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Thursday, March 18, 2010
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Microsoft officially released the IIS 7 URL Rewriter Module for using SEO friendly URL's in your websites. This is something that has been in beta for awhile, but now you can download the RTM via the Web Platform Installer on Windows 7 or Windows 2008 Server.
If you are maintaining a legacy ASP.NET Web Forms application, the IIS 7 URL Rewriter may be just the thing for creating more search engine friendly URL's and having them mapped to the older, less search engine friendly query parameter syntax used by your legacy web application. This is certainly a good transition solution if you eventually want the legacy web application to use the new URL Routing Module that shipped as a part of ASP.NET 3.5 SP1 and ASP.NET MVC Web Applications have enjoyed for the past year.
The idea is that the new RESTful routing syntax will help with search engine optimization as well as help your customers remember the URL's of their favorite pages on your website. After you install and make more search engine friendly URL's for your ASP.NET website with the URL Rewriter Module you can point the new IIS SEO Toolkit at your website and analyze it for other seo problems.
Again, both the URL Rewriter Module and IIS SEO Toolkit are installed via the Web Platform Installer, so install it now :)
You can learn more about the IIS 7 URL Rewriter Module here.
David Hayden
Filed: Search Engine Optimization Tools
Search Engine Optimization Tutorials
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
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At Mix, Microsoft showed off a number of Windows Phone Demos and announced the Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools CTP.
The Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP includes the following
- Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone CTP
- Windows Phone Emulator CTP
- Silverlight for Windows Phone CTP
- XNA 4.0 Game Studio CTP
You can download the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP here.
Once you have the Windows Phone Developer Tools installed you might want to check out the Windows Phone 7 Series Developer Training Kit on Channel 9 here. There are currently 3 sections in the course:
- Getting Started with Windows Phone
- Silverlight for Windows Phone
- XNA Framework 4.0 for Windows Phones
If you plan to be a Windows Phone Developer, make sure you check out the Windows Phone 7 Developer Portal for resources on how to develop for the Windows Phone here.
Hope this helps.
David Hayden
The Microsoft Patterns & Practices Team released the Enterprise Library 5 and Unity 2 Beta 2 downloads. These are the last releases of Enterprise Library 5 and Unity 2 before they are released as RTM right after the release of Visual Studio 2010:
- Enterprise Library 5 Beta 2: Download here.
- Unity 2 Beta 2: Download here.
Just a couple of things worth noting. The Enterprise Library 5 Configuration Editor is now integrated with Visual Studio 2008, and due to time constraints, Unity configuration has been removed from the EntLib 5 Configuration Editor and will be added later after Enterprise Library 5 ships.
You can check out a few of my Enterprise Library 5 and Unity 2 Tutorials to get started.
Filed: Patterns & Practices
David Hayden
Enterprise Library 5 DAAB Tutorials
Sunday, March 14, 2010
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Filed: Microsoft .NET Developer Tools
I have talked about the Web Platform Installer in passing as a way to install various applications, IIS 7, SQL Server 2008 Express, and various other framework, database, and web related technologies on your desktop and web servers.
Although I love the idea of the Web Platform Installer, the reality is that it is almost impossible to download the various applications and tools separately without using it. If all I want to download and install is SQL Server 2008 Express SP2, for example, I shouldn't have to install the Web Platform Installer. Albeit you can download SQL Server 2008 Express separately, it is not and easy thing to find anymore as all links point to the Web Platform Installer. This is somewhat annoying, causing me to have mixed feelings about the Web Platform Installer.
That being said, in the past week I needed to set-up and configure two new Windows 2008, IIS 7 Web Servers as well as a new Windows 7 Desktop Machine from scratch. This is when the Web Platform Installer absolutely shines, because you can easily install a number of technologies and software very quickly. Here are a few:
- IIS 7
- IIS 7 FTP Publishing Service
- ASP.NET
- ASP.NET MVC 2
- Classic ASP
- PHP
- Various .NET Extensibility, ISAPI Extensions and Filters, etc.
