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When building a web application, we must decide how and when the browser will communicate with the web server. The ASP.NET WebForms model greatly simplifies web development by providing a straightforward mechanism for exchanging data between the browser and the server. With WebForms, each ASP.NET page's rendered output includes a <form> element that performs a postback to the same page whenever a Button control within the form is clicked, or whenever the user modifies a control whose AutoPostBack property is set to True. On postback, the server sends the entire contents of the web page back to the browser, which then displays this new content. With WebForms we don't need to spend much time or effort thinking about how or when the browser will communicate with the server or how that returned information will be processed by the browser. It just works.

While this approach certainly works and has its advantages, it's not without its drawbacks. The primary concern with postback forms is that they require a large amount of information to be exchanged between the browser and the server. Specifically, the browser sends back all of its form fields (including hidden ones, like view state, which may be quite large) and then the server sends back the entire contents of the web page. Granted, there are scenarios where this large quantity of data needs to be exchanged, but in many cases we can use techniques that exchange much less information. However, these techniques necessitate spending more time and effort thinking about how and when to have the browser communicate with the server and intelligently deciding on what information needs to be exchanged.

This article, the first in a multi-part series, examines different techniques for accessing server-side data from a browser using client-side script. Throughout this series we will explore alternative ways to expose data on the server so that it can be accessed from the browser using script; we will also examine various tools for communicating with the server from JavaScript, including jQuery and the ASP.NET AJAX library.

This is an assembly used to print reports in text mode. This results in a FAST and LIGHT WEIGHTED printing solution for your .NET application. It support all major printer control command sets (HP-PCL, EPSON-ESC, IBM-Proprinter). Most printer are normally compatible with one of these. The component supports the use of font styles (bold, italic ...), lines and rectangles, fonts, mapping of character sets.... RTextPrinter provides an easy to use api for printing text mode reports. It will handle the communication with the printer and all printer configuration commands in a transparent manner for you.

With many applications, spell checking can be a vital aspect to include. Most people are accustomed to the spell checking capabilities of products like Microsoft Word or OpenOffice. There are products available for purchase that can add spell checking capability, such as SharpSpell that can cost hundreds of dollars. Unfortunately, there is a lack of Open Source, freely available tools that can provide the functionality of Microsoft Word. That is why I began to work on a spell checking IExtenderProvider that could extend any control that inherits TextBoxBase (both TextBox and RichTextBox inherit TextBoxBase).

Windows Vista introduces a new cryptography API to replace the old CryptoAPI, which has its roots in the early versions of Windows NT and Windows 95. Cryptography Next Generation (CNG) is meant to be a long-term replacement for the CryptoAPI, providing substitutes for all of the cryptographic primitives it offered. CNG supports all of the algorithms provided by the CryptoAPI, but goes much further and includes many new algorithms and a much more flexible design, providing developers with greater control over how cryptographic operations are performed and how algorithms work together to perform various operations.

Most applications will require some form of text input. By using the ITextInputPanel API you can optimize the pen text-input experience on Tablet PCs.If you have ever used a Tablet PC, you have most likely used Tablet PC Input Panel. Input Panel is the handwriting input tool that lies on top of your application so that you can insert handwritten text into any non-ink enabled Microsoft Windows control. Using Input Panel programmability is a great way to ensure that Input Panel provides the best possible pen input user experience in your application.

The cloud means many things. It means Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google, Bing and - oh yes - Windows Azure! Windows Azure, as you know, is Microsoft’s cloud operating system. It consists of many parts, but at a high level you can say it includes Compute (web and worker roles, plus storage), SQL Azure and AppFabric. AppFabric, in turn, consists of AppFabric Access Control, ServiceBus, and Cache. This article concerns ServiceBus, and its integration with SharePoint 2010 and Office 365.

The dependency injection pattern, also knows as Inversion of Control, is one of the most popular design paradigms today. It facilitates the design and implementation of loosely coupled, reusable, and testable objects in your software designs by removing dependencies that often inhibit reuse. Dependency injection can help you design your applications so that the architecture links the components rather than the components linking themselves.

This article presents an overview of the dependency injection pattern, the advantages of using dependency injection in your designs, the different types of dependency injection, and the pros and cons of each of these types, with code examples where appropriate.

Online Article: The Baker's Dozen: 13 Productivity Tips for ADO.NET 2.0

This installment of "The Baker's Dozen" presents a variety of tips and techniques to become productive with data handling techniques using ADO.NET 2.0 in Visual Studio 2005. ADO.NET 2.0 is faster than the first version of ADO.NET; in some instances, significantly faster. While many view ADO.NET 2.0 as more evolutionary than revolutionary, it provides many functions to give developers greater control over data access and data manipulation. It also leverages the new database capabilities in SQL Server 2005. In addition, ADO.NET 2.0 simplifies the creation of multiple-database solutions.

ListBoxes suck. Except that statement is not true anymore. Not in WPF and Silverlight anyway, where ListBoxes have evolved from simplistic controls to true workhorse objects. ListBoxes have been around since the beginning of Windows (and other GUIs) and have served a pervasive yet simple purpose, which can be summed up as “show me a list of labels in a list with a scroll bar.” A premise that has its uses but is not sophisticated enough for advanced data presentation, which is why developers often use special controls such as “data grids” or “list views” among others. In WPF and Silverlight, however, ListBoxes are so flexible and powerful that they are the first choice for just about anything. In fact, WPF originally shipped without a data grid control since ListBoxes all but eliminated that need. Developer perception, however, was different and the power of the ListBoxes went largely unnoticed. That is reason enough for me to write an article that displays the ease, flexibility, and power of ListBoxes.

Microsoft's ASP.NET AJAX Framework helps page developers design more interactive web pages by streamlining the postback mechanism. In traditional web pages, a full postback involves the browser re-requesting the page, which is then re-rendered. This re-rendered page markup is returned, in its entirety, to the browser for display. Ajax techniques improve the user's experience in two primary ways through the use of partial postbacks: first, a partial postback is asynchronous, meaning that the user can still interact with the page while waiting for the partial postback to complete; second, and more importantly, because a partial page postback updates only a particular region (or regions) of a page, less data needs to be shuttled between the client and the server, resulting in a quicker and smoother experience..