Bilal Haidar [MVP, MCT]

FYI : Telerik Trainer

2008-07-02T09:21:00Z

Few months ago Telerik started a new strategy of delivering guides and tutorials to its products by adding the Telerik Trainer. The Telerik Trainer is a special Media-Player software that you can download for free from the Telerik website (http://www.telerik.com/training.videos/TelerikTrainer.zip). This Media Player has all the features required to watch the T.T. videos with special and customized effects and hence no need for any other media player to watch the T.T. videos. Once you download the T.T. you can download several T.T. videos that are evolving day after day with lots of videos being added. You can reach the download page here (http://www.telerik.com/support/teleriktrainer.aspx).

In addition, Telerik already has a Videos page that you can download and watch to get to know more about their controls and how to use them and do special tasks with them. You can reach the Videos page here (http://www.telerik.com/support/videos/default/b220i-a.aspx).

Moreover, Telerik provides a self-paced tutorial that is around 600 pages compiled in a PDF document that covers all of their controls. It is a Step-By-Step tutorial that you can go through to learn how to use and configure the controls properly. You can reach this long-tutorial here (http://www.telerik.com/support/self-paced-tutorial.aspx).

Also, when you download and install the Telerik controls there is the main CHM documentation file that contains heavy tutorials, online links on how to build some features and a complete documentation for all the classes that build up the Telerik controls.

Finally, Telerik provides an online Forums that you can make use of to ask questions where other developers using the Telerik controls help you there and reply to your questions including Telerik MVPs and Telerik core developers.

Last but not least, Telerik provides an online support tickets where you can send a request to the support team to help you with your problems, issues and bugs (if any).

Hope all this helps!
Regards

ModalPopup Dialog in WPF Browser Applications (XBAP)

2008-06-29T14:12:00Z

You can download the code for the post here.

I have always enjoyed the ModalPopup dialogs provided by ASP.NET AJAX Extensions 1.0. In one way or another they add a very special touch to the Web application in a user-friendly way. You can read more on ModalPopups in AJAX here (http://www.asp.net/AJAX/AjaxControlToolkit/Samples/ModalPopup/ModalPopup.aspx).

Now that I am working on WPF, I thought of having the same feature in WPF Browser Application (XBAP). The WPF Browser Application as you know runs in the Browser (Firefox and IE) with several Security limitations on WPF. WPF provides the Popup class that allowed me to provide such a Modal Popup Dialog Box. Read more on Popup class here (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.controls.primitives.popup.aspx).

To start with, let us create a new XBAP application by opening up VS 2008, File --> New Project --> WPF Browser Application.

Let us prepare Page1.xaml of this new project piece by piece:

First of all set the Title of main page.

     <StackPanel Name="mainPage" >
        <StackPanel Margin="10">
            <TextBlock Margin="5" TextWrapping="Wrap">Click the button to show a Modal Popup Dialog Box</TextBlock>
            <Button Click="cmdShowModal_Click" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Padding="3" Margin="5">Show Modal</Button>
            <Label Name="lblName" Margin="0, 10, 10, 10" FontSize="18" FontFamily="Arial"></Label>
        </StackPanel>

Add a new StackPanel that shall be the main container of the entire Page. Then add another StackPanel to hold a TextBlock and a Button. The TextBlock asks the user to press the Button to show the Modal Popup Dialog Box.

        <Popup Name="dialogPopUp" StaysOpen="True" Placement="Center" Width="250" Height="200">
            <ScrollViewer VerticalScrollBarVisibility="Auto">
                <Border BorderThickness="1" Background="#D4D0C8">
                    <TabControl>
                        <TabItem Header="Page 1">
                            <StackPanel Margin="5" Background="White">
                                <TextBlock Margin="10" TextWrapping="Wrap">
              Enter your Full Name:
            </TextBlock>
                                <TextBox Focusable="True" Name="txtName" Margin="10"></TextBox>
                                <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" Margin="10">
                                    <Button Click="cmdOK_Click" Padding="3" Margin="0,0,5,0">OK</Button>
                                    <Button Click="cmdCancel_Click" Padding="3">Cancel</Button>
                                </StackPanel>
                            </StackPanel>
                        </TabItem>
                        <TabItem Header="Page 2">
                            <StackPanel Margin="5" Background="White">
                                <TextBlock Margin="10" TextWrapping="Wrap">
                                    Another TabItem
                                </TextBlock>
                            </StackPanel>
                        </TabItem>
                    </TabControl>
                </Border>
            </ScrollViewer>
        </Popup>
    </StackPanel>
</Page>

The Popup Window contains a ScrollViewer that makes sure the Popup Window will scroll when its content Width or Height goes beyond the preset Width and Height on the Popup Window.

