J. Ambrose Little

From Blah to Aha! in Web Sites/Apps

J. Ambrose Little — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 14:50:21 GMT

There are a ton of resources out there to help developers (and designers) make better Web sites and applications, but I wanted to draw out three that I think will have a very high ROI for any developer who is building for the Web. You could easily consume these three resources in a weekend and, if you apply them, will see immediate positive effects on your Web interfaces that your managers, customers, and the world will love and will ultimately lead to world peace. :)

First, two books, both of which are extremely approachable, short, and valuable:

Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug
Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks by Luke Wroblewski

Then, this talk by Ryan Singer of 37signals (think Basecamp, Ta-da List, & more). [CS seems to strip out my embed. Need to fix that; for now, use the link.] I especially like his emphasis on language (towards the end).

These three resources all have very concrete, actionable guidance you can apply in everyday UI creation.

And as a bonus, for ongoing learning/reference, I suggest using the various UI patterns catalogs:

Designing Interfaces (see Jennifer Tidwell's great book from which this is drawn)
Patterns in Interaction Design (Welie.com)
UI Design Pattern Library
Yahoo! Design Pattern Library

I'm very interested in patterns; send me an note if you are, too.

Visual Studio Tutorials (.com)

J. Ambrose Little — Tue, 06 May 2008 23:59:05 GMT

One of our IG champs (unofficial term), Christopher Bishop, has put up a really snazzy independent community site called VisualStudioTutorials.com:

It has a tutorials, code snippets, and forums, and he'd love to get more folks using Infragistics and/or VS to share their stuff. An interesting feature of the site is "The Challenge" area. The general idea, as I understand it, is to try to reverse engineer interesting applications in under 30 days.

The first challenge is the desktop challenge--to build a Web-based desktop. It's coming along very well, and it's only a few days in. He's also been challenged to build an Outlook-like Web client, which he's been doing using Infragistics NetAdvantage for .NET. Pretty cool stuff!

Great work, Chris!

Minor faceOut Update

J. Ambrose Little — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 18:43:59 GMT

As reported by Dave Sussman (and others), the initial version expected to be running on US systems (thanks to some hard-coded US date formats in the sample XML data). I've since updated faceOut to handle those peculiarities (including forcing use of the USD ($) while respecting other locale settings) and added a little "about" popup.

Nothing major at this point, but I wanted to let folks know in case they've run into that issue.

German Article (auf Deutsch!) on Infragistics Excel Engine

J. Ambrose Little — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 13:56:02 GMT

I just wanted to point out an article written by one of our top German community members, André Krämer. Thanks, Andre!

"Wenn Excel mehr als eine Datensenke sein soll"

"Optisch ansprechenden Excel-Dateien zu erzeugen, erfordert normalerweise fehleranfälligen Automatisierungscode. DevDorado.de zeigt Ihnen, wie Sie mit Hilfe der Infragistics Excel Engine fehlerfrei zu eindrucksvollen Ergebnissen kommen..."

Lies den ganzen Artikel

faceOut - our latest Silverlight 2 app - is Alive!

J. Ambrose Little — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 13:50:45 GMT

If you want to get an [updated] overview of what we're doing with Silverlight, go to our Focus on Silverlight area. We've published a high-level roadmap there and that's also where you can get an intro and overview of faceOut (as well as launch it or download it).

Random Thoughts/Tech Tidbits You Might Find Interesting About faceOut
The app itself is a salesperson dashboard that mashes up "representative sales data" (read: Northwind!) with Windows Live Maps (a.k.a., Microsoft Virtual Earth) and uses the Windows Live Contacts schema for easy mashing with that service. We prepped the app for the Live Contacts integration, but it's not hitting the Live Contacts services in this release.

The Silverlight client uses WCF services as a bridge/basic service layer. Of course, we could in theory hit the Live services and even Northwind on Astoria directly using the new cross-domain support, but using the service layer allows us to control the actual provider of the data. So you can have an "offline" version that uses local XML data as it is setup to do now. The nice thing about the service layer is that you can pretty much arbitrarily decide where to get the data from.

The UI is a blend of prototypes that UXG built to test out some ideas we have for SL controls (rich tooltip, rich tab, transient message, HTML host, etc.) as well as early prototypes of Infragistics Silverlight controls (chart, gauge, scrollpanel, and monthview, for example). In addition to the controls, of course, is the glue that makes the UI a real, functional LOB application. You can delve more into these and read some good tips by taking a gander at our faceOut Overview that Josh Smith [resident IG Guidisan] put together for you.

