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Web Development (General)
Articles filed under Web Development (General)
Articles
Showing 1–266 of 266
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Custom Scripting for Web Applications
This article by Nevio Medancic, Enzo Grubisa, and Vassili Kaplan argues for using CSCS Web, a lightweight, JavaScript-like scripting language, to extend ASP.NET Core web development with server-side endpoints, templates, and dynamic content without recompiling. The authors demonstrate how CSCS Web can implement endpoints, access request data, render HTML templates, manipulate JSON, and mix SSR and CSR techniques (with HTMX) to build interactive web applications. The article emphasizes the language’s openness and ease of extending functionality by registering new CSCS functions at runtime, and showcases a complete Employee List sample to illustrate practical, script-driven APIs and templating workflows.
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Chrome Debugging Tips
Updated
Learn why the dev tools in Chrome are still the ones that Sahil uses. Read how to use code folding, locate any file (Ctrl-p), Prettify, the snippet editor, live expressions, and more.
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Clean Shave: Razor Pages for Web Forms Developers
If you’re already familiar with ASP.NET Web Forms, you can apply your existing skillset to use Razor Pages instead. Shawn's overview of Razor Pages provides a straightforward migration path for Web Forms developers.
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Mastering Routing and Middleware in PHP Laravel
Learn about middleware and how to create routes to control incoming HTTP requests with controllers and use route groups in PHP Laravel.
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FIDO2 and WebAuthn
If your system relies on username and passwords for security, you may be in trouble. Sahil describes how an application can securely trust a user's identity using modern software and FIDO2 with WebAuthn in Azure.
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The Future of the Web Needs a Redesign
Thanks to spiffy new tools and a more computer-literate audience, it’s time to rethink how we load up our websites. Michael and RSnake set SEO as a priority to make sure you get the most bang out of your design.
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How to Use the Fetch API (Correctly)
Updated
Paul continues looking at the XMLHttpRequest object in this exploration of the Fetch API. It’s not all sunshine and unicorns, but it’s pretty useful nonetheless.
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Test Your REST APIs Using Insomnia REST Client
APIs are everywhere! Joydip shows you how to take advantage of them using a new, free, cross-platform desktop framework, Insomnia, with its user-friendly interface and sophisticated features.
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Using Ajax and REST APIs in.NET 5
Updated
In this article, create a .NET 5 Web server to service Web API calls coming from any Ajax front-end. You also learn to create an MVC Web application and a Node server to serve up Web pages from which you make Ajax calls to the .NET 5 Web server.
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Building Multi-Tenant Applications Using ASP.NET 5
This overview of multi-tenant architecture describes the challenges and solutions to using them. Ultimately, multi-tenant gets cheaper over time. Follow along to implement a multi-tenant application in ASP.NET 5
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Routing in Vue3: Navigating the Options
Shawn Wildermuth demonstrates how to use Vue Routing in a single page application. This article also explores RouterView, RouterLinks, Route Parameters ($route), Matching Routes (pathMatch), Nested Routes , and Routing Guards.
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Understanding and Using Web Workers
Miguel Castro teaches you the how to use Web Workers to do multi-threaded development in Web applications using JavaScript.
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Blazor Updates in .NET 5
Learn about new features available in Blazor using .NET 5 including the Blazor WebAssembly SDK, new built-in support for virtualization, CSS isolation, lazy loading and built-in features that reduce or eliminate JavaScript interop code required.
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Using Geolocation and Google Maps
In this article, Paul Sheriff explains how to leverage the HTML5 `navigator.geolocation` API alongside Google Maps to obtain a user's current location and display it on an embedded map. He guides readers through creating reusable JavaScript closures for handling geolocation data and map interactions, including adding markers, multiple locations, info windows, and driving directions. Paul emphasizes best practices such as error handling and API key management, providing practical examples to help developers integrate location-based features effectively into web applications.
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A Deep Dive into ASP.NET Core Localization
Joydip shows you how to build multilingual applications in ASP.NET Core using Visual Studio 2019 to enable a broader reach for your applications.
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Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)
Learn to create a progressive Web application (PWA) which you can deploy through the App Store or Google Play for iOS and Andoid mobile apps. PWAs are built with browser-based technologies but can act just like a native app.
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Use the MVVM Design Pattern in MVC Core: Part 3
Paul shows you how to use the MVVM design pattern in MVC Core to build a product detail page for adding and editing data, and validating product data and display validation.
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Transform Your ASP.NET Core API into AWS Lambda Functions
Updated
Learn how to move an Existing ASP.NET Core API to a Serverless Application Model (SAM) application which is a form of AWS Lambda Functions.
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Use the MVVM Design Pattern in MVC Core: Part 2
Updated
In a MVC Core application using an MVVM design pattern, learn to sort data when a user clicks on a column header in an HTML table. Learn to add a pager to limit the number of rows displayed on a page. Learn to cache data in the Session object to improve performance.
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Vue 3: The Changes
Shawn Wildermuth reviews new features in the early beta of Vue 3, including: conversion to TypeScript to improve the type interface; the switch to using the Virtual DOM for overall performance improvements, improvements for Vue users using WebPack (or similar solutions).
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NestJS Step-by-Step: Connecting NestJS with Angular (Part 4)
Updated
Bilal Haidar concludes this series and shows how to connect an Angular front-end application with a NestJS back-end API.
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What’s New in ASP.NET Core 3.0
Get ready for an exciting list (and examples) as Shawn explores the new tools in ASP.NET Core 3.0.
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POURing Over Your Website: An Introduction to Digital Accessibility
Everyone knows that there are standards when it comes to building apps. And most people know that there are standards for accessibility. But did you know that writing accessible apps is better for everyone? Ashleigh shows you what to think about the next time you sit down to create something.
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Syncing a Client Database with the Server
Craig shows you how to gracefully resolve conflicts and synchronization issues with disconnected databases.
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Intro to GraphQL for .NET Developers: Schema, Resolver, and Query Language
Peter introduces you to GraphQL so your REST API client list can grow and change without a lot of pain. You can use strongly typed schema, eliminated over- and under-fetching, and you can get analytics about how clients are really using your API.
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Moving from jQuery to Vue
If you don’t need the enormity of a SPA, you don’t have to lose the benefits of a framework. Shawn recommends using Vue to simplify the code and make it both more reliable and more testable.
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Formatting Data in Vue.js
Shawn shows you how to use Vue.js to separate views and models and make Web development formatting a lot simpler.
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Nest.js Step-by-Step
Updated
If you want to build efficient, reliable, and scalable apps, you’ll find the Nest.js framework to be an essential tool. Bilal shows you how to build a server-side app as he shows you Nest’s intrinsic compatibilities with other libraries and databases.
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Introduction to Cloud Firestore
Updated
The article "Introduction to Cloud Firestore" by Wei-Meng Lee introduces developers to the Cloud Firestore service from Google. The author explains how Cloud Firestore is a NoSQL document database that allows developers to store data on the cloud and keep clients synchronized through real-time listeners. Lee provides step-by-step instructions on setting up Cloud Firestore in a React Native application, as well as demonstrating how to add, retrieve, update, and delete documents in the database. The article serves as a beginner's guide to getting started with Cloud Firestore and highlights its benefits for building responsive apps that can work online and offline.
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A Vue to a Skill
Shawn introduces you to Vue.js, a framework that can keep complex build systems from clogging up your app. It’s a SPA library that helps you separate the data from the markup, but it’s also much more.
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Azure DevOps, Docker, and Angular
Sahil shows us how DevOps (formerly called VSTS) can connect disparate functionality using two of his favorite tools: Docker and Angular.
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Upload Small Files to a Web API Using Angular
If you have some small files to upload to a Web API, there’s no reason to use the same cumbersome process that works for larger files. Paul shows you how to save a lot of time and effort using Angular.
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Angular and the Store
Bilal takes a look at making sure that your Angular app, large or small, can deal with state management and data access using the ngrx/store module.
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Java
Ted takes you on a little spelunk into Java, replete with some history for context.
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Marking up the Web with ASP.NET Core and Markdown
You’re probably already using Markdown for HTML text entry and formatting your README.md files. But Markdown is good for so much more—Rick shows you parsing, stable content in a website, embedding converted HTML into a Razor output, and more.
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Security in Angular: Part 3
In this third installment of his Angular security series, Paul addresses the Angular 6 release and shows you how to build an array of claims without single properties for security.
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Demystifying React
In "Demystifying React," Milton Abe clarifies React's nature as a JavaScript library focused on building scalable, performant user interfaces rather than a full framework like Angular. Milton highlights React's key concepts—JSX, components, state, props, one-way data binding, lifecycle methods, and virtual DOM—and demonstrates how they collaborate to enable efficient UI development. Through a step-by-step CRUD example, he illustrates React’s practical usage, emphasizing best practices and the advantages of controlling component state manually. Milton ultimately conveys that React offers a powerful, flexible, and maintainable approach to modern web app development.
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Security in Angular: Part 2
In this article, Paul Sheriff demonstrates how to secure an Angular application by building a .NET Core Web API that authenticates users against a SQL Server database and returns an authorization object with user claims. He guides readers through creating Entity Framework security classes, implementing JWT-based authentication, and securing API endpoints with the `[Authorize]` attribute and policies. The article also covers configuring Angular to store and send JWT bearer tokens via an HTTP interceptor, enabling seamless, secure communication between client and server. This foundational work sets the stage for more advanced claim-based UI security in the next installment.
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Build Real-time Applications with ASP.NET Core SignalR
Updated
You may have already heard about SignalR and that the new version makes it easier to build fast Web apps and provide great user experiences. Anthony explores this tool and shows you how to take advantage of it.
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Introducing Progressive Web Apps: The No-Store App Solution
Updated
Chris shows you that you can’t depend on SPAs to do all the dirty work anymore. Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) not only have more capabilities, but they make your users’ experience much snappier.
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Security in Angular: Part 1
Updated
In the first installment of his new series, Paul addresses who needs access to what in Angular, and how to make sure that nothing unpleasant happens on the client-side.
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Eliminate HTML Tables for Better Mobile Web Apps
Updated
At this point, you’re clear that your app has to work on all platforms, especially on smartphones. Paul gets tables to adjust their sizes based on which platform is being used to view it.
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Ready for Prime Time: .NET Core 2.0 and ASP.NET Core 2.0 Have Arrived
Updated
Rick explores the new features in .NET Core and ASP.NET Core and shows you that the wait was worth it.
