Blaine Wastell - patterns & practices client architecture guidance : Web Client

Web Client Guidance on how to partition controllers

blaine — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 22:26:32 GMT

Francis posted a question on Codeplex on how to partition controllers in our SongsController. Let us know your thoughts. He is asking how much functionality should be in the controller? Should it have searching, rating, and reviews?

3rd Public Drop Available for Web Client Guidance

blaine — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:16:11 GMT

Below are the changes for our 3rd pubic drop of the Web Client Guidance. I would like feedback on two topics:

WebForms: Top Ten Tasks for Improving Responsiveness (see documentation). Do we have the right questions? What additional questions should we address? Also what is the quality of the answers? Go here to give us feedback.
Modularity: Do you like our convention for loading concrete implementations? Are we covering the right topics in modularity?

Please put your feedback on this Codeplex discussion topic.

Reference Implementation

Modified the minification and combining of javaScript files (CombineAndMinifyHandler) to support individual files to be minified, by specifiying filepaths instead of logical group names. The combining strategy is centralized in the register.debug.js file.
Repositories were refactored. They are now registered as singletons in the container and some concurrency issues were fixed using synchronized collections.
Modularity :
- Convention over configuration: Main application loads by default all concrete implementations of IServicesSupplier and IRoutesSupplier in the assemby, avoiding to explicitly add one by one. (see Global.asax and TypesProvider)
- UIComposition: UIExtension points are provided for the "Add To Library" link in the search page and the "Follow" link in the profile page. Modules supply services that provide the necessary information to render the links. The controllers and Views in the main application pull these services and render the links.
- Hybrid MVC-Webforms: Modules can register routes that map to webforms pages.
- Added friends webforms module that supply the FollowProfileActionProvider service and register routes for the AddFriend.aspx and FriendList.aspx webforms pages (see FriendsRoutesSupplier)
- Update the MyLibrary module to supply the AddToLibrarySongActionProvider service.
- Added the InitializationOrderHint attribute to support managing the order in which services, routes, and so on are registered.

QuickStarts

Added MVC validation to the Validation Quickstart. The Quickstart now also shows validation of view models using MVC2 Beta validation with Data Annotations and Custom validators.

Documentation

Added the Sharing Validation between the Client and Server document that provides a couple of advices of how to achieve this.
Added the Authentication and Authorization document.
Added the Adding Tracing to Your JavaScript document.
Updated Validation QuickStart: Added "Validation in MVC" section.
Updated Webforms: Top Ten Tasks for improving responsiveness (very early draft).

We need your feedback on Web Client Guidance

blaine — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 19:09:03 GMT

Last week we posted our 2nd public drop for the Web Client Guidance project. We have over 1000 downloads of our first two drops which is great. We now need to your thoughts on how we are addressing the challenges of responsiveness and modularity which is why we created a discussion topic on Codeplex to get your feedback.

We are only as good as the feedback we receive, so let us know how we are doing.

Drop 2

As background, this last drop made the following changes from the first drop.

Reference Implementation

Upgraded to MVC2 Beta.
- Consistentely using RenderAction to render views (No longer using ActionFilters+RenderPartial). See SongDetails, EditProfile and Home pages.
- Removed jQuery validations and replaced them with new custom validator attributes. Attributes are used in ViewModels and by JavaScript validation methods. See Register and EditProfile pages, validators are located in the /ViewModels/Validation folder and JavaScripts are in the CustomFormValidation.debug.js file.
Added modularity infrastructure.
- Different supplier interfaces (IServiceSupplier, IRouteSupplier, IInitializable, and so on) are used to provide new Routes, Services, Initialization, and Endpoints to the main application. Registrars (ServiceRegistrar, EndpointRegistrar, RouteRegistrar, etc) are used for registering those items during the application startup (See global.asax). These allows to develop each feature in a decoupled way.
- An agnostic DI approach was used by using the CommonServiceLocator project in all infrastucture classes and interfaces. Particular implementations (such as the UnityControllerFactory and Service suppliers) are usign a UnityContainer.
- The modularity feature is not complete yet, and will be more stable in the next drop.
A new MyLibrary module was Introduced.
- The module provides a controller. See the LibraryController.cs for reference.
- Views for the Library controller are shared using MVC Areas. See /Areas/MyLibrary folder for reference.
- The module exposes a contextual rendering endpoint when the song search results are displayed. The “Add to Library” link is displayed only when this module is loaded.
- The module registers a shared service. See the MyLibrarySongDetailsProvider.cs. The Shell provides the SimpleLogger service.

