Ivan Porto Carrero

I've moved my blog to http://www.flanders.co.nz/blog

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Today I opened a workspace on gotdotnet for an open source blog engine I started writing.

Everybody is welcome to join in. The space I have on gotdotnet is not so big which means that you'll have to email me for now to get the complete and current source database.

A little bit later this week I will have a demo site/blog running on http://www.nblogr.com

The characteristics of the blog are :

1. It's The asp.net 2.0 atlas framework :)

2. It's free for everybody to use

3. It's open source so please if you change something then let me know.

4. Will be focussing on integrating the whole web 2.0 (the real web 2.0) experience i.e. direct integration of flickr etc.

5. The conversion from your current blog software should run without glitches.

I am definitely in need of somebody that knows how to create good templates/xhtml/css designs because that is not my strongest side.

The workspace is located @ http://workspaces.gotdotnet.com/nblogr

I've been getting much better along with The asp.net 2.0 atlas framework lately. Almost up to the point that it takes me almost the same time to create page in asp.net than it does me to create a page in The asp.net 2.0 atlas framework. Notice the word almost :) And that's optimism talking

Anyway it does take a wee while longer to create an The asp.net 2.0 atlas framework page than it would to create an asp.net page. But the result is about 10x as usable and than a normal page.

That being said. All that The asp.net 2.0 atlas framework goodnes comes at a cost : A lot of javascript being pushed down to the browser. When I was in wellington on wednesday there was somebody talking about The asp.net 2.0 atlas framework in the user group.  Seen as I will go talk to the regional groups I was quite keen what Tatham had to say on the subject.

It was interesting but at a certain point he talked about the "obfuscated" javascript files. Those are just packed. That made me think that I also want to have packed javascript that is slightly less readable. I remember I have some open source library that I downloaded a year or so ago.

Well the guy has a nice library that you can download here :

If you're not using the control toolkit for The asp.net 2.0 atlas framework and are doing some client side scripting. you may find that the April CTP has doesn't always work in the safari browser.

This is in part due to the way that safari attaches events.

In the control toolkit they use the following script to "patch" the april CTP of The asp.net 2.0 atlas framework to support safari a whole lot better. Some might find it useful :-)

I use guids as PK in my databases.

I like guids :) But The asp.net 2.0 atlas framework shows them as Object and that gives me some trouble using them in my The asp.net 2.0 atlas framework pages.

But to implement your own converter is not so difficult you just inherit from the JavaScriptConverter and override those methods.

And afterwards you have to register it in the converters section of the web.config

The web.config

The Converter Class:

My friend Miel found this site from poisoned minds.

They have a nice breakdow on how time is really spent when developing a website. Of course this is good for a laugh :)

I think they do have a point with the pure css lay-out. I for one am a dropshadow fan because if I put 2 divs on top of each other they need to look like there is some distance between them. I like the depth af the whole idea.  Up till now I haven't found a way to create a rectangle with rounded corners and a dropshadow (like in photoshop or fireworks dropshadow) using only divs. I can do it easily using tables tho.

But IE users must die. People love to attack microsoft stuff and I think those that complain about the quirks in IE start developing their site for other browsers than IE and that's where those people make a thinking mistake. The logic behind it is : if 95% of the users use IE why would you start developing a site that does not target this browser primarily.

Ruby looks to me like a hack. I'm not the only one with problems there :)

http://tabo.aurealsys.com/archives/2005/10/11/django-or-why-i-chose-it-over-turbogears-and-ruby-on-rails/

The following is from his blog post :

I  decided to ignore Ruby for the moment and focus on Rails. What i noted:

• Very simple to install and set up new projects
• You create a database and it’s tables, and Rails will handle them
• Things get messy when you want to write SQL instead of using the framework to access the data model
• URL generation is simple but not flexible
• Rails templates looked ASPish, horrible, almost cthulhian. I couldn’t stand the sight of them. There is too much code in them and worst of all, I couldn’t find a way to change the template system (Clearsilver in Rails anyone?)

