The ASPx Blog - Mehul Harry's DevExpress Blog

CodeRush In The Cloud

Mehul Harry (Developer Express) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:00:00 GMT

Check out this CodeRush in the Cloud screencast with Rory Becker. The video shows you how to use Microsoft’s free Live Mesh service to synchronize your CodeRush settings across multiple machines.

The video covers:

Which CodeRush settings to synchronize
How to setup Microsoft Live Mesh for CodeRush
Other useful CodeRush in the cloud scenarios for development teams:

Team settings, templates for common practices, shortcut keys

Live Mesh web security concerns
How developers like to relax aka gaming!

Click the image above and watch the ‘CodeRush In The Cloud’ video. Then drop me a line below with your feedback please.

Rory and I both love the convenience of cloud storage services. How do you use these cloud services like Microsoft Live Mesh or DropBox?

Sneak Peek: Enhanced ASP.NET Themes DLL Performance

Mehul Harry (Developer Express) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:00:00 GMT

Another performance enhancement in the DXperience 2009 volume 3 release is the use of the ASPxThemes DLL. Using our custom HTTP handler [1] module, the ASPxThemes DLL will now compress the CSS files along with the scripts and callbacks.

Typically, the ASP.NET theme files are stored in your project’s App_Themes folder. With the DXperience 2009 volume 2 release, you have the advantage of using our ASPxThemes DLL [2] which packs the images and CSS files into one DLL.

Using the ASPxThemes DLL in the DXperience 2009 volume 3 release results in reduced web server traffic because:

Shorter resource URLs:
- ASPxThemes DLL - '/grid93/DXR.axd?r=1_16' – (22 Characters)
- App_Themes Folder - 'App_Themes/MyBlackGlass/Web/sprite.png' - (38 Characters)
The ASPxThemes DLL will now compress the CSS files (v9.3) along with scripts and callbacks (v9.2):

Recommendation

We’re recommending that you use the ASPxThemes DLL. By default, the pre-packaged themes we provide will already be included in the ASPxThemes DLL. However, if you use custom ASP.NET Themes then put them in the ‘custom theme assembly’ before publishing your web site. And here’s how to do it:

S132599 - Provide a way to use custom ASP.NET Theme with New HTTP Handler for Resources

Your Feedback Is Appreciated

Drop me a line below with your thoughts and comments.

References:

[1] ASP.NET Performance Improvements in DevExpress 2009 volume 2 by Mehul Harry

[2] Custom ASP.NET Themes And The New ASP.NET Themes DLL by Mehul Harry

DXperience? What's That?

DXperience is the .NET developer's secret weapon. Get full access to a complete suite of professional components that let you instantly drop in new features, designer styles and fast performance for your applications. Try a fully-functional version of DXperience for free now: http://www.devexpress.com/Downloads/NET/

Sneak Peak: CSS Sprites Make Your Websites Faster

Mehul Harry (Developer Express) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:45:00 GMT

Let’s get right to the good news. The CSS Sprites technique has been added to some of the major ASP.NET controls in the DXperience 2009 volume 3 release!

You might be asking yourself, what is a CSS Sprite? It’s a CSS technique to combine several smaller images into one image and gain performance. As web design guru, Chris Coyier [1] puts it:

The name might be a little misleading, because sprites aren’t little images like you might be picturing, a sprite is actually one big image. Have you ever seen the CSS technique where the “on” and “off” states of a button are contained within the same image and are activated by shifting the background-position? Think of CSS Sprites as an extension of that technique. The difference is that instead of just two or three images being combined into one, you can combine an unlimited number of images into one.

Using the CSS Sprite technique has the effect of reducing the amount of requests sent to the web server: one big image requested instead of many many small images. And less requests on your web server means 2 things:

There’s less to send over the wire.
Pages load faster!

How fast?

We tested the performance using the 512kps speed settings in Fiddler. Just to be sure that we’re targeting a common speed that users might have if their visiting your website from home.

