VS.NET 2005

VS 2008 Templates for ASP.NET AJAX Extensions 1.0

Mohamed Ahmed Meligy — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 18:03:25 GMT

ASP.NET AJAX Original Roadmap
When Microsoft released ASP.NET AJAX Extensions (formerly codename ATLAS), their roadmap for the core extensions was to release ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 for ASP.NET 2.0 (AKA, .NET Framework 2.0) as separate installation, and have that to integrate greatly with Visual Studio 2005, and then integrate that with ASP.NET 3.5 to be part of it, enabling you to have the same experience (better experience actually) with Visual Studio 2008. Of course that's all while having the "futures" line developed in parallel and eventually merged with the core, and having ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit developed by the community.

The story with VS 2008
Now with VS 2008 multi targeting (meaning being able to use it with multiple versions of the .NET framework, not just .NET fx 3.5, but 3.0 and even 2.0 as well), it's relatively easy to work with "new" ASP.NET 2.0 websites the same way you do in Visual Studio 2005; except that in VS 2008, you'd do that as if you were adding ASP.NET AJAX support to an "existing" ASP.NET 2.0 website, meaning you have to add the references yourself, and modify web.config file with these big blocks of markup for config sections, assembly references and tag mapping, HTTP handlers, etc..... on your own, as VS 2008 of course doesn't have the ASP.NET AJAX for ASP.NET 2.0 integrated.

So, what's new ... ?
To me the current model is totally fine. That's how I do it most of the time anyway because they guarantee less weird runtime errors and since I used to reference local versions of the ASP.NET AJAX assemblies when I used to work on multiple sites running different BETAs and other pre-release versions of ASP.NET AJAX 1.0.
Now Microsoft wanted to make that easier by porting ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 to VS 2008 so that you can download those, and be able to create new ASP.NET 2.0 website with ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 support just by creating another web site/project from the New Website/ New Project dialog(s).

Download ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 Templates for Visual Studio 2008
Note: Of course you need to have ASP.NET AJAX Extensions 1.0 installed already.
Read Brad Abrams[MSFT]'s Announcement

Technorati Tags: VS 2008,ASP.NET AJAX,Visual Studio

Dark Visual Studio With Resharper - My VS Settings (Colors, Windows Layout, ... )

Mohamed Ahmed Meligy — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 17:55:56 GMT

I heard few comments about my VS color scheme in the last demo day, and Mohamed Korayem mentioned it in his blog post about the sessions. Many asked me to share it with them.

Here's how my Visual Studio looks:

The idea of dark colors originally came to me from Dave Reed [ASP.NET Team] 's "Join the dark side of Visual Studio" post (which Dody pointed me to). Some color effects (like current line highlight) are special enhancements by Resharper.

So, I exported my settings file for color and window layout and everything so that you can go and download it. You can use it with VS 2005 or VS 2008 (even if you don't have Resharper, but you might then encounter some false warnings, and of course won't get its enhancements).

Have fun

Gotcha: Wokflow designer not working when openning workflow in non-workflow VS 2005 project

Mohamed Ahmed Meligy — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 08:45:24 GMT

If you worked with Windows Workflow before on Visual Studio 2005, copied a workflow diagram from a workflow project into a second normal project, added the proper references, built the second project and everything, but afterwards tried to open the workflow diagram in designer, and it didn't work, giving you an error message like tis one:

The service 'System.Workflow.ComponentModel.Design.IIdentifierCreationService' must be installed for this operation to succeed. Ensure that this service is available.

You can solve this by one of two ways:

Create a 3rd project as workflow project and move everything from the 2nd project to it. [Sounds like Microsoft recommendation - I hate that one though]
Modify the .csproj file file to add the lines in green under the black lines:

<AssemblyName>ASEEMBLY_NAME_HERE__TYPICALLY _SAME_AS_PROJECT_FILE</AssemblyName>
<ProjectTypeGuids>{14822709-B5A1-4724-98CA-57A101D1B079};{FAE04EC0-301F-11D3-BF4B-00C04F79EFBC}</ProjectTypeGuids>
</PropertyGroup>
<Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Microsoft\Windows Workflow Foundation\v3.0\Workflow.Targets" />

Hope that helps!