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What’s New in ASP.NET Core 2.1
Updated
Daniel takes you on a tour of the new features in the new release of ASP.NET. He thinks you’ll find it exciting, especially regarding its SignalR capabilities.
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Configuration Settings for Angular Applications
In another of his articles on Angular, Paul dives into global configurations and shows you how to access your Angular applications from any component or service class.
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Securing IIS Web Sites with Let’s Encrypt Certificates
If HTTPS or HTTP over TLS and registering certificates has got you down, you’ll want to read Rick’s take on this required technology. He’ll show you how to keep your website safe and introduce you to some useful new technologies.
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Logging in Angular Applications
Continuing his series on Angular, Paul looks at logging as a reporting tool for debugging, warnings, errors, and other types of messages, as well as calling classes to log to the console, local storage, and Web API.
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From Zero to CRUD in Angular: Part 3
In the third and final segment of his series on using CRUD in Angular, Paul adds additional server-side validation to the generated Entity Framework classes. He also shows us the client-side validation and validates data in Angular.
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From Zero to CRUD in Angular: Part 2
Updated
Building on his article in the last issue, Paul adds HTML, Angular code, and Web API methods so that the user can add, edit, and delete product data.
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Building an Angular Front End for an ASP.NET Web API
Updated
Rick follows up on his server-side Angular back end for ASP.NET Core with this interesting look at the matching front end.
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From Zero to CRUD in Angular: Part 1
Updated
CRUD’s a part of everyday life for a lot of devs. If you’re one of them, you’ll be interested in this first installation of Paul’s new series on using Angular.
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Getting Down to Business Building an ASP.NET Core API Service
Building an API-based app doesn’t have to be daunting. Rick shows you how to use Angular 2.0 to build a small app that breaks out business logic, uses a repository class to consolidate data access code, and deals with complex relationships and data updates.
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HTML Forms’ Time Has Come (Again)
Once upon a time. HTML forms were invented to provide a link between the various functions in an application. Then other tools pushed them aside. But the time has come for HTML forms to rise from the cinders and take their rightful place in Web development. George shows you how and why.
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Introduction to Angular Routing
If you need to navigate around your Single-Page Application (SPA), you’ll want to know about routing in Angular. Paul shows you how.
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Angular 2 Forms
Sahil continues his series on Angular 2 and this time, looks at that essential element, the form.
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The Journey to Angular: Part 4
Paul continues his deep dive into AngularJS. This time, he adds validation to the page so you can spot input errors.
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Getting to the ASP.NET Core
New releases ASP.NET Core and .NET Core have come up with some interesting high-level architecture that you’ll want to read about. You’ll definitely want to play with these tools after Rick shows you some cool new tricks.
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The Journey to Angular: Part 3
Paul continues his deep dive into AngularJS. This time, he uses this important tool to insert, update, and delete data by building some Web API calls.
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Aurelia: An Introduction
If you need to build a SPA that works across a variety of devices and platforms, you need to check out Aurelia. Jim and Jeremy take a fascinating look at what you can do with the open-source UI JavaScript framework called Aurelia that doesn’t behave like a framework.
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Go
Updated
There’s a new language called Go, and you’ll want to check out Ted’s exploration of it. Go ahead. You know you want to.
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The Journey to Angular: Part 2
Updated
You’ve been hearing a lot about Angular and it’s time to see what it can do for you. Paul continues his excellent series on Angular, the tool you need to create solid, reusable, and extensible code.
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AngularJS 2
Updated
Sahil shows us a few nifty aspects of AngularJS 2 that help experienced and novice developers alike. AngularJS 2 is still in beta, but he says that you’ll love it even so.
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Integrating ASP.NET MVC and Angular JS
Updated
Miguel looks at organizing styles and integrating technologies to make one spiffy new kind of app with multi-SPA layers, and you don’t have to throw away your Microsoft experience to do it.
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The Journey to Angular: Part 1
Updated
When you wrap your JavaScript code into a closure, you won’t have bugs caused by unnecessary variables. Paul shows you how to do this using a templating tool called Mustache, which will help you get closer to coding in Angular.
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Flexing Your HTML Layout Muscles with Flexbox
Updated
When it comes to creating complex structured layouts in HTML, Flexbox, Rick tells us, is more capable than HTML tables were.
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Handling Exceptions Returned from the Web API
Updated
Learn how to use the IHttpActionResult methods in the .NET Controller class to deal with exceptions when Paul explores the messages that no one likes to receive.
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CRUD in HTML, JavaScript, and jQuery Using the Web API
In this second installment of his new series on working within HTML and the Web API, Paul looks at the four standard HTTP verbs GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE. By creating a product information page with mock data, you’ll get a good idea of the power of these tools.
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How Functional Reactive Programming (FRP) is Changing the Face of Web Development
Updated
Joe helps you understand the emerging front-end framework technology that’s showing up everywhere these days.
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Integrating YouTube into Your iOS Applications
You’ve made your website pretty spiffy, but the one thing it’s missing is the one thing that makes social media platforms so hard to compete with. Add sound and video to your content by making it YouTube-capable. Jason shows you how!
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JSLint, AngualrJS, and TDD
Sahil explores the three cardinal rules of working on any JavaScript project and introduces some cool new tools.
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CRUD in HTML, JavaScript, and jQuery
Paul begins a new series on working within HTML and the Web API with this close-up look at JavaScript and jQuery. You’ll learn some of the juicy details, but you’ll also get a good overview of what these technologies can do for you.
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Telerik Kendo UI Outside the Box
Bilal takes us on a tour of Telerik’s Kendo UI and its great number of widgets that facilitate your Web or mobile app development process. There’s no need for multiple libraries anymore!
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TypeScript: The Best Way to Write JavaScript
In this continuation of his series, Sahil focuses on TypeScript and why it’s mandatory if you want to write good, reliable code in JavaScript.
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A Data-Driven Menu System for Bootstrap
Did you know that you can create a simple one-line menu system using two C# classes and a little bit of Razor code in an MVC page to create a hierarchical menu structure for drop-down menus? Paul shows you how.
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WTF.js
Sahil takes a look at some strange behavior on the part of JavaScript. He provides a list of common mistakes and what to do about them.
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Easier AngularJS Routing with Angular UI Router
Updated
Craig builds a simple application that reveals the states, dependencies, and methods of navigation that you’ll need in order to fully understand the Angular UI Router framework.
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Extending Bootstrap: A Product Selection System
Updated
Paul continues his series on Bootstrap by creating a custom product selection system that keeps a running total of a user’s purchases.
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A First Look at ASP.NET vNext
In this article, Rick plays with the beta version of ASP.NET vNext. You’ll get to see what’s (probably) coming so you can start making plans.
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ASP.NET vNext: The Next Generation
ASP.NET has been Microsoft’s hallmark product for more than a dozen years. In vNext, it’s getting more readily adaptable to the way users—especially mobile users—interact with their data, and Rick shows us how to take advantage of these radical changes.
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Doing It with Style
Updated
Have you ever wondered if your forms were capturing the information you or your clients need? Q designs forms with HTML that are clean and simple, and he’s happy to show you how.
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Extending the Bootstrap Accordion
Paul teaches us how to use Bootstrap’s accordion features to make easily mobile-adaptable navigation panels.
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What ASP.NET 5 Means to a Technical Manager
Dino explores the new ASP.NET features and takes a close look at the ways it might benefit you to upgrade (or not).
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Why Micro JavaScript Library Should Be Used in Your Next Application
Chris shows you not only how, but also why you really want to use a Micro JavaScript Library.
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Introduction to IndexedDB: The In-Browser Database
Is dealing with databases on a browser your idea of a bad nightmare? Craig implements an in-browser document database called IndexedDB to create, read, update, and delete large sets of records, just like a database on a server.
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Use HTML 5 and jQuery in WebForms
Web Forms aren’t going anywhere. Paul shows us how to use HTML 5 and jQuery to keep ASP.NET Web Forms working smoothly.
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Using Ruby to Find Beer
Updated
Ruby is a very popular programming language. Ben explains why it’s so popular and helps us build our first app. And he helps us find beer.
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10 Good Practices for ASP.NET MVC Apps
Updated
Dino talks about the best possible layout for your project in MVC 5, and gives some great tips for helping you keep it all organized and effi cient.
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Angular JavaScript Jumpstart
Have you ever wondered how to use your browser (and those of your customers) as rich clients without plug-ins or ActiveX objects? Shawn Wildermuth tells you how.
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Hosted Solutions
Updated
Ben Coe gives us tips on planning an engineering project when you’re starting with a blank slate. He starts with hosting options, addresses scaling, and looks at tools like Heroku, Amazon’s Web Services (AWS), Amazon’s Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2), and the Twelve-Factor App Manifesto.
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SPA Web API
Updated
If you've ever wondered how to commit changes to a database using ASP.NET Web API as the service provider, Jeff Etter gives you the recipe for the secret sauce.
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Bootstrap 3: What’s It All About?
Bootstrap 2.x was a great product, but you’ll build more attractive, more inviting, and more accessible websites with the next Bootstrap. Jim and Scott tell us what’s new.
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Building Robust Applications with MySQL, PHP, and CodeIgniter II
In last issue's article about CodeIgniter, Menachem took a first look at this tool and how to build simple applications with it. In this installment, Menachem looks further into CodeIgniter and show how easily it can be used to build large-scale applications with the features that any good application should have.
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Planning Web Solutions Today: Web Forms, ASP.NET MVC, Web API, and OWIN. Oh My!
Be aware that this is not going to be a classic how-to article that delves more or less deeply into some technical issue or feature. It is, instead, an article that aims at providing an overview of the options you have at present for architecting Web solutions.
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Structuring jQuery with Backbone.js
Derick shows us how to achieve a high level of interactivity in our Web applications with small-scale functionality.
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Mobile Development with Single-Page Applications Using KendoUI
Updated
When considering mobile development, you have a variety of techniques to choose from. In many cases, reactive rendering (using CSS media queries) provides a good solution. Additional mobile customization can be achieved by using ASP.NET MVC4 device detection/customization to provide adaptive rendering. Both of these techniques follow the traditional Web development pattern where each page is focused on a specific task. In an application managing a list, there is a page devoted to the list of items, a second page to view details, and perhaps a third to edit a specific item.
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Multi-view Pages for Web Sites: Client, Server, or Both?
I foresee that in a couple of years pretty much any Web site will be easy to consume from within mainstream devices. I deliberately used the term “mainstream devices” instead of more specific terms like tablets and smartphones just to give a measure of how fluid the situation is.