The result? If one of the ASP.NET controls contains a lot of images, for example the ASPxHtmlEditor, then the CSS Sprites approach gives you a staggering improvement of about 1.5 to 2 times for a page with the ASPxHtmlEditor.

Your Feedback Is Appreciated

This post has a lot of information to digest so fire away if you've got more questions.

References:

[1] CSS Sprites: What They Are, Why They’re Cool, and How To Use Them by Chris Coyier

DXperience? What's That?

Video: CodeRush Metric Shader Plugin

Mehul Harry (Developer Express) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 23:15:00 GMT

Check out the CodeRush Metric Shader plugin video with Rory Becker. Rory’s created for you another useful plugin that helps you visualize code metrics!

Check out the video to see what I mean:

Then, be sure to leave us a comment below with your thoughts, questions or just praise for Rory.

DXperience? What's That?

DXperience is a royalty-free tool suite for rapid business application development for WinForms and ASP.NET apps.

Instantly enhance your WinForms and ASP.NET apps by dropping in new feature sets encapsulated in components.

Try a fully-functional version of DXperience for free now: http://www.devexpress.com/Downloads/NET/

Mark Miller Will Beat You With a Guitar!

Mehul Harry (Developer Express) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 22:45:00 GMT

Check out this 8 minute Mark Miller video interview where he discusses:

How he got an Xbox Guitar working with Visual Studio
The coding challenge at the DevExpress booth during Microsoft’s PDC 2009

Click the image below and watch the video to learn why I’m so excited to see this in action:

PDC Challenge

The coding challenge is simple:

You both have a PC with a standard install of Visual Studio.
You get to use a standard keyboard and mouse.
Mark will use an Xbox guitar and CodeRush.
You battle against each other by writing a piece of code.
Finish first and win big prizes.

Now, I’m a little skeptical whether Mark can pull it off. I mean that I’m basically crippled without my Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000. But one thing I’ve learned is that you don’t underestimate Mark “the Millinator” Miller.

What do you think? Will he slaughter the competition or has he bitten off more than he can chew this time? Drop me a line below with your thoughts.

DXperience? What's That?

DXperience is a royalty-free tool suite for rapid business application development for WinForms and ASP.NET apps.

Instantly enhance your WinForms and ASP.NET apps by dropping in new feature sets encapsulated in components.

Try a fully-functional version of DXperience for free now: http://www.devexpress.com/Downloads/NET/

Video: Quick Add Reference – Visual Studio Plugin

Mehul Harry (Developer Express) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:15:00 GMT

Check out this 9 minute plugin screencast with Rory Becker. Rory created a fantastic Visual Studio plugin to address the slow “Add Reference” dialog issue.

Watch the video to learn more about the CR_QuickAddReference plugin and …

How fast the dialog is
How simple it is to install and use the plugin
Why bother recreating an existing functionality
And how was it built

Rory Becker is one smart developer who’s created tons of useful DXCore and CodeRush plugins. I’ll highlight some of the best ones for you on this blog.

Click the image below and watch the full screencast. Then drop me and Rory a line below with your thoughts.

DXperience? What's That?

DXperience is a royalty-free tool suite for rapid business application development for WinForms and ASP.NET apps.

Instantly enhance your WinForms and ASP.NET apps by dropping in new feature sets encapsulated in components. DXperience contains:

IDE Productivity Tools - Make Visual Studio easier and more effective with IDE enhancements
- DXCore - IDE tools extensible engine
- CodeRush - Extensible swiss army knife of tools to make source code editing faster and easier, including code editing templates, code editing utilities (selection, navigation, clipboard), inline code visualizations and the upcoming unit test runner.
- Refactor Pro - Code editing tools specifically geared for refactoring source code.
XAF - Business app framework for WinForms and ASP.NET
XPO – Object-relational mapping for .NET
Reporting - Reporting "platform" for WinForms and ASP.NET
UI Components for WinForms, ASP.NET, WPF and Silverlight

Try a fully-functional version of DXperience for free now: http://www.devexpress.com/Downloads/NET/

500 Screencasts and Counting…

Mehul Harry (Developer Express) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:00:00 GMT

Yes, we’re gonna party like it’s 1999 because we've just reached a sweet little milestone for The DevExpress Channel.

