch of new products that web developers can use to build websites and web applications.  Scott, Drew and Jonathan will take you on a whirlwind tour of what’s new in the Microsoft Web Platform, including ASP.NET MVC 3, NuGet and more.

11:00 - 11:30 Coffee Break

11:30 - 12:30 HTML5: How about today? (Katrien De Graeve, Developer Evangelist, Microsoft)
What is HTML5? With more and more browsers supporting HTML5, ECMAScript 5 and other web standards, developers now have a strong web platform they can use to create a new class of web application that is more powerful and interactive than ever before.  What's in HTML5 that lets us take our sites to the next level?
Expect demos and code!

12:30 - 13:30 Lunch

13:30 - 14:45 Come in as jQuery zero, go out as jQuery hero (Gill Cleeren)
jQuery is the web developers’ new favorite. This lightweight JavaScript library has developers writing JavaScript code again, and loving it! What previously needed 20 lines of code can now be done in just 3 lines. Who wouldn’t be enthusiastic? Microsoft showed its love for the library by fully integrating it in Visual Studio. I dare to ask: should you stay behind? In this session, we’ll take a look at jQuery and we’ll teach you what you need to know to get you on your way. More specifically, we’ll look at selectors, attributes, working with WCF, jQuery UI, and much more. You could easily walk out of this session wearing a sticker: “I love jQuery”!

14:45 - 15:15 Coffee Break

15:15 - 16:30 OData: Open Data for the Open Web (Jonathan Carter, Senior Technical Evangelist, Microsoft)
There is no shortage of valuable data being generated by applications, reports, tools, Web sites, etc. Unfortunately, this leaves many of us wishing we could programmatically access the data and logic behind an app, report, or Web site. To break down data silos and increase the shared value of data and its associated business logic through the Web, Microsoft has recently announced the Open Data Protocol which enables exposing any data source as a Web-friendly data feed. Join this session to understand what the Open Data Protocol (OData) is and how it adds end-user and developer value to many of Microsoft's leading products and services (such as SharePoint Server 2010, Microsoft Codename "Dallas", Windows Azure, SQL Server Reporting Services, SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel, Visual Studio, .NET, Silverlight, AJAX, etc.), as well as being accessible from a range of platforms such as Java and PHP. "

16:30 - 17:30 Closing drink

Registration can be completed here (there are a few seats left!!)
Location:
Business Faculty
St. Lendriksborre 6 / Font Saint Landry 6
Brussel - Neder over Heembeek 1120
Belgium

You can also watch the live stream but you need to register from here. And if you want to view the event from within your company, you can get a free breakfast (Register here)

OK, now what is a webcamp then?
Microsoft Web Camps are free events that allow you to learn and build on the Microsoft Web Platform. Good news: Web Camps are coming to Belgium!

The Belgian Web Camp event on 24th of January 2011 is a full-day event where will hear from Microsoft experts on the latest components of the platform, including ASP.NET MVC 3, jQuery, HTML5, OData and WebMatrix.
Scott Hanselman is doing a two-hour keynote together with James Senior. I’ll be doing the oData and JQuery sessions and Katrien De Graeve is doing the HTML5 talk.

Two options to registering for the event:

1. Register to attend in-person: https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032472434&Culture=en-US
2. Register for the keynote live stream and see how you could have free breakfast delivered to your company: https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032472819&EventCategory=2&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

Location: Business Faculty
St. Lendriksborre 6 / Font Saint Landry 6
Brussel - Neder over Heembeek 1120
Belgium
Timing: Monday 24 January 2011 – 8:30 to 17:00

Full agenda:

8:30 9:00

Welcome and registration

9:00- 11:00

Opening Keynote by Scott Hanselman and James Senior on ASP.NET MVC 3 and WebMatrix

11:00- 11:30

Coffee Break

11:30- 12:30

HTML5: How about today? (Katrien De Graeve)

What is HTML5? With more and more browsers supporting HTML5, ECMAScript 5 and other web standards, developers now have a strong web platform they can use to create a new class of web application that is more powerful and interactive than ever before. What's in HTML5 that lets us take our sites to the next level?
Expect demos and code!

12:30- 13:30

Lunch

13:30- 14:45

Come in as jQuery zero, go out as jQuery hero (Gill Cleeren)

jQuery is the web developers’ new favorite. This lightweight JavaScript library has developers writing JavaScript code again, and loving it! What previously needed 20 lines of code can now be done in just 3 lines. Who wouldn’t be enthusiastic? Microsoft showed its love for the library by fully integrating it in Visual Studio. I dare to ask: should you stay behind? In this session, we’ll take a look at jQuery and we’ll teach you what you need to know to get you on your way. More specifically, we’ll look at selectors, attributes, working with WCF, jQuery UI, and much more. You could easily walk out of this session wearing a sticker: “I love jQuery”!

14:45- 15:15

Coffee Break

15:15- 16:30

Oh, look at that data: using oData to expose your data over the web (Gill Cleeren)

While applications, sites, tools all generate tons of useful data, it is sometimes hard to access that data from your own application. To increase the shared value of data, Microsoft has introduced the Open Data protocol. Using Open Data, we can expose any data source as a web-friendly data feed.
In this session, we'll start by looking at oData, to make sure that everyone is on board with all the concepts. We'll see how it adds value for the developer and the end user for many of Microsoft's products and services. We'll then look at how we can build our own oData services using WCF Data Services, from working with the basic concepts to more advanced features such as query interceptors and service operations.
Come and learn about information and entity services that are stunning in their simplicity!

