Web 2.0 ASP.NET

Free Continuous Integration Toolkit

noreply@blogger.com (David Ridgway) — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 04:19:00 +0000

What the hell is Continuous Integration Anyway?

For those of you unfamiliar with the term here is the Wikipedia definition:

“In software engineering, continuous integration (CI) implements continuous processes of applying quality control - small pieces of effort, applied frequently. Continuous integration aims to improve the quality of software, and to reduce the time taken to deliver it, by replacing the traditional practice of applying quality control after completing all development.”

My personal definition is:

“Giving a damn that the code you write is not breaking the app considering that other developers are working on the code base at the same time and realizing that you are not infallible.”

Sounds a lot like common sense right? But when you have a room filled with developers who are adamant THEIR code could not possibly be responsible for a build failure… it REALLY helps to have a system in place.

I can still remember a time when builds were a matter of gritted teeth, chewed finger nails, white knuckles and headless chickens.

In some ways I don’t think we have improved all that much as a programmers, certainly the skill sets have become more diverse but I for one am a little less daring than I used to be.

But there is one undeniable fact:

The quality of my code and and my teams code has improved exponentially.

We MAKE deadlines, our code’s quality is quantifiable (due to quality unit and integration testing) and most importantly if I needed to run an emergency release/build at ANY time, I am ALWAYS a couple of clicks away from a working copy of any of the applications in our portfolio. This means I sleep better, this means a cold one tastes like it should, this means I am not worried about a bonus coming in December!

Raiders of the Lost Ark

There are a lot of Indiana Jones, seat of your pants outfits out there and hand on heart I used to be one of them, that’s not to say I haven’t produced some really “out there” code which worked very well indeed, but when it comes to thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars you are playing with, the time has really come to stop letting the seat of you pants take the strain.

Don’t get me wrong, you wouldn’t catch me dead being a code Nazi, it would be a total cluster (something beginning with f) if we started to value precision over ingenuity and creativity in our code.

BUT……… There are some SMART steps you CAN take to narrow the odds and Continuous integration is definitely one of them.

Way back when there were very few tools to help you do this, I started running 2 builds a day (using a get latest from Visual Source Safe), ran the test fixtures then confirmed it built and finally kept a copy on my machine locally. Which is kind of the equivalent of digging a coal mine with a Spork.

So what if I told you there was a way to do this all for FREE AND let you sleep better AND give you more time to think about the important stuff?

Drum Roll please…

Daadaaa Your Free Continuous Integration Toolkit:

1. Continuous Integration Server

There are lots to choose from, we first tried Cruisecontrol.net, but we ran into several issues, mostly reliability. I am sure it is probably light years better these days, but it is an open source project. We finally settled on TeamCity from Jetbrains (who also make ReSharper) this is a seasoned product with amazing functionality and it is 100% free for the Professional Edition.

Check out the comprehensive list of features here:

TeamCity Features

Where TeamCity really excels is that with very little setup you have totally automated Continuous Integration solution, which doesn’t break!

Download TeamCity Here:

TeamCity Download

2. Source Control (Code Repository)

Luckily, Visual Source Safe is dead (for good reason, I was absolutely sick of fixing the source safe database 4 times a week) and we have been using VisualSVN server (Subversion server for Windows), which never breaks, ever since.

Tortoise SVN integrates nicely with the windows shell and if you are looking for tight Visual Studio Integration then take a look at Ankh SVN (Free).

Download Ankh SVN Here:

Ankh SVN Download

Download VisualSVN Server Here:

VisualSVN Server Download

3. Testing Framework

You can of course use MSTest (built in to Visual Studio) but we like NUnit (or old faithful as we know her). We like NUnit because ReSharper (Not Free but worth EVERY penny) has wicked good NUnit test support, so it is really easy to run tests locally in the Visual Studio IDE (ReSharper has a testing result window which clearly displays results). There are of course plenty of other free testing frameworks out there, and if you combine this with mocking tools like Telerik’s Just Mock you have a really powerful non-invasive testing solution.

