Guy Burstein's Blog

מפגש בלוגרים: עיצוב והבלוג והצצה לעוד 100 שנים

Guy Burstein — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 08:25:00 GMT

מפגש בלוגרים: עיצוב והבלוג והצצה לעוד 100 שנים

אנו שמחים להזמינכם למפגש הבלוגרים הרבעוני שלנו ולהרים יחד כוסית לכבוד השנה החדשה.

המפגש ייערך ב- 8 לספטמבר במשרדי מיקרוסופט,
רחוב הפנינה 2 רעננה, קומה 0,
בין השעות 17:00 - 20:00.

מה בתוכנית?

17:00-17:45	מינגלינג וכיבוד

17:45-18:45	*היכן יעבדו אנשי ה-IT בעוד מאה שנים?* דיון על ארגונים, על המהפכה שתשנה את כל מה שאנחנו יודעים על עבודה, ועל בלוגים ומדיה חברתית. מרצה: ישראל בלכמן, סמנכ"ל אסטרטגיה ב"בלינק", איש מדיה חברתית וסוציולוג חובב.https://twitter.com/israelblechman

18:45-19:15	*טאצ’ עליז לבלוגר שיעיז* איך לעצב את הבלוג ע”י שימוש ב- CSS מרצה: אלעד אברון http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/Ambious http://www.twitter.com/Ambious

19:15-19:30	עדכונים

להרשמה לחצו כאן

אנא אשרו השתתפותכם מראש! לנרשמים תוסדר חניה במקום ללא תשלום.
המפגש לבלוגרים מקהילת הבלוגרים של blogs.microsoft.co.il

נתראה במפגש!

ניפגש מחר בהרצאה First Look at Visual Studio 2010 IDE

Guy Burstein — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 11:52:35 GMT

ניפגש מחר בהרצאה First Look at Visual Studio 2010 IDE

מחר בבוקר אעביר הרצאה בנושא החידושים ב- Visual Studio 2010 במסגרת יום עיון למפתחים. אני מאד מתרגש לקראת ההרצאה ובטוח שהיא הולכת להיות מעניינת ומהנה!

כמו בכל הרצאה שלי – יהיו משחקים, תחרויות והפעלות לקהל, ואני מזמין את כל מי שמגיע מחר ויש לו חשבון Twitter, להשתמש בתגית vs2010day# במהלך ההרצאה.

נתראה מחר!

‫10 טיפים וטריקים לשימוש ב- Internet Explorer 8‬

Guy Burstein — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 07:29:10 GMT

‫10 טיפים וטריקים לשימוש ב- Internet Explorer 8‬

לפני כמה חודשים הושקה הגירסא החדשה של הדפדפן Internet Explorer 8, המכילה חידושים המשפרים את חווית הגלישה והופכים אותה לבטוחה יותר ומהירה יותר.

אתמול פורסם ב- Newsgeek מאמר שכתבתי בנושא ‫10 טיפים וטריקים לשימוש ב- Internet Explorer 8‬, ואתם מוזמנים לקרוא ולהינות!

Israel@PDC09 – המשלחת הישראלית לכנס המפתחים בלוס אנג’לס

Guy Burstein — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 18:41:18 GMT

Israel@PDC09 – המשלחת הישראלית לכנס המפתחים בלוס אנג’לס

השבוע נפתחה ההרשמה ל- Professional Developer Conference שיתקיים בלוס אנג’לס בין ה- 17 ל- 19 בנובמבר. למי שלא מכיר, PDC הוא כנס עולמי שמיקרוסופט מקיימת מדי שנה / שנתיים ובו היא חושפת את חזונה הטכנולוגי לשנים הקרובות ומפתיעה בהכרזות מרעישות ביותר. רק לשם קבלת מושג, ב- PDC03 הוצגו הטכנולוגיות Avalon ו- Indigo שבשנת 2006 זכו להיות חלק מ- .Net Framework 3.0 ולהקרא WCF ו- WPF. ב- PDC05 הוצג לראשונה הרעיון של LINQ שיצא עם Visual Studio 2008, ובשנה שעברה נחשפו לראשונה Windows 7 ו- Windows Azure.