16:30- 17:30

Closing drink

Yesterday, I got to do my very first presentation ever at TechEd Europe. The title of the session was "What you as an ASP.NET developer need to know about jQuery". The focus of the talk was of course jQuery and where it can be used in combination with the ASP.NET platform, both WebForms and ASP.NET MVC. More specifically, I covered the following topics:

Why jQuery?
jQuery fundamentals
Creating and manipulating elements
Events
Animations and effects
Talking to the server
jQuery UI
Writing plugins
Breaking news around new releases
Using the CDN

The room was full with over 350 attendees and I got some great feedback. Thanks to all people that visited my talk, really appreciated.

As promised, here are the slides and ALL the demos (including the ones I did not talk about in the session):
Slides
Demos

Last week, I gave 2 sessions at NDC 2010 (Norwegian Developer Conference) in Oslo. I was glad that I was asked by the organization to be part of this conference that is known for its long list of renowned speakers. Here are my impressions of the conference as well as the downloads I promised in my sessions.

Conference report
Oslo is a really nice city. I mean really nice. People are friendly, the city is very clean and apparently, it houses a lot of great developers too.

NDC 2010 took place this year from June 16th until June 18th in the Oslo Spectrum. The Spectrum is a large event center, comparable to the Sportpaleis in Belgium. For me, it was the first time I’ve been to a conference that was organized in this type of center. I was at first wondering whether this would be handy to attend and give sessions in. Well, it works great ?. You have a great view of the session contents because of the screens being high in the rooms while you can still see the speaker very good as well. While giving my sessions, I was still able to have interaction with and see the audience.  The organization of the event itself was done as it should as well. So for the conference and infrastructure, a big thumbs up!

While infrastructure is one thing, content of sessions is much more important. One of the reasons I was really looking forward coming to this event as a speaker, as I mentioned in the intro, is that it is filled with top speakers for a developer audience Also, I got to hang out with a great number of fellow RDs. Names included Juval Löwy, Michelle Bustamente, Ingo Rammer, Richard Campbell, Carl Franklin, Tim Heuer, Billy Hollis, Rob Conery, Greg Young, Robert Martin and I’m forgetting a whole lot at this point. This is a formula for success: the Norwegians surely know how to “entertain” a developer crowd.

All in all, NDC is a really nice conference that is now on my list of yearly-must-attend events! Congrats on job well done to the people of Programutvikeling (I hope I’m spelling it right, my Norwegian is even after a week still horrible).

Session downloads
Here are the links for downloads for both my sessions:
Silverlight 4 Data Access and Services not for the faint of heart

ASP.NET 4 Caching: Performance for free

If you have any questions or remarks, please send me a mail!

I just noticed that the video of my session on ASP.NET 4.0 at DevDays Netherlands is online. You can watch it here: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/matthijs/Whats-hot-in-ASPNET-40-by-Gill-Cleeren/

On March 29th and 30th 2010, DevDays 2010 Netherlands took place for the 13th time.  The event, if I heard and remember correctly, had over 2300 attendees and 120 developer sessions.

I was there, for the second year in a row, as speaker and gave a talk on ASP.NET 4.0. The session slides and demos are available for you to download and use:

Slides

Demos

Here are some images of the event I took with my phone.

The rest of the pictures can be found here.

Yesterday, I gave a talk for Visug on ASP.NET 3.5 SP1. It was a long evening, with over 2 1/2 hours of content. The talk covered Dynamic Data, Ajax History, Data Services and Entity Framework (talk given by Kurt Claeys).

Below, you can find the presentation. If anyone is interested in the demo's, leave a comment and I'll upload those as well.

Slide deck

I hope you all enjoyed the talk! Remember to register early for our next events!

Yesterday, I gave my talk on ASP.NET 3.5 - AJAX - LINQ - Silverlight for Visug. Here is the slide deck of that talk:

http://www.codeflakes.net/blog/file.axd?file=ASP_NET35_AJAX_LINQ_Silverlight.pptx

Man, it's going fast now! Almost feels like Christmas, downloading all these goodies.
Here is the link for ASP.NET MVC Preview 2.

The ASP.NET MVC Preview 2 provides an early look at an upcoming framework for building ASP.NET web applications using the Model-View-Controller pattern.

Just after the ADO.net Entity Framework went into Beta 3, Scott Guthrie's team released the first CTP ASP.NET 3.5 extensions, which contain the MVC Framework (Model View Controller), ASP.NET AJAX Improvements, ASP.NET Silverlight Support, ADO.NET Data Services and ASP.NET Dynamic Data Support.

I have just finished installing it, since I'm really looking forward to the MVC framework. However, I'm not really sure as what to expect, since it really brings a new way of developing ASP.NET applications into play.

The installation gave me this strange but very honest error...

But, it ended up installing everything correctly, the extensions are showing up inside of the Project Template window.

I'm hoping to find some time to start exploring the new Silverlight controls...

All of this candy can be downloaded here.
Video's on using the MVC and other stuff included in this release can be found here.

If you attended my small talk on ASP.net futures (Silverlight and MediaPlayer controls) and you want to see the slides or the demo's again, click here.

If you want to see the other slidedeck, I have just posted them on the Visug website on this page.

Thanks for attending, it was a fun event!

Finally, we can present the RTM version of the Visual Studio 2008 RTM Training Kit.
This kit is a real goldmine, containing presentations, Hands-On-Labs, demo's... on all topics related to Visual Studio 2008.
Now you only have to find about 5 days to complete all that's in here, and you're set!

All the info is below:
The Visual Studio 2008 Training Kit has been updated for the RTM and has been released on the Microsoft.com Download Center for anyone to download and use.

The Visual Studio 2008 Training Kit contains a full 5-days of technical content including 20hands-on labs, 28 presentations, and 20 scripted demos.   The technologies covered in the kit include:  LINQ, C# 3.0, VB 9, WCF, WF, WPF, Windows CardSpace, Silverlight, ASP.NET Ajax, .NET Compact Framework 3.5, VSTO 3.0, Visual Studio Team System, and Team Foundation Server. 

