Sasha Sydoruk

Just got back from the official launch event of Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008. It was quite amazing to see Steve Ballmer speak. Microsoft has some great plans for the launch products, and to be fair, they do look amazing.

VS 2008 is an amazing product for developing software. And especially now, with ReSharper 4.0 out, I can keep developing with passion. LINQ, lambda expression, faster VS, better JS debugging - all these together - AWESOME. Now we just need to wait for Silverlight 2 and MVC.

IIS 7 needs to be mentioned by itself. Hosting asp.net applications is going to so nice. I just can’t wait.

What else? I got to see Brad Adams speak. His presentation was nice, but a bit outdated. He mentioned asp.net ajax and ajax toolkit, which are great, but it is kind of old news now. I guess, Mix is where all the great stuff will come out. I mentioned my issues with Silverlight animations, but it didn’t seem like he knew of a fix.

Got to talk to some people from SQL Server team, and those guys were great! If you are their manager, they deserve a raise! SQL Server 2008 has some amazing features and I hope I will get to use it soon.

All in all, a great event, great swag and a lot of really great people.

2008 is going to be a wonderful year for developers!

Just found that out recently. I had to purchase a subscription for my wife and couldn’t help but notice how nice the site looked. The workflow is very well designed and is joy to use. Opened up the source and - “say hello to my little friend” - __VIEWSTATE.

Also found this white paper on surverymonkey.com from Microsoft - Customer Solution Case Study.

http://dotnetblogengine.net - is a great starter kit from Microsoft. It is a full featured blog engine written in ASP.NET.

It is very interesting to see how things are implemented. Xml based membership and role providers. Http modules for compression and url rewriting. Cool stuff.

Someone please defend Visual SourceSafe.

This is pretty funny. I have never really liked VSS myself. There is always something better out there. Some people are afraid of the cost, but with SVN the cost is not a problem. But SVN in general is quite foreign to a Windows developer, so that’s why some people go with Source Vault. I have used it a bit and I really like it. There is some cost to it but not too much.

But to answer the questions - “Let’s assume you’re in a situation where it would impractical or impossible to quickly switch to something better, what do you do to make using VSS more tolerable?” - I guess, I would make sure that there is only one person in charge of the merging. Use a lot of branching, stick with check in/out model, check your database for integrity from time to time, and no users spread around the world hitting the same database.

And of course - backup, backup and backup.

• Reflector
• LLBLGen

Scott Hanselman - Sharpen the Saw for Developers

I, especially, like the part about creating a technical library at work and reserving some work time to read the books. I am a self-taught developer and without buying new books I wouldn’t get to where I am now. I think it is a really cheap way to become a better developer.

I am not so sure about attending conferences. They are usually interesting, but not very educational. Just my 2 cents.

I have been a proud user of .NET framework for 6 years now and I still think it is a really awesome product and Microsoft did a wonderful job developing it.

WinForms is the best way to develop Windows application (with occasional jump into Interop for extra APIs); ASP.NET is enjoyable way to develop web applications and WCF is just pure honey. If all this makes me sound like Micro$oft fanboy, that’s because I am. .NET is really awesome and Visual Studio is the best way to do any kind of development. Especially with Resharper installed. I don’t know how JetBrains did it, but somehow they sold their souls to Satan and in return they can unleash the dark magic of Ctrl+Alt+Space.

But what puzzles me is that not too many people use ASP.NET to create cool products. Sure there are Community Server, MySpace, DotNetKicks and DasBlog; there are all very fine products, but compare them to LAMP, Rails and Java lineup: Digg, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Flickr, Backpack and the Company, Delicious, all the Google Apps, Mint, Meebo, Twitter, Zillow and of course Infinite Cat Project. If you checkout the new startups on TechCrunch, it seems like every new startup is something Linux based and is not ASP.NET.

And I really want to know why. If you are a new startup, you have only one shot at it, so you really want to use the best tools available. And it seems like everybody picks anything but ASP.NET, unless you are doing corporate development.

Why are there so few startups that use ASP.NET? Is it the cost of tools? Hosting cost? Restrictive licensing? Or maybe ASP.NET became “the van” of web development. Safe, bulky and definitely not sexy.

I am sure that I have missed some really awesome ASP.NET projects, so please post the links in comments. Any thoughtful feedback is welcome. All flaming and FUD will be moderated.

If you have a bunch of AutoComplete extenders that are wrapped inside of ModalPopup and you try to run it in Safari, chances are, you will not like what you see. The autocomplete div will be shown under the modalpopup. Works fine in Firefox and IE, but Safari is screwed up. What gives?

Well, if you look into source code of AutoComplete extender, you will notice that they have a special handling for Safari (also known as a one-button mouse of the browsers Just kidding!). Because of this special handling, the correct z-index is not being set on the autocomplete div.

But how can I fix it? Well, all you need to do is to add a div somewhere near the extender with id of “AutoCompleteDiv” and in your extender set the property of CompletionListElementID to “AutoCompleteDiv”.

Here is how I found this info:

• http://logbook.trioro.com/2006/12/ajaxnet-autocompleteextender.html
• http://tim.mackey.ie/ProblemsWithTheAJAXAutoCompleteExtenderArrgh.aspx

Also, there is a custom autocomplete extender based on prototype and script.ac.ulous. I have not tried but it looks really interesting. I would like to take a look the source when I have a bit more time. Here is the link.

I just started using ASP.NET AJAX extensively in my work and I am not sure what to make of it. The whole asp.net ajax is pretty complicated once you get away from basic UpdatePanel scenarios. But finally there is a book about it. As always, my hero Dino Esposito came through and wrote a book, so the rest of us can learn how to use it. Book’s name - Introducing Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX.

I got mine from Amazon because bookstores in the hood didn’t have it and I just could not wait anymore. I have been waiting for APRESS’s Foundations of ASP.NET AJAX but it has been delayed so many times that I gave up on that book.

I am 2/3 through the book and so far I like it. It cleared up a lot of misconceptions that I had about asp.net ajax and actually explained in full detail the magic behind UpdatePanel.

I have a pretty good understanding of how different parts of asp.net ajax work, but I still want to see how it all ties up together. Could someone get me the source of PageFlakes? The last 1/3 of the Dino’s book mentions something about writing ajax enabled applications, but I have not gotten to that part yet..

My Book Rating to Introducing Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX - Good Times!

Vertigo Software has a really good post on how to do this - Adding the Build Number to your Team Build binaries.