- SQL Server 2008 Express SP2
- IIS SEO Toolkit
- WordPress
- etc...
Notice I mentioned ASP.NET MVC 2 above. This showed up on the Web Platform Installer the very day it was released, making sure developers get the latest and greatest tools as they are made available.
If you are not using the Web Platform Installer, you really should be. You can download it here.
David Hayden
Sarasota Web Development
If you haven't upgraded to ASP.NET MVC 2 RTM for Visual Studio 2008, you need to download ASP.NET MVC 2 RTM directly or through the Web Platform Installer.
If you are also using the Spark View Engine with ASP.NET MVC, you can also download the latest binaries of the Spark View Engine which have been compiled against ASP.NET MVC 2 RTM.
You can download Spark View Engine 1.1 for ASP.NET MVC 2 RTM here.
For screencasts and tutorials on the Spark View Engine with ASP.NET MVC 2, check out the official Spark View Engine website.
Hope this helps.
David Hayden
ASP.NET MVC 2 Tutorials and Related Posts
Friday, March 12, 2010
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In addition to downloading the ASP.NET MVC 2 RTM, you can also download the ASP.NET MVC 2 source code and futures assembly here. This is Visual Studio 2008 only.
ASP.NET MVC 2 for Visual Studio 2010 will be released in April as a part of Visual Studio 2010.
Hope this helps.
David Hayden
ASP.NET MVC 2 Tutorials and Training
Thursday, March 11, 2010
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Good news today. Microsoft released ASP.NET MVC RTM for Visual Studio 2008.
You can download ASP.NET MVC 2 here.
Check out my index of ASP.NET MVC 2 Tutorials.
Hang out with the Sarasota Web Developer Group as we learn ASP.NET MVC 2 from scatch.
David Hayden
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
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Although I spend the majority of my day developing ASP.NET MVC Websites in Visual Studio, I can't help but spend a few hours each evening doing Rails, PHP, etc. on the Mac.
Normally you will find me developing on the Mac using Espresso and RubyMine, but today I got a licensed copy of RapidWeaver, which is a web design and development tool for the Mac. Amazingly enough, RapidWeaver is built by the same company that develops LittleSnapper, one of my favorite tools for snapping screen images on the Mac.
I played with RapidWeaver for about an hour creating a blog using the Blog Plugin. Developing a blog using RapidWeaver is an interesting alternative to installing blog software on our website. It has all the basic blog features, such as categories, tags, permalinks, summaries, etc. You also have the ability to quickly change the theme of the blog by selecting a built-in template. After about an hour I got the hang of developing my own blog using RapidWeaver as well as adding a homepage for the website and a PHP-driven contact page. Another couple of hours and one can probably learn how to customize the sidebar, inject custom HTML, and customize the styles.
If you are looking to build a simple website or blog on the Mac, you might want to download a trial of RapidWeaver. It might give you the biggest bang for your buck given its built-in templates and blog plugin that shelter you from digging too deeply into HTML, CSS, etc.
Learn more about RapidWeaver here.
David Hayden
Mac Web Development Posts
Monday, March 08, 2010
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You have to love the fact that the ASP.NET MVC Framework is so extensible you can create your own view engines. If you don't like the default Web Forms View Engine, you have your pick of several view engines such as:
- Brail
- NDjango
- NHaml
- NVelocity
- SharpTiles
- Spark
- StringTemplate
- XSLT
and now Sharpy ( too name a few ).
I, personally, use Spark unless the client prefers the Web Forms View Engine, but I guarantee there are developers who love each and every view engine listed above and can tell you a hundred reasons why they like their view engine the best!
Sharpy is interesting because it uses MEF to allow developers to implement their own functions and modifiers. And, Sharpy doesn't allow you to use HTML Helpers or Extension Methods. Sounds crazy, but the developer wanted to create an MVC View Engine that allowed web designers and developers to better collaborate. For better collaboration in the view he thought it was best to keep the number of abstractions and code in the view to as little as possible. Makes sense :)
If you are a previous PHP developer familiar with Smarty and agree with the restrictions of not using HTML Helpers and Extension Methods in the view, take a look at Sharpy here.
