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

Wow, I had no idea there were so many ajax frameworks. Here is the list of 50 that I found here. I guess it makes sense since it is so new and everyone likes to have full control, so they write their own. I know I did also, but it is no where close to the quality to let anyone else use it.

Although I am slightly biased, my choice is Atlas.
I am now migrating all of my old ajax stuff to atlas. I have played with many frameworks, and Atlas is by far the most complete. It is a little more complicated, but also more powerful. It really is an extension of JavaScript and I predict will be the standard way to implement good practices ajax programming. Anyone wanting to get involved with ajax programming in asp.net 2.0 really needs to be using Atlas. Microsoft is adding some cool features and it will integrate right into the Visual Studio IDE. This is where the future is headed, so no need to learn frameworks that you will be porting from in the future.

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.

I was lucky enough to be able to attend the Atlas SDR (Strategic Design Review) last week in Redmond. For those of you who do not know what that is, what they do is invite 30 or so people for 3 days to help teach, discuss and learn what developers want to see in the product. Not knowing exactly what I can or can't say about the next version of Visual Studio, I will say that I want the next version of Visual Studio now!

My head is still spinning on the amazing things they are doing in Atlas. I must say that Nikhil Kothari is a genius. Being the architect of Atlas, he was easilty able to help me understand some very in-depth concepts on how Atlas works. I am very lucky to have met him and had some great instruction from. This javascript framework they have come up with goes so deep, that it is hard to grasp all at once. I am going to put up some demos soon on how to use some of this stuff in the real world. There are some very compelling scenarios that are not as hard as one might think.

If you haven't already be sure to download the April CTP from atlas.asp.net and download the docs. There are some pretty cool demos to get you started and the new control toolkit gives you a good on idea on how you can extend the framework yourself.

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/

Well better late than never. I have been wanting to tell about this great event, but as soon as I got back from vegas, my kids got me very sick. So here it is:

So, it was the coolest convention I have ever been too. This is no joke. Microsoft really outdid themselves this time. Not like a normal Microsoft event. It didn't even feel like one sometimes. The branding was different, not the bold Microsoft signs but MIX 06 signs everywhere with Microsoft on the top left corner. There were also media center lunges with bean bags to sit and play xbox 360 games and the new vista media center. What was also wierd was the number of apple laptops I saw. There were tons of flash and mac developers and graphic designers there. It truly was a mix of different people. It was bringing together the designer and the developer. It was really cool the kind of conversations I had. Here I am talking to someone from Adobe about how WPF/E will compete with flash. For those of you that don't know what I am talking about, WPF/E is Microsoft's version of Flash. Except better I think. Finally will have a way to wire up cool design to code-behind pages. You can get more information about Microsoft's new design tool called Expression here.

I played with the xaml stuff and wpf/e in the hands-on labs, but have yet to get it installed on my pc. I am very excited about where Microsoft is headed. It was definitely the early adopter crowd. I don't think WPF/E even comes out until Mid-2007.

So anyway, Vegas was lots of fun and I met alot of cool and fun people. Microsoft had a reception Monday night which was one of the best parties I have ever been too. I saw O'Reilly dancing, Gates wasn't there though. It felt like one of those parties you used to hear about in 2000 at the height of the dotcom boom. Lots of key companies there and everyone drinking and having fun.

For those who missed it, it is definitely worth going next year. It will be hard to top this year, but I am sure it will be somewhere fun.