Ayman Farouk

Check out the new blog !

Ayman Farouk — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 19:53:00 GMT

CHECK OUT MY NEW BLOG

SharePoint 2007 -- Built on ASP.NET 2.0

Ayman Farouk — Mon, 01 May 2006 17:15:00 GMT

One of the things we did with ASP.NET 2.0 was to work very closely with the SharePoint and CMS teams within Microsoft to enable much richer architectural and developer integration than we had with previous releases.

Specifically, we tried to drive many of the core architectural requirements and scenarios they and other portal/CMS vendors had into the ASP.NET 2.0 runtime (for example: web parts, virtual path providers and compilation, site navigation, membership and role management, personalization, etc). The SharePoint/WSS/CMS Teams are then building their new releases on top of these ASP.NET 2.0 APIs -- and will have the Beta2 versions of these apps out shortly. This will enable .NET developers to learn and master a single core set of APIs and then easily re-use this across any type of web application they are building – whether it is a SharePoint Portal, a CMS application, or a totally custom ASP.NET web application.

A few of the many cool extensibility scenarios this enables:

1) You can now build a web-part control that supports drag/drop user-personalization and customization and use it within any vanilla ASP.NET 2.0 application, or host it within a SharePoint 2007 or Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) site.

2) You can build a class library, control, or page that uses the Membership, Roles, Profile, or Site Navigation APIs and re-use it across both a custom ASP.NET application and a SharePoint/CMS site. SharePoint will ship with a bunch of SharePoint providers that plug-in using the standard ASP.NET 2.0 Provider API (for example: they ship a SharePoint provider that integrates the SharePoint Page and List models under the ASP.NET 2.0 Site Navigation API). This means you get *a lot* more mileage with your code, and can re-use your API knowledge for a lot more projects.

3) You can plug-in your own custom providers to extend SharePoint and WSS solutions just like you would vanilla ASP.NET 2.0 sites. Because SharePoint uses the standard ASP.NET 2.0 APIs for things like Membership, this means you can now easily change the authentication mode and membership storage for SharePoint solutions (previous versions required Windows Credentials). Sahil Malik posted last week here about how to-do this. In Sahil’s post he was using the default ASP.NET Membership Provider to enable Forms Authentication for a SharePoint site. What is cool is that you could actually plug-in *any* ASP.NET membership provider and have this scenario work. You can also now download the source-code to the built-in ASP.NET providers, customize them or write your own, and then add them to a SharePoint or WSS solution.

We think all of this unification is going to enable a bunch of really cool scenarios for .NET developers going forward. It also helps validate and drive requirements down to the APIs we ship in ASP.NET and the .NET Framework, and ensures that they provide all the hooks needed to build big feature-rich applications on top of them (having the Office Division starting to build on top of the new ASP.NET 2.0 APIs two years ago really drove a bunch of great enhancements and improvements to their extensibility and capabilities).

Best of all, it means you can also start more projects using SharePoint or WSS (note: Windows SharePoint Services is a free download and can be deployed totally free on Windows Server), and quickly create a solution with rich document management and collaboration support already built-in (including client Office tool support) – and then be able to customize and enhance it further using the ASP.NET 2.0 and VS 2005 skills you already know.

This should enable you to build and deploy really great solutions even faster, and make your customers (whether internal or external) even happier.

Hope this helps,

Scott Guthrie.

Spell Checker Plug-in for VS 2005 for ASP.NET and HTML Pages

Ayman Farouk — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 19:44:00 GMT

Guys, go and check this out

Thanks,

A tough weekend

Ayman Farouk — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 21:17:00 GMT

I am really facing a tough weekend. The other day I had my Data Structures midterm exam. On Sunday I have the Micro-controllers misterm exam ( this one is really really really really hard ! especially with the 983578734 :D page resource ! ) , and the funniest thing that I'm gonna be co-presenting in ATLAS session on Saturday .. :D

I called my father, and I told him that I might fail in university but am not gonna skip my session in MAD .. hehehe .. “wish he didnt read this post :s .. lol “

Microsoft Academic Day

Ayman Farouk — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 15:27:00 GMT

Microsoft Academic Day “MAD” is an event arranged by .NET Clubs Champs around the country, and sponsored by Microsoft itself. The idea of such event appeared last year, when .NET Clubs champs of Jordanian universities wanted to show up their knowledge and their ability to manage events.

This year, Jordanian MAD is going to be on April 15th, in PSUT (Princess Sumaya University for Technology). It’s going to be a full day (9 am - 7 pm) and the agenda will look like:

09:00 to 09:30   Microsoft keynote / .NET Clubs and theSpoke.net community
09:30 to 10:30   Developing websites using the FREE Visual Studio & SQL Express
10:30 to 11:30   Managing look, feel and layout with Visual Studio 2005 and ASRNET
11:30 to 13:00   Lunch & coffee break
13:00 to 14:00   Vista demo / Videos
14:00 to 15:00   Creating Personalizable websites using Web Parts with Visual Studio 2005
                           and ASRNET 2.0
15:00 to 15:15   Coffee break
15:15 to 16:15   DirectX 9.0 — Game development!
16:15 to 17:15   ATLAS
17:15 to 18:00   Refreshments: Meet the partners / submit your resume and feedback
                          Draw (Give away some exam vouchers and NFR copies of VS & SQL 2005)

I and Bander Al-Shrafi are going to present the (16:15 to 17:15) session; talking about ATLAS framework for building ASP.NET 2 AJAX based applications. Hope to see you there guys.

