Ajaxus place on the net

Adobe today will bolster its “Platform for Rich Internet Apps” with the full release of a trio of developer tools. Each of the tools Adobe is releasing is either free or open source. Along with the boost to Adobe’s RIA platform, a number of companies are also announcing applications built on Adobe’s cross platform system runtime, AIR.

Perhaps the most significant of Adobe’s announcements is that their much-touted desktop runtime for Rich Internet Apps, AIR, is coming out of beta about a year after being announced. The final release will be free on the AIR web site for Mac and Windows (with Linux support promised in “upcoming versions”).

Along with AIR, Adobe is also announcing the final release of Flex 3 and the Flex Builder. Flex is an open source framework for building applications on the Adobe Flash and AIR platforms, while Flex Builder is an IDE for Flex. The Flex 3 SDK comes out of beta today and is released under the Mozilla Public License on the Flex web site.

Flex, Flash, and AIR form the cornerstone of Adobe’s “Platform for Rich Internet Apps,” a complete end-to-end solution for creating and deploying RIAs to the web and desktop. This has been a big year for the RIA platform at Adobe, according to Adrian Ludwig, the group manager in the company’s platform and development unit.

Ludwig told us that 2007 was a “real turning point for the industry” and that Adobe saw broad based adoption of their RIA platform. Oracle, for example, is using Flex to create interface elements for applications, while Adobe has worked with BEA to comarket Flex Builder along with BEA’s own developer tools. The wide adoption of Adobe’s RIA technologies “was confirmation of the value that these types of applications have,” said Ludwig.

At DEMO this year, Ludwig told us, there were three companies whose entire business was built on Adobe AIR. Considering AIR debuted just over a year ago itself at DEMO (as Apollo), that is fairly amazing. In just a year, Adobe’s runtime has matured enough that entrepreneurs are willing to build entire businesses around it — even when AIR has been in beta until today. “That, combined with our commitment not just to innovation, but to open source technologies where it makes sense,” said Ludwig, “I think that’s going to really further innovation and advancements in the RIA space.”

Along with the new releases of Flex and AIR, a number of companies are announcing public releases of AIR applications, including Nickelodeon, eBay, AOL, Nasdaq, and the New York Times Company.

Adobe is also releasing the final first version of Blaze DS under the GPL license. Blaze DS was announced two months ago and is a server side remoting and messaging technology that was previously only available as part of the LifeCycle suite of products.

The attraction to Adobe’s platform makes a lot of sense. They offer an end-to-end solution, and Flex and AIR makes the question of desktop vs. online a deployment decision, and not a development decision. Write the application once in Flex, and deploy to the web or to the desktop with AIR with very few code changes. That sort of flexibility is very attractive to many developers.

Recently Scott Guthrie released some of his notes about the second version of Silverlight 2. This actually will be a beta version but still some new key features will be produced. Here is what Scott is saying:

Silverlight 2 includes a cross-platform, cross-browser version of the .NET Framework, and enables a rich .NET development platform that runs in the browser. Developers can write Silverlight applications using any .NET language (including VB, C#, JavaScript, IronPython and IronRuby). We will ship Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Studio tool support that enables great developer / designer workflow and integration when building Silverlight applications.

This upcoming Beta1 release of Silverlight 2 provides a rich set of features for RIA application development. These include:

* WPF UI Framework: Silverlight 2 includes a rich WPF-based UI framework that makes building rich Web applications much easier. In includes a powerful graphics and animation engine, as well as rich support for higher-level UI capabilities like controls, layout management, data-binding, styles, and template skinning. The WPF UI Framework in Silverlight is a compatible subset of the WPF UI Framework features in the full .NET Framework, and enables developers to re-use skills, controls, code and content to build both rich cross browser web applications, as well as rich desktop Windows applications.

* Rich Controls: Silverlight 2 includes a rich set of built-in controls that developers and designers can use to quickly build applications. This upcoming Beta1 release includes core form controls (TextBox, CheckBox, RadioButton, etc), built-in layout management panels (StackPanel, Grid, Panel, etc), common functionality controls (Slider, ScrollViewer, Calendar, DatePicker, etc), and data manipulation controls (DataGrid, ListBox, etc). The built-in controls support a rich control templating model, which enables developers and designers to collaborate together to build highly polished solutions.

* Rich Networking Support: Silverlight 2 includes rich networking support. It includes out of the box support for calling REST, WS*/SOAP, POX, RSS, and standard HTTP services. It supports cross domain network access (enabling Silverlight clients to directly access resources and data from resources on the web). Beta1 also includes built-in sockets networking support.

* Rich Base Class Library: Silverlight 2 includes a rich .NET base class library of functionality (collections, IO, generics, threading, globalization, XML, local storage, etc). It includes rich APIs that enable HTML DOM/JavaScript integration with .NET code. It also includes LINQ and LINQ to XML library support (enabling easy transformation and querying of data), as well as local data caching and storage support. The .NET APIs in Silverlight are a compatible subset of the full .NET Framework.

Silverlight 2 does not require the .NET Framework to be installed on a computer in order to run. The Silverlight setup download includes everything necessary to enable all the above features (and more we’ll be talking about shortly) on a vanilla Mac OSX or Windows machine.

The Beta1 release of Silverlight 2 is 4.3MB in size, and takes 4-10 seconds to install on a machine that doesn’t already have it. Once Silverlight 2 is installed you can browse the Web and automatically run rich Silverlight applications within your browser of choice (IE, FireFox, Safari, etc).

Read more here, plus 8 good tutorials!

