Steve Holstad’s "the bright lights"

Nov 07

Ding Ding! Sandcastle Oct CTP and the Sandcastle Help File Builder

About a month ago, I began using the October 2007 CTP release of Sandcastle, Microsoft’s offering for generating code documentation files from existing .NET 2.0 assemblies. The product will no doubt become the standard for generating your project’s docs, replacing the previously ubiquitous NDoc (which is no longer supported, partly due to personal attacks directed towards chief dev Kevin Downs. What a nice way to support his volunteer efforts, huh?). Along the way I’ll try to absolutely mangle a boxing metaphor… Here we go:

Round One: Me vs. The ‘Castle Command Line

Carmen my love.. I dance so sweet for you!

My first encounter with Sandcastle was a knockdown, drag out tussle with lack of documentation and the joys of the command line, but I stuck it out in honor of our comrades from the 1980′s and beyond… sarcasm aside, I was pleasantly surprised by the output of the tool. The docs were professional looking, and with some love could have been presentable to our clients if needed. (I was only looking to generate some docs to give our dev team an easy to way see how our previous committment to full code documentation was shaping up)

Decision: It was easy to tell this was going to become a powerful tool in the near future, but was still on the undercard with the hairy 300lb guy they pulled out of a bar… or maybe that’s just the Cedar Rapids circuit?

Round Two: Introducing the Sandcastle Help File Builder

Would you like some punch to drink? Ha Ha Ha!

Once my team decided we needed a complete snapshot of our code-level XML documentation, I was thinking of the best way to create one help file for all assemblies,that included our custom comments and offered the functionality and usability NDoc had provided for so long,all without the painful command line monotony I envisioned. Lo and behold, Eric Woodruff’s NDoc-style GUI appeared. Yes, I see the irony of Microsoft trumping an open source project with it’s own offering, only to have a UI created that is a mimic of the original…. but hey, what works, lives.

The GUI tool relies on the Sandcastle 2007 October CTP, the HTML Help Workshop for building HTML help files, and the HTML Help 2.0 compiler just as the command line utilities do, but wraps all this in a clean, intuitive interface. I simple enabled our projects to produce XML document outputs (via the Project Property –> Build tab), and referenced these output files using the UI tool. It took about 40 minutes for the help documents to compile, but afterwards we had a web site and generated help docs for our team to review for missing comments. The web site is slow and clunky, but I’ve got a little man-crush going with the .chm. Puppy love I guess. And imagine the help a full .chm file could be to an incoming team member. At some point this will become a client-worthy offering that a lot of consultants may not take the time to produce, so this tool has become a nice value-add in my .NET toolbelt.

Decision: Sancastle with the CodePlex GUI are prepped for the spotlight, stay tuned to see how these products evolve.

Round Three: Gratuitous Bald Bull

My barber didn’t know when to quit… Do you?

Okay, okay, I’m done… calm down.

Must-have Mike Tyson Punch Out references: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Mac#Little_Mac

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Nov 07

OpenSocial Google API Release taking on Facebook

By: Steve Holstad

Today is the target launch date for Google’s OpenSocial, a programming API targeting social networks such as Orkut, LinkedIn, Friendster, Plazo & more. This move is intended to challenge the stranglehold Facebook currently is developing with social network programmers. I’m not much of a Facebook fan; nothing against the site itself, I just don’t have the energy anymore to constantly monitor that type of site… I did check out Orkut, which seems to be wildly popular in Brazil & Asia, but much like David Hasselhof’s singing career, totally missed the boat in the states.

Normally I don’t post a lot of current event type news, but since Clarity has done so much to aid in Facebook development, thought that I’d put this out there to see if any of the Facebook developers would take a look at OpenSocial and see how it stacks up.

Right now I have the feeling that:

- Trying to develop on a standard platform for multiple proprietary network sites will be frustrating

- If the target sites themselves aren’t taking off, then why would devs commit to developing for them?

If anyone checks it out,post a quick review here.

