Dropthings - Ajax Web Portal

New Post: AjaxTookit Undifined (Help)

merlinr — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 20:47:15 GMT

Whenever I would have errors related to the AjaxControlToolkit, I replaced my web.config with a fresh version from the downloaded 1.1 version. Sometimes, certain actions you perform in Visual Studio 2008 will make changes to your web.config and mess things up.

Also, add a Global Assembly Cache entry that points to the AjaxControlToolkit.dll that's in the /bin folder of your site.

For instance, my project is at C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\trunk\Dropthings so I added the GAC entry for C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\trunk\Dropthings\bin\AjaxControlToolkit.dll

Also your project needs to have all of these folders to function properly.
C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\trunk\Dropthings
C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\trunk\AjaxAsmxHandler
C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\trunk\Components
C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\trunk\CustomDragDrop
C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\trunk\DashboardBusiness
C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\trunk\DashboardDataAccess

Open the solution file in Visual Studio from C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\trunk\Dropthings.sln

Hope this helps, these are just some things I learned via trial and error.

New Post: FastRSSWidget - rss parameter null

insertcoin — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 17:07:02 GMT

I downloaded the last full release (1.1.0). I couldn't compile it so I made some fixes and managed to build the solution.

Now I'm having troubles with the RSS widgets. They do not load any content.

IE 7 is throwing a runtime error at line 26 of FastRSSWidget.js:

for ( var i = 0; i < rss.length; i ++ )

Microsoft JScript runtime error: 'length' is null or not an object.

I don't know why the "rss" parameter is coming null in this function.

Any ideas? Thanks.

New Post: Dropthings Needs Another Innovative Feature(s)

alex9spain — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 13:04:45 GMT

Hi Shaun,

Just sending a friendly post to see if you have any new/glad news to share with me regarding the drag and drop functions of TabPages?

I'm curious how things have progressed with you.

Any suggestion or help from anyone in this issue would be greatly appreciated!!! Thanks a lot Walu for the nice feature you posted.

Hope all is well,

Best regards,
~Alex

New Post: Sys.InvalidOperationException

bhagwath — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 13:44:59 GMT

I downloaded the latest release v1.1 and I am having problems adding new widgets (Add stuff link). I get the following error

"Microsoft JScript runtime error: Sys.InvalidOperationException: Type Sys.Timer has already been registered. The type may be defined multiple times or the script file that defines it may have already been loaded. A possible cause is a change of settings during a partial update. ".

I am using .Net framework 3.5 and VS 2008. I have googled for this error and there a couple of people who have got the same error message.

New Post: Adding support for master page

eransc — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:10:52 GMT

I saw an old posting regarding that issue.
Can someone shade some light ?

New Post: Is DropThings compatible with vs.net standard edition?

Goalie35 — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:24:47 GMT

I've been working with dropthings using a trial edition of visual studio.net 2008 professional edition, however my trial is going to end shortly & I'll need to purchase the actual software.

Can the dropthings solution run on the standard edition of vs.net 2008 or do I have to pay for the full professional edition?

Thanks.

-Goalie35

Updated Wiki: Home

oazabir — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:43:45 GMT

Project Description
Ajax Web Portal built on Linq, Workflow Foundation and ASP.NET AJAX. Code is in Visual Studio 2008 using .NET 3.0 and .NET 3.5.
Production site
http://www.dropthings.com

Source Code

Book about this project

This book explains how this project has been built step by step. It also explains many advance AJAX concepts, development and production challenges for building and maintaining a high volume production website.

Get it from Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Building-Web-2-0-Portal-ASP-NET/dp/0596510500

Technologies

ASP.NET 2.0
ASP.NET AJAX (.NET 3.5)
Linq to Sql
Linq to Xml
Workflow Foundation (.NET 3.0)
Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2005

Join Us
If you are a seasoned ASP.NET Developer and have ASP.NET AJAX skill, come and join us to make Dropthings a feature rich Ajax Web Portal. Please email me at "OmarALZabir" at gmail dot com.

What is an AJAX Portal
A Portal refers to a page that allows users to customize their own homepage by dragging and dropping widgets onto the page. This approach gives users complete control over what content they see on their page, where they want to see it, and how they want to interact with it.

