I just came across an article titled "At a Glance: ASP.net vs. PHP."  Let's be clear up front: I don't know diddly-squat about PHP.  I'm not here to start yet another language battle, in a war that will never be won :)  However, I do have some comments for the article regarding ASP.NET.  And, since there doesn't seem to be a way to post comments on the "Market Day" site, you get the benefit of reading them here :)

Ian Wilson writes:

In order to develop with ASP.Net one must obtain the extremely expensive Microsoft Visual Studio Programming Suite.

I won't argue that Visual Studio 2005 Professional or Team Edition is very expensive when compared to free.  However, the author fails to mention that you can develop ASP.NET using one of the free Visual Studio Express Editions, or even your favorite text editor.  What can you do with an Express Edition?  Just about anything you can imagine.  If you really need features that aren't available in the Express Editions, chances are you're developing for a company that can afford to pay for the upgrade.  For the individual Web developer, check out Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition and one of the many starter kits that are available.

One of the arguments the author uses for PHP is the wealth of community resources.  I believe the same argument is true for ASP.NET.  Check out my list of free tools and resources.  There are lots of other great sites and online blogs for ASP.NET developers.

ASP.NET is a viable solution, even for individual developers who are community-minded, budget-conscious, and into open source.  Happy coding!

Speaking of great apps that keep getting better, there's an interesting mojoPortal vs. DotNetNuke post over at mojoPortal.  Also, take a look at the interesting comments from a DNN user (www.wwwcoder.com). 

Joe reports that a new release is just around the corner.

dasBlog continues to improve.  The list of new features is very impressive.  I was able to upgrade without much effort.  If you're looking for simple-to-use and yet very powerful blog application, dasBlog is worth a look.  Also, check out the dasBlog documentation.

Like a few others, I eventually ditched ASP.NET 1.1 Web Form projects in in favor of Class Library projects.  For any of you out there converting your 1.1 Class Library projects to ASP.NET 2.0 and want to use the after-market Web Application Project, here's what you need to do.

1. Convert your 1.1 project to 2.0 using the VS 2005 conversion wizard (just open the project in VS 2005)
2. Close VS 2005
3. Edit your .csproj or .vbproj file with a text editor
4. Find the line that reads <ProjectType>Local</ProjectType> and change it to:
   
   [C#]
   
   <ProjectTypeGuids>{349c5851-65df-11da-9384-00065b846f21};{fae04ec0-301f-11d3-bf4b-00c04f79efbc}</ProjectTypeGuids>
   
   [VB.NET]
   
   <ProjectTypeGuids>{349c5851-65df-11da-9384-00065b846f21};{F184B08F-C81C-45F6-A57F-5ABD9991F28F}</ProjectTypeGuids>
   
   

For any of you still developing under VS 2003, check out Fritz Onion's ASP.NET without Web Projects.

UPDATE: Found out that settings for VB.NET projects are different.

UPDATE 2: If you've upgraded a 1.1 project to WAP, you'll probably want to also right-click on the project and choose the "Convert to Web Application" option.  This will split the code-behind files into partial classes and enable designer support.  Thanks for the tip, Scott!

ArgoSoft have just announced a free e-mail validation Web service, based on their years of experience with their Mail Server product.  Plug it into your ASP.NET app for real-time e-mail address verfication!

I've used ArgoSoft's Mail Server for years and have found it to be a great product at an unbeatable price.  ArgoSoft support has always been top-notch, as well.  Highly recommended.

As a follow-up to my previous post on creating a DataManager class for WilsonORMapper that uses the IsolatedContext, I'm posting a download that includes updates for Paul Welter's excellent CodeSmith templates for WilsonORMapper.  These templates are intended for use with Web projects.  The DataManager stores the IsolatedContext instance in the current HttpContext so that the same IsolatedContext is used throughout the current Request.

To use the new templates, just unzip the files in the /Internal folder where the existing DataManager templates are stored.

FYI, although I've confirmed that they compile, I have not tested the VB.NET and VB.NET 2.0 DataManager versions.  If you find any issues, I would appreciate your feedback.

Download the Templates

I'm not a PHP developer, but I recognize that it is a very popular scripting language and there are a lot of resources available.  I just came across Phalanger, which is a PHP compiler for .NET.  This is not just CLR support for the PHP language, but a compiler that can take existing PHP script and compile it to run on the .NET Framework (MSIL). 

Under Sample Apps, you'll find popular PHP applications such as PhpMyAdmin, phpBB, and PHP-Nuke 7.5 that were compiled with little or no tweaking.  The Phalanger Forum is running under a compiled version of phpBB.

For PHP developers, this means taking advantage of the .NET Framework class libraries and the speed of truly compiled applications.  Benchmarks provided suggest that PHP applications compiled for .NET realize significant speed improvements and have a much higher throughput.  PHP developers can also take advantage of other .NET components written in C#, VB.NET, or any other CLR language.  For .NET developers, this opens up a whole world of PHP modules and applications that can be tapped for .NET applications.

Currently, Phalanger only works with .NET 1.x and does not run on Mono.  However, these features are on their roadmap.

Great news for ASP.NET developers.  After joining Microsoft, Matt Hawley had to stop distributing his great ASP.NET server controls.  After 10 long months, he's finally been given permission to start distributing them again.  My company and I have used his pop-up calendar control.  I also use Unleash It (unaffected by the blackout) to deploy web applications, and it is fantastic.  Thank you Matt, and thanks for listening, Microsoft!

