Mark Johnston's Blog : Atlas and ASP.NET

Free web application hackers workshop coming up

markjo — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 18:41:16 GMT

SPI Dynamics are running a web application hacking workshop at Microsoft UK campus on the 26th April and it is FREE for anyone to attend. Thankfully, it's not free for wannabe hackers but is all about helping web developers secure their applications and code from known security vulnerabilities through the browser.

What you will learn:

The evolution of Web applications and why they need to be secured
Advanced hacking techniques like SQL Injection, Blind SQL Injection, Session Hijacking and several other hacks
Why current HTTP security measures fall short
Specific methods for integrating Web application security into your company’s software development and implementation processes

Who should attend:
Developers, QA professionals and security professionals who are interested in Web application security.

Link to SPI Dynamics Web Application Hacking Workshop

Reach/richness of user experience technologies

markjo — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 14:29:00 GMT

Mike Taulty in my team posted a great diagram describing the reach/richness of Microsoft presentation technologies.

This really sums up the world of presentaiton technologies and web technologies which I hope to present on for the next year or two! I've got a LOT to learn - the first two (incl. ASP.NET) I'm cool with but the rest is all being crammed into my head as we speak :-)

Spectrum of richness/"reachness"

ASP.NET Ajax Beta Released

markjo — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 16:52:19 GMT

After numerous ASP.NET 'Atlas' CTPs there is now an ASP.NET Ajax v1.0 Beta for people to play with. Looks like it has just gone live (2.50AM west-coast USA).

This is quite a significant jump in the product shipping cycle and brings it one step closer to being released with out any 'CTP' or 'Beta' suffix!

Technorati tags: asp.net, ajax, beta

Getting design time rendering of ASP.NET Themes in Expression Web

markjo — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 14:22:00 GMT

MikeO on my team asked me what was Expression Web's support for ASP.NET Themes - a great bit of functionality in ASP.NET 2.0 which allows developers to dictate the appearance of controls in a web application using template files with a .skin extension and also using style sheets. I didn't know the answer, so off I toddled to the product manager in Corp, Wayne Smith, who quickly came back with the solution.

So, to test this out I downloaded an ASP.NET Starter Kit from www.asp.net such as the Personal Web Site starter kit which includes ASP.NET Themes in the solution. I installed the project template and created a sample personal web site to see what Expression Web did out of the box with Themes - not much was the answer and I didn't know why:

As you can see above - there is no style being applied to the .master page. This is where Wayne and subsequent searching on the web found the solution. To get design time rendering it is *really* simple, just add the following line to your web.config file (the pageBaseType isn't necessary):

<pages pageBaseType="PageBase" styleSheetTheme="Red" />

And as a result you get this:

I am assuming that this should also work in Visual Studio but haven't investigated.

tags: asp.net, expression web, themes

Ruby on .NET and WPF revolution

markjo — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 11:09:00 GMT

I get a regular email from the people over on www.theserverside.net and the most recent one included some interesting stuff for web developers and those interested in developing clients using WPF.

First, people are porting Ruby onto the .NET Framework which could bring the no-fuss-easy-to-get-going style of Rails to web development on the Microsoft platform. I think this could be really big and beneficial to both MS and non-MS developers using RoR. I know an ex-Imagine Cup competitor who is hopefully going out to work for Microsoft in Redmond to work on future developer tools and he should be considering pushing this as a must have for hobbyist and new audiences!! :)

Ruby on Rails article on TSS

An secondly, there was some commentary on why Windows developers should ignore Windows Presentation Foundation. I agree with a lot of what the author has to say as I have yet to get my head down and start developing on the platform (and I guess I've never been a Windows client developer - *shock and awe*). That will change and I am putting this here as a placeholder which I want to revisit on how developers can stop ignoring this great technology and start creating really great user experiences. How am I going to do all that....first step is get my head around Charles Petzold's new book:

Applications = Code + Markup

tags: ruby, web dev, wpf, charles petzold, theserverside

NextDesignNow - great resource for budding UX gurus like me!

markjo — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 22:46:00 GMT

http://www.nextdesignnow.com/

David Shadle is a User eXperience Evangelist at Microsoft in Redmond and maintains a great set of resources for all the different presentation technologies. I have started to work my way through some of the links and there is a wealth of information to read. Check it out...