ASP.NET 2.0 Provider Model

Michael Kalika — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 18:54:00 GMT

Microsoft has published the following articles about their ASP.NET 2.0 provider model:

Introduction to the Provider Model (14 printed pages)
Membership Providers (24 printed pages)
Role Providers (13 printed pages)
Site Map Providers (20 printed pages)
Session State Providers (21 printed pages)
Profile Providers (23 printed pages)
Web Event Providers (14 printed pages)
Web Parts Personalization Providers (12 printed pages)
Custom Provider-Based Services (10 printed pages)
Hands-on Custom Providers: The Contoso Times (3 printed pages)

AJAX - To use or not to use

Michael Kalika — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 02:12:00 GMT

I just read Plip's post about Ajax and usability. Recently, there is a lot of buzz around AJAX technology. To use or not use - that is the question. I think it's OK and even a good practice to mix AJAX with a non-AJAX code for scenarios like datetime picker that depends on the server date and time, querying for something on the server every specified interval of time (for some alert for example), parent/child relationship between lists and/or comboboxes, perform some action on server when user closes the window and so on. AJAX will save all the roundtrip to the server and improve experience of your users. But you should use it wisely. I wouldn't build a whole application with AJAX until it become transparent to our users (I mean problems with back, refresh, stop buttons and so on).