MS Ajax Extensions

TUX Update... (AKA I missed something)

Jay Kimble — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 20:27:56 GMT

MSDN Premium Subscription is up for grabs

I forgot to mention this yesterday. Bill Reiss our resident MVP is giving away an MSDN Premium Subscription. So if you come you have a chance at getting it.

Multi-location

BTW, we are working toward being multi-location, so if you are in another state in the US (probably more of an East Coast thing) or in Florida, one of our goals is to make our meetings available via streaming (but only to groups... sorry you won’t be able to just dial up our stream from your desk at home)

Writing Better JS Components

Jay Kimble — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 12:04:33 GMT

Perry (my boss... a developer/manager... he codes and manages) and I have been having a recurring conversation lately. One that keeps bringing to my mind a product that I knew about when I worked for ZAC Catalogs (way back in the day). I would daresay that none of you had even heard of it (although we did pick it up as a result of Xtras carrying it, so maybe a few of you knew about it). I believe it was a called "MFC DataGrid Wizard" or something like that. Anyway what it did was build a custom DataGrid component for you based on selections in a wizard. You selected what features you needed and then it would take it’s full-featured Grid source code (which came with the component) and would dynamically generate a full blown component for you with just the features you needed.

There are two reasons this has become a topic for discussion for me. The first is that we are currently struggling with a set of third party components that a prior developer/manager pushed all over our main site. The components are ones that you have probably heard great things about them and they are pretty cool. The problem is when you shove these components everywhere! We are having ViewState issues among other things... One of the components is a full-featured Grid control (client-side) that while nice we usually only use as a glorified listbox (we use it for selecting an item). As a result I built a specialized DataGrid for our company (one that I’ll be doing a walkthrough on its codebase at the first TUX user group meeting next month)

The other reason is this post from Bertrand LeRoy where he talks about a simple grid for ASP.NET. Here’s my problem with Bertrand’s post. The grid he talks about as being simple really doesn’t sound all that simple to my ears. Let me list a couple features:

Column drag/drop
Different column types
Data Sorting/Paging
Inline editing

Now mind you these are awesome features if you need them all then you would want to use something like this, but a lot of times what we need is something simpler. You could use the aforementioned grid for this, but the grid will probably still use ViewState (because it needs it maintain state for the paging, sorting, and editing features). It might need several more scripts or <shudder /> it’s script might be 500-1000 lines longer because of the added features.

A Better Way

I have been thinking about a better way to "do" script components. We really need to have a wizard that asks us what we will be needing in the components and then the main script file can be customized (as can the server side code) to remove certain things. It could be done really easy with templates for the script. You need a template for the main file, and additional includes based on features. The server side would work pretty much the same way. I know that no company really wants to give away their source, but even if they were able to do this for script code that would make our lives a lot easier.

Tampa User eXperience (TUX) User Group is coming September 10th, 2008…

Jay Kimble — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 03:35:18 GMT

I am proud to announce that I and a couple other guys are starting User Group that revolves around User Experience (or UX) in the MS tools eco-system. The other guys are Shawn Cady, Perry Panagopoulos, and Bill Reiss (MVP) [Bill always gets his MVP props].

I could give you all their backgrounds, but I’ll make them do it at the first meeting. I’m sure Papa Fish (aka www.devfish.net) the local MS Dev Evangelist (my Blog Father) Joe Healy will be around (at least for the first meeting).

TUX' Focus
Our focus will be on the "now" of Ajax and how it integrates with ASP.NET (in all its various forms), and the "future" of Silverlight2, and anything in between (like adding Silverlight2 controls to Ajax sites, etc); we’ll not be stuck in just Web either... we’ll probably do some WPF as well. We’ll also be dealing with some of those more abstract things that you need to get better at (like how to be a better designer, creating good user experiences, etc.), and we will do our best to keep this group "devsigner-friendly" (devsigner is a developer who is also a designer).

We have a lot of really creative ideas to make this fun and useful to you today as well as with an eye for the future (but I don’t want to blow them all)... We will definitely keep this interactive and will try to help you solve your problems as well (at least we’ll be around to chat with you before and afterward).