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Creating a Robust Web Application with PHP and CodeIgniter
Updated
In this article, Menachem Bazian demonstrates how to create a robust web application using PHP and the CodeIgniter framework to solve a practical problem: tracking user login and logout events on a network. He explains the development process, from designing a simple logging database and capturing events with a Visual Basic script, to building a user-friendly web interface with CodeIgniter’s MVC structure. Menachem emphasizes CodeIgniter’s ease of use, built-in features, and its ability to streamline development, making it an excellent choice for PHP developers seeking efficient and maintainable web applications.
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HTML5 History: Clean URLs for Deep-linking Ajax Applications
The value of URLs for a website cannot be understated. The scheme of URLs can help give clues to visitors and machines alike regarding the structure of your website and well-crafted locations help facilitate search engine indexing, bookmarking and sharing. The role of URLs in Ajax applications becomes even more important as content is often changing on the page while the URL remains untouched.
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Log Users in to Your Web Application with OpenID or OAuth
Users already have many usernames and passwords for different popular online services, and with OpenID and OAuth, you can leverage those. Why burden users with yet another set of credentials for your site if they can use their Google or Facebook account, or any other OpenID or OAuth account? In this article, I will show you how to do this with ASP.NET 4.5, but more importantly help you understand what’s going on behind the scenes.
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What’s New in ASP.NET 4.5 and Visual Studio 2012
Microsoft has added an abundance of new features and functionality to ASP.NET 4.5 and Visual Studio 2012. This article provides an overview of many of those new features and enhancements ranging from improved editors for HTML, CSS and JavaScript all the way through to publishing your work to the web.
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Building ASP.NET Single Page Applications in HTML 5 with Upshot
A Single Page Application (SPA) is a different way of building HTML 5 applications from traditional Web page development. Instead of spreading the functionality of your Web applications across a collection of separate Web pages with hyperlinks between them, you instead define a single root page that the user lands on and never leaves as long as they are working with your application. You define client-side logic that switches out the data and chunks of content within that page to allow the user to navigate from logical screen to logical screen without ever leaving the page. This means that the user never sees a full page refresh while using your application. They see portions of the screen change based on their interaction, and those changes can be done in a more fluid way with transitions to enhance the user experience. You can also support using the application while offline by storing data client-side, based on some of the newer APIs of HTML 5. Taking this approach makes an SPA feel very much like a desktop application to the end user.
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Building Web APIs with Node.js and MongoDB
Node.js by itself is a blank canvas. However, the Express.js web framework for Node.js provides programmers with a clear, concise development platform to build high performance Web APIs.
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Real-Time Web Apps Made Easy with WebSockets in .NET 4.5
In the world of browser-based development, interoperability is king. Unfortunately, interoperability can be at the expense of performance.
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An Introduction to ASP.NET Web API
Updated
Microsoft recently released the ASP.NET MVC 4.0 beta and along with it, the brand spanking new ASP.NET Web API. Web API is an exciting new addition to the ASP.NET stack that provides a new, well-designed HTTP framework for creating REST and AJAX APIs (API is Microsoft’s new jargon for a service, in case you’re wondering). Although Web API currently ships and installs with ASP.NET MVC 4, you can use Web API functionality in any ASP.NET project, including WebForms, WebPages and MVC or none of the above. You can also self-host Web API in your own applications.
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Business Web Page Layout Ideas for HTML5 Applications
Updated
In most business applications, you create a common look and feel, data entry pages, and a method for navigating through the application. As you begin to work with HTML5, you will want to build these features and take advantage of the features of HTML5 that can make your applications stand out from the crowd. In this article, you will be presented with several common business Web pages that give you an idea of the power of HTML5 and CSS 3.
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CODE Framework: Writing MVVM/MVC WPF Applications
ByMarkus Egger
VFP Conversion Papers · CODE Magazine · 2012 - January/February · Markus Egger Talks Tech
Updated
The CODE Framework is an open-source application framework by the makers of CODE Magazine. It is entirely free of charge. It covers a wide range of features that can be applied altogether or individually in an À la carte fashion. All of these features revolve around a single concept: Building advanced business applications in a productive and maintainable fashion while maintaining great application architecture. In this article, we are focusing on a subset of the CODE Framework, specifically the components used to build WPF applications using the MVVM and MVC patterns.
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Seven New Features in Silverlight 5 (Plus a 3D Bonus)
The next version of Silverlight should be available by the time you read this article. The Silverlight team has followed a fast pace during the last few years, producing four versions of their framework in only thirty months. Each new version of Silverlight has been full of surprises and useful features. Version 5 is no different. Let’s look as some of the best features available in SL 5
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Session State in SharePoint 2010
The title of this article is a misnomer, but I still picked this title because it is indeed the problem we are trying to solve. The problem is session state, especially in-process session state, is just evil. It makes your application less predictable, less reliable, less scalable, and locks you out of possibilities such as Windows Azure.
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Beginning PHP
So, you’re considering using PHP for a project, but aren’t sure where to start, or maybe even why you should use it? Perhaps you’ve heard all the horror stories about PHP being spaghetti code, bad for your health or that it’ll run slow as molasses. Don’t believe them! It’s not as bad as you think, and with the right approach, can be quite fun (and productive). Honest! Don’t believe me? Read on...
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Entity Framework 4.1: Code First
The Entity Framework team at Microsoft has been making several improvements since the launch of v4 with Visual Studio. The biggest of these is the capability to use a Code First or Code Only development model. Previously, if you wanted to work with the Entity Framework, you had to use either a Database First or Model First development model.
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Introduction to HTML5
As the bedrock to the web, HTML has evolved in many ways from its birth in 1991. While the markup language has had its share of ups and downs, the advent of what’s being called “HTML5” is a welcome and much anticipated addition of new semantic capabilities and valuable APIs.
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Introduction to Ruby on Rails
Updated
Ruby on Rails is an open source web development stack with a large developer base. Last year, Ruby on Rails reached a critical milestone with the release of Ruby on Rails version 3.0. For more information about Ruby on Rails I recommend checking out www.rubyonrails.org. You can find installation information, documentation and links to other resources on this site. This article will demonstrate how to get up and running with Ruby on Rails with help from the RailsInstaller.
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Six Silverlight ListBox Tips
Updated
The Silverlight ListBox is much more than you may think. When most people think of a ListBox they typically think of just a simple control that displays rows of text. However, the Silverlight ListBox is one of the most flexible controls you will find. I tend to think of the ListBox as similar to the ASP.NET Repeater control as it too is very flexible. In this article, I will show you six different ways to display data in a Silverlight ListBox.
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Creating Wijmo: The New JavaScript Library in Town
Updated
Wijmo contains over 30 widgets built on jQuery and jQuery UI that can help you build a better Web.
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Discovering MooTools
Updated
MooTools is an object-oriented JavaScript framework aimed at experienced web developers who need to write effective code quickly, effectively, and in a cross-browser manner. Dino walks you through how to use it and why you just might want to.
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Leveraging Razor Templates Outside of ASP.NET: They’re Not Just for HTML Anymore!
Updated
The Razor syntax is much more than just a clean way to write ASP.NET MVC Views and WebMatrix web pages. In fact, with a working knowledge of the Razor API, you can leverage Razor templates in any application. The Razor API exposes a powerful library for parsing, compiling, and executing templates created using the Razor syntax.
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The Razor View Engine
Updated
The new view engine for ASP.NET MVC and WebMatrix combines simplicity and functionality to facilitate clean view development. In this article, I’ll dive into the Razor View Engine, the new default view engine for the ASP.NET MVC framework and WebMatrix products. Razor’s main goal is to simplify view development and to improve developer productivity while providing a clean view infrastructure.
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Highlights of ASP.NET MVC 3
As developers are just getting used to ASP.NET MVC 2 and Visual Studio 2010, Microsoft has already planned and released a preview of the next version of ASP.NET. What started out as “just another option” for ASP.NET developers has become the programming style of choice for developers writing .NET applications for the web.
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ASP.NET MVC and the ADO.NET Entity Framework
Both ASP.NET MVC and the ADO.NET Entity Framework are both very popular topics right now in the developer community.Having spoken at various user group meeting and code camps it is very obvious to me what topics a lot of developers are interested in. I see that sessions about ASP.NET MVC or the Entity Framework are always packed with developers eager for more information. The focus of this article is the Entity Framework, but in the context of an ASP.NET MVC application. As such, I am assuming at least basic understanding of ASP.NET MVC but little-to-none with Entity Framework.
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Exploring the Bing API Using WCF
Updated
The TV commercials took me and many others by surprise. A stream-of-conscienceless-style ad that had our brains struggling to catch up with the next topic that the next person blurted out. Funny enough, the bouncing from topic to topic by the actors in the commercial seem to be a familiar metaphor to anyone that has traversed search results at one time or another. And at the end, a familiar logo appears: Microsoft, followed by a not-so-familiar one: Bing.
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New Features in WCF 4 that Will Instantly Make You More Productive
Updated
WCF 4 is all about productivity.
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Reflections on a Decade of Visual Studio
Updated
Reviewing where we’ve been over the last decade in the world of .NET and Visual StudioAt the brink of a new release of .NET and Visual Studio, you may wonder where all of this new technology is taking us. Not only do we now have a number of new flavors of Visual Studio targeted to release on April 12, 2010, we also get to enjoy a plethora of new technologies such as Silverlight 4 and RIA Services, as well as new hardware platforms to consider, such as Windows Phone 7 Series. Understanding the future usually begins with a reflection upon the past so let’s take a look at how Visual Studio has changed in the last decade.
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ASP.NET MVC and the Spark View Engine
Updated
Getting friendly with HTML in ASP.NET MVC just got a whole lot easier.In this article, I’ll delve into the Spark View Engine, an alternate view engine for the ASP.NET MVC Framework. Spark’s main goal is to allow HTML to dominate the flow of view development while allowing code to fit in seamlessly.
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Supercharging ASP.NET MVC with MvcContrib
Hot on the heels of the groundbreaking release of ASP.NET MVC CTP 1 in December of 2007, an open source project called MvcContrib came to life.MvcContrib has enjoyed tens of thousands of downloads since it started in December of 2007. In this article, I will explain MvcContrib; it’s major components, how to use it, and how to get involved in its continued development.
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Post Mortem Web Project
First Premier Bankcard (www.firstpremier.com) is the 10th largest issuer of Visa and MasterCard credit cards in the United States.First Premier employs multiple thousands of people spread across the state of South Dakota. A major percentage of the employees at First Premier work in call-center operations helping people apply for credit cards.