רשימה ראשונית של 30 הרצאות לכנס הקרוב פורסמה, ואפשר למצוא שם הרצאות על העתיד של Visual Studio, Silverlight, Sharepoint 2010 וכו’, ומנסיוני, ההפתעות הגדולות נחשפות רק בהרצאות המליאה של הכנס.

כמו בשנה שעברה, גם לקראת הכנס הנוכחי מתארגנת במיקרוסופט ישראל משלחת בשם Israel@PDC, המאגדת את כל הנציגים הישראלים הנוסעים לכנס. המשלחת נועדה לחבר בין הנציגים, לשתף ביניהם חווית מכנסים קודמים ולשתף טיפים כדי להפיק את המקסימום מהכנס. במהלך האירוע מקיימת המשלחת גם סעודה חגיגית ואיך אפשר בלי תמונה.

ההרשמה לכנס PDC, ולנרשמים עד ה- 15 בספטמבר ניתנת הנחה של 500$. אם אתם נוסעים לכנס בבקשה צרו איתי קשר, ואם אתם יודעים על מישהו שנוסע לכנס, בבקשה תגידו לו שיצור איתי קשר גם הוא כדי להיות חלק מהמשלחת ולהצטרף לחגיגה!

למי שלא נוסע, תמיד תוכלו להתעדכן בטוויטר על כל מה שאנשים כותבים על PDC09.

כמה פוסטים שגדי כתב על PDC08 ותמיד כיף לקרוא:

תהנו!

Seadragon – לשתף תמונות באיכות גבוהה (או - מי היה יהודה הלוי?)

Guy Burstein — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 08:28:00 GMT

Seadragon – לשתף תמונות באיכות גבוהה (או - מי היה יהודה הלוי?)

אחת הבעיות באתר שיתוף התמונות היא שהם מציגים תמונות באיכות בינונית בלבד. גם כדי לקצר את משך הזמן שלוקח להוריד תמונה וגם כדי שהתמונה תיכנס בגודל דף באינטרנט ללא צורך בגלילה של הדף.

אבל מה אם אני בכל זאת רוצה לשתף תמונה באיכות גבוהה, שלמשתמשים לא יקח הרבה זמן לצפות בה, שהיא תיכנס בגודל של דף אינטרנט אבל בנוסף תאפשר גם Zoom In לצפייה בפרטים הקטנים?

בדיוק בשביל זה אני אשתמש ב- Seadragon – שירות שיתוף תמונות חדש של מיקרוסופט.

לדוגמא, נניח שיש לי תמונה שכרגע נמצאת ב- Flickr, תמונה שצילמתי בשיטוט האחרון שלי עם המצלמה בתל אביב. כאשר העליתי אותה ל- Flickr, האתר יצר מספר עותקים של התמונה שלי ואחסן אותן בנפרד, ואני יכול לבחור באיזה גודל אני מעוניין לצפות.

אני אבחר את הלינק לתמונה באיכות המירבית, אעתיק אותו ל- Seadragon, ואלחץ על Create.

האתר יעתיק את התמונה וימיר אותה לפורמט Deep Zoom. בסיום, אני אקבל את התמונה שלי באתר ואוכל לבצע Zoom In עמוק כדי לראות את הפרטים הקטנים. למשל – מי היה יהודה הלוי? (רמז: התשובה בתמונה)

ניתן עם לעשות Embed של התמונה בתוך דף אינטרנט, כפי שעשיתי כאן:

שיתוף נעים!

Windows 7: Create .Net Flickr Federated Search Connector

Guy Burstein — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:30:11 GMT

Windows 7: Create .Net Flickr Federated Search Connector

Windows 7 makes searching for content much easier with Federated Search. In this post I’ll talk about how to how to create a Flickr Federated Search Providers in .Net.

Before We Start

This sample uses Flickr API through Flickr.Net. In order to build your own version of this Flickr Federated Search Connector:

Download Flickr.Net from CodePlex
Acquire your API and Secret Keys for Flickr API.

Create a new ASP.Net Web Application

Create a new ASP.Net Web Application with Visual Studio.

Add the Flickr.Net project (called FlickrNet.csproj) to your solution, and add a reference to it from your web application.