Peter has a post giving an overview of some tools that are essential to him as a developer.

http://jonesie.net.nz/EssentialTools.aspx

I would say that I use most of them but not all and I would like to add a few to the list because i mainly do webdevelopment and that's a different story then winforms.
Obviously I made the choice to go for The asp.net 2.0 atlas framework so I won't sum up any other ajax frameworks. That is reserved for a separate post. 

AJAX/Web development:

Internet Explorer :
Fiddler - a tool to view http traffic (that gets sent through IE)
WebdevelopmentHelper BHO - A tool written by Nikhil Kothari and I consider it crucial
Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar - This has got a lot of cool things you do want to know about your page sometimes.

Mozilla/firefox :
Greasemonkey - makes firefox highly extensible.
WebDeveloper toolbar - This has got a lot of cool things you do want to know about your page sometimes.
Venkman Javascript Debugger - Javascript debugging is a must :)
Greasemonkey Http Trace script - does the same as the BHO or fiddler for IE.

Collaborative development:
We are mostly using team foundation server to do continuous integration. However sometimes when a lot of different parties are involved we can't use the team foundation testing suite and then we use other tools to do our integration.

TestDriven.NET - does nunit testing and code coverage in VS 2005 - this used to be free but it isn't anymore.
CruiseControl.NET - does the builds based on nAnt or msbuild build scripts etc. It's the continous integration server alternative that we use
GhostDoc - essential for documenting your code.

I've come across a french guy's blog who has created an intellisens xsd generator for the The asp.net 2.0 atlas framework framework.

He says it's not perfect but I'll take whatever I can get that saves me from writing full words. It's not perfect in the sense that it doesn't show you if something is allowed there or not.

The link to the article about the intellisense generator:
http://blogs.developpeur.org/cyril/archive/2006/04/19/Intellisense_pour_Atlas_c_est_possible_generation_schema_xsd_en_javascript.aspx

To install the xsd just extract this file to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Xml\Schemas

The next step is to separate the xml script from your aspx page so it doesn't look so cluttered anymore. Also the intellisense will only work in the xml editor.  The same guy has written another post on how to do just that.

The link to his article : http://blogs.developpeur.org/cyril/archive/2006/04/29/Atlas_Charge_un_fichier_xml_script_externe_dans_une_application_ATLAS_grace_a_Ajax.aspx

The english explanation :
link to your The asp.net 2.0 atlas framework xml file like this : <link type="text/xml-script" href="DynamicLoad.atlas" />

And next add some javascript to the page :

I'd go for sharing thank you :)

I've learnt a lot from other people's blogs etc.

I try to give some of it back but am affraid i don't do so much exiting stuff :)

Kathy Sierra has a much longer post about whether you should share or guard your knowledge.  In my opinion there is only one thing to do with knowledge and that is to share whatever you have, maybe somebody else can put it to better use than you can :)

http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/06/mosh_pit_as_inn.html

Vladimir Bychkov explains it nicely.

http://vladimir.bychkov.info/blog/PermaLink,guid,be76b3bf-c524-456c-9c8f-a2584924aa32.aspx

This will take a lot of the pain out of creating themes :)

Tonight we had a user group meeting on XForms.

First let me tell you that I think it is a big shame that we don't get Xforms capabilities in IE6 or in IE7.
It would get rid of all the javascript hassle and hoops we have to go through to get the simplest things done.

Anyway, I've been working with The asp.net 2.0 atlas framework a bit more now. And it is really cool just a shame that i can't use other libraries in conjunction.  But I still have to explore the animation api maybe if i can do things that i consider cool enough I don't need other libraries any more.

