Archive of All Posts

Photos from a photo trip to Yellowstone and Grand Tetons National Park...

This post continues the discussion and investigation into the ViewModel (aka MVVM) pattern. This time around, the sample, a New York Times Newswire API-based News Widget application demonstrates how the MVC pattern caters to implementing navigation logic, while the ViewModel pattern focuses on interaction logic.

A demonstration of testability of view models, mocking the server when using .NET RIA Servces, in conjunction with dependency injection and the IoC implementation from Silverlight.FX to help facilitate the overall implementation.

A little sample app that uses Silverlight 3, the Virtual Earth Map Control CTP and IP-based geo-coding to implement the Locate Me scenario...

This blog post revisits the view model pattern, this time in the context of .NET RIA Services. It shows how a DomainContext can be used within a view model, along with various Silverlight.FX features such as actions, event triggers and behaviors.

A demonstration of the MouseWheel behavior to add mouse wheel-based scrolling in Silverlight applications, effortlessly, using Silverlight.FX and behaviors...

A deep drilldown into the thinking behind .NET RIA Services, the concepts and architecture behind the bits...

Slides and code for my MIX '09 Talk - Building Data-driven Applications with Silverlight and ASP.NET

Silverlight Version 3 takes center-stage at MIX '09, and shapes up to be a great platform for RIA and LOB apps. More coming by way of .NET RIA Services...

TemplatePanel from Silverlight.FX is functionally equivalent to ASP.NET master pages and Powerpoint Slide masters, helps simplify XAML and facilitates separation of content and layout.

An overview of some layout panels in Silverlight.FX: XGrid, FormPanel, HStackPanel, VStackPanel and TilePanel - specialized for simplifying layout of a few mainline app scenarios.

About the Silverlight.FX project and the latest sample addition...

An inspiring concept video of what next-generation UX could be and what digital life might be...

My MIX plans, and some hints about what my presentation will be about...

A prototype data source server control that provides the combined goodness of ObjectDataSource and LINQ... source code included. What do you think of this model? And for server-control developers, a behind-the-scenes look at dynamic code-generation.

A little bit about Designing for the Social Web - an interesting, insightful and fun read on what to keep in mind when designing social experiences on the web.

A small set of links reviewing 2008, and looking forward to 2009, from tech to news to photos, annotated with some personal comments...

A fluent (jQuery-esque) API for creating Silverlight animations easily in code, built on top of Silverlight.FX, along with some early thoughts on possible integration of animations and view models.

A couple of ActionResult implementations to abstract out FormsAuthentication specifics from Login/Logout controller actions... thoughts?

A quick walkthrough for implementing in-place editing ux for TextBox controls in Silverlight, using just styles, templates, and visual state manager in a completely declarative manner.

Live Search finally gets a REST head and JSON-based API ... and testing the C# 4.0 dynamic RestClient against it (and Google Search) to see if it holds up to these services...

An in-depth walkthrough of using the effect behaviors and animations in Silverlight.FX - from basic declarative use of out-of-the-box features, to writing your own effect-enabled Silverlight controls to writing your own custom effects.

This followup post on the C# 4.0 dynamic feature demonstrates taking dynamic JSON further to dynamic or proxyless REST service calls turning dynamic method calls into HTTP requests...

C# 4.0 will introduce dynamic programming and late-bound code in the midst of otherwise statically compiled code... in an extensible way. Heres one scenario enhanced with dynamic capabilities - working with JSON data.

Some large-scale Ajax apps and frameworks - the Live Framework and Office 14, both announced at PDC - built using Script#...

Another PDC announcement - the Live Framework enables sync and sharing across devices and users and brings that new capability to your own applications...

New opportunities and possibilities with Cloud Computing and Windows Azure - complete with a familiar .NET development platform...

A Dilbert comic strip for some weekend humor - Scott Adams on features and complexity...

A big update for Silverlight.FX - now in sync with Silverlight 2 and with a bunch of new features. This post discusses one feature area: controls that intrinsically support effects and transitions.

Script#-based Ajax development enables you to repurpose existing .NET tools - this posts shows how you can use FxCop to perform static code analysis for script code...

