General

ProudMonkey Controls for ASP.NET 4.0 - Version 3

Vincent Maverick Durano — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 12:27:19 GMT

First of all I am so happy to know that many developers around the world uses my controls (~ it's really a big surprise to me. =} ). Thank you all and hope you'll continue to provide feedback or feature suggestions so that I can work on it on my free time.

I've seen a lot of developers asking me via email, forums, blog comments, and private messages requesting how to use those controls in ASP.NET 4.0 with the latest release of AjaxControlToolkit. As you may know the previous dll of ProudMonkey controls will not work with the latest version AjaxControlToolkit dll (v4.1.51116.0). So if you want to use the MessageBox, ConfirmBox and FrameBox controls in ASP.NET 4.0 with the latest ACT version then you can download the compatible version here:

If you want to customize the look and feel of the controls then be sure to check this post: ProudMonkey Controls for ASP.NET 4.0 - Customizing the Modal

Related Downloads:

For ASP.NET 4.0 with ACT v4.1.51116.0 (Download here)
For ASP.NET 4.0 with ACT v4.1.40412.0 (Download here)
For ASP.NET 3.5 with ACT v3.0.1106.0 (Download here)

How to use it? Check this post: Using the Controls

Enjoy! =}

Technorati Tags: ASP.NET,ProudMonkey Controls

A Monkey Talks about ASP.NET

Vincent Maverick Durano — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 06:50:55 GMT

Last week, I was interviewed by Zandra Nilocas from Microsoft Philippines. It was my first time experience to talk about something in front of the camera so it's not surprising that I looked like an idiot in that interview (you know swiveling my chair back and forth without noticing it).

Anyway in the interview we talked about ASP.NET WebForms, MVC and Web Matrix in general and just to elaborate a bit of what we talked about and to clarify things out, I have decided to write this post... WebForms and MVC are two approaches for building ASP.NET applications. Both are good choices and both have their place in the market. WebForms is a development approach for Rapid Applications in which you can take advantage of the design surface, powerful server controls and components. So if you are familiar with drag-and-drop and event driven model or if you are coming from a Windows Application development and want to jump on web development then you can start with WebForms. ASP.NET MVC on the other hand is another approach for building up dynamic web applications and provides a clean separation of concerns (the Model, the View and the Controller) and gives you full control over your codes, HTTP, Request, Response, JavaScripts, CSS, HTML, Get and Post and so on...Aside from WebForms and MVC there's another web development tool from Microsoft called WebMatrix and it's absolutely free . It is basically designed to provide easier entry into ASP.NET development - especially for those used to scripting technologies like PHP and classic ASP or those completely new to dynamic web development. With WebMatrix you can easily build a dynamic website within less than an hour because everything you need for web development is bundled into one including IIS Express, IDE, Sql Server Compact Edition, Razor, and a new programming Framework - Web Pages. It also provides a lot of built-in web templates that you can use.

Now which development approach would I follow?

Well the answer depends on the business needs. Again all approach are good choices but here's what I would like to suggest:

If you are a windows application developer (I'm actually referring to VB6 or .Net windows forms programmers) and want to get started with ASP.NET then you can start working with WebForms.
If you wanted to build up web applications in just a short amount of time then you can go for WebForms.
If you are coming from a classic ASP, PHP or even WebForms and wanted to embrace the web, value unit testing, separation of concerns then you can go for MVC.
If you are an experienced WebForm developer and wanted to know the real web development then you should get to know MVC.
If you used PHP or classic ASP before, love scripting and wanted to enter the ASP.NET world then you go for WebMatrix.
If you wanted to build up web applications in just a short amount of time and you are already familiar with scripting technologies such as PHP or classic ASP then you go for WebMatrix.

Technorati Tags: General,ASP.NET,ASP.NET MVC,Web Matrix

Analyze and Manage your Code with Visual NDepend

Vincent Maverick Durano — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 11:05:39 GMT

NDepend is an awesome tool by Patrick Smacchia (C# MVP) which the primary goal is to let you analyze your application and to get clear idea about cross dependencies between objects, level of association between them and to know the condition of your code easily.

With NDepend you can get the summary of everything on what’s happening in your project at glance and provide a lot more cool features that would help you in analyzing your application.

