With the news that Microsoft are going to include jQuery in future asp.net ajax releases I thought I’d have a go at a very simple example to see how it all fits together. The objective here is to have a wcf ajax service that returns an object and a simple ui that is controlled by jquery code and to illustrate: The two libraries work well together without any immediate conflicts It is simple to set-up and use First I created a new .net 3.5 Asp.Net web site and...

If you have wondered about how Silverlight 2 will fit into your enterprise application, then Rockford Lhotka has just strengthened the (in my opinion) inevitable case for Silverlight 2 becoming the de-facto standard for web based enterprise apps over the next few years. He has just ported his popular Windows CLSA.Net framework to Silverlight, and has maintained a coherence between Windows and Silverlight.  As he says: The commonality between the two framework implementations allows sharing of business object code between .NET and Silverlight, while the differences allow you to exploit the power of the two...

If you are interested in using the new Virtual Earth Asp.Net control, then Soul Solutions have created a nice set of examples (with downloadable source) that are well worth exploring. Having the VE control as well as the JS control (and the Silverlight developments such as Views and the forthcoming managed control) really widens your options for using Virtual Earth.  This server control is well designed, offers both client and server support and takes advantages of the Extenders model so implementation can be really easy.  Definitely worth a look. Cheers Ian...

One feature of Live Id that I have been aware of for a while, but others I mention it to aren’t, is the ability to link Live Id’s.  What this means is (from account.live.com): If you have more than one Windows Live ID, you can link them. With linked IDs, you sign in only once for all accounts, so you can quickly switch between accounts. and If you have a Windows Live ID that you use for work and one that you use at home, you can link them. When...

UPDATE:  You can now download it and get games on you Zune and updated UI for the desktop.  All quite nice, though I would love to explore the new social features -  but these are still US only ;-( Full details of changes here   Technorati Tags: Zune Ian

We know from Mix 08 that Microsoft are bringing Silverlight to the Nokia S60 as well as for Windows Mobile, but I was surprised to see that RedFiveLabs already have a Net60 framework that provides CF on S60. There have just released version 1.1 which includes: support for Visual Studio 2008 (CF 2.0 Smart Device Projects). the Net60 Launcher tool used to execute .NET executables directly from device. RedFiveLabs.Mobile.dll providing managed APIs for SMS, telephony, audio, GPS & vibration. managed support for OpenGL (suitable for game development). new WinForm controls such...

This is pretty neat and gives us some advanced glances at how Live Mesh will work and how Windows Mobile 7 will look.  Exciting! Cheers Ian   Technorati Tags: Mesh,Windows Mobile 7

The current Beta 2 release of Silverlight 2 is not very informative when there is an error from a Wcf service that you have referenced. Currently all errors materialize in a http 404 no matter what their origin and you will end up seeing something like this: To get the real exceptions you will need to wait for the final version of Silverlight 2, but for now you can use WCF diagnostics to help you out. In your web app that is hosting the service, right click on web.config and select Edit Wcf Configuration (I don't see this...

Sometimes I know how to do something in Sql but not how to do the same thing in Linq.  I think this is a common scenario until we all start thinking in Linq. Here is an example of some Sql that I struggled to translate into Linq SELECT ResourceTag.ResourceId,                  CourseResource.Name,                  CourseResource.FileUri,                  CourseResource.Active FROM ResourceTag                          INNER JOIN ...

Isolated storage offers a great opportunity to improve performance for locally cached data.  Instead of reading data from the server you can store it locally in the protected storage available to Silverlight.  Images seem like a good use for this, but it is not as easy as you may expect in the current build.  Here is a simple image browser example that walks through some of the ideas. In this example we will: See how to use the FileOpenDialog to allow the users to select image files from their hard drive Save those files into Isolated Storage...

Chrome makes a case in their "launch comic" that JavaScript performance can be vastly improved over current browsers, and go into some detail about how they achieve that.  I decided to test it using the bubblemark site which provides a simple metric for various RIA technologies. Using the DHTML test I ran the page on IE7, FF3, Safari for Windows, and Chrome.  Here are the results: Browser DHTML Score for 16 balls (Lenovo T61p Vista x64 4Gb Ram) IE7 62 fps Safari 55fps Firefox 3 74 fps Chrome 136 fps That's a significant...

The default installation experience for Silverlight 2 can be a bit confusing for your average web user:  they may not have heard of Silverlight and will not understand why they should install it when faced with the following: There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the button, it just that you really need to supplement this with an explanation of how their experience will improve for your site if they do install Silverlight.  With the Asp.Net Silverlight control you can easily provide a custom installation experience using the PluginNotInstalledTemplate: <asp:Silverlight ID="Xaml1" Windowless="true" PluginBackground="Transparent" runat="server" Source="~/ClientBin/SilverlightInstallExperience.xap"...