xlar54,

In answer to your question, I'm just getting into it like you. But, my understanding was that the object model was to be accessible both declaratively and imperatively. I will look into the IDE side when I prepare for the follow-up post. You might want to listen to these two podcasts with Jesse Liberty (who heads up the Microsoft Silverlight project), he discusses when and where to use the declarative versus the code approach (Shows 9-10):

http://www.sparklingclient.com/

Anthony :-)

I hear you. I'm trying to ramp up on a whole new set of technologies also. And despite the fact that we love bitching about it, we'd have another complaint if we were bored, right?

My original aim here was a two-part blog, culminating in an example that was useful in some way. And that's probably what I'll end up doing. However, the question that keeps screaming at me is where it all fits in, from Microsoft's point of view. I agree with you regarding the IDE's as they stand. To me, Expression seems like FrontPage with a sexy dress on, aimed at the amateur Web designers of mom and pop shop websites. I use VS for everything, coding, CSS design, etc. I don't expect professional designers to use VS, but I would imagine that like me, they would find the Expression IDE clunky and overpopulated, quire like SharePoint Designer 2007. I like to open up my stylesheet in notepad and take it from there. Maybe I'm showing my age!

Something tell me that Microsoft is keeping secret the true ultimate destination in the shape of a set of products/technologies. On the one hand they are trying to appeal to the young amateur market; PopFly, MySpace, etc. On the other hand they are now in an open source environment facing new competition in an RIA world. We're talking all the new bits of the jigsaw: Silverlight, Ajax, Web Services, Data Clouds, Mashups, Web3.0, Semantic Web, Microformats, etc. Microsoft ain't stupid. I think they have a master plan here and only time will tell if they will deliver the knockout punch by finding a unique way of combining these technologies. I remember when the neighbors would come around to see a computer on a desktop :-O

Fixed, thanks :-)

Hi liviu,

It's already established that I am using ASP.NET for this project. As for the MVC pattern, it would be kind of ridiculous to dance through those hoops to solve something as basic as this, on the face of it. ASP.NET developers have been agonizing over the form issue and lack of a decent SDK for years in the PayPal forums. It would seem a reasonable thing to ask that ASP.NET developers are given some measure of consideration as all others. That's all I'm saying...

Like I said in the blog, there are numerous alternatives. The point is that we shouldn't need such alternatives in the first place. The MVC pattern was something most of us gladly gave up years ago in the switch to .NET, given the amount of goodies such as ViewState, that ASP.NET afforded us. I'm not going to get into a debate over the merits of one technology over another (MVC is amazingly flexible) but overkill in this situation.

I would still recommend PayPal as a means of receiving payment for any e-commerce site. I don't normally write rants, but when it comes to the idiots that pass themselves off as professional support engineers with PayPal, I will gladly make an exception (more likely, it's the management at fault here). I rest my case and I honestly believe that many more ASP.NET developers have felt the same frustration with them that I have. Thanks for reading the blog liviu and please note that my frustration is due to PayPal "Support" and not you personally :-)

Good read! :-)