Here's a sample screen shot of the tool:

Note that just to provide you a graphical representation of the tool I've just used a simple project.

The Visual Ndepend Interactive GUI is composed of the following main sections:

Class Browser
Dependency Graph/Matrix
Info
CQL Query Explorer

The Class Browser:

The class browser section allows you to dig into the class objects and methods.

The Dependency Graph/Matrix/Metrics

The Dependency graph is the best way to understand the architecture of the code. This is because by looking at the graph you would be able to determine how the objects are connected and related to each other.

The Dependcy Matrix allows you to determine which namespace is dependent to another. Below is a sample screenshot of how the Dependency Matrix look like:

In the Matrix above, The green indicates the number of methods in namespace on the left header that directly use members of namespace on the top header while Blue indicates the number of methods in namespace on the left header that is directly used by members of namespace on the top header.

The Info Section

The information section gives you the summary of all the information based on what are currently looking at .

The Code Query Language (CQL)

CQL is one the coolest feature in NDepend. It gives you the power to gather just about any information you need about your source code. CQL is very similar to SQL, but instead of querying the database, you are querying into your source-code. You can use CQL to quickly search for particular areas in your code that can be of your interest in term of code quality. For more information abou CQL,please see http://www.ndepend.com/CQL.htm.

Aside from the cool features mentioned above, NDepend also generates Code Analysis Report which wraps up all the information that you may need to know about your source codes. There are still many more things that I didn't mentioned about NDepend features here so I would suggest you to go through this link (http://www.ndepend.com/) and start looking at the demo videos and documentations.

All I can say is that I am really impressed with this tool. Thanks to Patrick Smacchia for sharing this amazing tool and for giving me the opportunity to use this wonderful tool in my project. Really helpful!

Hope you'll find this post useful too!

Technorati Tags: NDepend,General

Moderator at CodeASP.NET

Vincent Maverick Durano — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 08:04:48 GMT

Today, I was surprised to know that I have been selected as one of the moderators at the Code.ASP.Net community. I feel honored to be one of the moderation team. I know this is not an easy role but I will try my best to contribute more and help grow the community. I hope to be able to keep up the good work there for years to come.

Technorati Tags: Community

Create, Build, Run,Test and Debug codes online with CodeRun Studio

Vincent Maverick Durano — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 10:57:02 GMT

Hajan posted a blog at codeasp.net and discovered an awesome tool that would let you Create, Build, Run, Test and Debug codes online. I find this tool very useful and handy because I can easily run and test codes without Visual Studio and without installing something in my computer.

What is this awesome tool by the way?

They called it CodeRun Studio - CodeRun is A free, cross-platform browser-based IDE designed for the cloud. It enables you to easily develop, debug and deploy web applications using your browser.

CodeRun Studio can be used instead or alongside your existing desktop IDE. You can upload existing code in order to test it in the cloud or for sharing with your peers.

For more information, visit the official site here: http://coderun.com/

Hope you'll find this post useful!

Technorati Tags: General

Microsoft MVP Again for 2010

Vincent Maverick Durano — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 16:52:14 GMT

Just got an email from Microsoft stating that I have been re awarded as an ASP/ASP.NET Microsoft MVP for 2010!! I am very honored to receive the award the second time. Feels really great! =) Here's the email below:

Dear Vincent Maverick Durano,

Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2010 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in ASP/ASP.NET technical communities during the past year.

Also in this email:

About your MVP Award Gift
How to access www.mvpaward.com to begin taking advantage of your award benefits
Your MVP Identification Number
MVP Award Program Code of Conduct

The Microsoft MVP Award provides us the unique opportunity to celebrate and honor your significant contributions and say "Thank you for your technical leadership."

I would like to thank Microsoft for bestowing this award on me, my MVP Lead Lilian Quek, readers, and everyone who has supported me.

Technorati Tags: Community

Microsoft Windows Live Hotmail

Vincent Maverick Durano — Tue, 18 May 2010 11:41:11 GMT

Microsoft just gave a sneak peek to the new Window Live Hotmail, representing the next generation in personal email. Practical innovations has been introduced to help people manage the clutter and regain control of their inboxes – efficiently and the new features will become available to customers world-wide from mid-2010.

