P&P have been releasing a series of bundles for the last couples of month focused on responsive web applications using AJAX technologies.

This time, the topic of this bundle is the Live Search pattern.

Concept

Searching is a common scenario for most Web Applications.

Usually users performs this task via search pages with results that often span across multiple pages. ASP.NET AJAX can improve the performance and user experience of the search.

Guidance

This bundle includes guidance on

• Implementing the Live Search pattern using ASP.NET AJAX
• Displaying progress indicator for long running queries
• Paging the result to improve search experience
• Perform server paging to minimize resource usage
• Implement Submission Throttling pattern using ASP.NET AJAX

Add Live Search capabilities

Download the Search bundle from Codeplex!

You can easily add Live Search features to any existing Web Site.

RealTimeSearchMonitor Control

In this bundle we introduced the RealTimeSearchMonitor control which allows developers to easily incorporate real-time search behavior into their Web applications.

By using the RealTimeSearchMonitor control, developers can declaratively specify in markup code what input controls are to be monitored for user input, without the need to write custom client-side code.

Stay tuned!

Keep on tuned. More releases are coming real soon!

The patterns and practices team is shipping a bundle again.

Now, we are providing the community with a guidance bundle focusing in another recurrent concept: The validation bundle.

What are the scenarios addressed by this bundle?

• Create responsive LOB web applications using an Ajax approach.
• Improve UI responsiveness of existing web application.
• Determine what type of validation can be use to address different scenarios.
• Reuse entity business validation logic.
• Use Enterprise Library Validation Application Block in an Ajax web application scenario.

Inside this new bundle you can find:

• Validation QuickStart: source code to demonstrate how to improve UI responsiveness for validation and reuse of validation rules across pages.
• Validation Application Block from Enterprise Library 3.1: Validation Application Block binary.
• AJAXControlToolkit.WCSFExtensions.dll: Contains the ServerSideValidationExtender which invokes ASP.NET validators including the Enterprise Library PropertyProxyValidator via AJAX
• Acceptance Tests: Manual tests that can be executed to walk you through the Quickstart functionality.
• Documentation: Documentation explaining Validation Guidelines (Security, Schema, and so on) the Quickstart, and how to use the extender.

You can start with Glenn Block's introduction video (15' - 15MB) for a quick introduction to the concepts inside this bundle.

You should stay tuned; there are more bundles to come. (Check the bundles catalog for more guidance)

As you already know the second weekly drop of
the Web Client Software Factory vNext is already available. You can download it
from the release
section of the project in Codeplex.

I'm really excited about is the ability of
using a kind-of dependency injection (DI) on pages, master pages, user controls
and web services.

Focusing on simplicity and consistency
getting dependency resolve works in the exactly same manner for pages, master
pages, user controls and web services.

The disadvantages of this are that instead of
happening automatically, an object that wishes to be injected must call a
single static method.

_{In this example, a user control
is injected by itself calling a
static method.}

Get the zip, play with it, and comment what
you think about this changes in our forum.

Enjoy!

Juan Arguello

For the last couple of weeks Miguel, Julian and I have been working with the Patterns & Practices team in Microsoft on the Web Client Software Factory vNext here in Redmond.

We planned releasing weekly drops for your early evaluation so the development of the factory will be guided by your feedback.

Here you can download the first weekly drop. Start playing with it. Enjoy! 

Finally, Smart Client Software Factory - May 2007 is out there (here in Microsoft Download Center).

This release provides (from Blaine's announcement post):

·         Windows Presentation Foundation interoperability CAB extensions and  guidance for creating new WPF Smartparts (Check out this great post from Miguel Saez)

·         Offline application blocks and recipes; the application blocks support asynchronous calls to WCF web services. (Don’t miss this post from Mariano’s blog about Offline Quickstart)

·         Richer ClickOnce Deployment capabilities

·         Enhanced guidance packages which includes code generation Visual Basic .NET 2005 (don't miss this previous post for more details)

·         Improved installation with a new dependency checker.

Just go out there, and start playing with the factory! Enjoy!

For the last couple of weeks Matias, Mariano, Miguel and I have been working with the Patterns and Practices team developing the next version of SCSF.

Miguel and I have been porting the guidance package to support the latest version of GAT/GAX 1.2. We worked heavily on TDD creating new wizard pages to allow a future improvement of the user experience, and did some refactoring both on code and XML configuration files.

Here you will find some details of the work we’ve been doing:

Disconnected Service Agent

The Add Smart Web Reference recipe was replaced by the Add Disconnected Service Agent (DSA) recipe which uses the OAB.

This recipe (and the OAB) was ported from the MCSF. After fixing some issues regarding differences between Mobile and Desktop web references, we could successfully port the recipe.

Also, this recipe was modified to work with any class besides a web reference. This makes the Add DSA recipe a powerful tool to wrap any service class and make it work in a disconnected fashion.

Custom Wizard Pages

We replaced XML defined wizard pages by custom wizard pages. As this custom wizard pages are WinForm controls, they will allow future improvements to the user experience.  This wizard pages implemented the MVP pattern.

We strongly recommend this practice when customizing the any guidance package.

Test Driven Development

Following WCSF steps, we worked under TDD to create wizard page’s presenters. TDD helped us to find some “hidden” requirements that were not so easy to read in the XML Page definition. It has also been really helpful when creating spikes (We’ve been doing some research to include the Validation Application Block included in EntLib 3.0).

XML refactoring

As we began working with some of the Guidance Package recipes it became natural to split the main guidance package xml definition into pieces.

This approach was already used in WCSF and it help us to focus in one recipe at a time. We also extracted the BindingRecipe recipe to a separate file. EvaluateExpression Actions were used in the former guidance package to obtain values and use them as arguments of subsequent Actions. It made more sense for us to have all the values used for Actions in the Arguments section. This approach was the used in WCSF and make this values available for wizard pages.

New RecipeFramework Library

The previous SCSF version has a library project containing Actions, ValueProviders  and other classes.

This library is now part of the Recipe Framework that comes with GAT/GAX 1.2. We are using GAT/GAX classes where suitable.

Some of these classes included in the RecipeFramework library has a different behavior than those included in the previous version of SCSF. We had to make some research before replace some of this classes.

Use of GEL (GAT/GAX Extension Library)

Other classes used in the previous version of the SCSF guidance package are now part of the Guidance Extension Library project (a.k.a. GEL).

By inspecting on the WCSF code we find that some of this classes was now part of the GEL project.

We found some issues when using some of this classes so we fix them and temporally included this project in the SCSF guidance package.

We will post this fixes in the Codeplex GEL project and then return to a binary reference of GEL instead of having the project included.

We found some issues on the road, some related to the library used and some related to the use of custom wizard pages instead of xml definitions. We will try to post some details in the next days, so stay tuned!