This Wrox Blox will teach you how to create and customize ASP.NET 4 AJAX Preview 4 Client Templates. The author shows you how to use declarative as well as imperative data-binding techniques to address the simple to advanced UI requirements. He also covers how the observer pattern is fully implemented in ASP.NET 4 AJAX and, when used in conjunction with the Client Template markup extensions, provides a developer experience much like XAML-based applications ... Read More

This Wrox Blox demonstrates how to start using NHibernate in line business applications using ASP.NET and VB.NET. Using NHibernate will speed up your application development by removing the need to build your own Data Access Layer (DAL).  In addition, you can focus solely on the business problem instead of the infrastructure concerns. Using a simple demo application as an example, this Wrox Blox shows how easy it is to get started with NHibernate ... Read More

This Wrox Blox will teach you how to work with the new ASP.NET Dynamic Data feature set. Rather than being a new data access technology or some new approach to querying the database, a Dynamic Data web site helps abstract the user interface controls needed to present the data in your database. You will learn to model the database in LINQ to SQL and apply a variety of metadata attributes to the model. These attributes and their arguments will allow ... Read More

In this Wrox Blox, you will learn how to use the Microsoft BDC Definition Editor tool effectively to create Application Definition Files (ADF). Business Data Catalog (BDC) is a SharePoint feature that allows users to access external data from within SharePoint. BDC offers an excellent way to integrate SharePoint with line-of-business (LOB) applicationsYou will also learn how to import ADF files into SharePoint. This Wrox Blox will cover the usage ... Read More

In this Wrox Blox, you’ll learn how to create powerful Dashboards for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. First, we introduce Web Part Pages and some of the out-of-the box Web Parts available in WSS. We then look at how to use Web Part Connections to add interactivity to our Dashboards. Later we create advanced Dashboard Views using the Data Form Web Part available with SharePoint Designer 2007. While the author focuses on Windows SharePoint Services ... Read More

This Wrox Blox shows you how to perform a complete upgrade from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6 for a simple but non-trivial Drupal site involving the Drupal core itself, and several indispensable modules.  The author gives step-by-step instructions for carrying out this upgrade, outlining the best practices to be followed. These include the recommendation of using a test site in conjunction with a subversion repository for version control and deployment to ... Read More

This Wrox Blox aims to provide an ASP.NET developer who is ready to begin his or her learning in Silverlight 2 with some familiar context, while focusing on key areas that a developer needs to be productive: layout, state, consuming and binding to data, and developing reusable controls. While there is massive depth within Silverlight 2 in its entirety, we cover some essential elements to prepare the developer for enhancing future learning or moving ... Read More

This Wrox Blox teaches you how to create animations using Microsoft's new platform for building rich Internet applications — Silverlight. This Wrox Blox introduces animation concepts and answers questions such as when and why you want to use animation in your Web development. The core classes that make up the Silverlight animation subsystem are also introduced, providing you with a solid foundation to take away and build on. The author takes you step-by-step ... Read More

This Wrox Blox walks you through building a desktop application using your favorite text editor and the Flex 3 command-line tools, leveraging the Flex Framework to browse and manipulate images found on your local system using the Adobe AIR API included in the Flex 3 SDK. Adobe AIR is a cross-platform runtime that gives you the ability to bring the rich Internet application experience to the desktop. Building a photo gallery is an excellent place to ... Read More

This Wrox Blox illustrates a CD Player application built with WPF and DirectSound using C# and Visual Studio 2008, and is targeted at the intermediate-level programmer who is familiar with C#, WPF, and .NET interoperability with native Windows APIs, and the Visual Studio development environment. This application provides basic control capabilities such as Play, Pause, Stop, and Eject, and also displays the duration of the disk and each track as well ... Read More

This Wrox Blox introduces readers to the ReSharper Visual Studio add-in software. ReSharper is a tool from Jet Brains software that offers advanced code refactoring, code generation, code completion, code navigation, and code analysis tools for increasing programmers’ productivity writing C# and VB .NET code. ReSharper is an intuitive and easy-to-use product that maximizes productivity by automating many of the error-prone and time-consuming chores ... Read More