Another installment of Silverlight.FX additions to enable creating declarative views - this time, pre-packaged, declarative effects and transitions...

A quick note about the recently released Advanced ASP.NET Ajax Server Controls book...

A theming system for Silverlight 2 apps... this post steps you through creating a set of theme assets, adding customizability of themes (colors and fonts in the sample), and using them in an application, including selecting a theme dynamically... complete with source code.

Thoughts on search for RIAs, along with pointers to my latest slides as well as MIX session on ensuring indexability (esp. for Silverlight and Ajax apps)...

More fun with the ViewModel or M-V-VM pattern - using the Dynamic Language Runtime in Silverlight to create a better glue between the View and its ViewModel.

This post describes the ViewModel aka M-V-VM pattern, and presents a prototype Silverlight 2 framework for implementing this pattern using Action Behaviors (which provide the equivalent of commands)

A bit about code style guidelines, my own preferences and a pointer to StyleCop.

Microsoft Engineering Excellence Award presented to Script#!

An implementation of AutoComplete functionality that you can add to your TextBoxes in XAML... ala Google Suggest and the ASP.NET AutoComplete control extender (built on top of the behavior framework).

A framework for creating reusable and attachable behaviors in Silverlight, and a sample behavior that demonstrates using and building them... along with all the code.

Live Mesh announced...

Some words about the latest release of script#, now on CodePlex, and with support for localization, doc-comments and more.

This post describes a prototype for an Ajax templating solution, combined with an Ajax-friendly server-side solution that hints at what is coming down the road in ASP.NET Ajax.

My thoughts on questions along the lines of Ajax vs. Silverlight, and independent of the debate, how .NET spans the gamut of application development platforms...

Facebook's latest offering to application developers - a client-side script API, built on Script#!

A followup post on my HTML 5 thoughts: specifically how some of the new concepts can be implemented today using microformats.

Just some thoughts, and perhaps some ranting around the HTML 5 spec...

A quick update on the release of Facebook.NET 0.3 with support for new and changing Facebook APIs...

A quick post announcing version 0.4.5.0 of script# which is now available for download - adding support for VS 2008, along with a number of fixes and some enhancements.

Slide.Show - A very nice (and open source) implementation of a photo slide show experience built using Silverlight 1.0 and script.

YouTube video on Bubble 2.0 - a hilarious take on web 2.0 and related industry trends... makes for a good quick break.

This post describes using tag mapping and a derived form control to fix URL rewriting in asp.net pages.

This post presents a few basic Ajax features (similar to partial rendering and behaviors in terms of concepts) running on top of the ASP.NET MVC framework... some early ideas, experimentation and app-building results.

Photos from a short visit to Napa Valley - vineyards, grapes, wine and a geyser!

Windows Live Messenger now has an IM control you can embed in your pages... written in Script#. I also have some thoughts on what I'd love to see from this control as it evolves in terms of programmability and monetizability.

Link to my .NET Rocks Interview, where I talk about Ajax, Silverlight, my projects, and what I've been upto at Microsoft...

Pointers to some interesting works built on top of Script# - first a client-side MVP sample, and second, a project called Ext#.

This post describes how you can use Google Analytics to track users browsing and visiting your site with Silverlight-enabled browsers in the interim... until Google updates its engine to natively track Silverlight versions.

Script# supports programming against Silverlight 1.0. You can start writing your RIA and associated components and controls in C# rather than in JavaScript... today! This series of posts will build a photo carousel one step at a time to illustrate this approach. Part 3 completes the series by adding data-binding and templating to the carousel and by querying Flickr using JSONP to fetch the actual photos to display in our photo viewer scenario.

Sharing a link to a starter kit for Facebook.NET, and a new release of Facebook.NET (0.2.1.0) itself.

Joel Spolsky posts about where Ajax development might be headed, and alludes to compiling down to JavaScript. Script# is based on a similar philosophy...

Script# fully supports programming Silverlight 1.0. You can start writing your RIA and associated components and controls in C# rather than in JavaScript... today! This series of posts will build a Flickr photo viewer one step at a time to illustrate this approach. Part 2 starts building relatively more interesting functionality - specifically the carousel control.