Originally developed for early adoption work with ISVs, it is now available to all. 

You can download the entire training kit from the download center here:  http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=7602397 .  The kit is just over 120MB compressed.   After downloading the kit, simply run the installation program to extract the contents to your local machine.  Once the installation process is complete, you will see an HTML page that allows you to navigate through the contents of the kit.  

Here are some links you might find useful:
-LINQ cookbook: series of solutions to specific scenarios, that the team comes across when writing code and using queries
-Nice intro to ASP.NET MVC framework
-Looking for a replacement for FreeTextBox? Maybe this newly created rich text box for ASP.NET is the solution: http://www.codeplex.com/rte

My article on ASP.net Ajax is published in the Dutch version of the .net magazine this month (and my head is on page 3... Page 3 head ;-) )

In case you do not know the .net magazine, it's a free magazine that is published every 3 months in Belgium and the Netherlands. It's a real shame if you do not subscribe: every 3 months, you get articles on what's new, but also in depth coverage of already existing technologies.
Convinced? You can subscribe here.

In a few days, the articles will be published online too, and you can read them here.

Introduced way back in 2005, the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar is not in beta anymore. A final version for Windows XP, 2003 and Vista is available!
For those of you who don't know what this plug-in is, it's a handy tool that let's you explore everything on a webpage: see table borders, change size of the browser window, explore the DOM...
In short, it has become an unmissable tool for developing ASP.net webapplications.

The most important features are the following:

• Explore and modify the document object model (DOM) of a Web page.
• Locate and select specific elements on a Web page through a variety of techniques.
• Selectively disable Internet Explorer settings.
• View HTML object class names, ID's, and details such as link paths, tab index values, and access keys.
• Outline tables, table cells, images, or selected tags.
• Validate HTML, CSS, WAI, and RSS web feed links.
• Display image dimensions, file sizes, path information, and alternate (ALT) text.
• Immediately resize the browser window to a new resolution.
• Selectively clear the browser cache and saved cookies. Choose from all objects or those associated with a given domain.
• Display a fully featured design ruler to help accurately align and measure objects on your pages.
• Find the style rules used to set specific style values on an element.
• View the formatted and syntax colored source of HTML and CSS

You can download the tool here.

A few days ago, a collegue asked me how it was possible to add tooltips to a gridview's header. This property is not present on the gridview by default.

A few solutions came to mind. The first solution I thought of consisted of adding attributes to the cells. However, this seemed not to work.
My second solution consisted of a client-side solution. Since I've been creating Vista Sidebar Gadgets, I've solved several problems with Javascript, and this one too seemed candidate to be solved with it.

In this sample, I will explain how I added tooltips to the ASP.net 2.0 gridview header.

First, we'll do some preparing work.
Let's add a simple gridview to the page. I created a small database, and simply dragged a table from the server explorer into the Visual Studio designer.

This gave me a simple gridview as can be seen on the figure on the left. What do you think about the great layout ;-) ?

So far, not so exciting!

Creating script from code-behind
We'll use an javascript array of strings, that we create in the code-behind. This makes it possible to have the tooltips multilangual, which is often a requirement (in my case, it was).

In the following code, I'll make use of the ClientScriptManager class and RegisterStartupScript method. The script added by the RegisterStartupScript method executes when the page finishes loading but before the page's OnLoad event is raised (from MSDN Library).

            

              
              private
              
              
              void
               AddTooltipToGridHeaders()
{ ClientScriptManager cs 
              =
               Page.ClientScript;
String csname 
              =
              
              
              "
              ConcatScript
              "
              ;
Type cstype 
              =
              
              
              this
              .GetType(); 
              if
               (
              !
              cs.IsStartupScriptRegistered(cstype,
csname)) { System.Text.StringBuilder cstext 
              =
              
              
              new
               System.Text.StringBuilder(); 
              //
              build
client script from code-behind
              
              
               cstext.Append(
              "
              <script
type=\"text/javascript\">
              "
              ); 
              //
              this
values can be added or translated
              
              
              
              
              string
               arrValue 
              =
              
              
              "
              \"
              "
              
              
              +
              
              
              "
              CustomerId
              "
              
              
              +
              
              
              "
              \",
              "
              
              
              +
              
              
              "
              \"
              "
              
              
              +
              
              
              "
              Firstname
              "
              
              
              +
              
              
              "
              \",
              "
              
              
              +
              
              
              "
              \"
              "
              
              
              +
              
              
              "
              Lastname
              "
              
              
              +
              
              
              "
              \",
              "
              
              
              +
              
              
              "
              \"
              "
              
              
              +
              
              
              "
              Street
              "
              
              
              +
              
              
              "
              \",
              "
              
              
              +
              
              
              "
              \"
              "
              
              
              +
              
              
              "
              Number
              "
              
              
              +
              
              
              "
              \",
              "
              
              
              +
              
              
              "
              \"
              "
              
              
              +
              
              
              "
              ZIP
              "
              
              
              +
              
              
              "
              \",
              "
              
              
              +
              
              
              "
              \"
              "
              
              
              +
              
              
              "
              City
              "
              
              
              +
              
              
              "
              \"
              "
               ; 
              //
              create
array of the values
              
              
               cstext.Append(
              "
              var
ToolTips = new Array(
              "
              
              
              +
               arrValue 
              +
              
              
              "
              );
              "
              ); 
              //
              call
the javascript method defined in the aspx
              
              
               cstext.Append(
              "
              gvAddToolTips(document.getElementById('
              "
              
              
              +
               GridView1.ClientID 
              +
              
              
              "
              '),
ToolTips);
              "
              );
cstext.Append(
              "
              </script>
              "
              ); 
              //
              register
the script when the page finishes loading 
              
              
               cs.RegisterStartupScript(cstype,
csname, cstext.ToString(), 
              false
              );
} }
            
          

 Using the array in client side script

The following function is added to the HTML/ASPX code. In this function, I first test if the TBODY tag is present, I use the firstChild method to retrieve the header row. If it isn't, I use the nextSibling method.

