Fabrice's weblog

Ajax? Why ajax? This guy at TrimPath has different applications: they run entirely in the browser. He calls them SPADE, single page applications that include a built-in development environment.
Just take a look at Next Action for example, a Getting Things Done todo-list tracking tool.

Over at TrimPath.com, you'll also find open-source components to build this type of applications. These crazy things include:

• JavaScript Templates, which lets you have template-based programming (like PHP/ASP/JSP) while running in a web browser.
• TrimQuery, a 100% JavaScript query engine that features an embeddable SQL syntax.

James Avery has started a new series of articles on VisualStudioHacks.com named "Ask The Pros". The first issue was about Visual Studio add-ins, the second one is about Debugging. This is a great read. It gives a lot of tips to help you make the best of the debugging tools offered by Visual Studio.

PageMethods for Visual Studio 2005 has just been released. This version offers the same support as the version for VS 2003, plus some additional features.
PageMethods proposes a new code model that enables well-defined URLs and simplifies working with hyperlinks for your ASP.NET sites and applications.

PageMethods enables reliable URLs.
Linking to a web page is very easy, both in simple HTML and in ASP.NET. Linking to a page that really exists, passing the right parameters, and parsing these parameters, is a bit different.
PageMethods takes care of your URLs. It proposes a solution to define structured URLs for each of your pages, as well as a clean and simple way to call them.
The idea is based on strict page inputs and declarative parameter binding. With PageMethods, each page exposes a set of methods that represent the different ways to call the page. All you have to do to start benefiting from sharp, reliable URLs is to add methods to your pages, and mark these methods with attributes provided by PageMethods.

Here is how you would declare a page method:

[PageMethod]
protected void DisplayCustomer(int customerID)
{
  ...
}

Here is how you would refer to the page declaring this method:

MyHyperLink.NavigateUrl = MyPageMethods.Customers.CustomerPage.DisplayCustomer(1234);


Features include:

• Object-oriented approach for hyperlinks
• No concatenations of strings required anymore
• Strongly typed parameters
• Automated parameter handling
• Parameter validation
• Compile-time checks
• Code completion
• Integrated with Visual Studio
• Support for HTTP GET and HTTP POST (new)
• Support for arrays and custom objects (new)
  

• an introduction
• a walkthrough tutorial
• details about the features and benefits
• and of course a page to download the product.

A new cross-browser Javascript widget library is born: Rialto (Rich Internet AppLication TOolkit).

Here is the description of the project:

Because it is technology agnostic Rialto can be encapsulated in JSP, JSF, .NET or PHP graphic components.
Nowadays it supports pure javascript development and JSP/taglib development. A JSF integration is on the road. And we hope to start .NET and PHP integration soon.
The purpose of Rialto is to ease the access to rich internet application development to corporate developers. Ideally a Rialto developer have neither need to write or understand DHTML, Ajax or DOM code.
The target of Rialto is corporate web applications and not internet web sites.
The widgets include: forms, drag & drop, tree, data list with fix header and resizable columns, pop up, splitter,
Rialto enables single page interface application development. It is available as open source under the Apache License.

Google Base is now live. You can go and play with it.
I am currently working on a similar project. I had the idea first, but Google somewhat was faster than me. But it will be different and a good competitor to Google ;-) Just wait some more weeks before I unveil it...

I've been playing with Google Maps, Ajax, and ASP.NET 2 lately. The result is a fun experiment: MapShares.

MapShares lets you place advertisement on a Google Maps map of the world. Just click on the map to select a corner of the Earth where you'd like to place your own image, text and link.

One day, if I have the time, I may try to explain how this site is built. If you need help using Google Maps or need a developer to implement Google Maps on your site, feel free to contact me.

In the meantime, let's give a try to http://mapshares.madgeek.com

If you need to install Visual Studio 2005 on Windows XP without Service Pack 2, you can follow these instructions.
SP2 is not deployed at the client where I am at the moment, so Aaron's tips where useful. I'm sure it can help a lot of people in the corporate world.

Two months ago, I've been contacted by a lawyer who asked me, on behalf of his client - SUN Microsystems, to change the name of my site http://JavaToolbox.com.
As you can tell from the name, this site references the development tools and libraries, like SharpToolbox does for .NET, but for the Java world.
Now, tell me, is this site a blatant counterfeit of the Java trademark, as they say? Isn't my site about Java? Isn't it clear for everyone that this site is not related to Sun?

Have they even looked at the site? I don't think so. You know what? I believe that they don't care. They don't want to support people helping them doing business.

It's really funny to see how Sun behaves, compared to what Microsoft does to help us, the community, to promote and use their technologies. There are several links from Microsoft sites to mine, I've been named an MVP, I've had direct contacts with Microsoft employees, etc. The only contact I had with Sun: a lawyer!

On more thing: they spend a lot of money attacking individuals who are not able to defend themselves. But wait, isn't it strange that they do not attack big sites like JavaWorld, Javalobby, JavaBoutique, OnJava, O'Reilly Java, who do not even mention the Java trademark?...

Update: see also the discussion on TheServerSide.com et sur Application-Servers en français.