Google’s OpenSocial

TechCrunch breaks the news

NY Times

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Oct 07

Coding4Fun: YeahTrivia client & server using WCF & WPF

By: Steve Holstad

I spent the last couple of weeks creating a posting for Coding4Fun’s blog site, called YeahTrivia. The demo consists of a WCF client & server communicating via the wsDualHttpBinding channel. I used the article to learn quite a bit about implementing WCF to abstract service communication outside of an app’s core code. Learning this new design pattern is a bit intimidating: I find that the hardest part in shifting your thought process is to take the first step… awhile back I attended Juval Lowy’s WCF class, but until now haven’t had time to apply it.

I’ll be posting some of my favorite features of WCF and WPF as I continue to dive in. Be sure to check out the demo and tell me what you think.

To start, here are the config files of the client and server I used to create a wsDualHttpBinding communication channel:

Server:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″ ?>
<configuration>
<appSettings>
<add key=”BaseURI” value=”http://localhost:8088/Trivia”/>
<add key=”QuestionLoadDelay” value=”4000″/>
<add key=”QuestionTime” value=”11000″/>
</appSettings>

<system.serviceModel>
<services>
<service name=”Trivia.Server.GameServer” behaviorConfiguration=”MyServiceTypeBehaviors”>
<endpoint address=”http://localhost:8088/Trivia”
binding=”wsDualHttpBinding”
contract=”Trivia.Common.ITrivia” />
<endpoint contract=”IMetadataExchange” binding=”mexHttpBinding” address=”mex” />
</service>
</services>
<behaviors>
<serviceBehaviors>
<behavior name=”MyServiceTypeBehaviors” >
<serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled=”true” />
</behavior>
</serviceBehaviors>
</behaviors>
</system.serviceModel>
</configuration>

Client:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″?>
<configuration>
<system.serviceModel>
<bindings>
<wsDualHttpBinding>
<binding name=”WSDualHttpBinding_ITrivia”
clientBaseAddress=”http://localhost:8082/Trivia/”
closeTimeout=”00:01:00″
openTimeout=”00:01:00″
receiveTimeout=”00:10:00″
sendTimeout=”00:01:00″
bypassProxyOnLocal=”false”
transactionFlow=”false”
hostNameComparisonMode=”StrongWildcard”
maxBufferPoolSize=”524288″
maxReceivedMessageSize=”65536″
messageEncoding=”Text”
textEncoding=”utf-8″
useDefaultWebProxy=”true”>
<readerQuotas maxDepth=”32″
maxStringContentLength=”8192″ maxArrayLength=”16384″
maxBytesPerRead=”4096″ maxNameTableCharCount=”16384″ />
<reliableSession ordered=”true” inactivityTimeout=”00:10:00″ />
<security mode=”Message”>
<message clientCredentialType=”Windows” negotiateServiceCredential=”true”
algorithmSuite=”Default” />
</security>
</binding>
</wsDualHttpBinding>
</bindings>
<client>
<endpoint address=”http://localhost:8088/Trivia” binding=”wsDualHttpBinding”
bindingConfiguration=”WSDualHttpBinding_ITrivia” contract=”Trivia.Common.ITrivia”
name=”WSDualHttpBinding_ITrivia”>
</endpoint>
</client>
</system.serviceModel>
</configuration>

The client config contains some extra binding attributes that are optional, but I wanted to show you the exact files that were generated using the Svcutil utility. Use Svcutil.exe to generate a proxy class which, when created and added to your client project, is used to marshal calls via WCF to the service. To generate my client class, I started my service and ran the following at the command line:

svcutil /language:cs /out:ServerProxy.cs http://localhost:8088/Trivia

Not a complete solution, but should get you started in the right direction. For a working example, check out the article and let me know if you have any questions.

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Oct 07

Apple to provide SDK & allow 3rd party apps on iPhone

By: Steve Holstad

Wow, it’s been awhile, and I apologize for the delay in posts. I took some time off to get married and head off to Greece… amazing times.

