ASP.NET MVC Preview 2 is available
Preview 2 of ASP.NET MVC has been posted to Microsoft Downloads.
One of the nice features that will be available this time around is full source code and permission to compile it if you need to fix a bug.
Release Notes are available here. I was pleased to see a few of the items that I had complained about corrected in this release.
- IControllerFactory.CreateController() now takes a string for the controller name instead of a Type instance. This helps a lot for IOC containers because most people seem to prefer names instead of types.
- Added Dispose method to IControllerFactory to support IOC recycling semantics
- and most important: ControllerBuilder.SetDefaultControllerFactory has been renamed to SetControllerFactory and now has an override that takes and instance of IControllerFactory.
The last one is nice because I had to write some ugly code before in SpringControllerFactory (MVCContrib) because SetDefaultControllerFactory had previously taken a Type parameter for the IControllerFactory. If you wanted to share a spring.net context between the controller factory instance and another part of your app you had to resort to the ugly code method because you had no control over when and how often the controller factory was created.
Thanks should go to the ASP.NET MVC development team for obviously taking feedback from the community seriously. Check the release notes for other improvements to the api.
Tags: aspnetmvc, dotnet, preview2
Silverlight 2 Beta 1 Released
Microsoft Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2008 has been posted to the Microsoft Download Center.
This download will install the VS integration (new project templates, debugging, etc..) as well as Silverlight 2 Beta 1 and the Silverlight 2 SDK Beta 1.
Tags: visualstudio, dotnet, silverlight, beta
Beta 1 of Silverlight 2.0 is coming soon
Scott Guthrie announced on his blog that the first beta of Silverlight 2.0 is coming soon. He gave an overview of what is included and linked to tutorials for a sample application.
A few things are interesting in the announcement:
- Not only are http protocols like SOAP and RSS supported but socket based networking is also included. This could mean that Silverlight applications have the ability to communicate with applications on the host computer via remoting. I’ll be checking that out when the beta comes.
- Threading will be there.
- Local storage. This will be big for Silverlight, in my opinion.
I think the crucial component affecting adoption by developers will be how much of WPF is available. Scott mentioned that it will be a compatible subset. If this subset is large enough that component vendors are able to deliver controls that work the same on standalone clients and in Silverlight, the adoption will be swift and wide.
Tags: silverlight, dotnet
Abstract Base Classes and Interfaces
Phil Haack, who is working on the ASP.NET MVC project at Microsoft, posted an explanation of the choice they made to change the abstraction of HTTPContext from an interface to an abstract base class.
This topic is something I like to ask about in interviews for more senior developers who are expected to take on design work as well as development. The answer I generally look for is something along the lines of:
Abstract base classes should be used in cases where the actual behavior is significant to the contract.
Phil goes in to much more depth here and discusses something that is also very important: the choice between interfaces and abstract base classes is a crucial component to flexibility when it comes to versioning.
Read Phil’s post on this. It is a good explanation of the tradeoffs involved.
Tags: dotnet
White UI Testing Framework for Windows Applications
I just read this post on InfoQ written by Jay Flowers. Jay discusses a new framework that has been released on CodePlex called White.
White is a testing framework for the UI layer and supports Win32, Windows Forms, WPF, and the SWT java framework. For those of you who may be surprised about the java framework part of SWT, I’ll let you know that this is possible because SWT is actually implemented using native UI Widgets on each platform it supports. Since native code is being executed, I would presume any testing framework that works at the Win32 level would also work on SWT.
The thing I really like when I first look at White is the syntax and the apparent support of non standard UI controls. The main drawback I have seen with other attempts at UI testing frameworks is that they do not easily accept controls that are not shipped with Windows Forms.
The CodePlex site has some samples and a link to a good getting started tutorial.
Tags: white, unittesting, windows, dotnet
ReSharper 4.0 Early Access Program
JetBrains has announced the EAP for ReSharper 4.0. The product supports most of the C# 3.0 features, but sadly still no LINQ support. They have added quite a bit to ReSharper, in addition to the new language features. I am looking forward to the final release.
Tags: resharper, jetbrains, visualstudio, visualstudiodotnet
Unity DI Container CTP
Microsoft Patterns and Practices has released a CTP (Community Technology Preview) of Unity, a new DI container. So far, documentation is lacking but hopefully will be forthcoming. It appears future versions of Enterprise Library will utilize this container. P&P is having a workshop next week for those who really want to jump in head first.
For those who might be a little confused by this offering because of the previous pushing of ObjectBuilder from the P&P team, here is a post going into some detail about ObjectBuilder whether or not is does DI.
Update 2/15/2008 10am -
Grigori Melnik, from P&P, kindly pointed out that a CHM is shipped with Unity. After checking, I found that I missed it because the zip file places the CHM one directory above the Unity directory in the tree. Since everything else in the distribution started from the Unity directory, I overlooked it.
I am still having some problems reading the CHM file from my machine. The help browser seems to be attempting to read the content from the internet and cannot find it. Since people are referring to the documentation in discussion posts, this must be something specific to my machine or a low percentage problem.
Update 2/15/2008 11:20am -
The problem with the viewing of the CHM was security related. The short answer is open the file properties dialog for the CHM file, uncheck Read-only, press the Unblock button and accept the changes. The longer description is here.
Tags: dependencyinjection, unity, .net, dotnet
.Net Mass Downloader 1.1 Released
I forgot to include this in my post yesterday but John Robbins, from Wintellect, has announced version 1.1 of.Net Mass Downloader. This handy tool allows you to download all available source code for the .Net framework, all at once.
VS.net 2008 will download the code once it is configured, but only a little at a time. For those who want to peruse the code at their leisure, this would not be acceptable.
Tags: VisualStudioDotNet, VS.net, massdownloader, dotnetsource
Cool Visual Studio Things I’ve Run Across Lately
StickyNotes is a VS 2008 package that adds notes to solutions, projects, and project items. The information is stored in the solution and project files. This is functionality that I have always thought would be nice to have in Visual Studio. The coolest part of this is that the tool window is not WinForms, it is WPF. Written by Pablo Galiano and hosted on MSDN Code Gallery. Sadly, no source code is available yet but it is promised soon.
MSDN Code Gallery is a new site that was introduced by Microsoft. The site already has many good examples and pointers to good information. It looks strikingly similar to CodePlex, only not so green. I am not sure why these sites needed to be separate but I am sure someone has a good reason.
Scott Hanselman has put up a post with various VS themes. It has become very fashionable to show off your custom themes lately. I sort of like the Jedi Scheme. The name is certainly a can’t miss.
Microsoft has just released a CTP version of the new XSLT Profiler for VS 2008. My recent tribulations with debugging xslt have given me a huge appreciation for tools in this area.
Tags: VisualStudio, addins
ReSharper 3.1 Released
I am back, after a pause for the flu and the Christmas whirlwind tour.
Jetbrains has released ReSharper 3.1. Although it does not contain the C# 3.0 functionality, it does contain some speed increases. Release notes can be found here.
If you have recently purchased 3.0, this is a free upgrade. If you haven’t purchased 3.0, purchasing this release will give you a free upgrade to 4.0 when it is released.
I highly recommend this add-in for Visual Studio.
Tags: Visual Studio, ReSharper