How We Built It, or, A Brief History of [SL]ime
Over the month of February, UXG and VDG worked together with early prototypes of Infragistics' Silverlight controls that our SL development team has been working on. It was definitely a fun, interesting, and challenging experience getting to work with the early SL 2 bits from Microsoft. If you download the sample app code, you'll probably run into the occasional workaround here or there that no longer applies. :)

It started with a simple vision doc that took into account our various goals--to use our prototypes, build something meaningful for LOB, integrate with internet (Live) services, and maybe give you an early jump on building something with Silverlight.

The next step was our in-depth, up-front architecture:

From this, we set ourselves free to start hacking away at it. You can see the final version online; it's pretty darn close to our detailed specs above. <grin> We naturally refined the design and functionality as needed throughout development, cut things here and there that needed trimming and/or turned out not to be feasible, and completed in the timeframe we set for ourselves. Silverlight rocks! [And so do our engineers and designers! :)]

Enough of my blabbing. You can go now to download, play with, reuse, and maybe even learn from the application source and start tweaking around with the IG controls if you like.¹You can also just launch it right now to experience faceOut now. Enjoy!

Notes
1. At this point, I am bound by the third section of paragraph twenty-two of the penal codices for early, early pre-release code to inform you that all of this (the faceOut solution source and Infragistics.Silverlight bits) is provided as-is with no warrantees, guarantees, manatees, or anything slightly resembling developer support. {No, not even the garden gnome in your backyard can provide support.} But you're welcome to discuss the solution and offer thoughts for what you'd like to see in our Silverlight product at our IG Labs forum.

Come Learn Infragistics at our First Ever Conference!

J. Ambrose Little — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 22:53:00 GMT

This year—coming up very soon—Infragistics will be co-hosting devscovery with Wintellect! This is going to be awesome. Not too long ago, I blogged about how Infragistics is an MVP squirrel. We’re bringing those nuts to this conference as well as some of our seasoned control developers and designers to bring you the best content on .NET and Infragistics you can find anywhere. In addition to the 22 Infragistics-provided sessions, Wintellect is providing their own 33 .NET sessions all for the same low price—only $900.

Here is a list of the sessions Infragistics has lined up.

WEB CLIENT TRACK

BUILDING A SCALABLE WEB APPLICATION – ADVANCED TIPS FOR ASP.NET DEVELOPERS
Based on the real life experience of managing the Infragistics NetAdvantage for ASP.NET samples browser, learn some of the techniques used to tame this 10,000 + file asp.net project. Topics covered will include best practices for building an ASP.NET application, as well as best practices when using NetAdvantage for ASP.NET. The techniques will not only open new doors for you, but will also keep maintenance costs in check, as your application grows. Attendees will walk away with an understanding of techniques such as custom web config sections, custom expression builders and the ASP.Net tag mappings section.

INTEGRATING WITH SHAREPOINT
Whether you’re ready or not, SharePoint has arrived in a big way. WebParts provide a flexible and extensible model for building SharePoint portal pages. In this session you’ll learn how to build your own custom WebParts composed using Infragistics web controls. Learn the basics of building a composite web part, along with tips for both development and deployment of your custom part.

ADVANCED DATABINDING TECHNIQUES
Data can come in all different shapes and sizes. Because of this, controls including the Infragistics WebGrid can be data bound to an assortment of data sources. We will take a deep look at using the most common DataSources including the SQLDataSource, the ObjectDataSource and custom Business Objects. Learn about CRUD, and how Two Way DataBinding can make your life easier. Attendees will walk away with a new understanding of databinding, and the strengths and weaknesses of the various approaches.

MODULARITY AND ARCHITECTURAL PATTERNS WITH ASP.NET
Aikido is a new ASP.NET control framework that builds on top of ASP.NET AJAX, providing XHTML compliance and CSS friendly designability at its core. This new framework is designed to simplify control development, and is being leveraged by Infragistics in their new ASP.NET WebControls. Attendees will ride along side as a new control is built using the Aikido framework. This session will introduce some of the architectural aspects of the framework that are used, and highlight the common problems they address.

AJAX DEVELOPMENT WITH CSOM
Building an AJAX application doesn’t need to be tricky or difficult. With NetAdvantage for ASP.NET and the concept of Embedded AJAX, the functionality is built directly into the controls, allowing you to AJAX enable your application in a single step. In this session, learn exactly what the CSOM is and how to leverage it to propel the user experience of your application to the next level. Additionally, attendees will learn how to combine the Infragistics CSOM with Microsoft’s ASP.NET AJAX Extensions library.

