In This Issue...
Introduction: The first issue!
Hello Subscribers,
I've been very busy the past week with the first issue of the ASPit Digest. I'm still currently busy with finalizing the design, but for now, this will do. It looks good in most e-mail clients and browsers.
This is the first issue, so there aren't any special interviews or reviews yet, but rest assured that future issues will contain unique content. I'm working hard behind the scenes to arrange this all! For now, enjoy the first issue, and if you've got any questions or comments feel free to e-mail me.
Happy Reading!
Dennis Pallett
dennis@aspit.net
Editor's Perspective: ASP & RSS
RSS has been gaining a lot of popularity in the past few weeks, and every web-developer and their mum is talking about it.
What exactly is RSS? To describe it very shortly, it's a way to let your readers know of any updates on your websites. ASPit also has RSS feeds, because I believe it makes it a lot easier for people to follow updates on your websites. Before RSS, I never tracked updates on websites, and simply checked every now and then. Since using an RSS aggregator I've been able to follow more sites than ever, and more efficiently. I now track about 600 websites, and as soon as they update, I get notified within minutes. Couldn't be more perfect!
I believe ASP is an excellent tool to use in combination with RSS. In fact, there's a whole website dedicated to ASP and RSS, at ASPRSS.com (ASPit is listed there as well). As you can see on that website, 67 ASP websites are currently using RSS. Would you rather check each website every day, or simply get notified when anyone of those websites update?
Creating your own RSS feed is very easy to do, and countless articles and tutorials have been written about, including one on ASPit ("RSS & ASP: Easily Done!"). What's stopping you? I suggest you start right now (after finishing reading the rest of this Digest of course). RSS can never make you lose your visitors, but can definitely increase your traffic.
What's New on ASP & ASP.NET
There has been a lot of excellent information posted on ASP and ASP.NET in the past few weeks and my RSS aggregrator has about 200 new items available.
MSDN is the leader with over 100 new items. There are some real gems, like two new parts of Scott Mitchell's "An Extensive Examination of Data Structures". Part 5, "From Trees to Graphs", talks about using a new kind of data structure, graphs. Very useful for generating dynamic graphs using ASP.NET. Part 6, "Efficiently Representing Sets", discusses data structures for data structures for implementing general and disjoint sets. A set is an unordered collection of unique items that can be enumerated and compared to other sets in a variety of ways.
Scott Mitchell has been really busy with publishing on MSDN lately, because there's yet another article by him on there. URL Rewriting in ASP.NET, talks about using ASP.NET to perform dynamic URL rewriting. URL rewriting is the process of intercepting an incoming Web request and automatically redirecting it to a different URL, also known as mod_rewrite in the Linux/PHP world.
A final thing worth mentioning that has been published on MSDN is Data with ASP.NET in Visual Studio 2005. Unlike a normal article, this is a video of Scott Guthrie talking about a few of the new data features with ASP.NET in Visual Studio 2005 (formerly known as "Whidbey").
4GuysFromRolla has, of course, published a few new articles on ASP.NET as well. Two articles by Scott Mitchell, and one by Paul Apostolos. Scott Mitchell writes about creating template-driven websites and getting the most out of Visual Studio .NET. The first one discusses using MasterPages, in ASP.NET, to create template-driven websites. The second on is rather self-explanatory, and simply talks about using Visual Studio .NET to the fullest. Paul Apostolos writes about creating an ad banner system in ASP.NET. If you want to start serving advertising banners on your websites, this might be quite a useful article to read through!
Apparently, using templates is a hot topic lately, because ASPAlliance has also published an article on it. "Speed up with Project Templates" talks about using 'code-templates' instead of html templates, to make development go faster. If you often find yourself copying+pasting code snippets, this might be worth a look.
Finally, DeveloperFusion has a piece about replicating GetRows in ASP.NET. This article shows you how to replicate the ever-so-popular GetRows function of classic ASP in ASP.NET.
Article Series: Using Amazon Web Services in ASP
There's a new buzz: building websites completely based on Amazon's Web Services. Luckily for all you ASP developers, ASPit is running a complete series on using Amazon Web Services in your ASP websites.
Part 1, "The Beginning", has already been published a few weeks ago, and part 2 is due to be published in a few days
To give you a sneak peek, part focuses all on searching the Amazon database. In specific, part 2 looks at doing keyword searches, blended searches and so-called 'browse-node' searches. In a few days you'll know all about these searches and how to implement them yourself
If you've already got an ASP-based AWS websites, please e-mail me to be showcased in one of the articles (one part will showcase a few ASP-based AWS websites.
Script of the Week: aspAccessEditor
aspAccessEditor is a web-based database tool, specifically created for Microsoft Access (all versions). If you ever wanted to quickly edit your database on the web, but never been able to, then it's time to have a look at aspAccessEditor. Managing your database is no longer a problem at all. Using aspAccessEditor's advanced graphical interface you can quickly browse through your Access database, changing any aspect you'd like
Currently, aspAccessEditor is very versatile and contains many features, but even now it is not yet complete. Therefore, a new version is already being written and should be released very soon. This new version will be packed with even more features, and will be up to par with phpMyAdmin.
If you wish to stay updated on any changes related to aspAccessEditor, feel free to subscribe to the low-traffic mailing list now, by clicking here. This mailing list is completely free, and your e-mail address will never be viewed by 3rd parties. You will never receive more than one e-mail per week either (though it's more like one e-mail every 2-3 months).
What's New on ASPit
I'm constantly improving and changing things at ASPit. At the moment I'm adding new codesnippets daily, and writing new articles and tutorials as fast as I can. I also try to add new features to ASPit, like a rating feature (to be rolled out very soon!).
I'm looking at the possibility of adding hosted services, most of them free-of-charge, to ASPit. Some ideas include a hosted "formmail", mailing lists, database tools and more. In the next following weeks I'll be looking if this is worthwhile, and if they are, get them released as soon as possible. In the next newsletter I will have more news about this.
Lately, small things have also changed at the ASPit forums. I've added new features, and removed a few un-used ones. If you haven't registered there yet, feel free to do so by clicking here.
Closing Words
That wraps up the first issue of the ASPit Digest. I hope you enjoyed reading it. Feel free to forward this issue to any friends or colleagues. If they like it, don't hesistate to give them the subscribe link (the ASPit homepage). If you've got any comments or questions, feel free to reply to this e-mail (it'll be directed to me). I will try to personally reply as fast as possible.
The next issue will be sent in two, around Tuesday April the 27. Expect it to be filled with articles, tips and more on ASP & ASP.NET. I will also try and get a unique special, like an interview with a .NET expert or Microsoft employee (if you'd like to suggest someone, e-mail me!).
