Jim Zimmerman - ASP.NET, MVC, Ajax and ORM

Although I have known for a while that there was going to be IntelliSense for JavaScript in the next version of Visual Studio, this is the first time I have seen a public post from the team on how it will work.  I just ran across this post: http://blogs.msdn.com/webdevtools/archive/2007/03/02/jscript-intellisense-in-orcas.aspx that shows real examples of how this will work.  I am so excited to use this tool.  If only i could use it now.  I feel that there must be a beta coming sometime soon.

ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 has just released!  We can now start to write great AJAX applications that will be fully supported.  They may have taken a while, but that is too be expected when they create a massive base framework that will be supported across multiple browsers.  This is not an easy task. 

This is a huge step to great things with using AJAX with ASP.NET 2.0.  I know there are a lot of frameworks out there, but this is one that will be around for awhile and is easily contributed to.  They have also extended the JavaScript language so that it feels a little bit more like C# and wait until they release the new Visual Studio where we will get intellisense for JavaScript.  I am so excited to see this in action.

Be sure to check out ajax.asp.net and watch some of the video demos they have and implement their code samples.  While we have all seen demos like this before, we can actually implement these scenarios in a supported environment.  Have fun!

You can now download the Release Candidate of ASP.NET AJAX 1.0.  It is time to get your app's ready.  I am pretty sure we will not see too many changes at all now and can confidently write code that will be used when it ships next month. 

This has been a long wait, but well worth it.  I am sure that this framework will grow and grow as it matures.  It has been a little painful to wait this long for a release, but is well worth it.  These guys have worked so hard to come up with a release that works cross browser and is easy to use to develop with and is relatively bug free.  I am excited to all the new features that will be added once there is a 1.0 release.  I think people will really embrace it and add many controls that can be shared across the community.

You can now download the new Atlas or shall I say ASP.NET AJAX.  They have several downloads including the toolkit with a ton of cool controls for asp.net Ajax and also a library for non asp.net users.  Pretty cool stuff. 

You know they say they are going to commit to this for 10 years.  I don't know about you, but anyone who is going to support this type of technology for 10 years is one that you should be getting to know now.  This is not going anywhere and you know Microsoft will always be adding features to this stuff.

Well the guys at Microsoft released the September release of the Atlas Control Toolkit. This is a great release with some cool features like animation and nobot along with some cool sliders. My balloon did not get in this time around because of some unforeseen bugs. Those guys are fun to work with and they work very hard. I see code check ins at midnight and sometimes 3 in the morning. They really worked hard to get this release solid and you can tell when you look at it. Have fun! The animation stuff is really amazing. You would swear its flash.

I don't know about you all , but I think the biggest ajax problem is the "back button problem". For example, I built this cool build a car application and my wife would click the next button and then when she wanted to change something and go back she would hit the back button and say, "What happened? Where did the car go?". That was when I realized that we had to come up with a solution for the back button browser problem in ajax. Well it looks as if Nikhil has come up with a good solution for this problem here: http://www.nikhilk.net/BackButtonSupport.aspx . I haven't had time to implement his stuff, but he is the father of Atlas, so I am sure it probably works as advertised. He has some great stuff on his site on how to implement it.

Scott Guthrie just announced Atlas 1.0 Naming and Roadmap. This is great because it will be released to work with vs 2005 and be fully supported. They listened to alot of people that want the new technology now and they are delivering. Here is a little excerpt of what he said:

"Many people have asked us to deliver a fully-supported 1.0 release of �Atlas� before the next release of Visual Studio. �Fully supported� means that Microsoft product support services are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year and that any customer can obtain hotfixes if they encounter a bug affecting their application. It also means that the product has a committed servicing product lifetime of 10 years � which provides companies with the ability to depend on it for mission critical applications.

I am excited to announce today that we are going to ship this fully supported �Atlas� 1.0 release on top of ASP.NET 2.0 and ensure that it works with Visual Studio 2005. Our goal is to ship the �Atlas� 1.0 release around the end of this year. The plan is to first have a Beta, then an RC, and then decide on the final date based on customer feedback."

Good stuff!

Funny, i Just found out there is a magazine for Ajax called AjaxWorld. There are probably more magazines out there dedicated to Ajax, but i have not run into them yet. I ran into this article today and thought I would share it with you. It is a nice primer for those of you wanting to learn more about the features and potential of Atlas from a third party perspective.

Microsoft just released the first Atlas Control Toolkit with controls from non-microsoft authors. My balloon control did not make it into this release but will be put in the next one to allow for proper testing. There are some cool new controls that I think everyone will enjoy. I especially like the ratings and dynamicpopulate control. Shawn Burke did a great job on the DynamicPopulate Control and I thank him for allowing me to add the customScript feature so that you can call javascript to populate a control instead of a web service or a page method. Sometimes this can be very useful.

