Link 2 Imagine Cup

Check my blog for Imagine Cup at Link 2 Imagine Cup Blog. It's all about imagine cup and my experience there. Imagine Cup is the biggest Technology Competition in the world organized by Microsoft. Check imagine cup new in Egypt at Link 2 Imagine Cup, check my posts there and Enjoy :).

Barmagy

WOWW, Now I’m one of Barmagy Community and I’m really proud of that. I’m starting my activities soon to help people learn more and more about technologies. Wish Barmagy for more progress. Check barmagy Community at: http://www.barmagy.com

JQuery with ASP.NET

In the past few days, I was working in development some components using JQuery. I was really impressed with the functionalities and performance as I am really a big fan of javascript.

You can take a look on JQuery and download the library from: http://jquery.com/.

Now, I’m going to give a sample about how to use JQuery ASP.NET to have an AJAX page.

1.Download the library from http://jquery.com/.

2.Create New ASP.Net web application using Microsoft Visual Studio.

3.Add new User Control in your project.

4.Add the downloaded file of JQuery to your project.

5. drag and drop the JQuery .js file into your control or just add the following line to your ascx:

<script src="jquery-1.3.1.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

Now we are going to start the most interesting part.

Consider a case that you want to have an expand/collapse button, when user clicks on it, it shows a form to let the user enter a data, if it is already expanded, then collapse it. Also you need to expand or collapse with animation (slide the form that will appear), that is, not just appears suddenly to the user.

Consider the following:

   1: <div>

   2:         <div>

   3:             <!--The button to expand or collapse-->

   4:             <a href="javascript:;" onclick="ExpandCollapse(this,'expandcpllapse')">+</a> Show

   5:             Panel

   6:         </div>

   7:         <!--The div that needs to be shown or hidden based on expand or collapse-->

   8:         <div id="expandcpllapse" style="display: none">

   9:             <asp:Label ID="lblName" runat="server" Text="Name"></asp:Label>

  10:             <asp:TextBox ID="txtName" runat="server"></asp:TextBox>

  11:         </div>

  12:     </div>

and the javascript to expand/collapse

   1: //Represents the current status of the panel to expand/collapse

   2: var status = 'Collapsed';

   3:  

   4: //Expand the form if collapsed. if collapsed, expand it.

   5: function ExpandCollapse(sender, div)

   6: {

   7:     switch (status)

   8:     {

   9:         case 'Collapsed':

  10:             {

  11:                 //Show the div that contains the data. the parameter "0" represents the speed to show it

  12:                 $('#' + div).show("0");

  13:                 //Change the text from "+" to "-"

  14:                 $(sender)[0].innerText = '-';

  15:                 //Change the status to be expanded

  16:                 status = 'Expanded';

  17:             }

  18:             break;

  19:         case 'Expanded':

  20:             {

  21:                 //Hide the div with speed "0"

  22:                 $('#' + div).hide("0");

  23:                 // change the text from "-" to "+"

  24:                 $(sender)[0].innerText = '+';

  25:                 //Change the status to collapsed

  26:                 status = 'Collapsed';

  27:             }

  28:             break;

  29:     }

  30: }

that was a very little from JQuery functionalities and how to use it to reach a better user experience.

Visual Studio 2010

Microsoft has announced about Visual Studio 2010. You can take a look about it here: http://www.microsoft.com/Visualstudio/products/2010/default.mspx

Also you can download the CTP version. Enjoy

Imagine Cup 2009

In Jan 2006, My life has changed. One of my friends told me about a competition organized by Microsoft called "Imagine Cup" and he asked me to participate in this competition and to costruct a powerful team together to represent Egypt in the finals. I've been impressed by the idea and I decided to take the challenge with my friend. We started to collect the team members, and finally we found two of our friends that can represent Egypt in that huge Challenge. Now we are a team that our dreams has no end. We have many ideas many dreams to participate in Imagine Cup. In Feb 2006, we started to develop our chosen idea and we loved that project like one of our sons :). In March 2006, this is my turing point in my life, a phone call from "Ahmed Adel" from Microsoft Egypt to tell us that we have won the 1st rank in the local competition and we were chosen to represent Egypt in the finals in India.

Now, Imagine Cup competetion will be in Egypt. That makes me really proud and really so happy for that. Go to that link http://egyptimaginecup2009.spaces.live.com/ to check about the new updates about Imagine Cup in Egypt.

If you are student, Please don't hesitate to participate in Imagine Cup. If you are not, try to check the real challenge and the spirit of all participants. That will really make you impressed and proud of the ideas and the students.

Check Imagine Cup web site at: http://imaginecup.com/

Great Experience with TFS 2005

In the last two weeks, I decided to install Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2005 on a virtual machine at my home. It was really a great experience. I worked in the check-in policy before but I decided to get more experience about TFS.

Installing TFS is not so hard but all you need to do is to follow the installation guide. You can find the guide file burned on your DVD of TFS or you can find it at Microsoft web site. also you can try TFS 2005 trial version. It's trial for six months. Find the TFS 2005 trial at:

Team Foundation Server 2005 Trial Download link

But unfortunately, After Installation, I found that Microsoft has just released Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2008 and i knew that after installing TFS 2005 :( but I'll install it soon.

Remember, just follow the guide and everything will be OK.

What is LinQ?

LinQ stands for "Language Integrated Query". It extends C# and visual basic syntax with the new LinQ syntax to provide more capabilities in your code.

It's an interesting feature in C# 3.0. I'll hit an example for LinQ. consider the following class:

   1: class Student

   2:  {

   3:      int id;

   4:  

   5:      public int Id

   6:      {

   7:          get { return id; }

   8:          set { id = value; }

   9:      }

  10:      string studentName;

  11:  

  12:      public string StudentName

  13:      {

  14:          get { return studentName; }

  15:          set { studentName = value; }

  16:      }

  17:  

  18:  }

List<Student> studentList = GetStudentList();

now you need to find all student with name John:

   1: var studentQurey = from student in students

   2:                    where student.StudentName == "John"

   3:                    select student;

   4: studentQurey.ToList();

that was a so simple example for LinQ. You can use LinQ to SQL to search in a database in your application and a lot of feature included in LinQ.