In the for-loop, I loop through the cells of this row (headerRow.children) and set the title to the corresponding value of the array. The array is available from the code above.

            

              
              <
              script 
              type
              ="text/javascript"
              >
              
              
              function
               gvAddToolTips(gv,
colTooltips) { 
              var
               tableBody 
              =
              
              
              null
              ; 
              if
              (gv.firstChild.tagName 
              ==
              
              
              "
              TBODY
              "
              )
{ tableBody 
              =
               gv.firstChild;
} 
              else
               {
tableBody 
              =
               gv.firstChild.nextSibling;
} 
              var
               headerRow 
              =
               tableBody.firstChild; 
              //
              check
if the array has the same number of items than there are rows
              
              
              
              
              if
              (colTooltips.length 
              >
               headerRow.children.length)
colTooltips.length 
              =
               headerRow.children.length; 
              for
              (
              var
               i
              =
              0
              ;
i
              <
              colTooltips.length;
i
              ++
              )
{ 
              var
               tableCell 
              =
               headerRow.children[i];
tableCell.title 
              =
               colTooltips[i];
} } 
              </
              script
              >
            
          

The result can be seen on the following image.

I just got home of DevDays 2007 (and now already I'm typing a report...), and man, it was a fun ride! If you weren't there, you did miss out on  great sessions and great fun (and great little pies... still don't know what was in them, but they tasted great). In my DevDays report, I want to highlight some of my personal 'fav-moments', some nice little tools I learned about and show some of my pics I took (maybe you're on them somewhere...).

(I wasn't at the pre-conference, so no report on March 27th...)

Day 1
6.00 am. Very early... Must get up to avoid traffic jams.
7.30 am. Breakfast at ICC Gent, avoided all traffic jams (jeej).

The day began like usual with an opening keynote, given this year by David Chappell. He went over what he thought would be the most important Microsoft-related innovations for 2007. These included the .net 3.0 framework, Forefront, Security Center and Longhorn Server.
 
After that, I went to the Blend demo, given by Carrie Longson. She showed some XAML effects created easily using Expression Blend. After that, she showed some impressive applications created with WPF. One of these was an application created by Microsoft UK for the Londen Underground (the tube). It was able to give an overview of the trains, where they were, all rendered in real time. It was even possible to rotate the viewport, completely in 3D. The application, while very impressive, took only 3 weeks to create with WPF.

Jeff Prosise is the speaker I saw the most sessions of (you'll find him again later in this article). The first one on Asynchronous ASP.net was impressive. He showed how to (and how not to) program threaded ASP.net. Doing this correctly can create a vast scalability for your web application. I hope to find some time to blog on some of his thoughts on this subject (hold your breath).

Up next was the first of 2 sessions of Raj Pai. This first one on Linq (.net Language Intergrated Query framework) explained in depth the possibilities of this extension of C# that will be included in C# 3.0. While the syntax on some moments still feels weird (it's odd to see Select and From in your C# code sometimes, even if you've been playing with it for some time), the session was very clear.

Like I said, Jeff Prosise would come back in this article. The next session I attended, Optimizing and Extending ASP.net Ajax, was very helpful for me. I've doing quite a lot of Ajax in the last months, but 1 thing I didn't use a lot yet, is the Ajax Client Script Library (the javascript). This library is not documented very well at this moment, so it's sometimes hard to figure out what you can do with it, and even harder how to do it. Luckily, this session cleared some clouds in my brain, so I think I'm on my way with it now!

The last session of the day, Hardcore debugging of .net applications given by "Mr Type Fast" Ingo Rammer was easily the one where I learned the most. I didn't know what to expect from it, but the demo's of this session literally blew me away.
He started by showing how to use WinDbg (WinDebug). While this is not a .net debugger, it can be used (loading in some DLLs) to debug running (production) .net applications. I actually never knew this was possible. This program is not the most user friendly, but it can be a real time saver. It does however use a lot of commands, and so I hope this session will certainly be included with the DVD.
He went on showing some other interesting tools. ADPlus is another tool (command line) that can be used to create a memory dump on any PC, that can afterwards be analyzed using WinDbg. Using these 2 can give you insight on why an application crashes or hangs.
The last shown tool was HawkEye. The free version can be used to inspect any .net forms application: you can see all properties of any control (name, color...) on a forms application.

After that, Visug, the Belgian Visug Studio User Group (of which I'm the webmaster), organised a bowling in Gent. We started playing at 9 pm, but due to a blackout in a large part of Gent, we were forced to stop playing around 10 pm.

1 am: in bed ;-)

       

Day 2

6.00 am... you know the story...

The day started with the second session of Raj Pai, that closely intergrated with the session of day 1. In this session, he explained the new features of C# 3.0 (of which I'll be blogging in the coming weeks): extension methods, automatic properties, how LINQ works internally...

I was lucky enough to be able to attend 2 "sidemeetings" with 2 speakers, namely Raj Pai and Jeff Prosise.
At 11am, I met in person with Raj on the top floor, and together with some collegues of Ordina, we got to ask him questions on LINQ and C# 3.0 .
He explained in detail what went on behind the scenes when you run a LINQ statement. Seeing this more or less eased me! On my question on how you could debug a LINQ statement, he advised me to break the statement into pieces, and add a ToList() to each part. That way, you can easily see what each part of the statement actually returns.

Another question we asked was the following: how do you see LINQ in a DAL? Sadly, on this topic, they're actually still working themselves, and he promised that some white papers will be available soon.

