DevShare.NET - Developers Sharing .NET Experience

Borland is back with a free IDE for C# / C++ / Delphi / Delphi.NET: Turbo Explorer series, available now for download.

What is Turbo C#?

Turbo C# Professional is an extensible and customizable solution including 200+ pre-built drag and drop components providing everything you need to start real C# development today, as well as an extendable environment for build-your-own and third party components and IDE add-ons.

The free Turbo C# Explorer edition is a fixed, all-in-one solution which lets beginners and hobbyists learn programming and develop applications using the C# language.

I’ve just read about new launched Nike & Google social-networking site: Joga.com.

“Joga is an online community created by Google and Nike for anyone anywhere in the world who shares a love for soccer, the world’s most popular sport. Joga is about getting to know your fellow fans; creating games and clubs; accessing athletes from Nike; and enjoying video clips and photos (you can even upload your own). You can strengthen existing friendships and begin new ones, join a wide variety of professional athletes and soccer communities, and even create your own to discuss soccer, exchange tips on the coolest moves, browse through various pitches worldwide, and plan your next game.

But most of all, Joga is about “Joga Bonito” — Portuguese for “play beautiful.” Are you ready to start down the path of soccer bliss? Join us, and show the world what playing beautiful means to you.”

That’s very nice. But have you noticed file extensions? *.aspx. A Google website (check ‘forgot password’ page or domain name whois) with ASP.NET? That’s very interesting. I also checked webserver software: GFE/1.3. This one and GWS/2.1 are Google webserver software, maybe based on some *nix flavour, I think. So, they have ASP.NET on other platform? It’s not that is impossible, but I never thought they would use .NET at all. I don’t think it’s only *.aspx extension, because would have no logic.

Then I did another test: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Agoogle.com+filetype%3Aaspx&meta=
Interesting results again, although the pages are not there (but they were when page was indexed).

So, I think is fair enough to say: yes, Google is using ASP.NET.

An interesting article about new Microsoft Vista and .NET: Analysis of .NET Use in Longhorn and Vista by Richard Grimes.

“My conclusion is that Microsoft has lost its confidence in .NET. They implement very little of their own code using .NET. The framework is provided as part of the operating system, but this is so that code written by third party developers can run on Vista without the large download of the framework. Supplying the .NET runtime for third party developers in this way is similar to Microsoft supplying msvbvm60.dll as part of XP.” 

I agree with those who say that Vista core should not be made with .NET, but I’d expect much more MS applications delivered with OS to be developed with .NET, especially Visual Studio. I’m interested to see important MS applications, money generators, developed with .NET as a strong assertion for its capabilities and power. By comparison, Java Studio Creator & Java Studio Enterprise is build with Java.

I started this post from Erik Porter’s blog. I saw and played with new live.com. I like the design, functionality and general idea, but … there are some ‘buts’:

- At least, for general information, feeds and search is similar with start.com, another Microsoft project (?). Same Web 2.0 ideas, page organization and even Passport login. It’s true that live.com has a very nice and interesting (futuristic ?) design, I really like.

- Lots of new stuff, like those macros but maybe some are still beta. See these problems:

First problem is that search box is under the logo, when resizing. Second, see how text is displayed when window is resized. Then, third one is a fatal error and nothing happen when opening this job macro search.

- Then, there is a problem with standards, or maybe is not a problem at all?

- I’d expect a tooltip for scrolling buttons. Also, I think is a problem this client-side scrolling because is far from smooth, on many computers. Normal browser scrolling is fast, smooth and more intuitive, not the same as this JavaScript solution.

Although somehow hidden (b.htm ?), pages use IIS & ASP.NET, I think (live.com/login.aspx). Is this an experimental site or something we’ll see live, without “beta” ?

I’m really curious what future will bring in web development because looks like each month there is something new and innovative.

I’ve read an interesting post about new released Microsoft Application Security Anti-Cross Site Scripting Library (Feb. 26). The only problem is that the link provided is not working. The same happened for other blog post.

I went further and searched MS site but all links take me to msdn.microsoft.com/downloads. On that page it might have been a link to this new library, but is no more there.

An excerpt from initial blog (Irena Kennedy):

The question is, since we already have HtmlEncode method under System.Web.HttpUtility to combat XSS, why do we need anything else?  As it turns out, HttpUtility.HtmlEncode only escapes the known dangerous characters/strings; the new AntiXSSLibrary.HtmlEncode (and UrlEncode) only allows a small subset of known safe strings and escapes everything else.  This is a much safer way to go!

I still couldn’t find this library on MS site, so I think something happened with it. Total mistery.

Update: the link is up and running now. Nice.

Initially, I wanted to install on this Apache webserver mod_mono module and to develop the website with Mono. You know, is that .NET solution for Linux / Unix machines.

Good part is that there is something in CPanel for mod_mono installation. I tried to install it from browser, just ticking a check-box. It just didn’t worked. I think current integration on mod_mono with CPanel don’t work at all. I tried to compile mod_mono library on the server but it just missed to many other modules and the biggest problem: I’m not experienced Linux administrator. I didn’t worked, either. Then I asked for support of hosting company. They didn’t figured out. I did some searches on the net, I saw some solutions that work (I know is possible), but at the end I gave up.

Actually, I gave up because of other a few reasons:

• Even if I install it I should spent more time developing Mono / .NET software I’d need. I read that some .NET blog software works with mono (BlogX) but I’m still not convinced;
• Then it’s Mono itself. Unfortunatelly, I think it will be always one step behind Microsoft .NET. See what they say about Mono 1.1.13: “Many .NET 2.0 updates”. There aren’t all updates of .NET 2.0 and truth is that many classes are not there or behind schedule (see Windows.Forms, even if it’s another story for its necessity for WebForms & web development). Why a company would invest in a second hand technology, only because it’s free? I don’t say it’s not possible that Mono will become first grade technology, running side by side with Microsoft solution, just it’s not there yet, I think.
• Also, regarding Mono itself, I don’t see too much happen in it’s community. Sorry to say this, but I new emerging technology would need more support and active members.

I’ll still keep an eye on Mono and jump for it whenever I’ll consider it’s good for me, just that not right now.

Some may give me links how to solve my problems. Thanks, but I don’t have to much time for ‘trial and error’ solutions.

Good luck Mono!

Welcome to DevShare.NET, a new weblog + articles + software download + open source focused on .NET and a few other related technologies.

There are may websites focused on Microsoft .NET, so we don’t want to just create another one, but something developer centered, with thoughts and ideas that come from our experience. This is why this would be mainly a weblog, with additional pages, rather than an article website with an additional weblog.

Other main topic will be open-source useful tools, not only limited to .NET. There are many great programs available, many of them almost unknown. This website wants to share some thoughts on some of these programs.

Thanks for reading these and stay close.