Download NUnit Here:

NUnit Download

Full Disclosure

In fairness many of our choices were based upon a cool Screencast one of my team found over at Rob Connery’s Kona blog which actually details setting up TeamCity and hooking it into unit testing, subversion etc. it also offers some insight on quality testing so it is a must watch, especially if you want a detailed walkthrough to help you to set up the Continuous Integration stack detailed above.

Conclusion

I always encourage my team to dive into the creativity gene pool because this gives us a competitive edge, Continuous Integration is about refining the process of Software Development so that your team really does function like a team and ergo the products you produce are of high quality, within budget and on time. While Continuous Integration is a guideline or development philosophy, having a set of tools to automate the process is invaluable when realizing the goal, taking the pain out of patterns and best practices is half the battle to making them stick!

Trust me, the less effort your team has to make to conform to a programming paradigm the exponentially more likely they are to do it, it’s just human nature!

DotTrace 4.0 Performance Profiler Released

noreply@blogger.com (David Ridgway) — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 03:16:00 +0000

I have been using DotTrace for a while now and have always found it invaluable when digging into an application to find performance bottlenecks and memory leaks. Before DotTrace it was a real pain trying to lock down these problems (often so obscure that the Hubble space telescope could find it difficult to see!).

What DotTrace does is to take a snapshot of an application, while it is running, from a performance/memory usage perspective and then provide you with several ways of digging into your code and highlighting potential hotspots or problematic areas.

This is of course galaxies better than any kind of debugging, tracing or simply just reading the code! Finding a memory leak in an application without a tool is just like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack and often times, having sifted through the billion lines of code, you always find the problem in your back pocket far far away from any place you would have thought to look.

With this release DotTrace has now split into 2 logical versions DotTrace 4.0 Performance Profiler and DotTrace 3.5 Memory Profiler, I will be writing more detailed posts soon on both. My initial reaction is that both are performing better than the previous version and, more importantly, the new UI makes it even easier to see issues immediately.

You can get a Trial Versions of DotTrace 4.0 Performance Profiler and DotTrace 3.5 Memory Profiler Here:

DotTrace 4.0 Performance Profiler

DotTrace 3.5 Memory Profiler

Windows Phone 7 Bing Map

noreply@blogger.com (David Ridgway) — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 10:44:00 +0000

Just found this nice article describing how to add a Bing Map Control to a Windows Phone 7 App really worth looking at:

Windows Phone 7 Bing Map Control

Windows Phone 7 Development Jump Start

noreply@blogger.com (David Ridgway) — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 00:55:00 +0000

With the release of the RTM version of the Windows Phone 7 developer tools set for the 16th of September. This series of 12 screen casts from Microsoft MVP'S Andy Wigley and Rob Miles is a seriously good way to get up to speed in developing applications with Silverlight and XNA for the Windows Phone 7 Platform. Aside from the bad jokes and the English Accents both these guys have years of experience developing for the mobile platform and their enthusiasm and excitement about the Windows Phone 7 Platform shines through.

See the first Screencast here which has the links to the other 11:

Windows Phone 7 Jumpstart Introduction

You can also get the code examples and accompanying documents here at the Jump Start Site:

Jumpstart Companion Site

ReSharper Zen Coding

noreply@blogger.com (David Ridgway) — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 15:45:00 +0000

ReSharper Zencoding Powertoy

I have to say I am really blown away with the new ASP.NET features in ReSharper 5 but in addition to all the goodness, like a really cool html/aspx/ascx navigator and related files navigation. There is a little gem I found this week that I wanted to share with you.

Zen Coding

Those of you familiar with Zencoding will know that it is an editor plugin for writing HTML at warp speed which also works for XML and XSL (or any other structured code format for that matter). Essentially it is a powerful abbreviation engine which allows you to expand expressions like CSS selectors and produce HTML code as a result. What this means is that you can write something like:

div#div1>ul>li*3

And Zen Coding will spit out

Zen Coding Hello World

Ok, so if you don't already have ReSharper 5 drop over to the Jetbrains site and get a free trial here:
Resharper 5 Download

After you have installed ReSharper 5 (or if you already have it installed) get the Powertoys for Resharper over at Codeplex here:
Powertoys for Resharper Download

And install the Zen Coding Powertoy, that's it you're good to go, open up a ASPX file and try the above example:

div#helloworld>ul>li*3

All you do then is use the ReSharper Zen Coding shortcut alt + f

and that's it job done. Some have commented that you get a line of unformatted html generated, but that is simple to fix, select/highlight the line and use the format html shortcut in Visual Studio ctrl + k + f and you get a nicely indented block of HTML.