The (hopefully) final answer for VS 2005 debugging (F5) on IIS 7

Mohamed Ahmed Meligy — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 07:04:16 GMT

The Problem:
If you have been using Vista for a while like me, and you get into situations beyond the capabilities provided in ASP.NET development server (simply like virtual directories), and had to load your development in IIS7, you must have had at least 3 or 4 times of problems with debugging (or simply hitting F5) not working at all.
Some of the solutions were creating the website application/v dir yourself not using Visual Studio (This applies to Website model more than Web Application Project model), set the asp.net model to classic (which means enabling asp.net modules normally), enabling windows authentication in IIS,
Sometimes, all these (combined) do not work on solving the problem and getting F5 to work!
The Solution:
Microsoft has simply released a public downloadable hot fix. It's available on Microsoft Connect website. You choose to download the hotfix, extract, install (yeah, it takes so long as all other VS patches!), and you are done.
Notes:
Of course the hotfix applies to VS 2005 SP1 with SP1 Vista Update installed, and to debug on IIS, you must make sure it's configured right, and you need to run VS using "Run As Administrator" (or simply disable UAC).
References:

Test Driven .NET 2.4 BETA is out

Mohamed Ahmed Meligy — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 03:37:00 GMT

Test Driven .NET (the famous tool that helps integrate most common unit testing frameworks into Visual Studio) has a new release, 2.4. It's still a BETA though.

You can read the official announcement for the release, as well as the release notes, or just get it downloaded.

Personal Notes on the release:

It supports NUnit 2.2 and 2.4 RC2.
It supports Orcas (that's in the installer, I haven't tried myself) - since 2.2
Supports Reflector 5 - since 2.2.

If you're new to Test Driven .NET (or never heard about it before), it should be helpful to check out its documentation.

The "good" memories from the last MDC, MDC 2007 - Part 1/2

Mohamed Ahmed Meligy — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 02:37:00 GMT

This post became too long that I had to split to two parts (1, 2).

I intended to write this after the 3rd day in MDC, but I got REALLY busy after that, I was too stressed for Dody's travelling as well (he's already outside Egypt now, should be back in three weeks), and really tired as well, and even sort of sick too :(. I thought it was too late to blog it afterwards, until my friend Mohamed R. Samy called me yesterday, and we had discussions on some of the few good parts of the last MDC (mainly certain sessions), so, I thought that maybe it's not that late yet!

Yes, the last MDC. The new turns of the conference won't be MDC (Middleeast Developers Conference), but EDC (Egypt Developers Conference). It's OK anyway; because after 2005 turn, having the GDC (Gulf Developers Conference), and other developer conferences in the Arab world, the audience of the MDC was mainly Egyptian developers.

So, how different is that from the earlier MDC 2007 post? Actually, that one was an MDC post, while this one doesn't just complement it, but is also more on the topics that I believe developers who attended MDC should value attending, and dig more into (unless they have more important stuff to dig into of course). Also, the eatlier post was full of anger towards the childish keynote, the selection of most topics, and even the teach-the-kids way in some per-conference sessions. The conference was NOT bad, but the older ones were WAY FAR better (some of the sessions I’ll mention here were not that good. Again: this means not as good as we used to in earlier MDCs, I won’t mention the sessions I didn’t like / knew were bad, but I’ll mention the sessions I liked a little bit).

Speaking of the pre-conference sessions, there was one good long session that I need to talk about. That was VSTS session. by Mr. Ahmed Bahaa. Mr. Ahmed used to be the best pre-conference sessions speaker. I hardly knew him in 2004, and later got very impressed by his IBF (Information Bridge Framework) pre-conference session in 2005, that made me get to know him better, especially after I knew about how his OO analysis and design was DIFFRENT when some RAYA guys told me about it. I did miss that myself, but learnt a lot from their quotes they credited him for.