Now that I’m back, I thought I’d take a moment to pass on some interesting news: Apple is releasing a first SDK in February that will allow developers to create and install 3rd party applications onto the iPhone. This means some exciting times for you pretty Mac devs out there…

CNN’s report makes a good point: that this is most likely a reactionary move to stop the bad publicity they’ve received from scores of iPhone owners looking for a more customized experience.

As some of you may know, I’ve been a late-adopter to many things Apple, but this is one more piece that may have me carrying an iPhone sooner than later (at least once an faster network is supported).

Comments welcome!

steve

Apple

iPhone

Mobile

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Aug 07

WhatWG, W3C and HTML 5.0

By: Steve Holstad

It’s an interesting exercise every once in a while to take a look at the technologies we use in everyday development, and how they evolve over time. I started out writing HTML 4.0 & ASP 3.0 apps in high school, then watched as .NET 1.0, 1.1 and 2.0 became entwined in our vocabulary. Sitting here tonight, I’m writing some test apps using VS 2008 Orcas and HTML 4.0. Wait a tic, what happened with HTML’s progression? Think of all the incredible web technology that has sprouted in the last 10 years: it’s all been so exciting and glittery that everyone was deked into advancing other areas like scripting, AJAX & CSS. The last release of an HTML spec was released in July 1997. I’m not here to trash a standard we’ve all learned to love, but everyone who’s ever programmed a web page can see some improvements could be made: think “DIVitis”, for one. Surprised it took this long? Me too.

The cavalry is coming. The WhatWG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group) was formed by an association of Apple, Opera & Mozilla browser vendors and independent web developers, with a goal of updating the hypertext markup language specs to support some much needed updates. The group formed in 2004 after they became concerned about the W3C’s lack of direction and support for the everyday developer. A major concern for me is the fourth name you don’t see as a founder of the WhatWG group. Microsoft IE definitely is the elephant in the room when we’re talking about upgrades and standardization. The good news is that the W3C has picked up the call, and the WhatWG and W3C working drafts of HTML 5 are now advancing in tandem. Still,the WhatWG blogs state that the spec is being developed with IE compatibility in mind,and that many features can be supported in IE using JavaScript workarounds…what a potentially painful annoyance for developers. Standardization: so close, yet so far away.

On a quick side note: Some writers have pointed out that until the next generation of browsers update their HTML rendering engines, any upgrades to the spec are useless; It’s pretty obvious to me that this is a classic “cart before the horse” worry… how are vendors supposed to support a format that is not yet formalized? Plus, being that three of the big four browser vendors founded the group is a clear sign that they are preparing to make upcoming browsers support the latest HTML.

The HTML 5.0 spec is being developed using a three-pronged approach. WhatWG sums the branches up nicely:

The work is currently split between three specifications.

Web Forms 2.0 is targeted to the common needs of web authors. Advanced widgets like RTF controls, menus and toolbars are the domain of Web Applications 1.0. These drafts are in active development. Web Forms 2 is nearing maturity; proposals are currently being discussed and specified for Web Applications 1.

Web Controls 1.0 is intended to add functionality to Javascript and CSS that aid the creation of custom widgets. However, this will be influenced by the design and implementations of XBL2, and so will not be available in the near future.

I’m not diving into a code sample here, because A) the constructs are still changing frequently, b) c’mon, I’m planning a wedding here, and c) Elliotte Harold does a really nice job of it here.

You can start developing sites using these standards once browsers begin to support them, even though the final recommendation won’t come until the implementation is complete; be wary of changes until then. Keep an eye out for browser betas that allow testing of these new capabilities. The spec is fully backward compatible, so old browsers will continue to display content as expected.

