Martijn Boland » Web development

Considering ASP.NET MVC UI controls? Learn HTML and Javascript!

martijn — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 09:31:16 +0000

Warning: highly subjective content ahead.

In the recent weeks we’ve seen several control vendors come up with toolkits that target ASP.NET MVC. Personally, I don’t see anything that might make me starting to consider picking one of these toolkits to speed up development. Why on earth would I prefer a wrapper around jQuery UI or shoehorning existing WebForms controls in MVC views?

The beauty of ASP.NET MVC is that it embraces the web as it is and this automatically involves HTML, CSS and Javascript. Don’t be afraid for that. The combination can be so powerful! Why aren’t there any large component vendors for PHP, Rails, Django etc? Isn’t it probably possible that these components are not required to do proper web development?

The control vendors seem to be targeting people who come from a Windows background that don’t want to learn HTML and Javascript, but from my experiences I can say that those people should really stick to WebForms.

The problem of data grids in your web application

martijn — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 10:31:53 +0000

I’m sure everybody who builds web applications uses grids to display data. There is nothing wrong with that per se, but you might not realize that you’re increasing the customers expectations to an unreachable level:

Yes, all very nice and well, but can’t you make that thing work like Excel?

My first thought is always something like: “sure, if you supply us with the budget that the Excel team has”, but in practice we’ll always end up buying one of those bloated grid components or hacking our own solution where the customers is never 100% happy (because it still doesn’t work like Excel).

The solution?

Don’t format the data in a grid, but in a nicely formatted list and stay away from anything that resembles column headers. Add some simple search and filter options and people are happy.

ASP.NET MVC bridging the gap with PHP development?

martijn — Thu, 07 May 2009 15:01:49 +0000

For a long time, there has been a distinct separation between ASP.NET and PHP developers. The platforms have been so fundamentally different and also have the surrounding cultures. Generally speaking, ASP.NET developers consider the PHP guys script kiddies with no real understanding of ‘real’ software development and the PHP guys saw ASP.NET developers as some M$ infected bunch of people that have no clue of web standards, clean HTML or how to build a proper web app at all.

But times have changed. Both platforms are moving. PHP now has a whole bunch of application frameworks (Zend, CakePHP etc.) that encourage good application design and also since PHP 5, the programming language has improved a lot. On the other hand, with the release of ASP.NET MVC, it has become much more easy to render clean HTML and we can finally leverage all the cool client-side toolkits that are out there without having to work around the quirks of Web Forms.

So, with this movement, we see that both platforms grow towards each other. More and more developers come to have a look over the fence to see what’s happening at the neighbours place.

Two concrete examples:

I’m consulting a little at a PHP shop that is moving towards .NET. They found Visual Studio and C# very cool, but the Web Forms issues regarding clean HTML etc. made it an absolute no-go. ASP.NET MVC is what made them switch.
Just watched the ASP.NET MVC Mix 09 presentation of Rob Conery (Microsoft) and he showed lots of things that were clearly inspired by how PHP apps like WordPress work.

I like this movement! As a .NET developer, I find it very refreshing and inspiring to mix and mingle with ‘the other side’. There is a lot we can learn from each other to make better web applications.