REAL WORLD SILVERLIGHT
If you haven’t noticed, there’s quite a buzz around Silverlight, and for good reason. With Silverlight 2.0, you can take a web application to new levels by creating a user experience never seen before in a web application. In this session, you will learn how to leverage the power of Silverlight in combination with NetAdvantage for ASP.NET. Attendees will learn the basics behind building a Silverlight application, as well as the fundamentals of interoperability between ASP.NET and Silverlight.

BUILDING LOB APPLICATIONS WITH ASP.NET
The requirements for building Line of Business applications has certainly evolved over the years. Luckily the supporting tools have evolved as well. In this walkthrough, you will learn how to build a LOB application with NetAdvantage for ASP.NET. This session will focus on a best practices approach to building your application, and will highlight some of the core aspects of programming with NetAdvantage for ASP.NET. Topics covered will include Application Styling, Accessibility, and Usability.

WINDOWS FORMS TRACK

BUILDING LOB APPLICATION WITH WINDOWS FORMS
This session offers a high level overview of the NetAdvantage for Windows Forms product line. It offers both a technical introduction to the individual controls, but also real world practices on how to build a LOB application with NetAdvantage for Windows Forms. Furthermore, the session demonstrates how rapid application development tools plus application styling technology enhances the ability to create great user experiences without the need for a visual designer. The session closes with a brief discussion of the future of the NetAdvantage for Windows Forms product line.

WINDOWS FORMS AND WPF (INTEROP)
Utilizing WPF in a Windows Forms application is Microsoft’s prescriptive guidance for a migration path to the next generation of applications. This session offers guidance on utilizing Windows Forms and WPF together. It covers some of the challenges of this approach and educates the attendee on both the pros and cons of utilizing these two technologies. Lastly, it offers a practical sample for implementing an Infragistics WPF control in a Windows Forms environment utilizing elementhost.

PRESENTATION LAYER FRAMEWORK (PLF)
This session offers an overview of the design principles and architecture of the Presentation Layer Framework (PLF). The session offers a chance to hear from the architects of the PLF describe how they built and designed the framework. It will cover the basic terminology for determining how to extend the framework and achieve advanced customization, along with practical examples that demonstrate the concepts. Two extremely important parts of the architecture include creation and draw filters. Creation Filters are used to customize Infragistics components and add elements that aren’t currently part of the control. Draw Filters allow the developer to make stylistic changes to the control in places that may not have properties to modify. Both of these advanced topics will be covered in this session.

DEEP DIVE IN THE ULTRAWINGRID
This session offers a deep dive into the UltraWinGrid. The session will begin with an architectural overview of the control and offer an understanding of the composition of the grid. After a high-level understanding of the control is achieved, the focus will be diving deep into key capabilities of the control and demonstrating the different pieces of functionality. Finally, the session will close with advanced tips and tricks for achieving high degrees of performance while utilizing the WinGrid.

NETADVANTAGE FOR WINDOWS FORMS EXTENSIBILITY
Are you curious about how to use different interfaces in the NetAdvantage for Windows Forms product? This session will offer an indepth technical discussion on some of the most popular and challenging interfaces in the Windows Forms product. The end goal is to provide a deep dive into the extensibility of the framework and allow you to walk away with base knowledge of how to fully utilize Infragistics’ controls. IEmbeddableEditor and ISupportAppStyling will both be covered and demonstrative walkthroughs on how to create both a grid embeddable editor and a custom control that consumes the application styling infrastructure.

USER EXPERIENCE TRACK

USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN PATTERNS
Even if you think you know what UX is, you’ll be able to get something out of this session. In addition to introducing the concepts around UX, we’ll dive into exploring a number of UX patterns that can help you build great UX and provide examples of how you can start using them in your development today. We’ll cover patterns that pertain to different kinds of user interface problems such as commands, data entry, information architecture, navigation, page layout, and data visualization.

CAB, WCSF, SCSF, MVP, MVC, AND MORE
Are you confused by all of the UI frameworks and patterns out there for application development? If so, you’re not alone. In this session, we’ll cover the major .NET UI frameworks and UI patterns (and how the frameworks use the patterns). In addition to familiarizing you with the frameworks and patterns, helping you understand when to choose what, we’ll also delve into examples of some of them, including the Infragistics NetAdvantage CAB Extensibility Kit.

PRAGMATIC APPLICATION DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT
Using our exemplars, you’ll learn practical and agile best practices for application design and development. This talk will include the full application lifecycle we use to develop our exemplars, decisions we made in designing and developing, and a deep dive into the architecture and code. We’ll cover development primarily in WPF and ASP.NET, though most of the concepts will apply to other .NET platforms such as Windows Forms and Silverlight.

