Dave Glover "Down Under (Oz)" : ASP.NET Editorial

Dimension Data/Microsoft .NET and ASP.NET Session: Melbourne 21 Sept, 2006

dglover — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 12:19:00 GMT

Great to see so many people at the Dimension Data Learning Services .NET/ASP.NET session last night.

I know for a lot of you this was all new stuff so fingers crossed it all made sense!!

You can find the demo code, demo notes, code snippets etc all at http://projectdistributor.net/Releases/Release.aspx?releaseId=290

And you can find the PowerPoint Slide deck here http://projectdistributor.net/Releases/Release.aspx?releaseId=393, so please feel free to rerun:)

Thanks for making it along and thanks to DDLS for hosting, Cheers Dave

Microsoft® Expression Web Beta 1 is now available for download:)

dglover — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 04:39:00 GMT

Hi there, well if you made it to Student TechEd Day or various User Groups then you'll have seen my session on Expression Web Designer and hopefully like you'll be pretty excited by the possibilities.

There is fantastic support for markup standards; HTML, XHTML and CSS etc, the tracing, design and rendering support and the multi browser previews.

Well Expression Web Beta 1 is now available for download and it's pretty darn good, it comes with a minor name tweak, it's now called just Expression Web, the Designer part of the name has been dropped.

It'll coexist on systems with current released versions of Office, 2003 etc. But if you are trailing Office 2007 then it will only coexist with Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh.

See http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/web_designer/wd_free_trial.aspx and have fun.

I've attached my demo notes to this blog item to help you get started.

Feel free to post comments with links to your creations off this entry.

Cheers, Dave

How to stop VSTS Team Explorer from auto connecting

dglover — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 11:51:00 GMT

This is a very handy tip that I spotted on Nick's blog just before TechEd. You too may have missed this and it's very handy especially when you are on the move or can't always connect to your Team Foundation Server.

"add a DWORD value called AutoLoadServer under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\TeamFoundation and set the value to 0."

ahhhh...:)

See Nick's and and Noah's blogs - thanks guys!!

Dave

Cascading Style Sheets and the Garden of Zen

dglover — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 02:33:00 GMT

Stewart sent me through a link to a pretty cool site at http://www.csszengarden.com/, it's a great place to see the magic of CSS in action, see how the pros do it and hey maybe contribute something yourself.

Thanks StewartB

Installed, uninstalled, reinstalled SQL Express a few times and found your database files don't attached no more?

dglover — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 13:29:00 GMT

Well if you are anything like me and you've installed, uninstalled and reinstalled SQL Express a few times (system rebuilds etc) then you might have struck this problem message

"Failed to generate a user instance of SQL Server due to a failure in starting the process for the user instance. The connection will be closed"

uhhh, so what's all that about then!!

Well http://www.differentpla.net/node/487 is a god, thanks dude and it may save you some time too.

Dave

Atlas.ASP.NET site spiced up and ready to Mix06 it!

dglover — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 13:17:00 GMT

Well if you can sex up a dev website then I reckon the Atlas boys have done just that with with updated content, docs, demos and showcases sites with some sizzle, nice!!

Check it out at http://atlas.asp.net

Cheers, Dave

ASP.NET Atlas Session in Melbourne/Oz Tuesday March 21st at lunch time

dglover — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 05:49:00 GMT

If you've not had a chance to see Atlas in action then come one down and I show you just how cool it's going to be to build more interactive AJAX style web applications with ease.

It's happening at the CITC, 257 Collins Street, Melbourne at 12pm.

You can register here

Session is as follows...

BUILDING WEB APPLICATIONS WITH ASP.NET "ATLAS"

Wanting to build more interactive Web applications then this Atlas session is the one for you? ASP.NET “Atlas” makes building cross platform AJAX style applications a whole lot simpler and is a package of new Web development technologies that integrates an extensive set of client script libraries with the rich, server-based development platform of ASP.NET 2.0. With “Atlas”, you can take advantage of the best of ASP.NET and server-side code while doing much of the work in the browser, enabling a richer user experience.

Date: Tuesday 21 March 2006
Time: 12pm
Venue: CITC, 257 Collins St, Melbourne

Registration: Register directly with Microsoft by following this link: http://msevents-as.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=120467971&Culture=en-AU

There is no charge for Victoria.NET members to attend this session, but space is limited and pre-registration is essential.

Coffee/tea will be served; please bring your own lunch.

WebDU ASP.NET V2 and Atlas Demos are now posted

dglover — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 02:44:00 GMT

For those of you at the WebDU Conference last week who made it to our breakfast session on March 3rd then you can find my whirlwind demo at http://projectdistributor.net/Projects/Project.aspx?projectId=194.

It's a combination of the Visual Studio 2005 Launch ASP.NET (Whidbey Rocks) demo with the latest Atlas (for AJAX style web apps) Jan 2006 bits. The download project includes all the Atlas bits so you don't need to download Atlas to get this sample working.

Check out the Tickets.aspx page for the Parent/Child Data Binding with the partial refresh Atlas support, no pesty post backs, hmmm nice and smooth!! Check out the site.master for the autocomplete search box - see the words.txt file for the demo word list

For more info on Atlas see http://www.nikhilk.net/AtlasM1.aspx and http://atlas.asp.net for the Quickstart Tutorials.

