AJAX Usage Among .NET Developers in 2009: Survey

Posted by VINKAS Solutions Madurai Tamilnadu India in News on July 4th, 2009

A couple of years ago Simone Chiaretta did a survey of .NET Developers usage of Ajax..   I just saw that he is refreshing that survey to see what has changed in the industry.

Are people still actively moving to Ajax?

Are they using MVC or WebForms with their Ajax?  Which ones of the *many* ajax frameworks out there are they using?  Feel free to write-in Silverlight if that is your current preference for this style of application.

Very interesting data… and while clearly not a scientific survey, it is an interesting data point as Simone has agreed to publish all the data he gets.

Here is what he has so far.

So please take a few minutes and fill out the survey and pass it on to your colleagues.

http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB22973CYKW2H

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ASP.NET C# Instant Messenger Status Determination – Akxl Labs

Posted by VINKAS Solutions Madurai Tamilnadu India in Chat on July 4th, 2009

First, we need some functions to determine the status of an AIM user. I do this using the http://www.imwrapper.com/ service to get the status, based on the protocol.

The first function figures out if the user is online:

 1protected bool GetIMStatus(string screenName, string protocol)
 2{
 3    protocol = protocol.ToLower();
 4
 5    string imStatusUrl = "http://www.imwrapper.com/" + protocol + "/"
 6                       + screenName + "/standard";
 7
 8    System.Net.HttpWebRequest imStatusRequest =
 9        (System.Net.HttpWebRequest)
10        System.Net.WebRequest.Create(imStatusUrl);
11
12    imStatusRequest.Accept="image/*";
13    imStatusRequest.AllowAutoRedirect = true;
14
15    System.Net.HttpWebResponse imStatusResponse =
16        (System.Net.HttpWebResponse) imStatusRequest.GetResponse();
17
18    return imStatusResponse.Headers["Content-Disposition"].
19Contains("online.png");
20}

GetIMStatus takes the following parameters, and returns a boolean, where true indicates that the user is online.

a screen name:

The screen name of the user to check. This value is generally case-insensitive, but this depends on the protocol.

a protocol:

The protocol to check on. Valid values are:

• AIM
• Yahoo
• MSN
• ICQ
• Jabber
• Skype

Note that these values are case-insensitive.

If that’s all you want to do, then you only need that function. But I wanted a snap-in, linked status indicator.

So, we need a function to display something based on this information. A big part of this will be the link location. Most protocols support a way to launch a message window to a user via a link, so we’ll need to construct a link for each protocol.

 1protected string GetIMStatusString(string screenName, string protocol)
 2{
 3    return GetIMStatusString(screenName, protocol, "standard");
 4}
 5
 6protected string GetIMStatusString(string screenName,
 7                                   string protocol,
 8                                   string iconSet)
 9{
10    string html = "";
11
12    try
13    {
14        protocol = protocol.ToLower();
15        iconSet  = iconSet.ToLower();
16
17        string imStatusUrl = "http://www.imwrapper.com/"
18                           + protocol + "/"
19                           + screenName + "/"
20                           + iconSet;
21
22        string statusString =
23         ((GetIMStatus(screenName, protocol)) ? "Online" : "Offline");
24        string linkStart = "";
25        string linkEnd   = "";
26
27        // jabber : xmpp:<sn>
28        // skype  : skype:<sn>?chat
29        // yahoo  : ymsgr:sendIM?<sn>
30        // aim    : aim:goim?screenname=<sn>
31
32        switch (protocol)
33        {
34            case "aim":
35                linkStart = "<a href=\"aim:goim?screenname="
36                          + screenName
37                          + "\">";
38                linkEnd   = "</a>";
39                break;
40            case "yahoo":
41                linkStart = "<a href=\"ymsgr:sendIM?"
42                          + screenName
43                          + "\">";
44                linkEnd   = "</a>";
45                break;
46            case "jabber":
47                linkStart = "<a href=\"xmpp:"
48                          + screenName
49                          + "\">";
50                linkEnd   = "</a>";
51                break;
52            case "skype":
53                linkStart = "<a href=\"skype:"
54                          + screenName
55                          + "?chat\">";
56                linkEnd   = "</a>";
57                break;
58        }
59
60        html = String.Format("<img src=\"{1}\" alt=\"{0}\" "
61                           + "align=\"absmiddle\" /> {3}{0} as {2}{4}"
62                            ,statusString
63                            ,imStatusUrl
64                            ,screenName
65                            ,linkStart
66                            ,linkEnd
67                            );
68    }
69    catch
70    {
71        // ...
72    }
73
74    return html;
75}

GetIMStatusString takes the following parameters, and returns the HTML for an icon for the client and status, a string describing the screen name and status, and (where possible) a link that will launch a message window to contact the screen name.

a screen name:

The screen name of the user to check. This value is generally case-insensitive, but this depends on the protocol.

a protocol:

The protocol to check on. Valid values are:

• AIM
• Yahoo
• MSN
• ICQ
• Jabber
• Skype

Note that these values are case-insensitive.

optionally, an icon set:

Check http://www.imwrapper.com/ for icon set names. The default is ’standard’, which is the first icon set on each list. All protocols also have ‘default’, which is the icon set actually used by the canonical clients. To find the icon set name, check the URL of the images in the set. For example, if an image’s URL is ‘http://www.imwrapper.com/images/icq/bevelled/offline.png’, the icon set is ‘bevelled’.