Add the Flickr API and Secret Key’s to your web.config in the AppSettings section:

<appSettings>
  <add key="flickr_api_key" value="923422ab4225345dfgdb777daf46"/>
  <add key="flickr_secret" value="aa8b23fsdfhyc3beda"/>
</appSettings>

Create the Flickr Search Provider

The following provider will be executed by the Windows Explorer client using HTTP GET, and will receive several parameters from it:

http://localhost:52903/Search.aspx?q=TechEdIsrael2008&start=1&count=20

It will perform the search against Flickr, and return the response as RSS.

<rss version="2.0" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/">
  <channel>
    <title>Flickr Search Results</title>
    <item>
      <title>IMG_0134c</title>
      <link>http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3100/2682983091_7cea404dc4_m.jpg</link>
      <description>show shadow dance techedisrael2008</description>
      <pubDate>Sun, 20 Jul 2008 01:47:25 GMT</pubDate>
      <media:content url="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3100/2682983091_7cea404dc4_b.jpg"         
                     type="image/jpeg" height="333" width="500" />
      <media:thumbnail url="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3100/2_7cea404dc4_t.jpg" />
    </item>          
          
    <item>
      ...
    </item>
  </channel>
</rss>

Create a new Web Form called Search.aspx.

To make it easier to test the response, right click the web application, and open the Properties window. Go to the Web pane, select Search.aspx as the start page and provide the query parameters:

In the page markup, add a new asp:Repeater control that will define the template for each item in the response:

<asp:Repeater runat="server" ID="itemsRepeater">
</asp:Repeater>

In the page code behind, implement the logic that uses Flickr.Net to search for photos and bind the result to the repeater control:

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
  string flickrApiKey = WebConfigurationManager.AppSettings["flickr_api_key"];
  string flickrSecret = WebConfigurationManager.AppSettings["flickr_secret"];
 
  string searchTerm = Request.QueryString["q"];
  int startPage = int.Parse(Request.QueryString["start"]);
  int count = int.Parse(Request.QueryString["count"]);
 
  Flickr flickr = new Flickr();
  flickr.ApiKey = flickrApiKey;
  flickr.ApiSecret = flickrSecret;
  Photos photos = flickr.PhotosSearch(null, "", 0, searchTerm,       
                      DateTime.MinValue, DateTime.MinValue, 0,       
                      count, startPage, PhotoSearchExtras.All);
 
  this.itemsRepeater.DataSource = photos.PhotoCollection;
  this.itemsRepeater.DataBind();
}

In the code above I first grab the API and secret key’s from the configuration file and then, I extract the parameters from the query string. I create a new instance of the Flickr object, and perform the actual search for photos, providing the page number and the number of items in each page. Finally, I bind the returned photo collection the the repeater control.

Replace the html header and footer with RSS header and footer in Search.aspx.

Before:

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Search.aspx.cs" Inherits="FlickrFederatedSearch.Search" %>
 
<head runat="server">
  <title></title>
</head>
<body>
  <form id="form1" runat="server">
  <div>
    <asp:Repeater runat="server" ID="itemsRepeater">
    </asp:Repeater>
  </div>
  </form>
</body>
</html>

After:

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Search.aspx.cs" Inherits="FlickrFederatedSearch.Search" %>
 
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/">
  <channel>
    <title>Flickr Search Results</title>
    <asp:Repeater runat="server" ID="itemsRepeater">
    </asp:Repeater>
  </channel>
</rss>

Set the ItemTemplate of the Repeater control to display the photos data according to the output format:

<asp:Repeater runat="server" ID="itemsRepeater">
  <ItemTemplate>
    <item>
      <title><%# Eval("Title") %></title>
      <link><%# Eval("SmallUrl")%></link>
      <description><%# Eval("CleanTags")%></description>
      <pubDate>
        <asp:Literal runat="server" 
         text='<%# ((FlickrNet.Photo)Container.DataItem).DateTaken.ToString("R") %>' />
      </pubDate>
      <media:content url='<%# Eval("LargeUrl")%>' type="image/jpeg" />
      <media:thumbnail url='<%# Eval("ThumbnailUrl")%>' />
    </item>
  </ItemTemplate>
</asp:Repeater>

Run the application. The browser should navigate to Search.aspx passing all the relevant query parameters. The response should be an RSS feed that contains items per photos found.

