Web Development
Web Development will contain sessions aimed at the web developer who is interested in ASP.NET MVC, AJAX, ASP.NET Dynamic Data and other ASP.NET specific topics.
VLT5Real World ASP.Net MVC in One hour!
Gus Emery
Tuesday, October 14 – 11:00 a.m.
With the addition of the new ASP.Net MVC framework there will be a lot of questions surrounding how this technology can be used instead of the Web Forms that we all have been used to since .Net 1.0. With the release of the MVC Framework we now have the best of the old world ASP Classic, with a Compiled and easier to debug workspace. This session will cover a quick overview of the MVC framework, and continue with the building of a 'Real World' application.
VLT9Deep dive into the ASP.NET AJAX UpdatePanel
Wallace McClure
Tuesday, October 14 – 2:30 p.m.
This session is a deep dive into the ASP.NET AJAX UpdatePanel. The UpdatePanel provides for a mechanism to add client side Ajax capabilities through a server side control. We’ll look at:
- Quick Intro to the UpdatePanel.
- How to debug with it. The UpdatePanel provides client side Ajax functionality. We’ll look at how to debug with it and see that the UpdatePanel allows for the server side debugging functionality that most developers are used to.
- Its client side programmability features. The UpdatePanel provides a client side interface into its features. We’ll look at the events provided and how they allow developers to add to their applications to improve the user experience.
- Error Handling. By default, errors are generated as JavaScript alerts, we’ll look at the options for handling errors so that user’s aren’t forced into the annoying JavaScript alert popup.
- The data format that the UpdatePanel uses. When does AJAX not use XML or JSON for data transfer? When it the UpdatePanel is used. We’ll look at the Update Panel’s data transfer format.
- History with the UpdatePanel. One of the most frustrating things from a user’s standpoint is that hitting back on Ajax application takes them out of the application. We’ll look at what a developer must do so that a user hitting back does not exit from the application, but merely goes back to the previous state of the application.
VLT13What's New in Visual Studio 2008 for ASP.NET Developers?
Kenneth Getz
Tuesday, October 14 – 4:00 p.m.
Visual Studio 2008 adds many new capabilities and features for Web developers. Although it's not possible to dig deep into all these features in 75 minutes, this session provides an overview of the new capabilities, including new designers, support for Ajax and JavaScript, strong CSS support, and more. If you're a Web developer moving from Visual Studio 2005 to Visual Studio 2008, you won't want to miss these exciting new enhancements.
VLW1Jumpstart Your Web Site with ASP.NET Dynamic Data
Robert Boedigheimer
Wednesday, October 15 – 8:00 a.m.
Do you need to get a web site setup quickly? Why code all the pages yourself when you can use the ASP.NET Dynamic Data to build the initial pages based on your data schema? This new feature creates the .aspx pages for you based on your data. The pages can be used directly, or you can customize the pages to add your own look and feel. You can augment the data model for the site to include information that can automatically create the necessary validation controls! Included are a set of Field Template controls that are user controls to edit particular types of data, these can be customized once and apply to all page templates used on the site. Don't start with nothing when you need to create a new site, take advantage of the ASP.NET Dynamic Data support to have a functional site very quickly and simply customize it to get a great site!
VLW9Creating a Custom ASP.NET DataSource Control
Rockford Lhotka
Wednesday, October 15 – 11:00 a.m.
The new data binding in ASP.NET 2.0 is very powerful. Unfortunately the pre-built data source controls may not always meet your needs. Learn how to create a fully functional ASP.NET DataSource control, including complete support for both runtime and design time behaviors.
New Features in ASP.NET 3.5 with Service Pack 1VLW9
Wallace McClure
Tuesday, October 14 – 2:30 p.m.
This session will be a look at the new features of ASP.NET 3.5 that have been added into Service Pack 1. Most developers think that all a service pack does is fix bugs with a product. While there are bug fixes in service pack, Microsoft has included a new set of features in the latest service pack. We’ll look at these new features including:
- History with the UpdatePanel and Web Services based AJAX. One of the most frustrating things from a user’s standpoint is that hitting back on Ajax application takes them out of the application. We’ll look at what a developer must do so that a user hitting back does not exit from the application, but merely goes back to the previous state of the application.
- Using ADO.NET Data Services (Astoria) with ASP.NET.
- A new cache callback to eliminate multiple threads from performing an update to a cached item. Pre SP1, it is possible for multiple threads to reload a cache item. With SP1 and some code changes, it is possible to handle the refilling of the cache item once instead of multiple times.
- Dynamic Data services. Have you ever wanted to build a simple data input form as the front end for a database? We’ll look at how Dynamic Data services in SP1 can help you with that.
- Combining scripts to minimize network traffic and requests. Make your apps quicker for the users.
VLW13Distributed Caching for ASP.NET Applications
Jeff McManus
Wednesday, October 15 – 3:15 p.m.
