Keith Smith's Blog : Samples & Tutorials

Celso Gomes launches Nibbles Tutorials

keiths — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 20:43:28 GMT

Designer extraordinaire, Celso Gomes, has created a new blog for designers on Silverlight, Windows Presentation Foundation and Expression Studio tutorials. The coolest feature is his tutorial engine is built in Silverlight as well. The first set of tutorials on creating Silverlight apps with Expression Blend is already available.

Celso does amazing work. His fingerprints are all over the Silverlight keynote & launch content. You can spend a few minutes learning how to do some really cool things from a masterful professional designer.

Free ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 Clinic from Microsoft Learning

keiths — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 22:57:31 GMT

I am excited to announce the launch of a new, free, 2-hour "Developing Enhanced Web Experiences with Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX Extensions" clinic created by Microsoft E-Learning. The delivery of this clinic helps us reach a major milestone in our content & training roadmap for ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 following its release back in January. The clinic was created by professional instructors from around the world with contributions and input from members of the Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX product team.

From the course description:

In this 2-hour clinic you will learn about the rich functionality that ASP.NET AJAX Extensions provides for building highly responsive and enhanced web applications. In addition to learning about the different server and client components of ASP.NET AJAX, you will also learn how to build new ASP.NET AJAX applications and how to upgrade existing ASP.NET applications to take advantage of ASP.NET AJAX.

This clinic is appropriate for experienced .NET Web Developers and Software Architects who are looking to incorporate ASP.NET AJAX within their existing and future solutions.

Here is a list of the modules and lessons covered in this clinic:

Clinic Overview
- Module Introduction
- Navigation Overview
Overview of ASP.NET AJAX
- Module Introduction
- Introduction to AJAX and ASP.NET AJAX
- Introduction to the Architecture of ASP.NET AJAX
- Module Summary
Programming with ASP.NET AJAX
- Module Introduction
- Building a Simple ASP.NET AJAX Application
- Using the AJAX Library to Enhance Web User Interfaces
- Calling Web Services and Web Methods from the Client
- Module Summary
Additional Information
- Module Introduction
- Glossary
- Next Steps

Please help me spread the word about this free training for AJAX development using the Microsoft platform. Also, send me any feedback you have. I would also like to get your feedback on follow-up lessons and content you would like to see.

Sneak Peek at CSS Editing Features in Visual Studio "Orcas"

keiths — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 23:02:04 GMT

Sam Spencer, Program Manager on the Web Development Tools team, has posted a quick overview of some of the new CSS editing capabilities coming in VS "Orcas."

He writes about how the designer and CSS property grid tool window make it easy to analyze and tweak styles applied directly to elements as well as those that are inherited.

Nikhil Does it Again

keiths — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 09:57:34 GMT

ASP.NET AJAX Architect, Nikhil Kothari, has released 3 updated server controls (one existing, two new) for ASP.NET AJAX 1.0:

UpdateHistory

A non-visual control that allows you to add history entries to the browser's navigation stack selectively for some post-backs, and not for some others. This helps fix the back button to make it work, and allows you to implement Ajax patterns such as "logical navigation" and unique URLs.

StyledUpdatePanel
A simple derived UpdatePanel that adds CSS class semantics. A simple addition, but a useful feature, nevertheless, that didn't make the feature cut.

AnimatedUpdatePanel
Another derived UpdatePanel that displays new content using a variety of animations or effects: slides, wipes, cross-fades as well as a visual highlight. This allows you to implement the "visual notification" Ajax patterns such as the one second spotlight and one second mutation.

In addition to samples, Nikhil also includes a "WPF/E"-hosted video in his post showing all 3 controls in action so you OS X users can enjoy it too.

ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 Documentation Released

keiths — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 23:41:44 GMT

The official ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 documentation was released today and includes samples, tutorials, samples in addition to API references. So we have shipped the product, released the source and now the updated docs are available for download.

