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Monday, July 12, 2010
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  I bought ASP.NET MVC 2 in Action as a PDF yesterday and read all the updated chapters on my iPad and much of the previous information from the first edition of the book. I just can't put these types of books down :)
I really like this book as it has a professional tone that seeks not only to teach you ASP.NET MVC but how to use it adhering to sound software development principles. As I mentioned in my review of the first edition, in my humble opinion the goal of ASP.NET MVC in Action is not to teach you every little thing about ASP.NET MVC, but to teach you patterns and principles to help you take your ASP.NET MVC applications to the next level - a more maintainable and sustainable level complete with good separation of concerns, testability, and other professional software development concerns.
Some of the non-ASP.NET MVC content of the first edition was actually removed to make way for a number of the new features in ASP.NET MVC 2 like Areas, Display and Editor Templates, Strongly-Typed View Helpers, Client-Side Validation, Value Providers, and other features in MVC 2. Because a couple of the authors are involved in the MvcContrib Project, there is also coverage of integrating MvcContrib into your applications like Portable Areas, Grid, etc. And for those of you who prefer NHibernate, AutoMapper, and Domain-Driven Design concepts in your development, you will appreciate the coverage of those subjects as well.
If you seek a different flavor in your ASP.NET MVC books that focus on web development concepts and practices to build more maintainable applications, I think you will get a lot out of this book. If you are interested in the open-source community and feel comfortable about trying technologies like MvcContrib, AutoMapper, Fluent NHibernate, NHibernate, and other such solutions, I think you will definitely appreciate the book.
If you really just want the details of ASP.NET MVC and are not interested in anything but the Microsoft Stack and care little for software development practices that focus on separations of concerns and testability, you may want to hold out for another book, but I urge you to expand your comfort zone :)
You can buy ASP.NET MVC 2 in Action on Amazon.
Hope this helps.
David Hayden
Related Posts:
 Although I have only scratched the surface of WebMatrix I felt comfortable with its existence as the right tool for a very particular job. My gut was that technically we could look at WebMatrix as a solution for simple forms-over-data web applications where the data is your application and you just need a pipe to get it back and forth between your datastore and web pages. Screw separation of concerns in these scenarios as it would just add friction and unnecessary abstractions and make the solution less maintainable. Just toss the data access and minimal code within the pages themselves as best as possible. As long as we learned from Classic ASP days that this type of structure can get really ugly, really fast as the complexity of the application evolves, we should be okay :)
From a Microsoft perspective the WebMatrix stack may get developers going to PHP for this type of development to come to ASP.NET and IIS. It will hopefully also get the remaining Classic ASP Developers to move to .NET as well.
This is great, but recently I read a blog post suggesting that WebMatrix is a good way for developers to ramp-up to more enterprise frameworks and tooling.
"WebMatrix is a stack and tool for folks just entering the ASP.NET development arena. The hope is WebMatrix will provide an easy on-ramp to the enterprise worthy frameworks for the those new to the party. WebMatrix is more concerned with you learning the fundamentals than allowing you to effectively separate the concerns of your application, unit test every aspect of your site or create an n-tier solution."
I agree that one can learn the fundamentals of ASP.NET using WebMatrix, but I doubt it will help with learning the fundamentals of enterprise web development and what it takes to move to an enterprise-worthy framework. In fact, development learned using WebMatrix may do more harm than good as a stepping stone to enterprise development.
Enterprise web development is all about creating maintainable and sustainable applications for which you must understand separation of concerns and other core software development principles that you won't be leveraging with WebMatrix. One can just read the Twitter streams of all the professional ASP.NET Developers during the WebMatrix announcement that it pretty much has no place in their toolbelt except for the possibility of the situation I mention above ( and as the shiny new toy we all love to play with ). The fact is, separation of concerns and other basic software development principles are crucial to professional enterprise web development and not learning them from the beginning can cause more pain later on as you try to unlearn all your “bad practices.“ Just ask me who is constantly unlearning old habits, all the Classic ASP developers who never could transition to .NET, and those ASP.NET Web Developers who still don't fully understand how to develop a maintainable web application. It is difficult to unlearn old techniques that were put in place while learning a skill.
