Lots have happened since I’ve got home from India. There hasn’t been much time for blogging, but here are the latest updates!
I’ve began the 3rd year at school, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). I’m two semesters from my Bachelor degree in computer science. This semester I’m gearing up, and take to more courses than I actually need to. Courses like algorithm, UI design and usability, LISP etc. So far, it has been fun!
This semester I’m also going to assist in a course at NTNU. The course is a preparation study for 5th year students starting on their diploma assignment. The tentative plan is to held tree lectures with follow-up study groups. The topics for the lectures are WF (Windows Workflow Foundation), WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) and real time communication. The idea behind the course is to give the students a superficial knowledge about these technologies so they can use them in their assignments. As far as I know, it’s the first time ever .NET related technologies have been a part of a course at NTNU.
At work, Jonas and I are finishing up a project we have been working on since April. We deployed the product in production 1st of September as planned. I want to point out an interesting experience we had with a new technology called Atlas. Atlas is the AJAX framework for ASP.NET 2.0.
As a part of the project, we created a web based user interface for the product. In the beginning of the project, we didn’t even think about using Atlas. In the middle of the development process (in June) we decided to begin using Atlas to make the user interface more responsible and user friendly. By then, we had already created most of the web forms and the functionality behind them. So it was quit a risk to take.
What’s cool about Atlas is that it’s “wrap” it self around regular ASP.NET 2.0 server controls like TextBox etc. and extend (decorate) them with AJAX functionality. You can se some samples here: http://atlas.asp.net/atlastoolkit/ModalPopup/ModalPopup.aspx.
So since using Atlas and enabling AJAX functionality into the user interface was all about wrapping asp.net controllers with Atlas controllers, we could use the web forms we already had. We only had to decorate the existing controllers in the web forms with Atlas controllers to enable AJAX functionality.
Jonas is actually going to show the application we created next week on NNUG in Trondeim. The topic for his session is Atlas. I suppose he is going to say something about how we used Atlas to realize AJAX functionality into our web based application.