DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by spootwo

A Degradable jQuery AJAX Email Form for ASP.NET MVC

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 07:45:10 GMT

Pretty much every web site on the Internet features a form for users to provide feedback via email to site owners. Migrating to ASP.NET MVC requires a slightly different approach to that used by Web Forms development, so this article looks at one way to implement a web site contact form using the MVC framework and jQuery that degrades nicely. AJAX functionality is said to be "degradable" if a way is provided for the process to work, even though users don't have Javascript available to them.

More ASP.NET MVC Best Practices

Wed, 06 May 2009 21:16:02 GMT

In this post, I'll share some of the best practices and guidelines which I have come across while developing ASP.NET MVC web applications. I will not cover all best practices that are available, instead add some specific things that have not been mentioned in any blog post out there. Existing best practices can be found on Kazi Manzur Rashid's blog and Simone Chiaretta's blog.

What ASP.NET Developers Should Know About jQuery

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 04:03:54 GMT

It's hard to believe that JavaScript is already well over a decade old. Often relegated to marginal tasks in its early years, JavaScript has grown to become a pillar of modern web development. With the current popularity of DHTML and AJAX, it can be difficult to find a site that doesn't use JavaScript anymore. One of the driving forces behind JavaScript's newfound popularity is a proliferation of JavaScript frameworks, such as jQuery. Why? Though JavaScript itself is a great programming language, t...

My New Favorite Tool: OneNote

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 07:01:15 GMT

Review of Microsoft OneNote 2007 relating to the developer.

Linq Vs Stored Procedures Part 1 (Inserts)

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 23:15:40 GMT

A head to head comparison of the two with real results. In this part we do a comparison between SPROCs and LINQ to see which one is able to insert data into several different database tables the fastest.

I Spose I'll Just Say It: You Should Learn MVC

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 17:31:21 GMT

I'm never shy about my opinion - why start now? I've been reading a lot of posts flying about on whether you should learn MVC, Summing up the differences so you can decide when to use it, I even found a post that offers a scorecard approach! I remember reading the latter post thinking to myself "how can you possibly put a number next to Testability? And why it is only 2 more points than "using a RAD designer"? Isn't this missing the entire point?

Silverlight Animation Part II: Sprites

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 01:52:13 GMT

In the previous post in this series, you learned how to create a simple animation with Silverlight. The next step is to learn how to create animated objects called sprites. This post will also explain how to ensure that their movement is restricted to a bounded area, as shown below in Application 1. Logic like this can be used in simple games, or in programs that want to use animation to capture or focus the user's attention.

Create a simple menu in asp.net mvc

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 01:46:02 GMT

Simple code to create a menu in asp.net mvc using a master page and a master controller.

Just say No! to C# Regions

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 10:01:02 GMT

You need a language construct so that your IDE can help you hide your big messy code block from you (because it's just so hideous, you don't even want to look at it anymore)?

Using jQuery Grid With ASP.NET MVC

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:31:02 GMT

Continuing in my pseudo-series of posts based on my ASP.NET MVC Ninjas on Fire Black Belt Tips Presentation at Mix (go watch it!), this post covers a demo I did not show because I ran out of time. It was a demo I held in my back pocket just in case I went too fast and needed one more demo. A common scenario when building web user interfaces is providing a pageable and sortable grid of data. Even better if it uses AJAX to make it more responsive and snazzy. Since ASP.NET MVC includes jQuery, I figured it'd be fun to use a jQuery plugin for this demo, so I chose jQuery Grid.

File Uploads in ASP.NET MVC 1.0 RTM

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 06:16:10 GMT

I had not messed around with file uploads in ASP.NET MVC for a while and so when I fired up ASP.NET MVC 1.0 RTM I was pleasantly surprised to find out how easy they had made it!

Walkthrough: full example of using MvcContrib grid w/jQuery datatable.

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 13:46:02 GMT

How to create a grid layout in ASP.NET MVC using the MvcContrib extensions and jQuery.