So, speaking of VSTS seemed odd to me at this time. It's an outdated topic (for a conference that used to introduce pre-release stuff), and It sounded a very basic topic for Mr. Ahmed to waste time in. Later I released how many medium companies (that's the main category for "good" software companies in Egypt) just don't realize the value of VSTS. Even that some of them don't exactly face the financial border in there.

If you attended the session, you must have been impressed with the "real" chances you have for example with the shelving feature, and other source control features (including policies), the enhanced model for work items management (which is close to our favorite FogBugs, but still needs add--ins to leverage some other features, like creating new work items by sending mail to a certain email address), and must have noticed the real problems you might have when merging branches and doing other "real world" tasks (like "when" you'd need to buy and add-in or write your own), that the guys who already got canned asked about. This made me more and more determined to return to Dody and see what we need to migrate our existing agile tools to VSTS (it's just that we don't have enough problems with it to do the migration, and thought we might lose some features we have).

This is all great, but the true sweeet part was VSTS for DB Pro (that was released only a week or two before the session :) ). This product is just PRETTY. I've seen some few vidoes on it, but never realized the real power behind that. The encapsulation of the SQL poor development model (SQL is for querying, not other development tasks), providing the same great source control features, great integration and merge and simulation. The good thing is that it seems to actually really work, not just a session/demo stuff. Looks like it's a valid integration, like the way ASP.NET controls encapsulate HTML, not a poor one, like how DataSets in .NET 1.1/VS.NET 2003 used to be encapsulating data ;-).

BTW, I just found that he blogged the session when I was confirming his blog URL. :)

Here, I have to say one more word about MDC itself. We had this great session, and then in the next day, we had almost the same session (even in a limited scope and without DB pro if I remember well) without even having alternate session in the same time. Why??? And afterwards, we had other sessions for each edition of VSTS. OK. That could be good (I didn't need to attend any more VSTS sessions myself even DB Pro cause we had half an hour just for it already in the pre-conference session), but only if we had more sessions / more days.

Anyway, let's move to the next good thing. but from my own experience. I mean: I was stupid enough to miss the agile development session thinking that (we already practice agile development (SCRUM) in our daily work in SilverKey anyway). Mohammed Hossam told me how much I did miss, and later (I'll tell you when) I realized it myself. So, whether you did attend the session or not, if you believe agile development would be a good model for your team (mainly if small one, it does), just go for it! (If you are hesitated because you approach CMMI, just forget it for God sake :S) This is such a really great approach for development. Also, this means reading MANY blog posts about it. Also, make sure to keep an eye on every single thing the patterns and practices team does. Having two guys from that team delivering this session was the golden key I guess behind its success as I’ll show later.

The next topic I guess was Data Mining. As far as I know, most data mining projects are either project that started with non-Egyptian teams, and an Egyptian team caught after, or one for government or so. We had data mining sessions before in earlier MDCs, but this one was a bit different showing more about the cubes and how the integration services and analysis services play together. I’m not a big fan of DBs, but whenever I go more in my projects, there sound to be too many shortcuts in DB that could probably take time to implement, but would save pretty much performance headache (and I’m not talking about the normal right data normalization and querying techniques). Hmm, let me be honest, I don’t have the MDC notes in my grandmother’s house where I’m spending the night, and didn’t discuss this in the talk that started this post, so, maybe I’ll have a dedicated post on that later. For now, if you don’t know about the analysis services stuff, and you think you’re having some problem with too many calls to the DB (or might have soon), just consider reading the outlines of the analysis services in SQL Server 2005, so, when time comes, you already see what chances you may have not visible in the horizontal.