The ScrollViewer contains a TabControl with two defined TabItems. The first contains a TextBlock and TextBox to allow the user to enter her/his Full Name and then either hit the OK or Cancel button. The other TabItem is empty just a way to show you how flexible the Popup Window is.

Before running this application we need to add some code in the code-behind of the Page1.zaml. Mainly, when the *Show Modal* button is clicked we want to disable the main StackPanel so that the user cannot interact with the page, set a light gray color for the background of the page and finally open the Popup control using the *IsOpen* boolean Dependency Property.

When the OK button on the Popup control is clicked, we need to reverse what has been done above, i.e. enable the main StackPanel, remove the light gray color background of the main page and finally close the Popup control. In addition, we will grab the text the user has entered and show it on a label on the main page.

When the Cancel button on the Popup control is clicked the same thing should happen as in the case of the OK button with the exception that there is no need to update the Label in the main page with any entered text.

The code below shows how the above is implemented:

        private void cmdShowModal_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            // Configure the main page to disable the main StackPanel,
            // Set the background color to LightGray as if it is dimed
            // and finally open the Dialogbox.
            this.ConfigureMainPage(
                false,
                new BrushConverter().ConvertFromString("#8F8F8F") as SolidColorBrush,
                true);
        }

        private void cmdOK_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            // Configure the main page to enable it, remove the LightGray
            // color as the background and finally close the dialogbox.
            this.ConfigureMainPage(true, null, false);

            // Grab the Full Name entered in the dialogbox.
            this.lblName.Content = string.Format("Welcome {0} to my first XBAP application!", this.txtName.Text);

            // Clear the Textbox
            this.txtName.Text = "";
        }

        private void cmdCancel_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            // Configure the main page to enable it, remove the LightGray
            // color as the background and finally close the dialogbox.
            this.ConfigureMainPage(true, null, false);

            // Clear the Textbox
            this.txtName.Text = "";
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Configures the main page by setting the
        /// IsEnabled property of the main StackPanel, setting
        /// the background of the main StackPanel and finally open/close
        /// the dialog box
        /// </summary>
        private void ConfigureMainPage(
            bool mainPageEnabled,
            Brush mainPageBackground,
            bool IsDialogOpened)
        {
            this.mainPage.IsEnabled = mainPageEnabled;
            this.Background = mainPageBackground;
            dialogPopUp.IsOpen = IsDialogOpened;
        }

The code is self-explanatory and simply does what I have just explained above.

When we run the application, the main page looks as in Figure 1 below:

Once you click the *Show Modal* button the Popup window shows up as shown in Figure 2 below:

The user can type her/his name then either press OK or Cancel button. Notice how the Popup is popped Window-Centered and you can see the TabControl clearly containing two main tabs. Assume I typed my name and pressed OK, the page looks as in Figure 3 below:

You can see how the page is updated with the text the user has typed in the Textbox that was shown inside the Popup control.

You can download the code for the post here.

Hope you enjoyed reading this post!

Thanks

My First Book on ASP.NET - Professional ASP.NET 3.5 Security, Membership and Role Management with C# and VB

2008-06-24T20:24:00Z

Few months ago I was contacted by Wiley Publishing to write an ASP.NET book. The book that I was asked to work on was the Professional ASP.NET 2.0 Security, Membership and Role Management written by Stefan Schackow.

The idea was to upgrade the book into ASP.NET 3.5, IIS 7.0 and provide both C# and VB.NET code for all the chapters.

To make the story short, I started working on this book that now has the following title:

Professional ASP.NET 3.5 Security, Membership and Role Management with C# and VB

This week I finally finished the first draft of all the chapters. Expect the book to be in the market sometime end of this summer!

It was a great experience working on authoring a book after I have worked for several years on writing articles online or for printed magazines.

More to come on the book :)

Thanks

Microsoft Blend and Visual Source Safe, When?

2008-06-11T19:08:00Z

I have started lately working on WPF and developing an application by going through the complete life-cycle. Starting with the UI design in Microsoft Blend going to VS 2008 to implement the functionality of the application.

I noticed that Microsoft Blend misses the integration with Visual Source Safe. Does any one know if VSS will be integrated into Microsoft Blend?

Microsoft always talks about integration, I believe integrating VSS into Microsoft Blend is something required very much!

Regards

Bartek Marnane is blogging!!

2008-06-07T11:52:00Z

I would like to invite you to check my friend Bartek Marnane's new blog at: http://blog.evonet.com.au/default.aspx.

Bartek has so many nice and helpful posts that I am sure you will like them and benefit from!

Good luck Bartek!!

Regards

LINQed & LAYERED

2008-06-06T17:37:00Z

My article, LINQed & LAYERED: Implement CRUD Operations with LINQ in Three-tier ASP.NET Applications, is now published on www.aspnetpro.com June 2008 issue as the COVER STORY of the issue!

