Get the Most out of WebGrid in ASP.NET MVC

In this article on MSDN Magazine, Stuart Leeks introduces WebGrid and shows how it can be used in ASP.NET MVC 3, then takes a look at how to really get the most out of it in an ASP.NET MVC solution.
This article looks at how to fit the WebGrid component into an ASP.NET MVC environment to enable developers to be more productive while rendering tabular data. Focus is on WebGrid from an ASP.NET MVC aspect:

• creating a strongly typed version of WebGrid with full IntelliSense
• hooking into the WebGrid support for server-side paging
• adding AJAX functionality that degrades gracefully when scripting is disabled

The working samples build on top of a service that provides access to the AdventureWorksLT database via the Entity Framework. If you’re interested in the data-access code, it’s available in the code download, and you might also want to check out Julie Lerman’s article, “Server-Side Paging with the Entity Framework and ASP.NET MVC 3,” in the March 2011 issue(msdn.microsoft.com/magazine/gg650669).

Read the entire article on MSDN

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ASP.NET Developer Guidance Map

J.D. Meier has introduced to a comprehensive resource for (new) ASP.Net Developers, guiding them to the road to learn ASP.Net. The developer guidance is available in the form of Code Samples, How Tos, Videos, and Training.

The ASP.NET Developer Guidance Map helps you kill two birds with one stone:

1. It show you the key sources of ASP.NET content and where to look (“teach you how to fish”)
2. It gives you an index of the main content collections (Code Samples, How Tos, Videos, and Training)

 

Mental Model of the Map
The map is a simple collection of content types from multiple sources, organized by common tasks, common topics, and ASP.NET features:

Download the ASP.NET Developer Guidance Map

• Download the ASP.NET Developer Guidance Map (PDF)

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.NET Development for OS X

Rabi Satter, blogged about starting .Net development for OS X or other Apple devices; an excellent step by step article to start with. According to him:

Yes you read that right. This entry will show you the basics of building a Mac application in .NET. How can this be .NET is a Microsoft Windows technology? … I mean the Mono Project a Novell project that has ported .NET to Linux and other platforms including Mac OS X. What follows is a step by step guide to using .NET and no PCs were killed in the writing of this blog entry.

The tutorial leads you from setting up your machine to HelloMac application. Here you can find the entire article.

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12 Absolutely and Insanely Essential Utilities For Programmers

Jesse Liberty is a Senior Community Program Manager for Microsoft, focused on Silverlight and Windows Phone 7. He has collected 12 Absolutely and Insanely Essential Utilities For Programmers and listed them on his blog.

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Authenticate ASP.Net application using Social Sites Credentials

James Senior's blog details the new social API Web Application Toolkit for .NET web developers. If you’re not familiar with Web Application Toolkits (WATs) then here’s a summary:

FREE Web App Toolkits help ASP.NET web developers complete common web development tasks and quickly add new features to your apps. Whether it’s Bing Maps integration or adding social capabilities to your site, there’s a toolkit for you. For the full list of Web Application Toolkits check out this website.

 Here is a summary of the work they've done in this release:

• Added a new Social API Web Application Toolkit
• Updated all the WATs to be compatible with Visual Studio 2010

The code examples can be found here.

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Visual Studio 2010 Productivity Power Tool Extensions

Another news from Scott Gu, who just blogged about the cool new VS 2010 Productivity Power Tool Extensions.
Highlight of this is the Add Reference Dialog:

This new Add Reference dialog caches assembly information – which means it loads within a second or two (note: the very first time it still loads assembly data – but it then caches it and makes it fast afterwards). The new Add Reference dialog also now includes searching support – making it easier to find the assembly you are looking for.

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CodeRush Xpress for C# and VB

CodeRush Xpress is freely available to all Visual Studio 2010 developers and offers a comprehensive suite of tools that enable you and your team to simplify and shape complex code - making it easier to read and less costly to maintain.

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Hands-on Labs for Enterprise Library 5.0 and Unity 2.0 Ship

An updated set of hands-on labs were released for C# and VB.NET enterprise developers, including exercises for application blocks, Unity, interception and complex configuration scenarios. 

The set contains a guide to learn about the application blocks included with Microsoft Enterprise Library 5.0 and practice how to leverage their capabilities in various application contexts. It includes Caching, Configuration Sources, Cryptography, Data Access, Exception Handling, Interception, Logging, Security, Validation, and Unity Hands-on Labs.

You can download the hands-on lab using this link, however to download Enterprise Library 5.0 please use this link.