A quick overview of the key updates:

Stay better organized

Today’s inboxes are overflowing with mail that most people consider junk, even though it’s mail that’s legitimate. To help keep inboxes clean and organized, the new Hotmail delivers the first and only virtual broom, enabling customers to easily “sweep” unwanted mail out of their inbox. It also helps cut through clutter with intelligent filters that in a single click will filter the entire inbox to show mail just from contacts, just social network alerts, or just mail from the groups users belong to.

Manage your social networks from your inbox

With the new Hotmail, customers will be able to see rich previews of photos and videos from popular sites like Flickr, YouTube, Hulu and SmugMug, and see the status of tracked packages in real time, inside their emails. They’ll also be able to accept invitations to connect with someone on a social or professional networking site like LinkedIn – all from the convenience of their inboxes.

Increased attachment size

One of the biggest changes to Hotmail is the increased ability to manage and share personal photos and documents. Today, people are sharing over 1.5 billion photos and 350 million Microsoft Office documents per month in Hotmail. Still, the “attachment size problem” remains, regardless of which mail service people use. The new Hotmail lets’ customers send up 10 GB of attachments (200 attachments – each up to 50 MB in size) in a single message, erasing worries of attachment size limits.

You can also find out more at http://hotmailpreview.com

Joined the 100,000 Recognition Points Club in the ASP.NET Forums

Vincent Maverick Durano — Mon, 17 May 2010 07:25:39 GMT

I am the fourth person who reached the 100,000 recognition points in the ASP.NET forums and I am really honored be one in the club. Feels great!

Why double quotes does not work in inline databinding statement?

Vincent Maverick Durano — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 08:53:49 GMT

Over the ASP.Net forums where I frequently participate, a member asked the difference between using single quotes and double quotes in a databinding expression. So I thought of sharing the answer that I have provided on that thread as a reference to others.

Here's the actual question of the user:

I have always been wondering what can be the reason behind the following?

<asp:GridView runat="server"> 
     <Columns> 
          <asp:TemplateField> 
               <ItemTemplate> 
                    <asp:HiddenField runat="server" Value="<%#Eval("ColumnName")%>" /> 
               </ItemTemplate> 
          <asp:TemplateField> 
     </Columns> 
</asp:GridView>

When written with " " always gives error The server tag is not well formed.

Whereas if we write it in single quotes Value = '<%#Eval("ColumnName")%>' , it is accepted!!!

Why is this so? Googling didnt turn out to be useful for me to find ut reson behind this.

Any ways got such questions in mind before n whetherhe/she got the answer to the same?!?!

Basically, the difference is when you use double quotes [""] in your databinding statement and assign it to a server control property like Text or Value, the HTML parser will interpret the expression as a multiple strings. So if you'll have this line below:

Value='<%# Eval("ColumnName") %>'

The html parser thinks that expression "<%# Eval(" is a string by itself. So based on the above expression, the html parser is looking for two strings which are the: (1)"<%# Eval(" ColumnName (2)") %>" . That's why you'll get the error The server tag is not well formed because using double qoutes is not allowed for inline databinding because this messes up your html element format. To avoid that error then you'll need to use single quotes in which the html parser will be able to realize that there is another nested string inside the outer sting.

I hope someone find this useful!

Technorati Tags: ASP.NET,General

Free Developer Training: Silverlight 4 Training Kit

Vincent Maverick Durano — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 09:42:45 GMT

Channel 9 is offering a free Silverlight 4 Training Kit. The training kit includes a whitepaper explaining all of the new Silverlight 4 features, several hands-on-labs that explain the features, and a 8 unit course for building business applications with Silverlight 4.

The business applications course includes 8 modules with extensive hands on labs as well as accompanying videos that walk you through key aspects of building a business application with Silverlight. Key aspects in this course are working with sandboxed out of browser features, elevated trust out of browser features, the new RichTextBox control, implicit styling, webcam, drag and drop, multi touch, validation, authentication, MEF, WCF RIA Services, right mouse click, and much more...

For more information then you can refer here: http://channel9.msdn.com/learn/courses/Silverlight4/

Technorati Tags: General,Silverlight