I also asked his vision on the "over-use" of extension methods in C# 3.0. Using these methods, you can for example write your own System.String.In() method. Personally, I think this will make code review very hard. Raj agreed with me, and said there will be some patterns and practices available later on when to use these methods.

Due to this private session, I was unable to attend the session given by my collegue Kurt Claeys. I did hear nothing but positive comments afterwards, so Kurt: congrats!

The next session I attended was again one given by Jeff Prosise, this time on WPF/E.
This session was closely followed by my second private session, this time with Jeff. During this session, we talked on the future of the 3 web technologies Microsoft is currently using/developing: ASP.net 2.0, WPF/E and ASP.net Ajax. He thinks that all these will intergrate more in the future, certainly WPF/E and ASP.net Ajax.

He said that what we have seen so far of WPF/E is only a fraction of what it will really become. He believes that on some aspects, the final version will be better that it's competitor, Adobe Flash. He seemed very excited on some features that will be announced at Mix '07, including the final name. This session was not only fun, it gave a great insight in what web technology is evolving too.

In the last session of the day, Ingo Rammer explained some more of on profiling .net applications using CLR profiler and SQL profiler.

After this session, I went home, tired, but happy!
Great job guys!

The Ordina booth
My company Ordina was Platinum Sponsor of this event, and so we had a very large booth. On the following pics, you can see more of this.

 

All my DevDays 2007 pics can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gillcleeren/sets/72157600035030532/

What I brought home...
Het Computerwinkeltje, Belgium's largest computer book store, was also here, and they organised some book signing sessions. I just bought the new book on Powershell, Manning's Windows Powershell In Action , writte by Bruce Payette. I got my copy signed!

I also brought home the new book from Apress on LINQ.

According to Scott Guthrie's blog, there has been an update to the documentation of ASP.net Ajax. The following changes were made:

• An interesting article on CSLA.net, ADO.net Entity framework and LINQ. More here
• WinDevPowerTools on The MicroISV Show: more here
• Continuous Integration the Microsoft way!!! - level 200: here
• New ASP.net Ajax book coming up: http://www.manning.com/gallo/
• “WPF/E” (codename) Community Technology Preview Sample Pack (Feb 2007): here

Enjoy!

DinnerNow.net V1.0 is released.

DinnerNow is a fictious marketplace where customers can order food from local restaurants for delivery to their home or office. This sample is designed to demonstrate how you can develop a connected application using several new Microsoft technologies.

The demo utilizes several technologies including: IIS7, ASP.NET Ajax Extensions, Linq, Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Powershell, and the .NET Compact Framework.

The DinnerNow sample application is now available for download. You can download the entire DinnerNow sample code from CodePlex.

It's a free download, you can get it here.

The new circular loading icon in Windows Vista is kinda neat. Here's how to make it: http://www.codeproject.com/cs/miscctrl/mrg_loadingcircle.asp

There are times when our web form will be performing lengthy tasks (e.g. reading a file, retrieving high volumes of data, or maybe calling a remote web service, etc...). Here's how to do it: http://gbarnett.org/archive/2007/02/08/asynchronous-programming-in-asp-net.aspx

Snowball.be has a first for you!

As webmaster of Visug.be, I just finished the work on the the registration page for this groundbreaking event: Scott Guthrie is coming to Belgium, and moreover, he's coming to Visug, the Belgian Visual Studio User Group.

Scott Guthrie, co-creator of ASP.NET at Microsoft, will be in Belgium for the first time onFebruary 1st 2007. VISUG is very proud that it can host - in collaboration with MSDN Belux - 2 presentations of this renowned speaker. In the first presentation, Scott will talk about the next version of ASP.NET, code named ASP.NET “Orcas”; during the second presentation Scott will give practical tips and tricks on ASP.NET 2.0 and ASP.NET AJAX. Want to join this unique oppurtunity? Register here!

Lately, I have been doing a lot of projects with Dotnetnuke. I first started using it for my own use, but lately, I have used it to create some large portal sites for some of our customers.

To start with, let me first introduce Dotnetnuke (DNN). The very first sentence on the DNN homepage states the following: DotNetNukeis an Open Source Framework ideal for creating Enterprise Web Applications.

Let’s analyze this sentence, shall we? For starters, it’s a framework that you can use out-of-the-box to set up a portal site. Included in the download package are a number of modules that are sufficient to build an entire portal. Modules included vary from a simple HTML module to an entire forum and an image gallery. Of course, these are not enough to build an entire enterprise application. But DNN is very versatile, and so for every need, new modules can be build.
Since it’s an open-source project, it’s easy to tweak the framework where needed, to meet the needs of the application you are designing with it.

Sometimes, if an web-application is needed very fast, nothing comes close to use a portal framework like DNN. Lately, I have built the new Visug (Visual Studio User Group: www.visug.be ) site with DNN. We needed a site quickly, and DNN brought us the solution.
Some people I met are skeptical towards the use of DNN. The main concerns are mostly speed, reliability and not being in control. Personally, I admit that sometimes the latter can be true. I have had some problems with included features that are hard to override or undo. But since it’s open-source, I have been able to conquer them all.

One little thing, though. DNN is written in VB.net (the core and the core modules, that is). If you’re like me and you don’t program in VB.net, but still want to develop modules, you can do so in C#! Since Visual Studio 2005, it’s not a problem to have a solution with VB.net and C# files. Should you require to modify some core settings, you’ll have to write your code in VB.net, however.

So, now that I have been using DNN for several large projects, I have decided to share my knowledge on it via a series of articles.

In the first article, I will discuss how to install DNN and create the first portal with it. In the articles to come, I will show you how to create a module, how to skin the portal and how to extend DNN to use it to create full enterprise applications where DNN is used in a SOA environment. Stay tuned!

