Welcome to Michaels Blog

All posts published in April 2007

Blog of latest news, updates, and stories for developers

Silverlight .NET Support

The Silverlight team has released a new version [1] today at the MIX with .NET support. Since Mike announced [2] this Web developers are waiting for this new feature.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, April 30, 2007


Orcas and JavaScript IntelliSense

I had a great discussion [1] with Bertrand [2] about the feature to have dynamically (Assembly Resources or on-the-fly created JavaScript files) added JavaScripts in IntelliSense available, too. Currently it is only possible to add JavaScript files by hand that are more or less static files, and ASP.NET AJAX does not come with plain JavaScript files, too, but it is working because ScriptManager is doing his job.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, April 30, 2007


webinale 07

I will be available for Microsoft Silverlight discussions at the [webinale 07 [1] conference in Ludwigsburg/Stuttgart to talk and discuss about the latest version of Silverlight presented at the Mix07 in Las Vegas. Of course, you can talk with me about Ajax.NET Professional, too.]

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Saturday, April 28, 2007


Visual Studio Orcas JavaScript IntelliSense

Bertrand [1] has a great post about JavaScript IntelliSense [2] with the next Visual Studio .NET code-name Orcas. I downloaded the bits to give it a try. Oh yes, it is working great when creating ASP.NET AJAX Web applications.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Saturday, April 28, 2007


AjaxPro more JSON compliant

I put the next beta version online to test the new JSON converters. I have added a new web.config paramter which will bring JSON converters to render a different output.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, April 23, 2007


AjaxPro User Experience

DotNetSlackers [1] creator Sonu Kapoor writes [2] about Ajax.NET Professional [3]:

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, April 19, 2007


Rich Media Platform Comparison

I found a nice table which will show a comparison between Microsoft products and Flash/Flex:

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, April 19, 2007


Silverlight Support on Windows Mobile

I got several questions about when and if Silverlight [1] (code name WPF/E) will be supported on Windows Mobile devices. The code name has included the word everywhere. Do you still remeber this:

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Wednesday, April 18, 2007


Microsoft Live Labs - DeepFish Experience

Some weeks ago I installed the DeepFish Technology Preview [1] which will enhance existing mobile browsing technologies by displaying content in a view that is closer to the desktop experience. After installation was finished I was very anxious to see how it is working. I have several Windows mobile devices I can test. The first was a Qtek 9100 using a GSM Internet connection (9.600 baud, is my modem at home which I can use at no cost). Oh, what will the benefit be when using Deepfish compared with the built-in Internet Explorer?

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Wednesday, April 18, 2007


Microsoft Silverlight

For all of you didn't noticed the name change of code name WPF/E, it is now Microsft Silverlight. Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and rich interactive applications (RIAs) for the Web. Silverlight integrates with existing Web applications and, of course, almost all Web technologies you are already using like Ajax.NET Professional [1] or ASP.NET in common.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, April 16, 2007


Download AjaxPro Beta with jQuery Support

I forgot to put the beta version online that will support jQuery and json.js from http://www.json.org [1]. You can download the latest beta of the AjaxPro library at http://www.ajaxpro.info/download/jQueryAjaxPro.zip [2]. The download currently includes only the .NET 2.0 library including a Visual Studio .NET 2005 Web Site project.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Sunday, April 15, 2007


AjaxPro and the jQuery JavaScript Provider

Because jQuery is a often used JavaScript framework I will have a provider available in the next release of Ajax.NET Professional [1] that will render only the wrapper JavaScript files in the jQuery [2] JavaScript code.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Friday, April 13, 2007


Looking Forward to next AjaxPro Release

Some developers mentioned that it would be nice if Ajax.NET Professional [1] could be more JSON compliant to use with some JavaScript frameworks that are not using the eval statement. And, if you have a look at json.org [2] JSON message always have to be an object or array, not a string or boolean directly. Well, I absolutly see the need of these changes and I have done this already in a beta version which I will provide this evening.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Friday, April 13, 2007


Tip #2 - Display JSON String from Object

Sometimes it is necessary to see i.e. the full result you will get inside the asynchronous callback function to see all properties. The AjaxPro JavaScript includes a method to convert a JavaScript object into a JSON string.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, April 12, 2007


Tip #1 - Using AjaxPro.AjaxNoTypeUsage

If you want to hide name and assembly details of classes you return in your AjaxMethod simple add the AjaxPro.AjaxNoTypeUsage attribute as meta information:

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, April 12, 2007


Trackbacks, Who Is Linking You and where you should pay attention

Today I opened the turkish version of Google [1] and did a search for something I cannot remember. The thing was that I didn't hit enter, instead I clicked on the button Google'da Ara. What I noticed then was that the ' was not correct url encoded. Hm, nothing you have to care about. But after clicking on a link to a blog from the search results I found the same wrong url encoded url in the who is linking me section. While reading the page I had the idea to do some more testing with the apostrophe (or a quote).

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Wednesday, April 11, 2007


jQuery and Ajax.NET Professional (AjaxPro)

jQuery [1] is a fast, concise JavaScript library that simplifies how you traverse HTML documents, handle events, perform animations, and add Ajax interactions to your web pages. jQuery is designed to change the way that you write JavaScript, but it can be only used on the client-side JavaScript code. That means you need a framework on the server-side code if you want to add Ajax interactions to your web pages.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Tuesday, April 10, 2007


Intel Software Network Videos using AjaxPro

I talked today with a Intel developer and he showed me where the are using Ajax.NET Professional JSON Library [1]. The Intel Software Developer Network [2] has it's own video library where you can see great videos on several technologies Intel is offering with it's processors. We talked about why they are using AjaxPro and the answer (that I get more and more) is: "we are using Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1". I'm happy to see that the decission to support .NET 1.1 in all my releases was one of the biggest benefits you get when using AjaxPro. Well, Intel talked about using AjaxPro as AJAX library, too. So, maybe we will see more web applications from Intel next time.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Saturday, April 7, 2007


JSON Hijacking and How Ajax.NET Professional (AjaxPro) Avoids these Attacks

There are a couple of web sites reporting about security issues that hackers can use to invoke AJAX methods or use the JSON output to get data from other web applications. Specificallly, these attacks use HTTP GET requests invoked via an HTML <script src=""> include element to circumvent the "same origin policy" enforced by browsers (which limits JavaScript objects like XmlHttpRequest to only calling URLs on the same domain that the page was loaded from), and then look for ways to exploit the JSON payload content. The use of HTTP POST is only working if you are in the same domain, which does not mean this is not a dangerous security issue if used in web sites where different users can access data (i.e. spaces.live.com, blogger.com,...); there it is very easy to run HTTP POST with XmlHttpRequest object in the same domain (see Google XSS bug [1]).

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Saturday, April 7, 2007