Script# fully supports programming Silverlight 1.0. You can start writing your RIA and associated components and controls in C# rather than in JavaScript... today! This series of posts will build a photo carousel one step at a time to illustrate this approach. Part 1 builds the very basics of this scenario, and is primarily focused on introducing Script# and Silverlight working together.

A brief photo essay of my trip down-under ... with a select few photos from my photo gallery to recount some of the vacation highlights.

Finally back into Redmond after completing TechEd in Australia and New Zealand. Slides and code posted...

Sharing a minor update to my Web Development Helper tool that fixes some bugs, and also provides an early version of a new feature: a script class browser, right in your browser!

I've been playing with Facebook for a few days and am impressed. This post shares some thoughts as well as introduces a new open source project, Facebook.NET, a framework optimized for developing ASP.NET-based Facebook applications in C# or VB.NET.

The new .reflector assembly list file feature of .NET Reflector can be used to streamline the class browsing experience for Script#...

A quick update to my MSDN Search Gadget (a small sidebar gadget that lets you search for developer content on MSDN right off your desktop)...

Pointers to a few Script# projects and related works from a tutorial to a VS add-in to an actual commercial offering...

This post contains a writeup of an Ajax pattern I demonstrated at one of my MIX07 talks around improving the indexability of Ajax and Silverlight, and in general RIA applications as part of an SEO effort...

A new build of Script# is now available, complete with full support for creating Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX components, controls and behaviors... this post includes a video demonstration of building a script watermark behavior, and gives me a chance to reflect on this project exactly a year since its initial release...

I've updated the UpdateControls suite of controls for ASP.NET AJAX to include a new UpdateIndicatorControl that is based on my MIX AJAX patterns talk, that provides some options for directing user's attention to what has changed in dynamic Ajax pages...

Slides and demo code from my two MIX07 talks: AJAX Patterns, and AJAX Controls with Silverlight...

Today at MIX07, Silverlight was announced along with some amazing demos showing off the media capabilities, as well as the .net/managed programming model...

A little known attribute, configSource, enables some level of configuration factoring and splitting for the ever-growing web.config...

Pictures from the 2007 Skagit Valley Tulip Festival...

Microsoft Silverlight formerly known by its code name "WPF/E" has now been announced...

The first revision to the UpdateControls ASP.NET AJAX server controls package including bug fixes for reported bugs on UpdateHistory and AnimatedUpdatePanel, as well as the addition of another control, UpdateAction.

Intros to my two MIX07 talks: "ASP.NET AJAX Controls with WPF/E" and "AJAX Patterns with ASP.NET AJAX"...

The latest release of Script# enables authoring Windows Vista Sidebar gadgets using C#. It also comes along with a sample gadget that enables searching MSDN content and a project template to get you up and running quickly.

Two controls that go along with the UpdatePanel and partial rendering features in ASP.NET Ajax: UpdateHistory and AnimatedUpdatePanel.

The big news for the day: ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 is finally out and available...

Pictures from the aftermath of January 2007 snow storm in the Seattle area...

A simple Virtual Earth-style Hello World application demonstrating usage of map control APIs from Script# introduced in the latest build.

A second take on my Photo Map prototype - this time displaying photos taken from my 2006 travels... implemented using Virtual Earth, WPF/E and Script#.

C# offers a nice syntax for LINQ. While it is not quite possible to use the same syntax in script, the concepts do carry over, and the interesting constructs can be implemented. This post provides a couple of examples, and a quick reference for the relevant script APIs that come into play...

A whole bunch of technologies working together - AJAX, Script#, JSONP, and the just announced, WPF/E client runtime that enables scriptable media and vector graphics in the browser...

JavaScript doesn't have a nice literal syntax for date values, which results in some complications in JSON serialization. This post describes the approach we adopted to enable serialization of date values...

A brief intro on an update to the HTTP tracing feature in Web Development Helper to enhance the display of async post-back/partial rendering responses sent by the server when using the UpdatePanel server control.

