roncli.com blog

Currently, I am going through the Six Minutes To Release website and making all sorts of updates and changes to the input interface. Basically, I've decided that UpdatePanels are far too slow for my needs on pages where user interaction is heavy, and I decided to instead go with implementing the ICallbackEventHandler.

I think I discussed Ajax security a while back and came to the conclusion then that it wasn't ready for prime time. Since then, I've been doing a lot of reading up on the subject, and have found that ICallbackEventHandler provides a way to keep page state through your Ajax calls, thus resulting in the important things that I have stored on the server controlable by me, such as whether or not the user is logged in and so on. The added bonus is that I can update the page through JavaScript and THEN send the data to the server to update the database. The result is an instant update as soon as you click on something, and it's very nice.

Now, in reality, things aren't instant, but the user doesn't have to know that. This is also only really useful for non-critical functions... I wouldn't trust any account information with this method. However, signing up for raids, having a raid leader change a raider's raiding status, things that aren't going to make or break the site... these are acceptable to me to use this "instant update" method.

And the main reason I did this was to improve the slow method of using UpdatePanel. I like UpdatePanel for one-time deals, like submitting a form, but when you're using the page's controls over and over again, UpdatePanel is too slow for my taste, and Solitha found that the page kind of sucks to have to wait to update something, wait a second or two, update again, wait, update, and so on. User friendliness is something I know I need to work on with my web sites, and using Six Minutes To Release as a learning ground for this is going to help me in that department a lot. I look forward to being able to use stuff like this.

Labels: AJAX, Coding, ICallbackEventHandler, Six Minutes To Release, UpdatePanel

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

AJAX not ready for prime time just yet
Posted: 12:33:00 AM 0 comments

I was playing around and got my first full page designed using ASP.Net 2.0 and AJAX.Net Professional. Then I had this thought go off in my head like an alarm siren. How am I going to stop hackers from sending Javascript requests through their browser to my server? The answer, unfortunately, is I'm not.

Security in AJAX is kind of crap. I still have to do all my validation on the server side if I want to make sure that the data I am getting is secure. I mean, it can be done, but it's such a hassle that I might as well do it server side anyway. ASP.Net is quick enough for it.

I may still do some implementations of AJAX to speed things up in areas where the user isn't posting data to the server. Perhaps when/if secuirty improves, and I'm not sure it can, I'll take another look at it.

Perhaps that is why it's been around for so long and just hasn't gotten used. You get one big company who takes the time and effort to go through it and do things the right way, and now everyone thinks they can do it. Although I for one won't be surprised if we ever hear about GMail getting hacked somehow.

Oh wait.

Labels: AJAX, Coding

Sunday, November 20, 2005

Where have the days gone?
Posted: 3:56:00 AM 0 comments

Since downloading Visual Studio .NET 2005, I've been doing absolutely nothing but ASP.Net. I mean, nothing to the point where I haven't eaten food, I haven't slept much, and just about every thought (outside of the area of my brain permanently reserved for music) has been how to get something to work in ASP.Net.

And for once, I'm actually excited about AJAX.

I'm working on the roncli Productions website. In order to properly launch Due Process, I will need to develop the website full on. I plan on having a simple page that has a product listing, trial downloads, purchasing, and forums.

Of course this means I need a registration process. The whole "are you 13 years of age" thing to collect email addresses set in, and I thought, wouldn't it be nice if there was a control that could limit the date range in which one could enter within it?

This quest led me to Michael Schwerz's amazing and free AJAX.Net library. It's not open source, but there is enough support for the library, and it's just so damn easy to use, that I decided to give it a shot. My jaw literally dropped when I saw how easy it was to do.

My problem, though, is I'm far from a JavaScript guru. In fact, my JavaScript is about as bad as my C++. Considering they are related languages that shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. The simplest tasks become complex when I typo here, case wrong there, forget to var something elsewhere.

So now I have a nice date picker control in ASP.Net 2.0 that I can use anywhere I can use AJAX.Net. So I figured, why not do the entire registration process like this?

I'm about halfway done, having tackled my first AJAX routines, and I actually WANT to finish it. Never mind I'm half asleep and it's 4 AM in the morning.

Ah, the coder's life.

Labels: AJAX, ASP.Net, Coding, Due Process, roncli Productions