Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Release Candidate
Feb 9th
Microsoft announced that Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Release Candidate versions are available for MSDN subscribers as of February 8th, with general availability on February 10th.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/dd582936.aspx
Download links are now published on the web page above.
Microsoft Days 2010 Bulgaria – Extensible Output Caching with ASP.NET 4 Session
Feb 8th
Microsoft Days 2010 Bulgaria will take place in Sofia on 30-31 March 2010. The conference consists of numerous valuable lecturers and the whole list can be seen at http://www.msbgregistration.com/Lecturers.aspx.
I will be presenting a session titled as Extensible Output Caching with ASP.NET 4.
Here is a brief description of my session:
Through ASP.NET 1 to 3.5, output caching was stuck in memory. ASP.NET 4 makes it possible to use custom output-cache providers to use any kind of storage mechanism including databases, local and remove disks and distributed cache engines. In this session, we will build a custom output-cache provider that persists data in local hard-drive and we will learn how to configure an ASP.NET application to use some famous distributed cache engines. This is a coding and configuring oriented session.
Martin Kulov is of course there with 2 sessions. One about Visual Studio Test Professional 2010 and one about Branching and Merging with TFS 2010.
Another cool news is that Daron Yondem from Turkey will also be there with 2 Silverlight sessions.
Those of you living in Bulgaria or who can visit Bulgaria for the event, do not forget to register at http://www.msbgregistration.com before all the seats are booked.
Introduction to jQuery and jQuery Selectors
Feb 3rd
Please note that jQuery is dual licensed under the MIT and GPL licenses.
Short History and Current Status
The initial idea of developing a Javascript library that uses Pseudo-CSS Selectors to bind Javascript functions to HTML elements and to manipulate DOM elements using Javascript belongs to Ben Nolan with a library called Behaviour.
John Resig, a developer who was unhappy with Behaviour’s features and syntax, blogged about his compliments about the library in August 2005. He did not provide any working code or demo, however, the idea of him was obviously so cool that most of us are using a library called jQuery that was mentioned within that blog post first.
First stable version of jQuery was released on 26 August 2006 and it is version 1.4.1 as of today and can be downloaded from www.jquery.com.
Definition of Parts
jQuery consists of two main parts. One of them is being referred as jQuery Core and the other one being jQuery UI.
jQuery Core is the part that implements the selectors feature and is responsible for handling/binding events, DOM manipulation and Ajax.
jQuery UI, on the other hand, handles animations, provides support for effects, themes, widgets, etc. jQuery UI is developed on top of jQuery Core.
You do not necessarily work with jQuery UI to take advantage of using jQuery for development, however, you will find yourself doing that after a while since some of the plug-ins that you may want to use might be requiring jQuery UI library.
Advantages of Using jQuery
Being one of the essentials of web development for many web application and/or HTML developers, jQuery simplifies most of the tasks that you would like to achieve using Javascript with the huge plug-in database and what is more, it takes important problems like cross-browser issues away from your coding pleasure.
We can list the advantages of using jQuery as follows. Please remember that there can be a lot more that I forget to mention.
- jQuery is cross-browser. Both jQuery Core and jQuery UI supports IE 6.0+, FF 2+, Safari 3.0+, Opera 9.0+ and Chrome. (Please do not forget that 3rd party plug-ins that the community fellows or individuals develop might support some of these browsers and some not.)
- jQuery supports what you are used to use and upcoming standards. CSS 3, Json, etc.
- jQuery is extensible. Objects in jQuery can be extended with your own implementations. Yes, in an object oriented way.
- jQuery is independent. What programming language you use does not matter. Since jQuery is a Javascript library, all it needs is a browser to run. Microsoft supports jQuery by providing jQuery IntelliSense in Visual Studio, even providing the “.js” files within the ASP.NET Web Application project template in Visual Studio 2010. A lot of PHP developers use jQuery as well. Both ASP.NET and PHP developers support the community by developing jQuery plug-ins to be used by other developers.
- jQuery is open source. You know what you are working with and you can dig into the code if you need to debug some stuff.
- jQuery has a lot of plug-ins. As we, all developers , say “No need to reinvent the wheel”. Indeed, there really is not any reason to do that. Just pick up the plug-ins you want to use from jQuery Plug-ins Repository at http://plugins.jquery.com/ and start using them.
- jQuery is lightweight. The regular (uncompressed) size of the jQuery.js file is 157 kilobytes for version 1.4.1. You may want to use the regular version in case you want to debug what is going on deep in the library. Once you are ready to go live, just start using the Minified (Gzipped) version of jQuery which is only 23 kilobytes in size for version 1.4.1.
Who Uses jQuery So Far?
- Microsoft
- Digg
- Netflix
- Mozilla
- WordPress
- Drupal
And a lot more.
What Are Selectors?
Selectors are the identifiers that you can use to access HTML elements in the DOM. There are several options to achieve that. You can access an element using its tag name, using its ID, using the CSS selectors it has been assigned or combining any of these with attribute selectors. For instance selecting all “input” tags that has a type of “submit”.
Some basic selectors can be seen below.
$(“*”)
This is an “All Selector” and will select all elements within the DOM. It is known to be extremely slow when your page contains too many HTML elements within the DOM.
$(“#myElement”)
This is an “ID Selector” and will select the HTML element that has an ID attribute of “myElement”. Please see the “#” prepended to the ID.
