This Wrox Blox will help you create a simple RSS feed widget to run on your iPhone (or iPod Touch) using Dashcode. After a brief tour of Dashcode’s capabilities, you’ll get right to the task of creating the widget. You will choose a template, provide an RSS feed URL, set customizable attributes, change the UI of your widget, design a homescreen icon for your widget, test your widget and upload your code to a server. In just about an hour’s worth of ... 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

In this Wrox Blox, you will learn how to build a QuickStart blogging tool with CodeIgniter. The blogging tool will include an administrative dashboard that will allow users to create and manage posts and categories. If you’re a PHP developer, CodeIgniter will help you build Rails-like applications without learning a new language. Use MVC and agile technologies, model and schema for products, helpers and libraries, Ajax and Scriptaculous, to create ... 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 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

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

This Wrox Blox empowers developers to develop ASP.NET AJAX controls by giving them a look “under the hood” of AJAX controls. While this Wrox Blox focuses on Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5, developers should know that the concepts for creating custom controls in Visual Studio 2005 and .NET 2.0 with ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 are very similar. Visual Studio 2008 offers many improvements concerning JavaScript editing/debugging, and .NET 3.5 includes ASP.NET AJAX ... 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 teaches you how to add graphics to C# 2008 applications, explaining fundamental graphics techniques such as: drawing shapes with different colors and line styles; filling areas with colors, gradients, and patterns; drawing text that is properly aligned, sized, and clipped exactly where you want it; manipulating images and saving results in bitmap, JPEG, and other types of files. Also covered are instructions for how to greatly increase ... Read More

This Wrox Blox explores Service Orientated Architecture and the Enterprise Service Bus, focusing on how it can be implemented using Microsoft BizTalk Server. It explains the need for SOA Architecture in an enterprise business and looks at the key Business and IT Drivers in business, how they can interact, and where there are conflicts that SOA can help resolve.  Specifically, the author discusses Microsoft ESB Guidance and how, by using BizTalk 2006 ... Read More

This Wrox Blox gives developers a hands-on look at some of the commonly used AJAX Control Toolkit controls, focusing on the CollapsiblePanel, Accordion, Tabs, ModalPopup, TextboxWatermark, AutoComplete, and CascadingDropDown.  Developers also gain the tools they need to effectively use and understand the other controls found in the Toolkit. The starting point is an introduction to ASP.NET AJAX discussing the ASP.NET AJAX Extensions 1.0 and AJAX in ... Read More

This Wrox Blox provides two solutions for dynamic control survivability, including using the ASP.NET Session object to hold the dynamic controls, and accessing the page's Form objects before they are destroyed. Using ASP.NET 2.0 with C# and VB.NET, you will explore both solutions and see the best situations in which to use them. Many ASP .NET programmers require the use of dynamic, page-generated controls to provide a flexible user experience. However ... 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 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 explains touch input events and illustrates how to detect an orientation change, capture two-finger scrolling inputs, and simulate a drag-and-drop action when designing applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Web developers designing applications for Mobile Safari, the browser on iPhone and iPod Touch, are able to easily incorporate touch input event handling without writing any code at all. However, while page flicking and scrolling ... Read More