May 20th Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET AJAX, .NET, Visual Studio, Silverlight, WPF

Apologies for the sparseness of my posting the last few weeks - work and life have been busy here lately.  Below is a new post in my link-listing series to help kick things up a little.  Also check out my ASP.NET Tips, Tricks and Tutorials page and Silverlight Tutorials page for links to popular articles I've done myself in the past.

ASP.NET

  • ASP.NET Perf Issue: Large numbers of application-restarts due to virus scanners: Tess Ferrandez has a great post that details a debug session to determine why an ASP.NET application was restarting frequently (causing performance slowdowns).  The issue was a virus scanner that was causing files to be constantly updated.  Make sure to check out the logging code you can add to your application to identify restart causes like this.

ASP.NET AJAX

.NET

  • 7 Ways to Simplify your code with LINQ: Igor Ostrovsky has a great blog post that talks about new code techniques you can use to improve your code using .NET 3.5 and the new language and LINQ features in it.

  • Visual LINQ Query Builder for LINQ to SQL: Mitsu Furuta has created a cool Visual Studio designer that allows you to graphically construct LINQ to SQL queries.  Also make sure to download download the latest LINQPad utility - which is invaluable for learning LINQ and trying out LINQ queries.

  • Ukadc.Diagnostics: Josh Twist pointed me at a new CodePlex project he is working on that extends the System.Diagnostics features in .NET to include richer logging features (SQL trace support, email support, etc).

Visual Studio

Silverlight

  • Silverlight 2 Pie Chart: Peter McGrattan has posted a nice control and article that demonstrates how to use a new Silverlight charting control he has written.

WPF

  • WPF week on Channel9: Watch 6 great videos on Channel9.  Each one includes interviews and demos with members of the WPF team talking about some of the awesome work that went into WPF 3.5 SP1 (read my blog post here for a summary of some of it).

  • WPF Testing and Application Quality Guide: Check out the 0.2 release of a free online book being developed by Microsoft that covers how to test WPF applications.  Definitely worth book-marking if you are doing WPF development.

  • WPF 3.5 SP1 StringFormat: Lester has a nice post that describes how to use the new StringFormat feature in WPF 3.5 SP1.  This makes it much easier to handle formatting of databound values.

Hope this helps,

Scott

25 Comments

  • "IValueConverter" are a step backward. They are never as powerful as the TypeConverter that are introduced already in .NET 1.0. WPF uses the TypeConverters too but without the TypeDescriptor infrastructure. So the fancy stuff cannot be done in WPF which we did in WinForms :-(

  • you have written a nice book!it is so interactive!

  • Thanks

    Cannt wait sl2b2

  • Hi ScottGu,

    Now that SP1 of Visual Studio, including ASP MVC and the Entity Framework, is close to the final release, I wonder what the future focus is. Perhaps you could write a post about the future of Visual Studio. I’m very curious what beautiful products the future will bring us.

  • Cool book! I think it may be useful.

  • Thanks for these great links! When will asp.net mvc preview 3 be released? I can't wait for it!

  • Hey Scott,

    When can we expect preview 3 of the MVC framework?

    - Jim

  • You always have a good links.

  • Hey Scott,

    Great blog, I follow ever post.
    Which is why I was surprised when I saw that you had linked Dave and I.
    Thanks! And thanks for the links and blog posts.

    - Mike

  • Great AJAX Progress Bars

  • Hello. Sorry if I post this comment at the wrong page. Scott, I just want to get your attention.

    The whole point of Silverlight was to facilitate WMV HD Media. So I find it so strange and frustrating that Silverlight only supports a meager 48 KHz audio and even downsamples it to 44.1 KHz before playing it. Why can't MSFT add proper support for their own HD WMA Pro 10 Audio Codec for 24-bit 96 KHz audio at least 2-channel and 5.1 if possible? Is it all that difficult? It's their own codec. Silverlight 2.0 download size is already > 4 MB. What is the problem in adding one more codec support which I feel is quite important? I thought HD Audio support was a feature which would make Silverlight better than Flash Player but it seems I am mistaken. I don't think the Flash Player fully supports 24-bit 96 KHz HD audio and even if it does, it is difficult to find a codec to encode the video with that audio quality to MOV or MP4 for Flash Player playback. In comparison, it is much easier to encode a WMV Video with 24-bit 96 KHz WMA Pro 10 audio but the big unfortunate scenario is that Silverlight does not support it. It is really a pity. Silverlight cannot claim to support full HD Video until it adds support for the HD WMA Pro 10 audio codec for at least 24-bit, 96 KHz 2.1 channels (and ideally 5.1 channel support).

    It does not actually make sense to me. You create such a cool HD Audio codec like the 24-bit 96 KHz WMA Pro 10, and then you don't support it in your Silverlight web player which is meant to support HD Video. Please do explain why this has been left out and you still support only 44.1 KHz?