Of course this example is just the tip of the iceberg and there is a great starter article for Zencoding here:

Zencoding Quickstart tutorial

IIS Express

noreply@blogger.com (David Ridgway) — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 12:50:00 +0000

If like me you are sick to death of Cassini (whats that then? its the built in web server that visual studio uses) and also sick to death of playing around with IIS 7 then relief is at hand. Scott Gu just announced the new IIS express which you can set as the default server in Visual Studio 2010 instead of Cassini or IIS 7 proper.

Why would you want to do that? you may be asking, well there are several good reasons for changing over:

1. IIS Express will start up and run like Cassini does when you run an application in debug from Visual Studio. This means that you do not really need to have IIS 7 installed and running on your dev machine (some places I worked at did not even allow IIS on dev machines anyway).
2. IIS Express is lightweight (10 MB install).
3. Supports SSL (Even installs its own self signed certificate nice!).
4. Supports URL routing
5. Does not need to be running in an administrative account to debug in Visual Studio 2010.
6. Will also work on Windows XP.

All in all this is a really smart positive step forward for web development in ASP.NET and about time Cassini got retired (it was a nice idea, but IMHO it was always half cooked , I like my dev tools well done thank you very much!) The public beta will be available soon and future VS editions will install it automatically.

Read the full details here over at Scott Gu's blog

Scott Gus Blog Post

Telerik Q2 2010 Betas Now Available

noreply@blogger.com (David Ridgway) — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 08:05:00 +0000

I have to say that I really like what Telerik are doing these days, I have always liked and used their Rad Control suites and the Rad Ajax and Silverlight Controls really make it easy for me to get great looking sites with cutting edge functionality up and running with much less effort. These days though, its not just Windows, Silverlight and ASP.NET controls they do.

You should really take a look (if you haven't already) at their Open Access ORM, this is a cutting edge data access tool (ORM) which REALLY takes the ouch out of building CRUD methods or creating your own DAL. The Q1 release saw some serious performance improvements and the wizards which run out of Visual Studio have gotten even better. You can build your DAL 2 ways, either by pointing Open Access at your existing database, or even creating a Database based upon the business objects you already created, what matters most though is that Open Access works on most available Databases, which means you are free from your data store and can easily move from database to database. Open Access also handles really complex mapping so it is much easier to work with existing complex data structures and relationships.

Also, Teleriks code completion and Re-factoring tool Just Code has now got unit testing support and Just Mock (Very Cool mocking framework) is also in Beta, in the same vein and quality/performance of their other tools, these also look set to take the pain out of testing and mocking. The new Beta of Just Code also includes integration with Just Mock to make it even easier to get mocking set up in your applications.

Anyway, the 2010 Q2 betas are now ready to download so there is no better time to take a look at all the pain you could be avoiding!

Rad Controls for ASP.NET AJAX

Rad Controls for Silverlight

Just Mock

Open Access Orm

Just Code

Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools Now work with Visual Studio 2010

noreply@blogger.com (David Ridgway) — Sat, 01 May 2010 07:32:00 +0000

If you are dabbling with Windows Phone 7 Development then I am sure you are probably aware that up until now the Windows Phone 7 Development Toolkit CTP only worked with the Beta Version of Visual Studio 2010.

The recently announced April Refresh for the Developer Tools CTP now supports the RTM of Visual 2010 so you can go get a copy and start coding your way to Windows Phone 7 application stardom!

Couple of gotchas though, before you install the Developer tools you will need to uninstall the Silverlight 4 SDK, otherwise the install will fail and, Contrary to Charlie Kindles (Windows Phone 7 development product leads) explanation at Mix this year, the development tools installer automatically installs Visual Studio Express 2010 for Windows Phone 7 as well, NOT just adding the tools to your VS2010 installation, so you will need extra space for the install.