My goal isn't to beat up WebMatrix as I can see a purpose for it, but let's not have developers thinking this is the best path for being a professional enterprise web developer. For those interested in Enterprise Web Development, I recommend using tools and techniques being used by the professionals that embody sound software development principles and focus on the methodologies, practices, and principles for turning out good solutions.
The WebMatrix technology stack is mainly about providing a suite of tools for more simple development needs - the right tool for the right job.
To all those just starting to learn web development I wish you the best of luck. Technology is changing faster than ever and it is easy to get distracted and not focus on skills that will sustain you in the long run. In general, you may want to focus on your software development skills first and then learning a particular envirornment for you to apply those skills. Sound software development skills will always stay with you, be in demand, and will allow you to adapt quickly to changes in technology.
David Hayden
Sunday, July 11, 2010
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  I don't know about other Macromedia Fans, but even after all these years I still have a difficult time using any other bitmap and vector graphics editing software other than Fireworks. I held onto my copy of Macromedia Studio MX 2004 for years hoping to never have to update to the Adobe Software. Still annoyed after all these years that Macromedia sold out to Adobe, I finally broke down and purchased Adobe Fireworks CS5.
Although I also own Adobe Photoshop, if you are doing graphics for mainly the web and not a high-end web designer or graphics designer, I personally would look at Adobe Fireworks before trying Adobe Photoshop. This has nothing to do with money, but workflow and productivity. I find the Fireworks UI much more intuitive and easy to navigate for most web graphics design needs.
As much as I tried to use the very popular and free, Paint.net, which I would recommend for people for general graphics editing, I have a difficult time navigating its interface and being productive. If you haven't spent years using Fireworks this may not be a problem for you.
An article on SmashingMagazine.com has some really interesting comments regarding Adobe Photoshop vs. Fireworks. Although I believe the two products serve two different types of needs, the comments have some really good insight that I overall agree with in terms of the usability of Fireworks for general web graphics needs. Check it out here.
A pretty nice description of Adobe Fireworks CS5 on Amazon, too.
David Hayden
I have used the Telerik Extensions for ASP.NET MVC on a couple of small projects and they are quite convenient out of the box. The most useful extension has got to be the Grid Control, which allows you to very easily place a grid in your MVC Web Application complete with paging, filtering, sorting, etc. along with the ability to handle both server-side and client-side templates. The fact that the ASP.NET MVC Extensions leverage jQuery, come with a few skins, and have support for Telerik's CDN is awesome, too!
In Telerik's Q2 2010 update, which should be here very soon, we will see the beta of a basic HTML Editor with the ability to do formatting, bullets, hyperlinks, etc. A couple other MVC “Controls“ I am excited to see are mentioned on their blog:
“The other Extensions that will debut in our MVC package are the Window, featuring various built-in behaviors—animations, maximize/restore, resize, refresh and drag capabilities—and the ComboBox suite. The ComboBox will actually encompass three Extensions–AutoComplete, DropDownList and ComboBox. You can choose between the three depending on your application scenario.“
Pretty excited to see these new ASP.NET MVC Extensions in the Q2 Update. You can check out the extensions on the Telerik Website.
David Hayden
Filed: .NET Developer Tools and Components
Saturday, July 10, 2010
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  Pro ASP.NET MVC 2 Framework was just released by Apress and I should have my copy by the middle of next week. I am really looking forward to the second edition of this book as I found the first edition excellent ( Pro ASP.NET MVC Framework Book Review ).
You can expect a review of the book within a week or two :)
Although a bit dated now that we should be seeing updated versions of MVC Books for ASP.NET MVC 2, you can also check out my thoughts on choosing a book on the ASP.NET MVC Framework.
David Hayden
 Safari 5 was released during Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference ( WWDC ) and boasts some really nice developer tools, fantastic support for HTML 5 and CSS 3, ability to host extensions, and is really, really fast. I also love the Readability Feature which allows reading online tutorials and articles so much more enjoyable. You can get a comprehensive list of the features in Safari 5 on the Apple website.
