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While the Microsoft Chart Controls have some rough edges, their cost (free), number of chart types, and array of supported charting features make them an excellent choice for adding charts to an ASP.NET web application. This article, the first in a series of articles on the Chart Controls, shows how to download, install, and get started using the Microsoft Chart Controls.

Partial classes and partial methods are two programming language features of .NET programming languages that make it possible for developers to extend and enhance auto-generated code. In a nutshell, a partial classes allow for a single classs members to be divided among multiple source code files.

At compile-time these multiple files get combined into a single class as if the classs members had all been specified in a single file. Partial methods are methods defined in a partial class that are (optionally) divided across two files. With partial methods one file contains the method signature - the method name, its return type, and its input parameters - while the body is (optionally) defined in a separate file. If the partial methods body is not defined then the compiler automatically removes the partial method signature and all calls to the method at compile-time…

This article shows how to implement incremental navigation, which is a style of navigation where users find information by clicking through a series of lightweight pages, with each click resulting in a small, but highly visible change to the navigation user interface. It differs from traditional drop-down menu navigation in that incremental navigation limits the amount of new choices available to just the next level in the sitemap hierarchy.

This article provides an overview of JSONs rules and illustrates how it is used in AJAX-enabled web applications. Well also look at using the Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX framework's JavaScriptSerializer class, which facilitates serializing and deserializing JSON-formatted messages on the client in JavaScript or in C# or Visual Basic code on the server.

Until recently, there was no built-in support for creating or consuming syndication feeds in the.NET Framework. That changed with the release of the.NET Framework version 3.5, which included a new namespace: System.ServiceModel.Syndication.

This new namespace includes a handful of classes for working with syndication feeds. As aforementioned, syndication feeds are XML files, and for the syndication feed to be of any use it must conform to one of the popular syndication feed standards. The two most popular syndication feed standards are RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0, and these are the standards supported by the classes in the codeSystem.ServiceModel.Syndication namespace. But there is a third format that, while not as popular as RSS 2.0 or Atom 1.0, is still used. That standard is RSS 1.0./?p>

The good news is that with a little bit of work we can create a class that works with the RSS 1.0 standard and have this class used by the syndication feed-related classes in the.NET Framework 3.5 can be. This article introduces a free library, skmFeedFormatters, which you can use in an ASP.NET 3.5 application to create and consume RSS 1.0 feeds.

jQuery is a small JavaScript library that makes development of HTML-based client JavaScript drastically easier. With client logic getting ever more complex and browsers still diverging in features and implementation of features, jQuery and other client libraries provide much needed normalization when working with JavaScript and the HTML DOM.

When a browser requests an ASP.NET page from a web server, the ASP.NET engine takes that request through a number of steps that, together, generate the resulting markup, which is returned to the requesting browser for display. The stages in this process are referred to as the HTTP Pipeline and perform tasks like authentication, authorization, and having the requested page render its content. During one of the later stages in the HTTP Pipeline the rendered markup is handed off to a response filter which, if supplied, has an opportunity to inspect and modify the markup before it is returned to the requesting browser.

With a little bit of code you can create your own response filters and associate them with a particular page, a particular type of page (such as ASP.NET resources that generate HTML), or for all ASP.NET resources. And if you are using IIS 7s integrated mode you can have your filter work with the output of any content type. This article provides an overview of response filters and shows two such filters: a naive filter that strips out whitespace to reduce the size of the markup sent over the wire, and a filter that adds a copyright message to the bottom of all web pages. You can download these two filters, along with a simple demo application, at the end of this article, with examples in both C# and Visual Basic…

This article looks at how to use the Google Chart API to create charts. The Google Chart API is a free service from Google that enables web developers to generate chart images on the fly by creating an <img> element with a src attribute that points to a URL that includes the chart data, labels, and other information in the querystring. Read on to learn how to use the Google Chart API in your ASP.NET website!

Unlike debugging server-side code, examining the HTTP traffic sent between the client and the server is typically done on the client - namely, from the browser rather than from within Visual Studio. Fiddler is a free, excellent tool for debugging HTTP traffic. This article provides an overview of Fiddler and shows how to use Fiddler to assist with debugging.

This article looks at Microsoft's free virtualization software, Virtual PC, and shows how to use it to create guest environments where you can cleanly install alternate development environments to assist with web development.