Wait! Don’t throw out your JSON services! The Situation You’ve made an investment in exposing some services for client script consumption.  Most likely if you did it in the past 2 years, that involved exposing your data as JSON formatted objects. What is JSON? It is a text-based, human-readable format for representing simple data structures and associative arrays (called objects) Perhaps a search service returns a list of people formatted using your custom “Person” object and you’ve been using this in your AJAX applications for a while now.  Maybe your JSON data looks something like this: [{"City":"Queen Creek","FirstName":"Tim","LastName":"Heuer", "Website":"http:\/\/timheuer.com\/blog\/"}, {"City":"Portland","FirstName":"Scott","LastName":"Hanselman", "Website":"http:\/\/hanselman.com\/blog\/"}, {"City":"Redmond","FirstName":"Scott","LastName":"Guthrie", "Website":"http:\/\/weblogs.asp.net\/scottgu"}, {"City":"New Hampshire","FirstName":"Joe","LastName":"Stagner", "Website":"http:\/\/joestagner.net"}, {"City":"Boston","FirstName":"Jesse","LastName":"Liberty", "Website":"http:\/\/silverlight.net\/blogs\/jesseliberty"}] If you squint long enough you can...

When working with Silverlight 2, most will be working with managed code (c#, vb, etc.).  But likely people are working with Silverlight as an additive value to their web application, providing some enhanced user experience to an application.  there may be times where you will still need to call back into the hosting html context.  For then, you'll want to be familiar with two objects HtmlDocument and HtmlPage.  Both of these objects provide access to the page context hosting your silverlight control.  If you need to seek things in the HTML DOM, you could use the HtmlDocument class.  For example,...

i've spoken a few times about axosoft.  they are a local ISV that does some great work.  their ceo, hamid, does a great thing every year for his employees (maybe more often) in encouraging and icubating new projects.  they have a core product, but also have incubated some great ideas.  some haven't lasted, but some live strong!  either way it is great to see what kind of ideas their group comes up with. PureChat is one of those new ideas.  this is an idea that was just released.  it is for asp.net sites and is built using c# and asp.net ajax...

recently i've been getting a few notes/questions about working with web services and asp.net ajax.  my colleague, rob bagby completed a series of great web casts last year covering the topic of the ajax libraries in detail, one of which deals with web services.  there are also two webcasts that deal with calling WCF services using the ajax libraries.  i highly recommend checking them out! tags: ajax, asp.net, asp.net ajax, atlas, aspnet, wcf, services, web services, bagby, silverlight

the leaders of the arizona .net user group have convinced scott guthrie that phoenix is nice in march (and it is...spring training baby!) and he should visit.  they've organized a super user group meeting and you can find information on when/where here.  it will be hosted at scottsdale center for the arts, which is a pretty killer facility.  i'd recommend carpooling and not messing with the no parking signs (those scottsdale folks like to watch those meters). having ScottGu come to phoenix immediately after MIX08 is a great thing for the community.  if you couldn't make it to MIX, you'll be...

this morning, scottgu posted details on the roadmap for the .net web platform.  it is an exciting roadmap to me, so let me hit some of the highlights: ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions - this will include the MVC framework, AJAX improvements, dynamic data support, asp.net and silverlight support, and ado.net data services (entity framework).  this release is expected to be available for download on the web next week in the first preview mode. silverlight: because of the significant effort being made and...

the team over at discountasp.net have just launched .net 3.5 hosting platforms in their offerings!  that's right, you can host your .net 3.5 web apps with them!  if you need a space just head on over there and they'll give you 3 free months as well. in addition, they've enabled cardspace integration so you can login to your control panel using one of your personal information cards.  pretty cool, i'm going to have to check that out.  thanks to discountasp.net for continued support to user group communities as well as being an early adopter hoster so that early adopter developers can...

[UPDATE: I added other US cities I am aware of, any not listed here, I'm not aware of them.  Reminder that these are being hosted by user group communities in partnership with Microsoft.  If you don't attend the user groups sponsoring these events, you have them to thank and you should start attending and getting involved!!!! These events are made possible by the commitment of user groups.  You should absolutely participate in them, show your support, be an active member and get to know your local developer contact at Microsoft :-).] want the latest IDE toolset and start developing solutions in .net...

in a world of changing technology, when we look for places to put our apps, we're probably looking for people who are on the cutting edge of the frameworks as well.  i want to draw your attention to discountasp.net.  why?  well, for one their feature set rocks. free iis7/.net 3.5 hosting during the beta (one of the early adopter hosters) real-time data backup tools great sql support with tooling as well ...