We published the 500th screencast this week with the “WPF Grid - Feature Tour” screencast.

Since launching the DevExpress Channel in July 2008, we’ve pumped out about 38.4615 videos a month! Sure, I’ll grant you that some months had more videos than others but I stand by the milestone.

Therefore, in just a little over one year:

over 403,000 total views (nearly 1/2 million)
average views up from double to triple digits and 100+ videos with 1000+ views
over 800 comments
did I mention 500 videos?
the backup and sister youtube channel is steadily rising
the http://tv.DevExpress.com site has gotten:
- professional graphics makeover (September 2009)
- skip feature: metadata injection let’s you skip around in the videos (August 2009)
- A complete redesign (ok still pending but it’s close)

And what a fun time we’ve had making these videos this past year! However, the newly redesigned DevExpress channel is even more exciting so stay tuned for more info in the coming weeks.

DXperience? What's That?

New Video Feature: Jump Or Skip Time

Mehul Harry (Developer Express) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Recently, we added a super-useful little feature so you can skip around in the videos without having the video fully loaded. All the videos on the DevExpress Channel are now converted to support the new feature.

How does it work?

We inject ‘metadata’ into the video as a final step in the production process.
You click to any point in the video and the player will start streaming from the new cue point. Take a look at the shot of the 9 minute screencast below. I’ve clicked to the 4 minute mark and video player started streaming from this point forward. Sweet!

Who does #2 work for?

Everyone! Especially on those really long videos. For example, if you had to stop watching a video half way through and wanted to continue where you'd left off, you're just one jump point away.

But wait, there’s more…

One of our internal teams is hard at work on a complete site redesign. The new site has a lot of your suggestions like a playlist feature built-in. Stay tuned for details in the coming weeks.

DXperience? What's That?

DXperience is a royalty-free tool suite for rapid business application development for WinForms and ASP.NET apps.

Instantly enhance your WinForms and ASP.NET apps by dropping in new feature sets encapsulated in components. DXperience contains:

IDE Productivity Tools - Make Visual Studio easier and more effective with IDE enhancements
- DXCore - IDE tools extensible engine
- CodeRush - Extensible swiss army knife of tools to make source code editing faster and easier, including code editing templates, code editing utilities (selection, navigation, clipboard), inline code visualizations and the upcoming unit test runner.
- Refactor Pro - Code editing tools specifically geared for refactoring source code.
XAF - Business app framework for WinForms and ASP.NET
XPO – Object-relational mapping for .NET
Reporting - Reporting "platform" for WinForms and ASP.NET
UI Components for WinForms, ASP.NET, WPF and Silverlight

Try a fully-functional version of DXperience for free now: http://www.devexpress.com/Downloads/NET/

Gearing up for PDC 2009 – Platinum Sponsors

Mehul Harry (Developer Express) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 20:00:00 GMT

We’re getting ready for the upcoming Microsoft Professional Developer’s Conference 2009.

If you’re attending then you’ll be in for treat because we’re bring the big booth with us. This means that we’ll have a bunch of the DevExpress crew there to answer your questions and give demos. And we’re also planning to have a little bit of fun for you.

The logo reveals a little bit of the the theme that we’ve got planned for you.

Can you guess what the theme might be?

DXperience? What's That?

Video: New CodeRush Plugin To Collapse Long Methods

Mehul Harry (Developer Express) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 21:30:00 GMT

Check out this short eight minute CodeRush plugin screencast with Rory Becker. The screencast explains:

What is DX_CollapseFromEnd?
How do you use it?
How was it built?

