F9 Group Marketing and Technology Blog

Most web developers have a particular development environment on their computer.

The .NET development team at Microsoft has created a new .NET logo (shown above).  Their goal was to create a logo “that was in sync with the key values that we want .NET to stand for: consistency, robustness and great user experiences.  The result is a design we refer to as the ‘wave.’  The design is strong, simple and distinctive.  The suggestion of the letter ‘N’ in the design will become instantly recognizable over time as shorthand for the .NET brand name.”

Many objects in .NET are stored in a hierarchy.  For example: controls, files and folders, and anything you would normally display in a tree view.  There are many different algorithms for finding the root of a hierarchy.  Here is one of them: public MyObject GetRoot() {     // start with this as root     MyObject root = this;     // get the parent     MyObject parent = this.Parent;     // keep going until no more parents     while (parent != null)     {         // save the parent         root = parent;         // get the parent of the parent         parent = parent.Parent;     }     return root; } Sample Program Here is a simple console program that demonstrates this.  Note that the function to get the root is a method GetRoot() instead of a Root property.  Making it a method instead of a property implies that it must be calculated each time, similar to how the .NET Control class has a FindForm() method. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; namespace CSharp411 {     class Program     {         static void Main( string[] args )         {             MyObject a = new MyObject( “a” );             MyObject b = new MyObject( “b” );             MyObject c = new MyObject( “c” );             MyObject d = new MyObject( “d” );             a.AddChild( b );             b.AddChild( c );             c.AddChild( d );             Write( a );             Write( b );             Write( c );             Write( d );             Console.ReadLine();         }         static void Write( MyObject obj )         {             string objName = obj.Name;             MyObject parent = obj.Parent;             string parentName = parent == null ? “none” : parent.Name;             MyObject root = obj.GetRoot();             string rootName = root == null

ASP.NET’s forms-based authentication system in tandem with the Membership API and Login Web controls make it a cinch to create a user store, create user accounts, and allow visitors to log into the site. What’s more, with little effort it’s possible to define roles, associate user accounts with roles, and determine what functionality is available based on the currently logged in user’s role (see Part 2 ). Many ASP.NET sites that use Membership have an Admin role, and users in that role are granted certain functionality not available to non-Admin users. Consider an online store – Admin users might be able to manage inventory, whereas the only way normal members could interact with the inventory was by adding items to their shopping cart. I was recently working with a client who had an interesting request: he needed the ability for Admin users to be able to log into the site as another user, and perform actions as if that other person had logged in herself. Returning to the online store example, imagine that some customers periodically phone in their order, or mail or fax in an order form

In August 2008 Microsoft released the latest version of the database server software, SQL Server 2008 .

AJAX applications offer a more interactive user experience by replacing traditional full page postbacks with leaner and more efficient partial page postbacks. These partial page postbacks are executed asynchronously using JavaScript code in the browser. When a web surfer clicks on a link or submits a form (via a full page postback) the browser automatically adds the page being left to the browser’s history

Mono is an open source implementation of the .NET framework for Linux, Windows, MacOS and other operating systems.  Mono v2.0 was just released and represents a major milestone in the Mono project. Read more >>

Microsoft announced the next version of its developer platform, which will be named Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0.  Microsoft said VS10 will focus on five key areas (in marketing-speak): riding the next-generation platform wave, inspiring developer delight, powering breakthrough departmental applications, enabling emerging trends such as cloud computing, and democratizing application life-cycle management (ALM). Read More >> ShareThis

Computerworld has published an in-depth interview with Microsoft’s leader of C# development, Anders Hejlsberg.  A prominent Danish software engineer, Hejlsberg also wrote Turbo Pascal and was lead architect of the team that developed Delphi.  Hejlsberg shared with Computerworld his thoughts on the development of C#, future programming trends, and his experiences putting out fires.  Here is a brief excerpt: (more…) ShareThis

ASP.NET offers a variety of tools and mechanisms for working with database data, including a number of data source controls, such as the SqlDataSource, ObjectDataSource, and LinqDataSource, among others. The SqlDataSource is one of the most basic data source controls as it operates directly against a configured database. Using the SqlDataSource control, an ASP.NET developer can retrieve, insert, update, or delete data by simply setting a few properties. Little to no code is needed. While the SqlDataSource makes it a walk in the park to implement the most common data access scenarios, a little extra effort is needed for more intricate scenarios.