Creating the Flickr Federated Search Connector

Add a new Xml file to the project and name it FlickrFederatedSearch.osdx (stands for OpenSearch Description Xml). This file contains the data that Windows Explorer needs to order to perform the search against the search service.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">
  <ShortName>Flickr Federated Search</ShortName>
  <Url type="application/rss+xml"        
       template="http://.../Search.aspx?q={searchTerms}&amp;start={startPage}        
&amp;count={count}" />
</OpenSearchDescription>

Notice in the above xml that the parameters are taken from some predefined names ({searchTerms}, {count} etc.), and the ampersands (&) are Html encoded.

Right click the .osdx file, and select Open With.

In the Open With dialog, select Windows Explorer.

In the Add Search Connector dialog, click Add.

Now, Flickr Federated Search appears in the Favorites section in Windows 7 Explorer and you can use it for searching items.

Summary

In this post I’ve talked about how to create a Flickr Federated Search Connector for Windows 7 in .Net. The above provider provides basic features and can be enhanced with more capabilities described in the Windows 7 Federated Search Provider Implementer’s Guide.

Enjoy!

Windows 7: Register a New File Associations

Guy Burstein — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:29:40 GMT

Windows 7: Register a New File Associations

Lets say I have a standard Windows Forms application that works with .guy file types (which is nothing but a text file):

This application can be launched from the command line with a file name as an argument:

> TextFilesViewer.exe SampleFile.guy

In this case, the application displays the file contents in the multiline textbox above:

private void ViewerForm_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
  string[] args = Environment.GetCommandLineArgs();
  if (args.Length > 1)
  {
    string[] lines = File.ReadAllLines(args[1]);
    this.txtFileContents.Lines = lines;
  }
}

Since this application is the only application that knows how to work with .guy files, we would like to associate this file type with my application.

In order to do that, add a reference to the RegistrationHelper sample. This is an exe that performs the actual registration of the file association and needs to be run with admin privileges. It can be found as a sample project in the WindowsAPICodePack\Samples\Shell\TaskbarDemo\CS\RegistrationHelper folderer

After you have added the reference you should add another file from the samples folder - RegistrationHelper.cs which is found in the WindowsAPICodePack\Samples\Shell\TaskbarDemo\CS\TaskbarDemo\ folder.
This file exposes several static methods that invoke the helper as another process with admin privileges.

private void registerFileTypeToolStripMenuItem_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
  string appId = "TextFilesViewer";
 
  RegistrationHelper.RegisterFileAssociations(
    appId,
    false,
    appId,
    string.Format("{0} %1", Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location),
    ".guy");
}

Notice that one of the parameters of RegistrationHelper.RegisterFileAssociations() method is the Application ID which is set to a meaningful name. I’ll talk more on the Application ID in later posts to understand its impact on additional features.

When the user tries to associate the file type, RegistratioinHelper will require admin privileges. If User Account Control (UAC) is enabled on your machine, you will be prompted to allow the registration utility to modify the registry.

After the registration completes, you can double click and .guy files in your machine, and the TextFilesViwer application will be launched to display its content.

Enjoy!

Getting Started with Windows 7 Development Through Windows API Code Pack

Guy Burstein — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:28:36 GMT

Getting Started with Windows 7 Development Through Windows API Code Pack

Windows 7 is said to be a great operating system, much more secure, faster and productive than its predecessors. As with every version of Windows, it also contains a huge amount of new features exposed for developers as API’s, unfortunately, as unmanaged code. The Windows SDK team is working on a project called Windows API Code Pack which provides managed wrappers for Windows API’s.

Downloading the Windows API Code Pack, you’ll get a Zip file containing both the Windows API Code Pack Source and Samples. In the next few posts I’ll explore the new features of the new OS and provide the managed ways to leverage them from your applications using the above source and samples.

Enjoy!

How to build a Simple IE8 Accelerator

Guy Burstein — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:08:09 GMT

How to build a Simple IE8 Accelerator

This post is a step by step guide for building IE8 Accelerators.

A Short Introduction to IE8 Accelerators

Accelerators are used to make the user more productive while surfing the net, by:

1. Speeding up the process of getting additional information about a meaningful string (address, stock quote, a product, a twitter account name, etc). In this sample

2. Allowing user to perform a quick action on a selected text.

From a technical perspective, Accelerators define 2 actions: Preview and Execute. When the user selects some text and hover over an accelerator, the Preview action is being performed - the selected text is sent to a defined url, that returns a 320x240 web page with a preview of the data.
When the user clicks the Accelerator, the Execute action is performed and the browser navigates to a page passing it the selected text as a parameter.

