Sketchflow is a wonderful tool from Microsoft for prototyping websites and web applications. It is built on top of Expression Blend, part of the Microsoft Expression Studio. From the article:

…SketchFlow is part of Microsoft’s Expression Studio range of design tools. After a lackluster history with design tools, Microsoft seems to be finally getting their act together with Expression Studio (disclaimer: I’ve previously worked at Microsoft). Expression Studio is up to its third release and comprises four or five products depending on how you count them:

• Expression Blend: For building user interfaces for Silverlight, Windows, and Surface.

• Expression Blend SketchFlow (part of Blend): For prototyping user interfaces.

• Expression Web: For building user interfaces for web standards.

• Expression Design: For creating graphic assets for the Web or Silverlight, Windows, and Surface.

• Expression Encoder: For preparing video assets for the Web or Silverlight, Windows, and Surface.

This article walks the reader through how to rapidly prototype a web application using SketchFlow. I suggest heading over to the site and reading the full article. And be sure to read to the bottom of page 2 for some great links to other SketchFlow resources… Now to fire up Blend and give this one a try!

Rapid Prototyping with SketchFlow

I found this posted over on TheServerSide.NET. Yes, it’s a couple of years old now, but it's still a good resource if you are not up to speed on LINQ (like me). It consists of a series of links (no pun intended) to a variety of resources, including word docs, webcasts, code samples, etc.

From the site:

Language changes are a two-edged sword, as learning cuts into your time but sharpens and future-proofs your skills. Some new features are minor and can be gradually integrated into your routine, while others quickly impact your approach to coding.

LINQ (Language Integrated Query) is a set of .NET framework extensions that will definitely impact how C# and VB developers work with data in the future. These extensions provide a way to natively query any type of data without having to resort to other languages such as SQL or XQuery.

This learning guide provides a quick look at the LINQ extensions and the upcoming release of C# 3.0 in general.

Table of Contents

• General information
• Articles
• Webcasts
• Downloads
• Code Samples
• Community

Click on over to the original article for all the LINQ goodness!

Enterprise .NET Community: C# 3.0/LINQ Learning Guide

What a great idea! A lot of companies create custom error pages so that you don’t see the ugly, default error page that comes with the web server that runs their site. When I say ugly, I mean… UGLY.

Many of them style it to look like their site so that there is consistency in the site.

I stumbled upon this awesome idea from Scott Hanselman that is not only a good idea, but easy to implement. Click on through to the article to learn how to put your error pages to work for good. And always, if you need help getting this into YOUR website, give Dash Technical Solutions a call and we’ll do our best to help you out!

Put Missing Kids on your 404 Page - Entirely Client-Side Solution with YQL, jQuery, and MSAjax

I’m not going to repeat the whole list here, but I thought it would be beneficial to my customers and peers to have this information, if they don’t already.

This is a great list of small things you can do to to :

1. Effectively market to your target audience (Copywriting)
2. Make your site easier to use (Usability)
3. Make  your site easier to find (Search Engine Optimization)
4. Make your site easier to use for visitors with disabilities (Accessibility)
5. Make your site attractive (Design)
6. Keep your site safe and protect its content (Legal)

It’s a good read. I just bookmarked it (well I also blogged about it, so I know exactly where to find it in the future…)

101 Five-Minute Fixes to Incrementally Improve Your Web Site - Inside CRM

Below is a list of galleries to get inspiration from. I’m a recent convert from the “use HTML and spacer gifs as a way to control layout” way of thinking to the CSS way of thinking.

Have a look. There’s some good stuff here. If you are a dyed-in-the-wool old-school tables kind of person, then it may take a bit to get you to see the beauty of CSS and get your head around how it all works. There is still room for tables but tables WITH CSS, is a thing of beauty.

Take a look at this link as well, which describes some of the advantages and disadvantages of both approaches: http://www.mardiros.net/css-layout.html

More for my own sake than anything else I thought I would comment on this article… This is a good post that details how to create  JSON Web Service with .NET technologies.

JSON (short for JavaScript Object Notation and pronounced like “Jason”) is catching on quickly with developers due to the fact that:

• JSON is easy
• JSON is nothing more than name : value pairs assigned within an object
• JSON is easy to understand because if written well, it’s a self-documenting structure.
• JSON is fast (parsing is extremely efficient)
• JSON organizes the ugly mess of procedural programming

An example of a JSON object:

{    
    "name": "Jack (\"Bee\") Nimble",     
    "format": {
         "type":       "rect",
         "width":      1920,
         "height":     1080,
         "interlace":  false,
         "frame rate": 24
    }
}

From my seat, this is a lot easier to understand than SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) that has been the standard for .NET Web Services ever since I can remember…

But also an interesting read is The Limitations of JSON, so it’s not a silver bullet.

How To Create A JSON Web Service In ASP.NET – Williamsport Web Developer Weblog

I’m following this with much interest. There are a few things holding me back from jumping feet-first into ASP.NET MVC:

1. No time… The current project I am working on is too far into the lifecycle to make the sudden and profound jump to ASP.NET MVC. For now, it’s plain ol’ web forms, which is not such a bad thing… Plus, my agile team members just got used to web forms, so it would be a big ask to ask them to make a paradigm shift now…
2. Lack of good controls… It seems like in the little time I have had to mess around with MVC that it does not have the rich control set that ASP.NET Web Forms has. If I’m wrong, somebody please let me know…

So, when I saw that someone has created a “DataGrid” for MVC, I was thrilled and started following. It looks like they are up to 5 parts in this multi-part series, and from what I have seen so far, this is good stuff, and a good primer for ASP.NET MVC folks who are creating their own MVC-specific controls.

ASP.NET MVC Grid – Part 1 « RAD for N-Tier web apps in .NET