I have been building a Web Application (ASP.NET, .NET Framework 4, VB, visual studio 2010). To be very brief the application interacts with a database and performs several actions (Insert Delete Select etc..).
I am using several Gridviews, ListBoxes etc and I am not happy with the presentation outcome and the functionality provided by asp.net. In simple words my application looks bad, outdated and unprofessional.
I figured that using Windows Forms that will be incorporated to the ASP app would be a great improvement and solve all of my problems.
I have created a Windows Form Control Library to use the dll created in my app as a user control. I found out that this is not supported in .NET Framework 4 (is this true? or am i doing something wrong?).
Is there any way to make my application have the 'look and feel' of a windows application?
Please note that it is has to be a web app and the clients should not have to download any other application to interact with the server.
Have you checked out the third party controls from other vendors?
I currently use them for rapid development.
http://www.telerik.com/
http://www.infragistics.com/
http://www.devexpress.com/
Anyhow all controls in .net you can change there look and feel using plain CSS.
Try using Silverlight 4, it has all that you need. What u are trying to do is traditional ASP.NET and that's as good as it can get coz its all server side code, but with Silverlight things are totally different, its all client side with specific server interactions. Have a look at the tutorials about how to use Silverlight and WCF RIA services to do what you are trying to do.
Try this link: WCF RIA services and Silverlight
Edit: Silverlight is designed to create stunning web GUIs. Just in case you were wondering what the heck it is.. :)
Related
I want to use SignalR in my project for real time chart updates.
My project is developed in WebForms with VB.Net Language.
I searched for for 3,4 days but all I found were MVC examples. Can anyone suggest a solution?
Please notice me. Thank you
You can use SignalR with webforms, see this question for example :
Can SignalR be used with asp.net WebForms?
However, it will require to make your current webforms project evolve in several ways, which can be a loss of time and a risk if it's an old project hard to maintain.
An alternative could be to create a completely new web project for the backend with everything required for a clean support of SignalR server, and to consume it in JS (using jquery.signalr, etc) from your currently existing webforms pages on client side.
The ability to achieve this kind of thing will depend of what version of .Net and SignalR you could/must support.
I have built several ASP.NET web applications in the past but have always struggled to get the application's basic structure in place. Building a framework using a combination of Silverlight/RIA services (or LightSwitch) is quite easy, but this makes your application not accessible through browsers that do not support Silverlight.
Is there any ASP.NET application framework with an HTML UI that provides the basic services that lightswitch provides?
By basic services I mean:
User Management
Themes
Standard way of displaying/editing basic records and master/detail records
see:
Integrating Visual Studio LightSwitch Application Into An Existing Website using IFrames
Check out http://www.evolutility.org/ or http://www.rapidwebdev.org/, both are opensource.
I am wanting to learn ASP.Net and am just a beginner. I have done some windows c# forms development before but have no experience of web development.
I have looked at the ASP.net website but beyond this, does anyone have any ideas as to good learning resources particulary in relation to the differences to windows development. For instance, It seems that the way events work is quite different under ASP to windows forms.
Thanks you all.
Thank you very much. I will have a look at MVC. It looks even more complicated but if this is the way things are going then I would be better maybe to invest my learning in this.
I would advise you at this stage in ASP.NETs life to instead direct your attention at ASP.NET-MVC. This url http://www.asp.net/mvc/ is a very good resource for learning.
ASP.NET Forms do a good job of hiding the nature of a connection-less HTTP/browser based technology and presenting a familiar Form with controls and lots of useful events environment that Windows Forms developers are used to.
However this approach comes with a price. For any serious project there is no avoiding getting under the hood of ASP.NET forms and properly understanding the underlying technology. At this point you start to realise the significant compromises the ASP.NET Forms has had to make in order to make Windows Forms developers feel at home.
ASP.NET-MVC, on the other, makes no such compromises. Learning MVC means learning how HTTP works up-front. It also has the advantage of being a much more test friendly approach which when used properly will save you days of debugging.
ASP.NET website - seriously, it's a really good resource.
I'd seriously consider starting with ASP.NET MVC. You'll end up learning what you need from ASP.NET "classic" but you'll pick up all the goodness of MVC (testability, seperation of concerns in your code etc) instead of learning bad habits.