BUILDING GREAT UX USING NETADVANTAGE FOR .NET
You know that Infragistics has a ton of controls to help you speed application development, but did you know we provide a lot of tools to help you build great UX into your applications as well? In this session, we’ll dive into the various tools in the NetAdvantage tool set that empower you, as a developer, to easily add better experiences for your users. Whether it is using our ribbon and toolbar controls to optimize complex menus, rich data entry with our grids and carousels, high-quality data visualizations with charts and gauges, built-in, optimized AJAX for ASP.NET, or consistent and professional styling with our presets and application styling, Infragistics is committed to helping make UX good and easy.

BUILDING EXPRESSIVE DASHBOARDS WITH NETADVANTAGE
Dashboards have been and continue to become an ever more integral part of business application development. Whether you’re building in SharePoint, DotNetNuke, or a custom portal solution (or maybe just adding a dashboard to an existing application), Infragistics’ provides you with a suite of controls that empower you to build expressive and polished data visualizations to your business stakeholders. Join us as we explore using the Infragistics charts, gauges, grids, and other goodies to take your dashboards to the next level.

LUMOS – A CASE STUDY IN SILVERLIGHT
Come learn about building with Silverlight from the authors of Wrox Silverlight 1.0. In this session we’ll delve into the details of the Lumos sample application included as a case study in the book. The book includes both a Silverlight 1.0 and a 1.1 (now 2.0) implementation of the same application, so we’ll examine both in order to highlight the differences so that you can learn what’s good, bad, and ugly and come away with a stronger knowledge of how you can use Silverlight in your own applications today and in the future.

WPF TRACK

MICROSOFT EXPRESSION BLEND FOR DEVELOPERS
Come get all the basics you need as a developer to get productive using the premier WPF design tool so that you can dramatically improve your productiveness and the look and feel of your WPF applications.

DESIGNER + DEVELOPER WORKFLOW IN WPF AND SILVERLIGHT
Sometimes the lines of communication between designers and developers can get strained. We all have the same goal—to produce the best app we can. Learn how you can optimize the workflow between developers and designers using WPF and Silverlight in this real-world session based on Infragistics experience. “Based on true stories!”

BUILDING LOB WITH WPF AND INFRAGISTICS
WPF has gotten a bad rap with developers as being only for UI glitz or “consumer-oriented” applications. Come see how Infragistics is proving that reputation wrong in providing real, line-of-business controls to help developers speed development of rich LOB applications.

IMPLEMENTING THE MVC PATTERN IN WPF
Real-world applications call for real-world maintainability and testability. The MVC pattern has proven time and again to be a great way to separate concerns and enable testing in the UI layer. Come learn how you can take advantage of this pattern effectively in WPF to build robust, maintainable applications with reliable test coverage.

As you can see, we have quite the lineup that will both help you to become an expert in Infragistics powerful tooling as well as just generally become the .NET ninja you’ve always wanted to be.

CONFERENCE PLACES/TIMES

New York – April 1^st-3^rd <-- Sign up now! Space is limited.

Redmond – August 19^th-21^st

TO REGISTER and learn more, visit the conference site at http://www.devscovery.com/.

UX and Agile

J. Ambrose Little — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 04:08:29 GMT

I was scheduled to do a talk today called "Building Great UX with .NET" today at the SouthCT .NET UG. Well, mother nature had other plans, and I had to reschedule for 8 April. So I have this wonderful presentation all prepared and nowhere to do it (yet). :) I'm sure it will surface more than once throughout the year.

As I was collecting my thoughts and research for the presentation, I got sucked into a related discussion on the Interaction Design Association discussion list. I was, frankly, shocked that there are advocates of waterfall process in the UX pro community. It's really odd, actually, because some of them seem to think that agile is this weird, engineer-centric approach to doing software and feel they can't do the design they think needs doing for good UX.

It seems to be an extension of the misperception that agile means anarchy or, at least, that agile means you can't do any up front design. I pointed them to Ambler's intro to initial agile modeling as well as the results of the most recent survey they've done that shows how agile tends towards greater success in software. I could also point to his essay on "proving" agile's worth, but after seeing the latest reaction--"How can this method possibly create new innovations if it is essentially the same old requirements/design/develope test process?"--I tend to think it's not worth the effort. At least that person is clearly not willing to invest the most basic level of research and open mindedness to understand what agile is. I think anyone who's spent five minutes reading up on it knows it's not the "same old process."

