Posts

For a project at one of our customers, we’re building a rich web application using the Coolite web controls in ASP.NET MVC. Coolite is a great product, wrapping all Ext JS widgets in an ASP.NET control. Upon ordering a license for both, we received two free copies of Packt’s “Learning Ext JS”, providing better insight in what’s going on behind the curtains of Coolite.

People following me on Twitter could have already guessed, but here’s something I probably should not have done for my agenda: next to the well known PHPExcel class library, I’ve now also started something similar for PowerPoint: PHPPowerPoint. Just like with PHPExcel, PHPPowerPoint can be used to generate PPTX files from a PHP application. This can be done by creating an in-memory presentation that consists of slides and different shapes, which can then be written to disk using a writer (of which there’s currently only one for PowerPoint 2007). Here’s some sample code:

As promised to all people attending my online session on ASP.NET MVC this afternoon, here is the slide deck I’ve used. MSDN - ASP.NET MVC I must say, doing a presentation using Live Meeting and a Microsoft Roundtable device seemed a bit strange at first. However, the setup that is used to do this kind of sessions is really cool to work with! Make sure to check Katrien’s blog for all other Live Meeting MSDN sessions that are planned.

Microsoft’s Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) is a .NET library (released on CodePlex) that enables greater re-use of application components. You can do this by dynamically composing your application based on a set of classes and methods that can be combined at runtime. Think of it like building an appliation that can host plugins, which in turn can also be composed of different plugins. Since examples say a thousand times more than text, let’s go ahead with a sample leveraging MEF in an ASP.NET MVC web application.

Last week, I blogged about all stuff that is included in the ASP.NET MVC Futures assembly, which is an assembly available on CodePlex and contains possible future features (tonguetwister!) for the ASP.NET MVC framework. One of the comments asked for more information on the AsyncController that is introduced in the MVC Futures. So here goes!

Some Great news (at least: I think this is great :-)): Kevin Dockx and I will be giving a session on PHP and Silverlight at the Netherlands DevDays09. This event, aimed totally at developers, will take place on May 28 and 29th in The Hague (Den Haag). It’s the first time the DevDays are hosting sessions related to PHP, and it’s also the first time I’ll be speaking at an event of this size. Our session will cover the basics of Silverlight and show you how you can create rich web applications using the best of 2 worlds: Silverlight and PHP.

For those of you who did not know yet: next to the ASP.NET MVC 1.0 version and its source code, there’s also an interesting assembly available if you can not wait for next versions of the ASP.NET MVC framework: the MVC Futures assembly. In this blog post, I’ll provide you with a quick overview of what is available in this assembly and how you can already benefit from… “the future”.

If you have been using the ASP.NET MVC framework, you possibly have been searching for something like the classic ASP.NET sitemap. After you’ve played with it, you even found it useful! But not really flexible and easy to map to routes and controllers. To tackle that, last year, somewhere in August, I released a proof-of-concept sitemap provider for the ASP.NET MVC framework on my blog.

Here’s a shameless, commercial blogpost… With yesterday’s 1.0 release of the ASP.NET MVC framework, I’m sure the following sample chapter from my book ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Quickly will be of use for people starting ASP.NET MVC development: Your first ASP.NET MVC application.

To keep up with a good tradition (see here and here), I have some great news on ASP.NET MVC: we are at version 1.0! This means production ready, supported, stable, …! Grab the download at Microsoft.com. I’m expecting an epic blog post by the Gu, but here’s some stuff you may want to have a look at: all my posts on ASP.NET MVC. Another thing you can do: order my book on ASP.NET MVC :-) We’ve released the print version yesterday, meaning you are now completely set to start developing with ASP.NET MVC. Edit: Looks like Simone was equally fast :-) And Kris.