Web Application Development with Microsoft Technologies

Inspired by Scott Guthrie , the General Manager for MS Technologies, and source for most of the cool articles I usually read, I will be posting a Monthly list of Microsoft Articles and Code Samples that I liked the most over the past month. Every month there are hundreds of posts over there, but having a list of the best ones would save you time and effort.

Since now I am trying to focus in Design, Architecture and How To Apply Latest Microsoft Technologies to the Projects I work with, most of the articles I read are not about “low level” programming. But because I still work as .NET Web Developer for some of the Projects I am involved, I still need to read and learn a lot from a programmer perspective.

In these monthly posts I’ll cover the blog articles and samples that really added value to my developer/architect life. In order to come with this list I just went to my RSS Reader (I use and love Google Reader) and my del.icio.us account, among others.

Well, enough intro so far, these are some fo the posts that caught my attention and helped me during the month of August 2007.  I hope you find something interesting for you as well, I categorized them for your better understanding.

ASP.NET, AJAX and Silverlight Articles and Samples.

• Recreating the Google Analytics Table as an ASP.NET GridView

How to customize the ASP.NET GridView control to have a better presentation for Sorting, Paging, Row Numbers, Page Size and GoToPage features, with just a few code lines. By Matt Berseth

• Building a iTunes-like website with Silverlight 1.1

This serie of 15 posts (so far), show us how to build a complete Web Site, similar to iTunes one, with a nice look&feel improved with Silverlight (1.1 alpha version). It is a great reading for all interested in watching Silverlight, ASP.NET and AJAX.NET Playing together. A must read and includes source code. By Jose Fajardo.

• Building a Product Listing with the new ASP:ListView and CSS

This post show the powerful new control available in the ASP.NET 3.5. It gives us full control of the layout, and when using CSS we end up having a rich and clean user interface. By Scott Gu

• Amazing Silverlight Applications uploaded to Showcase

In August, the Applications Showcase in the Silverlight home page was updated. There are more than 10 amazing examples of what can be done using Silverlight. Companies are investing a lot of money following this hot trend. You can also check Taifiti, the new Microsoft Search Engine powered with Silverlight, released in August.

• AJAX DisablerControlExtender

Async postbacks and page refresh can sometimes have some delay. During that time, user is still able to modify data in the page. When updatepanel refresh, data might be loss. We ran to this issue last week with some AJAX development we were working on. This control (still marked as “prototype”) disables the user interface (using a DIV and a bit of code) and displays a progress status bar to the user. It worth a try. By Matt Berseth.

• Declare static web methods in aspx and invoke them from AJAX client code

Another good tip. You can declare Page Web Methods ( adding [System.Web.Services.WebMethod] attribute) in your ASPX and invoke it from client with just a few lines of code. Even this is useful, you need to be careful, because you are exposing more entry points to your application code. In next posts I’ll be writing about some AJAX security tips like reducing entry points, increasing parameter validations, using scr= includes and others. By Matt Berseth. 

File Upload with AJAX

If you had to provide a file upload functionallity for any customer in the past, while using AJAX, then you probably found the XMLHTTPRequest object doesn’t support it. Alexander Gimenez pointed us to a good post for Creating an AJAX Style File Upload in a tricky way. There is also some other AJAX File Download control for downloading here.

• Media Player with new ASP.NET 3.5 Controls  and ASP.NET Futures (Mix 07 Version)

A great example of new technologies comming up: ListView control, Datapager, LinqDataSource, Media Control and more. It works for Silverlight 1.0 and ASP.NET Futures July 2007. Includes Source Code and you need VS 2008 Beta 2 installed. Steve says he did it in one night. Amazing! By Steve Marx

Tools & Misc.

• Scott Hanselman’s 2007 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

If you are a .NET programmer and you’re trying to increase your productivity, this is the place to search. Scott has a complete list of tools (most of them are free) that will help you in your daily coding. It is categorized and every tool has a good description. I cannot believe he is using all of them ! Some are well known, but some are not and those also deserves a try! by Scott Hanselman

• Silverlight in the last .NET Show Episode

“On this final episode of the .NET Show, Scott Guthrie, general manager for .NET Platform technologies, and Jason Zander, general manager for the .NET Framework, join host Robert Hess to discuss and demonstrate Silverlight”. Just click Play and Enjoy.

 I hope this helps ! And if you have some other post to recommend from past month, just drop a comment !