Recently, an announcement is published on WebDevTools blog @ msdn that there is a new hotfix available for Visual Studio 2008 (and Visual Web Developer 2008 Express) that fixes some performance and editor issues that have arisen in Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Web Developer 2008 Express. Fixes are related to HTML Source view performance, Design view performance, HTML editing, JavaScript editing and Web Site build performance. The download is available on connect.microsoft.com and is related to KB article KB946581. It is approximately 2,5MB large and in order to download it one must login to connect using Live ID. Here is address on connect, and here is official announcement . Installation is easy, quick and straightforward and on my dev machine it doesn’t ask for install DVD.

Last night, I’d the chance to look at John Resig’s talk on the Best Practices in Javascript Library Design.

                This talk explores all the techniques used to build a robust, reusable, cross-platform JavaScript Library. We’ll look at how to write a solid JavaScript API, show you how to use functional programming to create contained, concise, code, and delve deep into common cross browser issues that you’ll have to solve in order to have a successful library. John Resig is a JavaScript Evangelist, working for the Mozilla Corporation, and the author of the book ‘Pro Javascript Techniques.’ He’s also the creator and lead developer of the jQuery JavaScript library and the co-designer of the FUEL JavaScript library (included in Firefox 3).

1. jQuery - that simplifies how you traverse HTML documents, handle events, perform animations, and add Ajax interactions to your web pages.
2. Fuel - Firefox User Extension Library - is a JavaScript Library designed to help developers build extensions using terminology and interfaces that are familiar to them. It will be usable in Firefox 1.5-3.0.

Download jQuery

Download jQuery 1.2.1 (14kb, Minified and Gzipped) Great for production use.

Download jQuery 1.2.1 (77kb, Uncompressed) Great for testing, learning and development.

Download jQuery 1.2.1 (26kb, Packed) For those that can’t Gzip their JavaScript.

Thom has a table of .NET Framework 3.5 features, Daniel also has a good list of the new stuff in .NET Framework 3.51. System.Data.Linq.dll – The implementation for LINQ to SQL.
2. System.Xml.Linq.dll – The implementation for LINQ to XML.
3. System.AddIn.dll, System.AddIn.Contract.dll – New AddIn (plug-in) model.
4. System.Net.dll – Peer to Peer APIs.
5. System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement.dll – Wrapper for Active Directory APIs.
6. System.Management.Instrumentation.dll – WMI 2.0 managed provider (combined with System.Management namespace in System.Core.dll).
7. System.WorkflowServices.dll and System.ServiceModel.Web.dll – WF and WCF enhancements (for more on WF + WCF in v3.5 follow links from here).
8. System.Web.Extensions.dll – The implementation for ASP.NET AJAX (for more web enhancements, follow links from here) plus also the implementation of Client Application Services.
9. System.Core.dll – In addition to the LINQ to Objects implementation, this assembly includes the following: HashSet, TimeZoneInfo, Pipes, ReaderWriteLockSlim, System.Security.*, System.Diagnostics.Eventing.* and System.Diagnostics.PerformanceData.

Update:

Here’s the description from the Astoria Project Site (where you can get the CTP today): http://astoria.mslivelabs.com/.

Description:

“The goal of Microsoft Codename Astoria is to enable applications to expose data as a data service that can be consumed by web clients within a corporate network and across the Internet. The data service is reachable over HTTP, and URIs are used to identify the various pieces of information available through the service. Interactions with the data service happens in terms of HTTP verbs such as GET, POST, PUT and DELETE, and the data exchanged in those interactions is represented in simple formats such as XML and JSON. “

Here’s a great video by Pablo Castora: http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=306736#306736

In the last week Fredrick wrote about the MVP pattern and controllers etc, he also wrote about his old page workflow framework. But if you want something similar and also want to use controllers/presenter then take a look at the Web Client Software Factory from the Patterns & Practices team. It will help us build really cool web apps. The Web Client Software Factory have a page flow Application Block that can be used  to create a page flow (similar to fredrick framework, but the Page Flow Application Block use  .Net .3.0’s Workflow foundation and don’t support Shared transitions between different page flows.). But most of you probably already have .Net 3.0 installed (you can download it here). 