In any case, one of the things my presentation deals with just that--where and how to plug UX pros into an agile process. Of course, agile being the adaptable beast that it is, I don't dare presume that my suggestions are the only right way, but they're based on what seems to work (as well as what makes sense). The basic gist is that you plug them in where they need to be plugged in! :)

You have interaction designers? Plug 'em in up front and as needed during iterations. They create your basic high-level plan for your interactions (like the outline of a story). As you build our your iterations, they have "chapters" of their story to "write," working closely with the devs and stakeholders. If refactoring is needed, they're right there as needed to do their part.

Visual designers plug into the process in a similar manner. Up front, they might want to come up with an overall theme, maybe design the logo (if you need one), pick the color palette, come up with some initial mockups for the design even, though probably shouldn't get too detailed with mockups up front. As you build out your iterations, more firmly nail down particular wire frames, they can hammer out the particular designs and refactor as needed.

Usability pros also can plug in throughout the lifecycle. They can do usability research up front (observing users, interviewing, etc.). As the particular interactions are designed, they can participate in lightweight testing (e.g., paper prototype testing), and of course, as the iterations are built out, they can do more in-depth usability testing with user observations and provide input for refactoring of the app.

Information architects build out your basic information framework up front, establish applicable organizing principles, any known taxonomies, and any known architectural requirements that are needed to facilitate the IA. As the iterations are built out, they participate to ensure their vision is followed through and to fill out details as needed. If there's a technical barrier during implementation that makes the desired IA unworkable, the IAs can refactor or help the team figure out how to overcome or work around it.

Not only is this workable, it could actually help UX folks and devs and architects work better together, gain better mutual understanding, and even maybe build better software all around, which is, after all, the point of agile as well as the point of UX. They're made for each other.

Little Links - M-V-Poo on WPF, RSS Bandit on Infragistics, and More

J. Ambrose Little — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 15:28:52 GMT

Here are a few more links of interest I thought I'd share with you all.

M-V-Poo on WPF

Josh Smith, resident Infragistics guidisan, has posted yet another awesome article to Code Project detailing how you can do what has now been dubbed "M-V-Poo" (great name!) on WPF, which covers using a flavor of the MVC pattern and how to use that to unit test WPF.

RSS Bandit on Infragistics

Torsten Rendelmann kindly informed me that the latest version of that well-known RSS reader, RSS Bandit, is now running on Infragistics NetAdvantage for Windows Forms 2007 Volume 3. Cool stuff!

dotNetTemplar on Managing Complexity (or How Not To)

Now, if you're in the mood for a healthy dose of pure opinion and conjecture, check out a couple ramblings of my own about dealing with software complexity:

If you have something you think I should highlight, please do contact me and let me know.

Debug the .NET Framework

J. Ambrose Little — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 01:58:34 GMT

Scott just announced the availability of the .NET Framework source with the ability to debug (e.g., step into) the code inside of VS 2008. Those of us who have spent hours digging in via Reflector using imagination debugging (i.e., I imagine that it calls in here, then here, then here) will greatly benefit from this. Cool stuff! Go check it out!

Little Link Round-Up - Podder & IG Context Menu in System Tray

J. Ambrose Little — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 21:02:19 GMT

Just wanted to post a quick pointer to some great links on the net related to Infragistics.

WPF Podcatcher "Podder" - IG Guidisan Josh Smith published his WPF podcatcher app, named "Podder" over on Code Project. It's pretty snifty; here are some interesting features:

Uses VS 2008, .NET 3.5, WPF, XLinq, and C# 3.0.
Keeps podcast feed list and view all available episodes.
Favorites list.
And lots of standard and nice UX features. Go check it out!

Using Sub Main in VB to Startup a System Tray App with an Infragistics Context Menu - Phew! Long title, but it says it all. Provided by a valued Infragistics customer, Randy Walker. Thanks, Randy! Maybe I'll see you again at the next Tulsa Tech Fest. :)

If you have work you've published that uses Infragistics (IG) stuff, please do let me know. We want to highlight your efforts and give you the creds you deserve! Also, don't forget we are glad to publish content from you guys on our Community site. Get experience publishing; get your name out on the net, and get the good feeling that comes from knowing you're helping your fellow IGers.

