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

I just got back from Jacksonville CodeCamp this weekend and was very impressed with how organized it was. My hats off to Dennis and Vinay along with the many volunteers that did such a good job with the Code Camp. If it wasn't for you guys, this would not be possible. I really like the people I meet in Jacksonville. It is always fun!

For those of you that are into Code Generation you need to check out the new NetTiers release for Codesmith. NetTiers is an open source template for CodeSmith. It has options to include the atlas framework and atlas control toolkit along with so many other features like web service generation, admin generation, VSTS unit tests, DAL, etc. It is really unbelievable. I use it on every project now and it has simplified my life. It is really amazing how these guys are producing one of the smartest ways to architect your application for free. Well you need Codesmith, but the templates are open source. Its a great way to learn generics and the enterprise library. I swear by it now. Look into it if you are interested in saving time. Be aware of the learning curve. It is worth it at the end though.

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.

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!