Dave

PS, you can load the project with the copy of Visual Studio 2005 you got from the conference or use the Free of Charge "Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition" available from http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/

Multilingual ASP.NET and Windows Vista Demos and Slides from the Melbourne "Open Road 2006 Multilingual Conference" are posted

dglover — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 03:03:00 GMT

You can find the slides and demos that I delivered on Feb 7th at the "Open Road 2006 Multilingual Conference" on Darren's most excellent Project Distributor site.

Included in the zip file are the ASP.NET V2 Demos and the ASP.NET and Windows Vista Internationalisation Slide Decks.

If you've built an ASP.NET app and wanting to make it multilingual then it's pretty darn simple.

Load up your aspx page in design or source view
From Tools Menu select "Generate Local Resources"
This will generate you a resources file matching the name of the aspx page in the App_LocalResources. eg Default.aspx would create a Default.aspx.resx file.
Create a copy of this file in the App_LocalResources directory and name it according to "RFC 3066 – Tags for identifying languages", or check out the languageCode-CountryCodes under IE -> Internet Options -> Languages.
Examples:
1. For French Canadian if you created a local resources file for default.aspx then you'd create a default.aspx.fr-ca.resx file.
2. To create resources just for French then you'd create a file called default.aspx.fr.resx
3. If the browser language was set to "fr-ca" then the default.aspx.fr-ca.resx resources would be used
4. If the browser language was set to "fr" or another French speaking country such as "fr-ch" the resources would be drawn from the default.aspx.fr.resx, failing not being able to find the required resource the Resource Manager would fall back to default.aspx.resx.
5. Check out the slides at http://projectdistributor.net/Releases/Release.aspx?releaseId=312 and see http://www.asp.net/QuickStart/aspnet/doc/localization/default.aspx

The ASP.NET Localize Server Control

Use the "Localize" Server Control to add string literals rather then typing them directly on to a page. The Localize control has design time support, so unlike a "Label" or "Literal" you can add text directly to the control on the page.

The advantage of using the "Localize" control is that text in the control will be picked up by the "Create Local Resources" generator tool, a local resource will be created and it'll make your transition to multilingual a whole lot easier.

There is a W3C Working Group working on design guidelines for multilingual sites such as dealing with languages that flow right to left. When I find the link I'll post it as a comment against this posting...

Other useful resources include:-

ASP.NET Quick Starts: http://www.asp.net/QuickStart/aspnet/doc/localization/default.aspx
Michele Leroux Bustamante’s Globalization Site: http://www.dotnetdashboard.net/sessions/globalization.aspx
Michele’s Blog: http://www.dasblonde.net
General guidelines on internationalization: http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev
Developing International Software

Cheers Dave

ASP.NET V2.0 Internationalisation/Internationalization Resources

dglover — Sun, 05 Feb 2006 17:27:00 GMT

Currently prepping for the OpenRoad conference here in Melbourne and spotted a excellent resource page on "Internationalizing Your Application" at http://www.asp.net/QuickStart/aspnet/doc/localization/default.aspx, if you are about to start on a multi lingual web project then it's definitely worth checking it out

Oh and you can download font packs such as Japanese from here to get the samples working properly...

Cheers, Dave

Atlas ASP.NET Demos and PowerPoint Slides from Wednesday's ADNUG session now on the web

dglover — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 13:21:00 GMT

When I first saw Atlas I was a tad sceptical, a lot of code and not a great deal of tools to make it easy!! Well if you were in the same boat as me then check out the Dec Atlas bits from http://atlas.asp.net, a lot has been cleaned up, docs are better and some good samples to get going with!!

I've gone from hmmm, to this stuff is awesome, I can start doing AJAX style apps without a serious JavaScript implant and when all the tooling is all in place I can now see how easy it's going to be to build cross browser AJAX style apps that just work oh and I'll get client side debugging and trace support too (for when it doesn't just work:-))!!

I've put the demos and PowerPoint presentation from Wednesday's ADNUG session at http://projectdistributor.net/Releases/Release.aspx?releaseId=309. Unzip the file and just run the demos from the file system.

To get up and running with Atlas, then you'll need

Visual Studio 2005 or download for free Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition
The Atlas bits from http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/info/future/atlastemplate/.
Then check out:-
1. Documentation and Hands on Labs at http://www.asp.net
2. Quick Start Tutorials at http://www.asp.net

This is a really unobtrusive installation (though not production ready), all it does is to install an Atlas ASP.NET template.

Start up Visual Studio 2005 (or Express Edition), create a new web project and you'll see the "Atlas ASP.NET Project" Template. Select it and it'll load a new project with the Javascript libraries and the atlas.dll, simple and best of all it doesn't monkey around with any of your system files!!

When the Atlas "Go Live" licence is available you'll be able to run Atlas Web Apps on your existing ASP.NET V2 infrastructure without any changes...

My current two favourites Atlas feature are

Incremental Refreshes and Partial Updates with the UpdatePanel
- Create a page with a gridview as normal - set up paging etc, then wrap it as follows
  - <atlas:UpdatePanel runat="server" id="searchUpdatePanel">
    <ContentTemplate>
    <asp:GridView runat="server" ... />
    </ContentTemplate>
    </atlas:UpdatePanel>
- Add the scriptmanager tag above the form tag
  - <atlas:ScriptManager runat="server" id="scriptManager" EnablePartialRendering="true" />
- and run, it doesnt get a lot easier!! see http://www.nikhilk.net/AtlasM1.aspx
Server side Auto Complete - again see http://www.nikhilk.net/AtlasM1.aspx

As per the PPT, great reference points for more info are

Cheers and hope you have as much fun getting started with Atlas as I have - it'll be time well spent!!

Dave