Some say DOM scripting will end in fire,Some say in Silverlight.Still others say with much desire,That either will suffice. (apologies to Robert Frost). The arguments I hear go like this: if a developer can build on a cross-platform CLR with a diverse selection of languages and still interop with the browser, than why would the developer stoop into the primordial ooze of HTML and script against a document object model that has more eccentricities than the city of San Francisco? In other words, if I can write the following in C#: HtmlDocument document = HtmlPage.Document;HtmlElement select = document.GetElementByID("mySelect");for (int i = 0;...

The best part of installing Visual Studio 2008 ... ... is that I don't have to follow up with a four hour install of SP1 for Visual Studio 2005!

The current Silverlight 1.1 alpha will eat exceptions. I’m not sure if the final version will behave similarly, but if you are working with the alpha don’t let this behavior surprise you. For example, consider the following event handlers that listen to a shape’s mouse events: void _box_MouseLeftButtonDown(object sender, MouseEventArgs e) {                 throw new NotImplementedException(); } void _box_MouseLeftButtonUp(object sender, MouseEventArgs e) {     _box.Width += 5; } The left mouse button goes down and … nothing happens. There is no indication of an error. When the left mouse button goes up … the shape will grow in size. Silverlight is still running with the attitude of a Broadway director. Despite the...

Ajaxian linked to a reference implementation of ECMAScript 4 today. ECMAScript 4 (a.k.a JavaScript) is still a work in progress. When the work is finished, the new standard will be the first major update to the language since 1999. The language overview whitepaper is 40 pages of ambition – iterators, pragmas, packages, namespaces, serialization, generics, annotations, non-nullable variables - and the list goes on. Here is some code I was toying with: interface Printable {     function print() } class Point implements Printable {     static var name = "Point class";     private var _x : int;     private var _y : int;     function get x() { return _x; }     function set x(value: int) {...

Phil and Dino Esposito have been talking about the RESTful aspects of the upcoming ASP.NET MVC framework. REST – It's All About the Resources You can read about REST in a PhD thesis, but I think Tonic captures the essence of a RESTful architectural style from the perspective of a web application developer: Everything useful is a resource, not a file, not a CGI script, a resource, an abstract concept of something useful that the client wants to grab hold of. Resources are located by URLs, URLs are cheap and form the universal addressing system of the Web. Clients can issue a...

I can't believe how easy it was... Last week the bottom third of the display on my X60 tablet became distorted and wavy. Applying a gentle pressure to the bottom left corner would fix the display. Something was loose, obviously, and I can't just sit around all day squeezing my tablet. At 9:30 A.M. Monday, I opened up a support case on the ThinkPad's EasyServ site. I was mentally prepared to give up my tablet for 8 weeks, and have my request lost in the pneumatic tube system that dispatches repair orders to an IBM facility where spider monkeys are...

Due to popular demand, here are some answers to the questions. Well, not answers exactly ... just some pointers to the get you in the right direction...1. Are there advantages to building workflows using only XAML? Are there disadvantages?See Keith Elder's blog on "Leveraging Workflow Foundation", particularly the section on storing workflow definitions in the database. Also, see Matt Miler's Templates for Windows Workflow XAML activation projects2. What are the pros and cons of using an ExternalDataExchange service versus going directly to the WorkflowQueuingService? Sam Gentile: Windows Workflow 1023. When are attached dependency properties useful in WF programming? See: Dependency...