David Hayden
Related Posts:
Filed: Web Developer IDE's and Tools
Awhile back I mentioned how JetBrains has been releasing several Web Development IDE's for those web developers developing in HTML, PHP, Python, and Rails.
- Rails Developers: RubyMine
- PHP Developers: PhpStorm
- Python Developers: PyCharm
- Html Developers: WebStorm
Originally the PHP and Html Web Developer IDE was called JetBrains Web IDE, but they recently branded them as PhpStorm and WebStorm.
I have been using RubyMine for all my Rails development with some TextMate here and there. I am currently learning Python, but have yet to use PyCharm. As for PHP Development, I really enjoy using Espresso on the Mac, but I think I will give PhpStorm and WebStorm another shot given the new enhancements and bug fixes that have come out recently.
If you are a PHP or Html Web Developer, you may want to give WebStorm and PhpStorm a shot. Learn more here.
We will be looking at a few of these tools at the Sarasota Web Developer Group as we expose developers to other tools and web development frameworks.
David Hayden
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
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Filed: Microsoft .NET Developer Tools
Google released a software development kit for YouTube that includes various Visual Studio 2008 solutions to help Microsoft .NET Developers:
- Learn the Simple Update Protocol
- Handle authentication from an ASP.NET Website
- Upload Video Files to YouTube
If you are a .NET Developer interested in integrating your website with YouTube, the YouTube SDK and Visual Studio 2008 sample code sounds like just the ticket.
Learn more here.
David Hayden
The next Sarasota Web Developer Group meeting is on Wednesday, March 24 at 6pm. You can get the full details as well as register at the following link:
I am hoping for another packed event as we dive into the following topics:
- Presentation 1: Build ASP.NET MVC Contact Manager from Scratch
- Tool Spotlight: Castle ActiveRecord, SQLite, and NHProf
- Presentation 2: Get RAD with DynamicData
If you are truly interested in learning ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Web Forms, and various .NET Developer Tools I hope to see you at the next Sarasota Web Developer Group Meeting.
You can get a good overview of what we talked about at the first meeting in case you're interested:
See you there!!!
Dave
Tagged: Florida Web Developer Events, Sarasota Florida
Sunday, February 21, 2010
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Enterprise Library 5 and Unity 2 are in Beta 1 and I attempted to give the Enterprise Library 5 Configuration Editor a bit of a spin configuring Unity 2 graphically. Up until now, the Enterprise Library GUI Configuration Editor has not supported Unity so this is the first time Enterprise Library Developers are seeing it.
Unfortunately, I was not able to get the Type Editor to load my assemblies to recognize my types for proper alias registration and typemapping. Everytime I attempted to load a file not in the GAC I received various errors about the EntLib 5 GUI Editor not being able to recognize the file, etc.
Anyway, my goal was just to see what the configuration looked like in the editor so I added the Unity Configuration Section, aliases and registrations for Unity by hand and below is the visual respresentation of the App.Config settings:
The new Enterprise Library 5 Editor is going to take some getting used to for sure. Shown above I added two aliases, IContactDAO and ContactDAO, as well as a type mapping between the two. I have been configuring Unity via XML and fluently for so long that I probably won't use the graphical editor, but for those of you just starting to learn Enterprise Library 5 and Unity 2 you will probably love the graphical editor.
I believe there are still a number of things that need to be ironed out in beta 1, but if you like to be on the cutting edge, you certainly may want to download Enterprise Library 5 and Unity 2 Beta 1 to give them a spin.
David Hayden
Enterprise Library 5 and Unity 2 Tutorials
Friday, February 19, 2010
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If you haven't tried out the IIS Search Engine Optimization Toolkit to analyze your websites for SEO opportunities it can be a worthwhile process.
I used the IIS SEO toolkit to analyze a legacy 10+ year old website on the Internet and the SEO Toolkit reported the following errors:
Anytime you see hundreds and thousands of warnings, errors, and performance comments in one of these site analysis reports it can freak you out a bit. Don't despair as the report really over exaggerates a problem that is not really that bad.
