It looks like this will be Philly.NET's BIGGEST EVER code camp.  Check out these stats, sent from Bill Wolff:

· 590+ registered, expect close to 450 attending
· 8 rooms like last time
· Park on the west or north side, north (back of building) is closest to the common and session rooms
· Attendees and speakers must register, all get a badge, speakers get a shirt (please wear it!)
· Several of the partners will have a table for the day, stop by and say hello
· There will be empty attendee bags and a few tables full of goodies
· Volunteers (see below) should start showing up at 7:30 to set up
· We have three high school kids for the day to handle food, trash, and heavy lifting
· The first session is at 8:30
· Lunch is earlier this time – 11:30, Primo Hoagies
· Afternoon snack are hot soft pretzels
· Closing and raffle happen at 4:50 in the common room
· Volunteers are always welcome to help clean up
· The speaker party immediately follows (5:30-7:30) at the Bent Elbow
· Evaluations will happen online this time using SharePoint, results will be posted in less than a week
· Attendees can win one of three Zunes by completing evaluations

 

My session is "An Intro to ASP.NET Dynamic Data".  You'll get the basics of ASP.NET Dynamic Data in about an hour.  You should be able to be up and building some apps w/it after sitting in the session.

 

Friday starts my Tour de' PA, when I leave for the Bloomsburg area then head over to Philly on Saturday then Harrisburg on Sunday.  What a weekend it's going to be!

 

ASP.NET AJAX in Action by Assesandro Gallo, David Barkol and Rama Vavilala

Paperback: 600 pages
Publisher: Manning Publications (August 24, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1933988142

This book gets 5 stars from me!

Review:

Whether you're a novice or you've already been writing ASP.NET Ajax apps for a while, you'll benefit from this book.  At times the flow of multi-author books can be choppy, but not this book.  ASP.NET Ajax in action reads like a novel de' geek the flow is so smooth.  So much so in fact, that I am convinced that Allesandro, David and Rama are really all the same person.   The topics in the book are placed in perfect order so anyone could follow them and the code examples in this book were clear, precise to the point and easy to follow, whether you were opening the downloadable solutions or just moving along step by step. 

The beginning of the book covers the basics of JavaScript and the AJAX library, how they fit together with the overall Ajax architecture as well as Ajax patterns such as partial page updates and asynchronous network calls.   This part of the book also discusses the ScriptManager component, its importance and how it interacts with the page, including the ever important page lifecycle - but not just the server lifecycle, the client page lifecycle is covered in depth. 

The latter half of the book digs deep into the UpdatePanel control, giving us extended insights, best practices and great coverage of this frequently abused and misused control.  The last part of the book covers advanced technical topics such as creating your own Ajax enabled controls, using the control toolkit, extenders, behaviors, animations and everything under the Ajax hood that you'll need as an ASP.NET Ajax developer.  If you read this book you'll enhance your skills and expand your tools by tenfold.  This latter section of the book also includes an intriguing segment on ASP.NET Ajax futures so we get a great look at the up and coming, soon to be hot new technologies like XML Script, Debugging and Drag & Drop Ajax style.  While some of these futures may change between the publish date and the next release from Microsoft, you'll still be ahead of the game and pointed in the right direction, as the authors made sure to keep this notion in mind.

If Gallo, Barkol or Vavilala write more books, you can be sure I'll buy them.

 

Yesterday I've received the MVP 2008 award for ASP.NET.  Woot!

 

ASP.NET Soup to Nuts

.NET 3.5 Videos

Linq Videos

 

Free eBooks:  Topics are Linq, Ajax & Silverlight

Free Microsoft eLearning - Collection 5134: Developing Rich Experiences with Microsoft® .NET Framework 3.0 and Visual Studio® 2005

Free Microsoft eLearning - Clinic 5230 : Developing Enhanced Web Experiences with Microsoft® ASP.NET AJAX Extensions

Microsoft eLearning - More Offers (lists both free and reasonably priced)

 

I've recently been asked to join the ASPInsiders.  This is a great group to be a part of, since now I will be working very closely with some of our industry's best on some very exciting projects, as well as interacting with the MS teams directly!

 

Available on the MSDN Subscriber downloads.  Get it hot off the press!  Of course, you may be best off waiting a bit for the load to calm down, as the servers are very busy serving up VS downloads to the masses of developers currently downloading.

 

If you would like a dropdown that displays one static item such as  “–Choose One—“ while the rest of the items are data bound, then check out the code below:

<asp:DropDownList ID="drpProucts" runat="server"

    DataSourceID="ProductsDS" DataTextField="ProductName" DataValueField="ProductId"

    Width="150px" AppendDataBoundItems="true">

    <asp:ListItem Text="--Choose One--" Value=""></asp:ListItem>

</asp:DropDownList>

Set the AppendDataBoundItems property of the dropdown list to True, and add in the static list item.  Your dropdown will look something like this:

And there we go!  A dropdown list that also has a static entry stating to the user that s/he should choose an entry from the dropdownlist.

 

Multitargeting is targeting specific versions of the .NET Framework, in the Visual Studio 2008 Betas and later you can target the 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5 frameworks for development. 

So, why multitarget?  You may have to support existing code bases that were previously written using Visual Studio 2005 targeting the .NET 2.0 Framework with AJAX 1.0 and want to upgrade just your Visual Studio IDE to take advantage of new feature sets.  Or, you may have directives from management, company or client policy to keep creating on the 2.0 codebase until further notice.   Whatever the reason, you can target the version that’s right for your project.

How to target different framework versions: 

You can select the framework version you want when you start a new project or website.  The project type doesn't matter, multitargeting is available for Winforms, ASP.NET or any type of project template you decide to use.

Once you've started your project, if version requirements change at any time, you can adjust easily.  You can target different versions by visiting the project properties dialog box and selecting the Build tab (left side).   The versions available to target will display on the right (circled below).

And that's all there is, it's easy to try out different .NET framework versions or switch versions using Visual Studio 2008.

 

This site's been around for a while now but I keep getting asked where to get good videos so here it is:  ASP.NET How To Series. 

Some of the topics you can view there:

• Beginner series
• ASP.NET Ajax
• Visual Studio Team System
• Visual Studio Add-Ins
• First Look Videos (LINQy-licious)
• Migrating to ASP.NET
• More, more more... go check it out already!