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Design for Change in UpdatePanel-based ASP.NET AJAX Applications
Updated
Change is always a central issue for software development.In this regard Microsoft AJAX Web application is never an exception. You may find your application packed with a plethora of UpdatePanels and event handlers. Besides, you may be confused that ASP.NET AJAX offers more than one technique to do one thing but you cannot use them consistently. As a result, it becomes hard to make changes in your application.
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SharePoint Applied: SharePoint 2007 Ninja Debugging
Updated
One of the challenges of working as an on-demand consultant is that I frequently get called into projects where the SharePoint installation is a bit sick, and it is in production.All the usual tricks have been tried, and the Infrastructure Ogre won't let me install Visual Studio on the production systems to truly be able to debug the problem. Yet another problem of being an on-demand consultant is that the clock starts ticking even before I've understood the problem description.One of the challenges of working as an on-demand consultant is that I frequently get called into projects where the SharePoint installation is a bit sick, and it is in production. All the usual tricks have been tried, and the Infrastructure Ogre won't let me install Visual Studio on the production systems to truly be able to debug the problem. Yet another
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An Introduction to jQuery, Part 1
jQuery is a small JavaScript library that makes development of HTML-based client JavaScript drastically easier. With client logic getting ever more complex and browsers still diverging in features and implementation of features, jQuery and other client libraries provide much needed normalization when working with JavaScript and the HTML DOM.
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Accelerators in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2
Connect the user to your Web application with Accelerators!Accelerators provide an easier and faster way for users to access your Web application while seamlessly plugging in to your existing infrastructure.
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Create Your Own Web Slices
Web Slices are a new Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 feature that allow you to subscribe to parts of a Web page and view updates directly from the Internet Explorer Favorites bar.Web Slices let users bring their favorite parts of the Web with them wherever they browse. This article will explain how Web Slices work, why they are cool, and how you can start creating Web Slices of your own.
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Creating Accessibility-aware Silverlight 2 Content
Updated
If you haven't heard, accessibility is one of the most important aspects of a Web site experience.By using the accessibility features in Silverlight™ 2, you can provide the best experience for all users. Building a rich Internet experience can be a daunting task when you have to balance a cool visual design with usability.
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Developer Tools in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2
Updated
Great tools play a critical role in developer productivity, and while many web development tools exist, they likely don’t meet your needs in all tasks. For example, you may want to quickly debug JavaScript, investigate a behavior specific to Internet Explorer, or iterate rapidly to prototype a new design or try solutions to a problem.
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Internet Explorer 8 New Accessibility Features
Windows® Internet Explorer® 8 has a lot of cool new features that make Web page browsing more accessible.I’m going to cover Caret Browsing, Zoom Version 2, High DPI, Accessibility Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) support and User Interface Automation (UI Automation) support. Caret Browsing is particularly helpful for low-mobility users. Zoom 2 and High DPI support targets low-vision users, and the new ARIA and UI Automation support targets screen-reader users. Low-mobility users prefer to use the keyboard or devices that interact with a virtual keyboard. Some low-vision users require specialized assistive software to interact with computers while others can do well with features and tools shipped with the operating system.
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Introducing Compatibility View
Compatibility View allows access to content designed for older Web browsers. When a website says that it supports modern Web standards, Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 respects that and displays the site using its most standards compliant mechanism. In the majority of cases, this works out just fine. However, every once in a while, a page that says “display me using modern standards” really means “display me like Internet Explorer 7 used to display modern standards pages”. This is where Compatibility View comes in.
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Making Your Web site Compatible Across Multiple Versions of Internet Explorer
Improved standards support in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 makes developing sites that work across browsers simpler and less time consuming. The latest release of the world’s most popular Web browser includes upgrades to the Web platform, compatibility, and functionality designed to keep you on-point creating high-quality interactive experiences, not debugging browser interop issues. Let’s discuss how to best take advantage of these new features while ensuring your Web pages continue to work correctly in older browsers.
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New Search Features in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2
Can you imagine a world without search?I don’t think a single day goes by when I don’t do a least one Internet search. Internet search has gotten leaps and bounds better than what it started out as years ago; yet aside from adding a search box to the browser chrome, browsers, as of yet, have not significantly changed the way that users search online.
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Performance Improvements in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2
Updated
Great performance is one of many things being delivered in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2, the latest version of the popular browser. Beyond a much faster JScript engine, Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 includes profound performance improvements and exciting new developer features that make it one of the most exciting browser releases in years.
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Secure Coding with Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2
The Internet Explorer team has made significant investments to ensure that Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 is the most secure version to date.Many of these improvements (like the SmartScreen anti-phishing/anti-malware filter) operate automatically and require no changes to Web pages or add-ons. However, other security improvements will impact Web applications and browser add-ons. This article describes how to take advantage of these new Internet Explorer security features to help protect Web users and applications.
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Welcome to CDDE Focus for Internet Explorer 8!
In this issue, you’ll find information on all things related to Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2.From Web Slices to Developer Tools, from our improvements in performance to the great new features for building Web 2.0 applications, there’s something here for everyone.
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What’s New in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2?
For those of you who have been waiting to see what Microsoft has been cooking up for the standards-based Web, dinner is served! Released to the Web in August 2008, Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 delivers much more than just a snack for today’s ravenous tech-savvy users. Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 dispenses a four-course meal guaranteed to please even the most discriminating of palates.
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MVP Corner: We Are the Masters of the Twitterverse
How did we ever survive without social networks? I asked myself that today and couldn’t come up with an answer I liked. If I need to find contact information for that DBA I worked with three jobs ago, it’s off to LinkedIn or Plaxo. When I’m wondering about that guy from high school who was going to be a world famous rock star, Facebook is only a couple of clicks away. Out of town for a conference? No worries, I just check Twitter to see where my friends are.
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What’s New in ASP.NET 3.5?
Updated
Microsoft released Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 in November 2007. I have good news and, depending on your perspective, I have either bad news or good news. If you were hoping ASP.NET 3.5 would be released with a variety of new controls, features, and architectural changes then I have bad news for you. If you’re still trying to master all the controls, features, best practices, project structures, deployment options, and architectural changes introduced when ASP.NET went from version 1.1 to 2.0, I have good news for you. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of new things you will want to take advantage of in ASP.NET 3.5, but the changes from ASP.NET 2.0 to ASP.NET 3.5 are more additive and incremental than monumental.
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The Baker’s Dozen: 13 Tips for Building Database Web Applications Using ASP.NET 3.5, LINQ, and SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services
Updated
Are you moving a Windows desktop application to the browser, and sweating bullets, or perhaps just not quite sure about how all the new Web and data tools work together?With each passing year, Microsoft offers newer and more powerful tools for building rich database applications on the Web. So many and so frequently, in fact, that it can be hard to keep up with the new tools and still meet the requirements of your job! This article will show you how to get the most out of the new features in ASP.NET 3.5. The article will also show how you can use features in LINQ, even if you only use stored procedures for data access. And finally, since most applications use reporting, I’ll throw in a few nuggets on using SQL Server Reporting Services.
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Building Personalized Applications on the Windows Live ID Platform
Do you have a cool personalized application that you want to offer to over 400 million users? Do you want to light it up with Live controls or create a mashup with Live resources? Windows Live ID now offers a simple way for third parties to get Live ID authentication in your Web or rich client applications, letting you reach millions of Live ID users, integrate with Live Controls, and access Live services.
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Developing Plugins for Windows Live Writer
Plugins for Windows Live Writer are simple to create and can provide many extra features.This article will show you how to start writing plugins for Windows Live Writer, including how to get started, how to debug, and how to package the final plugin.
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Getting Started with the Windows Live Tools
Windows Live Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio enables developers to incorporate a set of Windows Live services into their Web sites using Visual Studio and ASP.NET.Using the Contacts ASP.NET Server Control, your users can easily share their contacts between Windows Live and your Web site. With the SilverlightStreamingMediaPlayer ASP.NET Server Control, you can show videos on your Web site from your Silverlight Streaming account with just drag-and-drop. The IDLoginStatus and IDLoginView ASP.NET Server Controls provide Windows Live ID authentication at your Web site for your users. Microsoft released its second community technology preview (CTP) in December, 2007. You can download this CTP from http://dev.live.com/tools.
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Introduction to the Live Search API
Have you ever wanted to implement search capabilities on your own Web site but didn’t want to implement the logic and deal with issues such as storage and indexing? The Live Search team now offers two different ways to utilize Search on your site: using the Live Search Box or using the Windows Live Search API.
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Light Up the Web-Microsoft Silverlight Streaming by Windows Live
Microsoft® Silverlight™ Streaming by Windows Live™ is a free streaming and application hosting service for delivering rich interactive applications (RIAs) over the Web.In this article I’ll show you how to get started with Silverlight and how to upload your applications and rich media to the Silverlight Streaming Service.
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Live from the Web! Bring the Windows Live Messenger Experience to Your Web Applications
Windows Live Messenger is one of the central offerings nestled among a suite of products and services under Microsoft’s Windows Live brand.For years online chat has been progressively and swiftly revolutionizing how you communicate with your friends, family, coworkers, and businesses you deal with. It is the foundation of the original chat room concept and the heart of instant messaging applications. Online chat-also called instant messaging or just “IM”-connects people for one-to-one or group chat, for social networking purposes, or for business directives, such as enabling access to technical support, customer services, or sales. Now, Windows Live Messenger supports a rich set of features for Web applications through the Windows Live Messenger IM Control, the Windows Live Messenger Presence API, and the Windows Live Messenger Library. The collective features of these products go beyond the simplicity of a chat application, making it possible to embrace this new era of social networking by leveraging your built-in Windows Live network within any Web application.
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Weaving the Windows Live Services into Your Web Site
Ready to build a Web experience your users will love? Windows Live Services are the building blocks of your new site. Get started right now with the Windows Live Quick Applications.
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Welcome to the Windows Live Platform CODE Focus Magazine
In this article, Angus Logan highlights how Microsoft’s Windows Live Services empower developers to create engaging, feature-rich web applications by providing access to a wide range of tools including infrastructure, personal data management, messaging, search, mapping, and secure identity services. Logan emphasizes the ease and speed of integrating these services into projects of any scale, offering practical guidance, business insights, and free resources to help developers leverage the platform effectively and stay updated on its continuous evolution.