QuickStarts

Enhanced the WebForms RI QuickStart. Song reviews can be added and deleted (Authorization). A preview is shown in the song results. This QuickStart is still in progress.

Documentation

Added the Script Loading document that leverages Webforms ScriptManager and MVC ScriptLoader information and considerations.
Added the UX Patterns document.
Added Webforms: Top Ten Tasks for improving responsiveness (very early draft).

First public drop for Web Client Guidance Available on Codeplex

blaine — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:59:13 GMT

The first public drop of Web Client Guidance is available on http://webclientguidance.codeplex.com.

As I mentioned in a previous blog, patterns & practices will have two Web deliverables in 2010.

Port of the Web Client Software Factory (WCSF) to Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0
Web Client Guidance

Web Client Software Factory

For WCSF, we will port it to Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0. We do not plan on adding new functionality to this release. This effort has started as Don Smith recently blogged.

Web Client Guidance

The Web Client Guidance will provide guidance on how to create rich responsive Web Applications. The focus of the project will be to:

Build Rich Responsive Web UI’s using ASP.NET MVC 2, jQuery, and AJAX library
Unit test JavaScript clients and ASP.NET applications
Separate concerns (application logic and domain model)
Create a UI architecture that includes:
- Separate presentation views from view logic
- User interface built using MVC 2 or Web Forms
- User Interface components are dynamically composed
Provide guidance on improving Web client security (authentication, authorization, prevent cross-site scripting, prevent cross-site request forgery)
Create application modules that can be developed, tested and deployed separately; flexible architecture that allows change
Allow incremental adoption of the guidance

Since we are in the early stages of creating the guidance, you will need to bear with us. We have not had a designer help us with the UI yet and the code has not gone through all its refactorings. What we have now will change based upon your feedback and our internal processes. So, give us your feedback to help us improve the guidance.

Reference Implementation Scenario

For this project, we picked a Music Store scenario. Currently you can browse songs, add your rating, write a review, see the average rating, see other users reviews, and your friends favorites.

As you can see on the page above, we added text that describes the guidance that we are demonstrating. This text defaults as hidden.

What have we done so far?

This is the first public drop of the Web Client Developer Guidance and our 5th iteration. Currently we have a Reference Implementation and 3 QuickStarts which include:

RI using MVC
RI_WebForms. This is a port of the RI, developed using MVC, to Web Forms.
Validation QuickStart. This shows server and client-side validation.
WebFormsMVCHybrid. This shows MVC functionality within a Web Forms application.

The Reference Implementation (RI) and QuickStarts currently demonstrate:

Web UI Responsiveness (JavaScript, AJAX, jQuery, and JSON)
Unit tests for JavaScript and ASP.NET MVC
Acceptance tests
Separate Presentation Patterns
- Model View Controller (MVC)
- Web Forms with Model View Presenter (MVP)
Separation of concerns (application logic and domain model)
Authentication, Authorization, and Input Validation
Reuse of MVC widgets across pages

UI Responsiveness and Separate Presentation have been our biggest focus thus far. Let’s look at what we have explored in these areas.