Search Engines are a Forgiving Bunch
Truth is, there are thousands of websites on the Internet that consist of incorrectly formed HTML, broken links, multiple redirects, poorly created titles and meta tags, missing header tags, non-conform to new standards, etc. and enjoy wonderful SEO. Now this isn't something I would brag about and ignore, but there is IMHO way too much hype and hysteria spread by various companies to get you to pay for their expensive SEO services.
Most of the websites on the Internet were built at a time when there were no sophisticated tools, knowledge, and standards we have today that these SEO Site Analysis tools use to analyze your website and recommend changes. If you run the IIS SEO Site Analysis Module against your website and see a huge number of violations as you see on the report above, don't take it personally and don't think your website stinks. Search engines are a pretty forgiving bunch and do a pretty darn good job indexing your website despite these problems. Many website owners with thousands of violations are enjoying great SEO Positioning.
Many Times IIS SEO Toolkit Violations are Easy to Fix
When you start analyzing the SEO violations you will notice that the same violation is actually “duplicated” because it comes from a common header, sidebar, footer or other area shared by many of the pages. Fixing one problem could actually knock off a hundred or more violations from the report.
This is especially true if you are using the same dynamic page to serve content across a number of different URL's. One can literally wipe out several thousand violations by closing an improperly closed div tag, for example, on a single dynamic page that serves up content for several thousand URL's.
Some IIS SEO Toolkit Violations Can Be Ignored
When I was analyzing another website I noticed some broken links that were valid and was wondering why they were indeed reported as broken. Turns out those websites happened to be down for some reason during the time of site analysis, but in general are typically up and running fine.
Some of the violations are more guidelines than anything and quite frankly aren't really going to hurt your SEO indexing and positioning. However, as guidelines, they are wortwhile considering as you add additional content going forward.
Conclusion
I think the IIS Search Engine Optimization Toolkit ( as well as other tools ) are indeed excellent at analyzing your website and helping you fix and notice errors. However, don't get too worked up if they throw a lot of violations and recommendations at you. Search engines are pretty forgiving and pretty smart at indexing your websites and many older and not-so-optimized websites enjoy wonder SEO positioning. Some problems can be fxed pretty easily and others are more of a guideline that you can quite frankly ignore for content done in the past.
That being said, the IIS SEO Toolkit gives you a really nice report and some guidelines that can help fix a lot of warnings and errors rather quickly to make sure your website is running at optimum search engine friendliness :)
Hope this helps.
David Hayden
Search Engine Optmization ( SEO ) Tutorials
ASP.NET and SessionState have been available for a long time. In April 2010 we are about to see ASP.NET 4.
For those of us who were with ASP.NET from the beginning, I remember hearing a lot more about proven practices regarding the use of sessionstate, especially the use and concerns of using in-process sessionstate that used the server's memory. For performance you can't really beat the use of local server memory to store session data. However there were always some proven practices regarding that strategy:
- Keep the data small.
- Keep session timeouts short to eliminate data associated with abandoned sessions.
- In-process sessionstate may have serious implications where scalability is critical due to limited memory resources and non-use in a web server farm.
- etc..
Problem is I never hear this preaching anymore and I wonder if such proven practices are making its way to the new ASP.NET web developers who come on the scene.
Case in point. I ran across a new web application that suffered from improper use of in-memory sessionstate. The website suffered from those very proven practices I mentioned above: 1) The amount of data being stored in session was ridiculously big, 2) Session timeouts were drastically increased for unknown reasons, and 3) The web application in question needed to be scalable as it would eventually be part of a server farm.
In the interim, I applied a temporary bandaid to use SqlServer for out-of-process sessionstate management while the true nature of the problem could be determined. Not a big deal in the end, but it worries me that maybe new developers aren't getting enough of the basics, and instead, are pummeled with all the new technology in the community. Heck, did I say new developers? I could use more about the basics as well as the basics seem to always be changing.