Rory is not just an avid fan of CodeRush but he’s an extraordinary plugin developer too. Not only has he developed several plugins but also goes the extra mile to help others learn about CodeRush and refactoring.

Click the image below and watch the full screencast. Then drop me and Rory a line below with your thoughts.

DXperience? What's That?

Sneak Peek: ASP.NET Time Edit Control

Mehul Harry (Developer Express) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 23:30:00 GMT

Check out this sneak peek video on the upcoming ASP.NET Time Edit control, the ASPxTimeEdit.

The ASPxTimeEdit gives your websites an editor with a slick user interface to edit date and time values. The control looks and behaves a lot like our ASP.NET spin edit control.

This is a great for your end users because they’re already familiar with how to use the up or down buttons of the control. And with keyboard support, there are now 3 different ways to edit the values:

Type the date and time into the editor
Using the mouse, change the values by clicking on the up/down buttons
Use the keyboard’s tab and arrow keys to change the values

Click the image and watch the “Sneak Peek: ASP.NET Time Edit Control” screencast below. It’s a short 3 minute video that shows the intuitive UI of the ASPxTimeEdit.

The new ASPxTimeEdit control will be released as part of DXperience 2009 volume 3 later this year.

Be sure to drop me a line below with your thoughts on this new control.

DXperience? What's That?

DXperience is a royalty-free tool suite for rapid business application development for WinForms and ASP.NET apps.

Instantly enhance your WinForms and ASP.NET apps by dropping in new feature sets encapsulated in components. DXperience contains:

IDE Productivity Tools - Make Visual Studio easier and more effective with IDE enhancements
- DXCore - IDE tools extensible engine
- CodeRush - Extensible swiss army knife of tools to make source code editing faster and easier, including code editing templates, code editing utilities (selection, navigation, clipboard), inline code visualizations and the upcoming unit test runner.
- Refactor Pro - Code editing tools specifically geared for refactoring source code.
XAF - Business app framework for WinForms and ASP.NET
XPO – Object-relational mapping for .NET
Reporting - Reporting "platform" for WinForms and ASP.NET
UI Components for WinForms, ASP.NET, WPF and Silverlight

Try a fully-functional version of DXperience for free now: http://www.devexpress.com/Downloads/NET/

How To Cache Rows In DevExpress ASP.NET GridView

Mehul Harry (Developer Express) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:11:00 GMT

Check out this short article on how to use the row caching property of the ASPxGridView and an upcoming feature of the ASPxPivotGrid:

What is EnableRowsCache?

In general, this is a good feature because it’s helps your web application’s scalability. How?

By default, the ASPxGridView stores data in memory for quick access. This avoids repeated database calls when performing various operations that don't require reloading data (e.g. rearranging or hiding columns). Therefore, it increases your Web application’s scalability and the individual operations will be quicker because there's no database access happening in that particular cycle.

As a bonus for the inquisitive minds: The DevExpress ASP.NET controls store items in memory by using our own custom callback state. It’s similar to the Microsoft ViewState, except that the DevExpress CallbackState lives between callbacks and not postbacks. Want to learn more? Check out the “Speed up your page loads with a lighter ViewState” blog post.

When To Set It To False?

To disable data caching, set the EnableRowsCache option to false. This can be useful, for instance, when the ASPxGridView displays real-time data. It's also recommended that you disable this option when binding to data created at runtime, because calling the DataBind() method will always reload data from the server.

Coming Soon To ASPxPivotGrid

The ASPxPivotGrid can have a large amount of data even between callbacks. For these scenarios, you may not want to store that info in memory. Now you have the option to disable row caching in the ASPxPivotGrid as well.

The ASP.NET team has just added the EnableRowsCaches feature to the ASPxPivotGrid. The option will be officially available in an upcoming major release.

Sneak Peek: ASP.NET Splitter Control

Mehul Harry (Developer Express) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 05:30:00 GMT

Check out this sneak peek about the upcoming ASP.NET splitter control!

