Ajaxus place on the net

I have severe lack of time so thats the reason to blog about the following posts in one short notice. Few weeks ago I came across Matt Berseth’s blog and made me quite good impression. He blogs frequently and providing quality posts. His last two I liked a lot.

The first one was about how to create image reflections. He describes three practices:

- Browser Specific Client Side Solution
- Cross Browser Client Side Solution
- Cross Browser Server Side Solution

Which one we choose is a matter of what we really want - rendering time or support for all browsers.

Then he wrote about my favourtite IDE - Visual Studio 2008. Matt described how we can use the new ListVew control plus adding DataPager control and extend it with SliderExtender Control from AjaxControlToolkit.

This post is provided with demo and source code for download. Thanks Matt!

This afternoon from Microsoft released an updated version of the Silverlight 1.1 Tools Alpha that works with the final release of Visual Studio 2008. You can download it for free here.

The tools alpha refresh released today has the same feature-set as the Silverlight Tools Alpha add-on which was previously available for Visual Studio 2008 Beta2 (it has simply been updated to work with the final VS 2008 release). This feature-set includes basic Silverlight 1.1 project system support, XAML markup editing and intellisense support, debugging support, Expression Blend project compatibility, and VB and C# code-behind intellisense. You can find quickstart tutorials that detail how to use these features here.

The next public preview of Silverlight will include a ton of new runtime features, as well as a significantly enhanced VS 2008 tooling support. Scott Guthrie will be blogging more details about this shortly.

Today Microsoft shipped Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5. You can download the final release using one of the links below:

* If you are a MSDN subscriber, you can download your copy from the MSDN subscription site (note: some of the builds are just finishing being uploaded now - so check back later during the day if you don’t see it yet).

* If you are a non-MSDN subscriber, you can download a 90-day free trial edition of Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite here. A 90-day trial edition of Visual Studio 2008 Professional (which will be a slightly smaller download) will be available next week. A 90-day free trial edition of Team Foundation Server can also be downloaded here.

*If you want to use the free Visual Studio 2008 Express editions (which are much smaller and totally free), you can download them here.

* If you want to just install the .NET Framework 3.5 runtime, you can download it here.

List of New Features - old version

- VS 2008 Multi-Targeting Support
VS 2008 enables you to build applications that target multiple versions of the .NET Framework. This means you can use VS 2008 to open, edit and build existing .NET 2.0 and ASP.NET 2.0 applications (including ASP.NET 2.0 applications using ASP.NET AJAX 1.0), and continue to deploy these application on .NET 2.0 machines.

- ASP.NET AJAX and JavaScript Support
.NET 3.5 has ASP.NET AJAX built-in (no separate download required). In addition to including all of the features in ASP.NET AJAX 1.0, ASP.NET 3.5 also now includes richer support for UpdatePanels integrating with WebParts, ASP.NET AJAX integration with controls like and , WCF support for JSON, and many other AJAX improvements.

- VS 2008 Web Designer and CSS Support
VS 2008 and Visual Web Developer 2008 Express includes a significantly improved HTML web designer (the same one that ships with Expression Web). This delivers support for split-view editing, nested master pages, and great CSS integration.

- Language Improvements and LINQ
The new VB and C# compilers in VS 2008 deliver significant improvements to the languages. Both add functional programming concepts that enable you to write cleaner, terser, and more expressive code. These features also enable a new programming model we call LINQ (language integrated query) that makes querying and working with data a first-class programming concept with .NET.

- Data Access Improvements with LINQ to SQL
LINQ to SQL is a built-in OR/M (object relational mapper) in .NET 3.5. It enables you to model relational databases using a .NET object model. You can then query the database using LINQ, as well as update/insert/delete data from it. LINQ to SQL fully supports transactions, views, and stored procedures. It also provides an easy way to integrate business logic and validation rules into your data model.

- Browsing the .NET Framework Library Source using Visual Studio

Lots of other improvements

The list above is only a small set of the improvements coming. For client development VS 2008 includes WPF designer and project support. ClickOnce and WPF XBAPs now work with FireFox. WinForms and WPF projects can also now use the ASP.NET Application Services (Membership, Roles, Profile) for roaming user data.