Quick intro to the couple of sessions I'll be presenting next week at TechEd, Barcelona, and call for last minute suggestions...

Slides, code and a demo video from my JAOO 2006 conference presentation - sort of a Lap around ASP.NET Ajax. Enjoy!

A simple tip on working around CSS incompatibilities across browsers without relying on CSS parser bugs...

Power toys for developers are always in demand... here are a couple of lists to check out...

This post introduces a prototype of a server control for implementing back button and bookmarkability in pages using UpdatePanel and partial rendering.

A somewhat 'undocumented' Atlas technique for loading script sooner than window.onload and improving perceived page performance.

This post demonstrates how you can use anonymous delegates from C# and Script# to implement functional programming patterns in JavaScript.

An interesting diagram illustrating the birth and evolution of programming languages from 1954 through 2005...

A quick pointer to my newly re-vamped projects site, where I have shared out my on-going projects such as Web Development Helper and Script#, along with better bug and release tracking options...

The June Atlas CTP fixes some bugs, and adds support for dynamic UpdatePanels opening up scenarios such as UpdatePanels within data-bound controls or WebParts, and more importantly, custom control scenarios. This post demonstrates the control development usage.

Developer division heads to the theater to watch "Superman Returns"...

I have added an entry for Script# to my projects page, for better tracking of updates... starting with v0.1.1.0 update that I have placed online today.

Microsoft Watch covers Script#...

Using IE page transitions to simulate Ajax...

Script# ... I might have inadvertently chosen an non-searchable name...

Script# brings the C# developer experience (programming and tooling) to Javascript/Ajax world. This post shares a project for enabling script authoring via C#...

My own wish list for what I'd love to see in the browser/scripting/Ajax space...

Some reflections on discussions here at the Ajax Experience, and taking a pragmatic approach to Web development, and relating that to xml-script in Atlas...

Off to San Francisco to attend the Ajax Experience Conference, which will a slew of AJAX presentations including Atlas of course... hopefully I'll also get to see some folks and have a chance to have some interesting conversations...

Why doesn't JavaScript include a literal syntax for Date objects? This results in a wrinkle in the otherwise simple and elegant JSON-based serialization used in AJAX apps. Heres a proposal...

Couple more sets of photos taken after the MIX conference - along the strip, and at Red Rock Canyon, just outside of Las Vegas...

A new photo album - India Trip 2006 - feature a selection of pictures offering a small glimpse of the grandeur of India...

A brief writeup on one of the driving forces behind the Atlas UI framework: enabling structural markup and design... now illustrated via an example.

Slide deck and samples along with an overview of demo scenarios and code from my MIX talk on the programmable Web...

The March CTP of Atlas is now online... along with the ability to use it live on your sites... and participate in a mashup contest.

Some words on my MIX session, along with a link to a podcast on the session.

Slides and code from my recent user group tour in India...

The third and final part of this series covers the implementation of the InPlaceEditExtender server control that allows ASP.NET page developers to easily incorporate in-place editing functionality without having to delve into client-side programming.

Another quick tour of the enhancements to ScriptManager and the partial rendering/async post-back model added in the Atlas M1 (January) refresh build that further enable the server-control based AJAX model.

As a followup to my original in-place editing Atlas sample, this post takes a deeper look at the sample by providing a step-by-step approach to writing script behaviors that work cross-browser, and some insight into the topic of component authoring atlas-style.

Information about my upcoming user group tour in India spread over various cities...

A couple of interesting links on Indian subjects that I came across going over my inbox...

Atlas samples from a recent conference...

Best wishes for 2006!

This post demonstrates a custom Atlas script component and associated extender control to enable in-place editing (i.e., Labels that morph into TextBoxes upon focus in an AJAXish manner). Source code included...

This post describes the role and functionality of the Atlas ScriptManager control, which is in some sense the brains of an Atlas page. It also points out some of the changes from prior releases where functionality has been consolidated into this control.

This post outlines the focus of the December '05 release of Atlas CTP bits, and walks through the key integration points with ASP.NET server controls to enable incremental enrichment of ASP.NET server-centric applications with scenarios such as incremental page refreshes, auto-complete, draggable panels etc.

