My site has been up and down, on and off, stiff and flimsy throughout the week. I am not the sys admin of the year so running on my own virtual server has been a workout. My pains really started with Plesk, a control panel for hosting multiple websites. It's a great tool when it works and it can configure the few things I'm not familiar with with a few clicks. However when it doesn't work then I have to manually go in and tweak things myself. Like my DNS and Mail for example. For whatever reason my DNS settings for dennydotnet.com would not be created, maybe it dislikes my name :) Anyways...

Today I decided to finally fix my Mail problems after a friend enlightened me with knowledge of Google Apps. "Google Apps.. and Mail, huh?" Yep! You can create your email account on Google Apps, add a few DNS records to your domain and voila! Google now handles your e-mail, faster and more reliably. You also have access to your email via GMail and you can of course enable POP/IMAP to access it via your favorite mail program. Best of all you get to use your domain name "@dennydotnet.com" not the "@gmail.com" name and you have total control of email as well as "lists."

Allowing the Goog to handle my mail is great because I can now disable and uninstall my mail server software. This, in turn, gives me back more memory and hard disk space as well as less headaches when my email isn't going through :)

Thanks Goog!

[Update 05/08/08]: Everything went well with Google Apps and I went around my site and changed my email settings to reflect the new Google Apps email. At first I couldn't figure out which host or port to send to but after some research I was able to make the necessary changes. Below is an example of the SmtpClient code needed to send mail via Gmail.

So I had a mishap happen with my project the other day and I decided, finally, to get a version tracking system. I had heard a lot about SVN and used TortoiseSVN occassionaly to get the latest versions of subsonic, jQueryMVC, ffmpeg and a few other projects. So I looked around for something that could integrate well with Visual Studio 2008. I ran across VisualSVN, downloaded the trial, and I'm now hooked! It's a really good price too (I have yet to purchase it though). Anyways, TortoiseSVN allows you to easily create your repository and you get a cool SVNAdmin tool which you can use to backup your repository (in combination with task cheduler).

So if you were like me and you keep hearing about SVN this and SVN that... jump in, the water is warm :) You're wasting productivity by not checking it out!

[04/30/08] There's another great article I bumped into today regarding a move to TortoiseSVN and VisualSVN, check it out here.

Marijn Haverbeke has put together an e-book named Eloquent JavaScript that not only has great content, but also comes with an integrated interface for editing and running the examples directly from the "pages."

I had to post this since the site is such an excellent resource for JavaScript. Running the examples is incredibly intuitive and easy. Excellent work on Mr. Haverbeke's part!

The post/link originated on Ajaxian: http://ajaxian.com/archives/eloquent-javascript 

Back in the saddle!! Scott Guthrie has just let us know that the source code for the .NET Framework libraries, mentioned below, are available for browsing and debugging!

The libraries include:

• .NET Base Class Libraries (including System, System.CodeDom, System.Collections, System.ComponentModel, System.Diagnostics, System.Drawing, System.Globalization, System.IO, System.Net, System.Reflection, System.Runtime, System.Security, System.Text, System.Threading, etc).
• ASP.NET (System.Web, System.Web.Extensions)
• Windows Forms (System.Windows.Forms)
• Windows Presentation Foundation (System.Windows)
• ADO.NET and XML (System.Data and System.Xml)

Instructions on installing the libraries for Visual Studio 2008 are located here: Shawn Burke's blog post. Read Scott Gu's post if you want to get the low-down.

Finally some great news! Scott Gu officialy announced the ASP.NET MVC Framework on his blog. I'm so anxious to get my hands on the framework! If you're not familiar with MVC I would suggest reading Scott's post, he explains it briefly.

However there are some really cool features... for example you can use both MVC and WebForm frameworks. You can also continue to use Master Pages, ASCX controls, <%=%> snippets and plenty more. The MVC framework will not use the existing post-back model, instead you route all end-user interaction to a Controller (no viewstate or page lifecycle - a great approach).

What about ASP.NET AJAX UpdatePanels? Scott mentions this in his comments:

UpdatePanel does use postback, so you won't use that control directly within a MVC based view.  But there will be a control (and optional helper method) with capabilities very similar to it.  It will invoke an action on a controller and allow you to incrementally update a portion of HTML really easily.  It will enable you to use the ASP.NET AJAX libraries really easily.

Curious to see the "optional helper method."

My biggest frustration has been with the difficulty in mashing JavaScript with ASP.NET WebForm's rendered output. With the MVC Framework it seems like I'll finally have the control I want to use JavaScript frameworks and server-side controls seamlessly.

