March's Toolbox Column Now Online

Published 26 February 09 10:00 AM | Scott Mitchell

My Toolbox column in the March 2009 issue of MSDN Magazine is available online. The March issue of MSDN Magazine has a focus on the Web and my reviews in Toolbox follow suit and include:

The Ajax Data Controls Project - The Ajax Data Controls (ADC) project is an ASP.NET AJAX extension that marries the ease of the server-centric development model with the performance of the client-centric development model. ADC is a collection of controls that displays data in an Ajax-enabled web page. You can add the ADC to your page like you would any other web control, and set their properties through the Properties window. However, you work with the ADC controls programmatically via JavaScript. The net result is that the ADC result in significantly less markup between partial page postbacks than the built-in Web controls in an UpdatePanel, but provide a similar page developer experience.
Fiddler - an HTTP traffic analyzer is a must-have tool for web developers. Such tools provide a clear picture of the low-level HTTP traffic coursing between the client and server. Moreover, such tools can be quite helpful in debugging or generating a pre-canned HTTP request (for testing server-side functionality) or response (when testing client-side functionality). My favorite HTTP traffic analyzer is Fiddler, a free tool created by Eric Lawrence. Check it out.
Blogs of Note:

Rick Strahl - Rick is an old-school FoxPro developer and ASP.NET developer who regularly shares his experiences, insights, tips, and tricks on his blog. Rick's blog posts primarily focus on Web topics, including ASP.NET, jQuery, AJAX, and Silverlight.
Sam Larbi - Sam pens one of my favorite blogs, My Secret Life as a Spaghetti Coder. Sam works as a jack of all trades developer, dabbling in both Web and desktop applications and languages ranging from C++ to ColdFusion to C# and ASP.NET. Along with posts about specific technologies, Sam also routinely writes about the non-technology-related aspects of being a developer, including topics like meetings, working with others, personal development, and so on.

The Bookshelf section reviewed jQuery in Action by Bear Bibeault and Yehuda Katz. An excerpt follows:

Due to JavaScript's increasing importance in Web development, several frameworks have been created. One of the most popular ones is jQuery, a free, open-source, cross-browser JavaScript framework created by John Resig. (In fact, Visual Studio 2010 will ship with the jQuery library, making it even easier for ASP.NET developers to get started with jQuery.) ... jQuery in Action (Manning, 2008) ... is a great resource for leaning the ins and outs of jQuery and for mastering its terse and flexible syntax. jQuery in Action assumes the reader is already familiar with JavaScript and wastes no time covering the basics of the language. Instead, it starts with a quick introduction to the motivation behind jQuery and jQuery fundamentals and then moves on to using jQuery to accomplish common tasks. (Some of the more advanced JavaScript concepts that are used by jQuery are covered in an appendix.)

Enjoy! - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd483223.aspx

As always, if you have any suggestions for products, blogs, or books to review for the Toolbox column, please send them to toolsmm@microsoft.com.