Pictures of fall leaves and scenes from Plumas County in California (taken on a recent vacation in October)...

Updates to both Web Development Helper and JavaScript Utilities projects... and download the latest bits and check them out.

Some pictures of water droplets after a rainfall.

I have just posted Virtual Places, a mashup-style (aka web 2.0) application using Virtual Earth, and various web services... all written using Atlas (of course). Check it out...

A brief introduction to one of the lesser known Whidbey features for control developers: Single Instance Templates, and some context around the problems it solves: specifically the need to use FindControl to access controls inside templates.

A discussion of client and server development models for rich Web application development using Atlas, and a quick overview of the framework and runtime modes of the Atlas script library.

Web Development Helper update (v0.8) and AJAX/Rich-Web application development goodies

Slides, demos and a brief overview of the contents from my atlas talk (PRS420) at PDC05. Enjoy!

A sample of XML script introduced in atlas, and general thoughts and opinions (go ahead and share your own thoughts...)

This post presents a high level overview of whats in Atlas today, along with the architecture diagram from yesterday's PDC session.

Finally, Atlas has been publicly demoed... and there is more to come.

Session abstract for my Atlas PDC session (PRS420), and a call for questions and discussion material for the panel session on the Microsoft Web Platform (PNL06)

v0.7.1.0 of this project continues with enhanced HTTP logging functionality, under the new and more general name, Web Development Helper, to reflect the nature of work going forward.

An update to my JavaScript utilities project, and some thoughts from my first experiences with extending msbuild...

Opinions on documentation, API naming, and a quiz for readers...

A set of javascript-related utilities and components for Web developers doing client-side development...

Wally posted the next installment in his ASP.NET podcast series, which includes a 15 minute segment of an interview with me...

The results of a weekend project on placing a few photos from my photo gallery on a map using the newly released virtual earth service from MSN and the associated APIs.

I've added a whole new section to my site, updated the ASP.NET Developer Helper tool to v0.7, and made some other miscellaneous additions.

A summary for data source control series, a screenshot, and finally (most importantly) the source code for the data source, the designer, the sample, and the async data source framework.

In part 5, the final installment of this series, I will cover adding design-time functionality and enabling design-time experiences associated with a data source control, and its associated control designer.

Part 4 of the series describes how to incorporate caching into data access logic, enabling further performance gains, and improvements in end-user experience.

Part 3 of the series describes how to perform and encapsulate asynchronous data access, while presenting a reusable asynchronous data-access framework that builds upon what is available in Whidbey.

The next installment in the data source control series shows how you can add support for declarative master/detail scenarios...

The first in a series of posts on authoring data source controls...

The word is out on Atlas, a project within our team to build in AJAX support ... in a big way.

Overview of a technique for scoping the lifetime of a URL to a fixed time period.

Some reflections on the past week, and some thoughts about future posts on this blog...

I'll be in Orlando next week, at TechEd 2005. Looking forward to meeting, and talking to folks...

I've just started using a simple IE fade effect between pages to smooth out the navigation experience. Does it help?

The hundreds (if not thousands) of user agent variations points to insanity in my opinion. Heres a sampling of some of them, and a proposal for a standardized format, even if it just amounts to interesting reading...

Two new features along with an enhancement to the view state viewer have been added in version 0.6 of this tool.

A few notes about view state display in the ASP.NET Development Helper tool, and information about the beta 2 sparse array optimization technique.

My personal thoughts and opinions, along with a bit of history, on the Whidbey DataSource control model, as well as the idea of making programming more declarative.

A browser extension to provide tools for the Web developer including ASP.NET page and control developers.

A listing of blogs from various folks on the team...

Anecdote on client-script related compatibility issues with ASP.NET v2.0 and some interesting personal observations...

Upates on whats going on (IIS7, ASP.NET and future stuff, etc.)

Locked out of my Windows machine, wishing for a password recovery mechanism, and hacking the local Administrator account (oh yes, its possible, as I found out).

Contemplating putting pictures up for sale...

The first article on IIS7 is now online... check out whats coming down the road...

