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ScottGu's Blog

Scott Guthrie lives in Seattle and builds a few products for Microsoft


Dec 2nd Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET Dynamic Data, ASP.NET AJAX, ASP.NET MVC, Visual Studio, Silverlight/WPFDecember 2

I'm flying out later today on a pretty intense business trip (22,000 miles, 5 countries, 3 continents, 1 week, no sleep... :-), so my blog activity over the next week and a half will be pretty light.  To keep you busy till I return, here is the latest in my link-listing series.  Also check out my ASP.NET Tips, Tricks and Tutorials page and Silverlight Tutorials page for links to popular articles I've done myself in the past.

ASP.NET

  • Geolocation/Geotargeting Reverse IP Lookup Code: Scott Hanselman has a cool sample that demonstrates how to perform IP address lookups on users visiting your site to determine where they are located on the globe (down to the latitude and longitude).  Pretty cool stuff.

  • Tracking User Activity: Scott Mitchell has a nice article that discusses how to track end-user activity when visiti

New ASP.NET Charting Control: <asp:chart runat="server"/>November 25

Microsoft recently released a cool new ASP.NET server control - <asp:chart /> - that can be used for free with ASP.NET 3.5 to enable rich browser-based charting scenarios:

Once installed the <asp:chart/> control shows up under the "Data" tab on the Toolbox, and can be easily declared on any ASP.NET page as a standard server control:

step0.png

<asp:chart /> supports a rich assortment of chart options - including pie, area, range, point, circular, accumulation, data distribution, ajax interactive,

jQuery Intellisense in VS 2008November 21

Last month I blogged about how Microsoft is extending support for jQuery.  Over the last few weeks we've been working with the jQuery team to add great jQuery intellisense support within Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Web Developer 2008 Express (which is free).  This is now available to download and use.

Steps to Enable jQuery Intellisense in VS 2008

To enable intellisense completion for jQuery within VS you'll want to follow three steps:

Step 1: Install VS 2008 SP1

VS 2008 SP1 adds richer JavaScript intellisense support to Visual Studio, and adds code completion support for a broad range of JavaScript libraries.

You can download VS 2008 SP1 and Visual Web Developer 2008 Express SP1 here.

Step 2: Install VS 2008 Patch KB958502 to Support "-vsdoc.js" Intellisense Files

Two weeks ago we shipped a patch that you can apply to VS 2008 SP1 and VWD 2008 Express SP1 that causes Visual Studio to check for the presence of an optional "-vsdoc.js" file when a JavaScript library is referenced, and if present to use this to drive the JavaScript intellisense engine.

These annotated "-vsdoc.js" files can include XML comments that provide help documentation

Update on Silverlight 2 - and a glimpse of Silverlight 3November 17

We shipped Silverlight 2 last month.  Over the last 4 weeks, the final release of Silverlight 2 has been downloaded and installed on more than 100 million consumer machines.  It has also recently been published to corporate administrators via the Microsoft SMS and Microsoft Update programs to enable them to automatically deploy across enterprises.  Over 1 in 4 computers on the Internet now have some version of Silverlight installed.

Silverlight 2 was a major release, and delivered an impressive set of cross-browser, cross-platform functionality for Media and Rich Internet Application experiences.  It has been great watching new sites launch using it.

Media Experiences

Silverlight 2 enables the highest quality video on the web, and delivers it with the lowest TCO of any media platform.

One of the capabilities built-into Silverlight 2 is its support for "adaptive streaming" - which enables video to be delivered at multiple bitrates (for example: 400Kbits, 800Kbits, 1.5Mbits, 2Mbits) with Silverlight dynamically choosing the optimal bitrate to use depending on the network bandwidth and CPU capability of the client (it can also automatically switch bitrates seamlessly if conditions change later). 

Silverlight's adaptive streaming support is extensible.  Move Networks (who helped pion

Styling a Silverlight Twitter Application with Expression Blend 2November 14

Silverlight 2 provides a rich platform for building cross-browser/cross-platform RIA applications. 

One of the things that makes Silverlight so powerful is the ease with which developers and designers can collaborate together on projects.  Developers can use Visual Studio to open and edit Silverlight 2 projects and get a powerful code-focused .NET development environment, and designers can use Expression Blend 2 SP1 to open and edit the exact same project and use a creative tool to sculpt and create optimal user experience designs.

The WPF UI framework shipped in Silverlight further enables a great designer/developer workflow by supporting concepts like layout management, controls, styles, templates, and resources - which help avoid scenarios where designers and developers end up tripping over each other when integrating functionality, behavior and expressive design.

Silverlight 2 Twitter Sample

Last month I posted an in-depth blog tutorial on how to build a Silverlight 2 Digg application which you can read here.  This tutorial was aimed primarily at developers, and focused on introducing the fundamental programming concepts involved when building a Silverlight 2 application. 

Today