In terms of Safari 5 Extensions, developing them couldn't be easier as they are just HTML, CSS, and Javascript. You can develop them right in Safari using the Safari 5 Developer Tools. If you want to deploy them so others can use the extensions, you will need to join the FREE Safari Developer Program and get your own certificate to sign the extension. This keeps others from maliciously hacking your extension and also proves it comes from you. In the near future Apple will have an Extensions Gallery for developers to upload their extensions and share with all Safari 5 Users.
I am really looking forward to sharing Safari Extensions with other users. For more information on developing Safari 5 Extensions, check out Apple's Safari Extensions Developer Guide. If you don't have Safari 5, download it now.
David Hayden
Related Posts: Firefox 4 Beta - More CSS 3 and HTML 5 Features
 Firefox 4 Beta has been released with much more support for CSS 3 and HTML 5, which makes the idea of using these emerging standards much more practical than I think web designers want people to think.
The Firefox 4 Beta will support features, like:
- WebSockets - Essentially provides a full-duplex communications channel allowing real-time interactions like gaming, chatting, etc.
- Indexed DB - Store application data locally for running web applications while offline
- HTML 5 Support - Audio, Video, etc.
- CSS 3 Transitions, etc.
Safari and Chrome already have great support for HTML 5 and CSS 3. Quite frankly I never install Flash so I won't miss it from the Internet.
Learn more about Firefox 4 Beta.
Related:
Thursday, July 08, 2010
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One of the best things about Visual Studio are the 3rd party tools and JetBrains makes some of the best.
Most people are familiar with ReSharper and love it for its refactoring, code analysis, and code navigation features. I have been using ReSharper since 1.0 and find it crucial for my development. For those of you running ReSharper 5, note there is a new maintenance release, 5.1, that was just made available and you can learn about here.
Along with ReSharper and dotTrace .NET Developer Tools, JetBrains has released a beta of dotCover, which is a code coverage tool for .NET and integrates with ReSharper. The description on the JetBrains website is as such:
“dotCover features include:
- Reporting statement-level coverage in .NET applications.
- Highlighting for uncovered code in Visual Studio.
- Detecting which tests cover a particular location in code.
- Integration with Visual Studio 2005, 2008 and 2010.
- Integration with ReSharper to show test coverage.“
With all the latest releases of several IDE's: PhpStorm, WebStorm, PyCharm, RubyMine, etc. as well as the awesome Visual Studio .NET Tools, one would think JetBrains would just release an IDE for .NET :)
Learn more about dotCover here.
David Hayden
Kudos to Microsoft for releasing SQL Server CE 4 CTP1, which is a free, lightweight, xcopy deployable, embedded database that is a part of the SQL Server family.
Right now you can find SQL Server Compact 4 as part of the WebMatrix Beta and later on it will be integrated in a updated release of Visual Studio 2010. You can download the CTP from Microsoft Downloads here or you can download it along with WebMatrix via the Web Platform Installer 3 Beta here.
For the full scoop on SQL Server Compact 4, you can check out Rob Tiffany's blog.
SQLite
I recommend you also look at SQLite, which I have been using for years and absolutely love. The SQLite Description pretty much says it all:
“SQLite is a software library that implements a self-contained, serverless, zero-configuration, transactional SQL database engine. SQLite is the most widely deployed SQL database engine in the world. The source code for SQLite is in the public domain.”
I also love the tagline: “Small. Fast. Reliable. Choose any three.”
If you are interested in SQL Server Compact Edition 4 and have never looked at SQLite, you owe it to yourself to look at SQLite!
Some SQLite resources worth looking into include:
And you'd be crazy not to download and use the Firefox SQLite Manager. Yep, that's right, administer SQLite databases from the comfort of your browser :)
David Hayden
Related Posts:
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
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For Web Developers interested in developing database-driven websites using the Microsoft Stack, you may be interested in a new web development tool by Microsoft, called WebMatrix.
