Xperimentality

Well I will be dog gone!  See, all I needed was a little patience.  Last week I mentioned the Google Calendar and that it would be great if they released an API.  I guess I should be careful what I ask for.  Google has released their Calendar API.  It was announced last night on the Google Updates Blog.  And they already have a C# client library available!

Now I have one more thing I want to play around with that I really don't have time to play around with.  When someone opens up a shop to sell extra hours in the day, I am going to be their best customer!

Some people say that the next World War will be fought with conventional weaponry.  I say the next World War will be fought with innovative technology and the battle front will be located in the trenches of our computers!  Yesterday I mentioned Google Calendar.  Well today I was pointed to the Longhornblogs.com.  It appears that Microsoft is fighting fire with fire and releasing their own online  calendaring offering.

The "browser wars" were just a pain in our neck!  It was unproductive, and I think it actually made me dumber trying to keep up with all the varying browser issues!  But what is going on now with Google and Microsoft is quite another matter.  I think Google and Microsoft are going to continue to push each other to constantly be more innovative.  They are going to have to look at using the current and future technologies to stay ahead and forge into ever newer territories.  We are actually going to benefit from this battle!

It has truely been a volley up to this point.  Just look at a few examples: Google Desktop Search vs. Windows Desktop Search, Google Earth vs. Virtual Earth, Google Toolbar vs. MSN Toolbar.  The list goes on and I am sure anyone reading this is familiar with most of them.  I can't wait to see both companies continue to push innovation in the areas of the web experience!  So I don't know about any of you but I am getting my bag of popcorn and my foam finger and getting ready for a battle for the future!

The Atlas team has released an Atlas Control Toolkit which contains some control extenders to do some pretty nifty things with little or no code. The control toolkit includes the following controls and extenders:

• CascadingDropDown: Easily link drop downs, complete with asynchronous population and no postbacks!
• CollaspiblePanel:  This extender allows panels on your page to collapse and expand with no code.
• ConfirmButton: This extender adds a confirm dialog to any Button, LinkButton, or ImageButton control.
• DragPanel: Makes any panel into an object that you can drag around the page.
• HoverMenu: Allows UI to pop up next to a control when the user hovers over it. 
• PopupControl: This extender turns any panel into a popup. 
• ReorderList: This control is a full-featured data-bound control that allows its elements to be reordered on the client via drag and drop.
• TextBoxWatermark:  This extender adds "watermark" prompt text to TextBoxes on the page.
• ToggleButton:  This extender turns an ASP.NET CheckBox into an image checkbox. 

You get the source code, documentation, and more.  There are also some tools to help build your own controls that can utilize the power of Atlas.  The toolkit also has:

• Helper Classes:  This library of helper classes eliminates many of the steps needed to create "Atlas" controls or extenders so you can quickly produce the code that will make your website shine.
• Project and Item Templates:  With just a few clicks of the mouse, you'll be writing your first "Atlas" component.  The toolkit contains Visual Studio 2005 Templates for Visual Basic and Visual C# users to create their own controls and extenders.

Although this is an early release and may not completely cover every possibility, it is a new toy to play with and learn more about using Atlas!

I am going to be giving a presentation at the Birmingham .NET User Group tomorrow on ATLAS. I am going to cover both the client focused and server focused capability as well as demonstrate some examples of the UI coolness provided in the client libraries.  I am going to also mention the Mash It Up contest!

I have gotten a number of questions lately about Atlas. What exactly is it? What do I need to run it? What are the requirements for begin able to use it? So I thought I would post some information here in an attempt to help others who may have the same questions.

First of all, if you have not heard of Ajax, you have been living under a rock. However if you prefer to live like Patrick the starfish, Ajax is simply a term given to the use of multiple technologies (ie. Javascript, DHTML, CSS, and others) used in conjunction to achieve a more rich browser-based user experience. Granted, there are plenty of other definitions you can find if you don't like that one. Since Ajax is not really a technology so much as a technique, it does not belong to any one person or company. Plenty of people have created Ajax libraries. It should be no surprise that Microsoft has created their own Ajax framework, Atlas.

Atlas has 2 components: a set of Javascript script files which give you a similiar type of development platform for client-based Web pages that ASP.NET offers for server-based pages, and a server library that extends ASP.NET to integrate with server-based services. Do what? Effectively, you can have most of your work done on the client using the script files, or you can have most of the work done on the server utilizing ASP.NET.

"Ok, great"...you say.  "Sounds like it is a Microsoft ASP.NET technology. Not interested, I use PHP!" Well think again! You can use the client scripts with any back-end data provider you choose. If you use Visual Studio 2005, the Atlas .msi file will give you the option to install the Atlas web site templates. The Atlas web site template will give you a new Atlas web site option when you do a File..New from the menu. There is nothing magic here, the template creates a couple directories for you, references the Atlas library, and copies the Javascript files into your project.

The Atlas client scripts also include some really nice DHTML tools you can use as well. So what are you waiting for? Go download it and start playing.

Since my return from MIX06, my mind has been racing with a more hightened concept of the web as an experience. I have always thought that web design and public facing web applications should invoke an emotional response as well as an intellectual one; that browsing the web should be an experience more so than just a mundane task. This, in my mind, is what keeps an audience returning to a site.

Some of the things I have seen at MIX06 have solidified and hyped this feeling of the web as an experience. So I have decided to personally embrace this "experience the web" concept and let it drive me. I have changed my blog warmer to reflect this, and plan to reflect it in my blog content as well. I look forward to getting more feedback on how we as developers can inject the "experience" into our development.

Well, now that I have been back for a day and tried to absorb all the material presented at MIX06, I have to say that it can be overwhelming. I thought I had a pretty good handle on Atlas and WPF. But as a web developer, I realized that there was so much more than what I had previously thought was coming down the pipe.

Web developers are having, truely, a brand new world of possibilities handed to them. The richness of the web experience, for it will soon be truely an experience, is exploding! We are going to have to learn to think and design without limitation. That is the only way we will be able to take advantage of all the capabilities soon available. For so long we have had many limitations. Recently, there has been a push to go beyond some of the more common and burdensome limitations, but nothing on the scale of what is to come.

All I can say is this: Throw off your shackles and chains and get ready for a whole new freedom...get ready to not just browse the web, but to experience it!

I guess I have that freakish quality you don't find often in engineers.  I love the creativity of web design and graphics work! My boss, who happens to be a great friend of mine, ribs me all the time about my love of all things visual.  So it goes!  I have been utilizing CSS in my designs for quite a while and one of my favorite sites for showing off what can be done with CSS is CSSZenGarden. A book was written about CSSZenGarden, which discusses some of the designs on the site and the interesting implementations of CSS within those designs.  I finally decided I would get it and see what others were talking about.  I think it is a great book for someone who is somewhat familiar with CSS but wants to grow their knowledge.  It is not a beginners book.  And it is not a book for advanced developers either. Reading the book is like having a discussion with a friend who is knowledgeable about CSS.  I think it is a worthwhile purchase for anyone interested in seeing other perspectives on CSS implementation.