Google for "ASP.NET MVC", check out ScottGu's blog, Scott Hanselmans's blog, or search StackOverflow for ASP.NET MVC (use the ASP.NET MVC tag too).
One good place to start...
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/04/01/asp-net-mvc-1-0.aspx
I know they are a bit out of date, but I still think the two Fritz Onion books give a great look at what's happening in ASP.NET under the hood.
Some resources:
asp.net (as you mentioned)
channel9
scott hanselman's blog (some useful entries)
Windows Client Homepage
W3Schools Tutorials (Useful for more than just .NET, but this is the .NET page)
I've been a .NET Windows Forms (not Web forms) developer for 1 and a half years. Then I switched jobs and started using WebForms for like... 2 years. Then I discovered ASP.NET MVC (January 2008) and since then although I still master ASP.NET WebForms I will always prefer ASP.NET MVC.
My recommendation also goes into ASP.NET MVC. You will have to learn HTTP, HTML and a bit of Javascript but after these you will master web development on ALL PLATFORMS.
A great alternative to ASP.NET MVC is ASP.NET Web Pages with Razor syntax. In fact, the latest release of ASP.NET MVC and the latest release of ASP.NET Web Pages both use the same view engine.
Here is a link to the complete ASP.NET Web Pages book:
Getting Started with WebMatrix and ASP.NET Web Pages
Also, here is the complete WebMatrix Content Guide:
WebMatrix Content Guide
Here's the description:
WebMatrix is a free, lightweight set of web development tools that provides the easiest way to build websites. It includes IIS Express (a development web server), ASP.NET (a web framework), and SQL Server Compact (an embedded database). It also includes a simple tool that streamlines website development and makes it easy to start websites from popular open source apps. The skills and code you develop with WebMatrix transition seamlessly to Visual Studio and SQL Server.
Does anybody have a clue how I might embed an ASP.NET 3.5 app inside a Visual Basic 6 application?
My other option is to provide a hyperlink inside the VB6 application that will open the ASP.NET app.....BUT I would prefer to embed the ASP.NET app within a tab control in VB6 if at all possible.
thanks in advance
For the auto-login to the .net app (assuming it's ASP.net) I would have the vb6 application login process write a session GUID to the database, and use it as a get or post variable when building a link to the .net application.
On the ASP.NET side, modify your MembershipProvider to honor a guid and username as evidence of successful authentication to the vb6 app.
There may be some additional security precautions you should take depending on how guarded your environment needs to be.
Realistically, your best option is probably to use the Web Browser control on a new tab, and point that at your ASP.NET application.
For auto-login, you SHOULD be able to have users login once. You'll probably need to enable a "remember me" feature in your ASP.NET application.
It'd be a two part process.
Create a .NET library to host asp.net, http://www.west-wind.com/presentations/aspnetruntime/aspnetruntime.asp.
Then use interopt to launch the library. Sounds like a really bad idea though.
That sounds like a terrible idea.
I think you should give more background on the situation so alternatives can be suggested.
EDIT: You say the VB6 app cannot be rewritten... but can it be edited? Depending on the complexity of the functionality in the ASP.Net app you could alter the ASP.Net app to include a web service and access that functionality from the VB6 app.
I'm trying to upgrade my existing web forms application to upcoming framework and rewriting couple of workflow as per the new business requirements. I want to introduce TDD based development in this project but after some investigation found that ASP.NET MVC will not help me as my web existing application is using lots of Infragistics UltraWebGrid controls for grouping, paging, column moving etc and there is no good alternative grids in ASP.NET MVC world. I also need to support blackberry in this release. So, am planning to use both MVP for desktop client and MVC for blackberry client in same project.
I would like to know if someone has done something similar in their project and links to any good open source asp.net applicaton using MVP pattern. I dont want to use WCSF as it is too heavy weight. I saw their MVPBundle sample application but it lacks use of modern tools like IoC (Unity or StructureMap), Mocking framework etc.
Regards,
Sunil
The latest incarnation of Nerd Dinner has mobile support in an ASP.NET MVC app.
I'm not sure about the JS support on a black-berry but there are quite a few grid/repeater type controls and mechanisms available using either jQuery or the forthcoming ASP.NET AJAX 4 templating controls.