Articles : Page 1 of 6

  • It’s The Little Things about ASP.NET MVC 4

    It’s The Little Things about ASP.NET MVC 4

    Mar 12
    11

    Conway’s Law states, ...organizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations. Up until recently, there was probably no better demonstration of this law than the fact that Microsoft had two ways of shipping angle brackets (and curly braces for that matter) over HTTP – ASP.NET MVC and WCF Web API. The reorganization of these two teams under Scott Guthrie (aka “The GU” which I’m contractually boun...


  • A Really Empty ASP.NET MVC 3 Project Template

    A Really Empty ASP.NET MVC 3 Project Template

    Jan 12
    11

    In the ASP.NET MVC 3 Uservoice site, one of the most voted up items is a suggestion to include an empty project template. No, a really empty project template. You see, ASP.NET MVC 3 includes an “empty” project template, but it’s not empty enough for many people. So in this post, I’ll give you a much emptier one. It’s not completely empty. If you really wanted it completely empty, just choose the ASP.NET Empty Web Application template. The Results I’ll show you the results first, and then t...


  • The evolution of asynchronous controllers in ASP.NET MVC

    The evolution of asynchronous controllers in ASP.NET MVC

    Jan 12
    09

    Asynchronous operations in ASP.NET MVC have always been left a bit behind. They appeared in ASP.NET MVC 2, remained untouched in v3, but now in MVC 4 (especially  in combination with C# 5 and async/await) they reached the same easiness of use of the standard synchronous controller. Now (or better, in a few months with the release of ASP.NET MVC 4, .NET 4.5 and C# 5) you can write public async Task<ViewResult> Stuff() { return View(await DoStuff("Some stuff")); } In this post I’m going to...


  • Using QUnit with Razor Layouts

    Using QUnit with Razor Layouts

    Dec 11
    11

    Given how central JavaScript is to many modern web applications,  it is important to use unit tests to drive the design and quality of that JavaScript. But I’ve noticed that there are a lot of developers that don’t know where to start. There are many test frameworks out there, but the one I love is QUnit, the jQuery unit test framework. Most of my experience with QUnit is writing tests for a client script library such as a jQuery plugin. Here’s an example of one QUnit test file I wrote a ...


  • 10 articles on ASP.NET MVC Extensibility to land on Simple-Talk in the next months

    10 articles on ASP.NET MVC Extensibility to land on Simple-Talk in the next months

    Sep 11
    26

    If you are following my blog since at least a few years you know that one of my main interest is the possibility to extend ASP.NET MVC and fine tune it to fit your (and your team’s) needs. One of my most popular posts is 13 ASP.NET MVC extensibility points you have to know, which I published almost 2 years and half ago (and was based on ASP.NET MVC v1). Still on the same subject I gave a two hours long presentation at Umbraco CodeGarden ‘10 Mvc Pre-Conf: ASP.NET MVC Extensibility. To try a...


  • 7 books for a .NET Summer reading list (2011 version)

    7 books for a .NET Summer reading list (2011 version)

    Sep 11
    12

    In the previous years “n books for a .NET Summer reading list” used to be the title of the book list post. Now, in the last of my 4 posts with books suggestions I am back to the original title. In my introductory post I said I would have listed only a few web development on .NET books. In fact there are only 2. Web Development on .NET Professional ASP.NET MVC 3 While Professional ASP.NET MVC v2 was mainly an update of the original professional MVC1 book, the third remake, due to the nature o...


  • Adding Export Capabilities to the Razor WebGrid

    Adding Export Capabilities to the Razor WebGrid

    Sep 11
    03

    When MVC first came out I really missed having a grid control. Now a few years later, we finally have a grid control again. In case, you didnt know the WebGrid was included in the System.Web.Helpers assembly which shipped with MVC 3. After using a variety of grid controls over the years I was actually glad that the API for the new WebGrid was kept clean and simple. Here is a screenshot of what the grid looks like: To display a grid on a razor view page, you basically create a new grid objec...


  • Studio for Wijmo MVC Review

    Studio for Wijmo MVC Review

    Aug 11
    22

    I was recently asked to review Studio for Wijmo MVC by Component One and, overall, I am impressed. There are 2 major components of this. The first is Wijmo Complete which is a collection of over 30 UI widgets (very similar to jQuery UI). The second is Wijmo Scaffolding for MVC which builds upon the scaffolding that was released as part of the MVC 3 Tools Update (note: is does *not* build on top of powershell-based MVC Scaffolding which Microsoft released earlier this year). Some of the Wijmo...


  • New Ajax Grid Scaffolding NuGet Package for MVC 3

    New Ajax Grid Scaffolding NuGet Package for MVC 3

    Aug 11
    18

    EDITOR’S NOTE: Microsoft has an amazing intern program. For a summer, these bright college students work with a feature crew getting real work done, all the while attending cool events nearly every week that, frankly, make the rest of us jealous! Just look at some of the perks listed in this news article! This summer, the ASP.NET MVC is hosting an intern, Stephen Halter, who while very smart, doesn’t have a blog of his own (booo! hiss!). Being the nice guy that I am (and also being amenable ...


  • The BackboneJS and Knockout Danceoff

    The BackboneJS and Knockout Danceoff

    Aug 11
    09

    I just rolled out Tekpub’s latest drop for the MVC 3 series: BackboneJS with MVC 3, and a lot of people are curious why I didn’t use Knockout. So here ya go - my thoughts on the two. http://www.pimpartworks.com/artwork/gmayhew/dance-off They Don’t Do The Same Thing It’s important to realize straight away that Knockout’s focus is different than Backbone. You can do the same things with Knockout that you can with Backbone - and vise-versa - but all they definitely are not two of the same f...