You can download the Developer Tools here:

http://developer.windowsphone.com/

Visual Studio 2010 Released

noreply@blogger.com (David Ridgway) — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 03:01:00 +0000

Visual Studio 2010 Released

The much awaited, latest version of Visual Studio, Visual Studio 2010 has now been released in conjunction with the latest version of the .NET framework (version 4). This is an exciting time for .NET developers as it also means that they will also be able to develop for Windows Phone 7 using their existing skillset.

Visual Studio 2010 Download
You can download the express versions of Visual Studio 2010 here:

http://www.microsoft.com/express/downloads/

And Trial Versions of the full versions of Visual Studio 2010 (Professional, Premium, Ultimate, Testing) Here:

http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/download

Buy or Upgrade to Visual Studio 2010

You can buy or upgrade to Visual Studio 2010 (with or without MSDN Subscriptions) at the Microsoft Store:

Microsoft Store Visual Studio 2010 Product Page

Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools

You can download the CTP for the Windows Phone 7 Developer tools here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2338b5d1-79d8-46af-b828-380b0f854203&displaylang=en

Visual Studio 2010 Add-in List

If you are looking to extend the functionality of Visual Studio, please see here for a Visual Studio 2010 compatible Visual Studio Add-in list:

http://web2asp.net/2009/01/top-visual-studio-add-ins.html

ReSharper 5 Released

noreply@blogger.com (David Ridgway) — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 02:50:00 +0000

Resharper 5 Released

Resharper 5 has now been released simultaneously with Visual Studio 2010 and is fully compatible with Visual Studio 2010 and greatly enhances your development experience in the IDE. You can read my review of the new features in Resharper 5 here:

Resharper 5 New features Review

You can get a Resharper 5 30 day trial download here:
Resharper 5 30 Day Trial

Resharper 5

noreply@blogger.com (David Ridgway) — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 06:03:00 +0000

ReSharper 5

With Visual Studio 2010 now released and the concurrent shipping of Resharper 5, I thought I would share my experiences with the latest version of, IMHO, the best productivity enhancing Visual Studio Add-in there is.

Those of you familiar with previous versions of Resharper 5 will know that ReSharper from Jetbrains is an essential addition to the toolkit of any developer, as it not only speeds up the development process but also helps developers produce better code.

So Whats new in ReSharper 5?
ASP.NET Developers will have a lot to smile about in Resharper 5, with a host of new functionality to check out, some of the highlights include a new file structure tool window, which helps you quickly navigate through an ASPX pages content:

One of my personal favourites though, is the new related files action, which allows you to quickly open related files without using the solution explorer, for example any of the User Controls or related code pages declared on an ASPX page:

For those of you who are working extensively with ASP.NET MVC there is more to smile about, as you know ASP.NET MVC is a hands on process, with little or no tooling available. ReSharper 5 adds some really useful tooling to Visual Studio, the best of which IMHO is the ability to create new types and methods from usages within pages:

Other MVC features include Code Completion and advanced Intellisense:

and navigation to and from controllers:

If, like me, you are beginning to realise the power of LINQ then there is a great deal to be excited about in Resharper 5 as it adds the ability to convert foreach code into its LINQ equivalent, this is great because while I am writing LINQ queries these days, a lot of the older code has yet to be LINQified so this speeds up the process drastically:

I have always thought the enhanced Intellisense alone makes ReSharper a no-brainer in terms of return on investment, Resharper 5 also sports seen some serious improvements in Intellisense speed and one new thing I really like is being able to type something like datasimapr and have it show DataTableSiteMapProvider in the Intellisense, this is smart and saves time which is what intellisense should be all about.

