Ajaxus place on the net

Yesterday from Microsoft released the AJAX CDN. The Microsoft Ajax CDN enables you to significantly improve the performance of ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC applications that use ASP.NET AJAX or jQuery. The service is available for free, does not require any registration, and can be used for both commercial and non-commercial purposes.

ASP.NET 4.0 will make it especially easy for ASP.NET Web Forms developers to take advantage of the CDN. By setting one property of the ScriptManager control, you will be able to redirect all requests for the built-in ASP.NET JavaScript files to the CDN and improve the performance of your Web Forms applications.

You can get a full listing of the JavaScript libraries (and associated URLs) we already have loaded in our CDN cache here: www.asp.net/ajax/cdn

Sorry for not writing lately but I have been distracted with some other projects. Here are some interesting books I came across yesterday. Enjoy!

Programming Microsoft® ASP.NET 3.5

Programming Microsoft LINQ

Introducing Microsoft® SilverlightTM 2 Second Edition

Today at .Net Developers Journal was posted this interesting article by Judy Lee. Check it out here as Judy makes fast comparison of these products related to their projects. At the bottom is the final conclusion table.
Today, RIA technology is widely used, also referred to as Rich Internet Clients (RICs). RICs provide the usability, responsiveness, and reuse of client/server applications with the deployment, manageability, and availability of a traditional Web application. Many websites are using DHTML and AJAX technology in HTML pages. Another very popular technology is Flash. How about Silverlight, though?

RIAs offer the flexibility and ease of use of an intelligent desktop application, and add the broad reach of traditional web applications with an entirely new kind of web experience that is engaging, interactive, lightweight, and flexible.

DHTML and AJAX

We used DHTML and AJAX technology in HTML pages in some of our .NET outsourced projects. However, we encountered problems of browser incompatibility. (For example, DOM is quite different in IE and in Safari.)

Although it is possible to make this kind of web application work in all browsers, it will take the developer much time and it is very difficult to maintain when the browsers update.

Flash

Another very popular technology is Flash, it doesn’t have any browsers compatibility problems, but it’s very hard to integrate with .NET. Integrating Flash demands that .NET developers make a special effort, and since our specialty is .NET software outsourcing, Flash is not the best choice for us.

Silverlight

Silverlight is a cross browser technology, so there’s no browser compatibility problem. Plus it integrates with .NET very well, so it is easier to use and develop. Silverlight does not have controls at present, but in version 2.0, many controls will be released for Web designers. Those controls will make Web development easier and faster.

Based on the features supported by Silverlight (see our chart below) more web page elements and properties can be controlled than DHTML&AJAX. Silverlight also offers a good user experiences.

Source

Quite interesting study from Coach Wei, of Nexaweb and Apache:

Introduction:
Ajax application performance largely depends on the performance of JavaScript execution and browser DOM operations. I’ve heard various people saying various things about Ajax performance. Some people say JavaScript is just too slow. Some people say that the problem is not JavaScript but rather Browser DOM being too slow. Some people would then argue that browser DOM operations are fine. The problem is Internet Explorer that is unbelievably slow.

More specifically, here is a list of Ajax performance issues:
1. Array performance on all browsers in general
2. HTML DOM performance in general
3. Calculating Computed Box Model and Style
4. FireFox: “eval”, Object Creation and “in” Operation
5. “String” Manipulation Performance on IE
6. Safari: “pop” Operation Performance

Check out the whole study here

With this tool you can easily create book covers with a template similar to the one used by O’Reilly Press. Yesterday with just few click I have created this one:

Check it out here

Once again Microsoft brings some knowledge to the masses This time its free e-books. All the headings speak for them selfs and with few words these books are MUST HAVE for every developer. Only few chapters are included in pdf’s as you are encouraged to buy them! Here is the content:

Introducing Microsoft LINQ by Paolo Pialorsi and Marco Russo ISBN: 9780735623910 * Chapter 1: LINQ Introduction * Chapter 2: C# Language Features * Chapter 3: Visual Basic 9.0 Language Features * Chapter 4: LINQ Syntax Fundamentals * Chapter 5: LINQ to ADO.NET * Chapter 6: LINQ to XML

Introducing Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX by Dino Esposito ISBN: 9780735624139 * Chapter 1: The AJAX Revolution * Chapter 5: The AJAX Control Toolkit

Introducing Microsoft Silverlight 1.0 by Laurence Moroney ISBN: 9780735625396 * Chapter 1: Silverlight and User Experience * Chapter 5: Programming Silverlight with JavaScript

Log into Microsoft Press home page for more info here

If you are familiar with Aptana, then you will enjoy this news. Modern web sites and applications use Ajax to create engaging user experiences: the HTML and CSS are set in motion using JavaScript running in the browser and calling back the server. To achieve this, the server needs to prepare the web page appropriately, and to know what to do when the JavaScript calls it. But the server knows nothing about the HTML and CSS DOM, nor how to handle JavaScript data, and you can’t code it in JavaScript…

…Jaxer changes all that. Jaxer is the world’s first true Ajax server. HTML, JavaScript, and CSS are native to Jaxer, as are XMLHttpRequests, JSON, DOM scripting, etc. And as a server it offers access to databases, files, and networking, as well as logging, process management, scalability, security, integration APIs, and extensibility.

Some of the key features that Jaxer provide are:

- Write entire applications or presentation layers in Ajax
- Share validation code on the browser and server
- Full DOM and JavaScript on the server
- Database, file, and socket access from JavaScript
- Seamless communications between browser and server
- Open-source, standards-based, and uses the APIs you already know
- Access existing pages written in other languages like PHP, Java, or Ruby on Rails

Here is an Ajaxians post
Here is Jaxer web site

Brad Abrams just converted the existing Web Site Starter Kit from the VS 2005 web site to use the new dot Net 3.5 framework, LINQ and Ajax extenders. Here is the full source code for that.

Here are some of the key points from his post:

- VS2008 Can Target .NET Framework 2.0
- Upgrade to ASP.NET 3.5 and Take Advantage of Linq
- Ajax Enabling the Site
- Tricking out the site with the Ajax Control Toolkit

read the whole post here

qooxdoo is a comprehensive and innovative Ajax application framework. Leveraging object-oriented JavaScript allows developers to build impressive cross-browser applications. No HTML, CSS nor DOM knowledge is needed. qooxdoo includes a platform-independent development tool chain, a state-of-the-art GUI toolkit and an advanced client-server communication layer. It is Open Source under an LGPL/EPL dual license.

Besides the many bugfixes, there are a few new features to mention:

* Cross-browser logging features based on Firebug Lite
* A source-code validation utility similar to JSLint, executed by a simple “make lint”
* Re-worked feedreader to demonstrate best practices for application development
* Early preview of the next-generation build tool generator2.

read source
view demo

On the 2nd anniversary of jQuery’s release there is a brand new release. This is primarily a bug fix release for jQuery 1.2.

Primarily, this has been a bug fix and optimization release. They landed over 120 bug fixes and our test suite now has over 1157 tests in it!

300% Speed Improvements to $(DOMElement)

Here’s a quick peak at some of the speed jumps that you can expect in all the major browsers:
Browser 1.2.1 (ms) 1.2.2 (ms)
Firefox 2 0.041 0.015
Firefox 3 0.033 0.01
Safari 3 0.017 0.005
Opera 9 0.023 0.004
Internet Explorer 6 0.04 0.03

read the source