First Talk: Intro To MS Ajax Scripting
The first person to present will be me. I will be pulling a talk out of my paid pile which means that you have probably never seen me give this talk (unless you work at one of the companies I gave it at)... this is very special and will never be repeated (well, maybe). This talk is one that I have yet to see anyone give (for free). It’s an introduction to the MS Ajax scripting framework. Oftentimes you see a demo where someone shows you how to build an Ajax Extender control where a JavaScript is thrown in, but rarely (I’ve never seen it done) does someone talk to you about building the script behavior which is used to create the Server-Side Extender (I will in fact be doing just this). You will leave this talk with the knowledge of how to do it. As is often the case when I talk about JavaScript, I’ll end with a Script# demo which will make your life a lot easier (so we’ll build the last demo in C# which will be compiled to MS Ajax-style JavaScript); this big demo is a selection grid behavior that I built for my employer to replace a commercial grid component that we were using; you’ll definitely have a use for it.

Bonus
We’ll have Pizza provided by Answers Systems, so just get there after work... you don’t need to eat first.

AND!!!! Bill Reiss (MVP) has graciously given us an MSDN Premium Subscription (used to be MSDN Universal) to give away, so don’t miss it.

Where/When will it be?
We will be holding these events at my workplace: Answers Systems in Oldsmar, FL. Better directions than this will follow in the near future (we will have a web site soon), but it’s right next to (West of) the Oldsmar Fleamarket on Tampa Rd (aka Hillsborough Ave). We plan to open the doors at 6:30pm with the activities starting at 7:00pm.

Can’t make it, but you really wanted to see my session?
<sarcasm>So you are in my fan club (Eric Wise, I know that’s you since you maintain some of my stellar code), but you live in another state (like say the cold state of Ohio... where it’s 40 degrees Fahrenheit in August) so there is no way you could see this session by me, but you really, really want to see it, but the plane ticket is so expensive.</sarcasm>

Well, we plan on videoing our sessions and making them available online (as long as the speaker is OK with it, and I am... SO this is the LAST time I’ll be able to charge for this session... unless I revamp it which I will).

Afterwards...
I’m not Joe Healy so I can’t pick up the tab, but there is a Starbucks down the street that many of my colleagues and I like to frequent (Stimulants... I need a good stimulant not a depressant... but we could be talked into depressants), so don’t be surprised if we all end up somewhere afterwards or maybe somewhere else...

RSVP
If you plan on coming please drop me a line via the contact form on this site. We need this to help us figure out how much Pizza to buy.

PS
In October (the 2nd Wednesday), Bill will be doing a Silverlight2 talk (He’s a Silverlight MVP and a soon-to-be Silverlight book author). It will be more of an intro, but he plans on really giving a nice overview from both the diesgn standpoint and the development standpoint.

And, yes, we actually have a a list of things we’re thinking about for November... nothing definitive (yet), but we plan on being way ahead of the game (as best as we can).

Types of Silverlight2 apps

Jay Kimble — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 21:03:02 GMT

I want to go on record for a prediction. I believe when the dust settles with Silverlight2 (SL2, hereafter), we will have 2 major types of apps. To me this is fairly obvious, but if all you did was look at SL2 tutorials you would get a different view altogether. You see all the tutorials that exist out there show you what I think is the preferred way: a single application that lives in the browser as a plugin.

I also see another SL2 type of app: the SL2 enhanced Ajax App. Seriously, there will be those who will use some of the fancy SL2 controls (and I’m talking about the third party ones that will be developed) to bring their Ajax apps into a new domain. So from a plumbing perspective they will stick with the familiar page model we have today. I think the draw of Ajax is strong and I would rather this not happen because it is my view that the SL2 framework is way better than classic DHTML/Ajax/Web2.0. There are those who will say, "I can’t leave the rich experience of JS on the client." (phooey... just code in DLR JScript instead if you want JavaScript).

BTW, I also see a third model. The old model built with a single Sl2 applet on each page. I think this will be a minor idea, but I see it coming.

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On another note, I’ll be putting up a few SL2 posts. I have been doing a fair bit of work with it in the last month or so. It definitely involves a slightly different mentality than classic web apps.

My SL2 prototype actually uses a REST service built with MS MVC and with the MVC Contrib project’s Restful feature. I will write some on this in the not too distant future. I have really grown to like REST (and building a service the way I have is really great for quick prototyping).

I’m actually starting to chew on Databinding (and doing CRUD operations on the data), so in time I’ll be writing about some of that stuff too.

