Graffiti Extras 1.3 Released
In the latest days of December 2008 Telligent released a new version of its Graffiti CMS software, version 1.2, after a long while of silence around the project. The new version had some minor changes in comparison with its preceding version, but it was worth having it at that point.
You may also know that I have started an open source project around Graffiti called Graffiti Extras which provides a collection of plug-ins, extensions, widgets, and themes for this CMS licensed under a New BSD license. This project has had some major and minor releases to now, and with the help of a few team members I could add new features to it during the time.
When I referenced the official announcement of Graffiti 1.2, I promised to have a new release of Graffiti Extras very soon. Besides, better open source contributions was one of my main goals for 2009, so here comes my first open source work in the new year!
Continue Reading : 4 Comments : 01.05.09
My 2009 Resolutions
It’s a blogosphere tradition to publish new year resolutions at the beginning of the new year and it’s also common to give status updated on a regular basis about the progress of the goals. Last year Steve had done this with good updates and let his readers know what’s up with his major goals in the new year.
I’m also going to do the same for 2009 even though most of my major goals had been defined from the past and I’m going to take my final steps this year. Besides, these important goals are private at least for now until I can be assured that I have achieved them, and they’re not of those kinds of goals that you publish here and there!
By the way, it’s good to have a plan and look for some goals and book them somewhere to be able to check your progress. For an active blogger, his blog with public audience would be the best tool for enforcement!
Continue Reading : 5 Comments : 01.02.09
Happy New Year 2009
And then 2009 began! It’s sweet to start a new year with happiness, so happy new year to you my dear readers! I hope you’ve had a good year and have a better year coming.
I’m smoothly losing the passage of time in a boring life that I’m wrestling with. The past years, specifically 2007 and 2008, were bad years for me when I had faced with many difficulties that you’re aware of them to some extent. Although they’re gone, I feel much older and exhausted of what has happened to me.
When I go back and forth and review my last year’s post, I realize that sometimes things go whether we want or not, and whether we do anything for or against them, but the most important point is how we pass them not how they go! My military service was one of those cases that I had to pass, but I’m happy that I could get the best of the worst and did my job despite all the controversy things. This is something that I want to recommend my personal experience to you to try to believe in god, stay strong, be persistent, and not give up to just spend the time!
Continue Reading : 2 Comments : 01.01.09
My Best Blog Posts in 2008
In the past 3.5 years of blogging, I haven’t had such best pick up collections in the end of the year, but now that everybody is writing one, why shouldn’t I write my own?!
Collecting this list, I could realize some interesting facts that completely changed my mind about my own blogging quality in 2008! First I thought that I haven’t had such a productive year on this blog because the number of posts was lower than the past years, but I realized that the quality has been great, and this is the more important point. Likewise, I had suspected that I haven’t had many programming posts this year, and I also saw a completely different result after this quick review of all my posts in 2008! Sometimes you evaluate things with your shorter term memory, so don’t notice such points in your environment or your works!
Continue Reading : 8 Comments : 12.31.08
Microsoft – The Talent Killer
Ok, year is going to end, so let’s criticize Microsoft!! By the way, the last sentence was some kind of mathematical logic that is not being used!
During the podcast that I had recorded with High on Coding, I talked about the advantage of ASP.NET WebForms in the usage of classical development model and the way that you drag and drop controls into WebForms designer to quickly build an application. Although this is an advantage for any software development technology to speed up the process and make it easier, I think that this kind of development has become a religion for Microsoft at least in the area of development technologies.
Continue Reading : 14 Comments : 12.31.08
My Interview on High on Coding About ASP.NET MVC
Mohammad Azam is one the ASP.NET community members who has been actively contributing to some sites including ASP Alliance and his own sites. He had a few sites about ASP.NET where he was publishing his articles but a short while ago he started a new site called High on Coding and redirected all his other domains and URLs to this new one. Mohammad is trying to publish valuable stuff about the .NET on the site as articles, videos and podcasts.
As a part of the site, Mohammad records regular podcasts about technical topics, and last week he invited me to join him to be interviewed on ASP.NET MVC. Although I was a podcast-virgin before then, I thought it’s good to have this interview done, and we recorded the podcast yesterday.
Continue Reading : 5 Comments : 12.28.08
DZone Syndicates Top .NET Articles
This post by Simone bit me to check DZone for my articles, and I found the first syndicated article of mine that I had missed before.
As I had written before, I had the pleasure to be honored as a DZone Most Valuable Blogger (MVB) by Alvin Ashcraft. As a part of this program, DZone syndicates the hottest articles written by its MVBs on its main site with a better quality and with a reference back to the original content.
As Simone has written, they have syndicated his article about calling ASP.NET MVC controllers from external assemblies. They also had syndicated my post about using Brail view engine with ASP.NET MVC a short while ago.
Continue Reading : 1 Comment : 12.28.08
My Bests of 2008
In the end of 2005 I wrote a blog post with my best picks for that year, but I didn’t have such a post in the past couple of years. I thought it’s better to take that style again because it may make me feel younger! Now that I review that old post, I understand that how experience can change a mind! That year I had loved anything came out of Microsoft, but now I’m not willing to talk about this fat elephant anymore!
By the way, 2008 was a better year than 2006 and specifically 2007, and I think that world had a better position in this year. This time I want to choose a few items but detail my reasons for choosing them.
Continue Reading : 2 Comments : 12.27.08
Using JsonResult in ASP.NET MVC AJAX
We are at the middle of editorial stage of our book, and I was working on my chapter about AJAX in ASP.NET MVC in the past few days. Ivan had left a valuable comment for me to include a short reference to the JsonResult option to return JSON data to views. I decided to have a short paragraph about the option and leave an exercise for readers to follow up with. Here I also write the whole discussion that may be worth sharing.
In ASP.NET MVC you can write action methods that return a variety of types to be used in your views to obtain data for AJAX interactions. Most common types are string and ActionResult, but there is also an option called JsonResult which returns its values as JSON serialized data. The returned data can be used easily in client-side as appropriate.
Continue Reading : 4 Comments : 12.26.08
Merry Christmas
This time thing goes so fast! Last year this time my hope was to complete the military service as soon as possible and become free, and now I’m at that point.
However, it’s Christmas time, and I’m happy to see that people are happy again, especially this year after the serious problems that all the countries have been experiencing recently, and had made people a little upset about the future. In such cases it’s great to stay away, stretch, and spend time with family, and Christmas time would be the best opportunity for that.
So merry Christmas to everyone especially my dear readers and friends, and I hope that you have a very good time as you wish.
Continue Reading : 2 Comments : 12.25.08