Rich client WinForms applications usually have the ability to split the screen into different sections or panels. For example, take a look at Outlook or even Visual Studio. This ability to layout and resize these panels helps your user interface because the end-users understand how these panels work.

The new ASPxSplitter control helps you create similar user interfaces in your ASP.NET websites. You can use the ASPxSplitter to divide the entire page or just sections of it. And the ASPxSplitter’s client-side capabilities allow your end-users to think you’re a some kind of JavaScript guru because they’ll be able to drag, click and resize the panels as they see fit.

Click the image and watch the “ASP.NET Splitter Control Preview” screencast below to see a demo of the upcoming features. It’s a short 5 minute video. I hope you like what you see!

The new ASPxSplitter control will be released as part of DXperience 2009 volume 3 later this year. Be sure to drop me a line below with your thoughts on this new control.

DXperience? What's That?

DXperience is a royalty-free tool suite for rapid business application development for WinForms and ASP.NET apps.

Instantly enhance your WinForms and ASP.NET apps by dropping in new feature sets encapsulated in components. DXperience contains:

IDE Productivity Tools - Make Visual Studio easier and more effective with IDE enhancements
- DXCore - IDE tools extensible engine
- CodeRush - Extensible swiss army knife of tools to make source code editing faster and easier, including code editing templates, code editing utilities (selection, navigation, clipboard), inline code visualizations and the upcoming unit test runner.
- Refactor Pro - Code editing tools specifically geared for refactoring source code.
XAF - Business app framework for WinForms and ASP.NET
XPO – Object-relational mapping for .NET
Reporting - Reporting "platform" for WinForms and ASP.NET
UI Components for WinForms, ASP.NET, WPF and Silverlight

Try a fully-functional version of DXperience for free now: http://www.devexpress.com/Downloads/NET/

DevExpress Dynamic Data Grid: Visual Basic Version

Mehul Harry (Developer Express) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 21:30:00 GMT

I have good news for Visual Basic developers interested in the DevExpress Dynamic Data Grid called the ASPxDynamicGridView.

After getting several of your requests, I finally had a chance to sit down and create a VB version of the ASPxDynamicGridView that works in Dynamic Data websites.

How To Implement

To be clear, this version of our Dynamic Data grid is simply a port of the CSharp code to Visual Basic. Therefore, the original video and blog post still apply.

So go read the blog post and watch the video right now: ASP.NET Dynamic Data and DevExpress Grid

The Bits

Now you’re ready to grab the Visual Basic version of ASPxDynamicGridView and the Page Template files here: DXDynamicDataVB.zip

Code Converters

Converting code from CSharp to VB was at the heart of this project and these converters came in very handy:

developerFusion’s online converter is one of the best and the top Google result.
Code Converter VS plugin on Codeplex: Haven’t used it yet but hear good things about it.
Rory Becker…

Since I’m not an expert in VB, Rory Becker was kind enough to help with the initial conversion. From there, just had to tweak a few of the declarations and build a sample Dynamic Data website. Thanks Rory! (Thanks to Aleksey on our ASP.NET team for coming up with the original C# version of the ASPxDynamicGridView.)

Community Project

The ASPxDynamicGridView is our contribution for developers that want to use the ASPxGridView in a Dynamic Data environment.

However, the ASPxDynamicGridView is not a supported product. Rather, our intention and hope is that the community enjoys, shares and benefits from each other’s experiences. That’s why the full source code of the ASPxDynamicGridView and Page Templates are available to you.

4 Settings To Improve DevExpress ASP.NET Performance

Mehul Harry (Developer Express) — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 19:15:00 GMT

Hang on to your seats, I’ve got more good news about the ASP.NET controls performance in the DXperience 2009 volume 2 release. We’re giving you four web.config settings for HTML compression that dramatically improve website performance. First, let’s take a look at the numbers.