UI Responsiveness

Architecture & Design

Progressive Enhancement: Displays an ASP.NET Web page if JavaScript is not enabled
Usage of jQuery and ASP.NET Ajax Library
Separation of business logic from views for both MVC and Web Forms

JavaScript

Optimize page load time and transitions using Microsoft Ajax Minifier and Microsoft Ajax Client Script Loader. Check out CombineAndMinifyHandler.cs
Follow Yslow guideline where appropriate
Unit test JavaScript using QUunit. Check out the Scripts solution folder in the MusicStore.Web.Tests project.
Browser back & forward buttons (works when URL does not change). Check ResultsController.debug.js

UX Patterns

Predictive Fetch. See ResultsController.debug.js
Inline edit (profile fields & rating). Edit.aspx page.
Single page interface. See the documentation
Unique URL Pattern. See ResultsController.debug.js
Progress Indicator. See SearchResultsUI.debug.js

Separated Presentation

For separate presentation, we are exploring three scenarios – Model View Controller (MVC), Web Forms with Model View Presenter (MVP), and Hybrid with MVC and Web Forms/ MVP.

MVC

For MVC we demonstrate how to unit test both the browser and the Web server. Additionally we demonstrate how to compose the user interface from reusable “widgets”. Check out Index.aspx where we display FriendsFavoriteSongs. When you run the RI, you need to login as User to see the Friend’s Top Songs.

MVP

For MVP we are in the process of porting the Music Store RI to Web Forms and MVP. Checkout the RI_Webforms QuickStart in the QuickStart folder. In this QuickStart we are reusing the JavaScript code from the RI where it makes sense.

Hybrid

We know that many of you have Web Forms sites that you want to start taking advantage of MVC so we decided to provide some guidance on the hybrid scenario. Right now we have a simple QuickStart called WebFormsMVCHybrid.

Documentation

The documentation includes draft guidance on cross-site scripting, cross-site request forgery, update panel, optimizing page load times, progressive enhancements, single page interface, UX Patterns and more.

What’s coming in future drops?

The next drop we are focusing on finishing the Web Forms QuickStart and starting modularity. Once these are complete and we address your feedback, we will move on to exception management, logging, skinning the user interface, and potentially some form of automation to help you create rich responsive Web applications. Additionally we will create a lot more documentation to go with the code.

Where do you get it?

You get it from codeplex. The current drop is the one from Nov 13th.

How do you consume the guidance?

There is a readme.txt in the drop that provides a list of dependencies as well as where you can get them. It also provides instructions on how to run the reference implementation, run JavaScript unit tests, and acceptance tests.

Feedback

As I stated earlier, we are early in the process of creating the Web Client Guidance. Check it out and let us know how we are doing? You can either leave feedback on the Codeplex site with a tag of “Web Guidance v-Next” or you can leave comments on my blog.

patterns and practices wants you to take the Web guidance survey

blaine — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:24:40 GMT

As I mentioned in a December blog post, the patterns & practices team plans to create new Web guidance. We need your help prioritizing the requirements through a survey that just went live. My blog post outlines the process that we will go through to define scope for the Web Guidance.

As an update, we decided to split the effort into 2 projects. The first project will be to update the Web Client Software Factory (WCSF) to run on Visual Studio 2010. The second project will take a fresh look at creating new Web Guidance. We took a similar approach when we created Prism (Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight). Your feedback from the survey will help define the scope for this second project.

So, go take the survey and let us know your priorities.

Update on SCSF, WCSF, and Software Factories

blaine — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 02:21:13 GMT

A number of customers have asked about our plans for the Web Client Software Factory and the Smart Client Software Factory (SCSF). In a previous post I announced that we are planning on updating the Web Client Software Factor for Visual Studio 2010. We also plan to update SCSF to run on Visual Studio 2010.

Don Smith posted a blog with our high level plans for the software factories and GAT/GAX for Visual Studio 2010. Check it out here. The key message here is that we at patterns and practices are committed to refreshing the software factories and GAT/GAX for Visual Studio 2010. As Don says in his post, help us understand the most important scenarios for you. Post a comment to this blog.

