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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Windows Phone Learning Zone

CodeProject has started another series on Window Phone 7 development where you can find everything you need to start building applications for WP7. Microsoft's free development tools WP7 work in the familiar Visual Studio IDE.

You can download the free tools and learn how to use the different tools and controls, the application architecture and how to design for the Rich Mobile Web.
Find it all, including a free SDK, in the Windows Phone Learning Zone.

Download the Windows Phone 7 Developer Toolkit	Designing and Developing for the Rich Mobile Web	Windows Phone in 7 Minutes	Getting Started with Windows Phone 7
The Windows Phone 7 Application Architecture	Windows Phone 7 Controls	Understanding the Windows Phone 7 Development Tools	Introducing Windows Phone 7

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Free eBook: Moving to Microsoft Visual Studio 2010

Well for those of you who want to learn about MS Visual Studio 2010 and are used to earlier versions, here is another great effort from Microsoft and it is free. Moving to Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 (Microsoft Press, 2011; 336 pages), written by Patrice Pelland, Pascal Paré, and Ken Haines.

The book is not a language primer, a language reference, or a single technology book. It’s a book that will help professional developers move from previous versions of Visual Studio (starting with 2003 and on up). It will cover the features of Visual Studio 2010 through an application. It will go through a lot of the exciting new language features and new versions of the most popular technologies without putting the emphasis on the technologies themselves. It will instead put the emphasis on how you would get to those new tools and features from Visual Studio 2010.

If you are expecting this book to thoroughly cover the new Entity Framework or ASP.NET MVC 2, this is not the book for you. If you want to read a book where the focus is on Visual Studio 2010 and on the reasons for moving to Visual Studio 2010, this is the book for you.

The book is written having three audiences in mind:

• Part I is for developers moving from Visual Studio 2003 to Visual Studio 2010
• Part II is for developers moving from Visual Studio 2005
• And Part III is for developers moving from Visual Studio 2008

You can download a PDF of the book here and can help Microsoft by filling out a survey at http://www.microsoft.com/learning/booksurvey.

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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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Introducing MSVS LightSwitch™

Microsoft is launching Visual Studio® LightSwitch™, the simplest way to build business applications for the desktop and cloud. LightSwitch is a new member of the Visual Studio family focused on making it easy to develop line of business applications. LightSwitch helps you solve specific business needs by enabling you to quickly create professional-quality business applications, regardless of your development skills. 

LightSwitch is optimized to combine data+screens idea by providing developers with tools to not only connect to an existing database, but also create database, tables and associated screens.

Visual Studio LightSwitch Beta will be available on August 23. Come back at that time to download it, plus check back before then for additional LightSwitch videos.

However, a very good preview/introduction is blogged by Jason Zander detailing development using LightSwitch.

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