“Phoneix” is so great too. This is the other GREAT session I want to tell you about. In brief, let’s just say that Microsoft is heading more and more in the right direction when it comes to compilers and compiler optimization. This was the one more reason why many java monsters switched to .NET in its early days, and C++ geeks used C++ CLI. Now they’re doing it again with native development and even managed in the same time. We’re talking about what’s going to be used for developing not just the next compilers, but even Windows itself. I really need to give a BIG thank you to “Andrew Pardoe” who showed all the practically behind the few pages on Microsoft search, showing the various students and markets toolkits to play with, the time line for such. Nothing big is expected to come sooner than 2008, so, if you’re a computer science student (there were MANY students this MDC than before I think, although some of friends might argue that). If you’re the kind of student who’s quite excited about compilers and compiler optimization, this topic is for you. BTW, thanks again to you Andrew and to whoever in Microsoft Egypt that decided this topic has to be there.

Go To Part 2

Very Quick: Articles from here and there

Mohamed Ahmed Meligy — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 16:52:00 GMT

The Server Side released a great LINQ/C#3.0 larning guide.
15 Seconds ahd a nice introduction to Microsoft IE developer toolbar.
The March 2007 issue of MSDN magazine is already out, with pretty interesting topics/articles.
Steven M. Cohn's WebLog also has great notes, especially on WCF.

Some useful resources/tips on ASP.NET 2.0 and such stuff ...

Mohamed Ahmed Meligy — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 19:34:00 GMT

Nireen is one of my two dearest friends not only in the frield but in entire life. She works as a senior web developer in the IT dev. department of one of the biggest inernational telcommunication companies. Her department serves not only Egypt, but all the company branhe world wide. And they've only lately swiched their ASP.NET website development from ASP.NET 1.1 to ASP.NET 2.0!! Unortuantely, this is the case in many companies when you have to priotize compitability/maintenance/stability over fututre productivity and being up to date and so; espeially in non development cmpanies where part of the tech. decision making is in hands of non tech. people.

I haven't called her for almost a month (which is such a big shame), so, i did today, and of course our talk included some tech. issues. I prmised to send her an email covering them, and after I was done with that, I though it might be useful to someone else somewhere as well!!

Here's info in the fields you asked me about:

Regarding Crystal Report, please check:

Binding to Crystal Reports Server or BusinessObjects Enterprise (Visual Studio 2005)
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms227373(VS.80).aspx
Highlights:

CrystalReportViewer Binding Scenarios that Use Crystal Services
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms225473(VS.80).aspx
Note: Has wrapper classes name changes.

Detailed Listing of All Scenarios
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms225466(VS.80).aspx

MSDN Forums Crystal Reports for Visual Studio Section
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=77&SiteID=1

VS 2005 CrystalReportViewer Object Model Tutorial
http://www.businessobjects.com/global/pdf/dev_zone/VS2005_Walkthroughs.pdf
Note: The document covers so many topics including how to set the parameters.
That's what was written about the document:

" If you are a novice or an expert looking for some guidance, this document is a must have for anyone looking to develop with Crystal Reports for Visual Studio 2005. This document goes over a number of tutorials complete with code that will make your application easier to build."

Quote from: http://diamond.businessobjects.com/node/222

Regarding master pages

Typed referencing of master pages

In the page markup, if you add the directive:

<%@ MasterType VirtualPath="~/_master/Default.master" %>

Assuming "~/_master/Default.master" is the path of your master page

When you write "Master" in the page class (C#/VB code file), this will not be of the generic "System.Web.UI.MasterPage" type, but will be the type of your master page (meaning you'll be able to access any property/method you have in this master page).

This is equivalent to writing something like "((MyCustomMasterClass) Page.Master)" in your in any web class (C#/VB code file of a page or user control), or "(Page.Master as MyCustomMasterClass)"

Setting a master page for all pages by default

In web.config under <system.web>, you should have something like

<pages masterPageFile="~/_master/Default.master" />

Again, assuming "~/_master/Default.master" is the path of your master page.
Of course, you'll need to set the "MasterPageFile" of the page directive to "" in the exceptional page that don't use this master page, And no, it doesn't set the master type for each page, you'll still need to add the directive or do the type casting whenever you need access to a property/method in the master from withing the page.