Roadmap for WCSF

blaine — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 09:01:00 GMT

A number of customers have asked about the future of the Web Client Software Factory. I want to announce that we are starting to plan for the next release of the Web Client Software Factory. We plan to start the project in the spring of 2009 and plan to deliver this next version with Visual Studio 2010. I need your feedback as to the scope for this next release. The overall process for this release is the following.

Announce intent for release and ask for scope requests
Obtain feedback from you and other customers to create candidate scope list
Publish survey to prioritize candidate scope
Build vision/scope from prioritized scope
Start project & deliver the project (if only it were this easy

We will take feedback from the following sources for the release:

Obtain feedback from my blog and Michael Puleio's blog

Obtain feedback from www.codeplex.com/websf

Obtain feedback from advisory board

Obtain feedback from direct customer discussions

We are considering a number of new features for Web Client Software Factory. This list is to get the discussion started but it will not be the final scope which is why we need your feedback. We will not have time to implement all of these features and I am confident that you will provide many other ideas that are not on the list.

List to start the discussion:

Unity for a container
Composite support for MVC
Support for Web pages through dynamic data
Eliminate the use of a base class similar to what we did for Prism
Allow library to be pluggable so you can use your own components including the container
Support for Silverlight controls on your Web pages
Allow Web Client Software Factory controls to be reused with SharePoint
How to distribute logic between layers of the architecture
Improve performance of CWAB

I need your feedback on what you think we should focus on. I also need your help to build a list of customers that are using the Web Client Software Factory. I constantly have customers that are asking who else is using it. Additionally it is helpful to have this list to put the business case together for how much budget we should spend on this next release. So please help me build my list of customers.

As for support, we will continue to provide support for WCSF through our Codeplex site.

Announcing 6 new patterns and practices releases

blaine — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 21:28:52 GMT

The patterns & practices team just published 6 new releases in the last two weeks. Ajoy discusses the releases on his blog. The new releases include:

Enterprise Library v4.1
Unity Application Block v1.2
Distributed Agile Development white paper and Agile showcase
Application Architecture Guide v2.0 (Beta 1)
SharePoint Development Guidance v1.0
Acceptance Testing Guidance

Check out the new guidance as there is truly lots of new and useful guidance.

Scope for Prism 2.0

blaine — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 21:58:25 GMT

In my previous post, I mentioned that we planned on creating guidance for Composite Silverlight applications. David Hill just blogged on our plans for Prism 2.0. From this survey we heard you wanted guidance on:

Multi-targeting controller, presenters, services, and models for both Silverlight and WPF
UI Composition for Silverlight
Modular Development for Silverlight
Data access

Based upon this feedback we decided to create guidance that will help you create Multi-targeted Silverlight and WPF applications and Composite Silverlight applications. We plan to use the existing Prism...I mean Composite Application Guidance for WPF as the starting point.

Based upon your feedback, we decided to guidance on SharePoint Intranet Development. This includes help with solution architecture, solution development, and packaging and deployment.

Elevator Pitch:

Target Customer: Primary: Silverlight Professional Developers (Includes Architects); Secondary: Human Designer

Statement of Need: Build new multi-targeted Silverlight and WPF client applications maintained by multiple teams (composite application).

Product Name and Capability:

Prism...Composite Application Guidance for Silverlight
Reusable components, guidance, automation and samples for developing composite WPF and Silverlight applications
Enable cross-targeting of applications for WPF and Silverlight easier.