$(“#myElement > *”)
This is a “Child Selector” and will select all the children elements of “myElement” element. However, the selected elements will be only the first level children elements of the parent element. To achieve that and select any children of children elements as well, you may simply remove the “>” char and make it as $(“#myElement *”).
$(“.black”)
This is a “Class Selector” and will select any type of element that has a “black” CSS class assigned. E.g.: <input type=”text” class=”black” /> or <div class=”black”></div>.
$(“div”)
This is an “Element Selector” and will select all “div” elements. “div” is an example here and can be img, input, a, table or any other tag name.
$(“div.black”)
This is again an “Element Selector” but together with a “Class Selector” and will select the “div” element that has a “black” CSS class assigned. E.g.: <div class=”black”></div>.
$(“#myElement div.black”)
This selector will select all “black” CSS class assigned “div” elements that is placed under “myElement” element.
$(“:submit”)
This is a type selector and will select any input element that has a type of “submit”. E.g.: <input type=”submit” />. There are many other selectors similar to this one. :reset, :radio, :text, :checkbox, :checked are to be listed for instance.
$(“div[attributeName='value']“)
This is an “Attribute Equals Selector” and will select any “div” element that has an attribute of “attributeName” and a value of “value” within the attribute. There are other attribute selectors like Attribute Contains, Ends With, Not Equal, Starts With selectors.
For a complete list of jQuery selectors, please refer to http://api.jquery.com/category/selectors/.
Please do not forget to download the sample Web Site project from here. The website was created using Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2.
Microsoft SQL Server Error 5030
Oct 8th
So, if you are trying to change the collation of a database and getting error 5030, this is much likely because you cannot change the collation of a database when it is in Multi_User mode. In this case, you should try to run the following query.
-- the following line sets the database to "Single User" mode ALTER DATABASE DBNAME SET SINGLE_USER WITH ROLLBACK IMMEDIATE -- the following line sets the new collation ALTER DATABASE DBNAME COLLATE COLLATIONNAME -- the following line sets the database back to "Multi User" mode ALTER DATABASE DBNAME SET MULTI_USER
DBNAME: Database name
COLLATIONNAME: New collation’s name. E.g.: Latin1_General_CI_AI
The resource object with key … was not found
Oct 1st
If you ever face problems with your resources and somehow the ASP.NET application/website refuses to load them, consider checking if your website path is readable by the process owner user of the website application pool.
Microsoft WebsiteSpark
Oct 1st
“A program that offers visibility, support and software for professional Web Developers and Designers”
Have you heard of Microsoft WebsiteSpark yet? WebsiteSpark is a global program by Microsoft to support Web Developers and Designers. If your company has 10 or fewer employees, you are eligible to enroll to the program and you will get the following opportunities, services and software for free for next 3 years!
For design, development, testing and demonstration of new websites:
- Visual Studio Professional
- Expression Studio 2 or 3 (1 user)
- Expression Web 2 or 3 (up to 2 users)
- Windows Web Server 2008 or R2 (when available)
- SQL Server 2008 Web Edition
For production use:
- Windows Web Server 2008 R2 (when available)
- SQL Server 2008 Web Edition
Fee: A USD $100 Program Offering Fee is due when the Web development and design company exits the Program. As part of Microsoft’s commitment to small Web development and design service companies’ long term success, there are no upfront costs for companies to join WebsiteSpark.
Only for USD $100, you get all these. Enjoy!
DevReach 2009
Sep 9th
DevReach 2009 is going to take place in Sofia, Bulgaria on 12-13 October. I, personally, suggest you having a look at the schedule and if there is any possibility, do not miss the chance to join it!
http://www.devreach.com/Event/Schedule.aspx
For further information, please follow Martin Kulov’s blog. The following is a quote from his blog.
It is less than two months when DevReach 2009 will happen again in Sofia, Bulgaria. This is the forth edition of the wonderful conference gathering so many internationally recognized Microsoft Regional Directors, MVPs, INETA and TechEd speakers.
The event will take place on 12-13th of October, in Arena Cinema Mladost, Sofia. We have selected this place in order to allow even more attendees than the last year. However keep in mind that space is still limited and we are expecting even more people to come, so make sure to reserve your seat in good time.
More than 44 sessions presented by more than 20 speakers in not less than 22 hours overall experience spanning in 2 days and 4 tracks. Many new things are still to come in the schedule. They will be announced here very soon.
In a follow up series of posts on my blog, I will try to highlight some of the new speakers that are coming this year. I hope this will give you better idea of how we change the schedule every single year to accommodate your needs.
Meanwhile – do not miss the 20% discount until 15th of September. Check Registration page for more information of different benefits and passes.
Microsoft deprecates OracleClient
Jul 28th
ADO.NET Team announced the deprecation of System.Data.OracleClient. It will still be shipped with .NET Framework 4.0 but will be marked as “Deprecated”.
Since it is being deprecated, all clients using System.Data.OracleClient are expected to migrate their applications to use ODP.NET (Oracle Data Provider for .NET).
For further reading, please visit http://blogs.msdn.com/adonet/archive/2009/06/15/system-data-oracleclient-update.aspx.
“The Turkey Test”
Jul 15th
Martin Kulov, a colleague of mine from ProPeople, sent me a blog post regarding something called “The Turkey Test”. If you are a developer who has ever developed some applications with globalization support or at least willing to, do not forget the check the post at http://www.moserware.com/2008/02/does-your-code-pass-turkey-test.html.