Some references:
Elliotte Harold’s review of HTML 5.0
WhatWG’s FAQ Blog
WhatWG’s working spec
W3C’s working spec

HTML HTML 5.0 W3C WhatWG Web Programming ASP

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Jun 07

Using AppDomain to Load and Unload Dynamic Assemblies

By: Steve Holstad

Recently a project I was working on required us to dynamically load an assembly at runtime, and invoke a method on the newly loaded assembly. After we had this working, I noticed that when we tried to then load a newer version of the dynamic assembly, the newer bits weren’t being picked up, and old code was executing. Time to investigate a bit further:

I came across a great article by Jon Shemitz that pointed me in the right direction. AppDomains are a powerful concept in .NET, however as most applications you write live within a single AppDomain, you may not have noticed them before. My problem was that in .NET, you cannot simply unload an assembly directly. However, if we were to create a new AppDomain,load our dynamic assembly within it,call the methods needed, and then unload the AppDomain, we could load, unload, update versions and reload until our hearts content. The final piece of our puzzle (that we already had in place) is to use an interface to allow us the ability to invoke methods on the loaded assembly from our manager executable.

The solution I’ve created to demonstrate this concept uses four projects:

AppDomainLoad: A basic console application that simply news up an instance of the Manager class and calls the entry method.

WorkerShared: This project holds any objects that will be used by both the Manager and Worker classes. This is the only assembly that will be loaded by both AppDomains. Our shared interface, IWorker, lives in this project. A utility class calls AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies() to let us know what really is being loaded at runtime. This is a handy method to use, even in standard single AppDomain applications, to ensure you only load what you need.

WorkerManager: The .dll that creates a separate AppDomain, loads an instance of the dynamic assembly, and casts this instance to the IWorker interface. After all this, the Manager simply calls a method available from the interface. Once the work is complete, the AppDomain is unloaded, which drops any assemblies loaded within the worker domain.

DisconnectedWorker: Where the rubber hits the road, this project executes the actual work. The worker class a) implements the IWorker interface b) derives from MarshalByRefObject, which allows access to objects across domain boundaries (because these interactions are basically remoting under the covers), and c) is marked as Serializable.

One final note, after building the projects, I placed the WorkerShared.dll and DisconnectedWorker.dll bits into the C:BlogProjectsAssemblyPool directory. This is only to simplify the project code; your project can locate these assemblies however you need. For this example, create the directory and drop the assemblies.

Here’s the example code. The key classes’ code is shown below. Let me know if you have any questions.

IWorker interface

namespace WorkerShared
{
public interface IWorker
{
// Define required methods:
void DoWork();
}
}

WorkerManager

using System;
using WorkerShared;

namespace WorkerManager
{
public class Manager
{
private const string CONFIG_ASSEMBLY_POOL = @”C:BlogProjectsAssemblyPool”;
private const string CONFIG_DYNAMIC_ASSEMBLY_PROJECT = “DisconnectedWorker”;
private const string CONFIG_DYNAMIC_ASSEMBLY_FULLY_QUALIFIED_NAME = “DisconnectedWorker.Worker”;

private const string FORMAT_WORKER_DOMAIN_FRIENDLY_NAME = “Dynamic Worker Domain”;
private const string FORMAT_WORKER_DOMAIN_CREATED = “Created ‘{0}’ AppDomain”;
private const string FORMAT_WORKER_DOMAIN_UNLOADED = “Unloaded ‘{0}’ AppDomain”;
private const string FORMAT_WORK_COMPLETE = “All work complete.”;
private const string FORMAT_START_ASSEMBLIES = “Starting Assemblies Loaded:”;
private const string FORMAT_END_ASSEMBLIES = “Post-unload Assemblies Loaded:”;

public void RunAppDomainExample()
{
// Show current assemblies before we start:
Console.WriteLine(FORMAT_START_ASSEMBLIES);
Utilities.WriteCurrentLoadedAssemblies();

// create display name for appDomain
string workerName = string.Format(FORMAT_WORKER_DOMAIN_FRIENDLY_NAME);

// Construct and setup appDomain settings:
AppDomainSetup ads = new AppDomainSetup();

ads.ApplicationBase = CONFIG_ASSEMBLY_POOL;
ads.DisallowBindingRedirects = false;
ads.DisallowCodeDownload = true;
ads.ConfigurationFile = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.SetupInformation.ConfigurationFile;

// Create domain
Console.WriteLine();
AppDomain workerAppDomain = AppDomain.CreateDomain(workerName, null, ads);
Console.WriteLine(FORMAT_WORKER_DOMAIN_CREATED, workerName) ;