As an FYI, while implementing SQL Server SessionState Management, I ran across an interesting change in ASP.NET 4 that introduces compression when using out-of-process sessionstate management. One can have ASP.NET 4 compress the data to be stored by setting a quick configuration setting- compressionEnabled = true:
Obviously compressing and deflating the data is gonna tax your server's CPU and you need to keep this in mind, but in those instances where you are handling large amounts of data in sessionstate, compressing the data can help performance across the wire. Still, you might want to ask yourself exactly why you are storing so much data in sessionstate and what other proven practices you may be ignoring in your use of sessionstate.
Hope this helps,
David Hayden
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
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Next week the Sarasota Web Developer Group has their first meeting. This group is special. It will be dedicated to teaching web developers real-world, marketable skills in ASP.NET 4 and the ASP.NET MVC Framework from scratch. Each meeting builds upon one another, increasing the skills and confidence of its members every month. Regularly attending the meetings and doing the optional monthly homework will help you become a better web developer period :)
I will be presenting several interesting topics for the first meeting on Wednesday, Februrary 24, 2010 at 6pm at the Community Foundation of Sarasota:
- Topic 1: What's New in ASP.NET 4
- Topic 2: Introduction to ASP.NET MVC 2
- Tool Spotlight: Search Engine Optimization ( SEO ) Toolkit
If your ASP.NET web development skills are a bit rusty or you are interested in learning ASP.NET Web Development for the first time, this is the perfect group for you!
Register for the meeting so we have an accurate count for pizza.
I really look forward to seeing you there!
David Hayden
Sunday, February 14, 2010
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Filed: Web Developer Tools
By default, when you use Apple Safari the Develop Menu is not visible and you do not have the ability to use the web developer tools when browsing and developing websites. The web developer tools ( Web Inspector )in Safari are getting pretty decent with cool tools like:
- Elements - Inspect and view CSS and HTML Elements by navigating Document Object Model ( DOM )
- Resources - View browser request showing download times and sizes
- Scripts - Javascript Debugging, etc.
- Profiles - Javascript Profiler
- Databases - Manage Offline Databases
Enabling the Web Developer Tools in Safari is as easy as:
- Choosing Safari Menu Option
- Choosing Preferences...
- Choosing the Advanced Tab
- Enabling “Show Develop menu in menu bar“
Make sure the checkbox is checked as shown below:
Now that the Develop menu appears on your Apple Safari Menu bar you can go ahead and enable the Web Inspector, which will provide you some nice web developer tools while you are developing your websites.
Hope this helps.
David Hayden
  As I mentioned in several past articles, I quit the gym and started exercising at home. To my pleasure, I have lost 35 pounds since this same time last year and have been getting an excellent workout with a few pieces of home exercise equipment:
In addition to the above which I swear by, I have also been exercising with the Ab Wheel and Perfect Pushups. The perfect pushups I use mostly for traveling, but if you are on a budget and cannot afford a good set of dumbbells and bench, you can get a good chest workout just from pushups. The nice thing about the Perfect Pushups is that they definitely help take the pressure of your wrists. The Ab Wheel, which my wife purchased for me as a gift, has never really done much for my abs, but it is a really good workout for your shoulders, arms, and chest, which I am about to talk about now!
Shoulder, Arm and Chest Workout with Ab Wheel Roller
If you haven't read my Ab Wheel Review, I highly recommend you do so as it provides more background on the pros and cons of the Ab Wheel.
Although my wife purchased the Ab Wheel so that I may have a bit of variety in my ab workouts, the Ab Wheel never really strengthened my abs. I think this may be because I have been using the Ab Rocket almost daily for over a year to strengthen my abs and for the first time in my life my abs are strong with a noticeable six pack.
One of my concerns early on about the Ab Wheel was the noticeable pressure on my lower back. Interesting how after a few months of using the Ab Wheel every 2 to 3 days I no longer notice the pressure on my back. I think the Ab Wheel helped strengthen my core back muscle, which is really nice. Still, if you do start to use the Ab Wheel for home fitness, you indeed need to start slowly. Make small movements, don't go to exhaustion, breathe correctly, use it only every 3 days at first, etc. Allow your back to get stronger slowly or you risk the chance of hurting it.