Thanks,

Microsoft Launches IE7 Bug Database

Ayman Farouk — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 20:43:00 GMT

Microsoft Corp. has launched a public bug database for Internet Explorer 7, which is currently in beta.

Access to the Internet Explorer Feedback site requires a Passport account and signup is through Microsoft Connect. The new site is similar to Bugzilla, a bug-reporting site set up for Firefox by Mozilla Corp.

“The intent of this work is to give everyone a better place to give IE7 feedback and to prepare the ground for future versions of IE,” Microsoft said in its IE blog.

The IE public database, launched on Friday, is not for reporting security issues, Microsoft said. Those problems should be reported through the Microsoft Security Response Center.

-- Source: Information week

Data Structures in C#

Ayman Farouk — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 17:06:00 GMT

Yes, I'm taking a Data Structures using C++ course in the university, and as you know am a Microsoft Maniac Guy - huh - thus, I decided to learn this course using C# .. hehe

Check out these couple of links:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnvs05/html/datastructures20_1.asp

http://www.brpreiss.com/books/opus6/html/book.html

Have Fun

Microsoft Ultra-Mobile PC

Ayman Farouk — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 20:23:00 GMT

I was watching this video from channel9.com, and of course I was amazed by this device. Here's some pics.. watch and adore guys :P

I'm wondering, if there is a NOMINATION for beta testers for this device :D :D :D ... -- I would be the first applicant.

New Atlas Release !

Ayman Farouk — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 19:49:00 GMT

This release - March CTP - is much different than the others, it came up with new features - like gadgest and other stuff- it also came with new documentations and resources + the new website interface : ) http://atlas.asp.net

Actually, I did not have the time to explore the new bits, but I'm going to do this soon. I liked to share these usefull links with you guys :

If you have more links guys, let me know about them, add them as comments.

Thanks,

IE 7 Beta 2, ... bug !?

Ayman Farouk — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 19:37:00 GMT

I am facing some problems in Internet Explorer 7 Beta Two .. and here is some pics

>> Tables and some text get nested !

>> In this pic, am typed sumthing and I tried to delete it by pressing back space, you see the cursor is getting backwards, but nuthing gets deleted unless I type again.

Anyone faces these problems !?

Thanks,

CSS Properties Window

Ayman Farouk — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 17:01:00 GMT

CSS Properties Window for VS 2005 .. Did you try this thing before !? If you didnt try it yet, go and download it http://www.asp.net/sandbox/app_sandman.aspx?tabindex=0&tabid=1

System.net.mail with Gmail account

Ayman Farouk — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 01:08:00 GMT

Here is a small code for sending an email from ASP.NET 2.0 page, using the namespace System.net.mail and a Gmail account.

First of all we have to import these :

Imports System.Net.Mail

Imports System.Net.Mail.MailMessage

Imports System.Net.NetworkCredential

Then,

Dim mail As New MailMessage()

Dim msgBody As String

Dim smtp As New SmtpClient

mail.From = New MailAddress(“ur-gmail-account@gmail.com“, "display name")

mail.To.Add(“ur-email@host.com“)

mail.Subject = “Subject“

mail.Body = “msgBody“

mail.IsBodyHtml = True ' This is to enable HTML in your email body

mail.ReplyTo = New MailAddress(“reply-to-email-address“) ' This is optional, it allows you to add Reply To email address.

smtp.Host = "smtp.gmail.com"

smtp.Port = 25

smtp.EnableSsl = True

smtp.Credentials = New System.Net.NetworkCredential(“ur-gmail-account@gmail.com“, "gmail-password")

smtp.Send(mail)

lblFlag.Text = "Your Message has beent sent."

Note: We can build this email form AJAX based, by putting the content in an UpdatePanel control, and add the button “send” as a trigger.

Windows Live "Search"

Ayman Farouk — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 19:21:00 GMT

Umm, I think this is the only way makes MSN search better than google.com !

http://search.live.com/#

MSN Messenger 8 & Display pic

Ayman Farouk — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 11:54:00 GMT

I dont know .. I have been using the MSN 8 for two days, umm, I noticed one thing, everytime I sign in my display picture gets changed :D .. I dunno if it is a new feature to pick up the pics randomly or it is a new BUG .. heheh .. Anyone faces what I face !?

The whole world goes for AJAX

Ayman Farouk — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 10:39:00 GMT

It's 9:34 AM in here, I was just exploring some website, and I wanted to check out the weathercast for today.. Usually I use Yahoo.com for this thing. But, it is my first time to see that YAHOO uses AJAX in fetching the weather! .. Guys, am afriad :P.. day after day we see AJAX in everywhere.. I think one day our eyes will be AJAX-Based, so we'll see everything and we'll never close our eyes even for seconds :P

I LONG FOR POSTBAKS .. lool

Have a nice day,