Last week, I got an excellent oppurtunity to work with Infopath 2007 and Business Data Catalog(BDC). As per requirement, need to pass employee personal information id to infopath forms. Infopath form should pre-populate data from DB based on PersonalInfoID from Querystring.  Whether i pass a parameter to a form file in InfoPath 2007 or the Web browser, first i need to update the form template’s Loading event. The LoadingEventArgs class of the Loading event provides the InputParameters property. This property gets an IDictionary object, which contains any input parameters that are specified in the URL that is used to start a form file. Next, use the TryGetValue method of the IDictionary object that was returned by the InputParameters property to retrieve a parameter value. Then, use the SetValue method on an XPathNavigator object to set the corresponding node value in the form file. The following example sets the Employee Name box to the value based on PersonalInfoID parameter that was passed in the URL that was used to start the form.  public void FormEvents_Loading(object sender, LoadingEventArgs e) {

string personalInfoId = string.Empty;

try {     

e.InputParameters.TryGetValue(”PersonalInfoID”, out personalInfoId);  

} catch (Exception ex) {

personalInfoId = ex.Message.ToString();

} finally {

 …do some db calls…

MainDataSource.CreateNavigator().SelectSingleNode (”/my:myFields/my: Name”, NamespaceManager).SetValue(customerId);

}

} 

Next, I must update the Business Data Catalog metadata file to include a custom action. So I’ve added as follows, which adds a custom action to the existing Employee entity (before the </Entity> end tag) that starts the status report form in the Web browser with a PersonalInfoID parameter.

<Actions>   

    <Action Name=”Status Report” Position=”1″ IsOpenedInNewWindow=”true” Url=      “<i>My MOSS Server</i>/_layouts/formserver.aspx?xsnlocation=       /formservertemplates/statusreport.xsn&      openin=browser&PersonalInfoID={0}”>       

  <ActionParameters>           

                  <ActionParameter Name=”personalInfoID” Index=”0″/>       

    </ActionParameters>   

  </Action>

</Actions>

Now, if I would like to add save location(which user can save the form after submited to DB) as follows 

http://mossserver/Employee Info/HR Response/Credit Response/Check In/_layouts/FormServer.aspx?XsnLocation=http://mossserver/FormServerTemplates/StatusCheck-In.xsn&SaveLocation=http://mossserver/Employee Info/HR Response/Credit Response/Check In /Personal CheckIn&Source=http://mossserver/Employee Info/HR Response/Credit Response/Check In /Pages/default.aspx&DefaultItemOpen=1   - Kindly note that, I’ve long URL which more than675 characters. If we would like to add this URL into our custom action, BDC services turncated longest URL because of MaxLength.Now, how we can resolve this problem? – I got an idea, why don’t to apply URLMapping functionality to this scenario. So finally I’ve added URL Mapping element to Web.Config as follows:       <urlMappings>        

                  <add url=”~/sample.aspx” mappedUrl=”~/_layouts/FormServer.aspx?XsnLocation= /FormServerTemplates/StatusCheck-In.xsn&SaveLocation= /Personal CheckIn&Source= /Pages/default.aspx&DefaultItemOpen=1&Perso nalInfoID={0} ” />     

    </urlMappings> 

Ahrr….Finally, we solved the problem by adding URL mapping. Hatzz off to ASP.NET team J

Also, here’re some pointer really help me to solve this issue.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb406004.aspx 

http://wm.microsoft.com/ms/msdn/office/2007officevisualhowtos/infopathparameters.wmv - Excellent videocast regarding this context 

              One of the hurdles in BDC development is creating XML Metadata Definition file. Microsoft has not yet provided any tool to create XML Definition file – But lot of third party products (like MetaMan) available to create XML Definition file for BDC applications. But it can’t satisfy our BDC thrist! – If you folks would like to create it by yourself using any XML tools, then obvisouly you need to go for XML Notepad 2007. It is really wonderful tool to create/customize XML files. Which provides a simple intuitive User Interface for browsing and editing XML documents, one of the biggest new feature is IntelliSense, which is driven by XML Schema information provided via the SchemaCache. For example, if your element or attribute is defined by an XSD simpleType and this simpleType contains a list of enumeration facets, then you can select it from a drop-down.

