Rick Strahl's Web Log

Weblog Posts in April 2008

jQuery.ui Sortable
April 28, 2008 @ 12:59 am

Sortable lists are a common thing to work on and jQuery.ui's Sortable plug in makes it super easy to create very nice looking sortable lists that work consistently even in complex layouts.

20 comments

Customized Loading... Images
April 27, 2008 @ 4:13 pm

Here's a cool site that provides a number of different Ajax loading images that you can use in your apps: http://www.ajaxload.info/ What's cool about this thing versus some other sites that have many of these same images is that this is actually a dynamic app that lets you completely customize foreground and background colors including background colors which is great if you need to stick...

5 comments

Variable Scoping in Anonymous Delegates in C#
April 26, 2008 @ 6:24 pm

On a few occasions anonymous methods still throw me for a conceptual loop. I'm comfortable with them in JavaScript, but in C# the behavior is a bit foreign and makes for some interesting compiler gymnastics. Anonymous methods work like closures and so variable scoping can be extended into these anonymous methods from the calling method scope which is pretty damn useful and the basis for what makes Lambda expressions work in the first place.

5 comments

Visual Studio's JavaScript Editor Really needs a Function/Class Viewer!
April 25, 2008 @ 1:17 pm

One thing I really would like to see in Visual Studio's JavaScript support is the ability to see all the functions/classes defined in the code. Right now there's no mechanism for navigating code in the JavaScript editor and while that's not a problem for small bits of code, for more complex code like libraries or truly client driven Web applications the VS editor becomes problematic with its CTRL-F or scroll wheel based search navigation.

9 comments

jQuery AJAX calls to a WCF REST Service
April 21, 2008 @ 12:52 pm

Here's an overview of how to call WCF REST services with jQuery. The basic process is very easy, but if you want to handle the formats that Microsoft sends down reliably, you have to make some format choices and deal with JSON encoding and decoding that is not native to jQuery.

17 comments

LINQPad as a Code Snippet Execution Engine
April 17, 2008 @ 12:45 am

LINQPad is an awesome tool to quickly execute code. Besides the obvious LINQ testing features that its name implies, LINQPad also can come in quite handy as a generic .NET code snippet execution utility that allows you to run any .NET expression or single statement block. It's a great tool for your toolbox to quickly check behavior of BCL functions for example...

9 comments

Byte Order Marks and XmlDocument Streaming to HTTP
April 15, 2008 @ 5:32 pm

If you're generating XML content that gets sent out to HTTP you'll need to watch out for the default XmlTextWriter encoding which includes a byte order mark. Including a BOM in Http output effectively produces invalid XML and while a smart XML client will skip over the BOM, others will barf on the BOM and treat it as content.

2 comments

Dynamic Queries and LINQ Expressions
April 14, 2008 @ 12:58 am

Using LINQ to SQL in some scenarios where dynamic expresions are required on the right side of a LINQ query expression can be tricky. How do you for example allow a query to use a dynamic field in a query and then query its data? Due to the strong typed nature of LINQ direct LINQ syntax can't be used for this sort of query, but there are a several ways to work around this by using dynamic expressions.

8 comments

On the Road again...
April 13, 2008 @ 2:41 pm

The next two weeks are going to be hectic. It's this time of year again, and I'm packing up home and hearth to go on my annual migration back to the West Coast. Except this year there will be a not so little European detour... The next couple of weeks will be especially hectic though. I'm getting on a plane in a couple of hours to fly back to Portland as I usually do this time of year. But this...

3 comments

LINQ to SQL ObjectTrackingEnabled and Deferred Loading of Related Data
April 12, 2008 @ 3:28 pm

LINQ to SQL supports object tracking by default, but if running queries it's often more efficient to turn off object tracking. This can be done with ObjectTrackingEnabled, but unfortunately this option has a rather severe side effect on deferred object loading.

5 comments

WCF REST Configuration for ASP.NET AJAX and plain REST Services
April 10, 2008 @ 7:56 pm

.NET 3.5 includes WCF REST service functionality that allows for cleaner HTTP access to services. For AJAX applications this means that WCF can now be used both for MS AJAX clients as well as non-MS AJAX clients like jQuery or Prototype. This post focuses on setting up and configuring WCF for REST operation with a focus on AJAX scenarios looking at some of the different configuration options available.

12 comments

Custom iPhone Ringtone Installation
April 09, 2008 @ 3:40 pm

This entry talks about how to get custom ringtones onto a phone including jail breaking and connecting to the phone to manually copy files on a Windows box.

9 comments

WCF REST Services and Could no load file or assembly... Error?
April 08, 2008 @ 1:26 am

I'm working with a few different WCF REST services for some demo code and I've been getting an inconsistent error, every few hours. I've been getting the old "Could not load file or assembly... or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified" errors when accessing the WCF .SVC file in an ASP.NET hosted WCF service: The odd thing about the error is that it only occurs with...

8 comments

Google AdSense Advertising - eeech...
April 04, 2008 @ 10:49 pm

I'm both a consumer and a publisher of Google Adsense advertising on the Web and even though Web advertising makes me some money by publishing ads on this blog and in a few other places around this site, both publishing and providing ads feels like a bit of black magic over which I have only a tiny bit of control. Buying Advertising But let's start with the part that really gets my goat, which is...

89 comments

Client Side Templating with jQuery
April 03, 2008 @ 4:22 am

When building AJAX applications there's often the requirement to choose between client and server side rendering. Server side ASP.NET controls provide rich templating, but updating those controls on the client can be difficult. Or is it? Here's one approach using jQuery and HTML templates in markup script to dynamically create complex layout on the client without writing reams of script code.

9 comments

Rendering individual controls for AJAX Callbacks
April 01, 2008 @ 3:21 am

It's quite handy to render HTML as part of AJAX callbacks and spit it back to the client. It's quite easy in fact to take advantage of ASP.NET Web Form rendering to render individual controls or compound user controls and pass them back to provide partial rendering even if you're using tools like jQuery, Prototype etc. rather than using ASP.NET AJAX.

5 comments