A widget is a discrete piece on a Web page that performs a particular function and comes with its own UI and set of features. Examples of widgets include a to-do-list, an address book, a contact list, an RSS feed, or even a clock, calendar, playlist, stock ticker, weather report, traffic report, dictionary, game, or almost anything you can imagine that can be packaged up and dropped on a Web page. In a corporate environment, widgets can connect to internal systems, such as an Expense Tracker widget that interacts directly with the internal Accounting System. If you are familiar with Sharepoint Portal, then you already know about Widgets. They are called Web parts in Sharepoint’s term and also in ASP.NET 2.0.

Portals are powerful RSS aggregation platform. You can put as many RSS widgets as you like on your page and get fresh content delivered to you as soon as it is published. Some Portal like Pageflakes archives RSS for a long time and thus you can go back in time and read older posts, save posts, and forward interesting articles to your friends.

An Ajax-powered portal is specifically a portal that uses Ajax technologies to create richer experiences for its users. It is one step ahead of previous generation portals like My Yahoo or MSN.com, because it gives you state-of-the-art UI that behaves more like a Windows client application -- with widgets, animations, popups, client side data grids, and other effects not usually found on a non-Ajax Web portal .

How to run the project

Install Visual Studio 2008 (VS 2005 won't work)
Install SQL Server 2005
Download latest code from "Release" tab for stable version or latest code from "Source Code" tab
Restore the database from dashboard.zip in SQL server
Update web.config from the web project and set proper connection string
Build and Run

How is ASP.NET AJAX used in this project?
It is an N-tier application, with a user interface (UI) layer, a business layer, and a data access layer. I have used ASP.NET AJAX to implement the UI layer of the portal application which includes the homepage and the widgets’ UI. ASP.NET AJAX provides the framework for loading widgets onto the home page, updating widgets without doing any postbacks (via UpdatePanel), and changing page layout by dragging and dropping widgets on the page. It also provides a rich collection of Control Extenders, that add cool effects like fade in/fade out, smooth transitions, and client side animations . You can add to the rich clientside experience by providing auto-completion behavior on text boxes, asynchronous data loading via webservice calls, and client side paging, sorting and many more.

How is .NET 3.5 used in this project
The business layer of the application is built with the Workflow Foundation in .NET 3.0 . Major operations like a first-time user visit, a subsequent user visit, adding a new widget, and creating a new page are all orchestrated using workflow . The workflows contain all the business rules and activities needed to complete each operation. For example, the "New User Visit" workflow creates the user account, populates the user profile with default values, creates some default pages, populates them with specific widgets, etc. Such compound operations are very easy to build with Workflows , which enables you to break the complete workflow operation into smaller chunks named Activities. Each Activity does a very small amount of work. It talks to the data access layer and performs the task. The data access layer is built with .NET 3.5 , utilizing LINQ to SQL .
The web project and the widgets make good use of .NET 3.5 by utilizing lambda expressions , LINQ to SQL, and LINQ to XML. You will use Linq queries to work with collections and database rows. Widgets make good use of Linq to Xml in order to consume XML from external data sources.

Warning: Dropthings.com is a very simple, open-source example of what can be done with AJAX and Microsoft technologies. It is intended for educational purposes only. Dropthings.com has absolutely nothing to do with http://www.pageflakes.com. But this project does a good job to show you how all the new hot technologies work together in a working web application that's production ready.

Updated Wiki: Home

oazabir — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:42:45 GMT

ASP.NET 2.0
ASP.NET AJAX (.NET 3.5)
Linq to Sql
Linq to Xml
Workflow Foundation (.NET 3.0)
Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2005

Join Us
If you are a seasoned ASP.NET Developer and have ASP.NET AJAX skill, come and join us to make Dropthings a feature rich Ajax Web Portal.

What is an AJAX Portal
A Portal refers to a page that allows users to customize their own homepage by dragging and dropping widgets onto the page. This approach gives users complete control over what content they see on their page, where they want to see it, and how they want to interact with it.

A widget is a discrete piece on a Web page that performs a particular function and comes with its own UI and set of features. Examples of widgets include a to-do-list, an address book, a contact list, an RSS feed, or even a clock, calendar, playlist, stock ticker, weather report, traffic report, dictionary, game, or almost anything you can imagine that can be packaged up and dropped on a Web page. In a corporate environment, widgets can connect to internal systems, such as an Expense Tracker widget that interacts directly with the internal Accounting System. If you are familiar with Sharepoint Portal, then you already know about Widgets. They are called Web parts in Sharepoint’s term and also in ASP.NET 2.0.