WebMatrix is completely free and includes a pretty nice web development IDE and development environment that allows a developer to build database-driven websites using ASP.NET, the new ASP.NET Razor View Engine, the new IIS Developer Express lightweight web-server, and a new lightweight, file-based version of SQL Server, called SQL Server Compact Edition. It is a pretty tight 15MB download, unless you don't have the .NET 4 Framework, which makes it a 50MB Download. Currently WebMatrix is in beta and you can get the bits here.
If you are a PHP Developer and have been looking for a cost-effective and easy way to learn or begin developing .NET Websites for clients on Windows, WebMatrix is a nice way to jump into IIS and ASP.NET Development. In addition to downloading WebMatrix, you will probably want to check out numerous screencasts to help you learn more about it. Check out the WebMatrix Screencasts here.
David Hayden
Related Posts
Sunday, June 06, 2010
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Lots of efforts and discussion around Document Databases, like CouchDB and MongoDB, in the .NET Developer Community. When you really start to get involved in the technology and become a part of the discussions it really makes you think about why you are using a relational database, like SQL Server, and how you are using it.
I first started hearing about MongoDB from the guys over at TekPub. They use Rails, MongoDB, MongoMapper, and MySQL, all open source technologies, as the technological basis for their wonderful business. In fact, they switched from ASP.NET MVC and SQL Server because not only did the open source technologies provide a better development story but saved them a bundle of money. You can read the InfoQ interview here which is quite fascinating and mentions a lot of technologies.
Just to show you how the Microsoft .NET Developer Community is embracing this technology, you can see a list of .NET Drivers for MongoDB. Note that they have LINQ Support :)
Then Oren came out with Raven DB, which is a document-database focused more from a .NET Perspective.
And then lately the European VAN has been having some interesting meetings on NoSQL. They had a general presentation on NoSQL and you can watch the video here. Recently they had a meeting on CouchDB, which was excellent. You can watch the CouchDB video here. And tomorrow, Monday June 7, the European VAN has a presentation on MongoDB.
Also worth mentioning is a free online book on CouchDB, CouchDB: The Definitive Guide, which has some really interesting thoughts on the technology in general. Read the Introduction Section just to get a feel for the technology.
I am personally starting to question the use of SQL Server, and relational databases, in my projects. In many cases, a relational database does not have to play as important a role in my web applications. A document database, like MongoDB or CouchDB, may better suit my needs and increase the performance and scalability wonderfully. A relational database, and a free one, can take a smaller role for simple tasks where it makes sense.
Lots of wonderful open-source software ( OSS ). I realize more and more how easy and inexpensive it is to start a business and create solutions for clients using OSS.
David Hayden
Mindscape just released an update to their awesome O/R Mapper, LightSpeed 3.1, which includes support for Visual Studio 2010!
In addition to support for Visual Studio 2010, there are some additional enhancements, including:
- Linked Models for Better Large Model Organization
- Class Table Inheritance
- Support for invoking SQLCLR server-side methods via LINQ. This means you can now do SQL Server 2008 spatial queries using LightSpeed!
- Reminder notes in the designer so you can include comments and links on the design surface.
- A T4 directive processor so that you can write your own T4 templates against LightSpeed designer models.
- Lots of improvements to group and join support.
Learn more about LightSpeed 3.1 here. For a quick comparison to a few other O/R Mappers, check out the LightSpeed comparison page.
Filed: O/R Mappers
David Hayden
JetBrains has released both their WebStorm and PhpStorm Web Developer IDE's. WebStorm is a general purpose web developer IDE for developing website and web applications using HTML, JavaScript, CSS, etc., while PhpStorm is focused on developers building websites with PHP. Where applicable, you get all the wonderful benefits of code completion, debugging, custom templates, refactoring, unit test runner, version control integration, and other benefits of professional web development.
Even better is that both WebStorm and PhpStorm are available for Windows, MAC OS X, and Linux.
You can download a free 45 day trial of WebStorm and PhpStorm from the JetBrains Website.
David Hayden
Related Posts:
Monday, May 31, 2010
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  I finished reading Visual C# 2010 Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach at the pool today and wanted to write a quick book review while the book is still fresh in my mind. Note that I received a copy of this book for free from Apress because I had purchased Visual C# 2005 Recipes from Apress in the past and really enjoyed that version of the book.
