ASP.NET 1.1 and 2.0 View State

I found this nice article comparing 1.1 and 2.0 view state. It really opens your eyes to the importance of view state that most developers take for granted. The author list a great example that if you check most asp.net websites, the view state is out of control. 2.0 gives us awesome view state control by fist adding control state and using view state the smart way when doing things declaritive [ and we all like copy and pasting code on ASPX pages and things working]. 2.0 also reduces the view state data nearly by half in some cases due to the new encryption methods.




Link: Link to Article

Magic Ajax .3 released

Today, the creator of MagicAjax informed me he released his new version. This version solves a lot of the cpu issues not to mention the ways you can now use it amoung ASP.NET applications. If you are a fan of easy deployable access, I suggest you go pick it up.

Quick review of things changed :

v0.3.0 (9 February 2006) - Major Release

Changes since 0.2.2

• If another form tag was added to page, MagicAjax did not work; fixed it
• Corrected an encoding issue
• Some controls with AutoPostBack set to 'true' were not working properly; fixed it
• Fixed reflecting scripts and css-styles that were added on a Ajax callback.
  Note: if you want to run the current MagicAjax.NET development version under ASP.NET 2.0 medium trust (as most hosting-providers are forcing), you need to compile MagicAjax with the MEDIUM_TRUST flag on. Unfortunately, this will disable MagicAjax's feature to reflect script/css changes on callbacks for now (because we now use reflection for this to call private system variables). Also, only the default MagicAjax configuration-settings will be used (because medium trust doesn't allow reading of the web.config). We're working on a non-reflection version at the moment (using regular expressions to scan through the Html output), which will run under medium trust.
• Fixed client-side ASP.NET validation
• Image buttons now return the X/Y coordinates
• Fix for incompatibility with flash applets
• Fix for the problem of the AjaxPanel not displaying its contents on VS 2005 when in a UserControl
• New MagicAjax attributes for ASP.NET controls (AjaxLocalScope, ExcludeFlags)
• Added ExcludeFlags property for AjaxPanel
• New base (abstract) controls added (ClientEventControl, BaseClientEventWrapper)
• New toolbox controls added (AjaxZone, KeyClientEventWrapper, ClientEventTrigger)
• Support for Opera and Netscape browsers added.
• MagicAjax.dll is now strongly named (public key token bf4053b35db106f3), so MagicAjax.dll can be registered in the GAC.
• AjaxCall event is renamed to AjaxCallStart
• AjaxControl/AjaxPage/AjaxUserControl invoke AjaxCallStart at Load event, PreWriteScript at PreRender, and AjaxCallEnd at Unload, during an Ajax callback
• Huge server-side performance improvement
• There were conflicts with the cookies handling by ASP.NET 2.0 and other HttpModules; fixed it
• Optimizations for the javascript client
• DropdownList and single-selection ListBox were not cleared for firefox; fixed it

Link: Link to new code

Ajax Comparison

This blog post has a great discussion on the different Ajax frameworks out. He only post frameworks which allow solid Ajax. Notice how Magic Ajax is the only completly free framework which can just be copied and pasted. Its also the only one that can do complete ajax across applications because ANYTHING on the panel becomes ajax. Please note that you can disable control by control. Its also the only framework we have been able to get to work in Rainbow 2.0. I know we can just use call back [ which i plan on using for hardcore rainbow core/modules] but we were looking for a nice free complete ajax project. Thanks to MA, rainbow portal .NET 2.0 will soon post an ajax version.

Lets review:
free
easy to use[ my 19 y/o cousin can copy and paste]
Makes everything ajax
supports both 1.1/2.0
Works with all major browswers


Link: Ajax Comparison

Rainbow 2.0 Community gets blogs

The rainbow community has upgraded to beta 3 of Community server. The more I use/admin the different versions of this platform the more I like it. Of course its got that Microsoft feel all over it but it gets the job done. I don't know of another blog engine that is close to CS. .Text is ok but with a couple more improvements CS can be as good as wordpress ( with a lot of improvements maybe).

However, I have made what I think is my fifth blog over at the community. If you create web applications or manage a CMS portal, I suggest you download rainbow and check out the community. Its a nice light weight portal that now runs on 2.0 [ thanks to myself and Anant Systems ok ok ok Microsoft helped get off my back]. It uses modules to extend it [ for now] which are just simply user controls copy and pasted. You can use aspx pages to do more task and organize controls. For better support you can wrap rainbow around your applications and use it as "portal comfort".

If you are a web admin in need of a CMS on the latest tech, rainbows your choice. Its not "boxey" like DNN and the modules dont break from version to version. CSS is raw css and you can create just about any site in existence on Rainbow. Users wont even know you are running an easily edit full fledge portal. You can even create roles of just site admins and have them make content changes to HTML modules. We also plan to spit out only XHTML so your users can use any browser across your organization or the world as rainbow supports 29 langs.


Link: Rainbow 2.0 Blogs
Link: Get Rainbow 2.0, its free