Here are four free chapters from the book “The Microsoft Expression Web Developer’s Guide to ASP.NET 3.5: Learn to create ASP.NET applications using Visual Web Developer 2008“. You can download it from here or buy it from here.
The list of the free chapters:
* Creating Web sites
* Creating and Managing CSS Styles
* Applying CSS to Web Forms
* Debugging ASP.NET Applications
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
If you plan upgrading your software from .NET Framework 2.0 to .NET Framework 3.5 you should consider reading this pdf.
Its not the ultimate and comprehensive guide but will give you the picture. The authors also included some code snippets to visualize what they have gone through.
Download from here.
Can’t miss that one because we all rely on this IDE! You can get it from here.
New Web Development Features in Visual Studio 2008 SP1
The following is a list of new features in SP1 which relate to web development:
* Class Libraries and Web Application Projects in Express
* JScript Formatting
* More Support for External JScript Libraries
* Dynamic Data Templates
* SQL Server 2008 Support
* WCF Renaming Support
* IIS Module and Handler Templates
* Multiple Selection in Design View (new since SP1 Beta)
Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and Visual Web Developer 2008 SP1 contains several hundred bug fixes related to web development.
Recently I found that e-book which might be useful to some of you. Its sub title is: “Building better software” and is written by Karl Seguin.
Here is a link.
Yes, its coming! The boys and Redmond can’t wait to release all these service packs. I have Scott Guthrie’s blog post in front of me and read it carefully. As for now these two downloads are still in beta but will be released soon in final stage. So far you can download it from here.
There will be some improvements that really concern us. I will closely follow these few:
- ASP.NET Data Scaffolding Support (ASP.NET Dynamic Data)
- ASP.NET Routing Engine (System.Web.Routing)
- ASP.NET AJAX Back/Forward Button History Support
- ASP.NET AJAX Script Combining Support
- Visual Studio 2008 JavaScript Script Formatting and Code Preferences
- Improved ExtJS formatting support!
- Application Startup and Working Set Performance Improvements
As well as some Data improvements:
- SQL 2008 Support - VS 2008 and .NET 3.5 are being updated to include support for the upcoming SQL 2008 release. Visual Studio 2008 data designers, projects and wizards now fully supporting connecting and working against SQL 2008 databases.
- ADO.NET Data Services (formerly code-named “Astoria”)
VB.NET update:
You can now add “XML to Schema” items to Visual Basic projects. On adding these project items a wizard will open that allows you to create a XSD schema set from a variety of XML sources. This schema set is then added to the project and it enables VB XML intellisense.
A XSD browser is also now included with VS 2008 SP1 and allows you to browse XSD schema sets. With the final SP1 release, developers will be able to right-click on XML element names (either in XML properties or XML literals) in the VB code editor and select “Go To XML Schema Definition” - this will open the XSD browser and display the schema set (and select the current element) for the VB project.
I just can’t miss that one! It comes from Matt Berseth’s blog where he describes how GridView, DetailsView and ModalPopup Controls can be nicely working together.
Here is a quick quote from his post:
“I am sure everyone is pretty familiar with Master/Details style of editing data, but just in case - here is how my page works. The grid shows 12 rows of customer data. The far right column in the grid contains a hyperlink that when clicked brings the detail view of the row into focus so the corresponding row can be edited. The detail view is a popup control and contains a Save and Close buttons. When close is clicked, the detail popup is dismissed and the user goes back to viewing the main grid. When they click Save, some simple validation checks are run (all are RequiredFieldValidators for this sample) and the new data values are persisted, and finally the detail popup is dismissed and the main grid is refreshed so that it displays the changes.”
You can find the rest here. Matt has done a wonderful job sharing also the source code.
Today will post about two things. One is hot fix available for VB performance issue in VS2008. It addresses performance issues in the following scenarios:
- The IDE takes a long time to build/rebuild the solution.
- You experience a slow response time when you press F5 to start debugging.
- You experience a slow response time in the Code Editor.
- You experience a slow response time in IntelliSense.
The performance issue is caused by having large files in your project that contain XML documentation. You’re most likely to run into these large files when using designer-generated files for web references and/or datasets. If you’ve found that turning off the option under the Compile tab in project properties for “Generate XML Documentation File” improves your performance, then this hotfix should address your issue.
Download it here.
The other is this useful tool called GhostDoc which enables you to generate XML description of your functions in VS 2008. I use this when coding in VB.NET though the VB.NET support is still experimental. This free add-in uses customizable templates to generate consistent, English-readable documentation based on the current context. To use it, right-click (or use CTRL + SHIFT + D) to document the current element:
This generates the following documentation (note GhostDoc split the property name into words and created a sentence from it):
Download GhostDoc from here.
This is MUST read from every dotNet programmer. It is written by Peter Ritchie on DevX.com and presents the new features of C# 3.0 syntax.
These guidelines will help you understand new additions to C# 3.0 syntax and avoid some of the pitfalls you can encounter when using them.
C# 3.0 includes a few syntactical additions to the language. For the most part, Microsoft added these language additions to support Language Integrated Query (LINQ). These features include (but are not limited to) lambda expressions, extension methods, anonymous types, implicitly typed local variables, automatic properties, and object initializers.
Most of the syntax additions fulfill very specific needs and should not reduce the importance of established coding and design methodologies and guidelines. When in doubt, prefer your established guidelines over the new syntax.
What is covered in his article:
- Lambda Expressions
- Extension Methods
- Anonymous Types
- Implicitly Typed Local Variables
- Object Initializers
- Automatic Properties
All these are presented with nice and small code samples. Read it here.
On 8th of Feb Microsoft released a hot-fix for the latest Visual Studio 2008. Scott Guthrie blogged about that release and I can’t miss that post. On Monday will install it personally and will blog about it. Here is what it should fix:
HTML Source view performance
* Source editor freezes for a few seconds when typing in a page with a custom control that has more than two levels of sub-properties.
* “View Code” right-click context menu command takes a long time to appear with web application projects.
* Visual Studio has very slow behavior when opening large HTML documents.
* Visual Studio has responsiveness issues when working with big HTML files with certain markup.
* The Tab/Shift-Tab (Indent/Un-indent) operation is slow with large HTML selections.
Design view performance
* Slow typing in design view with certain page markup configurations.
HTML editing
* Quotes are not inserted after Class or CssClass attribute even when the option is enabled.
* Visual Studio crashes when ServiceReference element points back to the current web page.
JavaScript editing
* When opening a JavaScript file, colorization of the client script is sometimes delayed several seconds.
* JavaScript IntelliSense does not work if an empty string property is encountered before the current line of editing.
* JavaScript IntelliSense does not work when jQuery is used.
Web Site build performance
* Build is very slow when Bin folder contains large number of assemblies and .refresh files with web-site projects.
Installation Notes
For more information on how to download and install the above patch, please read this blog post here. In particular, if you are using Windows Vista with UAC enabled, make sure to extract the patch to a directory other than “c:\” (otherwise you’ll see an access denied error).
To verify that this hot-fix patch successfully installed, launch VS 2008 and select the Help->About menu item. Make sure that there is an entry that says ‘Hotfix for Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite – ENU (KB946581)’.
If you ever want to remove the patch, go to Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs and select “Hotfix for Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 – KB946581” under Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 (or Visual Web Developer Express 2008) and click “Remove”.
Download