Blog Notes Live Writer Plug-in

J. Ambrose Little — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 19:14:56 GMT

I just published a sample Blog Notes Live Writer plug-in on dotNetTemplar. The full source code is available for learning/tweaking/extending. The plug-in just helps with using superscript notes (endnotes/footnotes) in blog posts as I am wont to do. Merry Christmas! :)

Favor Thoughtful Adherence Over Blind Adherence

J. Ambrose Little — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 15:00:51 GMT

Far be it from me to put words in Phil's mouth, but I hope that folks recognize that his post about favoring composition over inheritance is not specifically about that one best practice (the comments seem to indicate this is being missed). It's pretty clear to me that the thrust of that post is around a philosophical approach that he thinks the ALT.NET community should make.

Two things stand out from Phil's post in this respect: 1) don't appeal to authority, and 2) don't organize yourself around a set of technical principles (best practices), but rather organize yourself around the non-technical values of independent thinking and desire to improve. I hope that everyone can agree that these latter two values are good ones that should indeed be encouraged.

That said, should a community like ALT.NET eschew forming a more formal consensus on technical best practices? I tend to think not. While independent, critical thinking is valuable, it is not the summit of perfection. The summit of perfection, in the realm of ideas at least, is conformance with truth (what actually is versus what I think is), and independent thinking at odds with what is true is not only not valuable in itself, it can be downright detrimental.

For instance, what if you independently and critically think that security and privacy are not important aspects of the online banking application you are tasked with building? Is that kind of independent, critical thinking valuable in itself? Or will it potentially lead to great harm? Independent, critical thinking is valuable only in as much as it deepens one's understanding of and conformance to truth.

So I think that there is value in a community such as ALT.NET expending the effort to define principles through critical thinking and argumentation that it will hold up as ideals, i.e., things that seemed to be most in accord with the truth as we know it. This is where things like patterns and best practices come into play; it is the shared, accumulated wisdom of the technical community.

Now what about the broader idea of eschewing appealing to authority? Far be it from me to claim to be an authority in logic, but it seems to me that all appeals to authority are not invalid (the wikipedia article Phil links to discusses this to some degree but does not go far enough, in my estimation). The valid reasons for appealing to authority are discussed at the bottom of that article: 1) not enough time and 2) concern at one's ability to make the other understand the reasoning underlying the truth being expressed.

In terms of logic, it is not a fallacy to appeal to an authority on a topic that is accepted by all those involved in an argument. We're talking about presuppositions here, and without them, we'd never get anywhere in our search for truth. If you always have to argue from first principles (if you even acknowledge those), you simply get stuck in a quagmire. In terms of the topic at hand, if folks accept (as they generally do) that the GoF et al are authorities on the subject of OOD, then it is valid, logically speaking, to appeal to their authority to establish the principle that you should favor composition over inheritance.

The thing to watch out for in appeals to authority is 1) thinking that the authority is incapable of being wrong and 2) ensuring that the parties involved accept the authority. With the latter, you simply cannot argue (or at least the argument won't carry weight) from authority if the authority is not accepted. With the former, unless it is a presupposition shared by those involved that the authority is indeed infallible, you should keep in mind that even if you buy into the authority's credentials, it is still possible that the authority can be wrong.

So I would nuance what Phil says and say that if the ALT.NET community agrees that GoF is an authority, it is valid to appeal to them, while remaining open to criticism of the concepts involved (even those backed by an authority). The authority adds logical weight; it does not impose absolute authority.

We just don't have time to argue everything from first principles. Others who are generally acknowledged to be qualified have already taken the time to research, think about, and propose some good patterns and practices, and unless there is good reason to object, there is no need to rehash those. Instead, I'd suggest that the community focus on spreading knowledge of these patterns and practices all the while refining them, functioning essentially as a group in the way that Phil recommends individuals function--thinking critically and always working to improve. Doing this will help ensure that the community does not fall into a quagmire of unnecessary argumentation, and it will ensure that the patterns and practices that they agree upon can be continuously refined and enhanced as new technologies emerge and greater wisdom is gained over time.

Further, it gives the group a purpose that has meaning. After all, if the group's message is only "think for yourself and be all that you can be," there isn't much of substance to say after that. On the other hand, because it is a technical community that espouses that philosophy, it should take that philosophy on itself (as a group, not just the individuals in it). I would suggest this includes establishing greater consensus on best practices and patterns and then spreading the word about them to others. Be better together. :)

You see, it is not about setting down an infallible manifesto and excluding those who disagree, which is I think more than anything what Phil is concerned about. However, it also isn't about best practices just being true for you but not for me (best practices relativism?). Put another way, I suggest ALT.NET should favor thoughtful adherence to best patterns and practices, not blind adherence.

Beware Visual Studios Bearing Gifts of Pretty Markup!

