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

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.

Wow was that a fun code camp! We had a few hiccups during lunch (no food left for people late to line like me), but that was taken care of with pizzas later from VisualGov, thanks.

There were so many good people that i met and it was so cool to meet some of the new speakers that are brave enough speak here in Florida. We also had some great speakers from out of town who flew all the way into Tampa. We really did appreciate that.

So, to those who attended my session on advanced atlas controls, i am going to let you download the code samples that i demonstrated, but I have newer code that is more robust and takes advantage of other new features of the toolkit as of today. So once that code gets properly tested, i will post the changes here.

Ok, I just realized that I have not blogged in almost a month. So if I still have any readers, you may be interested in what my sessions are about at Tampa Code Camp if you have already signed up. We are completely full, and then some. I have been so busy working on a control for the atlas toolkit that mimics a balloon behavior similar to netflix and the many other things i do in my day and night jobs. I am doing two sessions tomorrow at Tampa Code Camp, one on Code generation and the ohter on how to create an atlas control. I am refactoring the balloon behavior again and am anxious to get it out there. In the code generation session I am going to show you how we bult tampa code camp using codesmith tools. I have fallen in love with that software. I don't think in sql anymore. Pretty cool.

See you there!

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!

I recently ran into this post from Julien Couvreur on his blog. He ported his XMLHttpRequest Debugging user script that works with firefox to IE. You can check out more about it here. I tried it out and it works pretty slick.

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.