To build IE8 Accelerators, we have several steps to do:

Building an Accelerator Page
Defining the Accelerator OpenService Xml
Registering the Accelerator with IE8
Using the Accelerator

To make sure this guide is generic enough for every Accelerator you may think of and not just for Twitter profiles, I am leaving the twitter logic to the last part of this post.

1. Building an Accelerator Page

Create a new ASP.Net Web Application in Visual Studio 2008 or open an existing one.

Add a new Web Form for the Accelerator Preview. In the page code behind, extract the query string parameters write them to the Response object:

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
  foreach (string param in Request.QueryString.AllKeys)
  {
    Response.Write(param + " = " + Request.QueryString[param] + "<br />");
  }
}

Test the page: Navigate to the accelerator’s url, and add several parameters. For example:

http://localhost:16319/ShowTwitterUser.aspx?data1=guy&data2=burstein

Defining the Accelerator OpenService Xml

In order to register the Accelerator with a user’s browser, we have to create an xml file with the details of the Accelerator.

Add an Xml file to the web application that defines the Accelerators metadata required by the browser.

<openServiceDescription        
      xmlns=http://www.microsoft.com/schemas/openservicedescription/1.0>
  <homepageUrl>http://www.bursteg.net/</homepageUrl>
  <display>
    <name>Twitter Profile Accelerator</name>
    <icon>http://www.twitter.com/favicon.ico</icon>
  </display>
  <activity category="Define">
    <activityAction context="selection">
      <preview action="http://www.bursteg.net/Twitter/ShowTwitterUser.aspx">
        <parameter name="selection" value="{selection}" />
      </preview>
      <execute action="http://www.bursteg.net/Twitter/ShowTwitterUser.aspx">
        <parameter name="documentUrl" value="{documentUrl}" />
        <parameter name="documentTitle" value="{documentTitle}" />
        <parameter name="documentDomain" value="{documentDomain}" />
        <parameter name="documentHost" value="{documentHost}" />
        <parameter name="selection" value="{selection}" />
      </execute>
    </activityAction>
  </activity>
</openServiceDescription>

Few things to notice in the Accelerator Xml:

1. There is some meta data about the accelerator such as homepage Url and the display name and icon.

2. The Activity node defines a category to which this accelerator belongs to. There are some default categories like Map, Translate, Blog etc, but users can manage their categories using the Manage Add-ons Dialog.

3. As described earlier, the accelerator defines 2 actions, preview and execute, each defines a Url to call to when clicked / previewed, and several parameters to pass to the target page.

Register the Accelerator with the User’s Browser

In a page of your chose (for example Default.aspx) add a button that registers the accelerator when clicked:

<input id="btnRegister" type="button" value="Add Accelerator to IE8"  
      onclick="BLOCKED SCRIPTwindow.external.AddService('TwitterProfileAccelerator.xml');" />

When the user clicks on the above button, a dialog pops us asking his permission to add this accelerator to his browser, and whether to make it the default accelerator in its category.

Using the Accelerator

After the user has added the accelerator to his browser he can start using it. Select some text and the accelerator box will appear next to it. Click on it add hover over the new accelerator. This should make an HTTP request to the accelerator page passing it the text you have selected.

If you click on the accelerator, IE8 will open the target page in a new tab passing it the selected text and additional information as defined in the accelerator xml.

Summary

In this pot I took the steps needed to build an accelerator. You can follow them you build your own accelerators and add additional logic to provide more interaction with your uses.

Enjoy!

חיפוש מוצרים באתר זאפ עם Internet Explorer 8

Guy Burstein — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 08:21:27 GMT

חיפוש מוצרים באתר זאפ עם Internet Explorer 8

אתמול קיבלתי מייל מחבר שלי:

“לא תאמין – היום חברה שלי ואני חוגגים שנה יחד, ואני מחפש לה מתנה. אני חייב לצאת גדול כי היא קנתה לי Xbox !!!”