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Windows Live Admin Center
When developing with Windows Live services, you open your application to a whole new world of software integration. In this fascinating realm of mash-up mania, developers can find tools for adding maps, searches, video, chats, and even social networking services directly into their applications and ultimately right into their users’ browsers. The benefit of adding services like Virtual Earth and Silverlight Streaming are obvious-creating dazzling content and facilitating rich user experiences. Yet services like these are still limited to specific contexts within your program. They are perfectly wonderful for beefing up the user experience in Web sites, but wouldn’t it be great if the folks at Microsoft provided a service that helps you administer user accounts and customize services around your Web site? Well indeed they have, and its name is Windows Live Admin Center (admincenter.live.com).
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Windows Live Delegated APIs
The smart way to share data between computers and other people is to place it in an online Internet store, which the other parties can access, but you want to make sure only the right people can access your data. This article will help you understand how the Windows Live delegated authentication system is used to access certain Windows Live data stores and the technologies Microsoft is building to make this work easier for you.
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Never Write an Insecure ASP.NET Application Ever Again
Updated
One of the most important security principles for software development is least privilege.Simply put, least privilege means that an application, process, or user should have the least access to resources required to accomplish a task and no more. By following this principle, even if your application is attacked or a user goes on the payroll of your nastiest competitor, you’ll have limited the potential damage. Bottom line: implementing partial trust in ASP.NET is the single biggest thing you can do to make your applications secure.
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ADO.NET Data Services
Updated
Separation of presentation and data has long been considered a best practice in the development of Web applications.Driven by the need for low friction deployment and a richer user experience, the types and architectures of Web applications are evolving dramatically. With the introduction and growth of AJAX-based applications and Rich Interactive Applications (RIA) using technologies such as Microsoft® Silverlight™, separation of presentation and data is no longer just a best practice, it is required.
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Browsing Windows Live Expo with LINQ to XML
LINQ to XML, which makes query a first class construct in C# and Visual Basic, is the new XML API in the .NET Framework 3.5. With the introduction of Language Integrated Query (LINQ), Microsoft is introducing LINQ implementations that work over objects, data, and XML. LINQ to XML improves on System.Xml in the .NET Framework 2.0 by being both simpler to use and more efficient. Microsoft developed this new API because the W3C-based DOM API does not integrate well into the LINQ programming model.
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Programming Against the ADO.NET Entity Framework
The ADO.NET Entity Framework raises the level of abstraction at which developers work with data.Rather than coding against rows and columns, the ADO.NET Entity Framework allows you to define a higher-level Entity Data Model over your relational data, and then program in terms of this model. You get to deal with your data in the shapes that make sense for your application and those shapes are expressed in a richer vocabulary that include concepts like inheritance, complex types, and explicit relationships.The ADO.NET Entity Framework raises the level of abstraction at which developers work with data.Rather than coding against rows and columns, the ADO.NET Entity Framework allows you to define a higher-level Entity Data Model over your relational data, and then program in terms of this model. You get to deal with your data in the shapes that make sense for your application and those shapes are expressed in a richer vocabulary that include concepts like inheritance, complex types, and explicit relationships.
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Catching the (Silver) Light
I’d guess that everyone reading this magazine has heard of Silverlight™. I’ll also guess that not everyone has jumped at the opportunity to “play” with something that had been in beta. The good news is that Silverlight 1.0 is now released! I’ve spent a lot of time with Silverlight since Microsoft made the Community Technology Preview version available as WPF/E. The delta between a Web site without Silverlight and a Web site that allows you to experience the wonderfulness of Silverlight is huge. Before you finish reading this article, I hope you’ll realize how very easy it is to bridge that gap.
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The Provider Model
In this article you will learn how to isolate yourself from change by taking advantage of the Provider Model.Designing your applications using the Provider Model will allow you to swap components out at runtime, thus allowing you to upgrade them easily.
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A Look at Windows Vista from a Developer Perspective
Updated
Rick Strahl discusses Windows Vista for developers.
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ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 is here
Updated
Rick Strahl discusses the newly released ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 (MS AJAX)
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Beyond HTML: Rich Internet Applications
Updated
Rick Strahl discusses building rich internet applications
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The Client-Side JavaScript Dilemma
Updated
Rick Strahl discusses considerations when writing JavaScript
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Enterprise Application Integration with Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006-Part 1
Updated
Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) is a collection of architectural principles combined to integrate new and existing applications both within the enterprise and in business to business or partner integration scenarios. This article (Part 1) will provide a conceptual overview of BizTalk Server 2006 and how it serves to address the problem domain common in the EAI space. In Part 2, I’ll introduce a business case for implementing an online ordering and fulfillment system and provide a step-by-step example of how to implement a solution that addresses the problem domain.
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Overcome the Barriers Around Using the Custom Class in ASP.NET
Updated
In .NET Web applications you can find that in many places custom classes and collections are better choices than the DataSet or DataTable. The custom classes or the custom class collections, which are truly object oriented, allow developers to employ all object-oriented programming techniques.
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How to Be Where Your Customer Wants to Be
We all know that applications have evolved, and not just towards Web deployment, .NET Framework development, and mash-up functionality.
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Inking in ASP.NET 2.0, AJAX, and IE7
In the past year, new technologies from Microsoft have changed how we can add ink to Web sites and the change is definitely for the better!
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Building a PreserveProperty Control in ASP.NET 2.0
Updated
ASP.NET provides a couple of page-level state persistence mechanisms in ViewState and the new ControlState.While both mechanisms work, they both have some limitations in that they are not deterministic for the application developer-ViewState can be turned off and can be very bulky, and ControlState can only be set from within a control implementation. In this article I’ll show another, more flexible state mechanism using a PreservePropertyControl that allows automatic persistence and restoration of field values automatically without requiring ViewState.
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Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 Membership API Extended
Updated
Working with big applications requires extending the Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 Membership API to handle more detailed member records.In this article, I’ll present one of the available techniques used to extend the Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 Membership API to solve some of the limitations of that API.
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The Baker’s Dozen: 13 Steps for Building a Lookup Page Using ASP.NET 2.0, SQL 2005, and C# 2.0
Updated
Lookup and navigation screens initially seem like no-brainers, when compared to other parts of an application-yet by the time a developer has met all the user requirements and requests, he/she has expended much more time than expected. This issue of The Baker’s Dozen will build a lookup Web page using ASP.NET 2.0, SQL Server 2005, and C# 2.0. The lookup and results page will contain optional lookup criteria and custom paging of the result set. The solution will utilize new language features in SQL 2005 for providing ranking numbers to correlate with custom paging, and new capabilities in .NET generics to pump the results of a stored procedure into a custom collection. Just like Mr. Mayagi taught Daniel the martial arts by doing exercises, the example in this article will demonstrate some common design patterns, such as factory creation patterns, using .NET generics. The article also subtly presents a general methodology for building database Web pages.
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A first look at SignalR
Updated
SignalR is the latest in a long string of new technologies pouring out from the ASP.NET team recently, when Microsoft rolled out version 1.0 of SignalR when Visual Studio Update 2 was announced. In a nutshell, SignalR is technology for .NET that allows you to build real time, connected Web applications. Connected in the sense that you can build Web applications that can send and receive and broadcast data in real time. The canonical example of a 'connected' application is a chat application where a client can broadcast messages to all other connected clients. While that's pretty cool in and of itself, that only begins to scratch the surface of what's possible with SignalR as you can communicate in a wide variety of ways between client and server and between all clients to push data around.
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AngularJS Fundamental Concepts for Building Web Applications: Part 1
In Part 1 of a two-part series, Jesse Smith gives you a solid introduction to AngularJS and how the framework is used to create simple web applications.
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AngularJS Fundamental Concepts for Building Web Applications: Part 3
In Part 3 of a 4-part series, programming expert Jesse Smith shows you how to use web forms validation the easy way with AngularJS to validate and prepare data before posting to a database.
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ASP.NET 4 Unleashed - Chapter 1 -Overview of the ASP.NET Framework
This excerpt is from the book, ‘ASP.NET 4 Unleashed, authored by Stephen Walther, Kevin Hoffman, Nate Dudek, Published Oct 14, 2010 by Sams. Part of the Unleashed series. ISBN 0672335522, Copyright 2011. For more info, please visit the publisher site http://www.informit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn= 0672331128.
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ASP.NET MVC 4 Mobile Websites Succinctly - Chapter 3 - Designing Mobile-Friendly Websites
ASP.NET MVC 4 Mobile Websites Succinctly </i>by Lyle Luppes is a concise guide to creating a website aimed at mobile but also serving desktops-from just one code base. Luppes extols the virtues of .NET’s ASP.NET MVC framework, offering it up as the perfect solution for cross-platform website development. The following excerpt from his book discusses design. This book is part the <i>Succinctly </i>series and can be downloaded for free from Syncfusion’s Technology Portal.
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ASP.NET MVC Framework Unleashed: Chapter 1 - An Introduction to ASP.NET MVC
This excerpt is from the book, ‘ASP.NET MVC Framework Unleashed, authored by Stephen Walther, Published Jul 14, 2009 by Sams. Part of the Unleashed series. ISBN 0-672-32998-0, Copyright 2010. For more info, please visit the publisher site http://www.informit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0672329980.
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Building Windows 8 Apps with C# and XAML - Introduction to UI Design Patterns for Windows 8 Apps Chapter Excerpt
In this excerpt from Building Windows 8 Apps with C# and XAML, learn about the various parts of MVVM and how to apply it with a special focus on testing. By Jeremy Likness, Published Oct 25, 2012 by Addison-Wesley Professional. Part of theMicrosoft Windows Development Series series. Copyright 2013 ISBN-10: 0-321-82216-1 ISBN-13: 978-0-321-82216-1. To Purchase go to: http://www.informit.com/store/building-windows-8-apps-with-c-sharp-and-xaml-9780321822161?w_ptgrevartcl=%20Introduction%20to%20UI%20Design%20Patterns%20for%20Windows%208%20Apps%20_1960915.
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C++ Primer, 5th Edition - Chapter 1 - Getting Started
This excerpt is from the book, ‘C++ Primer, 5th Edition”, authored by Stanley B. Lippman, Josée LaJoie, Barbara E. Moo, Published Aug 6, 2012 by Addison-Wesley Professional. ISBN 0-321-71411-3, Copyright 2013. For more info, please visit the publisher site http://www.informit.com/store/c-plus-plus-primer-9780321714114.
