Extreme Engineering

How many times have you thought of communicating with your server without posting or refreshing your page.You might have accomplished the same using java applets, where you opened a separate communication channel to talk to your server.Lets take an example .Let's say you are developing a charting application that shows your stock holding in the form of a chart.You want your chart to be updated at regular intervals to reflect your latest status.You can easily achieve this by a writing a charting applet.Are there any other ways to achieve the same thing.Definitely!!!!

ASP.NEt 2.0 introduces the notion of Script Call Backs that perform the same purpose i.e talking to your server independently and asynchronously without refreshing the current page.Well how does this magic work.It's simple and Micrsoft had introduced the same concept earlier in the form of "Remote Scripting" ,but now the Script Call Back Mechanism is much tightly intergrated into the ASP.NET 2.0 framework.So here is whats happening under the hood. The Script Call Back is binded to a trigger .When the trigger is instantiated it uses a COM object to issue an HTTP POST or GET command to the specified target URL. The COM object used here is an old acquaintance of many developers:
var xmlRequest = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");

Once the request is made to the server,the server calls the appropriate method,sends the result and the browser can change the UI of the current page using DHTML to reflect the results/changes.
Check it out at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/04/08/CuttingEdge/

After three weeks of hectic work the CMS Designer has finally entered the testing stage of the third iteration.By now we have numerous features in place.Just to introduce ,the CMS Desginer is basically the core of the NGCMS Next Generation Content Management System , im currently working on.We know content management systems in the past were simply more of the document management systems,and the only customization they provided was in the form of raw html that the user would end up manipulating . Even though some of the big companies have been quite innovative our basic aim was to give the user a much better experience by allowing him to design his custom web forms in a much more easier and intutive way.It's necessary to bring to your notice that the CMS Designer is completey web based and developed in ASP.NET Just as an example lets say my user wants to publish a page that will allow him to capture information from internet surfers .For this he'll need to setup a form . Using our designer he can quickly drag and drop elements ,set their properties ,select a datasource and/or a data destination and publish it as an ASPX page and he's done. The desginer will automaticall generate code behind for the ASPX page generated . This does not end here he has the capability to define complex custom validation . Let's he wants a validation that if some one selected having a heart disease history he cannot select to take part in a sprinting event.So iit's pretty Cool. One of the best features of the designer is to create your forms as USerControls so a user who created a userControl lets a form containing the address and name fields can later reuse it sometime later ,yet in another form.
So to recapitulate we're currently providng the following features.

1. Drag and Drop elements on the canvas
2. Easy specification of properties of elements
3. Generation of ASPX and userControls
4.Defining custom rules,validations ,specifying the datasoure and the data destination

HOLDING THE TROPHY

Presenting the paper

with DEAN ECE

With the Trophy

THe GOLD Medalists

me and faisal

ME

After the presentation

Buddies

Me and Faisal

IEEEP Photos