Unit Testable HttpModule and HttpHandler - Kazi Manzur Rashid's Blog

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 23:31:11 GMT

With the new System.Web.Abstraction namespace we can now easily write unit testable HttpModule and HttpHandler. In this post, I will show you how to write unit testable HttpModule and HttpHandler. Prior the release of System.Web.Abstraction the problem with unit testing of these web infrastructural items is HttpContext, it is sealed, no way to mock it with Rhino or Moq. The only option is to create the wrapper objects of these non-mockable objects but it has a very long tail like HttpRequest, HttpResponse, HttpSessionState, HttpServerUtility etc etc. And this is the exact thing that the System.Web.Abstraction provides, all wrappers around the non-mockable objects of HttpContext. But still, both the HttpModule and HttpHandler depends upon the original HttpContext which I hope will change in ASP.NET 4.0. till then we need to create a super layer for making it Unit Testable.

6 Things Developers Should Know By 2010

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 18:16:02 GMT

A list of 6 things I think asp.net developers should know by 2010

Exponentially Improve Performance to Start ASP.net 2.0, 3.0, 3.5 Debug

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 19:46:05 GMT

Stop the waiting when debugging your ASP.Net Web Applications! Here's a complete RAM Disk solution to save your sanity.

ASP.NET MVC Release Candidate shipping in January

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 19:01:02 GMT

ScottGu talks about the upcoming Release Candidate of ASP.NET MVC V1 and the features it brings to the table

Oxite Refactor, Take 1

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 10:46:02 GMT

I mentioned yesterday on Twitter that I'm helping out the Oxite team with some refactoring and tweaking of their codebase. I got started last night and people have been asking about it a LOT, so I thought that today I'd show you initially what I'm up to.

4 Steps To Ensure You're The Worst Developer Ever!

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 04:46:05 GMT

There are lots of articles about improving your skills as a developer. Everyone likes to talk about how to strengthen their skills and produce really good software. But, what if you want to be the worst developer ever? Nobody seems to want to share those secrets.

Testing is hard but debugging just sucks A$$

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 02:31:02 GMT

"At the users group I asked the question to the group 'who creates automated tests as part of their daily development cycle?'. After I asked this question I followed it up with, and if you don't WHY, WHY, WHY, WHY...... Below are some of the answers I received (btw, not the first time I have heard these reasons)."

Can developers test their own code?

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 19:10:38 GMT

A response to the claim that developers shouldn't test their code! Can developers be trusted? Campbell discusses the kind of tests developers should be writing, and what could be better left for the testers.

Explorations into "M"

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:15:03 GMT

Having freshly converted both the Visual Studio 2010 and Oslo SDK VPC images that we received at PDC 2008 last month to VMWare images, I figure it's time to dive into M. At PDC, the Addison-Wesley folks were giving away copies of "The 'Oslo' Modeling Language" book, which is apparently official canon of the "M" language for Oslo, so I flip to page 1 and start reading

jQuery Intellisense Updates from Microsoft

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 22:46:21 GMT

With Microsoft's recent releases of the jQuery Intellisense file plus the hotfix released this week using jQuery in Visual Studio has become a lot easier and more convenient. Here is a little more detail on what you need and how it works.

SubSonic 3.0 Preview 1: Linq Has Landed

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 15:16:16 GMT

Rob Conery explains some features of SunSonic 3.0 Preview 1

C# 4.0 Dynamic Lookup - Are You Kidding Me?

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 04:46:02 GMT

One of the core features introduced in C# 4.0 is called Dynamic Lookup which allows a unified approach to invoking things dynamically. When you have an object of type dynamic you can do whatever you like with it, those operations are resolved only at runtime. I DON'T LIKE IT, ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

LINQ To SQL Gets Kicked to the Curb... Needs A Good Home!

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 03:16:02 GMT

Great post on why L2S needs to be supported by the community and why a L2S targeted at the community is a good idea.