Portals are powerful RSS aggregation platform. You can put as many RSS widgets as you like on your page and get fresh content delivered to you as soon as it is published. Some Portal like Pageflakes archives RSS for a long time and thus you can go back in time and read older posts, save posts, and forward interesting articles to your friends.

An Ajax-powered portal is specifically a portal that uses Ajax technologies to create richer experiences for its users. It is one step ahead of previous generation portals like My Yahoo or MSN.com, because it gives you state-of-the-art UI that behaves more like a Windows client application -- with widgets, animations, popups, client side data grids, and other effects not usually found on a non-Ajax Web portal .

How to run the project

Install Visual Studio 2008 (VS 2005 won't work)
Install SQL Server 2005
Download latest code from "Release" tab for stable version or latest code from "Source Code" tab
Restore the database from dashboard.zip in SQL server
Update web.config from the web project and set proper connection string
Build and Run

New Post: Authenticate user and create profile if not exist.

michaelg83 — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 18:05:46 GMT

Thank you sir.

New Post: AjaxTookit Undifined (Help)

kimlostangel — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 03:21:28 GMT

I am getting the follwing runtime error when using the CustomDragDropExtender in CustomFloatingBehavior.js file.

Can you give me any pointers on where the problem could.

Error: 'AjaxControlToolkit undefined'

location:

CustomDragDrop.CustomFloatingBehavior.registerClass('CustomDragDrop.CustomFloatingBehavior',

//Sys.UI.Behavior,

//Sys.Preview.UI.IDragSource,

AjaxControlToolkit.BehaviorBase,

AjaxControlToolkit.IDragSource,

Sys.IDisposable);

How to solve this problem! Anyone know?

New Post: ProxyAsync & Proxy error

dwanders — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:39:08 GMT

The ProxyAsync error is gone. Still working through WidgetService issues.

Thanks for your help! making progress....!

-dave

\
MartynBrearley wrote:
For some reason, some of the classes in App_Code have had namespaces applied (A Good Thing), but where they are used in the rest of the released code they do not (A Bad Thing). These include Proxy, ProxyAsync, PageService and WidgetService.

For example, the line in Default.aspx should read:

        <script type="text/javascript"> if (typeof Proxy == "undefined") Proxy = Dropthings.Web.Framework.ProxyAsync;</script>

You'll find other missing namespaces in MyFramework.js for the proxied service classes mentioned above, e.g. the first method should read:

function DeleteWidget(instanceId)
{
   Dropthings.Web.Framework.WidgetService.DeleteWidgetInstance(instanceId);
   var theDiv = document.getElementById("WidgetPanelsLayout_WidgetContainer" + instanceId + "_Widget");
   theDiv.style.display = "none";
}

I'll let you do the rest, it's anything that calls either PageService or WidgetService methods.

Enjoy,

Martyn

New Post: Dropthings Needs Another Innovative Feature(s)

walu — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 13:55:11 GMT

Hi Alex

Since you are a fan of new features and you were charmed by Netvibes (www.Netvibes.com), I would like to share with you the source code of one of those features which is "Changing The Page Title".

Add the following inside the <body> of the Default/HomePage:

<span id="myTitle" style="display:inline;font-family:tahoma;font-size:18;font-weight:bold;" onClick="changeTitle()">
Type your page title here
</span>

<input type="text" id="myTxt" style="height:22px;font-family:tahoma;font-size:18;font-weight:bold;display:none;text-align:center" value="" onBlur="saveTitle()" onFocus="this.select();">

Then Add the following inside the <head> of the Default/HomePage:

<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">
function changeTitle()
{
               document.getElementById('myTitle').style.display="none";
               document.getElementById('myTxt').style.display="inline";
               document.getElementById('myTxt').focus();
               document.getElementById('myTxt').select();

     if(document.all)
     {
      document.getElementById('myTxt').value=document.getElementById('myTitle').innerText;
     }

     else
     {
       document.getElementById('myTxt').value=document.getElementById('myTitle').textContent;
     }
}

function saveTitle()
{
               document.getElementById('myTitle').style.display="inline";
               document.getElementById('myTxt').style.display="none";

     if(document.all)
     {
      document.getElementById('myTitle').innerText=document.getElementById('myTxt').value;
     }

     else
     {
      document.getElementById('myTitle').textContent=document.getElementById('myTxt').value;
     }

    //The new page title
     var newtitle = document.getElementById('myTxt').value;
}

</script>

Now your role is to connect this code with the user settings and make it work on the server side thus each user can save his/her own page title.