The string returned will render something like this:
IM: Offline

To make this code reusable, I made a custom control that can be snapped into a page. The control will render as the above status string. The source code that turns the above functions into a custom control is below. The control can be downloaded at the bottom of the page.

 1<%@ Control Language="C#" %>
 2
 3<script language="C#" runat="server">
 4    private string _screenName = "";
 5    private string _protocol   = "aim";
 6    private string _iconSet    = "standard";
 7
 8    public string ScreenName
 9    {
10        get { return _screenName;  }
11        set { _screenName = value; }
12    }
13
14    public string Protocol
15    {
16        get { return _protocol;  }
17        set { _protocol = value; }
18    }
19
20    public string IconSet
21    {
22        get { return _iconSet;  }
23        set { _iconSet = value; }
24    }
25
26    // [ THREE FUNCTIONS FROM ABOVE HERE ] //
27</script>
28
29<%= GetIMStatusString(ScreenName, Protocol, IconSet) %>

To use the control, you need two things:

The following code needs to be at the top of your page, to register the control.

1<%@ Register tagprefix="akxl"
2             Tagname="IMStatus"
3             src="/controls/IMStatus.ascx">

The next code places the control into the page output. You can also add another attribute, IconSet="<string>" to specify the optional icon set parameter. All attributes directly map to the parameters described above.

1<akxl:IMStatus id="akxlIMStatus"
2               runat="server"
3               ScreenName="ImTooSmartForMe"
4               Protocol="AIM" />

Here’s a live example of the control:

IM: Offline

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Free Ajax Controls for Asp.Net 2.0/3.0/3.5 – obout Suite Download

Posted by VINKAS Solutions Madurai Tamilnadu India in Control on June 29th, 2009

obout Suite for ASP.NET 2.0/3.0/3.5

  • TreeView
  • Grid
  • Editor
  • Spell checker
  • Calendar
  • Easy menu
  • Combobox
  • Slide menu
  • AJAXPage
  • Scheduler
  • Context menu (with Easy menu)
  • TabStrip (with Easy menu)
  • Slide Panel (with Slide menu)
  • Two colors menu
  • Splitter
  • Super button
  • Tree_DB
  • Show
  • Flyout
  • Window
  • FileUploadProgress
  • ColorPicker
  • Toolbar (with Supper button)
  • Autosuggest (with Combobox)
  • Multilevel Combobox (with Combobox)
  • State Selector (with Combobox)
DOWNLOAD
oboutSuite.exe (12mb)		 This is a self-extracting archive.
It includes all controls and hundreds of examples in C# and VB.NET

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Free Download ASP.NET AJAX Photo Gallery Control – NotesForGallery

Posted by VINKAS Solutions Madurai Tamilnadu India in Open Source Projects on June 28th, 2009

NotesForGallery Project
NotesForGallery is a simple photo gallery control based on asp.net Ajax and JQuery (LightBox plugin). The objective of this control is to build a gallery easily and quickly. (2 lines of codes)

Current functionalities

  • Auto generates thumbnails.
  • Animated Slide Show
  • Display images in modal dialog

thGallery.jpg thLightBox.jpg

More Informations:

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AJAX Multiple Files Upload in asp.net – Free Download

Posted by VINKAS Solutions Madurai Tamilnadu India in Control on June 28th, 2009

Click here to Download

FileUpload AJAX :: ASP.NET

Newest version: 1.2 (7/27/2007)

FileUploadAJAX is an open source ASP.NET 2.0 custom control that is similar to the predefined FileUpload control but with a key difference: AJAX behavior

And what does this means? This means that with the FileUploadAJAX we can upload files in an asynchronous way and without reloading the page… that’s all!

Furthemore there are a lot of configuration options that you will discover on the How to section

In order to begin, we show an easy example with very few code that will allow us to upload up to 5 “.gif” of less than 5KB each one. Test it yourself: upload “.gif” images, delete them, try to upload other kind of files, from more than 5 KB, etc.

Code.aspx
<cc1:FileUploaderAJAX ID=”FileUploaderAJAX1″ runat=”server” MaxFiles=”5″ />

Code.aspx.cs
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (FileUploaderAJAX1.IsPosting)
this.managePost();
}

private void managePost()
{
HttpPostedFileAJAX pf = FileUploaderAJAX1.PostedFile;

if (pf.ContentType.Equals(”image/gif”) && pf.ContentLength <= 5 * 1024)
FileUploaderAJAX1.SaveAs(”~/temp”, pf.FileName);
}

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