This post explains a new caching feature introduced in ASP.NET Whidbey that can be used by controls needing to display dynamic and different content on each request, even if the containing page is being output-cached. While illustrating this mechanism, I have also provided a helper class that creates the equivalent of the already established Render semantics within a Control to simplify usage of the underlying infrastructure.

Some thoughts related to recent poking around with native code and living in a C++ and COM world. It sure is great to get to use managed code most of the time!

A quick introduction to concepts and terminology about the connections feature within the ASP.NET Whidbey Web Parts Framework, followed by a discussion of building support for cross-page connections using the extensibility mechanisms, along with associated code to download and play with...

2005 New Year greetings...

A description of whats new in phase 2 of my site updates, including a new look... just in time for the new year...

Just got back from vacationing in Hawaii (the islands of Maui, Moloka'i, and Oahu).

We found a potential Denial of Service (DOS) attack using Web resources, and fixed it...

Theres a potential XSS attack to watch for when allowing entry of Color values.

Thoughts on non-visual controls in ASP.NET Whidbey such as SqlDataSource, and the new NonVisualControl metadata attribute.

A long overdue set of updates to my site... (phase #1)

Neat little trick for zooming browser content for presentations...

Pictures taken from my Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, trip are now online...

Slide deck and code presented at the MVP Summit down in Rio.

To bind or not to bind to fields?

A discussion (and some early thoughts) on enabling greater control over server-generated markup in ASP.NET...

Automatic metadata-driven schema generation for server control intellisense in Whidbey

Pictures from the Wild Animal Park a short drive from to downtown San Diego...

How you can spot a geek when you see one?

Taking the bus to work...

A bit about the new control state feature and view state serializer improvements in Whidbey, that should help go a long ways into minimizing view state on aspx pages.

A discussion about the "Callbacks" feature in ASP.NET Whidbey, and a sample control and slide deck to go along with it.

Photos from around the city in San Diego, California...

Some thoughts on whether or not to use postbacks in authoring an ASP.NET Web application, what are some of the side-effects, and what we're doing in Whidbey to improve the postback model...

Blogging again :-)

Sample Avalon code to my bezier designer...

A mini designer to create Bezier spline curves using the Path shape from Avalon.

Awards for the blogging world...

Blogs dedicated to server controls...

A bit about the Mort, Elvis and Einstein personas, and how they apply in the realm of server controls in ASP.NET Whidbey.

2nd set of photos now online, from a drive along Highway 1 in California...

Happy Holidays and a holiday doodle from Google.

Web Resources just work as you'd want to at design-time. Automatically!

A bit about WebResourceAttribute in ASP.NET Whidbey and the related Web Resources feature.

Posting the slide decks and code from my WSV401 and WSV402 PDC talks...

Updated abstracts for my PDC talks: WSV401 and WSV402.

The roots of "Lorem ipsum ..."

Rant on couple of W3C guidelines (Accessibility and XHTML 1.1) not 'inter-operating'...

Added a photos section to my site, and some photos from my trip to India...

Thanks on all the greetings and wishes.

Adding a new post to put an end to my blogging break, and the usual excuses...

Just returned from the India trip... as well as a pointer to the newly published server control licensing article.

Status update... no longer single :-)

New version of Web Matrix out...

Here in Singapore... on my way to India...

Heres some sample code that allows you to incorporate HTML viewing and editing into your own Windows Forms app.

Slides and code from my two server control talks at the TechEd.

At the TechEd... I'll be giving couple of talks on building server controls (DEV 300 and DEV 401)... and look forward to seeing some of you.

Screenshots for the big new feature - database editing - in this sequence of sneak peeks...

#3 in the series of Web Matrix screenshots... this time its all about plugins...

Another sneak peek at the upcoming version of Web Matrix... user control preview on the design surface!

Sneak peek and screen shot of the new upcoming ASP.NET Web Matrix version. Watch this space for more...

Matrix Reloaded plays into Microsoft culture.

A bit about my weblog and updates performed today...

Information on upcoming talks and conferences where I'll be speaking... plus some content from a previous talk.

The first post into my weblog... with a few words about me and this weblog, what you might expect to see in the future etc.