// do work on proxy
IWorker workerInstance =
(IWorker)
workerAppDomain.CreateInstanceAndUnwrap(CONFIG_DYNAMIC_ASSEMBLY_PROJECT,
&nbs p; CONFIG_D YNAMIC_ASSEMBLY_FULLY_QUALIFIED_NAME);

// Execute the task by invoking method on the interface instance
workerInstance.DoWork();

// Unload worker appDomain
AppDomain.Unload(workerAppDomain);
Console.WriteLine(FORMAT_WORKER_DOMAIN_UNLOADED, workerName) ;
Console.WriteLine();

// Show current assemblies before we start:
Console.WriteLine(FORMAT_END_ASSEMBLIES);
Utilities.WriteCurrentLoadedAssemblies();

Console.WriteLine(FORMAT_WORK_COMPLETE);
Console.ReadLine();
}
}
}

DisconnectedWorker

using System;
using WorkerShared;

namespace DisconnectedWorker
{
[Serializable]
public class Worker : MarshalByRefObject, IWorker
{
public void DoWork()
{
// Show the assemblies loaded in this appDomain
Utilities.WriteCurrentLoadedAssemblies();
}
}
}

Utilities

using System;
using System.Reflection;

namespace WorkerShared
{
public static class Utilities
{
public static void WriteCurrentLoadedAssemblies()
{
Assembly[] assemblies = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies();

foreach (Assembly assembly in assemblies)
{
Console.WriteLine(“Loaded: {0}.”, assembly.ManifestModule.Name);
}
}
}
}

Payday: The Project Output

Starting Assemblies Loaded:
Loaded: mscorlib.dll.
Loaded: Microsoft.VisualStudio.HostingProcess.Utilities.dll.
Loaded: System.Windows.Forms.dll.
Loaded: System.dll.
Loaded: System.Drawing.dll.
Loaded: Microsoft.VisualStudio.HostingProcess.Utilities.Sync.dll.
Loaded: AppDomainLoad.vshost.exe.
Loaded: System.Data.dll.
Loaded: System.Xml.dll.
Loaded: AppDomainLoad.exe.
Loaded: WorkerManager.dll.
Loaded: WorkerShared.dll.

Created ‘Dynamic Worker Domain’ AppDomain
Loaded: mscorlib.dll.
Loaded: Microsoft.VisualStudio.HostingProcess.Utilities.dll.
Loaded: DisconnectedWorker.dll.
Loaded: WorkerShared.dll.
Unloaded ‘Dynamic Worker Domain’ AppDomain

Post-unload Assemblies Loaded:
Loaded: mscorlib.dll.
Loaded: Microsoft.VisualStudio.HostingProcess.Utilities.dll.
Loaded: System.Windows.Forms.dll.
Loaded: System.dll.
Loaded: System.Drawing.dll.
Loaded: Microsoft.VisualStudio.HostingProcess.Utilities.Sync.dll.
Loaded: AppDomainLoad.vshost.exe.
Loaded: System.Data.dll.
Loaded: System.Xml.dll.
Loaded: AppDomainLoad.exe.
Loaded: WorkerManager.dll.
Loaded: WorkerShared.dll.
All work complete.

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May 07

Good old blurry pics

By: Steve Holstad

Well, that pretty much wraps up MIX 2007. What a great showing by Microsoft. Keeping with Clarity tradition, thought I should throw up a few fuzzy pics:

Mix Main Room screens
Keynote conference layout

Mix Main Room screens
Guitar Hero and Gears of War got a LOT of attention. Is this the defining geek image of our generation?

Mix Main Room screens
This is your shirt. This is your shirt when you fly Southwest. Any questions?

MIX07

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May 07

ASP.NET AJAX Tips & Tricks

By: Steve Holstad

My final session of Tuesday was a deep dive on ASP.NET AJAX, with Jeff Prosise, co-founder of Wintellect and Matt Gibbs, Development Manager at Microsoft.

