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

If you read my blog and are actually one of the few who subscribe to my blog, then you may be wondering what happened to me.  In a word, "book".  Taking on a few chapters in a book and then an additional few online chapters took it's toll on my writing.  I never knew I could write that many pages about AJAX, but apparently I can.  You can check out the book, Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX, on Amazon.  I was told it was out and printed, but have not seen one yet at the book stores, but it should be there soon.  We are giving a few away and Tampa Code Camp this year on July 14th, 2007.  So if you want to learn some things from great speakers for free and win a few books, then you need to come.  These are the best events to go to as a developer.  The connections alone are worth the Saturday spent inside. 

Hope to see you at code camp.  You know, last year at code camp, I learned some new stuff and met some cool people.  Some of you may get that from the movie.  I am not going to say which one.  If you don't get it, then I'm really sorry, but you are going to have to ask me at code camp.

I guess there has been a double booking of the Microsoft room for the 20th, so we had to move it to the 21st.  I hope you all can still make it.  we will all be speaking at Tampa Code Camp also on July 14th, so try to catch us there if you can also.  I will be showing some Silverlight and Ajax stuff at Tampa Code Camp.

 When connecting to my vista laptop or my vista desktop tonight using remote desktop, I kept getting this error. "The authentication certificate received from the remote computer has expired or it not valid."  This is new and could not find anything on it except for a comment left on a random blog post I found.  Luckily this worked.  Notice how it says my certificate expired on 7/1/2002.  Very strange.  For anyone else having this problem, this is how you solve it:

1. Start mmc.exe by typing in mmc in the search bar and open Certificates snap-in for local computer account.
2. Navigate to “Certificates\Remote Desktop\Certificates”
3. Delete certificate that’s in this store.

A few of us are having a Day of AJAX in Tampa, FL on June 20th, 2007 from 8:30 - 5:00.  This will be a fun day of learning ASP.NET AJAX for free put on by ASPSOFT, Microsoft and DevFish.NET. Join us for a deep dive into the intricacies of Ajax development using the Microsoft suite of tools. The agenda for the day will be:

8:30am - 9:00am : Registration and welcome
9:00am - 10:30am : Joe Healy ::  Introductions :: An overview of Microsoft Ajax
10:30am - 10:45am : BREAK
10:45am - 12:15pm : Jim Zimmerman :: Building controls and extenders
12:15pm - 1:00pm : LUNCH (pizza and soda)
1:00pm - 2:30pm : Jay Kimble :: Ajax Best Practices
2:30pm - 2:45pm : BREAK
2:45pm - 3:45pm : Joe Healy :: Ajax and JavaScript in Visual Studio "Orcas"
3:45pm - 4:00pm : Giveaways (including a Zune!)
4:00pm - 5:00pm : Open dialog with attendees

All topics are covered at a 200-level. Space is limited, so register early to get your seat at A Day of Ajax!

Go to https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=118815 to register.  I think there are only about 75 seats available, so you will want to register as soon as possible to get in.

Look forward to seeing you there.  Hopefully I will have a few copies of Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX to give away at the event.

MSDN has uploaded the Webcast I did last week.  It was my first one so there is some funny mess ups in the beginning.  I didn't know how to get back to the live meeting slides after switching to share my applications.  the host had to get on the line and tell me what to click.  Oh well.  I won't make that mistake again.

If you want to view it you can see it on-demand here, ASP.NET AJAX From Scratch MSDN Webcast.  I would love to hear any feedback you may have.

I got asked to help with a Webcast due to scheduling conflict and will be giving a Webcast on Monday May 14th at 12:00 p.m.  SDN Webcast: Russ and Joe Developer Show: ASP.NET AJAX from Scratch (Level 100) is where you can register online or download later.  I don't know when or if they will offer it as a download, but I will keep you posted when I find out.