I've been using the ASP.NET AJAX Update Panels for quite some time now and have picked up a lot of tips on when and how to use them. Update Panels were intended to allow the developer to do Partial Page Updates. Usually what you see is Update Panels updating nearly the entire page which completely defeats the purpose of Update Panels!

Here are some good tips to take into account when developing with Update Panels:

#1. One thing I notice is that people want to stuff all their functionality into one page with multiple hidden/visible panels. Then utilize the functionality by showing/hiding the panels based on actions within the page. This can lead to very confusing code...

If you're changing from one action which does a lot of functionality with X to an action which does a lot of functionality with Y then separate the functionality and use a page postback to switch between those pages. Don't throw everything together into one update panel and separate it by hidden panels. You'll end up with a ton of code which is not resuable and difficult to understand. Separate your functionality just like you would separate your DAL, BL and Presentation.

• User Management (insert, update, delete users)
• Settings (change your web app's settings)
• Media Management (insert, update, delete media)
• etc...

#2. Separate your Update Panels. Instead of throwing everything into one update panel break it up! Plan what areas of your page will need to update and what will trigger them to update. This will save you an insane amount of bandwidth (and download time) and return much better performance.

Example:
Lets say you have 3 areas on your page that will allow a user to: select a category, select a video and then watch the video.

• Part 1 displays a list of categories
• Part 2 displays a list of videos within that category
• Part 3 displays a video player

Lets think logically about the flow of execution with the 3 parts. First a user picks a category in Part 1. Then they select which video they want to watch in Part 2. And finally the video displays in Part 3 and begins playing.

So there are 2 steps involved to watch a video:

1. Pick a category
2. Pick a video

And 2 triggers:

1. "Click" a category
2. "Click" a video

(Each arrow represents a click)

So we've got the basic idea down now how do we determine WHERE we need update panels? We need to determine what parts change. The only parts that change are Part 2 which shows a list of videos within the selected category and Part 3 which plays the selected video. Part 1 will not change because nothing within that part changes. Part 1 is only used to select a category and the categories are loaded at Page_Load.

(Of course if you added paging or sorting to Part 1 you could then use an update panel but for this example Categories are static.)

So you have 2 parts that change meaning you only need 2 update panels, one for Part 2 and one for Part 3. Now how do we trigger these updates? Based on the flow we determined above we know what triggers are needed...

Triggers:

• Part 2 needs to update when a category is selected from Part 1.
• Part 3 should update when a video is selected from Part 2.

We also want to hide the video player when the user selects a new category because it wouldn't make sense to continue showing a video from the "Comedy" category after they selected the "Drama" category. So we'll need one more trigger:

• Part 3 should update when a category has been selected since we don't want to display the old video when they select a new category.

(Each arrow represents where the item is triggered from [start of line inside part] and what part it affects [end of line])

And that's all we need to properly separate our update panels. The cool thing about upate panels is that your trigger control does not need to be within the same update panel. In other words, it can be located anywhere on your page outside the update panel. That's why we only need 2 update panels. The triggers in part 1 can be set programatically or through the update panel "triggers" GUI from the properties menu.

Quick Tip: If you want to know how to set a trigger programatically then read this post.

What's the benefit of separating the update panels? Alot of Bandwidth! Update panels respond with their entire rendered contents when doing an AJAX call. Update panels also attach any control viewstates to the response. If you were to place the entire content of the example above in one update panel you'll be uploading and downloading everything every time you do a callback. On the other hand if you separate your update panels, like the example above, you'll only download the contents of the update panel that has been triggered.

Quick Tip: If a control within an update panel does not need viewstate enabled then disable it! This is a good way to decrease the size of the response.

You know how to set a default browser for debugging: (http://stevenharman.net/blog/archive/2007/08/02/setting-a-default-browser-for-visual-studio.aspx). This works great for most browsers, however if you're in an environment where you have to test with Safari as well... you're out of luck. Apparently Safari doesn't like the way Visual Studio opens the browser window and instead shows the default page. So how do you get Safari to play nice with Visual Studio?

#1. Right-click any folder or page in Solution Explorer and select "Browse With..."
#2. Click "Add..."
#3. Browse to your Safari folder (@:\Program Files\Safari\) and select the "Safari.exe"
#4. Under the "Program name:" textbox you'll see the path to Safari in quotes: "@:\Program Files\Safari\Safari.exe" At the end of the string (outside the quotes) add "-url" so it looks like: "@:\Program Files\Safari\Safari.exe" -url
#5. Click "OK"
#6. You'll get a message that states "File name does not exist, is invalid... Do you want to change your entry?" Make sure you select "NO"

You can now highlight Safari and browse to whatever page or folder you selected.

Note* Setting Safari as default will not allow you to start debugging. You'll get an error stating Visual Studio was "Unable to start program..."