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Chapter 1 - Accustoming Yourself to JavaScript, from the book Effective JavaScript: 68 Specific Ways to Harness the Power of JavaScript
By David Herman, Published Nov 26, 2012 by Addison-Wesley Professional. Part of the Effective Software Development Series series. Copyright 2013 Sample Chapter is provided courtesy of Addison-Wesley Professional. To purchase book click this link: http://www.informit.com/store/effective-javascript-68-specific-ways-to-harness-the-9780321812186
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Chapter 1 - Three Years of Silverlight
This excerpt is from the book, ‘Silverlight 4 Unleashed’ By Laurent Bugnion, Published Oct 21, 2010 by Sams. Part of the Unleashed series. ISBN 13: 978-0-672-33336-1, Copyright 2011. For more info please visit the publisher site: http://www.informit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0672333368
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Chapter 1: An Introduction to ASP.NET MVC
An introduction to the Microsoft ASP.NET MVC framework and learn why you should build web applications using ASP.NET MVC.
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Chapter 1: Getting Started
Updated
Silverlight Unleashed - Embedding the Silverlight Control Manually - Letting Silverlight.js Handle the Dirty Work - Understanding Your Hosting Options - Interacting with the Silverlight Control Programmatically
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Chapter 1: Mashup Styles, Techniques, and Technologies
This chapter is an excerpt from the new book, Mashups: Strategies for the Modern Enterprise by Jeffrey Hanson, published by Addison-Wesley Professional, ISBN 032159181X Copyright 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. For more info please visit: www.informit.com/title/032159181X Safari Books Online subscribers can access the book here: http://safari.informit.com/9780321591869To begin design work on a mashup, you must determine what is to be “mashed” together. Three high-level categories of items can be mashed together-user interface artifacts (presentation), data, and/or application functionality (processes). This might include HTML snippets, on-demand JavaScript to access an external API, web service APIs from one of your corporate servers, RSS feeds, and/or other data to be mixed and mashed within the application or pages. The implementation style, techniques, and technologies used for a given mashup depend on this determination. Once the items are determined, your development team can proceed with applying languages, processes, and methodologies to the application at hand.In this chapter, I point out some of the most widely used styles, techniques, and technologies to build mashups for each of the three primary categories or items.
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Chapter 11: Adding Client Capabilities to Server Controls Using the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit
In the preceding chapter, we covered the architecture of the AJAX Control Toolkit, describing at a high level what it has to offer and the attributes, classes, and interfaces that make it all happen.The enhanced functionality you get in the toolkit, from attribute-based programming to rich animations, provides a compelling alternative to coding against the ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions and the Microsoft AJAX Library directly. In this chapter, we delve into the details of the toolkit a little further as we develop as series of extender controls that demonstrate the rich features the toolkit provides.
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Chapter 3: Working with the DataList Control
In Chapter 3, we saw the Repeater control in ASP.NET and how we can use it to bind and unbind data in our applications. In this chapter, we will discuss the DataList control, which, like the Repeater control, can be used to display a list of repeated data items.
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Chapter 4: State Management
Essential ASP.NET 2.0 is the Microsoft developer's definitive reference for ASP.NET 2.0 programming. It covers all you need to know to build robust, well-designed Web applications with ASP.NET 2.0, Visual Studio 2005, and .NET 2.0. ASP.NET MVP Fritz Onion and Developer Security MVP Keith Brown draw on their unparalleled experience working with ASP.NET 2.0 and teaching it to professional developers. From data binding to security, UIs to performance, they demystify ASP.NET 2.0's most difficult areas, and introduce little-known techniques for leveraging it to the fullest.
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Chapter 7 from Murach’s JavaScript and jQuery.
Now that you have the JavaScript skills that you need for using jQuery, you’re ready to learn jQuery. So, in chapter 7, you’ll learn a working subset of jQuery that will get you off to a fast start. And in chapter 8, you’ll learn how to use the jQuery effects and animations that can bring a web page to life.
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Designing Silverlight Business Applications: Chapter 7 of Best Practices for Using Silverlight Effectively in the Enterprise
By Jeremy Likness , Published Mar 29, 2012 by Addison-Wesley Professional. Part of theMicrosoft Windows Development Series series. Copyright 2012, ISBN-10: 0-321-81041-4 ISBN-13: 978-0-321-81041-0 Chapter 7: Designing Silverlight Business Applications: the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM)
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Fluent C#: Chapter 1 - Application Development
Fluent C# By Rebecca M. Riordan, Published Oct 12, 2011 by Sams. Copyright 2012. Sample Chapter is provided courtesy of Sams Publishing.
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Graphics in Silverlight 3
In this chapter, you will learn how to add rich vector graphics and images to your application.You will also learn how to optimize performance and image quality of those graphics elements.
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Hour 1 - Getting Started with ASP.NET 4
Scott Mitchell introduces you to ASP.NET, shows you how to install Visual Web Developer, along with the .NET Framework and SQL Server 2008, and helps you create your first ASP.NET page.
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Java Servlets and JSP
This chapter begins by presenting two patterns that you can use for servlet/JSP web development. Then, it shows how to use the second pattern, which is known as the MVC pattern, to structure a web application. There are several advantages to this approach, and it's generally considered a best practice.
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Murach's Dreamweaver CC 2014 - Chapter 3
Since 1996, Dreamweaver has been the leading product for web developers who want to build web pages by using a visual interface instead of writing the HTML code themselves. Now, Dreamweaver CC 2014 takes that to a new level, with tools that make it easier than ever to take advantage of today's best web design practices, like the use of HTML5 semantics, external style sheets, CSS3, and Responsive Web Design. But any program that's so comprehensive is going to be complex! So the trick is mastering what all of Dreamweaver's windows, panels, toolbars, and web technologies do, and then incorporating all that with the design skills that you need to create your own websites. That's where this book comes in. Unlike other Dreamweaver books, this one blends all of the skills that you need to build inviting, standards-compliant, and accessible websites today.
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Murach’s HTML5 and CSS3. Chapter 15
This chapter is from the book Murach’s HTML5 and CSS3by Zak Ruvalcaba and Anne Boehm18 chapters, 636 pages, 264 figuresISBN 978-1-890774-66-0. For more information visit https://www.murach.com/books/htm5/index.htm .
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Node.js Succinctly
In Node.js Succinctly, Microsoft MVP Agus Kurniawan leads you through the fundamentals of using Node.js to speed up your JavaScript-based applications. This informative e-book will take you from Hello World to "if…then" decisions, all the way to real-time data monitoring. You'll learn how to use Node.js to build modules, declare JSON data objects, and create entire web-based applications. The basics of socket and database programming with Node.js are also covered.
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Red Gate: Why is Your ASP.NET Application Running Slow?
Sponsored article from Red Gate. Diagnose and speed up your apps!
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Ultra-Fast ASP.NET: Chapter 3 - Caching
Caching is an important cornerstone of high-performance web sites. You can use it to accomplish the following: Reduce round-trips: Content cached at the client or in proxies can eliminate web server round-trips. Content cached at the web server can eliminate database round-trips. Move content closer to clients: The farther away from clients content is located, the longer it takes to retrieve. Avoid time-consuming processes of regenerating reusable content: For content that takes a lot of time or resources to generate, system performance and scalability are improved if you can generate content once and then reuse it many times. Optimize state management: Caching state information at the client is more scalable than storing it in a central location (within certain bounds, as discussed later).
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Windows 8 Apps with HTML5 and javaScript UNLEASHED - Chapter 1
In <i>Windows 8 Apps with HTML5 and JavaScript Unleashed</i>, author Stephen Walther covers everything you need to build, test, and distribute outstanding Windows 8 software with JavaScript and HTML5. Walther clearly demonstrates the unique advantages Windows 8 offers to web developers. He guides you through using Microsoft’s new WinJS library to develop apps for Microsoft’s brand-new version of Windows--you learn how to use JavaScript templates, controls, and data binding. You’ll find in-depth coverage of everything from displaying data with a ListView control to supporting SkyDrive cloud storage, creating games to using IndexedDB and HTML5 forms.
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Visual FoxPro Web Services Revisited
ByRick Strahl
CODE Focus Magazine · 2007 - Vol. 4 - Issue 1 - Sedna: Beyond Visual FoxPro 9 · VFP Conversion Papers
Updated
Web services with Visual FoxPro (VFP) have never been easy. The most common Web service tool for FoxPro is the SOAP Toolkit, which has been discontinued and which had a host of problems when dealing with complex types passed over Web Services. In this article I’ll show how you can leverage the powerful Web service features of .NET and the new Windows Communication Foundation in your FoxPro application through COM Interop.
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A Silverlight to Illuminate the Path Ahead…
Updated
At Mix 2007 in Las Vegas, Microsoft announced Silverlight (formerly known as WPF/E) to much fanfare. Silverlight is very intriguing in concept, as it further travels the path previously laid out by WPF (Silverlight’s big brother), and it aims to bring the worlds of Windows and Web development, as well as the worlds of software development and graphical design, much closer together. As more and more details emerge (and the first released version is now available), it becomes clear that Silverlight is not just an intriguing concept, but it is for real! Markus discusses Silverlight concepts in this article.
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Microsoft Introduces WebMatrix
Updated
Microsoft recently released the first CTP of a new development environment called WebMatrix (http://www.asp.net/webmatrix.WebMatrix), which along with some of its supporting technologies are squarely aimed at making the Microsoft Web Platform more approachable for first-time developers and hobbyists. But in the process, it also provides some updated technologies that can make life easier for existing .NET developers.
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Native JSON Parsing: What Does it Mean for Your AJAX Applications?
Updated
JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) has become the de facto data transfer standard for client-side Web applications that use JavaScript. JSON is a JavaScript-based object/value encoding format that looks very close to raw JavaScript and can be very easily parsed by JavaScript code because JavaScript can effectively evaluate a JSON string and re-materialize an object from it. Unlike XML there’s no parsing involved in the process, so it’s easy to work with and also relatively quick because the actual parsing (or rather evaluating) of a JSON string is done internally in the JavaScript engine rather than through manual code. The format and data types are also well defined so it’s easy to generate JSON strings in other languages like .NET (although parsing is a bit more complex).
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The Rise of JavaScript Frameworks - Part 1: Today
When it comes to Web development, JavaScript frameworks have moved front and center in the mainstream in the last year and a half or so. When looking at building modern Web applications, the bar has been raised significantly by what is possible in large part due to the more accessible mainstream frameworks that are available today to build rich client and mobile Web applications. Although full featured end to end front end JavaScript frameworks have been around for quite a bit longer than just the last couple of years, it seems in the last year and half they really established themselves in the Web developer mainstream with extremely wide ranging uptake that happened very quickly. Clearly these JavaScript frameworks have a hit a nerve with the developer mainstream, scratching an itch that developers have wanted to scratch for some time, but didn't quite have the tools to do so easily. Frameworks have filled that niche and caused a lot of developers that previously avoided complex JavaScript development to jump in head first.
