Adam Calderon

There are a few things to think about when using Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) in ASP.NET and this article is going to cover creating a simple wizard application using lessons learned from a large-scale application using these technologies. The basis of this article and the companion code is a wizard used to enter employee expenses and relies on WF to control what page to display and to provide data for the page. Before we get into the code, let me explain the application in a little more detail. The employee expense wizard (see Figure 1 and Figure 2) is based on a StateMachine workflow (see Table 1) and collects expense information for an employee. The first step in the wizard collects employee information consisting of first name, last name, and department and the second step in the wizard collects expense information consisting of item description and amount.... (more)

RIAs for Web 3.0 Using the Microsoft Platform

The level of functionality on the Web is changing and the bar is rising on what is considered a true rich Internet application (RIA). This fact and the emergence of the Web as an interconnected platform is once again changing the landscape and moving us into the next phase of the Web, which is called Web 3.0. It might be a little early to completely define what Web 3.0 will be but there are many indications of what will shape it. Previous versions of the Web brought us from displaying traditional print media with simple interactions (Web 1.0) to the dynamic content, blogs, wiki... (more)

Cover Story: Unlocking the Inner Secrets of WinForms

The new version of Windows Forms in .NET 2.0 brings some exciting and much-needed enhancements that not only allow for more productivity, but also allow for creating some extremely professional looking applications that have the look and feel of many of the office applications we use every day. The goal of this article is to introduce many of the new features starting at the base level and building up, much as you would create an application, detailing each feature and how the features can help you. Base Level Enhancement The work that has been done at the lower levels of Windows ... (more)

The Heart Of Microsoft .NET - Whidbey CLR and Language Enhancements

The upcoming release of the .NET 2.0 framework brings many new enhancements to the CLR and the C# and VB.NET languages, and with the availability of Beta2, it seems like an appropriate time to dive into the .NET 2.0 framework and see what’s cooking. Since .NET is a platform that supports multiple languages my approach with each new release has been to review what the CLR has to offer first, since it is the foundation for all languages, and then review what is common for the languages I use the most, which are C# and VB.NET. Last, I review each language on its own to see how... (more)