It was a great honor for me to have my first article to www.aspnetpro.com published as a cover story.

I hope you enjoy reading it and if you have any comments please do contact me! You can download the June 2008 issue as PDF following this link: http://www.aspnetpro.com/PDF/Issues/aspJUNE2008.pdf

Regards

Photos from the lovely Lebanon

2008-06-06T05:05:00Z

A friend of mine passed this link for lovely photos of Lebanon. Thought of sharing it with you!

http://www.lovelylebanon.com/

Hope you will like my country!
Regards

AJAX Control Toolkit Tutorials

2008-06-04T12:23:00Z

I found a new page on www.asp.net website that contains a set of tutorials on AJAX Control Toolkit.

You can reach the C# version at: AJAX Control Toolkit Tutorials in C#
You can reach the VB.NET version at: AJAX Control Toolkit Tutorials in VB.NET

Hope you enjoy reading them!
Regards

IIS 7.0 Resource Kit Book is published

2008-05-25T19:05:00Z

The Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0 Resource Kit is now published and you can get it from the following link:

Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0 Resource Kit

I strongly recommend this book to read to get to know everything you want about IIS 7.0.

Regards

Visual Studio 2008 Hotfixes and SP1 Beta

2008-05-23T05:21:00Z

Before installing VS 2008 SP1 Beta, check if you had installed any previous hot fixes. If yes, then you need to install the Hotfixes Cleanup utility before installing the SP1 beta.

Where to get the cleanup utility? Visual Studio 2008 Hotfix Cleanup Utility for Installing Visual Studio 2008 SP1

Hope this helps,
Regards

Running Classic ASP pages inside Classic Mode in IIS 7.0

2008-05-22T18:45:00Z

I have been trying for a while to run classic ASP pages inside an application hosted on IIS 7.0 and running under the Classic Mode Application Pool.

In IIS 6.0, there was the concept of Wild-Card Mapping where you map all requests to the ASP.NET ISAPI extension to be processed by the ASP.NET engine. As you know, when running an application hosted inside IIS 7.0 and running under the Classic Mode application pool, it behaves similarly as if it was hosted inside IIS 6.0.

To define a wild-card in II 7.0 for applications running under Classic Mode application pool follow the steps:

Click on the application you want to configure the wild-card for it inside IIS 7.0.
Make sure the application is running under the classic mode application pool
On the home page of the application, double click on the Handler Mappings applet. This applet shows all the extension mappings defined for the current application that are already inherited from the Default Web site.
Click on the Add Script Map on the Actions pane on the right. A dialog box pops up allowing you to enter the details of the mapping you want. The diagram is shown in the figure below.

In the Request Path field you enter "*". In the Executable field you enter the ASP.NET ISAPI extension so that all requests will be redirected to ASP.NET engine. In the Name field you enter the name of the new mapping you are defining.

Once you have defined the above, click on the Request Restrictions button to show the dialog box in the figure below.

Clear the Checkbox above so that you don't put any restrictions on the requests to be mapped to the ISAPI extension defined.

Now when you run the ASP page inside your application, it will work fine! What happens is that the .asp page will first be handled by the defined handlers inside IIS 7.0, once the specified handlers are executed, IIS 7.0 sends the request to ASP.NET ISAPI extension to be executed!

Hope this post helps you!
Regards

Accessing the ASP.NET Authentication, Profile and Role Service in Silverlight

2008-05-18T18:38:00Z

A great article by Brad Adams on accessing the ASP.NET Authentication, Profile and Role Services in Silerlight!

Check it out here: http://blogs.msdn.com/brada/archive/2008/05/03/accessing-the-asp-net-authentication-profile-and-role-service-in-silverlight.aspx

Hope you enjoy it!
Regards

Input Validation Helper Methods

2008-05-17T20:00:00Z

I found a good resource on validating user input on Channel9. You can reach that resource by following this link: http://channel9.msdn.com/wiki/default.aspx/SecurityWiki.RegExInputValCode2

The page contains a set of utility methods to help you in validating the inputs for your web application. The technique used is "whitelisting" technique in a sense that the user input is validated against a pattern that is known to be good using Regular Expressions.

Hope you will benefit from this page!

Regards

Install Windows Search Service on Windows Server 2008

2008-05-09T08:04:00Z

Enabling advanced search inside Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 requires that you install Windows Search Service on the machine! However, installing this service is not that direct and easy to reach.

To install Windows Search Service on a Windows Service 2008 follow the steps below:

Go to the Server Manager
Click on Add Roles
Select File Services
Select Window Search Service
Select the drives you want WSS to have control on

Hope this helps,
Regards

Microsoft Server 2008 Launch in Lebanon

2008-04-29T19:49:00Z

Come join us!!