Jeff and Matt did an excellent job of challenging the advanced AJAX guys while still engaging coders with less experience using the ASP.NET AJAX libraries. These two guys seemed to get along really well, and (are you sitting down?) the banter between them was friendly and funny… not that common of a combination from my experience with major conference presentations. The expertise of ASP.NET AJAX they showed by easily handling difficult questions sold me, I’ll be checking their blogs from now on.

Code-wise, these two didn’t so much deep dive into one particular example, but instead provided “seed” information that I plan to research after the conference. In fact, I left not quite sure what specific points I could write about here, but I am positive that I just accumulated a lot of great tips & tricks that may come up with my clients in the future. A few tips:

When using multiple UpdatePanels per page, start getting into the habit of setting the UpdateMode flag to “Conditional”. This prevents non-updated panels from sending their contents (viewstate, etc) up the pipe. No need to send this traffic unless the content needs to be updated,right? Keep in mind that with this method,if UpdatePanel A needs to update whenever UpdatePanel C is changed, you’ll have to explicitly call UpdatePanel A’s Update method in the managed code (example: PanelA.Update();)
Immediately go and download Nikhil Kothari’s Web Development Helper Utility. What a great tool for watching your asynch postbacks firing client-server: turn logging on and start reducing your traffic size.
The ASP.NET AJAX library .pdb files are now available, add ‘em to your project to allow debugging into the libraries themselves. Email Matt if you see any bugs.
I will forever be stealing the phrase “New it up” to mean instantiating an object. It’s stuck in my head forever, much like Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart”.
An UpdatePanel’s brain actually lies within the System.WebForms.PageRequestManager class, so take a look at leveraging it’s events to manipulate your partial page updates:

var mgr = System.WebForms.PageRequestManager.getInstance();
mgr.add_InitializeRequest(InitRequest);

function InitRequest(sender, args) {
args.set_Cancel(!confirm(‘Really postback?’));
}

Even though this example isn’t very real-world, you could use something like this to prioritize async calls, preventing a more important in-progress request from being cancelled by a subsequent one. Jeff also used a similar method to draw attention to an updated content area after the asynch postback completed. Related docs:ASP.NET AJAX PageRequestManager doc

Great job, guys. Turn around, bright eyes…

MIX07

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May 07

Silverlight 1.1 .NET & details

By: Steve Holstad

I received more detailed info on Silverlight 1.1, here’s a quick synopsis:

Silverlight 1.0 provides the core functionality for Microsoft’s new cross-browser, cross-platform web presentation plugin. Version 1.1 (now available in Alpha) adds the .NET framework, allowing powerful coding in familiar territory to .NET developers.

The Silverlight version of the framework is a trimmed-down, factored subset of the full .NET Framework
This refactored framework drops unnecessary parts, such as COM Interop, and provides others on a “pay for play” basis. This allows the Silverlight .NET Framework to be ~4MB, versus the full version’s ~50MB.
Uses the same tools, APIs and technology as full version, requiring minimal code changes to support both a rich interactive web application and a full desktop implementation of your project
Silverlight lives in a sandbox, much like the HTML DOM, which is familiar ground to web developers
No way exists to break out of this sandbox,and no permission elevators are provided
Safe,isolated storage exists in an obfuscated location, allowing Silverlight to maintain a local storage location on the client machine. Don’t forget, all this is CLIENT SIDE execution! The framework is downloaded to the client machine, and what we’ve thought of as server-side execution now is executing on the client itself. When you hit a breakpoint when debugging, you are attached to the client browser process itself. Any immediate window edits, etc, actually affect the client instance.
Client-based file upload controls will allow direct manipulation of files specified by the user on their local disk. The thinking is that if the user specified the file, it is safe for Silverlight to manipulate it.
Cross-domain support is in progress
1.1 adds XAML extensibility, Control classes (user controls) and a subset of sample controls
Data binding is on the way
Only a subset of full WPF, so features such as 3D imaging not available.. these features really require the full hardware processing of a desktop machine to render correctly.