With Windows Presentation Foundation coming closer to its release date with Vista almost being upon us, more and more people are taking a look at programming in WPF… Lately, people searching on Google for WPF-related information is soaring. How do you know that, you might ask? Well, in my logs, I notice a steep increase in people landing on my blog who searched for information on WPF. That’s a good thing!! ?

However, what I do notice, is that there is still some confusion on some topics.  In this article, I want to help clear out the difference between the different application types in WPF/Vista. Since this is a major change with previous application models, lots of people, including me when I first heard about it, seem confused.

So, let’s get to it!

WPF has 2 main applications models: standalone and browser. On the other hand, it also has 2 types of navigation: menu-driven, which is what we’re all used to in traditional Windows applications and link-driven, which is the default for web applications. The first thing to note is that in WPF, both types of navigation can be used in either of the application models. Neat, isn’t it?
That basically means that you can create a web application as if it were a windows application, containing a menu to navigate around. Or, create a standalone desktop application that feels like a web application, with all buttons replaced by links.
No longer are you bound to one application model with is “natural” navigation model!

Standalone applications

When you want to create a “traditional” Windows application, you should choose to create “Windows Application (WPF)”.

The Windows Form now became a Window, each of these is declared as Window1.xaml. Notice that the build action for a Window file is automatically set to Page. What this means, is that the markup is turned into a special type of resource that can be identified uniquely by a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI). This way, WPF can load the window using a URI, as is done set the starting point in your App.xaml.

<Application x:Class="WindowsApplication2.App"
    xmlns=" http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation "
    xmlns:x=" http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml "
    StartupUri="Window1.xaml"
    >

This way, your application knows which window it has to load up first. This window is loaded modeless, meaning that it has no problems with you clicking anywhere else in the application.

Page’d applications

Should you want to create an application that mimics the web experience but still run as a standalone application, you should start by adding a Page(WPF).

Just like in the Window, you can add controls and content to the page. However, when you change the startupuri in the App.xaml to your newly added page, some things will change.

A window can host itself, like a form did in traditional Windows Forms programming. A HTML/ASPX page requires a browser. Now, we created a “standalone” application with the starting point set to a page. Kinda weird, right?

Well, the Application class in WPF is smart enough to detect if your startupuri is set to a page. It will then create a window to host your application.

Now, where does this “hosting window” come from?
When the startupuri is set to a XAML page or HTML page, Application  creates an instance of NavigationWindow to host them. This class derives from Window but extends it to make it look like a mini-browser window, providing navigation buttons at the top.

When content changes or when you click a link to navigate to another page, the previous content is added to the history. The management of the history itself is managed too by the NavigationWindow.

XAML Browser applications

The final type of application is the XAML browser application. While the previous type of application basically is a web application, being hosted in its own mini-browser, you can’t really take advantage of all the features modern browser have today. If that’s what you need, you should create a XAML browser application or XBAP.

To create one, you should choose new “XAML Browser Application (WPF)”. After that, you can copy all the code you created for that WPF standalone application to one or more pages, and your application is ready for the web!

One more thing you can do with XBAPs is publish them on a web- or intranet server. This is done using ClickOnce, which creates the executable along with 2 manifest files. One of these 2 has the extension XBAP, and that’s were the user navigates too. It then “downloads” the application to the local computer.

Because of the security risk, XBAPs are not installed and run in a security sandbox: some operations like writing to the registry are not allowed. Basically, XBAPs can only do things that are allowed for apps launched from the Internet zone, a restricted set of operations.

Conclusion
As you can see, the ways an application is build are different from what you are used to in traditional programming. I hope this guide is clear enough to help you choose the correct type when building a WPF application for Vista.
 

While I'm blogging this a few days too late, I still want to mention the release of the beta 1 of the Microsoft AJAX library, formerly Atlas.

From Scott:
You can download it now from the http://ajax.asp.net site. Available on the site are three download options:

1) The ASP.NET AJAX v1.0 “Core” download . This redist contains the features that will be fully supported by Microsoft Product Support, and which will have a standard 10 year Microsoft support license (24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year). The download includes support for the core AJAX type-system, networking stack, component model, extender base classes, and the server-side functionality to integrate within ASP.NET (including the super-popular ScriptManager, UpdatePanel, and Timer controls).

2) The ASP.NET AJAX “Value-Add” CTP download . This redist contains the additional higher-level features that were in previous CTPs of “Atlas,” but which won’t be in the fully-supported 1.0 “core” redist. These features will continue to be community supported as we refine them further and incorporate more feedback. Over time we’ll continue to move features into the “core” download as we finalize features in this value-add package more.

3) The ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit . This project contains 28 free, really cool, AJAX-enabled controls that are built on top of the ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 “Core” download. The project is collaborative shared source and built by a combination of Microsoft and non-Microsoft developers, and you can join the community or just download it on CodePlex today .

I'm testing AJAX a lot at the moment, since I'll be using it for a new project at my company. Since this new application requires a lot of database calls, and works with large table, AJAX should provide me with a nice and responsive user interface combined with minimal load on the DB server.

Oh, and while I'm on it... I recently became the webmaster of www.Visug.be , the belgian Visual Studio User Group, backed by Microsoft. So in the next few weeks, you'll be able to register over there for upcoming events (which will be announced very very soon!).

Today, I was programming on the new www.visug.be of which I recently became the webmaster.
I needed a time picker control for ASP.net. I already downloaded Basic Date Picker, which includes a date picker for free and a time picker. Sadly, the time picker isn't free.

So I searched a little, and stumbled on a free library of custom controls which can be found here: http://www.eworldui.net/ .
It includes among others a very nice Time Picker control for ASP.net, that works under ASP.net 1.1 and 2.0.
Great controls, I must say!

Today, I'm testing Infragistics NetAdvantage 2006 Vol 2 for CLR 2.0. It has all kinds of Ajax enhancements, and that's exactly what I need for a project I'm working on.