אני לא יודע מה התגובה הראשונה שלכם כשאתה קוראים את מה שחבר שלי כתב לי, אבל הדבר הראשון שעלה לי לראש זה – בואו נראה כמה באמת החברה שלו השקיעה…
אז כדי לדעת כמה בימינו אלה עולה Xbox, סביר להניח שהייתי פותח טאב חדש, גולש לאתר השוואת המחירים – זאפ ומבצע חיפוש למחרוזת Xbox כדי לראות כמה הוא עולה.

עם Internet Explorer 8, זה הרבה יותר פשוט. כאשר מסמנים טקסט כלשהו באינטרנט, פתאום מופיע הלחצן הכחול הזה:

שכאשר לוחצים עליו, נפתחת רשימה של Accelerators (או בעברית – מאיצי גלישה) שמאפשרים לי להפעיל כל מיני שירותים על הטקסט שסימנתי. לדוגמא, אני יכול להפעיל את ה- Accelerator של חיפוש פריטים בזאפ ולקבל את התוצאה הבאה:

ה- Accelerator פונה לאתר זאפ, ומציג לי את הפריטים שעונים לשם Xbox עם התמונה שלהם, טווחי המחירים ומידע נוסף. ובשביל לקבל את כל זה הייתי צריך בסך הכל לסמן טקסט ולהפעיל Accelerator. הרבה יותר פשוט מקודם!

אם גם אתם רוצים להוסיף את ה- Accelerator של חיפוש פריטים בזאפ ל- Explorer שלכם, תוכלו לעשות את זה מתוך גלריית ההרחבות של Internet Explorer 8 שמכילה עוד הרבה הרחבות שפותחו ע”י אתרים מובילים בארץ. את כל ההרחבות של אתר זאפ תוכלו למצוא כאן.

בהמשך אספר על עוד הרחבות ל- Internet Explorer 8 שפותחו בארץ…

תהנו!

Getting Started with jQuery in Visual Studio 2008

Guy Burstein — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:06:22 GMT

Getting Started with jQuery in Visual Studio 2008

In this post I’ll talk about adding jQuery IntellSense in Visual Studio 2008, and how to add jQuery to a simple Web Application inside Visual Studio 2008.

jQuery IntelliSense in Visual Studio 2008 - KB946581

In order to use jQuery in Visual Studio 2008 with IntelliSence a hotfix for Visual Studio 2008 must be installed:

Download the hotfix from Connect
Run the executable and extract its contents to a folder in your hard drive.
Make sure all instances of Visual Studio 2008 are closed, and run VS90-KB946581.exe from the above folder.

Download the Latest jQuery Library + Documentation

To use jQuery in Visual Studio 2008, and enjoy its IntelliSense, you should download 2 javascript files. One contains the actual jQuery library, and the second contains the library with documentation for Visual Studio 2008 to display its IntelliSense.

Go to jQuery Official Download Page
Scroll down and find the Current Release section.
Download the Uncompressed version (jquery-1.2.6.js) and the documentation for Visual Studio (jquery-1.2.6-vsdoc.js).

Using jQuery in a Visual Studio 2008 Web Application

In a new Web Application or inside an existing one, add the jQuery scripts into a certain folder.

In a web page (or a master page), add a reference to the jQuery library:

<head runat="server">
  <title>jQuery Sample</title>
 
  <script src="scripts/jquery-1.2.6.js"         
          type="text/javascript" ></script>
 
</head>

Then, in any javascript function you can start using jQuery functions and enjoy the IntelliSense in Visual Studio 2008.

A Simple Example of Using jQuery Functions

For example, Assuming that you have a page with the following content in it:

<form id="form1" runat="server">
<div>
  <input type="text" class="inputs" id="txtName"       
         value="Enter Text Here" />
  <input type="button" class="inputs" id="btnSubmit"       
         value="Click Me" onclick="handleButtonClick();" />
</div>
</form>

This form contains a single textbox followed by a button.

The handleButtonClick() function handles the button onclick event.

<script type="text/javascript">
  function handleButtonClick() {
  }
</script>

The way jQuery works is by selecting DOM elements and then doing something with them, such as executing a function or applying some properties. For example:

<script type="text/javascript">
  function handleButtonClick() {
    $("#txtName").css("border", "solid 2px red");
  }
</script>

The above method uses the selector function $ to select DOM elements (in this case – a single element with id = txtName) and to apply a style property of a red border. Running this page and clicking the button results in this output:

Summary

In this post I talked about the steps you should follow in order to use jQuery in Visual Studio 2008 with InstelliSense support. Then, we used jQuery in a simple web application.