We were waiting for quite some time to see this happening. After having so big variety of JavaScript libraries it was about time to see one of them build in into ASP.NET controls. Coolite has the answer!

These guys are the creators of the killer app called DateJS which we wrote about way back in November. Now the continue with the good work and created Coolite suite. It includes:

* Powerful integration of the Ext JavaScript Framework.
* Full Design-Time support in Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 & 2008 and Visual Web Developer 2005 & 2008.
* Drag-and-drop ease of use.
* Current support for Window, Panel and a many Form Controls including DatePicker, Calendar and HtmlEditor.
* New Controls being added weekly.
* Dual Licensed (LGPL 3.0 and Coolite Commercial License).
* Professional support options available shortly.

From the form controls they have included

* Calendar
* CheckBox
* DatePicker
* FieldSet
* HtmlEditor
* NumberTextBox
* RadioButton
* TextArea
* TextBox

Check out some examples 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.

Your first look at the next generation of Windows Server—straight from the experts.

Get a jump on evaluating Window Server 2008—with technical insights from Windows Server team. This practical introduction delivers real-world implementation scenarios and pragmatic advice for administering Windows Server in the enterprise.

Discover how to:
•Deploy Windows Server 2008, and configure and manage server roles
•Understand Windows Server Virtualization
•Implement a single, integrated IDA solution built on Active Directory
•Explore enhancements in Internet Information Services 7.0
•Use failover clustering for high-availability solutions
•Implement the Network Access Protection platform

get it here and say something good for me
more info

GWT-Ext is a powerful widget library that provides rich widgets like Grid with sort, paging and filtering, Tree’s with Drag & Drop support, highly customizable ComboBoxes, Tab Panels, Menus & Toolbars, Dialogs, Forms and a lot more right out of the box with a powerful and easy to use API. It uses GWT and Ext.

The company description above says it all. Nice set of controls which support Ext 2.0.

Check out some demos 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

Here

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

Monday morning at 6:00 am in Redmond, Microsoft announced that Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Windows Server 2008, which were co-developed from the same code base, were released to manufacturing. Vista SP1 is the first major update to Microsoft’s desktop operating system and is expected to trigger a new wave of corporate adoption. Meanwhile, Windows Server 2008 is the server-based follow-up to Windows Server 2003 R2, which was released in 2005.

“Microsoft has worked with its partners to significantly improve the Windows Vista experience in Service Pack 1,” a Microsoft spokesperson told me. “Customers will especially see enhanced value in terms of security, performance, reliability and application compatibility.”

While the schedule for Windows Server 2008 has been well known for some time–Microsoft previously scheduled a Windows 2008 launch event for late February and was widely expected to deliver the product well before that time–that for Vista SP1 was a bit less specific. In a post to the Windows Vista Blog this morning, Microsoft vice president Mike Nash finally explained how users will get SP1. New PCs with Vista and SP1 installed will arrive in “the coming months,” while Microsoft’s enterprise customers will get DVDs soon. For end users, SP1 will be released via a staged rollout. The release will be made available via Windows Update starting in mid-March, and then only to PCs that don’t have problematic hardware installed. In mid-April, SP1 will be rolled out to all users who have configured Windows Update for automatic updating.

Initially, Windows Vista SP1 will be made available in five languages, English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese. The remaining languages Microsoft supports will be released to manufacturing in April and ship worldwide after that.

I’ll be reviewing Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 on the SuperSite for Windows within the next 30 days.

The Flash-y folks at Yahoo! have released a slew of Flash and Flex components in their ASTRA suite:
New Flash components:

* AlertManager — a user interface component that creates alert windows and manages their queue.
* AudioPlayback — a set of controls for audio playback.
* MenuBar — a component that renders hierarchical data as a row of buttons with nested menus (using the Menu component)

On the Flex front, we have:

* AutoCompleteManager is a component that manages a set of input controls, popping up suggestions when a user types into one of the fields. Instead of replacing TextInput fields with a specific AutoComplete control, you can simply point the manager to one or more TextInputs, and you’ll get a slick pop-up or auto-fill interaction.
* Color Pickers:
o ColorPlaneAndSliderPicker is a user interface component that allows the user to pick a color value. It combines a one-dimensional color slider with a two-dimensional color plane.
o ColorSliderPicker is a user interface component for Flex that allows the user to pick a color value. It combines a set of sliders where each slider represents a component of a colorspace. For example, a ColorSliderPicker displaying an RGB color includes a red slider, a green slider, and a blue slider.
o DropDownColorPicker is a user interface component for Flex that allows the user to pick a color value. Similar to the standard Flex ColorPicker control, the DropDownColorPicker also gives the developer the ability to completely change the dropdown control to give the user a variety of color views.
* IPv4AddressInput is a user interface component for Flex that allows the user to input an Internet Protocol version 4 address. This control includes a field for each separate byte and full keyboard navigation.
* TimeInput is a user interface component for Flex that allows the user to input a time value. This control include fields for hours, minutes, seconds, and AM/PM. Styling options allow the time to be presented in 12- or 24-hour formats.
* TimeStepper is a user interface component for Flex that allows the user to input a time value. This control include fields for hours, minutes, seconds, and AM/PM. Styling options allow the time to be presented in 12- or 24-hour formats. Up and down buttons allow the user to increase or decrease the currently selected field.

Among updates to the existing components:

* The Tree component has been updated with new functionality that makes it much easier to change node icons and control branch nodes (see examples).
* The Charts component now has animation, some adjustments to the PieChart live preview, and several bug fixes.

Read the source