    Scott, if you are reading this, please add full 24-bit 96 KHz WMA Pro 10 audio support to Silverlight asap otherwise you will lose quite a bit of ground to Adobe Flash Player 10. Thanks for reading and awaiting your feedback.

  • Hi Jacob,

    >>>>>> Now that SP1 of Visual Studio, including ASP MVC and the Entity Framework, is close to the final release, I wonder what the future focus is. Perhaps you could write a post about the future of Visual Studio. I’m very curious what beautiful products the future will bring us.

    I'll try and post some on this later this summer. I feel pretty good about the future products coming - we have a lot of cool improvements under work that will add and enhance the current .NET Framework nicely.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi Mark,

    >>>>>>> The whole point of Silverlight was to facilitate WMV HD Media. So I find it so strange and frustrating that Silverlight only supports a meager 48 KHz audio and even downsamples it to 44.1 KHz before playing it. Why can't MSFT add proper support for their own HD WMA Pro 10 Audio Codec for 24-bit 96 KHz audio at least 2-channel and 5.1 if possible? Is it all that difficult? It's their own codec......In comparison, it is much easier to encode a WMV Video with 24-bit 96 KHz WMA Pro 10 audio but the big unfortunate scenario is that Silverlight does not support it. It is really a pity. Silverlight cannot claim to support full HD Video until it adds support for the HD WMA Pro 10 audio codec for at least 24-bit, 96 KHz 2.1 channels (and ideally 5.1 channel support).

    Silverlight 2 can decode all WMA Pro audio - so your first concern about not being able to play HD video that uses WMA Pro should be addressed with it. Internally we do convert to 44.1 stereo in our media pipeline to play it though right now. We are looking at potentially adding 5.1 surround sound in the future, as well as potentially adding support for higher frequencies and bit depths. One of the reasons we don't support this today is that even a golden ear on a high quality PC system struggles to discern anything past 48 KHz in 20-bit, and the support to play this does add more size to the download. As systems and speakers get better we'll add additional support to project this. Right now, though, we at least allow you to encode using WMA Pro and play it back using Silverlight.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi Jim,

    >>>>>> When can we expect preview 3 of the MVC framework?

    We should have new bits in a few days. :-)

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi Tim,

    >>>>>>> We'd like to implement the new ASP.NET 2.0 encryption technology. Asa a developer I think it is cool and will work well. But, my boss is getting pushback from our security manager questioning this methodology and it's security strength. I have printed off articles and looked for clues to support the technique, but have not landed on a valid argument. Can you help or put me in touch with a security specialist to help my case. Thanks, Tim

    I have some security reasons here you might want to check out: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2006/02/24/ASP.NET-2.0-Membership_2C00_-Roles_2C00_-Forms-Authentication_2C00_-and-Security-Resources-.aspx

    If you scroll down to the Cryptography section you'll find several articles on our encryption support.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi All

    I'm a Vietnamese student, I'm researching about LINQ, I would like to create a data access layer (like Data Access App Block) using LINQ, such as: return IQueryable or IQueryable, and accept some parameters, which like ExecuteNonQuery, ExecuteReader (DAAB). Some one can recommend me how to do this task.

    Could I create a new partial class for [My]DataContext Class? what's it used for ?

    Many Thanks in advance,

  • Hi all:
    you can read this post in spanish here:

    http://thinkingindotnet.wordpress.com/2008/05/23/enlaces-de-mayo-aspnet-aspnet-ajax-net-visual-studio-silverlight-wpf/

  • Hi
    Since i have installed SP1, i run in to a
    Layout measurement override of element 'System.Windows.Controls.InkPresenter' should not return NaN values as its DesiredSize.
    This did not appear in 3.5...And Uninstalling did not really fix it
    Any idea?Thanks Jonathan

  • Scott, Any chance of an update of where full CRUD data access is at with Silverlight. I have watched the Swiss MSDN team demo a Linq helper class they created and a few people have started building there own things but when is Microsoft going to publish a standard method. Is it that we are waiting for Astoria ? A brief update would be helpful, as I thought we had a hint that something was going to be released in April, did I miss it ?
    Thanks
    Steve


  • great as always

  • When can we expect to see silverlight 2 tools that are compatable with Visual Studio SP1
    I'm teaching my self programing in my spare time and the tutorials
    are a god send but without the tools thay'er not that esy to do
    Being new to this I'm excited about getting in at this time all this new stuff is going to change the way the web is viewed and create alot of opertunity

  • Hi Scott,

    Would you be able to post or let us know of some date when the MVC Release 3 is going to be out ? I really want to develop with it - but as you said in your other post, release 3 is the one to wait for ?

    Cheers,

    Andy

  • I was wondering dose anyone know when silverlight 2 beta 2 will be ready so the tools will be compatable with the Visual Studio SP1 Beta

  • Hi Rick,

    >>>>>>I was wondering dose anyone know when silverlight 2 beta 2 will be ready so the tools will be compatable with the Visual Studio SP1 Beta

    We'll have an update available for this shortly.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Love the bulk editing!

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