Key Benefit:

Provides infrastructure for developing and maintaining WPF and Silverlight composite applications
User Interface components are dynamically composed
Application modules are developed, tested and deployed by separate teams
Allows reusable components across WPF and Silverlight applications

Focus Areas of the Guidance:

Multi-targeting:

Developer needs to reuse controllers, presenters, services, and models across Silverlight and WPF: Must Have
Developer needs reuse unit tests across Silverlight and WPF: Delighter
Developer needs to reuse validation across Silverlight and WPF: Delighter
Developer needs reuse UI elements across Silverlight and WPF (styling to views): Delighter

Composite Application Guidance for Silverlight

Developer needs guidance on creating a Composite User Interface for Silverlight: Must Have
Developer needs guidance on creating modular application for Silverlight: Must Have

Line of Business Guidance for Silverlight

Developer needs guidance on how to query data and send updates to the server: Delighter
Developer needs guidance on how to create validation rules: Delighter
Developer needs guidance on how to authenticate and authorize users: Delighter
Developer needs guidance on how to cache data on the client: Delighter
Developer needs guidance on logging and exception handling: Delighter

Note that the Must Have's we plan on addressing. The Delighter's we will complete as many as we have time which of course could be none. Give us your feedback on the scope. Are we tackling the right set of challenges?

As an fyi, David Hill recently joined the p&p team and we are really happy to have him on board. I have had the opportunity to work with David in many different roles over the last 5 years. David played an advisor for some of our early Smart Client work which included the Offline Application Block and CAB. He also helped us write the Smart Client Architecture and Design Guide. More recently David was an advisor from the product team for Prism 1.0 and played a big role in helping us simplify the experience of adopting Prism. We are glad that he will be "pig" on Prism 2.0 for those that understand the pig and chicken analogy from SCRUM.

patterns & practices SharePoint Drop is Available on Codeplex

blaine — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 08:33:15 GMT

In a previous post, I talked about starting a new project to create SharePoint guidance. We heard you need guidance to help with:

Unit testing and debugging
Packaging and deployment
Setting up a team development environment
Unclear which SharePoint features/ components to use and when
Solution maintenance/upgrade
How and when is SharePoint Designer applicable

Based upon your feedback, we decided to guidance on SharePoint Intranet Development. This includes help with solution architecture, solution development, and packaging and deployment.

Elevator Pitch:

Target Customer: Primary: SharePoint Professional Developers (Includes Architects); Secondary: SharePoint IT Pro's

Statement of Need: Guidance for architecting, designing, building and maintaining intranet sites that require collaboration, human workflow, BI and LOB integration, and administration capabilities.

Product Name and Capability:

Intranet Application Development Using SharePoint
Reference implementation, application architecture, and library for developing departmental transactional applications.

Key Benefit:

Provides a reference implementation that demonstrates an appropriate use of SharePoint
Guidance on which SharePoint capabilities to use for implementing the specific scenario
Guidance on the SDLC as it relates to the specific scenario
Common pitfalls in SharePoint development
Strategies for testing and debugging
Improves predictability of developing similar SharePoint solutions.

Focus Areas of the Guidance:

Solution Architecture:

Architect/developer needs to decide which SharePoint components should be used
Architect/developer has to decide if they should be writing custom code
Architect/developer has to decide between storing data in a SharePoint list or a database

Solution Development:

A multi-site development team needs to setup their development environment and processes
Developer needs to unit test and debug SharePoint code
Developer needs to define the Visual Studio solution structure

Packaging and Deployment

SharePoint solution must be deployed to test, staging and production
Developer needs to troubleshoot deployment issues
Developer needs to upgrade an existing solution package

Here is a link to the vision/scope. Let us know your thoughts on the vision.

We plan to deliver the guidance in the late fall. Here a link to our most current drop. Checkout how we unit test our current version of the Reference Implementation. We are using a tool call TypeMock. Unit testing was one of the most requested areas of guidance for Sharepoint.

Composite for Silverlight Survey

blaine — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 08:05:19 GMT

We are the planning phase to create a composite library for Silverlight. We need your help to prioritize the requirements for this new guidance. Here is a link to the survey.

Once we complete the vision/scope for the project, we will post the vision/scope to CodePlex so stay tuned.

Do we listen to the community?

blaine — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:51:33 GMT

Does the patterns & practices client team listen to the community? It is easy for someone in our position to fall into the "ivory tower" trap and not listen to customers. Within patterns & practices we work hard at listening to the community when working on releases. I am interested in hearing both the good and bad of the client team listening / not listening to the community. So please share as we work on improving our assets and helping you create line of business applications that deliver business results for your customers.

