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Please find a list of resources that I mention in the ASP.NET 4.0 session during the MSDN Roadshow this fall.  Here you will find links to downloads to sample code, walkthroughs, labs, and presentations that involve ASP.NET 4.0, the .NET Framework 4.0, as well as Visual Studio 2010.  You can also find these resources listed in the back of the PowerPoint presentation I delivered.

How do I learn more about ASP.NET 4.0?

•  Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Beta 1 Walkthroughs – I refer to these in the Routing demo that I delivered during the Roadshow
• Download Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit - May Preview this has tons of demos, powerpoints and labs. I leverage the ASP.NET WebForm lab in my demo where I convert querystrings to routing tables for better Search Engine Optimizations (SEO). Note: large download ~82M Be sure to download the AdventureWorks database in advance.
• What's New in Visual Studio 2010
• What's New in Beta 1 for Visual Studio Team System 2010
• You can find more code samples for ASP.NET at Visual Studio 2010 Samples
• For overall resources on VS2010 and ASP.NET, refer to full list on the MSDN Visual Studio 2010 page.

How can I provide feedback to the product team regarding Visual Studio 2010 and ASP.NET 4.0?

• Submit feedback through the VS2010 forums. You can post your feature requests and bugs within the Beta1 forums.
• Direct Message the product team through Twitter: Visual Studio Editor Blog and Twitter
• Microsoft Connect enables you to submit a suggestion, report a bug, or search for any other reported items. First do a search to see if your request has been already submitted, if not, use the Microsoft Connect tool to share your ideas.

How do I learn more about AJAX? (ASP.NET Ajax Resources)

• ASP.NET AJAX Preview 4 “This preview builds on top of the existing ASP.NET AJAX framework (.NET Framework 3.5 SP1), and greatly simplifies the process of creating dynamic data-driven UI in the browser. Full end-to-end read-write scenarios based on JSON services are now easy to achieve, with minimal JavaScript code. “

What are best practices for building websites with ASP.NET?

• Tip: Protect your self with Anti Cross Site Scripting. You can download other encoders – like the AntiXssEncoder – the anti Cross Site Scripting Library. download the Microsoft Anti-Cross Site Scripting Library V3.0

How do I find more information by Asli ? (ASP.NET Resources by Asli)

• Book: Mastering Database Programming with Visual Basic.NET (Sybex)
• DVDs: Total Training for Visual Studio, Total Training for ASP.NET AJAX
• How Do I Videos on ASP.NET & AJAX
• IIS7 videos on CNET
• WomenBuild group on Facebook

LIVING WIKI: This means that this blog post will get updated frequently with more content.

These are tips strictly focused on those of you working with large projects – either tons of lines of code in a single file, having many, many files, or having a complex folder hierarchy. They should not be used gratuitously, as they may slow down performance or unnecessarily clutter a small project. However, when it comes to large and complex solutions, these tips are invaluable.

Tip 10a. Keep track of where you file-wise are in a large project.

For more tips like this, LIVE and IN PERSON, come see us at the MSDN Roadshow !

If you have ever worked with large project files, sometimes you lose track of which file you are in. You could look at the tab name to see which file you are in, but what if you want to know how deeply nested that file is inside the solution? This is where it’s handy to track your location within the Solution Explorer, with a subtle highlight indicating your location. The default behavior is that the item you last opened will remain highlighted and the Solution Explorer will not refresh as you move about your project files. You can change that highlight to be dynamically synchronized to your current file location.

It’s easy to turn this feature on – just go to options and under Projects and Solutions, you will see checkbox: Track Active Item in Solution Explorer. By default it is unchecked to keep the IDE performance snappy. Once you check it and hit ok, you’ll be able to track your location in the Solution Explorer.

Remember, once you customize your IDE the way you like it, be sure to Export the Settings out so you can import them onto a new or rebuilt machine.

Tip 10b. Do you have a very verbose and long method?

If you have a very length method that’s difficult to navigate, there are two tips that you’ll find handy – both new to Visual Studio 2010.

The first tip takes advantage of the new WPF-based Visual Studio IDE.  As typical with any WPF project, you have the ability to do vector based sizing – this means that everything is zoomable!  You can use the mouse scroll keys to zoom in and out of your project code seeing more or less lines of code as you wish.

Th second tip is not as obvious.  This actually is a bug fix of sorts.  In previous versions of Visual Studio, when you had really long methods, oftentimes you would use #region and #endregion statements to create collapsible chunks of code.  However these tags end up adding clutter to your code, making it less clean looking.  The other choice you had in Visual Studio 2008 was to turn off automatically Document Outlining, and right click chunks of code with the “Hide Selection” option. This would eliminate the messy #region/#endregion statements; however, once you turned Document Outlining back on, all your selections would be erased.

This is no longer the case in Visual Studio 2010. Now you can create region-less collapsible chunks of code along with automatically document outlining.  Just right click and select Hide Selection to create the region.

Another new feature is an active region bar. On the left hand side of the code editor, if you hover your mouse above the line between the + signs, Visual Studio will automatically highlight the relevant lines of code for that region.

Tip 10c. Do you have a ton of methods, properties and events?