Another thing which works really well is Intellisense for unresolved symbols, imagine that you just copied some code to a new method but you did not include the instantiation of a variable required in that code snippet, well Resharper 5 is clever enough to show that uninstantiated variable in the Intellisense:

Lastly, as a lead Dev I often try to impose some coding methodology on other developers in my team, not because I think my coding style is any better than anyone else's, but because as team members come and go it is really important to have a uniform code base. If we were all left to our own devices, we would inevitably end up with a code soup, which is not easy for any developer to jump into and refactor or modify. I have long been using the ReSharper clean up code function to do this, as it means that Developers don't have to worry about coding my way and I can fix up the code prior to a build. ReSharper 5 extends this functionality, by being able to create and configure custom, sharable code patterns, which can not only be used to replace instances in code but can also be included in code analysis. This means that developers on my team will be able to fix their code to the pattern as they develop. What this means is that it is now possible to enforce best practices without having to be a code Nazi! I let ReSharper enforce for me, giving me more time to worry about architecture and the best cup of coffee ever created!

You can download Resharper 5 (30day trial) from Jetbrains here:

Resharper 5 Trial Download

Windows Phone 7 Series Development Training Kit Available for Download

noreply@blogger.com (David Ridgway) — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 09:27:00 +0000

Hot on the heels of the release of the development toolkit for Windows Phone 7 Series, Microsoft have just released a downloadable training kit to jumpstart you Windows Phone 7 series development

See Here for details:

Windows Phone 7 series training kit download

Windows Phone 7 Development Tools

noreply@blogger.com (David Ridgway) — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 06:57:00 +0000

Hot of the press after MIX2010 the CTP for Windows Phone 7 Development tools is now available for download, the installer includes VS2010 Express for Windows Phone 7 CTP, the Windows Phone 7 Emulator CTP, Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 CTP and XNA 4.0 Game Studio. It took about 4 minutes to install and you need about 4 GB space available (note: if you already have any flavour of VS2010 RC installed then this installer just adds the relevant tools to your installation and will not install VS2010 Express for Windows Phone):

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2338b5d1-79d8-46af-b828-380b0f854203&displaylang=en

After that it's as simple as creating a new Windows 7 Phone Project and building:

For more details, tutorials, code examples etc. see the Windows Phone 7 Series development portal here:

http://developer.windowsphone.com/windows-phone-7-series/

For Windows Phone 7 Series News:

http://www.winphone7.net

ASP.NET MVC 2 RTM Released

noreply@blogger.com (David Ridgway) — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 15:20:00 +0000

This week sees the RTM release of ASP.NET MVC 2 see the full details and links at Scott Gu's Blog

Just so you know, you will need to uninstall any pre-release versions of ASP.NET MVC 2 and MVC 2 tools for VS2008. The MSI installs both the framework and VS2008 tools and will fail if you do not! Happened to me so I know...

Dot Trace Profiler

noreply@blogger.com (David Ridgway) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 02:33:00 +0000

Updating Multiple ASP.NET Sites by FTP

noreply@blogger.com (David Ridgway) — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 09:26:00 +0000

Imagine a scenario where you have around 100 ASP.NET web sites all using the same code base, which each consume site specific data from the same database and have several thousand dynamic pages each! Sounds daunting doesn’t it? Once you have all these sites configured that is ok for the time being, but what happens if you want to update all of these sites with a new version of the code? Some of you will already be shouting bad architecture, but if if a client wants dedicated IP addresses for each site and you intend to do caching in any meaningful way then separate sites with separate resources on potentially different web servers and even on different hosting companies does make some sense.

I first looked into using an FTP library like: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/IP/ftplib.aspx but soon realized that any hand rolled application would need to be robust enough to handle connection problems and update failures etc. It was then that I realized I already owned a tool that could with a little effort take care of the job.

WS_FTP Professional

With any tool there is certainly going to be some setup required and to make this solution work I did in fact create all 100 or so sites in the WS_FTP GUI, while you can save a sites individual ftp settings within the Visual Studio IDE it certainly cannot handle the scenario I am describing in this post. The cool thing about WS_FTP Professional is that it ships with a scripting tool and is also a great way to manage a myriad of FTP connections and allows you to name them and group them into appropriate categories of your choosing. The scripting language itself is also easy to use (and remember) and is very powerful. Obviously once you create a script you can save it and also use the WS_FTP scheduler to run scripts at convenient times (in the middle of the night to cause the least disruption!)
A simple example:

CONNECT "My Sites!Mysitename.info"
LCD “C://NewFiles”
CD “bin”
RDEL “*”
RPUT “*”
CLOSE

Here the script simply connects to a site in the My Sites group (think of the exclamation mark as a /), navigates to the folder locally where the new files are located, navigates to the bin folder of the remote site, deletes the contents, uploads the new files and finally closes the connection.