Screenshot:

Excellent design from Microsoft Team(Chris) - See XML Notepad 2007 Design for information about how this application is built. The downloadable installer for version 2.3 is available.  

I got a chance to work on following awesome tools. So, I would like to share my experience and tips using these tools.

However, there are a number of third-party SQL query editors that offer the features developers today take for granted. One such product is ApexSQL Edit version 2005.03, by ApexSQL. ApexSQL Edit boasts a number of time-saving features, the most impressive one being the Object MemberLists, which provides functionality much like IntelliSense. Type a query, like “SELECT * FROM…”, and immediately a drop-down list appears listing the database’s tables. This feature also extends to columns, variables, parameters, procedures, and so forth. Once you start writing queries using MemberLists, having to go back to an editor without it feels like running underwater. This feature alone could save you countless keystrokes and typos and makes ApexSQL Edit an interesting tool for any developer’s toolbox.

Source Control : Microsoft has long offered developers Visual SourceSafe^®, which was last upgraded with the Visual Studio 2005 release. Now, with Visual Studio Team System, Microsoft has released another source control tool, one designed specifically for supporting much larger developer teams.

One such popular open-source offering is Subversion version 1.4.2. Like other such tools, Subversion provides a centralized repository for storing source code and maintains a history of changes. Subversion can be configured to support access to its repositories through HTTP and HTTPS, enabling remote developers to interface with the source code repository. And Subversion also supports both the “check-in, modify, check-out” and “modify and merge” workflows.Fortunately, an additional open-source project-TortoiseSVN-provides a more user-friendly, graphical interface, although there is no Visual Studio integration. However, TortoiseSVN is integrated with the Windows shell. Once you have established a working directory for a particular Subversion repository, you can lock, merge, update, diff, or view statistics for any file by right-clicking on it in Windows Explorer and choosing the appropriate option from the TortoiseSVN context menu. Don’t let TortoiseSVN’s lack of Visual Studio integration dissuade you from considering Subversion. In fact, soon after I started using Subversion, I found the Windows shell to be a more intuitive interface for working with the underlying source control system than the Visual Studio IDE.

Regular Expression Editor: For developers new to regular expressions, the mishmash of text and special characters can quickly lead to incomprehensible gobbledygook. When creating a regular expression pattern in code using Visual Studio^®, there’s no tool support. Gone are color syntax highlighting and IntelliSense^®, and there’s no easy way to debug or test a regular expression pattern within Visual Studio. For more information, please have a look at Roy Osherove’s (weblogs.ASP.NET/rosherove) toolbox(tools.osherove.com)

Nikhil Kothari (is the architect of ASP.NET Ajax, part of the Web Platform and Tools team at Microsoft) demonstrates the out-of-box features in ASP.NET Ajax can be used to enrich Web apps with Ajax functionality and incorporate various Ajax patterns in a simple manner; he also demonstrates more powerful usage of the script framework, best practices and design patterns for incorporating and encapsulating script functionality.  Nikhil led the development of the page framework and several of the controls in the ASP.NET toolbox today. Here you got a go for his demo and presentation. http://www.infoq.com/presentations/ajax-with-asp-atlas-nikhil-kothari;jsessionid=494580136D216A7815F708221F1AF103

Wow!  - IBM is now offering something called the Rational Modeling Extension for .NET for pieces of its Rational software development portfolio.  Philosophically, this is the replacement for Rational Rose XDE, the well-regarded UML tool for .NET from IBM, that (I believe) IBM discontinued, as well as Rational Rose Developer for Visual Studio.  The Extension for .NET adds on to Rational Software Modeler or Rational Systems Developer.

IBM says:

The UML 2 modeling capabilities available for use with IBM Rational Modeling Extension for Microsoft .NET software include object diagram support (new in V7) and extended capabilities for modeling activities, composite structures, components, interactions (sequence and communication diagrams) and state machines-in addition provide use-case, class and deployment diagramming capabilities.