There's no fix for the debugging that I am aware of.

Well it's been a long while since I've blogged and I'm finally getting around to it. There's been a lot of things going on lately! First and foremost I'm going to be a new Dad starting next year around February or March. I'm excited about the news and can't wait to find out if it's a boy or girl. Things will definitely start changing around the house!

Secondly, I started a new job! I'm really excited about working at this new place because they're doing some really cool AJAX stuff. It's a great opportunity for me because I'll get to work with some really bright people and work with the latest technologies too. I recently picked up a book titled: "Professional ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX" by Matt Gibbs and Dan Wahlin (Amazon) to get some further insight on the ASP.NET AJAX Framework. It's an excellent book and there's plenty of tips and knowledge in here even if you're experienced. For example, I finally found out what the benefit of using the ASP.NET AJAX registration methods (for namespaces, classes, etc...). It has to do with performance, amongst other things. I'll blog more about this later! On another note I introduced SubSonic to the team as well. I had some positive feedback and it looks like we could be implementing it across various projects in the future.

I've recently been working with the ASP.NET AJAX Serialization classes, in particular the JSON serializer. There didn't seem to be too many resources while Googling for examples so I poked around and created a few helper functions for myself such as serializing a DataTable or DataReader into a JSON array / object (Yes ASP.NET Futures supports this already). I'll blog about this in the future as well. Anyways, upon creating some helper functions I realized I had something interesting started. I began thinking about how I could bind my array of JSON objects to a pre-defined template, like a Repeater only on the client-side. It seems possible but I haven't researched this thoroughly to see what implications it could have. It may be a side project in the future.

Feedback:
What I'm interested in knowing is how other people have been using ASP.NET AJAX. Are you taking adavntage of Web Services, or are you using PageMethods? Are you relaying your data as XML or JSON? Why? How are you using the data passed to the client. For example are you using it to update one or two specific elements or are you bulking your objects together to complete multiple tasks?

I'm very interested in hearing your responses.

I just can't help myself. The event sounds great, I'm even thinking about attending (LA is only an hour away). You even get a chance to win an XBox 360. The Microsoft Web Experience event looks mighty interesting and if it weren't for Kirk Evan's post I probably would have never known about it.
The most important part is that they're offering FREE BEER! My vote is in for a good hefeweizen... See you there!

Update (6/5/2007 10:15pm): I cleared up my schedule and will be attending the event! MicrosoftWebExperience

Microsoft is hosting free Microsoft Web Experience events at the Los Angeles Microsoft office on June 8th and the Denver Microsoft office on June 15th.  They will be presenting information on building the next generation user experience on the web.

They are providing breakfast and lunch, hosting a reception with beer and wine, and attendees are automatically registered in a drawing for an XBox 360 and a Zune that will be given away at each event. For more information, visit http://kaevans.sts.winisp.net/Shared%20Documents/webexperience.aspx.

Took my first Microsoft Certification today and passed with an 867 (yea I could have done better). But hey I'm happy, I can add this to my resume and I feel pretty good about it.

During my preparation I ran across a lot of blogs arguing over Certs vs. Experience. What I found is that even though I feel very confident with my skills I did pick up a few new things that I was not aware of prior to my certification path. A lot of those things were new to me because I have never been exposed to them at work. For the most part I could figure out nearly every question that was presented to me in the exam if I could just have a default Web application project open with Visual Studio. I had a completely different outlook on certs now than I did before. Here are a few certification vs experience questions I wanted to answer:

1. Is getting a cert worth it? Why? Yes. I believe the process of studying for the exam and reading the literature related to passing the exam gives you well rounded knowledge of the subject area. You'll probably pick up on something you didn't know before.
2. Would you hire someone with less experience and a cert or more experience and no cert? More experience and no cert. This is because although the cert is "proof" that you know your stuff a seasoned developer has been exposed to much more than just questions and answers. In the programming world we all know how brain-breakingly dynamic an environment can be.

So that's my take on the whole cert vs experience scene. Anyways! If you're interested in taking a cert here are some of my personal recommendations:

1. Get an exam prep book. The exam prep books go over what you will be tested on, source code, samples and study questions. The book will tell you how Microsoft wants you to answer the questions.
2. Take a skills assessment test on Microsoft Learning: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/assessment/default.mspx - This is a great way to prepare for an exam. The only issue I had with this is that it does not tell you which questions you had wrong. It only states what you should improve on. However it does give you many resources such as books and instructor-led training that will help you focus on the areas you need improvement.
3. I stumbled on a great site that was loaded with practice questions: www.certyourself.com - Here you get to go over the answers to the questions and they give you explanations as to why the answers are right or wrong.