Chris Love's Official ASP.NET Blog

Introducing SO-Aware, the WCF Management Tool Everyone Needs

2010-07-28T13:54:17Z

Today is the day, Tellago Studios officially launches with our first software offering, SO-Aware.SO-Aware is a RESTful WCF Registry solution. So what does that mean? In short SO-Aware is a web based WCF management tool that also does monitoring and automated testing of WCF services. If you are not sure how SO-Aware is unique from other governance solutions we have create a quick 5 Reasons Why SO-Aware is different from the competition . Participatory governance Centralizes metadata not messaging...(read more)

A Custom jQuery Selector to Retrieve Labels for Inputs

2010-07-27T23:30:16Z

This afternoon @DamienGuard asked how to select labels that are associated with input elements. I think I have an answer for him, or at least something that should be able to get him on the right track. If not, oh well its still pretty neat. One of the great features of jQuery extensibility is the ability to create custom selectors. This is how the jQuery Sizzle selector engine is able to extend the core CSS selector rules to allow some pretty slick, tight selectors. For example ‘:text’ can be used...(read more)

Intro To WebMatrix: Create a Contact Form Part 4 Adding A Master Page

2010-07-15T12:29:25Z

In my three previous posts about using the Microsoft WebMatrix tool I showed how to create a form, add database interactivity and automated E-Mail functionality. Today I want to start making the site take a more usable form by adding a site layout. Create Contact Form Add a Record to a Database Add Automatic E-Mail The use of Master Pages or common site layouts go all the way back to the beginning of web development. Back in Classic ASP days we used to use include file to reference things like the...(read more)

Why I Love Working for Tellago

2010-07-15T09:31:00Z

Last November I made the decision to join Tellago full-time. I was recruited by my friend Don Demsak for about 4-5 months before joining. It meant doing a lot of travel and essentially relocating to a South Florida the majority of time, a place I had only spent about 4 days visiting a decade prior. As for the travel, I was in a point of my life where I really wanted to get back in the air again. I traveled a little prior to starting Extreme Web Works in the summer of 2000. I enjoy the lifestyle....(read more)

Intro To WebMatrix: Create a Contact Form Part 3 Adding E-Mail Support

2010-07-12T13:01:11Z

This is the third in a series of posts on using the new ASP.NET WebMatrix tool. Today we are going to add automated E-Mail functionality. Again the Html Helpers make this a very easy task. Creating the Contact Form Adding Database Storage Continuing where I left off after adding the database insert functionality lets add the code to manage an automatic confirmation response and notification E-Mail mechanism. Just following the database code added in the last post I added a couple of string variables...(read more)

Intro To WebMatrix: Create a Contact Form Part 2 Adding Database Support

2010-07-09T11:49:05Z

Yesterday I posted the first in a series on using WebMatrix to build web sites . The first post created a basic contact form and collected the submitted values. Now I am going to add a database and a table to store the site’s contact form submissions. First, select the Databases node in the group navigation on the left-had side of WebMatrix. This is the accordion style tool if you are wondering, the Databases node should be close the bottom, just above the Reports node. After you have done this the...(read more)

Intro To WebMatrix: Create a Contact Form Part 1

2010-07-08T11:40:14Z

Earlier this week Microsoft released a Beta version of WebMatrix , as web development tool aimed at new developers, hobbyist and those new to the Microsoft web stack. Today I am going to walk through building a standard contact form using WebMatrix . The form will collect a First and Last name, E-mail and Comment. The data will be stored in a database table and e-mail confirmations automatically sent. This is the first installment of three. Today We will build the basic form, tomorrow we will add...(read more)

Microsoft’s WebMatrix, The Simple ASP.NET Editor

2010-07-06T20:13:29Z

Remember the days of Classic ASP? You know when you could build an entire application in notepad and some simple VBScript? Then Visual Interdev came along and well 12 years later we have a mountain range of classes and Visual Studio 2010 along with other productivity tools to help us build web applications. What if I said you could have all that simple freedom back to develop web sites? Well you can. Microsoft has just announced its latest web development platform and tool, Microsoft WebMatrix which...(read more)

The query parameter '$format' begins with a system-reserved '$' character but is not recognized

2010-06-17T13:36:00Z

Tuesday morning I was ranting on Twitter , well really whining, about how WCF Data Services does not support JSON format out of the box. Fortunately I was shown the answer in replies to my rant. So I want to share this with you. First, I made the mistake of learning to work against the oData specification, not WCF Data Services. Despite the marketing feel around oData and WCF Data Services, the latter does not completely implement the oData spec. In particular it does not support JSON out of the...(read more)

What Would You Select?

2010-06-15T13:20:00Z

Software development is a collection of trade offs; performance for speed to market, quick & dirty vs. maintainable, on and on. Most tend to sacrifice user experience at some level for time to market, other do not consider maintainability, reliability. You can keep adding things you have experienced. Lately I have had a torrid relationship with the jQuery Masked Edit Plugin . Like all love affairs you go through a cycle of sheer bliss where the new target of your affection is just awesome. This...(read more)

10 Ways to Debug JavaScript in IE 8

2010-06-07T13:12:00Z

I know, I know use FireBug and FireFox . I hear it all the time. I say meh, everyone does that. As I wrote last year, in IE 8 press F12 and Bazinga !!! You get the IE Developer tools. Read more about using the IE developer tools in my old post. But I show this in my CodeCamp sessions and folks are just amazed the tools are there and they work quite nicely. Now that I spend a majority of my web development in the JavaScript layer debugging my scripts is very important. If you are working in the corporate...(read more)

Still Stuck With IE 6? Consider Just Jumping to IE 9

2010-05-21T04:21:06Z

Odds are if you are viewing this Blog with IE 6 you are in a large, slow moving corporation. I really doubt normal folks reading this Blog would still have IE 6 installed on their home or small business computers. If so, Bad Geek, Bad Geek, now go think about what you are missing. Seriously there is no good reason for anyone to use IE 6, it is a 9 year old browser (warning clicking that link may display a disgusting image). The Internet moves fast, really fast and standards, trends and techniques...(read more)

JavaScript The Good Parts – Book Review

2010-05-20T11:00:00Z

Over the past 18 months or so I have become a heavy jQuery programmer. You can say a lot about using jQuery, one thing I thought I would never say is I love working with JavaScript, er I mean ECMAScript. As you start working with jQuery and JavaScript you will eventually learn about Douglas Crockford, one of the driving forces behind JavaScript. His book BLOCKED SCRIPT The Good Parts is a staple of the JavaScript library. If you really want a good explanation of JavaScript’s components this...(read more)

jQuery Tutorial: Validation with the jQuery UI Tabs Widget

2010-05-12T13:25:00Z

This is so long overdue, but I told Dave Ward last Summer I would post this Blog and well I have not been so good on that commitment. If you want to validate a form that is organized using the jQuery UI Tabs widget you probably need to perform validation as the user switches between tabs. In fact there may be many times you may need to validate a section of a form or a page as the user navigates through various areas. This technique can be used in any of those cases. Specifically when using tabs...(read more)

5 UX Resources for Developers

2010-05-04T13:30:00Z

I have been getting more and more questions about resources I use for various things. Today I was asked about User Experience (UX) resources and to be honest I was just not ready for the question. I do not consider UX to be a component of design or development. It does not belong to AJAX, Silverlight or any other application framework. I really consider it almost a light-black art of understanding how to articulate your application so a user finds it as easy and intuitive to use as possible. So with...(read more)