J. Ambrose Little — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:50:57 GMT

This one bit me again last night. The problem is that something mysteriously adds <assembly /> elements to the <compilation /> section of the web.config file. I had previously attributed the problem to the ASP.NET compiler, but it seems it was not the compiler. I ran this problem by some friends a while ago, and they said they'd seen it with Visual Studio, but I was assured the compiler couldn't be it.

Last night I confirmed it is indeed VS (unfortunately). I innocently opened a user control on the Web server to verify something (note that I was only reading the file--not modifying it--and it was independent of any configured Web site or project). Visual Studio, wanting to be as helpful as possible, I presume tries to back track and resolve references even for files not within a Web site or project. Part of this process is, apparently, it trying to add references to the web.config that it thinks you need.

For me, the problem was two-fold. First, I never want a tool to automagically modify any file on a Web server (that's just bad mojo, IMO)--especially not web.config--but it was compounded in that this app uses the <location path="." inheritInChildApplications="false /> approach to isolate some of the settings to this app and prevent them from being inherited in sub/child applications. Part of the isolated settings is the <compilation /> element, under which is the <assemblies /> element that tells the ASP.NET compiler about referenced assemblies, and VS apparently does not understand that isolation mechanism, so it added its own <compilation /> and <assemblies /> elements to help it figure out what was going on in the user control I was looking at.

Well, <compilation /> is one of those that you can only have one of, so as soon as it did this, I started seeing the dreaded hey, this app is configured such that we can't even show the custom error page that is configured message (you know, the one that tells you to turn customErrors=off so you can see the actual error?). Once I turned custom errors off (not my preferred thing to do, of course), I saw the real exception being that there was more than one <compilation /> element (which is easy enough to resolve).

That jogged my memory about the other times I'd seen this and then I remembered my friends suggesting it was Visual Studio, which further jogged my memory that I had indeed just used VS to view a UC, and it all fell into place that it was VS this time (and likely the last times I've seen this). I didn't suspect it because 1) VS is configured to open AS*X files for my box (default when it is installed) and 2) I never thought that just opening a file in VS would give it carte blanche to start modifying my web.config; IOW, using VS to view .NET files is so mundane that it was never logged in my brain that I did it and thus, until last night, didn't make the direct connection between VS and the modification of the web.config.

So the moral of this story is to learn from my mistake and debugging. Sadly, I guess this means I can't use VS to view ASP.NET files on servers. I've also marked web.config as read only in hopes that will prevent this should someone inadvertently open a file in VS. To be clear, I try to stay away from the servers (and generally out of the way) and let the experts do the work, but I was trying to be "helpful" last night. That'll teach me!

I'll have to look at Notepad++ again. Any other recommendations for quality--but harmless--editors?

Infragistics - An MVP Squirrel?

J. Ambrose Little — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 01:56:24 GMT

I can't take credit for the metaphor (that goes to our VP of Product Development & Marketing, Jonathan Cohen), but I thought it was apt. Why do I say this? Well, in addition to Jason Beres (VB MVP), Tony Lombardo (ASP.NET MVP), myself (Solutions Architect MVP), and of course our C# MVP Emeritus, Andrew Flick, we're honored to have two new MVPs and all around great guys joining us: Craig Shoemaker (ASP.NET MVP) and Josh Smith (WPF MVP). So it seems like we're collecting MVPs like squirrels collect nuts; at least it is the right time of year. :)

Are we nuts!? No, I think it is just an indicator that Infragistics is really invested in the software community and intends to continue to invest in it; it's a big reason why I love working here. On our Community site, we are doing our best to get and stay connected with you. If you are hosting an event, please let us know--we like to sponsor and send speakers as much as we can. You can use the Connect menu option on the Infragistics Community site to see where we're at using the community events calendar and see if we can help make your event a success.

Craig Shoemaker
We're extremely glad to have Craig starting with us. In addition to being an MVP, he is an ASPInsider, co-author of two books on ASP.NET AJAX, and he hosts the Polymorphic Podcast. As an evangelist, Craig is ramping up our community content, particularly with multimedia, so we'll finally get you those podcasts we promised. :) So keep an eye out for all the good content we'll be pumping out your way with Craig's help!

Josh Smith
Josh is bringing a lot to the table, particularly in client app development, with a focus on WPF. As well as being an MVP, Josh is a big blogger on WPF, speaks regularly about WPF at conferences and community events, and he's published a ton of highly-rated articles on Code Project. Josh is joining us in my group, UXG, as a guidisan, and he'll be focusing on cranking out a bunch of high-quality samples and exemplars for our Infragistics community to learn from.

