Dave Ward

The time for this is long past due. The current logo does not make the sort of first impression that it needs to. It’s a good reminder that we should usually stick to our core competencies (i.e. I shouldn’t pretend to be a graphic designer). I know at least a handful of you are design focused. So, if you want to take a shot at the contest, head on over to the contest page at Logo Tournament and show me what you’ve got. Update: The contest is over. I want to thank everyone who participated, especially the winner: Anica Soleva. ### Originally posted at Encosia. If you're reading this elsewhere, come on over and see the original. Design the new Encosia logo. Win $350. ... (more)

Use jQuery to catch and display ASP.NET AJAX service errors

If you don’t properly handle the inevitable errors in your web applications, you can expect your users to eventually react about like this guy. Since they typically squelch any server-side errors, AJAX service calls are especially problematic. In fact, they rarely even throw a client-side error when they fail. Even when a client-side error is thrown, most users won’t notice it and the ones who do notice won’t know what the error means or what to do next. In fact, I’ve found that even many developers don’t notice client-side scripting errors that occur while they’re debugging th... (more)

$(document).ready() and pageLoad() are not the same!

Recently, I’ve attended several presentations in which ASP.NET AJAX’s pageLoad() shortcut is demonstrated as interchangeable with jQuery’s $(document).ready() event. The suggestion that both methods are equivalent actually appears to be true in simple demos, but is not the case and is certain to lead to later confusion. While they seem similar on the surface, $(document).ready() and pageLoad() are very different behind the scenes. Determining the earliest point that it’s safe to modify the DOM requires a bit of black magic, and the two libraries approach that in their own unique... (more)

Simplify Calling ASP.NET AJAX Services From jQuery

As jQuery’s popularity in the .NET community has risen over the past year, one recurring theme I’ve seen is the desire to refactor away the details of using it to call ASP.NET AJAX services. Whether through helper function or specialized jQuery plugin, I’ve seen numerous methods proposed and/or in use. Personally, the syntax never bothered me. The contentType parameter is ugly, but I have a Visual Studio code snippet for the $.ajax call and rarely think about it. That came to an end earlier this year, when I started using dataFilter. I needed to isolate my code from the “.d” is... (more)

A Sneak Peak at ASP.NET AJAX 4.0’s Client-Side Templating

Dave Ward's "Encosia" Blog Hot on the heels of the recent ASP.NET AJAX roadmap, Bertrand and team have released a limited preview of the new AJAX functionality coming in ASP.NET 4.0. To see how the new functionality stacks up, I decided to recreate my recent jTemplates example, using only ASP.NET AJAX and its new templating features. Eventually, I settled on using the DataView class, which offers more advanced, repeater-like functionality. Having successfully completed the exercise, I thought it seemed like something that you might find interesting too. The solution boils down to ... (more)