An Introduction to Enterprise Library 5.0

Microsoft Enterprise Library is a collection of reusable application blocks designed to assist software developers with common enterprise development challenges. 

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LLBLGen Pro v3.0 RTM has been released!

After two years of very hard work, version 3.0 has been released! 
LLBLGen Pro now is the most advanced O/RM Designer for .NET and offers, among other things, Entity Framework (v1 & v4) support, NHibernate support (hbm & FluentNH), Linq to SQL support, Model-first and Database-first development, .NET 4.0 support, Model views and much much more.

Click here for the full feature list or download the trial to experience the power of v3.0 yourself. Congratulations team for another nice effort.

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One Sure-Fire Way to Improve Your Coding

Here I found another good article discussing the improvements in coding...saying:

The most obvious way to improve your coding is to write more code. Everybody knows that. However, another activity which I guarantee will improve your coding is the complete opposite of writing. I will state this as plainly as I possibly can:

If you want to dramatically increase your programming skills you need to be reading other people’s code.

Maybe you believe that, maybe you don’t. You should. And if you’re willing to give it a shot, I believe you will be rewarded greatly for your time.

In this article I will help you choose what to read and give you practical advice on how to go about reading it. If you’re already a code reader you may find a few ways to get more from your efforts. If you aren’t, you absolutely must read on.

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DotNetNuke(DNN) source in C#

Shaun first launched DotNetNuke on December 24, 2002.  I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest that the first inquiry about a C# version came in on about December 25.  And they have continued to come in on a fairly regular basis igniting all sorts of “language wars” which continue to this day.  Scott Wiltamuth is the Microsoft Product Unit Manager for Visual Studio Languages and recently described the co-evolution of VB and C# from his point of view.

Right now, there are published packages of the C# source for version 5.4.1 and 5.4.2.  The team is working on adding this packaging to our automated build process so that new packages can be created quickly once the conversion has been done.  A normal turnaround should be just a few days after each regular release.

I personally prefer Telerik's Sitefinity CMS due to ease of use, however, the C# port of DNN might help some developers in producing better Websites/CMS.

Here's the entire story...

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VS 2010 and .NET 4 Series at Scott Gu's blog

Another great set of posts at Scott Gu's blog related to VS2010 and .NET 4. This is an ongoing series for the topics comprising new and enhanced features of VS2010 and .NET 4. However, currently following topics are available:

• Clean Web.Config Files

• Starter Project Templates

• Multi-targeting

• Multiple Monitor Support

• New Code Focused Web Profile Option

• HTML / ASP.NET / JavaScript Code Snippets

• Auto-Start ASP.NET Applications

• URL Routing with ASP.NET 4 Web Forms

• Searching and Navigating Code in VS 2010

• VS 2010 Code Intellisense Improvements

• WPF 4

• Add Reference Dialog Improvements

• SEO Improvements with ASP.NET 4

• Output Cache Extensibility with ASP.NET 4

• Built-in Charting Controls for ASP.NET and Windows Forms

• Cleaner HTML Markup with ASP.NET 4 - Client IDs

• Optional Parameters and Named Arguments in C# 4 - and a cool scenarios with ASP.NET MVC 2

• Automatic Properties, Collection Initializers and Implicit Line Continuation Support with VB 2010

• New Syntax for HTML Encoding Output using ASP.NET 4

• JavaScript Intellisense Improvements with VS 2010

• VS 2010 Debugger Improvements (DataTips, BreakPoints, Import/Export)

• Box Selection and Multi-line Editing Support with VS 2010

• VS 2010 Extension Manager (and the cool new PowerCommands Extension)

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Coding Guidelines

Here is a thread at CodeProject that discusses Coding Guidelines and refers to MS guidelines for coding by Brad Adams.
I would highly recommend to go through the guidelines time to time to refresh ourselves. Here is the link to the guidelines...

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Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors

The 2010 CWE/SANS Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors is a list of the most widespread and critical programming errors that can lead to serious software vulnerabilities. They are often easy to find, and easy to exploit. They are dangerous because they will frequently allow attackers to completely take over the software, steal data, or prevent the software from working at all.