Both of these guys bring a lot of passion for software development and the software development community (you). We're very pleased and proud to have them joining the company! It's great to get to work with folks like these. If you're passionate about software and love working at a dynamic company that feels the same way, check out our openings, and/or you could subscribe to our newly added Career Opportunities feed.

Better Silverlight Installer UX

J. Ambrose Little — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 21:21:46 GMT

Anybody keeping an eye on the prominent Silverlight blogs knows that Microsoft just published guidelines for good installation experience. I took this as an invitation to update our Infragistics Silverlight prototype demo on Infragistics Labs. Oddly enough, about the same time, it was brought to our attention that our demo was not working in Firefox, but it turns out that updating the demo to follow the new installer guidelines also occasioned fixing the FF problem. What a happy coincidence!

Since probably most of those who read this have by now installed the latest Alpha refresh, here's what our demo looks like now (if you don't have SL 1.1 installed):

Yes, this preview image design is my own, so please don't blame VDG for it. :) The key elements are:

Give them a preview.
Urge them to install to see it in action.
Provide any guidance around what needs to be done to complete installation.

I chose to snag a preview of Infragistics' Silverlight chart because I think it is the cat's pajamas (of course our Silverlight gauge is pretty nifty, too, if I do say so myself). Then I used what little Fireworks mojo I have to fix it up as a proper background preview image and added it to my project.

Now to incorporate the new installer goodness, I added Microsoft's InstallCreateSilverlight.js file to my project as well, but to use it, I had to change our main Default.aspx page fairly significantly. You see, with the last update I made to the demo, I updated to use the ASP.NET Futures Xaml control to emit the needed magic to display the Silverlight control. What I found when I did that was that it didn't use the familiar JavaScript method for creating the Silverlight control but instead just emitted the HTML object tag with the parameters inline¹. It seems also that this was causing the demo not to work in Firefox, so by updating to use JavaScript, I got to kill both of them birds with one stone.

To do this, I re-added the latest Silverlight.js file to the project, and then added a Default.aspx.js file to stick my JavaScript for that page into (trying to follow the relatively new approach for JavaScript-behind™ files²). I modified the sample JS code given by Microsoft a bit in terms of the post-install guidance.

First, because this is the 1.1 alpha version, Microsoft unfortunately does not allow in-place installation like they do for 1.0 RTM. So I wanted to add an always-displayed message about the fact the user will have to leave our site to go to MS for the installation and return later. I changed the styles to make the message more prominent, which you can see in the __setupSL() method in the Default.aspx.js file. The other change was to use script constants for the messages rather than repeat them inline just for ease of maintenance; this was done within my __getPostInstallGuidance() method.

I'm also using ASP.NET AJAX Extensions, because the demo uses an early version of our Aikido WebDialogWindow control, so I used the MS AJAX auto-wired pageLoad(sender, args) event handler to do my page load script and also used the $get alias method to get elements rather than document.getElementById. Other than that, I pretty much follow the Microsoft sample and guidance for the installer guidance update.

One other change I made with this latest update is to quit using a named window for our in-Silverlight "links"³. Previously, I was using the Silverlight HtmlPage.Navigate(uri, windowName) overload, but I found that this must be using the JavaScript window.Open(url, windowName) method because the popup blockers would block it. This is one of those unfortunate things about an alpha where you don't have native link controls that act like regular links (but who knows if they'll be able to do that in the final version anyway). To work around this, I removed the window name, so it no longer tries to open a new window.

The end result is that we have a better non-installed experience. Before this update, it'd just show the little Get MS Silverlight badge with nothing else, and as you can see in the image above, there's a big improvement. We also no longer get the "click here to activate this control" message since we switched back from the Xaml Futures control to regular JS, it now works in Firefox, and the popup blocker is no longer being triggered now that we're using HtmlPage.Navigate(uri) without the window name. It's all good.

Notes
1. I noted this in my chapter on ASP.NET & Silverlight (Ch5) for our Silverlight book and provided an alternate implementation with a custom Xaml control that uses the JS approach, but when I did the last update, I had not completed that.
2. I'm kidding about the TM. It just sounded like one of those wacky terms that should be TM'd. The contents of that file are here.
3. I say "links" in quotes because as you probably know, there is no Link control in the box right now. They're really just TextBlocks that handle the MouseLeftButtonUp event to masquerade as links. In my implementation, I use the System.Windows.Browser.HtmlPage.Navigate method to navigate to the desired URL.