my colleague kirk has been writing some articles for the AOL developer network.  his first articles are up and he talks about integrating with the truveo, aol's developer api for video.  kirk does some integration with truveo's ajax api and displays information back in silverlight. the first two parts are up, and the third is underway, planning on using wcf and managed code with REST services. go check it out on kirk's site. tags: aol , truveo , silverlight , kirk evans , ajax , wcf , rest , api

in my previous sample i talked about creating custom expression encoder templates.  good times.  also jesse alluded to a something him and i have been working on with regard to what he calls "hyper video" and what i've previously referred to as 'timed overlays' in an example. in going through both of these i found an issue that i forgot to write about (but a helpful commenter reminded me: thanks ernie!) with regard to using the expression encoder templates and asp.net ajax. the problem expression encoder uses a model of encapsulating silverlight and the media elements within an asp.net ajax control.  because they...

i recently started to embark on a little 3 part series involving taking a pdf document of a baseball field and doing some silverlight and asp.net ajax love with it.  it led me along a path of creating some intense xaml design elements actually and i thought i'd share (in simpler form) the process i used. expression design is a graphic tool that enables creating vector art that can then be exported to xaml (either WPF or silverlight).  it is a great tool that i'm starting to be more and more familiar with.  design understands various import and export format but...

you can tell when a new fiscal year has started (or at least the month after a new fiscal year).  people are back from vacations, meetings are more frequent, last-minute trips are planned, you get the picture.  all of this has been counterproductive to me being able to really sit down and do some fun things with silverlight.  not to feat though, some great things have been going on. after i had helped "bcl man" :-) upload some videos of ironruby, i decided it did not do him justice to use one of the vanilla templates and altered it a bit...

what is windmill?  it is described as: Project Windmill was created with the intention of reaching 100% automated testing of heavy Ajax web applications after trying desperately to make existing solutions work. i'm eager to listen to this one.  i've used selenium as a web testing UI platform in the past and like a lot of what it offers...i'm expecting to see what windmill provides better/different and if it is more simplistic...here we go. the guys behind this are mikeal rogers and adam christian of the cosmos web project(?) which is now the...

i'm sitting in andi gutman's presentation at oscon about building rich internet applications in php.  my expectations will be that this will be talking about ajax and flex (given the nature of the conference). andi's first talking about the nature of ajax for rich applications in php.  what is cool is that he mentioned the micorosft ajax client library and the codeplex php kit in the talk so far.  he said he likes talking about it because it demonstrates the nature of ajax standards.  he also talked initially about simplexml as a mechanism for communicating with ajax...

what?! you don't know what facebook is?  haven't you heard all the cool kids are doing it so you should totally jump on it with complete disregard to whether or not there is any benefit to you at all.  then just accept every single friend request and you can have yet another disparate network of your own!  (i'm actually experimenting with adding random friends to see if people accept them the way myspace grew -- friends in myspace seem to almost be a chest-pounding reputation/currency thing.) seriously, though if you haven't heard about it, it is worth a read. ...

scottgu recently posted about his june travels.  if he's anything like me, he's sick of bischoff cookies.  at any rate, one of those stops is in my 'hood, in phoenix, arizona.  we call it "the valley" but not like "the valley" of mountain view/san jose in california...ours is the "valley of the sun" and when i came home yesterday my thermometer was reading 111 degrees farenheit.  blech. where was i, oh yeah, ScottGu is coming.  it's a free event.  stefan schackow is coming too.  it's the same event.  it should be fun.  when? june 27th.  want more details?  go to...

first, thanks to all who came out to the microsoft silicon valley campus on thursday to listen to me babble about microsoft and web developer technologies.  as promised, i said i'd make a post with answers to unanswered questions and/or concerns... so here we go! logistics: expression web product: i learned some clarification on the fulfillment of the expression web product (note: if you didn't hear, those that registered and attended will receive a not-for-resale copy of expression web, one of the products we discussed and showed in the morning for developing/authoring standards-based web sites/pages/applications.  there was confusion (mostly on...

well, some pretty good news coming out of mix07 today...here's a quick recap... release of Silverlight 1.0 beta supporting ajax/javascript release of Silverlight 1.1 alpha supporting .net programming model announcing cross-platform (windows/mac) .net as a part of Silverlight 1.1 alpha announcing support for dynamic languages (ruby, python out of the gate) as a part of Silverlight 1.1 alpha rtm of expression studio preview of expression blend v2 (supporting richer Silverlight development) expression media encoder preview for Silverlight Silverlight streaming by Windows Live whew, that is a lot to swallow.  i'm most excited...