In-memory caching can provide orders-of-magnitude performance and scalability benefits to dynamic web applications. ASP.NET has various built-in caching schemes. But its caching is limited to whatever spare RAM exists on a single web server. This makes it challenging to build internet-scale applications using ASP.NET.
Large web sites such as LiveJournal, Facebook, Flickr and Wikipedia use a distributed caching tool called memcached , which makes it easy to cache data on any machine in a data center that has spare RAM. Recently, Microsoft released a tool code-named Velocity that attempts to do the same thing. This talk will demonstrate how memcached and Velocity work, how they differ, and how you can integrate distributed caching into your ASP.NET web applications today.
VLW1710 Secrets of Creating Real World Dynamic Data Applications
Craig Shoemaker
Wednesday, October 15 – 4:45 p.m.
ASP.NET Dynamic Data is a new set of features that make creating and maintaining data-driven websites easier than ever before. Taking the "don't repeat yourself" principle to heart Dynamic Data - is a temple-based system that allows you to define views for data elements once and reuse them throughout your website.
In this session you will learn 10 ways to use Dynamic Data in a real-world setting. Topics include: building custom Dynamic Data controls, implementing security, moving Dynamic Data pages, creating custom pages and layouts and more.
VLTH1Tips and Tricks to Customize ASP.NET Dynamic Data App
Sue Googe
Thursday, October 16 – 8:15 a.m.
.NET 3.5 extension introduces dynamic data controls as a set of ASP.NET server controls that obtain database schema information at run time. With some customizations, you will gain the power of creating rich UI with little effort, no more messy Javascript and complex presentation layer needed for a fully customizable, data-driven application.
VLTH5Best Practices in ASP.NET 2.0/3.5: Defending Yourself From Worst Practices
Richard Hale Shaw
Thursday, October 16 – 9:45 a.m.
The Question is: if brought before a jury of your peers and accused of following Best Practices while programming ASP.NET, would there be enough evidence to convict you? While I could make a strong case that if you just used a little common sense, the evidence would be plentiful, I'm not sure I can say the same for ASP.NET itself. Where other parts of .NET at least don't get in your way when you try to build a rock-solid, extensible, maintainable application built from re-usable components -- and some parts of .NET seem to really encourage doing the right thing -- ASP.NET seems to be chock-full of the worst possible ways of solving problems -- or at least it seems to encourage or conspire to get you to implement solutions in the worst possible way. It's almost as if the technology itself were designed and written with an expectation that fragility would be the watchword of the day. So in this talk, an admittedly hostile- to-ASP.NET developer -- who maintains and extends his own sites with it, and wouldn't turn back to ASP or JSP or raw HTML -- talks about some defensive coding practices he's developed over the last 6 years of web programming with ASP.NET.
We'll start with Strings. In ASP.NET, they're used all over the place for a variety of entities: file names, page and control names, paths and URLs, etc. The problem is that they're not type-safe (they always compile) and you can easily mistype them. What if you accidentally redirect to an .ASPX who's filename has changed? What if someone decides that "Default.aspx" is no longer going to be the default page of the site? Then we'll move to the problems of programming with Cassini, the built-in web server that is so much easier to use than IIS -- or is it? Next, we'll look at page-redirects and dynamic Control loading: what if a control is moved or re-named? And how do you work with Session State is a sane fashion?
And when it comes to Web Forms and User Controls, "re-usability" is treated like a four-letter word: every .ASPX and .ASCX you create must be copied into the project directory of every ASP.NET application that uses them. And that means bugs in these pages and controls are propagated, so fixes and updates require re-copying them. For many developers, the solution is to heavily use server controls (aka custom controls), which are self-contained in assemblies that are easily referenced. But server controls don't have the UI support that ASCXs have – and the issue of how to create re-usable .ASPXs still remains.
The solution: a set of techniques you can use to create libraries from web pages and user controls that you want to re-use across a variety of ASP.NET projects.
You'll see how to create web projects that don't have to "own" or contain any .ASPXs or .ASCXs, but which reference and "inherit" pages and controls which can simultaneously be used by multiple projects. You'll leave with a handful of techniques you can immediately apply to existing VS2005/2008 projects to stop copying and easily re-use your pages and controls across a variety of applications.
We'll wrap up with the failures you'll run into if you're using the VS2005 Web Site project model. And Richard will buy the lunch of anyone who can demonstrate the value-add of Web Site Projects (vs. Web Application Projects). You'll see mistake after mistake waiting to happen when you use them, and why Web Application projects are your only realistic option. By the time you leave, you'll be well-armed with defenses against even the worst that ASP.NET has to offer, and you'll be ready to give it your Best.
VLTH9The Zen of ASP.NET and MVC
Javier Lozano
Thursday, October 16 –1:45 p.m.
The Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern has been around for over 20 years and has predominantly been the pattern-poster-child for web frameworks, such as Ruby on Rails, Struts, SpringMVC and recently ASP.NET. In this session will we cover how the two current implementation of this pattern on the .NET platform, MonoRails and ASP.NET MVC, enhance the way we approach web development by making it more specific, yet simple at the same time. If you're a web developer that's either curious or seasoned on this old new thing, this session is definitely worth checking out.
VLTH13Internet Explorer 8 and its Impact on Your ASP.NET Web Sites
Robert Boedigheimer
Thursday, October 16 – 3:15 p.m.
Internet Explorer 8 will ship in a new "standards" mode by default, which has the potential to impact many sites that have been crafted around various "features" in past versions. Learn which current practices will need to change and how this will affect your development techniques and your existing sites. Review tools that will be built into the browser to help developers debug and create web pages. Web Slices are a new feature that allow developers to mark areas of web pages that users can subscribe to like RSS feeds to wach for updates to those slices. Don't be surprised the day IE 8 ships and your sites break, be prepared!
VLT15Load Testing Your ASP.NET Applications
Chris Menegay
Tuesday, October 14 – 4:00 p.m.
Far too often performance and scalability testing is not performed until applications are ready to be rolled into production. At that point it is too difficult to correct what may be fundamental problems in application design and architecture. This session demonstrates how to create robust load tests and run them as part of a daily automated build process. This regular load testing allows you to see performance problems as they are created, and fix them in a much more timely manner.
VLW5 Data-Driven ASP.NET Ajax
Jeffrey McManus
Wednesday, October 15 – 9:30 a.m.
Performing asynchronous postbacks using ASP.NET AJAX Update Panels is simple, but how do you go beyond the basics to provide sophisticated data visualization and user experience idioms? In this session, we'll take a look at some common data-driven user experiences and demonstrate how to implement them using ASP.NET AJAX.
VLTH18 LOB 2.0 with Silverlight and AJAX
Anthony Lombardo
Thursday, October 16 – 4:45 p.m.
Line-of-business applications have a long history of being more functional than friendly. Leveraging the rich experiences that can be created with Silverlight 2 along with the power of the Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX framework, enables developers to build LOB applications with a Web 2.0 flare, like never before. In this session attendees will learn about the tools available in Silverlight 2, databinding options, and AJAX integration needed to build a visually appealing User Interface that ultimately adds value and efficiency to business operations.
VLT1Test Driven Development with ASP.NET MVC
Ben Scheirman
Tuesday, October 14 – 9:30 a.m.
Have you ever tried to write a unit test for an ASP.NET WebForms page? WebForms has been notoriously difficult to unit test, leading to techniques such as browser automation or applying the MVP pattern in order to unit test it. The new ASP.NET MVC framework is different. It is built with testability in mind. This will be an in-depth session on unit testing with the new ASP.NET MVC framework. Specifically you will see how to apply test-first development to this framework. Learn what techniques are used to isolate components from the database and other dependencies with side-effects. Ben will demonstrate high test coverage, dependency injection, mocking, and of course ASP.NET MVC.
VLTH9 The Zen of ASP.NET and MVC
Javier Lozano
Thursday, October 16 – 1:45 p.m.
The Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern has been around for over 20 years and has predominantly been the pattern-poster-child for web frameworks, such as Ruby on Rails, Struts, SpringMVC and recently ASP.NET. In this session will we cover how the two current implementation of this pattern on the .NET platform, MonoRails and ASP.NET MVC, enhance the way we approach web development by making it more specific, yet simple at the same time. If you're a web developer that's either curious or seasoned on this old new thing, this session is definitely worth checking out.
VLT5Real World ASP.Net MVC in one hour!
Gus Emery
Tuesday, October 14 – 11:00 a.m.
With the addition of the new ASP.Net MVC framework there will be a lot of questions surrounding how this technology can be used instead of the Web Forms that we all have been used to since .Net 1.0. With the release of the MVC Framework we now have the best of the old world ASP Classic, with a Compiled and easier to debug workspace. This session will cover a quick overview of the MVC framework, and continue with the building of a 'Real World' application.
VLTH17 Extending IIS 7 with HttpModules and HttpHandlers
Robert Boedigheimer
Thursday, October 16 – 4:45 p.m.
IIS 7 utilizes a modular architecture and has tight ASP.NET integration which provides great opportunities for ASP.NET developers to extend or replace its functionality. Learn how modules and handlers replace ISAPI filters and extensions with managed code. IIS features such as the very outdated directory browsing can be completely replaced by a new interface. Review a module that modifies response headers to automatically encrypt and decrypt cookies used by a web site. Discover how to intercept requests for all file types (including directory requests) and provide custom redirection rules. The new administration UI can also be extended to allow administrators a safe method of modifying custom configuration sections. Leverage your ASP.NET skills to extend and modify the behavior of IIS 7 for your web sites.