Visual Studio 2010 introduces a new feature called Navigate To.  This one is definitely one of my favorites. Instead of having to remember where I put a method, I can use fast intelligent searching with the quick pick functionality, zipping right to a method anywhere in any file in any project!

It’s really easy to trigger this function.  Just hit CTRL+, (comma).  This will pop up the Navigate To dialog box.  Once it’s up, you can just type in the first letters of the method and the quick pick will filter out matches for you. You can even search for multiple words by separating each word with a space. Then, all you have to do is double click on the method you wish to view, and Visual Studio will automatically zip you directly to that method. It’s fast! Try it.

For more tips like this, LIVE and IN PERSON, come see us at the MSDN Roadshow ! 

In Visual Studio 2010, when you set your cursor on a particular symbol, you’ll notice a new feature, Reference Highlighting. As you can see, this provides subtle highlights to all the usages of that particular symbol in your current code file. You can even navigate directly back and forth through all the lines that reference that symbol by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+ [UP ARROW| DOWNARROW].  This is much faster and more useful than hitting CTRL+F and then clicking on “Find Next” when it comes to looking for a particular item in your code.

For more tips like this, LIVE and IN PERSON, come see us at the MSDN Roadshow !

LIVING WIKI: This means that this blog post will get updated frequently with more content.

Last Modified: 8/31/09

This is a living Wiki of multiple tips focused on the ASP.NET developer who presents and demos a lot. This is 5 in a series of ASP.NET tips, which you can subscribe to here: This series of ASP.NET Tips is geared to the ASP.NET developer from novice to advanced. All the tips are categorized by level. Anything below 100 is simple, very easy beginner stuff. 100 Level means that you've worked a little bit with that technology. 200 is intermediate. 300 is advanced, 400 is deep dive. Each Friday, there will be a Living Wiki published (yes I know it's really redundantly repetitive) that contains a multiple of tips on a particular end goal - like being the best demo'er.

Tip 5a: Why Would I use the Import / Export Settings option? For Demo’ing, of course!

Visual Studio gives you an option to import and export your IDE settings. Why would  you want use these?  There are two scenarios that come readily to mind:

1. You are switching between machines and you want your custom Toolbox components and code snippets to come with you, along with your customized layout.
2. You are writing demo code and want to graciously package it up for someone else to use. Including step by step code snippets is not only extremely courteous, but extremely helpful.

In the screenshot, you can see that I have created step by step numbered  instructions to build out a demo. It’s always best to demo something that starts off simple or from nothing at all. Then everyone can watch you build the application and follow along.  It’s sometimes challenging to see the benefit of a features when there is a slick pre-canned and ready made demo that distracts from the core feature you are trying to showcase.  A best practice is to set up Tabs for grouped for each demo or demo sequence. As you can see here, I have one for the AJAX4 demo, and another for Routing.

Ok I am convinced, what do I do next?

1. Once you have your IDE and Toolbox the way you’d like. You can then opt to Import and Export Settings from the Tool menu
2. Walk through the wizard, choosing Export settings, and pick out all the settings you wish to export.
3. This will create a .vssettings file. Be sure to give it an intelligent name – by default it will use the date.  I store this in the same directory as my demo code, so users can access it readily.  (Have to thank devhammerfor this tip)
4. On the flip side, for a user who wishes to use these settings, they just have to simply import the settings, navigating to the proper .vssettings file. Be sure to back up before importing, so you don’t lose your own custom settings.

Tip 5b. Do you create a lot of garbage projects?

If you are a demo’er like me, you create tons and tons of useless project files. Why keep storing them on your machine and why end up with default names like WebApplication222243?  It’s easy enough to have these automatically not be persistent on your hard drive.

Pop open the Options box – go to Projects and Solutions and uncheck the box: Save projects when created.  That way you can opt-in  model should you ever need to save your lovely demo code.

Tip 5c. Do you see people squinting in your audience?

Then it’s time to whip out the magnifier option in Windows7.  It’s easy to set up.

Go to your Start Menu- type in Magnifier and launch the program. Once running,  all you need to do is hit the WINDOWS Key and + or – to toggle in and out of zoom mode. By default the zoom area will surround the centerpoint of your cursor.

Tip 5d. Are you downloading a lot of content?

This should really be a level 300 tip, but it belongs under Demo tips, so I will leave it here with a disclaimer: if you haven’t worked with the Registry before, don’t do so now. Assuming you are a demo’er then, odds are you are probably quite familiar with the Registry.

If you are like me the days before a new demo, you are probably downloading a ton of software.  IE8 has made lots of improvements, including bumping up the number of simultaneous downloads from the paltry 2 to 6. However, that’s still not enough, IMHO, so as I have more many years, I pop into the registry to up that number a bit. Note: this will definitely throttle your bandwidth and performance, so find a number that works best for you. I use 12.  It’s easy enough to set – just navigate to the folder FeatureControlvalue under the path HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\MAIN\ then drop into FEATURE_MAXCONNECTIONSPERSERVER. Inside that folder create a new DWORD value called: iexplore.exe with Decimal data: 12 (hex translation is: c).