Once you strengthen your back, however, and begin to expand your range of motion with the ab wheel, you will definitely start to get a good workout for your shoulders, arms, and chest. Those with weak abs will probably notice the Ab Wheel strengthening your abs as well, but like I said, my abs were already pretty strong so I didn't notice this first hand.
What I do notice, however, is an amazing arm, shoulder, and chest workout that offers really nice variety to the BowFlex Dumbbells. I do 4 sets of the Ab Wheel with anywhere from 30 - 50 repetitions in each set. My first time I am able to do 50+ repetitions and then slowly start to dwindle about 5 to 10 reps each set. I can tell you that my shoulders and triceps are especially burning after each set by the time I am done. As my arms start to weaken with each set my chest kicks in and starts to burn as well. It is a pretty intense workout with anywhere from 30 to 60 seconds between sets.
Conclusion
For $10, you can't beat a good Ab Wheel Roller for strengthening your arms, shoulders, and chest. Like I said, however, start slowly because it will definitely put some pressure on your back and I assume abs. The Ab Wheel is definitely an advanced workout, but by starting slowly and exercising consistently it is a great home workout at an afforable price. What I also love is that it takes almost no room. I stick it in my closet when not using it.
Check out the reviews on Amazon.
Hope this helps.
David Hayden
I have been steadily teaching my children computer programming using Scratch, which is a computer programming language from MIT that allows kids to learn programming while appreciating their creative outlets of games, art, and music. In my humble opinion Scratch is perfect for very young children and for children who have a very short attention span or really enjoy creating art, music, and interactive stories.
Another option for teaching programming to young children, little kids, and even adults is Small Basic, a programming language and environment modeled after the Basic language. Per the website:
“Small Basic helps beginners take the first step into the wonderful world of programming.
- Small Basic derives its inspiration from the original BASIC programming language, and is based on the Microsoft .NET platform. It is really small with just 15 keywords and uses minimal concepts to keep the barrier to entry as low as possible.
- The Small Basic development environment is simple, yet provides powerful modern environment features like Intellisense™ and instant context sensitive help.
- Small Basic allows third-party libraries to be plugged in with ease, making it possible for the community to extend the experience in fun and interesting ways.”
Small Basic has a nice graphics window for doing art work and games as well as the popular Turtle Graphics that is very popular for teaching young children. Although easy, Small Basic is definitely a bit more sophisticated compared to Scratch, so you may want to start with Scratch first.
Download Small Basic here.
Hope this helps.
David Hayden
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
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JetBrains is really churning out the IDE's lately. RubyMine is excellent for Rails Development. There is a version of Web IDE for PHP Development. And now, there is a public preview of PyCharm that is for Python Development with support for Django.
RubyMine for Rails Development is the one I use the most and I absolutely love it. Therefore, I suspect that Web IDE and PyCharm have to be pretty good for developing in PHP and Python, respectively. If you are the daring type, PyCharm is currently in public preview and you can give it a spin as well as give them feedback before it is officially released!
As so happens, I also got a new Python book today, The Quick Python Book . This is the second edition and hot off the press. Really looking forward to start reading it!
Hope this helps.
David Hayden
Monday, February 08, 2010
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Now is a good time to check out the new features of Unity 2 and Enterprise Library 5 before they are officially released around the same time as Visual Studio 2010.
For download links: Download Enterprise Library 5 and Unity 2 Beta 1
You can also check out my Unity 2 Tutorials and Enterprise Library 5 DAAB Tutorials if you are looking for stuff to play with.
David Hayden
Sunday, February 07, 2010
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I have been playing with PHP lately just to learn more about it. I can assure you that I am more dangerous than anything else with it. My web development framework of choice is the ASP.NET MVC Framework.
I will say, however, that my tinkering with PHP has led me to several MVC Frameworks based on PHP, like Zend, CodeIgniter, CakePHP, etc. It has been an eye opening experience to use other implementations of MVC other than the two I know quite well ( Rails and the ASP.NET MVC Framework ).