So, what do you need to build and run a Silverlight app? Here are the recommendations for most developers: (all available at http://www.silverlight.net)

Silverlight 1.1 Alpha runtime installation
Visual Studio Codename “Orcas” Beta 1
Silverlight Tools Alpha for Visual Studio Codename “Orcas” Beta 1
Expression Blend 2 May Preview
ASP.NET Futures

MIX07

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May 07

Free Willy 3.5: Visual Studio Codename "Orcas" Preview

By: Steve Holstad

I attended Omar Khan’s Visual Studio Codename “Orcas” Preview for AJAX Web Development this afternoon, and walked away very excited about getting my hands on it. Unlike the Silverlight alpha & beta previews, which will take nearly a complete paradigm shift by designers and developers to fully appreciate, Orcas appears to be ready to move development teams smoothly into the latest release of .NET 3.5. They’ve accomplished this by satisfying .NET developers wants, needs & more:

Needs

My #1 ASP.NET IDE complaint is history: Nested Master Pages now render correctly to the design window, instead of the previous IDE approach of “if at first you don’t succeed, String.Empty”. This will encourage more code reuse by allowing simple usages of multiple master pages for common content.

Comprehensive ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 support: A “huge investment in Javascript tooling for Orcas” is evident by the numerous AJAX Master Page, AJAX form and AJAX control items that are now available as file types you may add to your project. AJAX ojbects are now available within the Orcas toolbox.

This commitment also means that your days of debugging inane client script errors may soon be ending: Impressive context-sensitive Intellisense is now in place for Javascript, including smart discovery of object types (a var assigned to an integer gets numeric Intellisense options, etc). Even your external script libraries are available within Intellisene if linked into the page. And, if script library “A” references second library “B”, you’ll have Intellisense when editing the library “A” in the IDE; shared libraries are supported throughout a web project in this manner.

One of the coolest features I saw was the ability to comment your javascript and have the information parsed as Intellisense tags. Summary,description,parameter and return values can be specified in the Javascript functions, making client-side coding so much easier. Commenting a return type even explicitly sets the calling code’s variable to the specified data type. (I worry this could be error-prone: would err later if function changed but comment didn’t?)

SCRIPT DEBUGGING!!! I know that VS 2005 supports client-side debugging, but c’mon, are you really using it? Orcas makes debugging script much more intuitive: when a breakpoint is set on a file, the breakpoint is mapped to the file executing at the browser, giving the effect of direct breakpoint placement. Once you enable script debugging on the browser itself, you’re off to the races… I can’t WAIT for this one.

Wants

Multi-Targeting: This describes Orcas’ complete support of previous .NET framework versions. Simply changes the target platform property, and the IDE configures itself to completely work within the desired version. Sounds simple, but it’s a big deal: Target .NET 3.5 and projects reference the System.Core and System.Web.Expressions namespaces required by the latest technologies. Change to .NET 2.0 and the references are gone, the project type dialogs no longer contain > 2.0 project types, the compilers move to 2.0, config files are immediatley rewritten for compliance, etc. This is ideal for project teams that are currently supporting previous .NET projects in 1.1 or 2.0, but still want to move forward with development in 3.5. We can have the best of both worlds.

Linq To Sql File: .dbml file types can be used to create Linq data context objects, which allow direct querying of a SQL database. This gives you strongly-typed, object- relational data objects for direct data access. Admittedly, I am a newbie to LINQ, but I have some serious doubts about this type of tool… sounds great, but in these demos they rarely discuss the issues that tend to trip us up: Error handling, paging, caching, validation, saving back to database, etc.

Whoa, nice

Integrated CSS tools, including the ability to use split views (markup & design view); a CSS properties window which also identifies every element or class a particular object’s current styling is deriving from (sweet); design view adjustment of margins & sizing; the ability to create new style classes within the IDE and drag/drop them immediately into your external, linked CSS files; the really handy ability to adjust margin, sizes, etc within the VS IDE design view, while your changes are applied directly to the current CSS file(s).

I’m sure the team at Clarity will be posting more and more about Orcas as we continue to explore all of the new features… for now, I’m considering it a “Krill-er App”… sorry, just couldn’t resist that.

MIX07

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