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: .NET BlogVisual Studio 2008 RTM Is Here!
In case you have been under a rock, shacking up or in jail or otherwise indisposed, Visual Studio 2008 RTM is here! For full details, see Scott Guthrie’s official announcement. Personally, I think the most compelling new features are:
- Javascript intellisense & debugging. Quite frankly, I suck at javascript–even after reading the very awesome Simply Javascript cover to cover–mainly because it requires remembering more details about things than I am currently prepared to remember. Moreover, lack of good debuggers really hurts the cause. Alerting values out just does not cut it, especially with the level of complexity involved in modern javascript.
- HashSets. Finally. The only thing that would have made me more happy is if they made native collections with event notification on adds, updates and deletes.
Note I did not really mention LINQ, and that is quite intentional. LINQ itself is really, really awesome. But LINQ2SQL has the potential to become the DataSet of the 2008 generation. Just like it’s predecessor, it is designed to be a RAD tool to let just about anyone drag-n-drop database objects on forms and make neat, functional apps. And it will work for simple things. But once one starts kicking in complex, real-world data …
We ASP.NET Geeks Have Lost Nothing
Rob Conery—the creator of the very, very slick SubSonic persistence framework—writes that he has forgotten a lot of HTML and javascript. He ain’t lying. I took his little challenge and failed miserably. Then again, I realized how glad I was that I had not had to struggle with, nor implement, manual form handling in quite some time. While I might have lost something by becoming an ASP.NET junkie, at the same time I gained a lot of very, very powerful tools to make complex, interactive web applications without having to worry too much about how to wire up HTML forms.
Microsoft is finally adapting
Let me start of by saying that I’m a proponent of a lot of the development tools that Microsoft makes. Some might go so far as calling me a Microsoft fanboy in some cases. However, my feelings toward Microsoft technology is far from blind about it’s shortcomings. I’ve spent hours getting my CSS layouts to look right in IE, banged my head against the wall debugging cryptic .NET error messages and have accepted the fact that my Treo needs to be reset at least once a month.
Fortunately, Microsoft has been making some changes lately; not just in their technology, but also in their approach to technology. The longevity of IE6 was a testament to how slow Microsoft moves, but over the last year they’ve started talking about being more agile and getting rid of the 2 year delays and slow release schedules. Some of these new approaches have actually started to show between the MIX conference earlier this year and the reMIX Boston conference held earlier this week. Some of the changes were subtle, some were more significant, but each showed that Microsoft is responding more quickly to developer input.
The first big area that Microsoft changed between the 2 conferences …
A Survival Guide for ASP.NET Developers
I’m very proud to announce the availability of our latest release, The ASP.NET 2.0 Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks.
If you’re wading through lines of ASP.NET code every day — or even if you just dabble occasionally — then this book is a must-have companion for trekking through the ASP.NET jungle.
It features some of the biggest names in ASP.NET, and I can guarantee that these guys know their stuff. I should know — I was the technical editor for the book. They show you the most practical features, the best approaches, and help you get off the beaten path — in short, the stuff that matters.
Of course, if you enjoy stumbling through pages of pointless reference material, then by all means shop around. But if you’re looking for an ASP.NET book with truckloads of easy-to-use ASP.NET solutions, make sure you check it out.
.NET Framework Source Code to be Released!
Scott Guthrie has made the very, very cool announcement that the bulk of the .NET framework source code will be released! If you have ever spent hours trying to decypher ASP.NET in reflector, or pulling your hair out trying to make custom controls play well, this should make you a very happy person.
Databinding Protips Part 1: DataBinding 101
Basic hints and tips about using declarative databinding.
Public Website Admin Tools: Divide and Conquer
One of the first steps when designing a web application is figuring out how to administer the beast and where these admin tools should live. Often this comes down to one key question: should the public website itself also be the administrative tool? While there is no single approach that works in every situation, I generally find that keeping the administrative tools separate makes more sense than embedding the tools within the public facing website. Key reasons for attacking this problem this way are:
Differing Nature of the Beasts
Public-facing websites and website administrative tools are, by nature, fundamentally different sorts of applications. Your public-facing website needs to be highly accessible to any number of browsers, platforms and users; it should be highly standards compliant and Google-friendly. From a development perspective, scalability is a massive concern. This means things like completely disabling ViewState and arguably session state, or avoiding such useful tools as ASP.NET AJAX UpdatePanels in preference to much more streamlined scripting.
On the other hand, your administrative tools are likely aimed at a very small set of users on controllable platforms. Bandwidth usage is likely not …
Making IIS 6.0 Play With UrlRewriting
Getting IIS to play with your url rewriting scheme can be a bit of a trick. Read more for a few solutions to the problem.
3 Simple Rules for Solution Management
Having a properly structured project—or more properly, solution—is absolutely vital to ensuring a development initiative’s success. In a pinch, a developer needs to be able to pull the solution from source control, force a restore of the database and any other external dependencies, make minor and appropriate configuration changes and have a building, functional solution. There are alot of nuances to making this work in practice, but the essence of keeping things manageable can be expressed in three rather simple, yet meaty, rules.
- Always use some sort of source control.
There are a number of source control solutions available to cover nearly any development situation from the lone hobbyist to huge geographically distributed teams. Exactly which one you use should be driven by your requirements and infrastructure. But developing without a source control system in place is irresponsible to your clients or employers or just yourself. You don’t even have to get involved with managing the system yourself—hosted SVN solutions are available for a few dollars a month. And several sites offer free, public source control systems for open source projects.
Why is …
What to Expect With SilverLight 1.1 Alpha
Over the past few weeks, Microsoft has been making a lot of announcements about SilverLight (formerly WPF/E). At NAB, they showcased some of its video abilities and at MIX, they announced that it would have CLR support within browsers. After talking to some of the people that developed SilverLight at MIX and working with the beta and alpha tools over the past week, I’ve come to a few conclusions about SilverLight.
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