ASP.Net MVC on Windows Azure | ASP.Net MVC Web Role

Guy Burstein — Sat, 23 May 2009 13:44:38 GMT

ASP.Net MVC on Windows Azure | ASP.Net MVC Web Role

When you install Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio, you only get a project template for an ASP.Net Web Role. In this post I’ll talk about how to create a new ASP.Net MVC Web Role or move an existing ASP.Net MVC Application to Windows Azure.

There are 2 ways to do this:

Manually adding an ASP.Net MVC application as a Web Role (suitable both for a new ASP.Net MVC application and for an existing one).
Use a Project Template to simply create a new ASP.Net MVC Web Role (new ASP.Net MVC application only).

Creating a New ASP.Net MVC Web Role

The following steps apply both for creating a new ASP.Net MVC application and to moving an existing ASP.Net MVC application to Windows Azure.

1. Create an empty ASP.Net MVC Application (with or without a test project), or make sure you have an existing ASP.Net MVC application that you want to move to the Windows Azure.

2. Close this solution and create a new Blank Cloud Service. Make sure you start Visual Studio as an administrator because working with the Development Fabric requires that.

3. Add an existing project to the cloud service and select the ASP.Net MVC Application you have created earlier.

4. Right click the ASP.Net MVC project and select Unload Project.

5. When the project is unloaded, right click it and edit the project file.

6. The project file opens in the XML Editor.

<Project ToolsVersion="3.5" DefaultTargets="Build" ...>
  <PropertyGroup>
    <Configuration Condition=" '$(Configuration)' == '' ">Debug</Configuration>
    ...
  </PropertyGroup>
  ...        
</Project>

Inside the PropertyGroup Element, add the RoleType element and mark this ASP.Net MVC project as a Web Role.

<Project ToolsVersion="3.5" DefaultTargets="Build" ...>
  <PropertyGroup>
    <RoleType>Web</RoleType>
    <Configuration Condition=" '$(Configuration)' == '' ">Debug</Configuration>
    ...        
  </PropertyGroup>
  ...
</Project>

7. Close this project file, and reload the project.

8. Since the ASP.Net MVC now runs on the Windows Azure Service Hosting environment and will probably use its services – add a reference to Microsoft.ServiceHosting.ServiceRuntime.dll.

9. Right click the Roles node in the project tree, and add a Web Role Project in the solution. Select the ASP.Net MVC project from the project list.

Now the ASP.Net MVC project is shown as a Web Role.

10. Since the Windows Azure provides us only with the default .Net Framework 3.5 SP1 assemblies, we must make sure we also copy the ASP.Net MVC Assemblies to the cloud. To do this, right click on each of the following references of the ASP.Net MVC application, and set the Copy Local property to True:

System.Web.Abstractions
System.Web.Mvc
System.Web.Routing

That’s it. You can run the application to make sure that it is running on the Development Fabric.

Creating an ASP.Net MVC Web Role using a Project Template

Thanks to a great word done by the community, we can use a project template to do all the above steps for us. Here’s how to do this:

1. Download the project template from Codeplex at http://c4mvc.codeplex.com/.

2. Create a new project and select the Azure ASP.Net MVC template in the Community for MVC category.

This creates a new Cloud Service for Windows Azure with ASP.Net MVC Application as a Web Role.

Enjoy!

Visual Studio 2010 and .Net Framework 4.0 Beta 1 Is Publically Available

Guy Burstein — Thu, 21 May 2009 08:20:28 GMT

Visual Studio 2010 and .Net Framework 4.0 Beta 1 Is Publically Available

Downloads

Training and Resources

Enjoy!

WF/WCF using Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit

Guy Burstein — Tue, 19 May 2009 13:22:40 GMT

WF/WCF using Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit

The Microsoft WF/WCF using Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit includes presentations, hands-on labs, and demos. This content is designed to help you learn how to utilize the Visual Studio 2010 features and a variety of WF and WCF new features.

