Aptana Studio

I had a chance to take an Ajax class recently. It wasn't what I expected, really. What was billed as advanced JavaScript-ing amounted to writing my own $ function, and attaching a function to the array of elements returned. I also got to write my own wrapper around XMLHttpRequest. Not exactly rocket science. Needless to say, I was disappointed.

In any case, I did get some tidbit on closures. Also learned what is "em" in CSS. I also got a chance to use Aptana Studio for the lab exercises. I was pleasantly surprised. It has come a long way.

RadRails got updated, too, since I looked at it last. I will have to check it out, along with Rails 2.0 as well.

jQuery and FireBug Rock

So I was going to write a test page to check out the re-branded ASP.NET AJAX framework.  Well, that didn't happen.

Instead, I downloaded the source code to Ajax.NET Professional, put in the fix, re-compiled, and went to work on my project.

All was well in my world, until I hit brick wall.  When I attempted to serialize a large DataTable down to the browser as part of an Ajax response, something went wrong.  I think the generated JavaScript code that is part of Ajax.NET Professional croaked.  Yikes!

Well, since my project is a mashup of a few JavaScript libraries, I thought that perhaps one of them conflicts with Ajax.NET Professional.  So then I wrote another test page, which disproved my theory.  Doh!

At this point, I gave up on Ajax.NET Professional.  I was an inch away from rolling my own JSON serializer.  The rules are pretty simple, after all.   But some Googling led me to Json.NET, which is a simple JSON serializer/deserializer.  Except it's got some issues, too.  So I wrote a custom DataTable serializer using the JsonWriter class instead.  To keep things simple, every column value gets serialized as a string for me, an this worked beautifully.

On the client-side, I use jQuery to perform the Ajax requests as well as some fancy UI manipulation.  I think this is an awesome JavaScript library.

And FireBug is definitely worth mentioning, too.  I just don't know how JavaScript developers (myself included) coped for so long without it anymore.

Which AJAX?

Here I am, sitting in my workspace, pondering the pros and cons of AJAX frameworks.

In the past, Microsoft's Atlas left a bad taste in my mouth. Then, I found Ajax.NET Professional, which I loved for its simplicity and integration with the .NET framework. The only downside is that it doesn't do anything for the user-interface. That's where jQuery (or another library) comes in.

A few months ago, I took a class on Microsoft's re-branded ASP.NET AJAX framework. Even though it is also very convoluted, they've cleaned up things quite a bit.

More recently, I upgraded my installation of Ajax.NET Professional to 7.7.31.1, and to my dismay, DataSet/DataTable serialization broke. I found an open ticket that talks about the problem I am having, plus a workaround, which involves me downloading the source code, making a small change, and re-compile and use the now unofficial assembly. The ticket was opened in June, but the most recent release was in July with no official fix available, and not a word from the developer on this that I can find since the July release. This troubles me, and a bad taste is forming in my mouth.

Furthermore, something the instructor from my ASP.NET AJAX class began echoing in my head: "If you want to do something fast, UpdatePanel is the way to go." Well, that is exactly what I've been asked to do.

Putting it all together, whereas I started out consciously wanting to avoid Microsoft's ASP.NET AJAX framework, I now find myself re-thinking...

I've already written a quick test page using Ajax.NET Professional and jQuery. Perhaps it's time to write another test page, but use ASP.NET AJAX instead.