Jack @ ASP.NET

Develop to standards

Users browsing a web application employ a variety of browsers. Some browsers support plugins while others don’t, and all browsers have quirks that affect how they display a site. Web standards exist to help ensure that web applications look and work correctly regardless of the browser used. HTML, CSS, and ECMA scripts are the standards for developing cross-platform web sites. Visual Studio 2012 extends and significantly improves this support.

Use the latest HTML5 and CSS3 capabilities

Visual Studio 2012 includes full IntelliSense support for HTML5 making it easier to develop conforming web sites. In addition, the code editor has new productivity features that simplify web development. The CSS editor in Visual Studio 2012 has been updated to support the latest CSS3 standard and incorporates full IntelliSense.

Use JQuery and JavaScript to make your site more responsive

Visual Studio 2012 also provides support for script loaders that can improve page performance and reduce the complexity of developing a site that contains many JavaScript files. Developers simply select which JavaScript files they are using, and Visual Studio provides full IntelliSense support regardless of whether the file is loaded by using a master/layout page or a script loader.

Find problems faster

Visual Studio 2012 includes a new tool, the Page Inspector, to simplify debugging. By using the Page Inspector, developers can make live changes to the DOM and edit CSS rules, and when they achieve the desired result they can easily copy these changes to the source file. The Page Inspector also enables developers to reverse engineer—with just a single click—the rendered HTML, CSS, or JavaScript to the source file.

Develop for a modern platform and devices

Visual Studio 2012 helps make developing for mobile devices easier by supporting tools that optimize a page for a mobile device. For example, Visual Studio now supports jQuery Mobile, which includes controls optimized for mobile devices. By using a combination of these technologies, developers can create sites that look and perform great on mobile devices.

Powerful server side frameworks

.NET developers building a web site can choose between an ASP.NET Web Forms project or Model View Controller (MVC) templates. In MVC applications, developers define classes that describe the data being used by the page. This makes it much quicker and easier to bind data and work with user input.

Develop Web Services

Service developers can create services by using Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). Visual Studio 2012 makes it easier than ever to develop WCF services with built in support for Web API.

Reduce costs and streamline your developer operations

Move your development process to the cloud with Team Foundation Service, dramatically reducing your infrastructure maintenance and easily connecting to providers and external teams. With Team Foundation Service, your code is always safely managed and accessible.

Connected Devices, Continuous Services

Cloud enables your app with APIs that streamline connecting to continuous services. Or get Visual Studio 2012 Professional to create your own services that will be consumed by your site.

Located in the east coast of Japan, six nuclear power reactors in Japan Boiling water reactors (BWR). March 11 earthquake off the disabled power plant, triggering the three operating reactors automatically shut down – Units 1,2 and 3. The success of these units into the core rod, the end of the chain fission reaction. The remaining reactors – Units 4,5 and 6 – had previously been shut down for routine maintenance purposes. Backup power diesel generators to start off after the loss of power, started to provide power, cooling liquid circulation pump 6 reactors.

Shortly after the earthquake, a tsunami washed over the reactor site, and knocked backup generators. Although some cells still operational, the site lost the ability to maintain the normal function of the reactor cooling water circulation.

Here are six reactors, based on documents and (March 22 the new information in bold) Japanese officials confirmed that the current status:
Closed during routine maintenance before the earthquake, the two sides on March 20 to cool the reactor shutdown. The reactor is in a safe mode, the stability and control, and the reactor cooling system at low pressure.

Sometimes when you’re having trouble with an ASP.NET site, the problem turns out to not be ASP.NET itself. Here’s the top three issues and their causes. This category are for cases that were concluded because of external reasons and are outside of the control of support to directly affect. The sub categories are 3rd party software, Anti-virus software, Hardware, Virus attacks, DOS attacks, etc.

If you’ve ever run a production website you know there’s always that argument about whether to run anti-virus software in production. It’s not like anyone’s emailing viruses and saving them to production web servers, but you want to be careful. Sometimes IT or security insists on it. However, this means you’ll have software that is not your website software trying to access files at the same time your site is trying to access them.

Here’s the essence as a bulleted list

• Concurrency while under pressure: This causes problems in big software. Make sure your anti-virus software is configure appropriately and that you’re aware of which processes are accessing which files, as well as how, why and when
• Profile your applications: .NET and the Web are not black boxes. You can see what’s happening if you look. Know what bytes are going out the wire. Know who is accessing the disk. Measure twice, cut once, they say? I say measure a dozen times. You’d be surprised how often folks put an app in production and they’ve never once profiled it.
• Anti-Virus Software: It can’t be emphasized enough that site owners should ensure they are running the latest AV engine and definitions from their chosen anti-malware vendor. They’ve see folks hitting hangs due to flakey AV drivers that are over two years out of date.  Another point about AV software is that it is not just about old-school AV scanning of file access. Many products now do low level monitoring of port activity, script activity within processes and memory allocation activity and do not always do these things 100% correctly. Stay up to date!
• Know where you’re calling out to: Also, connection to remote endpoints: calling web services, accessing file systems etc. All of this can slow you down if you’re not paying attention. Is your DNS correct? Did you add your external hosts to a hosts file to remove DNS latency? 
• processModel autoconfig=true: This is in machine.config and folks always mess with it. Don’t assume that you know better than the defaults. Everyone wants to change the defaults, add threads, remove threads, change the way the pool works because they think their textboxes-over-data application is special. Chances are it’s not, and you’d be surprised how often people will spend days on the phone with support and discover that the defaults were fine and they had changed them long ago and forgotten. Know what you’ve changed away from the defaults, and know why.