Mike Puleio worked with the development team to close issues identified by the smart client community. He recently blogged about the number of items recently closed:

Out of 89 open work items/ issues, we closed 45 yesterday. A number of these had been fixed in the May 2007 release and never closed, a number were fixed in this release, and some were related to different weekly drops.
Out of the top 25 items (by community votes), we closed 13.
Looked at another way, we closed 1/2 of the open issues, and 1/2 of the top issues.

I want you perspective on if this is good or is it bad. I view this as good, but I do not want to be in the "ivory tower" so I want to hear from you? When thinking about the question of is the client team listening to the community, I ask:

What are we doing well?
What do we need to improve?
What should we do more of?
What should we stop doing?

With this feedback, if you can prioritize it I would appreciate it. Just like on your projects, we have limited resources that we need to figure out where to spend our money to have the most customer impacts. By the way the feedback right now is timely given we are working on creating our fiscal 09 plan.

So let us know your thoughts.

Smart Client Software Factory - April 2008 Release for Visual Studio 2008 is now available on MSDN

blaine — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 17:33:18 GMT

As Mike announced in his blog yesterday, we released an updated version of the Smart Client Software Factory for Visual Studio 2008. As previously discussed in my blog, this release provides:

Support for Visual Studio 2008.
Fixes for bugs identified by the community on CodePlex.
Side-by-side usage of the April 2008 Guidance Package with the May 2007 Guidance Package.
Support for Enterprise Library 3.1
Documentation in HTML format on MSDN

The release does require Guidance Automation Extensions - February 2008 Release (GAX). When you upgrade to the Guidance Automate Extensions - February 2008 release you can install it on top of your existing version of GAX and you no longer need to uninstall your Guidance Automate Toolkit Packages.

Once Enterprise Library 4.0 is released, we will provide guidance in the Smart Client knowledge base on how to upgrade to this version of Enterprise Library. If you need to run on Visual Studio 2005, you should download the Smart Client Software Factory - May 2007 release.

Here is a snapshot of how you can access the documentation in HTML format on MSDN from the SCSF Home Page:

You can access the following topics in HTML format here:

The downloads for this release can be found:

Please note that the source code and documentation is the duplicated in the factory and in the separated downloads. This provides you the opportunity to view them without having to install the entire factory.

As always, provide feedback on CodePlex community site which is www.codeplex.com/smartclient.

Web Client Bundles for .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.5 Available on Download Center

blaine — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 07:38:49 GMT

We just posted the Web Client Assets (formerly known as Bundles) for both .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.5 on the download center. You can get links to the downloads from the Web Client Factory Home Page or from the Bundles Pages on CodePlex. If you are not familiar with the Guidance Assets, they are small packages of guidance whose purpose is to allow users to quickly, conveniently, and easily learn and evaluate a concept. Additionally you can use Assets individually or as a whole.

Note: If want to use them as a whole package, then you should use the Web Client Software Factory.

Although an Assets can contain any type of guidance, it typically includes the following elements:

Source code: QuickStarts and related artifacts.
Binaries: Application block binaries required by the QuickStarts .
Written documentation: QuickStarts description and How-To topics.
Guidance Package: Visual Studio Automation for performing development activies in accordance with our guidance.
Reference Implementation: Applications that illustrate usage of our guidance in action.

All of the Assets, except for the Automation Asset, are zip files.

.NET 3.5 Assets for Visual Studio 2008:

.NET 2.0 Assets for Visual Studio 2005:

Ok go download them :).

Composite Web Application Block on Unity

blaine — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 01:41:31 GMT

Mike Puleio recently posted blog entries on how to convert Composite Web Application Block (CWAB) to use Unity. Here are the links to the blog posts:

- First post

- Second post

If this is something you are interested in, check it out. Unity simplifies the CWAB.