Office development is much richer - including support for integrating with the Office 2007 ribbon, and with Outlook. Visual Studio Tools for Office support is also now built-into Visual Studio (you no longer need to buy a separate product).

New WCF and Workflow projects and designers are now included in VS 2008. Unit testing support is now much faster and included in VS Professional (and no longer just VSTS). Continuous Integration support is now built-in with TFS. AJAX web testing (unit and load) is now supported in the VS Test SKU. And there is much, much more…

Installation Suggestions

People often ask me for suggestions on how best to upgrade from previous betas of Visual Studio 2008. In general I’d recommend uninstalling the Beta2 bits explicitly. As part of this you should uninstall Visual Studio 2008 Beta2, .NET Framework Beta2, as well as the Visual Studio Web Authoring Component (these are all separate installs and need to be uninstalled separately). I then usually recommend rebooting the machine after uninstalling just to make sure everything is clean before you kick off the new install. You can then install the final release of VS 2008 and .NET 3.5 on the machine.

Once installed, I usually recommend explicitly running the Tools->Import and Export Settings menu option, choosing the “Reset Settings” option, and then re-pick your preferred profile. This helps ensure that older settings from the Beta2 release are no longer around (and sometimes seems to help with performance).

Note that VS 2008 runs side-by-side with VS 2005 - so it is totally fine to have both on the same machine (you will not have any problems with them on the same box).

Silverlight Tools and VS Web Deployment Project Add-Ins

Two popular add-ins to Visual Studio are not yet available to download for the final VS 2008 release. These are the Silverlight 1.1 Tools Alpha for Visual Studio and the Web Deployment Project add-in for Visual Studio. Our hope is to post updates to both of them to work with the final VS 2008 release in the next two weeks. If you are doing Silverlight 1.1 development using VS 2008 Beta2 you’ll want to stick with with VS 2008 Beta2 until this updated Silverlight Tools Add-In is available.

Read Scott Gu

Today, during the keynote address at Microsoft TechEd Developers 2007, S. “Soma” Somasegar, corporate vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft Corp., announced that Microsoft will release Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 by the end of November 2007. Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 enable developers at all levels to rapidly create connected applications that offer compelling user experiences for Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, the 2007 Microsoft Office system, mobile devices and the Web. Soma also unveiled plans to open new opportunities for Visual Studio partners, as well as to deliver new tools and resources for developers, including a first Community Technology Preview (CTP) of the Microsoft Sync Framework and new capabilities for Popfly Explorer.

“The highly social and visual nature of the Web has fundamentally changed what users expect from all applications they interact with, regardless of whether it’s on a customer-facing Web site or Windows rich client application, or a desktop business application built using Microsoft Office,” said Somasegar. “Traditionally, organizations have been hard pressed to deliver the richer, more connected applications and services they need to boost productivity, drive revenue and stay ahead of the competition. With Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5, it is easy for developers to use the skills they already have to build compelling applications that take advantage of the latest platforms.”

press release

Thats something really good! Now in the new Visual Studio 2008 you don’t have to use underscore when writing text on multiple lines. Here is an example how we used to write it:

Dim oldWay = "this is a string" & vbCrLf & _
               "with formatting" & vbCrLf & _
               "and stuff" & vbCrLf & _
               "look ma, underscores" & vbCrLf & _

Now we can do something like that:

Dim newWay = <string>
this is a string
with formatting
and stuff
look ma, no underscores!!!</string>

The text formatting is preserved as well. All you have to do is get the .Value of the XElement, which is the string literal. As you can see this is much cleaner than what we’re used to. And if you still like to see your string literals in the default reddish color, you can easily change the color settings for VB XML literals in Tools –> Options –> Environment –> Fonts and Colors, then select “VB XML Text” and set the custom color to RGB(163,21,21).

Even more, now we can embed expressions using the <%= syntax.

Dim simple = <string>
This is a simple text merge example:
Hello, <%= Environment.UserName %>
                     </string>

Here is Beth Massi’s post about these features! Thanks Beth!

Raise hands!

Today from Microsoft anounced that they will be including .NET Framework libraries source code with .NET 3.5 and VS 2008 release later this year.

Here is a part from ScottGu’s post. You can read the rest here.

