Entries Tagged 'IIS7' ↓

MIX is a Microsoft web development conference we hold in Las Vegas each year. 

MIX tends to be a pretty fun event, both because it covers cutting edge content (we used MIX07 to announce our Silverlight plans), and also because it tends to attract a really diverse set of attendees (including both those who use Microsoft technology today, and a large % of attendees who don't).  The conference structure includes a healthy blend of sessions and interactive panels, and the layout and organization is designed to facilitate great conversations.

This year's MIX is being held March 5th-7th in Las Vegas.  Ray Ozzie and I are both giving keynotes the first day of the event, and Steve Ballmer and Guy Kawasaki will be doing a keynote the second day of the event.

The conference (and especially my keynote) is going to cover a lot of new web technology.  Attendees will be able to attend sessions covering:

• IE 8
• IIS 7.0
• ASP.NET (including ASP.NET 3.5, ASP.NET AJAX, ASP.NET MVC, and ASP.NET Dynamic Data) 
• VS 2008 and Expression Studio
• WPF
• Silverlight 2
• And much more....

Channel 9 recently did an interview with me where I talked about some of these new technologies.  In Part 1 of the interview I talked about IIS7, and in Part 2 of the interview I talked about ASP.NET, WPF and Silverlight 2.

Register Soon Or You'll Miss Your Chance

MIX is held at a smaller venue then some of our larger events like TechEd and PDC.  This gives the conference a more intimate feel (which is fun).  It also means that it sells out each year, and once it is sold out it is really sold out. 

Last year I received about 50 emails from people begging for tickets after it was full, and many people even flew to the event hoping to somehow be let in at the door (only to be unfortunately told they couldn't get in).  Unfortunately because of size constraints (and fire marshal restrictions) once it is sold out there really are no more tickets to be had.  Even my own team members get turned away if they haven't registered in time.

This year's registration is filling up faster than any of the previous MIX conferences.  If you want to attend I highly recommend registering really soon to ensure you can go.  You can learn more about the event and register online here.

Hope to see some of you there - it is going to be fun....

Scott

ASP.NET

• Extending the GridView to Include Sort Arrows: Scott Mitchell has a nice article that describes how to add a visual indicator to the GridView control to indicate the current sort order on columns.

• Using ASP.NET 3.5's ListView and DataPager Controls: Sorting Data: Scott Mitchell continues his ListView control series with a good article on enabling sorting scenarios with the new ListView control.

• Building a Grouping Grid with the ListView and LinqDataSource Controls: Matt Berseth has an awesome post that shows off using the new ListView control and LinqDataSource controls to build a hierarchical grouping grid.  A post to bookmark.

• Using the ListView, DataPager and LinqDataSource Controls: Matt Berseth has a good tutorial post that shows off using these new controls to join data from two database tables using LINQ.

• Some ASP.NET 3.5 ListView Control Examples: Mike Ormond has a nice post that provides a number of samples that show how to use the new ASP.NET ListView control.  For even more ListView articles, check out my last link-listing post which pointed to a bunch of them.

• Large File Uploads in ASP.NET: Jon Galloway has a nice post that provides some good details on handing large file uploads using ASP.NET.

ASP.NET AJAX

• Four ASP.NET AJAX JavaScript UI Methods You Should Learn: Dave Ward has another great post in his series about ASP.NET AJAX's client-side JavaScript Helper Methods.

• Five Tab Themes Created for the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit: Matt Berseth posts some really cool themes created for the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit's Tab control. Very slick!

• CNN Style Scrolling Ticker with the Marquee Toolkit Control: Matt Berseth posts another great one that shows how to implement a scrolling marquee UI using the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit.

Visual Studio

• Did You Know?: Lisa Feigenbaum from the VB team has posted a really cool series of blog posts that talk about some of the new VS 2008 editor and IDE features.  Read Part 1: Intellisense Everywhere, Part 2: IntelliSense is now Transparent, Part 3: Ctrl+Tab to Navigate Windows, Part 4: What You Can Do with Debugger DataTips, and Part 5: VB IntelliSense now filters as you type.

• Web Server Settings for ASP.NET Web Application Projects can now be stored per user as well as per project: The VS Web Tools Team has a nice post that describes how you can now store web server settings per-user instead of per-project.  This is very useful for multi-developer scenarios (where you don't want to check-in these values into source control).

• Using Ctrl-Break to Stop VS Building: Steven Harman points out a cool tip/trick, which is that you can use the Ctrl-Break key within Visual Studio to kill the current compilation build.  A useful tip if you've accidentally kicked off a long build or get tired waiting for it to finish.

• Visual Studio 2008 Trouble Shooting Guide: If you run into any issues installing VS 2008, make sure to check out this blog post.  It details a bunch of common causes of failures, and how to fix them.

.NET

• Marshaling between Managed and Unmanaged Code: Yi Zhang and Xiaoying Guo from my team in Shanghai have written a great MSDN article that describes how to use the marshaling interop features of the CLR to call native code.  One of the tools they highlight is an awesome P/Invoke Interop Assistant application they built that makes it much, much easier to generate p/invoke interop signatures when calling native methods.  A must-have tool for anyone doing native/managed interop!

• .NET Framework 3.5 Poster: Brad Abrams posts about the cool new .NET Framework 3.5 posters now available for download (now in multiple file formats).