In general, I am a big fan of cookbook-style books that provide real-world, bite-sized problems and solutions. First, these books are a great way to learn new language and .NET Framework features that you may be completely unaware of and possibly never normally come across. Second, because these books are pretty much all about code, typically the code is of a higher quality than you will find in non-recipe books that are more often than not just conveying a concept with code that is not useful in the real-world. Third, these books rarely get boring as the problem-solution changes every few minutes and you can easily jump around from problem-to-problem to find an interesting subject based on your mood.
That being said, I really enjoyed Visual C# 2010 Recipes just like I did the previous version of the book. The book is filled with all kinds of recipes broken down by larger categories like Threads and Synchronization, Files and Directories, Database Access, Networking, Windows, WPF, LINQ, Common Patterns, etc. The book weighs in at over 900 pages ( 300 more pages than the older version ) and pretty much all of it is filled with code. Typically these books pay for themselves pretty quickly as you will run across several of the problems in your daily work and can easily find an answer without spending hours searching on the Internet and filtering through questionable code. Much of this code ends up in your personal libraries to be used over and over again which makes them even more valuable. If you don't have a book like this on your bookshelf, I recommend checking out the list of recipes on Amazon by clicking the book's cover on Amazon to look inside. That way you can see the list of recipes and see if any catch your eye.
It is worth mentioning that the title may be a little misleading as one might think all the samples are specific to C# 4, .NET Framework 4, and Visual Studio 2010. This is not the case. The book has been updated from its 2005 Version to include not only the previous features that are still relevant today, but a lot of features based on C# 3 and 4 as well as the .NET Framework 3.5 and 4. Alhough the book is not a replacement for a good C# or .NET Framework book with its detailed analysis of new features, the book certainly does complement those books by providing a quick overview and solution to the most common problems that those features solve.
Again, I enjoy these types of books as they always teach me something new and come in very handy during day-to-day development. I probably wouldn't have purchased this book only because I have the previous version as well as a few others just like it and some recent language and .NET Framework books. That being said, this book is good and very useful if you don't have others like it. As I mentioned, I recommend checking out the list of recipes on Amazon first before buying just to make sure the problems and their solutions are of interest.
Visual C# 2010 Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach on Amazon.
Hope this helps.
David Hayden
You will have a difficult, if not impossible, time finding developers more interested in code quality and code metrics than Patrick Smacchia.
Patrick is the developer of the ever-so-popular NDepend that helps developers understand and measure the quality of their .NET Applications through various code metrics and dependency graphs. The beauty of NDepend is the ability to query information about your application using the Code Query Language ( CQL ), which feels like LINQ or any other query language. With NDepend v3 you get Visual Studio 2010 support as well as a number of new features.
If you are interested in better understanding the quality and behavior of your .NET Application, I highly recommend you visit the NDepend Website and check out the features as well as download the trial. Then, I would go to Patrick's blog where he has several examples of how to use NDepend to analyze various frameworks and applications. If you are responsible for the overall quality of your applications ( and who isn't ), I am not sure how you can achieve the role without a tool like NDepend.
I demonstrated NDepend at the Tampa ASP.NET MVC Developer Group and will probably do the same at an upcoming Sarasota Web Developer Group. If you are new to NDepend and measuring code quality, it is worth your time to look at NDepend.
Filed: .NET Developer Tools
David Hayden
If you haven't looked at the LLBLGen Pro O/R Mapper in awhile, I highly recommend you take another peek as LLBLGen Pro version 3 has quite a bit more features than earlier versions.
First, LLBLGen Pro supports a number of O/R Mappers in addition to its own framework:
- LINQ To SQL,
- Entity Framework, and
- NHibernate
Second, LLBLGen Pro now supports model-first driven development in addition to database-driven development that it has in the past.
The folks at Solutions Design have done an incredible amount of work on the visual designer if you prefer to visually work with your domain model to help improve productivity and reduce mistakes.
You can download a free 30 day trial of LLBLGen Pro on their website.
Also, Frans Bouma has a number of blog posts about why you will want to consider LLBLGen Pro for working with Entity Framework v4 over the built-in Visual Studio Designer. Check out his videos and blog posts for some good information.