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The Rise of JavaScript Frameworks - Part 2: Tomorrow
In Part 1 of this series I talked about the current state of JavaScript frameworks and how in many ways JavaScript frameworks have become the new baseline for developing client centric Web applications or Single Page Applications. Due to the complexities involved in building complex client side applications using JavaScript and HTML, frameworks have just about become a necessity to effectively building any non-trivial application.
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Use the ASP.NET MVC Framework to Write Web Apps without Viewstate or Postbacks
Updated
The Web View October 2007
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Web Code is a Solved Problem: How about Fixing Web UI Next?
Updated
Originally published as a blog post - Fixing Web UI
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What’s New in ASP.NET 4.0, Part One: Core Engine Features
Updated
Microsoft released the .NET Runtime 4.0 and with it comes a brand spanking new version of ASP.NET - version 4.0 - which provides an incremental set of improvements to an already powerful platform. .NET 4.0 is a full release of the .NET Framework, unlike version 3.5, which was merely a set of library updates on top of the .NET Framework version 2.0. Because of this full framework revision, there has been a welcome bit of consolidation of assemblies and configuration settings. The full runtime version change to 4.0 also means that you have to explicitly pick version 4.0 of the runtime when you create a new Application Pool in IIS, unlike .NET 3.5, which actually requires version 2.0 of the runtime.
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ASP.NET 2.0 Web Part Infrastructure and SharePoint 2007
In my previous article, (“ASP.NET 2.0 Web Part Infrastructure”, Nov/Dec 2006, CoDe Magazine) I talked about the ASP.NET 2.0 Web Part framework. I made the case for the emergence of Web Part or widget-like solutions, and explained the support for Web Parts in the ASP.NET 2.0 framework. However, I stopped short with a teaser into connecting these Web Parts with each other and where this story fits in with SharePoint 2007.
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Hosting WCF Services
Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Services can be hosted with Internet Information Services (IIS); with the new Windows Activation Service (WAS) installed with IIS 7.0; or with any managed application process including console, Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), or managed Windows service applications.Selecting the right hosting environment for your services is a choice driven largely by deployment requirements related to transport protocol and operating platform.
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ASP.NET 2.0 Web Part Infrastructure
Web applications today do a number of things. They could be a banking site, a content management system, or a news Web site. In spite of the diversity of Web applications available today, it almost always makes sense to break a Web page into smaller, reusable widgets
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ClickOnce for the Real World, Not Hello World
After four years of trying out every iteration of Web server application deployment that Microsoft created for .NET, ClickOnce has finally allowed me to succeed in deploying one particularly complex smart client application. But I still had to tear a few more hairs out before I got it working and came to love ClickOnce. I’m writing this article to share some of the not-so-obvious ways (including a hack or two) to use ClickOnce for application deployment.
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Fundamentals of WCF Security
Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is a secure, reliable, and scalable messaging platform for the .NET Framework 3.0.With WCF, SOAP messages can be transmitted over a variety of supported protocols including IPC (named pipes), TCP, HTTP and MSMQ. Like any distributed messaging platform, you must establish security policies for protecting messages and for authenticating and authorizing calls. This article will discuss how WCF accomplishes this.
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Compilation and Deployment in ASP.NET 2.0
It’s crucial to understand how your ASP.NET code compiles in order to debug your Web applications effectively. ASP.NET 2.0 has changed the way compilation and deployment works, and in this article I’ll dig in and show you how compilation works now and what has changed from ASP.NET 1.x.
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Detect Web Form Field Changes in ASP.NET
In ASP.NET, the value change related event will be triggered at server side per server control when the value of such a server control (form field) is changed upon postback. In most cases, a group of form fields are correlated with each other and typically correspond to member data in a business object. Thus developers need to check if such a group of form fields has changed as a whole. Unfortunately, the .NET Framework (1.x, 2.0) doesn’t offer an effective solution. This article will present an elegant technique to solve this problem and it can even go further so that you can know which field has changed.
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Web Control Enhancements in ASP.NET 2.0
I’m sure by now you’ve read more than your share of books and articles describing new ASP.NET 2.0 features. Master pages, themes, providers, etc., are all great, but have you read anything regarding custom Web control development and what has changed in 2.0? Well that’s what I’m here to tell you. If you’ve become involved in control development, either through my articles or on your own, I’ll describe some very cool enhancements that you can put to work right away in your controls using ASP.NET 2.0.
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Achieving Synchronicity: A Listbox Double-Feature
Updated
Building complex Web controls with rich client-interfaces often requires the integration of some client-side JavaScript code with the control’s server-side code. While in some cases this does not have to become too complicated to achieve some pretty nifty results, it can often break the data synchronization between the control’s internal server code and the rendered client HTML code. This becomes a problem when the page posts back. In this article, I will build two very cool Web controls that are vulnerable to this problem and then show you how to fix it.
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SQL Server 2005 Query Notifications Tell .NET 2.0 Apps When Critical Data Changes
Updated
One of the classic problems with database applications is refreshing stale data. Imagine a typical e-commerce site with products and categories. A vendor’s product list most likely does not change very often and their category list changes even less frequently. However, those same lists must be queried from the database over and over again every time a user browses to that Web site. This is an annoyingly inefficient use of resources and developers and architects have been stuck playing cat-and-mouse trying to reduce the waste.
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The Baker’s Dozen: 13 Productivity Tips for Remoting in Visual Studio 2005
Updated
This installment of the Baker’s Dozen presents an introduction to remoting and remoting interfaces.
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Creating a Generic Message Display Page for ASP.NET
Updated
Creating messages in your Web application should be quick, easy, and most importantly, consistent.They should look like they belong with the rest of the application even if an error occurs. How often have you created a new page to display simple text or a notification message to your users? Wouldn’t it be better if you could reuse an existing template and simply pass in a few parameters to tell it to render an application-specific message? In this article I will show you how to create a reusable Message Display class that reduces displaying messages generically in your application to a single line of code.
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Using the Ajax.NET Framework
What developer wants to spend hours manually writing Ajax pluming when the Ajax.NET framework does this for free? The Ajax.NET Framework presents a remarkably easy-to-use framework that will simplify Ajax development and allow developers to spend more time on implementation details and less time on parsing XML.
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Top-Ten Annotations and Remarks about the Wonderful and Powerful New Set of Features in ASP.NET 2.0
You’ll still write a good deal of code in ASP.NET 2.0.Don’t completely trust those who say that ASP.NET 2.0 cuts 70% of the amount of code you’re called to write. You’ll end up writing more or less the same quantity of code, but you’ll write code of different quality. You’ll have more components and less boilerplate code to tie together pages and controls. Features like the provider model, data source controls, and master pages make coding easier and equally effective. But since there’s no magic behind, you have to learn the implications of each feature you employ. In the end, ASP.NET 2.0 comes with code behind, not magic behind.
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A Low Level Look at ASP.NET Architecture
ASP.NET is a powerful platform for building Web applications, that provides a tremendous amount of flexibility and power for building just about any kind of Web application. Most people are familiar only with the high level frameworks like WebForms and WebServices which sit at the very top level of the ASP.NET hierarchy. In this article I’ll describe the lower level aspects of ASP.NET and explain how requests move from Web Server to the ASP.NET runtime and then through the ASP.NET HTTP pipeline to process requests.ASP.NET is a powerful platform for building Web applications, that provides a tremendous amount of flexibility and power for building just about any kind of Web application. Most people are familiar only with the high level frameworks like WebForms and WebServices which sit at the very top level of the ASP.NET hierarchy. In this article I’ll describe the lower level aspects of ASP.NET and explain how requests move from Web Server to the ASP.NET runtime and then through the ASP.NET HTTP pipeline to process requests.
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Custom Web Controls Demystified, Part 2
In the first part of this article (CoDe Magazine, September/October 2005) you learned how to create an inherited Web control, as well as a fairly functional rendered Web control. In part two of this article you’ll learn three professional touches for your custom Web control. First, you’ll learn how to make all parts of your custom control resize correctly. Next, you’ll learn how to capture an event when the button is clicked or when text in the textbox changes. Finally, you’ll learn how to add basic styling.
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Custom Web Controls Demystified, Part 1
When ASP.NET was released in 2002, it gave Web developers a whole new design paradigm to work with; one that varied greatly from the classic Active Server Pages that many Web developers worked with in the past. At the heart of this new way of developing Web applications are components known as Web controls. Though most Web developers use them while developing ASP.NET applications, many Web developers have not yet dived into the world of creating custom Web controls, even after all this time, and all .NET developers will soon face another release of .NET. In this article, I will attempt to give you a head-to-toe understanding of how Web controls work, and how to create them for yourself.
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Integrating PayPal into E-Commerce Applications with ASP.NET
E-commerce applications require user-friendly mechanisms for payment.Although e-commerce sites usually use full credit card processing gateways, offering PayPal for payment provides an option for those who don't want to send credit card information across the Internet. If you run a Web shop that uses direct credit card processing and you want to integrate PayPal, you'll find that using PayPal as a processing service is not as straightforward as using a payment gateway. In this article, I'll describe how you can minimize the external PayPal interaction and work the PayPal payment into your order processing workflow to provide a seamless interface using ASP.NET and C#.
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Introduction to Cascading Style Sheets
An effective use of CSS is an easy way to maintain and consolidate the visual aspects of Web development. Cascading Style Sheets are a Web standard that have been in existence for a number of years. Most modern browsers support CSS, so their use in your .NET applications should pose no cross-browser compatibility issues. However, like most things in the Web world, various browsers may behave differently depending on the CSS you feed it.
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Using the New Security Controls in ASP.NET 2.0
In this article, Wei-Meng Lee explains how ASP.NET 2.0 introduces a suite of new security controls that simplify user authentication and management for web developers. He demonstrates how to use controls like LoginView, Login, CreateUserWizard, PasswordRecovery, and ChangePassword, alongside the Membership Provider model, to handle tasks such as user login, registration, password management, and secure data storage without extensive coding. Lee highlights the flexibility of the Membership Provider system, which supports customization and seamless integration with various data stores, enhancing security and developer productivity in ASP.NET 2.0 applications.