I was installing the demo on a Virtual PC, and got the following error:
Error message: Error 1609. An error occurred while applying security settings. ASPNET is not a valid user group. This could be a problem with the package, or a problem connecting to a domain controller on the network. Check your network connection and click Retry or Cancel to end the install.

My first thought was that it was caused by ASP.net 1.1 not being installed on the system (since ASP.Net 2.0 does not install the ASPNET account). I didn't feel like installing .net framework 1.1, so I tried adding a user with the name ASPNET.

And voila, it worked... Saved the day ;)

Btw, you can set the account to inactive, so it doesn't appear at your login-screen!

The november issue is available, free for download as always!

This issue focuses on security and writing more secure code...

From the site:

Web.UI for ASP.NET AJAX is deeply integrated into the AJAX Library client-side type system:

All controls inherit from the Sys.UI.Control client-side base class;
All controls implement AJAX Library type descriptors, providing type information at runtime;
The namespace and all types are registered with the AJAX Library type system;

Web.UI for ASP.NET AJAX exposes comprehensive client-side APIs:

An industry first, the same level of programmatic control is available on the client as on the server;
The new APIs fully comply with the AJAX Library client-side syntax and semantics;
State of the art client-side API reference documentation is included with the product;

Web.UI for ASP.NET AJAX is optimized to work with the ASP.NET AJAX UpdatePanel control:

All client-side programmatic changes are persisted to the server upon callbacks or postbacks;
Proper client-side dispose mechanisms are used to optimize browser's memory consumption;
Control footprint is highly optimized in order to provide the fastest callback response time.

More here: http://atlas.componentart.com/

Microsoft has released a new add-in tool to help Visual Basic developers preserve Visual Basic 6 applications and breathe .Net into them.  Microsoft released its Interop Forms Toolkit 1.0 as a free add-in that simplifies the process of displaying .Net WinForms in a VB6 application.

The new toolkit not only helps to preserve VB6 applications, but also lets developers add functionality to them through additional .Net forms. For example, a developer could provide more dynamic content by adding a WinForm that accesses Web services or RSS feeds, Microsoft said.

Moreover, instead of upgrading the entire code base, VB6 applications can be extended one form at a time, Microsoft said.

"The goal is a phased upgrade, with production releases at the end of each iteration containing both Visual Basic 6 and Visual Basic .Net forms running in the same Visual Basic 6 process," according to a Microsoft Web page describing the new toolkit.

More here.

A new update of the Atlas Control is released, with a few nice new controls. It can be downloaded here.

Shawn Burke has some nice information on this latest build. More here. ScottGu also made a nice article here with very useful demo code.

I found a nice string manipulation library via www.ASP.net: you can access it here. Certainly a nice help if you have to work with strings a lot...

After a naming game, Atlas finally got its final name!

-Microsoft AJAX Library:  The client-side JavaScript library that works with any browser and also supports any server-side framework, not just ASP.NET.

-ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions: The server-side functionality that seamlessly integrates with ASP.NET and uses the same programming model familiar to existing ASP.NET developers.

Atlas will also ship in version 1.0 (final) before the end of the year!!!

Scott Guthrie has an entire article devoted to the Atlas roadmap. You can read it here.

Already added 2 posts about new stuff today, so I'm going to bundle these last 2 for today...

Yesterday, while I was at Disneyland (you can see my pics on my Flickr account...), MS released SP1 for Visual Studio 2003. It's a 160MB download, and once installed, you can't return without uninstalling, so install with care!

Go here for the download.

Something I came across are Nuggets. In Disneyland, you might ask? Yes, there were Chicken Nuggets, but since this a technical blog, I'm not going to bother you with what I ate... I'm talking about MSDN nuggets, hosted by Microsoft UK.

Don't have the time to read a 10-page how-to article or watch a full length webcast? Try an MSDN Nugget, a webcast that takes you step-by-step to discovering new functionality or exploring a hot developer topic, all in 10-15 minutes. View them online now or download for later reference.

Head over here for a lot of good content!

It is confirmed that the Atlas framework will not be named Atlas when it is released in a few (6?) months...

So, Steven Smith has organised a small game: Name that Microsoft product. In this game, he is in search of the name Microsoft should give its new framework.

He already has some good (and some less good) proposals:

• Rich Web Programming Foundation - RWPF
• Web Technology Framework - WTF (!)
• AJAXX (aka let's just add an 'X' to the existing name to make it sound cooler)
• Rich Language ASP Framework
• Big ASP Rich Foundation - BARF
• Active Client Pages - ACP

So head over to his blog and post your suggestions! Who knows, you might be the inspiration MS needs!

Today, I was trying to get build a C# custom module for a DNN (DotNetNuke) portal. DNN is completely wirtten in VB.net, but since Visual Studio 2005 came along, it is possible to build modules in C# too.

When using the module template from the site, it creates a subdirectory under the App_code directory. Now, since DNN is written in VB.net, some files like Global.asax.vb are already there. So, we are actually mixing C# and VB.net files under the app_code directory, which is not possible, since these are to be compiled into 1 dll.

The error I got was: The files '/MySite/App_Code/MyGuestbook/DataProvider.cs' and '/MySite/App_Code/AssemblyInfo.vb' use a different language, which is not allowed since they need to be compiled together.

After some searching, I found out that using the <codeSubDirectories> tag in the web.config would bring me the solution.

How to do it? Add the following (if not already there) to your web.config.
<codeSubDirectories>
   <adddirectoryName="MyModule"/>
</codeSubDirectories>

This results in the subdirectory of the app_code directory being compiled into a seperate assembly, thus seperating the C# from the VB.net code.

Some links for my students in summerschool in .net:

-Reflector: tool to disassemble compiled .net code (dll)
-Resharper: plug-in for Visual Studio
-MSDN event in Kinepolis!!
-Express editions of Visual Studio and SQL Server
-Third party controls: Infragistics
-Consolas font

If I forgot any, please make a comment and I'll add it.