IIS

• Microsoft Web Deployment Tool Technical Preview 1: Yesterday the IIS team posted the first preview of a new Microsoft Web Deployment tool.  This tool works with both IIS6 and IIS7 and enables automated deployment, synchronization, and migrating of applications on web servers.  If you are looking for a great way to automate the deployment of your ASP.NET applications then this tool is definitely one to check out.  To learn more, read the walkthroughs at the bottom of this page (in particular the "Introduction to MS Deploy" one).  This tool is awesome and should make automated deployment much easier.

Hope this helps,

Scott

Here is the latest in my link-listing series.  Also check out my ASP.NET Tips, Tricks and Tutorials page for links to popular articles I've done myself in the past.

ASP.NET

• Using ASP.NET 3.5's ListView and DataPager Controls - Displaying Data with the ListView: Scott Mitchell from www.4guysfromrolla.com (and also the author of the excellent ASP.NET Data Tutorials) is starting a new series that covers using the new ASP.NET ListView control.  This is the first in the series and discuses how to display data.

• Using ASP.NET 3.5's ListView and DataPager Controls - Grouping Data with the ListView: This is the second article in Scott Mitchell's series.  In this article he discusses how to use the grouping feature of the ListView to separate rendered items into different grouping containers.

• Using the ListView Control in ASP.NET 3.5: Mustafa Basgun has also written some great articles that drill into the new ListView control further.  Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and his Locking ListView's Header and Footer Columns with CSS to learn more about it.

• BlogEngine.NET 1.3 Released: Mads Kristensen blogs about the new release of BlogEngine.NET.  This excellent ASP.NET open source blog engine keeps getting richer and richer.

• Gallery Server Pro - ASP.NET Open Source Media Application: Roger Martin writes about the features and architecture of his new Gallery Server Pro project.  It is an open source ASP.NET application that provides a rich way to share and manage photos, videos, and audio files over the web.

• Web Hosters Offering ASP.NET 3.5: Brad Abrams has a nice post that lists some great web hosting providers that are already offering ASP.NET and .NET 3.5 offerings.

ASP.NET AJAX

• Creating a Google Suggest Style Filter with the ASP.NET AJAX AutoComplete Control: Matt Berseth has another fantastic post that covers how to use the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit's AutoComplete control to get auto filtering support within a textbox.

• A Slider DataPager with Dynamic Tooltips: Matt Berseth posts yet another great post on how to enable a sweet AJAX tooltip navigation UI using ASP.NET AJAX.

• Using the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions History Support: Dino Esposito has a nice article that demonstrates how you can use the new "EnableHistory" feature on the <asp:scriptmanager> control to add named history points to the browser.  This enables browser forward/back button integration with ASP.NET AJAX applications.  Also read David Barkol's post about this feature here.

• ASP.NET AJAX History How Do I Video: To learn more about the new ASP.NET AJAX history support, watch this great 15 minute video from Bertrand Le Roy of the ASP.NET team.  He demonstrates how to AJAX enable an <asp:wizard> control, and then add history marker points to it.

• Script# Update: Nikhil Kothari recently posted an update to his awesome Script# framework, which allows you to compile C# into JavaScript.  Included within this update are project and file templates for VS 2008.  You can learn more about Script# here.

ASP.NET MVC

• Using ASP.NET MVC from Visual Web Developer Express 2008: Jason Whitehorn has published a nice project template that enables you to use the ASP.NET MVC framework with a web-site project in Visual Web Developer Express 2008.  We'll be adding both class library and web application project support to Visual Web Developer Express 2008 SP1 later this year - which will enable you to optionally use the MVC web application project templates with the free VWD Express as well.

• Accessing Server Controls from CodeBehind with ASP.NET MVC Views: David Hayden has a good post that discusses a workaround for a bug with the current ASP.NET MVC CTP view templates - which prevents you from coding against server controls in view template code behind classes.  You can right-click on the MVC view files and select "Convert to Web Application" to fix it.  Alternatively, you can download updated MVC Templates that Troy Goode recently posted here.  This issue will be fixed with the next MVC update.

Visual Studio

• Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Training Kit: Microsoft recently shipped a free training kit that you can download that contains tons of excellent material that will help you learn the new features of VS 2008 and .NET 3.5.  Mike Ormond has a nice blog post that discusses it here.

• Spell Checker Update 2.1: The web tools team has a bug fix and feature addition update to the free spell checking download you can use with VS 2005 and VS 2008.  You can also learn more about the spell checker features here.

• Tip/Trick: Start-Up Options and Instances of the ASP.NET Web Server in a Multi-Project Solution: The web tools team has a nice post that talks about ways you can customize the application startup options when you have multiple web projects within a single VS solution.

IIS 7.0

• Enhance your ASP.NET Applications with the Integrated IIS7 Pipeline: Mike Volodarsky from the IIS7 team has published a great MSDN article that talks about the awesome extensibility and customization options available for ASP.NET developers with IIS7.  You can learn even more about how to take advantage of these features from Shahram Khosravi's new Professional IIS7 and ASP.NET Integrated Programming book.

• IIS Manager Module to Scan for Assemblies Built in Debug Mode: Vijay from the IIS team has a nice post that shows off how he used the IIS7 admin tool extensibility to build a module that automatically scans deployed applications looking for assemblies that have been accidentally deployed in debug mode.

Hope this helps,

Scott