Technology: Starting with ASP.NET MVC2

I'm trying to create a new storefront for my wife and as I've been given a chance to develop a site from the ground up I decided to take the opportunity to learn some new things. This weekend has been a sit down with several tutorials, screen-casts and talks.

I want to take the chance to introduce;

ASP.NET MVC 2 brings website development to a whole new level. It's available as an additional download for VS2008 SP1 or VS2008 Web Developer Express. As a developer who hates complicating pages with code/html mix, who hates making database calls alongside layout logic, MVC2 is a breath of fresh air. It's the same concepts I developed the PHP5 framework around and I think I made that easier but nowhere near as fully featured as this technology. 

In decided to use the technology, I wanted to go all out and make sure I took the time to better understand Dependancy Injection (StructureMap and Ninject) and learn a lot of things along the way. Hopefully, I'll actually manage to bring the learning to this site, either as a .NET rewrite (although that would involve host changes etc.) or I'll get a contact form and user interaction going on here and share my experiences.

One of the videos I watched this weekend was a presentation by Scott Hanselman on "Ninja black belt tips" in ASP.NET MVC2. It wasn't quite a guided tour of that particular product, but what it was was some eye opening techniques and tips that made me enjoy the entire 75 minutes start to finish. 

ASP.NET MVC2 Ninja Blackbelt Tips & Tricks

Check it out, it's illuminating. 

Twitter

For a very long time, I've been completely against "social networking". It's not that I don't like the idea of sharing information with people that care what goes on in my life. It's that I don't think that many people are really, truly interested in what I do.

But, as an experiment in networking, to go alongside my updated development efforts, I've decided to TRY and be more active. Maybe some people will follow me, maybe my development efforts are of interest to people and they may start following. I never know. 

Listening to a lot of the podcasts I've been missing out on for so long has really started me thinking about how these products such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace etc. have really changed the way we live, the way we interact. I'm not even sure they're working the way they were originally intended.

Available Now

I've been working on web services recently, working on consuming them on a variety of platforms, including mobile devices. In order to step up this effort, I put some additional work into creating services within the Amity-Framework. 

It was this last round of changes that made me decide to put the work up. So, if you wish to get the code, it's available on https://sourceforge.net/projects/amityframework/

I'll get a contact form back up on this site in the near future, hopefully there's something good to say about the framework.

You can find the Amity-Framework over at SourceForge.