Regarding ASP.NET AJAX

To start using that:

Go to http://ajax.asp.net/download page at: http://ajax.asp.net/default.aspx?tabid=47&subtabid=471

Click to download both the " ASP.NET AJAX 1.0" RC (also called ASP.NET AJAX "Core") and "Futures" December CTP, but not the "Microsoft Ajax Library".

It'll be helpful too to download the sample applications from the same page as well.

Install the "core", and afterwards the "futures" respectively (Note the order).

If you're not going to use the AJAX Control Toolkit (Check it at http://ajax.asp.net/ajaxtoolkit/ ):

Check the CTP installation folder (typically "\Program Files\Microsoft ASP.NET\ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Futures December CTP\v1.0.61025") for the sample web.config fille. You need to merge the entries web.config there with your existing site's web.config file.

On your development machine, do NOT copy the DLLs from the installation folder. On the deployment server, either copy the 2 DLLs from the core and futures installation folders (typically "\Program Files\Microsoft ASP.NET\ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions\v1.0.61025" and "\Program Files\Microsoft ASP.NET\ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Futures December CTP\v1.0.61025") into your site "bin" folder, or just do the "core" and "futuers" installation with the same order (but NOT both solutions).

If you're going to use the AJAX Control Toolkit:

Go to the toolkit project page http://www.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ProjectName=AtlasControlToolkit

Click on the "AjaxControlToolkit-NoSource.zip " link (or go to http://www.codeplex.com/AtlasControlToolkit/Project/FileDownload.aspx?DownloadId=4701 ), and proceed with the download.

"Inside" the downloaded zip file, go to the folder "SampleWebSite", You need to merge the entries web.config there (except the "siteMap" section under "system.web" of course) with your existing site's web.config file.

"Inside" the downloaded zip file, go to the folder "SampleWebSite\bin", copy the single DLL there to your site "bin" folder. This doesn't differ from your development and deployment machine.

The sample code for using the extenders and controls in the toolkit is available at http://ajax.asp.net/ajaxtoolkit/ , for offline viewing, extract the "SampleWebSite" folder from the AjaxControlToolkit-NoSource.zip file, and from Visual Studio "File" Menu, click "Open website", and point to the extracted folder.

To read about it more, go to http://ajax.asp.net/docs/, unfortunately, there's no download version of these docs.

For using webservices with ASP.NET ajax check "Using ASP.NET AJAX with Web Services Tutorials" at http://ajax.asp.net/docs/tutorials/ASPNETAJAXWebServicesTutorials.aspx
Note: any code sample in the links referenced in the links on this page that's using "<ScriptManager>" can have that replaced with "<ScriptManagerProxy>". In fact, you'll need to do that cause you must have only "<ScriptManager>" element on a page, so, you can add that just under the "<form>" element in the master page, and use "<ScriptManagerProxy>" in the pages that need JavaScript access to your webservice(s).

For using static methods in the page class (C#/VB code file) for calling them instead of webservices, check the last title "Calling Static Methods in an ASP.NET Web Page " at http://ajax.asp.net/docs/tutorials/ExposingWebServicesToAJAXTutorial.aspx

For better performance and management of your site build performance. I highly recommend that you use the website "application" project model, this is something like Visual Studio 2005 default web site model, with including two major things done same as in Visual Studio 2003:

It DOES compile the whole site into single DLL, and puts it in the "bin" folder of the site (this is possible in the default VS 2005 model, but not by default or directly).

It uses a project file (".csjproj" for C# and ".vbproj" for VB), and compiles only the files included in that project file.