Back to the user group meeting. Peter Nunn, the driving force behind a .NET XSP server application, came to give us a very passionate explanation on how xforms work and how they implemented them.
The effect you get is very similar to what I'm doing with The asp.net 2.0 atlas framework for the moment. Async pages that just get data from webservices, some might even call it SOA.
Where The asp.net 2.0 atlas framework gets cluttered combining 3 technologies in one page, Xforms does everything completely through xml. More clean... yes sir, more reusable .. yes sir, easily queriable.. yes sir.

Conclusion : we want more of where that came from but this time on every platform. Just once everybody should agree.. would make the life of a lot of developpers a lot easier :)  Would probably put a lot of people out of business too.

Would i use it ?  In the case where i develop for intranet applications i might be tempted to do so. As for my applications for uncontrolled environments (the internet) no thank you.
Xforms is only supported in firefox and while everybody is telling you how great mozilla is, my stats still show over 90% of my visitors use internet explorer. That being said, people trust plug-ins that are widely accepted like the flash plug-in. But people don't tend to trust obscure plug-ins from sourceforge, or other unknown companies in my experience.

So I'll continue the The asp.net 2.0 atlas framework path that I chose to take until there is  cross browser XFORMS solution that has penetrated deeply enough in peoples living rooms.

The company that hosts one of the servers that I use online is using OpenVPN as their vpn server.

And there are no drivers available voor the enhanced security model of Windows vista.  Yep let's call it enhanced security model instead of f***** security dialog boxes that pop up whenever you want to do something that is not an installed program on your pc.
I am loving vista absolutely so I'm not uninstalling because I don't think it works.

I just think that in my case it is too early to make the move untill openvpn has support for vista in their range. Otherwise I can't connect to my online sql server and server which makes my life at lot more stress free but eventually their would be less money coming in :)

Apart from the fact that my bluetooth headset won't work with vista. I do have a few other things that keep my mind busy.

I think it sucks I can't debug my asp.net apps when they are hosted on a UNC share. (this behavior was already present in XP)

If you are like me then you rarely turn off your pc and have it do a lot of stuff for maintenance during the night. This would be nighthly spyware checking, nightly virus scanning and defragmenting on certain days of the month.
Well if I leave my pc on during the night with a IE window open and outlook my internet is sluggish up to the point that I just gave up.  I had a look on other pc's on my network and internet was indeed working fine. So I restarted my vista box and yes sir we have somewhat fast internet again.

Anyway i still can't find anything wrong with office 2007 ==> probably because I don't look for stuff to be wrong.  And I do like new Outlook interface with the new sidebar on the right. Keeps me better informed :)

Mauricio has a few more things to say on vista, and probably he will be a better source for information than I am.

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/blogtrack.asp?postid=597

I installed vista on my laptop yesterday.

And the whole install is very hands-off and painless the price you pay is that it takes ages to complete. But it did install and upgrade my windows XP machine.

After booting my new system twice I grabbed the phone and ordered 2GB of extra memory because before vista i was already pushing it so now it's just a necessity to get it.

Vista works surprisingly well, it's a shame though that I still can't debug my asp.net applications when they are hosted on a network share instead of on my pc.  Sure i can remotely debug them but that experience is not as nice as locally. I do put everything on a network share because of backups. If you ever get your laptop stolen with a few weeks worth of work on them without a backup you'll never let it happen again

My favourite new feature would be the navigation in explorer over the folders. and the way you can quickly backtrack your path etc.

My least favourite new feature would be the never ending security warnings. If I say unblock on a program that wants to access my firewall then I mean it and I don't need to be asked 3 times. you don't read them but it kind of sucks that it freezes your screen.

All the animations are really cool :) but due to my ram limitation for the moment they aren't as fluent as could be. I hope the Dell people will be quick to send me my new mem.

I don't really know what to say about office because i rarely use it. I do use Outlook a lot, Word I also use but all the other programs are wasted on me because I just don't need them. Once or twice a year somebody sends me an access database. This database gets turned into sql very quickly ;).

But that toolbar thingy in word : VERY cool and accessible :D

I'm a happy emailer