January 18, 2008

Visusal Studio Launch In UK

For those of you interested in the Visual Studio 2008 launch, the site has just started taking registrations:

http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=8126604

January 16, 2008

Javascript and .Net programmers

Why .Net programmers should learn Javascript.

With the introduction of AJAX, .Net programmers have to seriously consider learning JAVAScript to develop AJAX enabled applications.

ASP.NET AJAX is a framework for creating more efficient and interactive Web experiences that work across all the most popular browsers. Microsoft AJAX library is a Javascript library. Ajax is Free.

In the Web world, Javascript is the widely accepted language for developing powerful web applications with rich client side functionality and Microsoft has come out with its own version of Javascript libraries for developing web application. Microsoft has included the OOPs extensibility features into its Javascript library and chosen it as the language of choice for AJAX. Microsoft Javascript was originally called as Jscript.

It is obvious that to implement client side scripting we should learn JAVASCript.

Reasons why .Net programmers should consider Javascript:

  • Superior
  • No near competitor – Universal usage
  • Client side scripting is the technology of today

Superior

AJAX Javascript is superior than any version of JAVASCript because of the OOPs functionality incorporated to the JAVAScript library by MICROSOFT.

The Microsoft AJAX Library brings classic OOP concepts to JavaScript and adds namespace support for grouping functionality.

Features of AJAX Javascript are :

  1. Classes
  2. Namespaces
  3. Inheritance
  4. Interfaces
  5. Enumerations
  6. Reflection

No near competitor

Whether you use PHP or ASP for your server side application design, Javascript is the language of many to implement client side application development. Vbscript which was the original language of choice of Microsoft for implementing client side scripting is now promoting both Javascript (via AJAX) and VBScript. Due to its popularity and features Javascript is widely used. So, it becomes all the more important for .Net programmers to learn Javascript.

Client side scripting is the technology of today

Increased emphasis on User Interface and flicker free web pages have necessitated companies to find ways and means to come out with technologies, which provide these features.

We know that HTML is used to create client-side user-interfaces, but cannot handle client-side activities to respond to the user. The content of a Web application that consists of only HTML pages is static. It does not respond dynamically to the actions performed by users.

To respond to user requests, we can use both client-side and server-side scripting in addition to HTML pages. Note that a web application can have client-side scripting, server-side scripting or both.

The advantages of using client-side scripting is to program web pages that can dynamically respond to user input without having to interact with the web server. With scripting, we can check every keystroke of the user, without any server interaction.

For example, in a web application that requires users to enter a number before displaying a particular page, we need to ensure that a user does not leave the number textbox field blank. To check whether a user has left the number field blank, we write client-side scripts that execute on the client computer. A client-side-script scripting speeds up the response time of a web application. Scripting languages, such as VBScript and JavaScript are used to write client-side scripts.

Briefly:

  • JavaScript is a programming language that is used to make web pages interactive. It runs on your visitor's computer and so does not require constant downloads from your web site.
  • A script is a program or a sequence of instructions that is interpreted or carried out by another program rather than by the computer processor.
  • Java and Javascript are two completely different computer languages. Only their names are similar.
  • Running JavaScript is easy. JavaScript support is built right into web browsers. Provided that the visitors to your site are using web browsers that support JavaScript (most do) and have JavaScript enabled (it is by default) then your JavaScript will run.
  • JavaScript is an interpreted language and so no special program is required to be able to create usable code. Any plain text editor such as Notepad is quite satisfactory for being able to write Javascript.

Websites which you should visit:

For a quick detailed backgrounder on AJAX :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AJAX

Microsoft AJAX site. You will have to visit this site often !
http://www.asp.net/ajax/

For a quick tutorial on AJAX
http://www.w3schools.com/ajax/default.asp

A basic tutorial on AJAX you should not miss !
http://dhtmlnirvana.com/ajax/ajax_tutorial/