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ASP.NET Development Through Web Controls and Declarative Programming
Updated
ASP.NET WebControls do more than just allow you to write reusable components. They can provide an entire approach to Web application development, allowing you to bring a new level of OOP to the UI and letting you program declaratively.Lately I've come to notice that no other programming term has more definitions than declarative programming. In this article, I will attempt to explain it in terms of how it applies to .NET development, specifically ASP.NET through the use of WebControls. I'll do this by illustrating some real-world examples that I have used in my own projects. In the end, I hope to leave you with an understanding of what declarative programming is, how you can use it when developing ASP.NET Web applications, and how, with the help of WebControls, to use it as an approach to ASP.NET development.
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By the Skin of Your App
Updated
Enable advanced skinning in your Web applications using an MVC pattern.MVC, or Model-View-Controller, is a design architecture that promotes separation among parts of an application, with particular focus on the presentation tier. The concept of MVC is inherent in the ASP.NET architecture and I'll show you how to take advantage of that in order to provide skinning or themes capability to your Web sites.
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Localizing ASP.NET 2.0 Applications
Updated
As we compete in the global economy, companies are increasingly developing applications for the world audience. Part of the challenges in globalizing is in understanding the language and culture of the local audience. An application written for the American market may not be useable in the Asian market. Hence, special considerations must be factored in when designing your application for the world market; in essence-you need to localize your application.As we compete in the global economy, companies are increasingly developing applications for the world audience.Part of the challenges in globalizing is in understanding the language and culture of the local audience. An application written for the American market may not be useable in the Asian market. Hence, special considerations must be factored in when designing your application for the world market; in essence?you need to localize your application.
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Preparing for Indigo - Choosing the Right Technology Today
Updated
Indigo is the next generation application connectivity and services from Microsoft, superseding the variety of .NET connectivity solutions available today: ASMX Web services, Remoting, and Enterprise Services. Since .NET debuted some five years ago, all three technologies have been inundated in either hype or misconceptions. With Indigo around the corner, it is time to take a long hard look at these three technologies, and separate fact from myth so that you will be best prepared for Indigo. This article starts by examining the existing technologies, describing their merits and shortcomings, putting them in the correct perspective of a modern distributed application, and suggests where to best apply them. Then the article briefly describes the Indigo programming model, and assesses how to best mitigate the cost of the migration.
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What You Need to Know about Web Controls
Updated
Knowing the flaws in Web server controls and how to work around them before you use them can save you hours of time.
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Free ASP.NET Goodies!
Free. Marketing professionals have known for years the positive results that this word produces. They use the word free to lure you in so that they can sell you something else. Luckily for you, that will not be the case in this article. All of the goodies, resources, tools, and utilities I mention are all free. They won't cost you a dime.In this article, I will share with you the results of my search for zero-cost resources for the ASP.NET developer. Space restrictions limit the depth to which I can discuss each item that I've found, but my descriptions should be enough for you decide if you would like to research the material further.
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State Management
The sun is shining and I am sitting at a large, umbrella-covered picnic table overlooking a shimmering pond, my state right now is pretty relaxed. I have been fortunate enough to have spent the last few days at a cabin in the northern part of Maine. The birds are chirping, kids are playing, and there's not a Moose in sight. The only state management I'm concerned with right now is my own state of mind, and right now I am feeling pretty good. State management, whether you are dealing with your own state of mind or if you are working with ASP.NET, is a very fundamental and important task.In this article I am going to cover the important and sometimes confusing topic of state management. I will explore the state management fundamentals, covering both client-side and server-side state management options.
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DotNetNuke 2.0
Updated
DotNetNuke 2.0 is the latest version of the increasingly popular, open-source, content management portal. It was originally released as an open source project on Dec 24, 2002. In the past fifteen months it has grown to over 50,000 lines of managed code. One thing is for sure, you won't be alone using it! The DotNetNuke support forum is one of the most active and dynamic forums on the www.asp.net Web site. There are currently over 45,000 registered users on the official DotNetNuke Web site and membership continues to grow at an exponential rate.In this article, Jim will cover some of the new features in DNN 2.0 as well as discuss upgrading portals from prior DNN versions. He also explores the new data access methodology and walks you through the steps involved in developing custom DNN 2.0 modules.
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ASP.NET: Creating an Application Configuration Class
In this article, Paul Sheriff explains how to create a custom configuration class in ASP.NET to manage application settings stored in the web.config file more efficiently than using the traditional Application object. He highlights the drawbacks of the Application object, such as lack of type safety and automatic updates, and demonstrates how to define a configuration section, implement the IConfigurationSectionHandler interface, and initialize the class to enable strongly typed, IntelliSense-supported properties that automatically refresh when the web.config file changes. Sheriff emphasizes that while the setup requires effort, the resulting improved maintainability and functionality justify it.
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The diminishing importance of HTML
Updated
HTML-based Web development has dominated application development for the last six years or so and there are no signs of that changing.However, things are changing as the .NET initiative takes hold. Although Microsoft has put a lot of effort into its Web-based interfaces, which include the powerful new ASP.NET Web Forms framework, I am guessing that there will actually be a push back to desktop-driven, forms-based applications once .NET takes hold.
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ASP.NET Caching Strategies
ASP.NET provides developers with the ability to cache dynamically generated pages.This means that it is now possible to cache pages built on posted data and querystrings! For instance, an e-commerce site that generates the same catalog from the database over and over on nearly every user request can now simply cache the catalog pages. Caching saves precious database server CPU cycles and renders pages down to the client much faster. Of course, when the catalog data is updated, the cache can simply refresh itself. Furthermore, developers can define the length of time an item is to be cached, indicate cache dependencies, create cached versions per browser, and indicate where an item should be cached (client, server, proxy, etc.).
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Retrieving HTTP content in .NET
Updated
Rick Strahl argues that .NET provides powerful yet approachable tools for retrieving HTTP content, centering on HttpWebRequest/HttpWebResponse and a practical wrapper (wwHttp) that simplifies common tasks without sacrificing access to underlying features. He demonstrates how to fetch and post data, manage encodings, cookies, authentication, and proxies, and explains event-driven and multi-threaded approaches to HTTP work. Through code examples and design notes, Strahl emphasizes building reusable, maintainable HTTP access with a balance of simplicity and configurability for real-world applications.
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ACME Insurance - Building a .NET Application
Part 3, The User Interface and the Rating Web ServiceWe are finally going to get our feet wet in Visual Studio .NET and start writing some real code! In this article, we're going to focus on two areas of the ACME application. First, we will talk about the user interface and how it's implemented in ASP.NET ? along with a few problems we overcame by utilizing the powerful object-oriented features of .NET. Next, we'll write a web service in Visual Basic .NET to rate policies based on their class codes. To demonstrate that web services can be used in a variety of ways, we'll consume the web service in both .NET and Visual FoxPro 7.
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Handling long Web Requests with Asynchronous Request Processing
Updated
Web Applications tend to be stateless, and running long requests can be problematic for Web backends. Long-running requests can tie up valuable Web server connections and resources. In this article, Rick describes one approach that can be used to handle lengthy requests. A polling mechanism and an Event manager class can be used to pass messages between a Web application and a processing server running the actual long task.
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Static Content in a Dynamic World
Updated
Web applications are essentially made up of functions that map inputs (requests) to outputs (responses).This article looks at a way to store the relationship between request and response and pre-generate responses, thus reducing the resources needed fulfill requests.
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Building and using a SOAP Web Service with West Wind Web Connection
Updated
Imagine that you need some specific information in your application, such as a shipping rate. You now go to a special "service" search engine and look up the type of service you need over the Web.Now, imagine that you can get this information easily from the service and simply plug it directly into your application. Sound too good to be true? Believe it or not, the technologies to make this possible are available today. Web Services provide this functionality by bringing to application development the same interlinked mechanisms that have made the Web so popular for Web browsing. By sharing data over the Web in standard formats, "Web Services" is becoming the new industry buzzword. Microsoft is talking about Web Services as the second life of the Internet. Web Services will tie together applications, just as the Web Browser and URL links have tied together Web pages. "The Web At Your Service" is the new mantra. In this article, Rick discusses SOAP and Web Services, then creates a sample Web Service and integrates it into an application.
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Configuring IIS via code
Updated
Rick Strahl shows how to configure IIS programmatically using ADSI and the IIS Admin objects, demonstrating a Visual FoxPro class (wwIISAdmin) that automates common install tasks—enumerating sites, creating sites and virtual directories, setting permissions, and managing script maps—so developers can build reliable installers or replication scripts for multi‑server deployments and remote configuration.
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Scaling Web Applications with Windows 2000 Advanced Server's Network Load Balancing
Updated
With ever-larger Web applications being built to service very large numbers of simultaneous users pounding away at Web sites, the issue of scaling applications beyond a single machine is important for Web application developers and network administrators.While hardware capabilities seem to be increasing to the point that high-powered single machines can handle tremendous loads, there will always be those apps that push beyond a single machine. In addition, for many administrators and IT planners, it's often not good enough to say that a server can handle x number of users. They want redundancy, backup and overflow support, so a Web server or hardware failure or an unexpected surge of visitors doesn't cripple the corporate Web site. In this article, Rick discusses the issues of scalability and how load balancing services can help provide redundancy and extra horsepower to large Web sites.
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Server-Side XML and XSL Merging
Updated
Data in XML format will play a significant role for the foreseeable future.Moreover, it's clear that XML and XSL will play a significant role in most, if not all, of my future applications. Why is it, however, that almost everything we read talks about merging XML+XSL on the client side, which requires IE 5 or higher browsers? In this article, Steve shows how to apply XSL transformations on the server to get around this problem.
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XML Data Binding for IE5 clients
Updated
Jon Newell advocates using XML as the data transport to bind server data to HTML in IE5+ client applications, separating content from presentation to enable multi‑platform reach and better scalability. By embedding XML data islands in server responses and using nonstandard yet IE‑friendly attributes (XMLTABLE, XMLFIELD) on form elements, data is bound on the client via a lightweight JavaScript library (binddata), with an optional sync back to XML islands and easy posting back to the server. This approach promotes true N‑Tier separation and interoperability across fat, thin, and mobile clients.
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Load Testing Web Applications using Microsoft's Web Application Stress Tool
Updated
Rick Strahl explains how to use Microsoft’s Web Application Stress Tool (WAS) to simulate large numbers of concurrent users against a web application in order to gauge hardware/software limits, plan capacity, and identify bottlenecks. He covers creating realistic test scripts via browser recording, configuring load with stress level, sockets, delays, and redirects, and interpreting comprehensive reports (throughput, response times, bandwidth, and backend logging). Strahl emphasizes long-running tests, careful parameter tuning, and the need for backend logging to understand performance over time, while warning of potential misuse and SSL limitations.