Finally, I hope soon we gonna hear from Shaun and he provide us the source code of Drag and Drop facility for the TabPages, am excited as well to try out this functionality on Dropthings.

Walu

New Post: ProxyAsync & Proxy error

MartynBrearley — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 09:28:23 GMT

For some reason, some of the classes in App_Code have had namespaces applied (A Good Thing), but where they are used in the rest of the released code they do not (A Bad Thing). These include Proxy, ProxyAsync, PageService and WidgetService.

For example, the line in Default.aspx should read:

        <script type="text/javascript"> if (typeof Proxy == "undefined") Proxy = Dropthings.Web.Framework.ProxyAsync;</script>

You'll find other missing namespaces in MyFramework.js for the proxied service classes mentioned above, e.g. the first method should read:

function DeleteWidget(instanceId)
{
   Dropthings.Web.Framework.WidgetService.DeleteWidgetInstance(instanceId);
   var theDiv = document.getElementById("WidgetPanelsLayout_WidgetContainer" + instanceId + "_Widget");
   theDiv.style.display = "none";
}

I'll let you do the rest, it's anything that calls either PageService or WidgetService methods.

Enjoy,

Martyn

New Post: ProxyAsync & Proxy error

dwanders — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 22:22:53 GMT

Hi. Great project!!! Congrats on the work accomplished.

I'm getting an error running Default.aspx:

Microsoft JScript runtime error: "Proxy" is undefined and
Microsoft JScript runtime error: "ProxyAsync" is undefined

I've checked everything I know and still get the error.

How can I resolve this?

Thanks!

New Post: Anyone know how dropthings store the position of widget

MartynBrearley — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 10:16:54 GMT

OK,

MyFramework.js -> onDrop() calls WidgetService.MoveWidgetInstance() which is proxied via the service back to the server, where the web method calls the MoveWidgetInstance method on the DashboardFacade.

That executes the MoveWidgetInstanceWorkflow, which is essentially a chain of Activity objects. Each one has a simple nugget of code in, mostly with a LINQ snippet to access the DB. For example the PushDownWidgetsOnColumnActivity uses LINQ to pull out the widget instances below the destination position in the destination column and loops through them, incrementing their OrderNo fields.

If this doesn't make sense, you probably want to do a bit of background reading on LINQ, the Workflow Foundation (WF) and the Facade pattern.

The system is pretty complex and I've picked up what I know from code inspection, debugging the frequently broken released source code (v1.1 wouldn't even build on our systems) and by reading Omar's book. I'd recommend getting a copy to get a top down view of the architecture. The Javascript payload is probably the most complicated bit actually, frequently breaking in the browser during development, largely due to browsers cacheing the scripts. Ctrl-f5 and Delete Browser History are your new friends ;)

Enjoy

New Post: Anyone know how dropthings store the position of widget

kimlostangel — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 21:28:18 GMT

thks! I got it.However, I want to know how the program connect to database,when I move the widget from the middle to the left zone

New Post: Anyone know how dropthings store the position of widget

MartynBrearley — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 15:16:35 GMT

look for the PageId, ColumnNo and OrderNo columns in the WidgetInstance table. They together define the position.

New Post: Could not create type 'WidgetService'.

MartynBrearley — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 15:13:52 GMT

You'll probably find you have to add the "Dropthings.Web.Framework." to a few other lines also. "PageService" calls needed the same qualification on my build.

New Post: Could not create type 'WidgetService'.

vamporakis — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 11:27:38 GMT

i followed gradecki's instructions but then i couldn't move widgets around. i found out that MyFramework.js needed to be updated as well.

I had to change line 6 to Dropthings.Web.Framework.WidgetService.DeleteWidgetInstance(instanceId);

And line 70 to Dropthings.Web.Framework.WidgetService.MoveWidgetInstance( instanceId, columnNo, row );

Now I can move thing around

New Post: Anyone know how dropthings store the position of widget

kimlostangel — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 09:36:49 GMT

Anyone know how dropthings store the position of widget ?

I am a newbie in this area.Anyone can tell me?