This is a simple example but you can target specific files and navigate folders during the same session, you can also download files. Even so writing a 100 of these for a single update is still a little annoying and sadly there is no for each loop to iterate through the sites in the "My Sites Group" part in the scripting language. What worked for me was to write a small Winforms app which helps me write the scripts using placeholders. This application reads the site names from a small data store and uses syntax like:

CONNECT “#SiteName#”
LCD “#LocalSiteFolder#”
DEL “web.config”
PUT “web.config”
CLOSE

When I click the go button in the Winform, the application generates a script for each of the sites, replacing the placeholders (e.g. #SiteName#) with the appropriate text. This works well too if, as in my scenario, the web.config file for each site has site specific settings, so in the example above I am able to target the folder for that specific site (which contains site specific files) and specify a file in it (this also works well for CSS files as each site has it's own theme).

All I need do is save the script and schedule it to run or simply paste it directly into the WS_FTP scripting utility and let it go about it's business. The WS_FTP Scripting Tool also has a log panel, so you can see if an update has failed for whatever reason.

As you can see with a little effort and the right tool you can turn a maintenance nightmare into a relatively painless exercise.

Jetbrains Resharper 5.0

noreply@blogger.com (David Ridgway) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 02:44:00 +0000

ASP.NET MVC 2 Preview 2 Released

noreply@blogger.com (David Ridgway) — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 02:02:00 +0000

Hot on the heels of ASP.NET MVC 2 preview 1, released a mere 2 months ago (great work MS that’s agile as hell), Phil Haack announced yesterday that ASP.NET MVC 2 Preview 2 is now ready for download! you can get yours here:

ASP.NET MVC 2 Preview 2 Download

For those of you familiar with Preview 1, where the focus was primarily on data annotation, Preview 2 builds heavily on this, with the addition and inclusion of client-side validation via the JQuery validation library. Although users of other libraries need not flinch! You can easily write a client adapter for the JSON Metadata, so you are not chained to the JQuery validation library by any means.

My personal favorite is the addition of Single Project Areas, which essentially means that you can divide out your MVC application pretty much how you would like, without having to have multiple projects. With this preview the registration of Areas has also been simplified, so it works real nice with little effort.

VS2010 users should be aware that the tools for Preview 2 only work with VS2008 SP1 so you will need to wait for beta 2 before you will be able to try out HtmlEncoding code blocks and the like.

I still think it is a crying shame Rob Conery has left the Microsoft fold it would be SERIOUSLY great to have subsonic integrated totally into the MVC framework and an integral part of VS2010. That’s just my 2 cents worth!

Resharper

noreply@blogger.com (David Ridgway) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 02:37:00 +0000

The HttpUtility.HtmlEncode Answer

noreply@blogger.com (David Ridgway) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:30:00 +0000

Is it just me.... but surely if you want to HtmlEncode something then you want to Encode all of it and not just the symbols? rant rant Anyway I found a nice little piece of code which will do ALL of the encoding over at the EggHead cafe thanks again Peter Bromberg for saving me an hour or three!

http://www.eggheadcafe.com/tutorials/aspnet/ca7f59b0-e086-4974-9130-3210625e675c/html-entities-class.aspx

Windows 7 Upgrade Experience

noreply@blogger.com (David Ridgway) — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 12:38:00 +0000

Hold your breath, back up EVERYTHING, cross your fingers and hit install… 4 hours later and wow! Not a blip on the Windows 7 horizon this is IMPRESSIVE, so long vista!

Sounds like a long time for an upgrade? But you have to bear in mind we are talking about a dev machine with 3 flavors of Visual Studio on it and all the other gunk from SSMS to Japanese mobile phone emulators or in Geek Speak some 80 gigs worth of software.