We are still not done and have even more exciting training and samples coming. Stay tuned...

IIS.net DownloadCENTER Released

keiths — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 02:58:05 GMT

The DownloadCENTER at IIS.net is an inclusive community destination for discovering new components, modules and 3rd-party solutions related to the Internet Information Services (IIS) Web server.

With the worldwide release of Windows Vista tomorrow, this new section of IIS.net is particularly relevant to ASP.NET developers interested in the future of the Microsoft Web stack.

For example:

The latest release of IIS, IIS7, is included with Windows Vista and has a completely modular architecture which features over forty pluggable components that can be easily added, removed or even swapped with custom implementations.
The integrated pipeline gives ASP.NET developers a familiar event model and unified programming framework for enhancing the server.
The powerful extensibility support is available to both .NET (managed) and C/C++ (native).
The new management & configuration system and tools make it easier to setup your sites so you can spend less time troubleshooting and more time implementing.

There are already numerous downloads for all versions of IIS available today. Many are provided by Microsoft but, even more exciting are those contributed by the IIS community. In the future, the DownloadCENTER will host a large number of extensions specific to IIS7 submitted by Microsoft, ISVs and the broader IIS community.

To learn more about the DownloadCENTER, go check out Bill Staples’ blog post about it or, better yet, go visit today.

ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 Has Shipped

keiths — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 22:27:14 GMT

We have released ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 and it is now available for immediate download on our newly redesigned ASP.NET AJAX Community Site.

You can read more about this major milestone on Scott's blog.

There are 4 things that excite me the most about this release:

Now developers have a fully-supported solution for building AJAX-enabled Web experiences using ASP.NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005. No new tools are required, no new concepts to learn. You can literally stick of few controls on your page and create a more sophisticated user experience that works in all modern browsers.
The ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit is up to 30 powerful controls and counting. The Control Toolkit has brought together some of the most creative developers in the ASP.NET community and everyone can benefit from their contributions.
We will be providng access to the source code for both the Microsoft AJAX Library and the ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions to aid in debugging and provide our developer community an unprecedented level of transparency.
Last, but certainly not least, there are many partners and early adopters who have gone to great lengths to support us since our early CTPs. From ComponentArt and SPI Dynamics to Burton Snowboards, Phanfare, Pageflakes, Squeet, TitleZ and Shelfari. There are way too many to list here and more sites coming online each week so be sure to check out the Showcase.

Over the next few weeks we will be providing a ton of new content and training material to help ASP.NET AJAX newbies and veterans alike take advantage of all the newest features and capabilities. This includes a complete MSDN eLearning Clinic, MSDN Virtual Labs, tutorials, sample applications and "How Do I?" videos.

Go download ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 today and let us know what you think.

ASP.NET CSS Friendly Control Adapters 1.0 Released!

keiths — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 04:15:05 GMT

ASP.NET CSS Friendly Control Adapters 1.0 has been released and is now available to help you build XHTML 1.1 compliant markup quickly & easily using built-in ASP.NET 2.0 UI controls.

Since the kits debut it has received tons of praise and generated lots of excitement throughout the community. Since the first Beta release, Russ and his team have made several enhancements and fixes and continued to solicit feedback for ways to make the kit even better.

This final version 1.0 release includes added functionality for the following popular ASP.NET controls:

An example of new functionality provided in this release includes the TreeView control that supports cascading checkboxes, populate-on-demand, and postback events.

To get started:

If you are running a Beta or earlier version of the kit, now is the time to upgrade!

Here is a list of major changes since Beta 3:

Changes @Page Title attribute on all pages due to kit rename (this is important if upgrading)
Added ASP.NET AJAX UpdatePanel support
Fixed IE7 "ghost" menus issue
GridView adapter updated to support more styling abilities
DetailsView and FormView adapted to support TableRow.Visible

Let us know what you think via the CSS Adapters forum.