Andy Oakley : GotDotNet

User Samples v2 released today

aoakley — Sat, 08 Mar 2003 06:09:00 GMT

The User Samples v2 is up and running on GotDotNet! Plenty of changes in the backend, and an improved UI with sorting by date, rating and download count.

Work on Workspaces v1 is going well. One useful addition this week allows news and releases made by public Workspaces to be consumed as RSS feeds.

More updates as they happen..

CRR, User Samples: Almost there

aoakley — Tue, 04 Mar 2003 02:25:00 GMT

The Resource Center/User Samples upgrades are running a little behind schedule. Although we've been code complete for some time, there are still a few outstanding problems that put us a few days from releasing. Despite some challenges in migrating the old user samples information over to the CRR, we're now in a much better position with almost all site meta-data stored in a single place.

While the CRR already 'exposes' a set of web services to the ASP.NET front end of the site, they're not exactly public-ready yet so we're looking at ways these can be opened up for more general use. Passport is already used to authenticate access to sensitive methods of the service used in the Workspaces File Share area, so that would seem to be the most suitable approach for methods like Update and Vote in the CRR. It's not always trivial authenticating against a Passport web service from a standalone Windows Forms application, so we've still got some investigation to do there.

As this content becomes available as a web service, it should be a relatively easy job creating RSS feeds for the different types of information in the Resource Center. Something else to add to the todo list..

New site features nearing completion

aoakley — Sat, 15 Feb 2003 11:02:00 GMT

Common Resource Repository 1.1
We're currently in the final stages of testing a set of enhancements to the Common Resource Repository (CRR). The CRR is the underlying data store used behind several features on the site, providing a common set of interfaces and ASP.NET user controls that can be readily reused. Templating in these controls allows particular information specific to a certain area to be displayed up front, while also having a consistent paging, searching and filtering interface.

Areas making use of the CRR include the Resource Center, Workspaces directory, parts of GotDotNet Student, and shortly the new User Samples area.

The significant changes for this release include sorting (which has been sorely missed in certain areas) and ratings support. We're also getting far closer to being able to expose the data via XML Web Services that will provide another means of access to GotDotNet resource information.

User Samples 2.0
Combined with this release, the User Samples area has just undergone a major overhaul. In addition to moving the sample information (filename, description, language etc) into the CRR, we've also made some significant changes in the user interface. The samples list has been simplified, with much more information now appearing on a details page, including a simplified rating and comments system.

Watch out for these new features appearing on the site towards the end of February.