--------------

Additionally, I am also working on starting a .NET UX user group here in Tampa Bay. I’m working with a couple of the local personalities to bring together a really good group. The group would focus on MS Ajax (and other Ajax Frameworks with ASP.NET and MS MVC) and Silverlight2 based apps. I can’t wait. It’s really exciting!

Cool ScriptManager stuff I missed...

Jay Kimble — Thu, 29 May 2008 21:20:57 GMT

So the last week or so I have been doing some heavy handed UpdatePanel development (stuff where I needed to fix an existing form that needs help to support an UpdatePanel or stuff where I needed to do something special while the page was posting back asyncronously).

In the midst I discovered some cool mechanisms that I missed!

For instance you can determine whether the current request is an async request by doing something like this:

        1: ScriptManager sm = ScriptManager.GetCurrent(Page); 

       2: if (sm != null && sm.IsInAsyncPostBack)

       3: {

       4:     // do something special here

       5: }

The other problem I had was that I needed to emit a startup script that should execute after the async request finished rendering. It turns out that the ScriptManager control has some really nifty static methods. Here’s the example of what I was trying to do:

       1: //                                  (control, type,   ScriptID,ScriptToRun, AddScriptTags)  

       2: ScriptManager.RegisterStartupScript(this, GetType(), "someID", "SomeScript", true);

Investigate it for yourself... there’s a lot of handy stuff here that corresponds to the same stuff you can do with the Page’s ClientScript object (with the difference being that ScriptManager’s stuff works during a Async Postback)

Script#: Events/Delegates in an Atlas/MS Ajax style script

Jay Kimble — Thu, 22 May 2008 13:30:48 GMT

First of all if you don’t know what Script# is, it is a C# language variant available in VS2005/2008. The difference is that it can be used to create JavaScript. The compiler produces an assembly (usable in other Script# projects) and a set of JS files (a release and a debug version). Nikhil Kothari (the author) also has 2 script frameworks you can target: Nikhil’s framework, and the "Atlas"/MS Ajax (aka MS ASP.NET Ajax) framework. There are difference in what you can do when using the "Atlas" framework.

Event Limitations

Let me start with a quote from the Script# Dox (regarding limitations in "Atlas" targeted scripts):

"No support for auto-generated event accessors. Auto-generated event accessors require the existence of a Delegate class with Delegate.Combine/Remove semantics, which are not provided
by ASP.NET AJAX. The workaround is to explicitly implement the 2add/remove accessors for events in your code, rather than have the compiler generate it. "

Basically this is saying there are issues with building events in your classes with Script#. It’s not impossible, but it’s not automatic like it is in Nikhil’s Script# (client-side) framework.

Since I recently had to do this and had to search the Internet for a solution (which there is no answer for), I thought it would be good to document how to do it (for both my reference and for others).

How To Add/Remove Events

That comment about needing to create your own add/remove logic is really simple to handle, but your class needs to derive from Sys.Component (or a class like behavior and control which derive from Sys.Component). The code looks like this (In Script#):

        1: // add a handler to an event

       2: public void add_MyEvent(EventHandler fn)

       3: {

       4:     this.Events.AddHandler("MyEvent", fn);

       5: }

       6: // remove a handler from an event

       7: public void remove_MyEvent(EventHandler fn)

       8: {

       9:     this.Events.AddHandler("MyEvent", fn);

      10: }

The reason we need to derive from Sys.Component is that Sys.Component gives us the Events property. Events is the container for all our events. New ones will be dynamically generated within that container. Let’s see a simple property we can build to easily get the event back when we want to invoke it.

       1: private EventHandler MyEvent

       2: {

       3:     get

       4:     {

       5:          return (EventHandler)this.Events.GetHandler("MyEvent");

       6:     }

       7: }

All of this is well documented. The hard part is. Now I have the event how do I call it with Script#? You might start looking for invoke or apply syntax (which I did. But the answer is quite simple. The EventHandler is a function/method that you can call directly like this:

       1: EventHandler evnt = this.MyEvent;

       2: evnt(sender, new EventArgs());

BTW, you can do the same type of thing with delegates... they’re just simp0le functions.

I hope that helps someone...

[I really need to write a fuller post on building Behaviors with Script# (in case you don’t realize Behaviors are the foundation of ASP.NET Ajax Extender Controls).]