The Top 25 list is a tool for education and awareness to help programmers to prevent the kinds of vulnerabilities that plague the software industry, by identifying and avoiding all-too-common mistakes that occur before software is even shipped. Software customers can use the same list to help them to ask for more secure software. Researchers in software security can use the Top 25 to focus on a narrow but important subset of all known security weaknesses. Finally, software managers and CIOs can use the Top 25 list as a measuring stick of progress in their efforts to secure their software.
The list is the result of collaboration between the SANS Institute, MITRE, and many top software security experts in the US and Europe. It leverages experiences in the development of the SANS Top 20 attack vectors (http://www.sans.org/top20/) and MITRE's Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) (http://cwe.mitre.org/). MITRE maintains the CWE web site, with the support of the US Department of Homeland Security's National Cyber Security Division, presenting detailed descriptions of the top 25 programming errors along with authoritative guidance for mitigating and avoiding them. The CWE site contains data on more than 800 programming errors, design errors, and architecture errors that can lead to exploitable vulnerabilities.

Guidance for Using the Top 25

Brief Listing of the Top 25

Category-Based View of the Top 25

Focus Profiles

Organization of the Top 25

Detailed CWE Descriptions

Monster Mitigations

Appendix A: Selection Criteria and Supporting Fields

Appendix B: What Changed in the 2010 Top 25

Appendix C: Construction, Selection, and Scoring of the Top 25

Appendix D: Comparison to OWASP Top Ten 2010 RC1

Appendix E: Other Resources for the Top 25

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VS2010 Professional RC is available for non-MSDN subscribers

Here it is for those who are not the MSDN Subscribers.
VS 2010 RC Download Page

[UPDATED]
Note that you can run 2010, 2008 and 2005 side by side, but you must have to uninstall Beta.
For further reading...

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Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Release Candidate

VS2010 RC  is available to MSDN subscribers on Monday, February 8th, with general availability on February 10th.

Release Candidate Highlights

	MSDN Subscribers: Download the Release Candidate
	Featured Overviews and Walkthroughs Check out this diverse collection of walkthroughs for RC. They provide step-by-step instructions for common scenarios and are a good place to start.

Please note: The Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 RC release does not support Silverlight 4 development. If you are developing a Silverlight 4 application you should continue to use Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2.

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Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Launch Date

Microsoft has announced that the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 will launch on Monday, 12 April 2010.
Read...

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Silverlight From Zero

Starts:	Wednesday February 17, 2010, 11:00AM Pacific Time
Ends:	Wednesday February 17, 2010, 12:30PM Pacific Time
Event Type:	Training/Seminar
Location:	This is a virtual event.
Website:	https://www112.livemeeting.com/cc/microsoft/join?id=G2K4BH&role=attend&pw=PN6.%3CQ]rb
Intended For:	Developers, Architects.
Organization:	LIDNUG

Jesse Liberty, Silverlight Geek, is a Community Program Manager for Silverlight at Microsoft, and author of a dozen books on .NET programming. His presentation, Silverlight From Zero, assumes you are a programmer who wants to learn Silverlight fundamentals fast. In this high speed technical presentation Liberty will cover: What is it and how do I get it and why do I want it?, Xaml and Code, Silveright controls, transforms and animation, templates, the Visual state Manager, Data and Databinding, Data Validation and the basics of media.
Note: This event is PST (Pacific Time)

Register...

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Windows® API Code Pack for .NET Framework

The Windows® API Code Pack for Microsoft® .NET Framework provides a source code library that can be used to access some new Windows 7 features (and some existing features of older versions of Windows operating system) from managed code. These Windows features are not available to developers today in the .NET Framework.


The individual features supported in this version (v1.0) of the library are:

• Windows 7 Taskbar Jump Lists, Icon Overlay, Progress Bar, Tabbed Thumbnails, and Thumbnail Toolbars.
• Windows 7 Libraries, Known Folders, non-file system containers.
• Windows Shell Search API support, a hierarchy of Shell Namespace entities, and Drag and Drop functionality for Shell Objects.
• Explorer Browser Control.
• Shell property system.
• Windows Vista and Windows 7 Common File Dialogs, including custom controls.
• Windows Vista and Windows 7 Task Dialogs.
• Direct3D 11.0, Direct3D 10.1/10.0, DXGI 1.0/1.1, Direct2D 1.0, DirectWrite, Windows Imaging Component (WIC) APIs. (DirectWrite and WIC have partial support)
• Sensor Platform APIs
• Extended Linguistic Services APIs
• Power Management APIs
• Application Restart and Recovery APIs
• Network List Manager APIs
• Command Link control and System defined Shell icons.

 Get it from here...

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MSDN Virtual Labs

MSDN Virtual Labs! Quickly evaluate or learn how to build great applications for Windows and the Web through a series of guided, hands-on labs which can be completed in 90 minutes or less. The best part is, the MSDN Virtual Labs don’t require any installation and are available to you immediately for FREE.
Direct Link

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