Matt Gibbs blog : Atlas

An excerpt from the Professional ASP.NET AJAX book

mattgi — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 10:34:00 GMT

Jim Minatel from Wrox has arranged for an excerpt from the book to be made available online. It's a section titled Enabling Intenret Explorer for Debuggng ASP.NET authored by Dan Wahlin. You can check it out at: http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-305946.html

Wrox releases Professional ASP.NET AJAX title

mattgi — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 22:20:00 GMT

Well, I've been asked three times now why I haven't blogged about my book, so here it is. I worked with Dan Wahlin and Wrox to create a book about ASP.NET AJAX. The book covers the UpdatePanel, ScriptManager and other server controls, discusses how the Microsoft AJAX Library works and how you can more easily invoke web services, provide client-side event handlers, debug and deploy your AJAX application and write custom AJAX controls. Check it out at Amazon

At this point, we are only taking high priority fixes and will release before too much longer. If you encounter problems, please let us know. And thanks to those who have provided feedback so far. It has helped us prioritize our work and while we haven't been able to include everything we would like for this release, I do think we have a solid release coming and am looking forward to adding more features in our next release.

Using PageMethods to access Session data

mattgi — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 11:30:00 GMT

Here is one of the samples I was asked for at TechEd last week. How to access session state data from the browser. There are two C# methods in the page. One overrides the the OnLoad method and stores a value in session state for demonstration purposes. The other is a static method decorated with the WebMethod attribute that can be called from JavaScript. It retrieves the value for the given key from session state. Currently, only static methods are callable use the PageMethods object in the browser.

In the JavaScript code, there is a pageLoad method which will be called automatically by the ASP.NET AJAX script library. The PageMethods object is used to invoke the method on the server. It provides callbacks for success and error. The success callback just displays the value retrieved from session state on the server.

<%@ Import Namespace="System.Web.Services" %>
<script runat="server" language="C#">
protected override void OnLoad(EventArgs e) {
HttpContext.Current.Session["foo"] = "bar";
}

[WebMethod]
public static string Session(string key) {
    return (string)HttpContext.Current.Session[key];
}
</script>

<script type="text/javascript">
function pageLoad(sender, arg) {
    PageMethods.Session("foo", OnCallComplete, OnCallError);
}

function OnCallComplete(result, userContext, methodName) {
    alert(result);
}

function OnCallError(error, userContext, methodName) {
    if(error !== null) {
        alert(error.get_message());
    }
}
</script>
<form runat="server">
<asp:scriptmanager runat="server" id="scriptmanager" />
</form>

Starting a Blog

mattgi — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 22:58:00 GMT

While I have been preparing for my TechEd Europe presentation next week, I have been asked several times for the blog address where I will post my slides. Starting a blog has been on my list of things to do for some time, so I guess this is the forcing function. I am a Development Manager on the UI Framework and Services team, responsible for ASP.NET and ASP.NET AJAX among other things. My intent here is to share info about the technologies I work on, and respond to common inquiries about developing applications. Developer feedback is key for guiding our product decisions, so don't hesitate to send me your thoughts.

A quick note of background about me: I joined the IIS web server team at Microsoft in 1997 working on what is now generally referred to as "classic" ASP. I worked on the IIS5 release, shipped the Mobile Controls for v1.0 of the .NET Framework, and then helped deliver .NET Framework versions 1.1 and 2.0. Now we are working on the ASP.NET AJAX Extensions as well as the next release of the .NET Framework code-named "Orcas."