There are feature in IE8 (some of which are in older Internet Explorers as well) that have been around but never got the attention it deserved. I am going to go threw some of the futures that you may not know about below.

ctrl+Q: See a thumb nail view of all your Tabs simply by hitting control Q on your keyboard (Ctrl+Q). Seeing how most people are visual this will allow you to work quicker and more efficient.

Click on the tab you want or press Control Q again to go back to the tab you were on.

Close the tabs by clicking on the “X” in the upper right hand corner.

Right click to see what other options you can do with the tab.

Full screen: IE8 comes with only a favorites bar and an area for the tabs, however some people like to install different tool bars that may clutter the top of there browser. Hit the “F11” key on your keyboard to toggle the page in and out of full screen.

Move the mouse to the top of the screen to see the rest of the browser the scroll bar is till on the right.

Alt+Tab will move you through windows while Ctrl+Tab will move you through tabs.
Ctrl+W will close your tab while
Ctrl+T will open a new tab.
And of course you can use the above Ctrl+Q to see all your tabs.

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Improved Zoom: With enhanced resolution and readability, Zoom allows for automatic scaling of a page’s content while maintaining the site’s intended layout. You can read very large or very small pages more clearly without having to scroll back and forth.

Press Ctrl+Mouse Role (if your mouse has this ability) to zoom in or out.

If your mouse does not do this Press Ctrl++ and Ctrl+-. (Control and Plus or control and Minus) With this feature and the last who will ever needs glasses anymore.

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Tab Grouping: Tab Grouping makes it easier to stay organized while browsing multiple webpages. Tabs that are opened from other tabs now have the same visual representation, and you can save time by closing a set of related tabs as a group by simply right-clicking. You also can right-click on a tab to close tab groups, ungroup a single tab, clone a tab, re-open a previously closed tab, or even open a new tab all together.

Home Tabs: In the morning when you open up your browser instead of opening up one tab with one Web site, open up as many as you want.

Go to the Tools->Internet Options and in the “Home Page” section type in the URL of each site you want to open in a separate tab on a separate line.

Suggeste d Sites: If you love that site, try this one. That’s the idea behind Internet Explorer 8′s new Suggested Sites feature. At your request, Internet Explorer 8 can use your browsing history to suggest other sites you may like or find useful. It’s another way that Internet Explorer 8 helps you utilize the web to its full potential.

This is a simple WebSlice. Simply click to find out what other things may interest you you.

Smart Address Bar: Internet Explorer 8 helps you find where you want to go as you type the address of your desired website.

By using Windows Search for faster performance and a richer return of information, the Smart Address Bar offers useful suggestions from your browsing history, favorites, and feeds.

Type single words into the Smart Address Bar, and they will be matched to simple domain names, making web surfing fast and efficient.

In Private Browsing: Stop worrying about your information being stored on a Public computer. With industry-leading security features like InPrivate, you can browse and shop confidently using Internet Explorer 8, wherever you go on the web, knowing you have control over the protection of your personal information. Safety, trust, and reliability has always been IE’s number one concern.

Domain Highlighting: When you visit a site, its domain is highlighted in the Address Bar. This helps alert you to websites that are imposters of trusted sites, This will reduce the chance of compromising your personal information.

Take a look next time and make sure the site you want is the site you are on.

.Cross Site Scripting Filter: Check out the command bar (picture) for all the different safety  controls you have command over. Stay safer online and help protect yourself from malicious software running on compromised websites with the Cross Site Scripting Filter.

Compatibility View: Are some sites that you are going to looking weird, this is because the site you are visiting has not been updated in a while. Now you can easily display websites that were designed for older browsers. Simply press the Compatibility View button if you see display problems on a website like misaligned text, images, or text boxes

Why SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is important for any publically facing web-site.  A large percentage of traffic to sites now comes from search engines, and improving the search relevancy of your site will lead to more user traffic to your site from search engine queries (which can directly or indirectly increase the revenue you make through your site).

IIS SEO Toolkit (Search Engine Optimization Toolkit)

The SEO Toolkit helps you improve your Website’s relevance in search results by recommending how to make your new or existing site content and structure more search engine-friendly. It works on any Website on the Web. Best of all – it’s a small, lightweight free download!

ASP.NET 4 SEO Improvements

ASP.NET 4 includes a bunch of new runtime features that can help you to further optimize your site for SEO.  Some of these new features include:

• New Page.MetaKeywords and Page.MetaDescription properties
• New Response.RedirectPermanent() method
• New URL Routing support for ASP.NET Web Forms

You can use the above routes and methods for both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC based URLs.

ASP.NET 4 includes a bunch of feature improvements that make it easier to build public facing sites that have great SEO.  When combined with the SEO Toolkit, you should be able to use these features to increase user traffic to your site – and hopefully increase the direct or indirect revenue you make from them.