This model as I said has very notable build performance improvement, and DOES support ASP.NET development sever (also known as Casini, although it's not it exactly), it even makes it super easy to switch between the development server and IIS (just an option in the "Web" tab of the project properties ), and DOES not has all the hassle we had with VS 2003 projects, like loosing synchronization between markup elements and code file control references or copying sites from a machine to another machine.
To have that, you need to either install Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 (Note: installation takes like an hour of full processor power usage and Visual Studio closed of course, but also makes VS faster, and solves some bugs in it), or download " Visual Studio 2005 Web Application Projects" plug-in from http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/asp.net/aa336618.aspx (this small and fast). BUT use only ONE of these two solutions, cause you can't install VS 2005 SP1 while you have the web application project plug-in installed too.
Note: The web application model makes any site you convert from VS 2003 to VS 2005 uses the web application model for conversion. This is goo cause it solves many conversion issues. It also allows you to convert any VS 2005 (yes, 2005 NOT 2003) site from the default website model to the web application by some few steps that get even less depending on what features of ASP.NET 2.0 you use, these steps are available at http://webproject.scottgu.com/CSharp/migration2/migration2.aspx (C#) or http://webproject.scottgu.com/VisualBasic/Migration2/Migration2.aspx (VB).

I already told you about Scott Guthrie's weblog at http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu, but I still want to hilight it more and more. Gaian: Do search Scott's blog for any ASP.NET 2.0 trip/gotcha you need BEFORE you start googling it. this most times works.

--
Regards,

Mohamed Ahmed Meligy
Software Engineer
Silver Key (http://www.silverkey.us/) - Egypt Branch

E-mail: Eng.Meligy (AT) Gmail.com (NO SPAM PLEASE)
Weblog: http://GeeksWithBlogs.NET/Mohamed
Mobile: +20 10 603 3013

OK... This was the end of the message if you haven't figured out yet ;-)

By the way, MDC 2007 is sad to be on Feb. 4. Registeration should be available soon via http://www.mdc2007.com.

Hmm, now I have to get back to univ. study. I knew I have to cut off my DSL cable if I want to pass this term finals :S.

No More BETAs for this version: Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 RTM

Mohamed Ahmed Meligy — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 12:26:00 GMT

VS 2005 SP1 RTM was released yesterday.

Quote: Some of the improvements in this service pack:

New processor support (e.g., Core Duo) for code generation and profiling
Performance and scale improvements in Team Foundation Server
Team Foundation Server integration with Excel 2007 and Project 2007
Tool support for occasionally connected devices and SQL Server Compact Edition
Additional support for project file based Web applications
Windows Embedded 6.0 platform and tools support

Download Links:

Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite SP1 (includes SP1 updates for Standard, Professional, and Team Editions of Visual Studio 2005)
Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server SP1
Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions SP1
Visual Studio 2005 SP1 Update for Windows Vista Beta

Bonus Content:

Check out MSDN support notes about using Visual Studio on Windows Vista.

Workaround: VS 2005 SP1 Bug: Cannot Add New Items/Projects using Web Application Projects

Mohamed Ahmed Meligy — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 11:01:00 GMT

As we in Silver Key are mad about new stuff, BETAs and RCs, we were installing Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 RC on a couple of development machines we have, and as I mentioned in my previous post, we are already using Web Application Projects for months now.

Web Application Projects model is integrated into SP1, so, it asked us to remove the existing version, which is typical. After installing the service pack, we opened a project to just continue work, and BOOM. We were unable to add any new form to the web application (a content form, a page etc..). We got the following message:

Error: this template attempted to load an untrusted component 'Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.Application, Version=8.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35'. For more information on this problem and how to enable this template, please see documentation on Customizing Project Templates.

This is a bug in the service pack as, it doesn't update the project template and item template cache folders. So, if you already have an earlier version of Web Application Projects, you'll not be able to add new items as in our case, if you never installed web application projects, you will not be able to create a new web application project originally!

To work around it, just open Visual Studio 2005 Command Prompt and type “devenv.exe /InstallVSTemplates”, and hit Enter. This will create the template cache for you.

DIGG It