Zubair.NET!

A great article on Portal Framework and WebParts co-authored by Fritz Onion has been posted on MSDN titled Personalize Your Portal with User Controls and Custom Web Parts

I particulary like their technique of encapsulating a WebPartManager and other links for switching between Browse, Edit, Design, Catalog and Scope mode of Webparts, into a User Control and then re-using it across entire website through dropping it onto Master Page. This control intelligently checks if the current page and user is allowed to switch to another mode and then displays the appropriate links.

I also liked their File-based storage approach instead of using SQL Express for storing personalization data of the Portal Framework, although not suited if in case the portal has many pages and many users. (See the App_data folder under the application root folder, it stores information for each user on each page, therefore its not very scalable), but is a good example of using a custom provider.

I wish if the article also included Connectivity between different Webparts and displaying data in one webpart based on the selection in other webpart.

It’s been a while since I could write something; there is a lot of new stuff in ASP.NET 2.0.

In case you already don’t know, Scott Guthrie(PUM) has been posting many new features lately, the most interesting one to be the Atlas Project, for building AJAX-style web application that provide rich user experience and better cross-browser support. However through Script Callbacks it was possible to build rich web application (check my earlier post), but debugging such application was a lot more difficult, check how Atlas comes to rescue. Also check out Brock Allen's comparision of Script Callbacks and AJAX.

Other interesting features include Extending Page attributes, Default Button and Default Focus. Read the full news on Scott’s blog.

In case you haven’t already downloaded, check out the new 101 Samples for Visual Studio 2005. I downloaded the Data Access and Web Development Samples, but for some unknown reasons I was getting “Server Application Unavailable” when I tried to run the samples with my .NET Framework 2.0 Beta 2 build that shipped with Visual Studio 2005 Beta Experience Kit.

I also downloaded and installed AdventureWorks database, but SQL Server 2005 that ships with Beta Experience Kit didn’t show the database, trying to attach the database I get the error stating that “opened database version is 607, the server support 603 and earlier”, I guess I need to download the latest build i.e. SQL Server Express Edition June CTP.

Get yourself started with the Club site Starter Kit and also checkout mike’s post, where he learnt how to send email through ASP.NET 2.0