We'll be showing off LLBLGen Pro v3 at an upcoming Sarasota Web Developer Group Meeting.
Filed: O/R Mappers, Code Generation
David Hayden
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
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If you plan on downloading RIA Services 1.0 you will need the Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010.
Per Microsoft Downloads:
Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010 includes several features:
- Support for targeting Silverlight 4 in the Silverlight designer and project system
- RIA Services application templates and libraries
- Support for Silverlight 4 elevated trust and out-of-browser applications and other new Silverlight 4 features, including
- Working with Implicit Styles
- Go To Value Definition lets you directly get to styles from your page
- Style Intellisense lets you easily modify styles
- Working with Data Source Window outputs
- Drag and drop from the data source window and see the data can, from which you can easily select and modify your data source information
- Add, remove, and re-sort DSW outputs using the Grid Row and Column context menu
- Move your controls around the form and change alignments in bulk using the margin editor
- Add sample data to see item templates and bindings at design time
- Working with Silverlight 4 Out-of-browser applications
- Automatically launch and debug your OOB app from inside the IDE
- Specify XAP signing for trusted OOB apps
- Set the OOB window characteristics
You can download Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010 here.
David Hayden
Microsoft released RIA Services 1.0 for Silverlight 4 and Visual Studio 2010.
Per Microsoft: “Microsoft WCF RIA Services simplifies the traditional n-tier application pattern by bringing together the ASP.NET and Silverlight platforms. RIA Services provides a pattern to write application logic that runs on the mid-tier and controls access to data for queries, changes and custom operations. It also provides end-to-end support for common tasks such as data validation, authentication and roles by integrating with Silverlight components on the client and ASP.NET on the mid-tier.“
You can download RIA Service 1.0 here.
Get started with RIA Services by watching some videos, etc. here.
David Hayden
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
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I will be presenting What's New in Enterprise Library 5 and Unity 2 at the IASA Tampa Meeting on Thursday, May 27, 2010 at 6:30pm.
I will be demonstrating a number of the new features in Enterprise Library 5 and Unity 2 and show how to leverage them in your applications. We will talk everything from:
- Enterprise Library 5 Configuration Editor
- Fluent Configuration
- Unity, IServiceLocator, and EnterpriseLibraryContainer
- Data Access Application Block and new Database Accessors
- Validation Application Block
- Logging Application Block
- Dependency Injection and Inversion of Control
- Proven Practices
- etc...
Although we will be focusing on new features, those new to Enterprise Library should get a pretty good crash course in the various application blocks and Unity.
See you there!!!
David Hayden
Related: Presenting Enterprise Library 5 in Sarasota Florida
Thursday, May 06, 2010
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Just a quick note that Unity 2 and Unity 2 for Silverlight have been released on Microsoft Downloads for those wanting to download Unity 2 separately from Enterprise Library 5.
Thank you to those developers who attended my Enterprise Library 5 and Unity 2 presentation last night! I know we took a bit more deep dive than you may have bargained for, but that's just how I roll :)
Next up. A hardcore presentation on ASP.NET MVC and AJAX at the Sarasota Web Developer Group!!
David Hayden
  I realize I have been talking quite a bit about iPhone and iPad development recently as well as mentioning new books being released to help developers learn how to program for the iPhone and the iPad. I have been reading every new book I can find to give me insight on the art of iPhone and iPad Development as well as working 3 hours each night on my own time learning the craft. Last night I successfully integrated Core Data into an existing iPhone application which was a pretty wonderful feeling of accomplishment that I can now easily apply to other applications.
Wanted to mention a new book by Apress, called Beginning iPhone Games Development, for those developers who are more interested in developing games than applications. I have it on my list of books to buy, but right now I am reading a handful of other books that are focused more on Objective-C, Xcode, Interface Builder, and iPhone Application Development. Still, the iPhone and iPad are amazing game platforms as I spend endless time playing Plants vs. Zombies over and over again with my kids.