Have fun!

Here is a very simple tutorial I saw on code project on how to use atlas to create a quiz. I like it because it shows how simple you can write atlas apps using straight javascript and html, but still using the atlas library to do the web service call management. Alot of times this is how I prefer to write ajax / atlas apps. I am also a big fan of the atlas toolkit, because you can resuse javascript now in such a cleaner way. Check out the toolkit here. And if you are so bold as to want to play with the source code, you can find that here.

For all you who would like to learn more about Atlas here in Tampa, Joe Healy and I are speaking on Wednesday, June 14, 2006 here in Tampa. Joe is going to talk about how to start with Atlas along with an overview and how to start with the Atlas Toolkit. I am going to get advanced and talk about how to best debug the atlas applications along with writing your own custom atlas control. I will also touch on script# from Nikil as well as talk about some advanced javascript features. You can check out the event details and signup here. I also have written a atlas control that you all will be able to download a beta of after the talk. I have been so busy writing the control and working that I haven't posted in a while. Hard to keep up sometimes. Hope to see you all there!

Now this is some very cool stuff. Nikhil, the architect of Atlas, has released a prototype to create atlas / ajax apps in c# without writing javascript code. You can check the post and download some bits here. I haven't had time to play with it yet, but I will post a review when I do. I actually like writing javascript, but i will try anything that makes life easier when writing complex ajax apps.

Have fun!

The new Atlas control kit has been updated a few days ago. This release incorporates a bunch of community feature feedback, fixes a lot of bugs, adds support for the Safari browser, and introduces another 4 new Atlas-enabled controls to the 9 introduced with the first release. You can download it from this link: http://atlas.asp.net/default.aspx?tabid=47&subtabid=477.

Have fun, the controls make it really easy to add atlas functionality to your site.

Bertrand Le Roy, a dev on the Atlas team has built a tool for documenting Atlas classes called ScriptDoc. You can download it from this link; http://www.gotdotnet.com/workspaces/workspace.aspx?id=5d6cbdb9-c177-40f2-98db-71ec86a467cc.

I haven't had time to use it yet, but it will definitley help keep my javascript more organized.

The other night I was doing a quick session on how to make live.com gadgets using Atlas. I couldn't actually show the atlas way working because I was getting a javascript error of 'm_contentIE is undefined'. I had to resort to just the xml, js, and css files way the live.com folks do it. The new atlas:Gadget control makes it so much easier. To get it work you have to add more trusted sites like *.start.com, *.live.com and localhost in internet explorer security settings. The * is what does it. Covers all current and future subdomains. This is only if you are testing from localhost as far as I know. Here is a post on it, that was shown to me during my session by Joe Healy.
http://microsoftgadgets.com/forums/5184/ShowPost.aspx .
I thank him for showing me that, I was about ready to pull my hair out debugging the live.com javascript code earlier that day getting ready for my session. Found out the reason I was able to get raw xml way working was because I Could set binding options inline = true. When using atlas:gadget you are stuck with the xml that is generating when calling page.aspx?gadget=true. I hope this helps at least one person trying to fix this problem.

Ok, now some of you may already know this, so don't laugh too hard that I have been writing Ajax - style apps for almost a year and have just been using fiddler to do most of my debugging. If you have not heard of fiddler you can get that here.

Anyway, I stumbled across a very easy way to debug javascript with Visual Studio 2005. I assume this also works for older versions. All that you need to do is put debugger; on the line where you want to set a breakpoint and then open the page in IE and it will ask you if what debugger you want to use. Note: You need to make sure you are allowing javascript to be debugged in IE by checking the appropiate checkbox in intenet options > advanced.

Once the debugger is open you can step though the code like you normally would in a c# app and watch the variables. If you are making ajax calls and returning xml or javascript you can also see that data come back. If you are using JSON you can actually continue stepping through that code that was returned from you server in runtime. Pretty cool stuff! It has just made my life so much easier and I am suprised I have not heard of this before. I guess I had my head in the sand for a little bit. I hope this helps someone who has been looking for how to do this.

Looks like some people have been listening to us developers about what we want. Microsoft has released shared source controls to simplify Atlas development. Pretty cool stuff. I am already starting to create controls. Have fun!

http://atlas.asp.net/atlastoolkit/

Here is Nikhil's Web Development Helper. This is a great tool for debugging ajax and atlas applications. Check it out here: http://www.nikhilk.net/Project.WebDevHelper.aspx


Make sure to follow instructions carefully to get this to work. Only will work on your own .net apps.

Here is a link to a look at the Atlas technology.

http://beta.asp.net/default.aspx?tabindex=7&tabid=47

I am looking at it myself and hope to incorporate this into my presentation on Saturday, Sept. 24th, 2005 in Tallahassee for Code Camp.