I kid you not, aside from having to uninstall daemon tools (which was picked up as incompatible by the install process) that really was it. Actually, I went out to a meeting while 7 did its stuff and came back to a MUCH more responsive notebook.

By much more responsive I mean that programs start and close noticeably faster, the notebook boots up and is useable noticeably faster.

There are really only a couple of things that I don’t like, but 2 of them at least have a work around, these are the absence of the quick launch toolbar, the removal of the classic startup menu and a lack of easy access to the file menu in Windows Media Player 12. The first can be got around by adding a custom toolbar to the Taskbar and pointing it at your Quick Launch folder, the second can be hacked using the CSMenu software but I hear it is slow and that you cannot right click the icons so I have not bothered and the last is really more of a niggle in that at whatever point if I am watching a movie or listening to a tune etc etc I want to be able to right click the player anywhere and to be able to browse for a different file (some would say this is really picky but as it it is now, unless I am mistaken, you have to go to the library tab first and then right click. Just seems like an unnecessary hoop to me).

Obviously my notebook is relatively new (A Dell XPS M1530) but I should imagine given the total lack of driver issues and program problems I have had so far that most machines already running Vista should be able to run Windows 7. Notably DELL have said that my notebook wasn’t compatible with Windows 7, but that was actually for the Beta version. Also you have to upgrade to the same or better version i.e. you can upgrade from vista home basic to windows 7 ultimate or Vista Basic to 7 basic

Seriously give it a go! I didn’t actually need to do the backup first but it is always a good idea regardless and to actually be able to do an in place upgrade like this to a noticeably better OS and have all your existing programs run fine is truly a breath of fresh air, I can’t applaud this point enough, some serious effort has gone into this and dare I say it even a non-techie could manage it!!

Are ASP.NET Mobile Controls Dead?

noreply@blogger.com (David Ridgway) — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 05:02:00 +0000

Is just me or does the ASP.NET mobile controls site look a tad moribund these days? Visual studio 2008 saw the removal of the mobile project templates removed from the standard installation and the lack of examples and real world applications really makes development a labor of love.

Noticably in Japan where mobile net usage is astonishingly high, I have literally been laughed at when mentioning the possibility of building sites on the platform.

But even so, I cannot help but think this is due to a lack of unerstanding of the technology. Also, in a market where developers can charge for the development of separate sites for each type of mobile markup, being able to generate a single site which dynamically renders the same content could decrease revenues. But this is a very simplistic view. As devices become more powerful, so do the mobile browsers with support for javascipt and standard xhtml becoming the norm. But there are still many millions of users with very basic phones.

Enter MVC! recently Scott Hanselman published a tutorial using MVC to build a mobile version of the Nerd Dinner sample application for the IPhone and Blackberry. Also Microsoft Ireland have been almost secretly updating the browser caps files to include the latest devices (Ireland being the European hub for all things mobile these days). I really think it would be a crying shame if the ASP.NET mobile controls were to dissolve into obscurity as they are essentially a great idea and although the upkeep could be costly I think it is a great reason for using asp.net as it provides a crossover for web developers to lever their existing knowledge and allow a diverse selection of devices access to essentially the same application.

windows mobile 6 and google mobile

noreply@blogger.com (David Ridgway) — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 04:15:00 +0000

I have to say I have been really impressed by the google mobile smart phone/PDA interface. So here I am in a café on a very sunny day here in Osaka blogging away! its as simple as downloading the mobile toolbar and logging in once. Only have to say its a shame that more stores don't have wifi access but Japan being what it is I doubt it will be long before there is total coverage here. Really check it out! I think mobile devices have come along way since the early days. That said, for the big fingered out there you may find the keyboards a little clumsy, but gadget or not this is at least fun!

Subsonic 3 Released

noreply@blogger.com (David Ridgway) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 08:48:00 +0000

Just read Rob Conery’s Blog and saw that Subsonic 3 is now available for download. For those unfamiliar with Subsonic it really is the ONLY no BS ORM out there, in fact it is so easy to get up and running that it is easy to forget that you ever set it up in the first place. The whole Subsonic ethic is to remove the hoops that other ORM’s have you jump through and essentially to get you home earlier.