By far the cheapest place to get books these days is on Amazon, so if you are interested in learning about iPhone Games Development, check out the book. It is new so I have to assume it has all the latest and greatest tips and techniques on creating iPhone Games using the most recent iPhone SDK.
David Hayden
Friday, April 30, 2010
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  A new book on Cocoa Programming was just released, called Cocoa Programming: A Quick-Start Guide for Developers.
This book is targeted to a developer audience that is already familiar with OOP and software development and just needs to get up and running quickly on Cocoa, Xcode, and Interface Builder. I suspect I will be buying this book within the week if not today :) It is always nice to get a few books, even on the same subject, as authors have different writing styles and examples that may help clarify a subject or speak to you more than others.
If you are not familiar with programming at all, you may want to start with Beginning Mac Programming, which I have been reading and enjoying but indeed covers a lot of basic programming skills that I have already aquired over the years. Still, it is nice to hear those basics from time-to-time because often we get so wrapped up in a particular language's syntax that we often forget to focus on the fundamentals to help solve problems.
Once I get a bit more confident at Xcode, Interface Builder, Objective-C, and Cocoa I hope to be blogging a great deal about Cocoa Programming and iPhone and iPad Development. Shouldn't be much longer as I am studying it nightly and my years of OOP, C#, and web experience are pushing me along at a quick pace.
Check out the Cocoa Programming book if you are a developer learning these new skills as well. It's hot off the press.
David Hayden
Thursday, April 29, 2010
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Next week I will be giving a presentation at the Sarasota .NET Developer Group on Enterprise Library 5 and Unity 2 on Wednesday, May 5 at 6pm at the Sarasota Community Foundation. We will be discussing the new features in Enterprise Library 5 and Unity 2 and what it takes to migrate your applications that use Enteprise Library 4.1 to Enterprise Library 5.
If you did not hear about the new release of Enterprise Library 5, here are a couple of resources from Patterns & Practices Guidance:
You can find a few of my Enterprise Library 5 Examples and Unity 2 Examples on my other blog.
Shortly after that I will be presenting ASP.NET MVC and AJAX at the Sarasota Web Developer Group!
See you on Wednesday!!
David Hayden
The Sarasota Web Developer Group will be discussing ASP.NET MVC and AJAX on Tuesday, May 18.
The event will be broken into 3 distinct topics to help you create a rich user experience in your ASP.NET MVC Web Applications using AJAX:
- ASP.NET MVC AjaxHelpers - A set of helpers built into ASP.NET MVC to help you use ASP.NET AJAX to ajaxify your web applications.
- Telerik Extensions for ASP.NET MVC - A set of extensions for ASP.NET MVC that provide a Calendar, DatePicker, Grid, Menu, PanelBar, TabStrip and other UI components for your ASP.NET MVC web applications.
- ASP.NET MVC with jQuery and jQuery UI - Using jQuery and jQuery UI to give your ASP.NET MVC Web Applications a bit of polish.
Pizza and beverages are provided as well as lots of nice giveaways.
Registration link and details can be found at ASP.NET MVC and AJAX Presentation - May Sarasota Web Meeting!
See you there!!!!
David Hayden
Sunday, April 25, 2010
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Very, very excited about the next meeting for the Suncoast iPhone App Developers Group Meeting on Introduction to Views and ViewControllers.
If you are new to iPhone and iPad Development as well as Xcode, Interface Builder, Objective-C, etc., this is a great time to see a beginner presentation on the very foundation of iPhone Development with regards to MVC ( model-view-controller) development.
As I have mentioned previously, I have been spending some late nights reading Beginning Mac Programming as well as iPhone and iPad in Action learning the basics of Xcode, Interface Builder, Objective-C, Cocoa, etc. for developing on the iPhone and iPad. To my delightful surprise, I find it pretty easy to move to iPhone development given my years of experience developing with C# and OOP in .NET as well as my two solid years of developing with the ASP.NET MVC Framework.
If you are interested in learning what I am sure will be tips and tricks on iPhone and iPad development, be sure to attend the next Suncoast iPhone App Developers Group Meeting that will discuss beginner level material that is fundamental and important to iPhone Development: Views and ViewControllers.
See you there!
David Hayden
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