Free Windows Vista Wall Paper

Vista enthusiast Brajeshwar Oinam has put together some beautiful, high-resolution Vista-themed wallpapers for us all, and he's even merged them all together in quite the handy-dandy little .zip file for easy download. Technically, these would work well for pretty much any screen, Vista or otherwise; and I have to say that the details on some of these are truly stunning. Got any other free wallpaper goodness you'd like to share? Let us know your thoughts in the comments. — Wendy Boswell

Download here

Ajax on Rails

In a few short months, Ajax has moved from an obscure and rarely used technology to the hottest thing since sliced bread. This article introduces the incredibly easy-to-use Ajax support that is part of the Ruby on Rails web application framework. This is not a step-by-step tutorial, and I assume that you know a little bit about how to organize and construct a Rails web application. If you need a quick refresher, check out Rolling with Ruby on Rails, Part 1 and Part 2.

In the beginning, there was the World Wide Web. Compared with desktop applications, web applications were slow and clunky. People liked web applications anyway because they were conveniently available from anywhere, on any computer that had a browser. Then Microsoft created XMLHttpRequest in Internet Explorer 5, which let browser-side JavaScript communicate with the web server in the background without requiring the browser to display a new web page. That made it possible to develop more fluid and responsive web applications. Mozilla soon implemented XMLHttpRequest in its browsers, as did Apple (in the Safari browser) and Opera.

XMLHttpRequest must have been one of the Web's best kept secrets. Since its debut in 1998, few sites have used it at all, and most developers, if they even knew about it, never used it. Google started to change that when it released a series of high-profile web applications with sleek new UIs powered by XMLHttpRequest. The most visually impressive of these is Google Maps, which gives you the illusion of being able to drag around an infinitely sizable map in its little map window.

While Google's prominent use of XMLHttpRequest dramatically demonstrated that vastly improved UIs for web apps were possible, it was Jesse James Garrett's February 18 essay that finally gave this technique a usable name: Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML). That was the tipping point. Without knowing it, we as an industry had been waiting for this, and the new Ajax name spread like wildfire. I have never seen such rapid and near universal adoption of a new technology moniker!

Click here to read in detail...

ASP.NET Client-side validation Controls - IE and FireFox

Here, you can download controls that work the same as ASP.NET standard validation controls with two important differences. Firstly, the controls will work in Firefox 1.0 and later, as well as IE. Secondly, they are fully HTML DOM compliant.

To run these, you need to refer to the compiled DLL (in the Release directory). This will add the controls.

Also the source code (in c#) is included in case you want to compile or modify the library yourself.

Click Here to Download

Microsoft Start.com

I was looking at the new site from Microsoft called www.start.com

Better way to search the RSS feed.. Microsoft coming with new way of RSS Feeds..

Check this URL: http://www.start.com/1/

All the information is saved via cookie or you can get a specialized URL which will work from any computer and contain your saved configuration. Add your own feeds, or you can import an OPML file or add your feeds individually.

I tried with www.start.com/2 it worked :)

You can share your Favorites (Favelet) thru a special URL. It imports your favorites (with a small ActiveX), with a special URL you can view your favorites from anywhere. Here is the URL to checkit out.

http://www.start.com/2/default.aspx


You can also try http://www.start.com/3 - Microsoft coming with new search functionality like Askjeeves

I also tried www.start.com/4 .... /5... Unfortunately it didn't work!!!

Ajax

What the heck is AJAX? Everybody moves towards AJAX...

Ajax meant (Asynchronous JavaScript with XmlHttpRequest)

The classic web application model works like this: Most user actions in the interface trigger an HTTP request back to a web server. The server does some processing - retrieving data, crunching numbers, talking to various legacy systems - and then returns an HTML page to the client.


Figure 1: The traditional model for web applications (left) compared to the Ajax model (right).
This approach makes a lot of technical sense, but it doesn't make for a great user experience. While the server is doing its thing, what's the user doing? That's right, waiting. And at every step in a task, the user waits some more.

How Ajax is Different

An Ajax application eliminates the start-stop-start-stop nature of interaction on the Web by introducing an intermediary - an Ajax engine - between the user and the server. It seems like adding a layer to the application would make it less responsive, but the opposite is true.
Instead of loading a webpage, at the start of the session, the browser loads an Ajax engine - written in JavaScript and usually tucked away in a hidden frame. This engine is responsible for both rendering the interface the user sees and communicating with the server on the user's behalf. The Ajax engine allows the user's interaction with the application to happen asynchronously - independent of communication with the server. So the user is never staring at a blank browser window and an hourglass icon, waiting around for the server to do something.




Here are few Major Open source Ajax..

http://ajax.schwarz-interactive.de/csharpsample/default.aspx

http://goog-ajaxslt.sourceforge.net/

ASP.NET 2.0 comes with ClientCallBack function does the same functionality.

More info: Click here

Remote Scripting ASP.NET

Remote Scripting has been used by classic ASP developers since the earliest days of Internet Explorer 3.0 when Microsoft put out their Remote Scripting applet and sample source code. In fact, the first major commercial implementation of Remote Scripting that I know of was Outlook Web Access, really at the time a quite remarkable and full-featured offering created by the MS Exchange programming team.

Click Here to complete article.

Flash Remoting with ASP.NET 2.0 (Beta2)

Finally!!

After running so many test... I was able to figure out working Flash Remoting on ASP.NET 2.0 Beta2.

It was a real pain, since ASP.NET 2.0 is not creating DLL files when you build the site.. It kept in a Temp location. Flash Remoting uses DLL file to talk to ASPX or C# objects... I found a work around to create a DLL and able to talk between Flash Remoting vs. ASP.NET 2.0.

N-Tier Applications and .NET: Achieving Isolation between UI and BOL

I love to create application developing in a n-tier... I have seen this article.

In the previous three articles we have seen how a typical 3-tier application looks like and how to achieve isolation between Data Access Layer and Business Object Layer. I mentioned in the last article that we still have tight coupling between UI and database. This is due to the fact that our Select methods are returning DataSets which contain actual database column names. This means any change to database column names is going to affect UI layer. This article takes the concept one step ahead and shows how this coupling can be reduced.

Click here to view more...