Learn basic workflow creation, hosting and running , and test-drive workflow development.
Get an introduction to workflow services, communication between workflows and content based correlation of workflow instances.
Use the flexibility of Flowchart workflow activities to implement non-sequential workflows.
Learn how to rehost the workflow designer in a WPF desktop application and customize it in several ways.
Learn how you can leverage some of the main WF and WCF monitoring features to track application execution and troubleshoot problems with services when necessary.
Learn how Service discovery allows you to locate services on the same subnet using ad hoc discovery, or using a proxy to establish connections with servers regardless of where they are.

This version of the training kit is compatible with Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1.

Download here.

WF 4.0: Long Running Custom Activities with Bookmarks and NativeActivity

Guy Burstein — Tue, 19 May 2009 12:37:00 GMT

WF 4.0: Long Running Custom Activities with Bookmarks and NativeActivity

This is another post in my WF 4.0: Custom Activities series. In a previous post I have talked about creating a code only custom activity that performs a simple task. In this post I’ll talk about creating a more complex activities that takes inputs from the calling program during their execution.

In the previous post WF 4.0: Code Only Custom Activities for Atomic Actions | CodeActivity, CodeActivity<T> I implemented the following activity for reading a string from the console.

public class ReadString2 : CodeActivity<string>
{
  protected override void Execute(CodeActivityContext context)
  {
    string value = Console.ReadLine();
    context.SetValue(Result, value);
  }
}

While this activity will perform the task it is meant to do, it is blocking the calling thread and bad for scalability. In addition to that It is bound to getting the value from the console only, and it is not generic enough to support another input methods.

Enter Bookmarks.

Using NativeActivity for Complex Activities

To create a long running activity, add a new item of type Workflow Element item to the project. Notice that the default activity inherits from CodeActivity.

public class ReadString3 : CodeActivity
{
  protected override void Execute(CodeActivityContext context)
  {
  }
}

To create complex activities such as long running activities, me need to change the base class and inherit from NativeActivity or NativeActivity<T>. In addition to that, there is a difference between the type of the parameter that the CodeActivity takes for the Execute method and the type that NativeActivity takes. Change the input parameter type from CodeActivityContext to ActivityExecutionContext.

public class ReadString3 : NativeActivity
{
  protected override void Execute(ActivityExecutionContext context)
  {
    throw new NotImplementedException();
  }
}

Enter Bookmarks

In previous versions of Windows Workflow Foundation we had the ExternalDataExchangeService and WorkflowQueue when we wanted to build a simple long running activity. In WF 4.0 this is much more simple to do using Bookmarks.

To use bookmarks we need to:

Create a named bookmark and Implement a callback method
Signal from the caller program

Register a Named Bookmak

The following activity registers a bookmark called “input” with a callback method called OnBookmarkCallback.

public class ReadString3 : NativeActivity
{
  OutArgument<string> name;
  public OutArgument<string> Name
  {
    get { return this.name; }
    set
    {
      ThrowIfOpen();
      this.name = value;
    }
  }
  protected override void Execute(ActivityExecutionContext context)
  {
    context.CreateNamedBookmark("input", new BookmarkCallback(this.OnBookmarkCallback));
  }
  void OnBookmarkCallback(ActivityExecutionContext context, Bookmark bookmark, object obj)
  {
    this.Name.Set(context, (string)obj);
  }
}

Signal the workflow from the caller program

In a previous post I have talked about the code that is needed to execute a workflow. Since we are now talking about long running workflows we will start with the default code that is generated for us when we create a new sequential workflow console application that uses the WorkflowInstance that lets know when the workflow instance is idle, and to resume a bookmark:

...
myInstance.Run();
//Get a string from the console and resume the bookmark called “input”
string input = Console.ReadLine();
myInstance.ResumeBookmark("input", input);
syncEvent.WaitOne(); 
... 

The main program performs the input and delivers the value to the workflow. Using this approach:

The main program is flexible in how it wants to get values from the user and any other input source
The workflow becomes idle when it is waiting for the input and during that time not consuming any resources from the machine.

To query the available bookmarks in a workflow instance, we can use the following code:

IList bookmarks = myInstance.GetAllBookmarks();
foreach (BookmarkInfo info in bookmarks)
{
  Console.Write(info.BookmarkName);
}

Enjoy!