Speed Comparison

Using our custom HttpHandler, the performance numbers for the DXperience 2009 volume 2 release are amazing. Let’s compare the difference with the DXperience 2009 volume 1 release. For benchmarks, we used the Fiddler2 tool again and got the following impressive results:

Page load time is reduced from 21.7 to 5 seconds ! That’s about 4.3 times faster on the 512 kbps connection used to test in Fiddler2.

HTML output is 5 to 7 times smaller! The page size is reduced from 324K to 41K - about 7 times less.

The Settings

To get the all the benefits of HTML compression and resource merging from the DXperience 2009 volume 2 release, set these four settings to true in your web.config file:

<appSettings>
    <add value="true" key="DXEnableCallbackCompression" />
    <add value="true" key="DXEnableResourceCompression" />
    <add value="true" key="DXEnableResourceMerging" />
    <add value="true" key="DXEnableHtmlCompression" />
</appSettings>

DXEnableCallbackCompression – Compresses AJAX callbacks (true by default)
DXEnableResourceCompression – Compresses scripts and CSS files (true by default)
DXEnableResourceMerging – Combines all scripts in one file (from different assemblies) and merge all CSS-files in one file. Reduces server requests. (false by default)
DXEnableHtmlCompression – Compresses HTML output to the client browser including AJAX callbacks (false by default)
- To compress individual pages, use the DevExpress.Web.ASPxClasses.ASPxWebControl.MakeResponseCompressed() method.

HTML compression has one shortcoming - a client browser will only display a compressed webpage after the page is completely loaded to the client. Consider the zipped file analogy. A zipped file has to be unpacked before you can view its contents.

This brings up an interesting question, what kind of load does compression put on the server and the client?

Bandwidth vs Processor

Compression has a small trade-off. Compression requires that both the server and client use more CPU cycles. After all, compression is the process of encoding information using fewer bits.

On the other hand, compression has major advantages like faster websites and less bandwidth. So which do you choose?

Simple, choose to save bandwidth and speed up your website. Bandwidth is expensive and processors cost very little comparatively. In fact, modern processors are fast and versatile enough to easily handle HTML compression requirements.

Besides ISP bandwidth costs, speed is also important for a website. Major sites like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft understand this. If your website takes too long to load then the visitors are more likely to leave. Therefore, you should consider website speed a factor for user experience on the web (search on Google).

IIS Compression

We’ve done some tests to see how the IIS compression feature and the four optimizations work together. We didn’t find any unusual behavior since everything worked as expected.

The DXperience ASP.NET controls offer a ton of functionality and styling while still being performant! So it’s hard to imagine that even more performance could be squeezed out the controls. But, that’s exactly what we’re going to attempt in the DXperience 2009 volume 3 release when we tackle CSS Image Sprites!

I’d love to hear what kind of performance gains you experience with the DXperience 2009 volume 2 ASP.NET controls? Drop me a line below and feel free to post your DevExpress-powered website URL.

DXperience? What's That?

DXperience is a royalty-free tool suite for rapid business application development for WinForms and ASP.NET apps.

Instantly enhance your WinForms and ASP.NET apps by dropping in new feature sets encapsulated in components. DXperience contains:

IDE Productivity Tools - Make Visual Studio easier and more effective with IDE enhancements
- DXCore - IDE tools extensible engine
- CodeRush - Extensible swiss army knife of tools to make source code editing faster and easier, including code editing templates, code editing utilities (selection, navigation, clipboard), inline code visualizations and the upcoming unit test runner.
- Refactor Pro - Code editing tools specifically geared for refactoring source code.
XAF - Business app framework for WinForms and ASP.NET
XPO – Object-relational mapping for .NET
Reporting - Reporting "platform" for WinForms and ASP.NET
UI Components for WinForms, ASP.NET, WPF and Silverlight

Try a fully-functional version of DXperience for free now: http://www.devexpress.com/Downloads/NET/