What I also like about these frameworks is that they can easily be developed on a Mac, which I also love as a development machine. It's not that I have a fondness for OS X over Windows 7. What I love is that I can run both operating systems on a Mac and quite easily develop in the framework / technology of my choice, whether it be Rails, PHP, ASP.NET MVC Framework, Webforms, etc. I can either run both OS's simultaneoulsy using VMware Fusion or Parallels or boot into a particular OS of my choice.
What also excites me about doing PHP Development on the Mac is that I finally get to use Espresso for PHP Development. You can certainly use TextMate, JetBrains Web IDE, etc. but I have always been wanting to use Espresso, which I purchased some time ago. I am not using Espresso to build professional PHP Web Applications, so I can't really comment on the pros and cons of its features ( other than the lack of built-in support for source control ), but what I do love about it is the clean and easy to navigate user interface.
Shown below is a snapshot of Espresso 1.1.1 while playing with the scaffolding features of the CodeIgniter PHP MVC Framework.
I don't plan to jump into the features of Espresso as you can easily get a tour on the MacRabbit website.
If Espresso is not quite your thing, I recommend checking out the new JetBrains Web IDE built specifically for PHP Development. JetBrains makes some really nice development tools. I use ReSharper, TeamCity, and RubyMine with great fondness. JetBrains Web IDE comes in flavors for Windows, Linux, and OS X. I have installed the beta of JetBrains Web IDE and plan to look at it in more detail myself.
Although I will stick with the ASP.NET MVC Framework for professional development, I do love to play with other development environments and frameworks like Rails, PHP, and who knows what is next. If you are interested in PHP Development on the Mac, I would certainly look into Espresso, TextMate, Coda and the JetBrains Web IDE for development.
Hope this helps.
David Hayden
Thursday, February 04, 2010
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I am trying to teach my children about computer programming at a young age since they always see Daddy developing professional web and mobile applications for a living. I honestly don't know where to start, but I do know that the process has to be fun and spark their creative juices.
As luck would have it I stumbled upon the Scratch Programming Language over at MIT that is absolutely perfect for introducing young children to the concepts of programming in a very fun and creative way. As the website mentions, using Scratch allows children to learn the basics of computer programming using their creativity and imagination to build interactive games and stories using art and music.
My children are abolutely crazy about Scratch, having built several games in the first two days after downloading it. As a developer it allows me to introduce my children to common concepts and programming language terminology like variables, looping, events, messaging, etc. that are used to build these wonderful games and stories. The kids enjoy embracing their love for music and art while building interactive games and stories for everyone in the family to enjoy. It is amazing to see them combine their love for music and art in a way to solve problems and entertain.
If you are like me and want to make the most of your young child's time on the computer, I highly recommend visiting the Scratch website. Scratch is a fantastic way to introduce your children to a computer education that embraces both left and right-brain thinking in a fun and imaginative way.
Hope this helps.
David Hayden
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
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Just like I did with Unity 2 Tutorials, I created a number of Enterprise Library 5 DAAB Tutorials that you may be interested in:
Some really interesting changes occuring with the new extension methods, ExecuteSprocAccessor and ExecuteSqlStringAccessor, on the Database Class.
Hope this helps.
David Hayden
Sunday, January 31, 2010
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Microsoft has an All-In-One Code Framework that has a lot of code samples for the Microsoft .NET Developer. Examples include:
- Entity Framework 4 Model First
- ASP.NET Examples to Import Excel Spreadsheet and Send Mail
- Silverlight Code Samples on Writeable Bitmap, Databinding, and Silverlight Storage
- WPF Animated Image and Data Paging Examples
- Visual Studio Example of Toolbars and Automation
- Windows Services
- Microsoft Office Samples for Automating Visio
- XML and Sample Libraries
- etc...
If you are interested in downloading several samples to help you with your ASP.NET, Silverlight, Entity Framework Development, the All-In-One Code Framework is probably worth a peek.
Learn more here.
David Hayden
Free Florida Web Developer Training
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