...Technology, etc.

Been to the MSDN event on VS2008, ASP.NET 3.5 and LINQ. In all it was a good event, and especially the LINQ stuff was really good.
Download the powerpoint slides from the presention here:
Visual Studio 2008
LINQ

Would be interesting to have a hands-on on it!
cheerio!

While browsing for some media stuff, i came across this shiny new browser called Flock. It is an open source browser which can be used for social networking and other media related needs. I like its interface as it is simple and has a nice layout. Does not look like a typical browser.
It has all the features of a browser with some additional ones like the Media Bar which sits in the top portion and can link to sites like Flickr, Photobucket, Truveo, ABC and show uploaded photos and play videos too!

Heres a snapshot of the browser:

Download the browser @ http://www.flock.com

Labels: Flock

Visual Studio 2008, the buzzword on web these days. After many unsuccessful attempts to install Visual Studio "Orcas" on my machine, i gave up and thought will wait for the final release. But VS 2008 Beta 1 and Beta 2 have come around nicely and now i am eagerly waiting for the final release of Visual Studio 2008. To catch a glimpse of this version of visual studio, i am looking forward to attend the MSDN event early next month. The event will also showcase .NET Fx 3.5 and Language Integrated Query (or LINQ). I will be posting my post-event experiences here...

Labels: Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Fx 3.5

When adding client-side script to a web page, the JavaScript can be embedded directly within the page's HTML or provided via an external reference similar to include files in programming languages. When using JavaScript include files, the browser will cache the file so that it doesn't need to be downloaded on subsequent postbacks and page visits. By embedding the script directly wthin the page's markup, the script must be downloaded on each page visit (with the rest of the markup), which is wasteful if the script content is static. Therefore, JavaScript include files lessen the amount of data the client must download, improving the end user's experience. So JavaScript includes are a Good Thing. In fact, when using certain ASP.NET Web controls (like validation controls, the Menu, and so on), script includes are used to inject the necessary client-side plumbing).
JavaScript includes have a simple enough syntax:
<script src="pathToJavaScriptFile"></script>
Of course, XML rules allow for elements with no inner content to use “/>” as a shortcut rather than needing the closing tag. In a recent project I assumed this would work for JavaScript includes and added a number of includes using syntax like:
<script src="pathToJavaScriptFile" />
Well, guess what? That doesn't work, at least not in Internet Explorer. IE ignores the JavaScript include altogether, not sucking in any of the JavaScript content from pathToJavaScriptFile. If your JavaScript file contains only infrequently-used functions, you of course don't find this out until you perform some action that calls one of these functions in pathToJavaScriptFile and you end up getting a script error. And then, of course, you spend the next hour pouring over the JavaScript code and the page's rendered markup to find what's wrong, not realizing that the browser hadn't sucked down the JavaScript include file because you used “/>” instead of “</script>”.
What's particularly odd is that if you use a tool like Fiddler to inspect the HTTP traffic, the browser still makes a request to pathToJavaScriptFile! It just doesn't 'execute' the script or 'register' the functions if you end the lt;scriptgt; reference with “/>“ instead of “</script>“. Ditto if you fail to end the <SCRIPT> element (that is, if you have ” when externally referencing a JavaScript file instead of trying to save six bytes by omitting it.

Shri Ganeshay Namah