ComponentArt announced yesterday their new beta Web.UI 2006 suite.  Included are two new controls: WebChart Lite for ASP.NET and Splitter for ASP.NET.  I had a chance to install the beta today and play around with the demos.  Once again, ComponentArt have outdone themselves.

WebChart Lite has all the features and API of its WebChart for ASP.NET big brother, but only supports 2-D charts.  Actually, from what I've seen, WebChart Lite will generate 3-D charts, but they are rendered with ComponentArt watermark.  I think it is outstanding that ComponentArt chose to provide WebChart Lite to its Web.UI subscription customers.  I'll also add that the licensing for the full version is quite reasonable when compared to some of the other charting components on the market.

The new Splitter control is very impressive.  With it you can create resizable panels that can be split horizontally and vertically, and can also collapse and expand.  The Splitter "panes" can have minimum and maximum heights and widths, or can fill the entire window area.  Layouts can be changed dynamically.  The demos provided look like an RSS reader or e-mail client.  There aren't any online demos yet, but if you download the beta you can view the demos locally.  I can think of quite a few areas in my own applications where I'll be using this new control.

Web.UI 2006 will also include ASP.NET 2.0 versions of their controls with support for new features such as skins, themes, and the ASP.NET 2.0 navigation architecture.  Way to go, ComponentArt!

I am very pleased to announce that www.ChristianASP.NET is now running on mojoPortal! 

The great news is that I now have discussion forums, which is a goal I have had for ChristianASP.NET from the beginning.  The bad news is, if you've registered for an account on this site in the past, you will need to register again.  I don't have any plans at this time to convert old user accounts.

Joe Audette and other contributors have done an outstanding job and a great service to the ASP.NET community over the last couple of years with the development of mojoPortal.  mojoPortal has been designed to run not only on Windows but also on Linux and Mac OS/X using Mono.  It features a pluggable data access layer and comes with support for MS SQL, MySQL and PostgreSQL.  Other application features include:

• Html Content Management
• Blogs
• RSS Feed Aggregator
  
• Event Calendar
• Search
• Image Gallery
• File Manager
• Localization
• Skinnable Design
• Host Multiple Sites From One Database

mojoPortal is a fantastic open-source alternative with a very bright future ahead.  I know that Joe has been hard at work to incorporate some of the latest ASP.NET 2.0 features, including updated Master Pages, Themes and skins.

I've always had a severe case of not-invented-here syndrome.  However, after taking a fresh look at dasBlog this weekend, I realized that there were a bunch of cool features that I was never going to get around to putting into my own blog application.  So, I decided to swallow my pride and take a serious look at converting.  Here's what I've discovered so far.

1. dasBlog is nearly as brain-dead simple to set up as you can get
2. 10 minutes of coding based on Scott's post and I had all my existing content imported into dasBlog
3. dasBlog themes are extremely easy to modify and create
4. Blog search with keyword highlighting is awesome
5. Trackbacks, pings, comments in my RSS feed, and all the other goodies I've been missing

I've set up my old blog home page and RSS feed to automatically redirect to the new blog at http://blog.christianasp.net/.  However, if you're a subscriber, I would appreciate if you would go ahead and update your subscription to the new link.  I believe all my old blog links will continue to work here.

Part 2 in the MySQL series is now up.  This article is an introduction to MySQL stored procedures including the benefits of using stored procedures, creating stored procedures using MySQL Query Analyzer, and executing stored procedures from ASP.NET. 

Comments certainly welcome and appreciated!

My first tutorial for ChristianASP.NET, "Using MySQL 5.0 with ASP.NET - Part 1" is now available.  My goal is introduce the latest MySQL open-source database, and how it's new features make it a powerful alternative to commercial databases.  Also, there are plenty of examples on the Web for using MySQL with PHP and the like, but not very many examples of using MySQL with ASP.NET.

To use FCKeditor in an ASP.NET project, you also need the FCKeditor.Net integration component.  Both the editor and the .NET component can be downloaded from the FCKeditor sourceforge project.  Next, follow the instructions found on the Developer's Guide for ASP.NET Integration to get the editor working in your .NET project.

What a shame.  Matt Hawley, now a Microsoft employee, is being barred by the MS legal department from distributing his free library of ASP.NET components.  I've used these components in the past, and have found them to be fantastic tools.  Help support all the work that Matt has put into the ASP.NET community by signing the petition.

UPDATE: It appears that developer community's reaction is making a difference!

"The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades." -Timbuk 3

ComponentArt continues to just blow me away.  Last week they announced version 3.0 beta release of their Web.UI suite.  The new components added to the suite include Grid, Calendar and Callback (AJAX - Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) controls.  You can demo the new controls at webui30.componentart.com.  July 20, they announced the beta of their new Charting components for both WinForms (WinChart) and ASP.NET WebForms (WebChart).  I got two words for ya: Amaaaaa-zing.

The new Grid control renders a very rich interface, allowing the end-users to page, sort, group, filter, search, resize columns, and use the keyboard.  The grid can operate in server, client and callback modes.  When using callback mode for a large set of data, your users can retrieve a page of data at a time without the page having to refresh, yet still have complete control over sorting, grouping, filtering, and so on.

Callback for ASP.NET claims to deliver AJAX-style functionality to any server-side control, giving the developer a clean and elegant way of providing user interfaces that can dynamically change without ever refreshing or "posting back" the current page.

The demos for the new Charting components are spectacular.  Also, check out all the features provided.  Although the charting components will be sold separately from the Web.UI suite, there's still good news for Web.UI subscribers.  According to this post in their product forums, a "WebChart Lite" control will eventually be provided to Web.UI subscribers at no additional cost.