This Wrox Blox presents WPF along with the Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML), showing developers how to customize existing user interface controls such as the Button, Progress Bar, CheckBox, Radio Button, and Label along with creating two new custom controls. The Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) released with the .NET 3.0 SDK provides a rich foundation for developing and customizing user interfaces. Unlike existing user interface ... Read More

This Wrox Blox shows you best-practice scenarios for knowledge worker information management using SharePoint Lists and Document Libraries. It demonstrates features that are common to both Windows SharePoint Services version 3.0 (WSS v3) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007). Starting with examples of traditional filing systems using folder hierarchies, it progresses to the introduction of custom metadata columns to make storing, ... Read More

Finally, TheBeerHouse website from ASP.NET 2.0 Website Programming: Problem–Design–Solution gets the ASP.NET 3.5 treatment! This Wrox Blox presents two unique approaches to applying LINQ to SQL to data access in TheBeerHouse.   In Part 1, you’ll take advantage of the original application’s data provider model to develop a custom LINQ to SQL provider for the Articles module. In Part 2, you’ll try a different approach, while learning how to develop ... Read More

This Wrox Blox shows how to communicate with SQL Server using SQL Management Objects instantiated on-the-fly in Windows PowerShell scripts. Topics include how to create Windows PowerShell scripts that use SQL Management Objects (SMO) to manage and program SQL Server. In addition, you will learn about areas of potential difficulty and see how to avoid them—for example, the use of '$' in instance name, quote nesting rules, connection pooling, and schemata ... Read More

This Wrox Blox introduces you to Visual Web Developer Express 2008 (think of this like Web Matrix on steroids!) and also goes over various Object Oriented Program (OOP) methodologies that you should be familiar with as you begin working with ASP.NET. While this Wrox Blox doesn’t cover actually building a working application, it touches on what n-tier architecture is and why it is a good idea to use it.  Because ASP.NET is such a vast topic, you can’t ... Read More

In this Wrox Blox, you learn how to create a custom button to generate a special HTML hyperlink. The hyperlink contains extra information to show the relationship between two individuals. This type of data is called the XHTML Friends Network (XFN), a specific type of microformat. A microformat is a Web-based formatting approach that aims to use existing XHTML tools (such as element attributes and classes) to describe data, not just to supply visual ... Read More

This Wrox Blox demonstrates various LINQ to SQL techniques to use in upgrading the “Articles” portion of TheBeerHouse application. The first step is migrating TheBeerHouse project from an ASP.NET 2.0 to an ASP.NET 3.5 application. Next, create a LINQ to SQL class (DBML) mapping file that will encapsulate the entire Data Access Layer for this project. Readers will become comfortable working with Entities ... Read More

This Wrox Blox provides a look into how to build and use custom ASP.NET httpHandlers to easily make advanced ASP.NET web sites. Learn fundamental concepts on what custom handlers are and how to use them. This Wrox Blox provides the opportunity to examine several real-world examples of custom httpHandlers to see how they can be applied and how they are developed. The author starts by covering built-in httpHandlers and adding an httpHandler to an ASP ... Read More

In this Wrox Blox, you'll see the code and layers used to add an ASP.NET blog to your site. After working through the blog design and installation, you'll also get a chance to modify the blog application further using a three-layer n-tier design. The three layers are the presentation layer, business layer, and data access layer. A blog is a great addition to any ASP.NET content site. Thanks to ASP.NET 2.0, it’s easy to make the data access layer work ... Read More

This Wrox Blox explains a custom design for integrating Microsoft CRM 4.0 with external applications. The author helps readers understand Microsoft CRM’s integration capabilities and design approach for integrating Microsoft CRM with other applications and implementing it by integrating Microsoft CRM with WSS Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (WSS).   The Wrox Blox begins with an explanation of the requirements for a generic design pattern and discusses ... Read More