I will be going over some basic stuff with UpdatePanel and some of the controls in the Ajax Control Toolkit.  I also will go over a cool demo using the Ajax Library to write my own class using Orcas Beta 1 and showing off intellisense with JavaScript.  It is truly amazing to reference my own JavaScript class and then see the properties and methods using intellisense when calling the class in the aspx page.

My favorite ASP.NET code gen framework has just been officially released to its 2.0 version.  It is really more than a code gen tool and provides an excellent framework for getting websites done much quicker.  Really good stuff.  You can check it out here at codeplex.  They have also released Subsonic Tools for Visual Studio which is great for generating dal's outside of you website projects and can be used much easier with Web Application Projects along with WinForm applications.

For those few that actually subscribe to my blog and were wondering if i fell from the face of the earth, well I did.  I have just returned from planet AJAX and am still having dreams of intellisense for JavaScript.  The lead author is having a hard time deciding on which cover to choose and is wondering what you think over at his blog. :) If you go to that post, it is the only real proof that i have that i have been working on a book with five other AJAX gurus as we think we are.  It also looks like Wally has been working on some other books in his WTF series that i was unaware of.

Writing a bok has been one  of the biggest challenges of my career.  At first I thought, "How hard could this be?"  Well it is very challenging and takes about 2-3 times more work than you would think.  With all the revisions that you must go through and the research into things that you thought you knew, it takes a toll. 

 I must commend my wife for being as patient as she has been with all the late nights i had been wirting.  The first official printed copy will be signed by me and given to her.  Although she will not understand a thing i said in the chapters i wrote, she will at least see that is is real and i wasn't just typing in my MSN instant messenging client.

I will be blogging much more often in the weeks to come.  Hopefully you haven't all deleted your subscription in your RSS reader yet. :)

If you like to laugh at geeky stuff, you need to check out David Silverlight's new creation called Real Technology Heroes.  This site is pretty funny.  Listen to the two audio commercials he has recorded.  Great voice, sounds just like the guy in the budwesier commercials that we all find amusing while we are driving in the car.

Oh and if you think you are smart and want to win stupid stuff, check out his community site called Community Credit.  His slogan is perfect, "stupid prizes for smart people".

There are several gotchas when installing Team Foundation Server SP1.  I have to admit I was scared which is why it took me until the beginning of March to do it.  The big reason I wanted to do it was the improved support for accessing the source control and work items over HTTPS instead of having to give vpn access to my outside developers.

So I backed up all of my databases first, then I started to install SP1.  The first issue was that it alerted me that I needed to install KB919156 which is an update that prevents the database from becoming corrupted when upgrading if a web service is invaded to get source from the server while installing the update.  That's nice that they remembered to tell me that before hand.  So I downloaded that update and when trying to install it, I get this error, "Windows Sharepoint Services is not using the designated Team Foundation Server configuration database (STS_Configure_TFS).  To proceed, you must exit setup and uninstall Windows Sharepoint services.  Then reinstall Windows Sharepoint Services in accordance with the Team Foundation Installation Guide, and run setup again".

So I started to get a little concerned that if I uninstall Sharepoint, I could cause a lot of problems.  So I look up that error and I find out that I need to install the update under the TFSService user.  So I do that and get past that error, but then get a weird 28002 Error Unknown message.  I searched for that error and found this post: http://blogs.msdn.com/dglover/archive/2006/12/18/upgrading-to-team-foundation-server-sp1-workgroup-version-and-a-gotcha.aspx

Well it turns out that if you are running workgroup edition which has a max of 5 users and you happen to have all five users licenced that you need to remove one before installing and then add that user back after updating.

Thankfully after all that it worked perfect.  At least it did not show any errors and now my HTTPS access works great.  Getting HTTPS client access to work with Vista and XP is another story.  I will save that for another post.

Hopefully this will save people a lot of time and give them the confidence that they can update to SP1 without worrying too much.  Make sure you backup first though, you never know what could happen.

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.