We’ll begin by offering the source code (with source file comments included) for the .NET Base Class Libraries (System, System.IO, System.Collections, System.Configuration, System.Threading, System.Net, System.Security, System.Runtime, System.Text, etc), ASP.NET (System.Web), Windows Forms (System.Windows.Forms), ADO.NET (System.Data), XML (System.Xml), and WPF (System.Windows). We’ll then be adding more libraries in the months ahead (including WCF, Workflow, and LINQ). The source code will be released under the Microsoft Reference License (MS-RL).

You’ll be able to download the .NET Framework source libraries via a standalone install (allowing you to use any text editor to browse it locally). We will also provide integrated debugging support of it within VS 2008.

VS 2008 will include support to automatically retrieve the appropriate .NET Framework source files on demand from Microsoft. This means that the source code for the ASP.NET GridView and BaseDataBoundControl classes above do not have to already be installed on the machine before we started the debugger. Instead, when we use F11 to step into their implementation VS can automatically download the source files from Microsoft and open it within the IDE.

By downloading the files dynamically we can also ensure that the matching source files always line-up with the particular version of the .NET Framework on your machine (for example: if you have a GDR or Service Pack Patch installed on your machine, we’ll make sure to download the source file that corresponds to it).

Summary

Having source code access and debugger integration of the .NET Framework libraries is going to be really valuable for .NET developers. Being able to step through and review the source should provide much better insight into how the .NET Framework libraries are implemented, and in turn enable developers to build better applications and make even better use of them.

Наскоро Microsoft представиха последните версии на Visual Studio 2008 и .NET 3.5 beta 2. Visual Studio 2008 можете да изтеглите от тук, а умалената експрес версия от тук. Важно е да отблежим, че новите версии можете да инсталирате съвместно с по-старата VS 2005.

Ето и някои от последните нововъведения в Visual Studio 2008:

- Поддръжка на Multi-Targeting – VS 2008 ви дава възможност да създавате приложения предназначени за различни версии на .NET Framework. Лесно може да се превключва от една версия на друга.

- VS 2008 Web Designer и поддръжка на CSS – в тази версия е включен подобрен HTML web designer. В него се поддържат ‘двоен’(сплит) изглед, внедрени една в друга master pages, и подобрена CSS поддръжка.

- ASP.NET AJAX и поддръжка на JavaScript – в .NET 3.5, ASP.NET AJAX е внедрен, както и са добавени нови функционалности като UpdatePanel с WebParts, поддръжка на WCF за JSON, и редица други подобрения по бързодействието. VS 2008 има и увеличена поддръжка относно интегрирането на JavaScript и AJAX в приложенията. Новото студио се отличава с подобрен Intellisense, който дори работи при включени външни JavaScript файлове.

- Езикови подобрения и LINQ – новите компилатори на VB и C# имат доста подобрения относно функциите на езиците. Това основно се забелязва при LINQ(language integrated query) който добавя нови възможности при заявки и работа с данни. Ето и някой от подобренията налични в C#:
o Automatic Properties, Object Initializer and Collection Initializers
o Extension Methods
o Lambda Expressions
o Query Syntax
o Anonymous Types

- Подобрен достъп до данни чрез LINQ към SQL
LINQ към SQL е внедрен OR/M (object relational mapper) в .NET 3.5. Той ви дава възможност да правите заявки чрез LINQ, както и да редактирате/изтривате и вмъквате нови записи. LINQ към SQL напълно поддържа транзакции, изгледи и запазени процедури.

Това са само някои от многото подобрения представени в новата версия. Дотук всичко е добре, но лично за мен остават отворени въпросите:
- Ще успеят ли да разработят всичките езикови подобрения и за Visual Basic?
- Ще успеят ли до Февруари 2008 да са готови с крайната версия?

Scott Guthrie again shows one of the new feature of the new Visual Studio 2008 which is the improved designer support for ASP.NET AJAX Control Extenders.

What are ASP.NET Control Extenders?

ASP.NET Control Extenders are controls that derive from the System.Web.UI.ExtenderControl base class, and which can be used to add additional functionality (usually AJAX or JavaScript support) to existing controls already declared on a page. They enable developers to nicely encapsulate UI behavior, and make it really easy to add richer functionality to an application.

The ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit is a great example of a project that takes advantage of this control extender functionality. It includes more than 40+ free control extenders that you can easily download and use to add AJAX functionality to your applications.

For example, let’s assume we wanted to have a textbox on a page where a user could enter a date:

If the browser has JavaScript enabled, we might want to have a nice client-side calendar date picker appear when the user sets the focus on the date textbox to help with selecting the date:

Enabling this is trivial using the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit. Just add the “CalendarExtender” control that ships with it to the page and point its “TargetControlID” property at the :

The CalendarExtender now automatically emits an ASP.NET AJAX javascript client script that adds the client-side calendar behavior to the TextBox at runtime. No additional code is required.

Using ASP.NET AJAX Control Extenders in VS 2008

With VS 2005 you had to manually wire-up control extenders yourself (either via source-view or via the property grid).

VS 2008 makes it even easier to discover and attach control extenders to your controls.
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Here is latest post from ScottGu’s blog. There he describes how to build a custom RSS Feed Reader using LINQ to XML. Check it out:

One of the big programming model improvements being made in .NET 3.5 is the work being done to make querying data a first class programming concept. We call this overall querying programming model “LINQ”, which stands for .NET Language Integrated Query.

LINQ supports a rich extensibility model that facilitates the creation of efficient domain-specific providers for data sources. .NET 3.5 ships with built-in libraries that enable LINQ support against Objects, XML, and Databases.

What is LINQ to XML?

LINQ to XML is a built-in LINQ data provider that is implemented within the “System.Xml.Linq” namespace in .NET 3.5.

LINQ to XML provides a clean programming model that enables you to read, construct and write XML data. You can use LINQ to XML to perform LINQ queries over XML that you retrieve from the file-system, from a remote HTTP URL or web-service, or from any in-memory XML content.

LINQ to XML provides much richer (and easier) querying and data shaping support than the low-level XmlReader/XmlWriter API in .NET today. It also ends up being much more efficient (and uses much less memory) than the DOM API that XmlDocument provides.

Using LINQ to XML to query a local XML File

To get a sense of how LINQ to XML works, we can create a simple XML file on our local file-system like below that uses a custom schema we’ve defined to store RSS feeds:

I could then use the new XDocument class within the System.Xml.Linq namespace to open and query the XML document above. Specifically, I want to filter the elements in the XML file and return a sequence of the non-disabled RSS feeds (where a disabled feed is a element with a “status” attribute whose value is “disabled”). I could accomplish this by writing the code below:

VB:

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Thats an interesting post from Scott Guthrie’s blog about JavaScript Intellisense for Silverlight:

In addition to shipping VS 2008 and .NET 3.5 Beta 2 last week, my team also shipped the first release candidate of Silverlight 1.0 (it was a busy week at the office!). You can download the Silverlight 1.0 RC here.

I blogged about our Silverlight plans and roadmap a few months ago. This first Silverlight 1.0 release is focused on enabling rich media scenarios, and delivers high quality video and audio streaming and XAML based vector graphics and animation support in the browser. Silverlight is cross browser and cross platform, and can be easily added to any HTML page. Silverlight 1.0 supports a JavaScript programming model that makes it easy to integrate into an AJAX based page experience (note: Silverlight 1.1 will then add a cross-platform .NET framework programming model and enable RIA support).

JavaScript Intellisense for Silverlight 1.0

Over the last few weeks I’ve blogged about the new VS 2008 JavaScript Intellisense and VS 2008 JavaScript Debugging features in Beta 2. In addition to using these JavaScript tooling features when building pure HTML AJAX solutions, you can also now take advantage of them when targeting Silverlight 1.0.

Justin-Josef Angel earlier today released an awesome Silverlight 1.0 JavaScript Intellisense CodePlex Project that helps dramatically with this. It includes some nice annotated JavaScript helper methods that provide the ability to work with any XAML element in Silverlight with full intellisense in VS 2008.

To use it, simply add his JavaScript library to the top of your page:

You can then use Justin’s helper functions to take late-bound objects and indicate their JavaScript type:

This will then cause the VS 2008 JavaScript intellisense engine to automatically provide intellisense and syntax checking for you:

You can learn all about Justin’s library via his excellent tutorial post here. You can then download and participate in the codeplex project here.

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