August has only just begun, but the September issue of the Visual Studio magazine is already here (not that we're complaining!!).

I haven't had the time to read anything, but this month, there are a lot of interesting articles IMO.
The one on Virtual Earth seems very interesting. In this article, the Virtual Earth API's and the Virtual Earth map control, a JavaScript component that provides all the functionality you need to draw maps, search for locations, and get driving directions, are explained.

The article on downloading files are needs reading! Here the author explains how you can force the browser to start a download window for some file-types, which would generally be opened in the browser, like for example, a JPEG.

A new version of the Atlas Control Toolkit has been released.

For the first time, there are some components that are not developed by Microsoft themselves included in the release: PasswordStrengthExtender by Paul Glavich, and the FilteredTextBox by Christian Wenz.

Apart from some bugs being resolved, some new controls are introduced too: RatingControl, NumericUpDown, and PagingBulletedList.

You can download this new version from Codeplex. Have fun Atlas'in ;-)

MSDN Event: .NET Framework 3.0 Development

Learn about .NET Framework 3.0, the upcoming managed-code programming model which builds on and extends the .NET Framework.

The new version of the Framework offers you both practical solutions to today's software challenges and new opportunities to create software and services not possible now.

It enables you, as a developer or designer, to quickly create new applications and experiences that are more reliable and secure, visually stunning, smarter about information management, better connected, and more collaborative.

Hurry up, it's free training on the next-generation!! Subscribe here

Well, this is very cool! Converting an image, any image, to HTML on the fly! Never seen this before actually.
The image is converted to html pixel by pixel, so the rendered HTML gets quite large if the image is too big... 

See it for yourself here.

The August 2006 issue of MSDN Magazine is now available online here. And for those of you on the go, a downloadable CHM file of the entire issue is available here. 

The new issue of MSDN magazine is available. All articles can be read online for free here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/06/07/default.aspx .

This month, among others, 2 articles in particular are a very good read: the one on Ajax (on which I'll be doing a presentation later this week at Ordina Lummen) and one on WinFX.

Did you also know that you can download a chm-copy of the magazine for free? Go here for this months issue or here for an entire archive on back-issues!

Tech Ed 2006 has taken off! Countless of speeches, demonstrations... are about to take place.

If you want to see the keynote, go here.

More on Tech Ed: http://www.microsoft.com/events/teched2006/default.mspx 

Oh and btw, it is also time for some new designs of laptops Intel showed to the public. You can see them here.

I for sure didn't...

Let me explain the situation.
I'm building a multilanguage ASP.net 2.0 application at KBC Bank. The underlying database is Oracle 9i. This application uses masses of dates, all are in the format required by the database, MM/YY/DDDD.

A collegue of mine wrote some lines of code using a rowfilter to filter out some records from a dataset, retrieved from the Oracle database. So he used a simple DateTime.ToString(). This appeared to be working... until someone came along and tested it with Dutch IE browser settings.

This resulted in a 'String was not recognized as a valid DateTime' error.

After some research, I found that the RowFilter always uses SQL Server syntax when filtering out results, no matter if the data retrieved originates from Oracle or SQL Server.

An article on calendars on CodeProject says the following:
...The code forces a "MM/dd/yyyy" date format when constructing the RowFilter as required for date comparisons in such expressions. The filter is also constructed to take into account the possibility of time values within the DayField column. 

So, what did I do in the end? This:

dv.RowFilter = string.Format(
                   "{0} >= #{1}# and {0} < #{2}#",
                   this.DayField,
                   day.Date.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy"),
                   day.Date.AddDays(1).ToString("MM/dd/yyyy");

And that line saved the day :-)

Today, 2 interesting programs were suggested to me by collegues on the project I'm currently working on.

Up first is Snippet Compiler. It's a "small IDE", that enables you to do some quick tests on code. Instead of making a dummy project in VS, where you can test if for example myDateTime.ToShortDateString() also includes the hours, minutes and seconds, you just tap in the line(s) of code in Snippet Compiler. It then runs these lines as a Console application.

To get this free tool, go here.

The second interesting tool I discovered is "The Regulator". I had to a quite nasty regular expression, but with this open-source tool, it is much easier than sitting down and writing them by hand.

The homepage mentions the following:
It allows you to build and verify a regular expression against any text input, file or web, and displays matching, splitting or replacement results within an easy to understand, hierarchical tree.

For this application, go here.

These two applications are gonna be in my toolbox for sure ;-)

Oh and while I'm at it, did you know the VS 2005 version of Resharper, Resharper 2.0 was released. Go here: www.jetbrains.com/resharper

A new build of the Atlas Control Toolkit is available. You can get it here.

The Toolkit contains several very interesting samples, which can get you started in no time.
Stay tuned for upcoming experiences with the toolkit, since I am preparing 2 sessions on ASP.net/Atlas which I will be giving next month.

More resources: ScottGu's site

A very interesting article was posted today on ASP.net. It's something I already could have used in the past, therefore, I post it here... No doubt I will not come acros a situation where I might need to debug JS.

The article demonstrates how, using a number of new ASP.NET 2.0 features such as Web Resources and Web Events, you can create an easy to use control that logs JavaScript errors on the browser to ASP.NET.

You can read the entire article here.

If you weren't there (like me... Vegas is a little too far ;-) ), you can now download or view all sessions of Mix06 online.

Go here to get them all! (There are some very interesting ones on Atlas!)

As posted on Scott Guthrie's blog, the VS 2005 WAP is now only a few days away, problably it will be released next Monday or Tuesday! So it's worth checking out the blog to get it asap!

(Next Tuesday? Damn... I'll have my new car then! No time to play around with WAP then :()