Forget XML templates, cumbersome GUI twiddling etc etc it is really as simple as adding a reference, adding a build provider section to your config file and a database connection string. See here for a quick start screen cast (which has a rocking led zep black dog backing track.. hey hey mama said the way you move..):

http://subsonicproject.com/docs/The_5_Minute_Demo

Other cool stuff to get your geek on are the new LINQ support, Simple repository and T4 templates it is built on, roughly translated means the learning curve is tiny and you can go customize it to your hearts content. Also, for the ”I don’t want to get the push cos I recommended a dog brigade” remember that these days RobCon is heavily involved in the ASP.NET MVC project and with their emphasis on open source and community input it is highly unlikely that the project will be left to pasture, in fact if I were to gaze into my crystal ball, I would hazard a guess and say that Subsonic could be destined for placement in the VS2010 suite of tools as an alternative to LINQ to SQL.

Seriously, give it a try. I was knocked out after watching a few demos and now a couple of projects down the line and having done my own ORM wars I can honestly say that it is the best. Don’t get me wrong NHibernate has been well cooked and probably has more features but for sheer ease of use and slap your head innovation you just can’t beat it.

Rob Conery and Team… guys you rock!

MVC Support in the ASP.NET control suite market

noreply@blogger.com (David Ridgway) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 07:30:00 +0000

One of the problems with embracing MVC is that the toolsets we may have used in our standard ASP.NET web forms projects may now not work in a new MVC project.

However, do not fear! some of the big guns in the control suite market already have MVC support, so you may not need to re-invest in new MVC versions of the same suites or have to start re-inventing the wheel building MVC controls yourself.

Telerik (10/10 Fully supported)

Telerik’s RAD Controls for ASP.NET AJAX, for example, have fully supported MVC since their 2009 Q1 release and have even provided a sample application:
MVC forums, see the demo here:

http://demos.telerik.com/mvc/forums

with full source code available here:

http://demos.telerik.com/mvc/mvc-forum.zip)

I dug into this offering this week and found some interesting stuff. Firstly, they are using their own ORM (Telerik Open Access ORM), which incidentally is free to use provided you are connecting to a free database (MySQL or SQL Express for example).

I have been playing with Open Access for a while, doing my own version of ORM wars, one of the things I find about ORM’s generally is a surprising lack of real world tutorials and while the Webcasts tend to focus on the basic functionality and the one click crowd pleasers, they do not dig deeply enough into the big questions. One of the cool things about Telerik’s demo is that they have built their own membership provider which uses their ORM for data persistence. When choosing a product to put into production it is very important to see examples of the enterprise implementation of a product and simply having a shiny examples page and the ability to demo the suite for a month will not be enough for a decision maker to make the jump.

DevExpress (8/10 full support in future version, now providing sample code for existing version)

DevExpress have committed to providing full support for MVC in their next version of the control suite however in the meantime they are proving examples and tutorials you can see the tutorial and download the sample code here:

http://community.devexpress.com/blogs/aspnet/archive/2009/02/17/video-case-study-devexpress-in-asp-net-mvc-framework.aspx .

Although relatively new in control suite market DevExpress, have impressed me with their agile approach, providing new functionalities and new versions quickly.

This tutorial focuses on the ability of the DevExpress controls to use call backs which essentially means that it should run faster. The sample code includes a full site using different controls to illustrate the methodology.

ComponentArt (6/10 some support)

ComponentArt’s Web.UI supports MVC via it’s ComponentArt CallBack component in much the same way as DevExpress does in their examples. Again, they do not heavily advertise this in their marketing but they do offer examples on implementation.

See Here for demo code and applications:

http://www.componentart.com/blogs/milos/archive/2008/05/01/asp-net-mvc-and-ajax.aspx

Infragistics (0/10 no support)

Infragistics have taken the stance that MVC is such an entirely different framework to work with that it will require a new suite of controls to really support it, although interestingly I cannot find any announcement or reference to any project which may may have been started.

See here for explanations from the Infragistics forum:

http://forums.infragistics.com/forums/p/1227/15920.aspx#15920
http://blogs.infragistics.com/forums/p/16378/59635.aspx#59635