Silverlight based photo viewer

Uploaded Microsoft Silverlight based photo/slide show viewer. It is not very difficult to use it in your website. Check out yourself :

http://ashishware.com/Silverlight_example.shtml

You can download required files for hosting it from above website.

My first attempt at game programing !

Completed working on my first game few weeks back. Its a very simple game written in Ruby. Its got 4 levels. I learned quite a bit about game programing from this game.

You can read my experiences here : http://ashishware.com/FirstGame.shtml

Below is a screenshot from my game :

Different ways of doing AJAX

A new article on my website , discussing different javascript libraries available for adding AJAX support to your webpages. Discusses individual strength of six libraries which include:

1] Basic javascript and XMLHTTPRequest object.
2] Prototype.js
3] Dojo Toolkit
4] Yahoo UI Library
5] ASP.NET !
6] Ruby on Rails

Read the article here: http://ashishware.com/Ajax1.shtml

Hindi/Marathi/Sanskrit Transliteration on Blogger.com !

So finally they did it. Now blogging in India's National language (Hindi), Marathi and Sanskrit has become even more easy. Great job guys !

Many may find a problem FireFox and Devanagari script. FireFox doesn't seem to render joined Devanagari letters correctly, at least on Windows. IE works just fine.

For example,

Entering 'kya kar rahe ho. ' in the blogger.com's post editor window in FireFox gives this:





Where as it should give this:




The correct output is from IE. Both browsers were set to UTF-8 Encoding. The above problem can be seen for words like 'hindi'. Here again FireFox fails to render the correct output.

I found a solution which I am yet to try out here:
http://marathiblogs.net/font_problem

Also one more piece of advice that I would like to give Google, is to make transliteration tools available on their website. Adding spell-check is also a great idea (am I asking for too much).

For more on Transliteration tools for Indian Languages:
http://ashishware.com/Transl.shtml

Code for JSON DataSet Deserialization in

My typed DataSet looks like this:









This method is in code behind

[WebMethod]
public static MyDS GetDataFromServer()
{
MyDS d = new MyDS();
d.MyTable.AddMyTableRow("1", "abc");
return d;

}


The following lines are from aspx page accessing the service:

<asp:ScriptManager ID="ScriptManager1" runat="server" EnablePageMethods=true>
<Services>
<asp:ServiceReference Path="Common\TestService.asmx" />
</Services>
</asp:ScriptManager>


Given below is the javascript code:

<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">

function OnLookupComplete(result, userContext)
{
//Accessing typed dataset using column names
alert(result.tables[0].rows[0].ID);
alert(result.tables[0].rows[0].Name);
}

function OnError(result)
{
alert("Error: " + result.get_message());
}
function init()
{
debugger; //start debugging
TestService.GetDataFromServer(OnLookupComplete,OnError);
}

</script>


It is called on body.onload

<body onload="init();">

Dataset JSON Serialization

There definitely seems to be some problem serializing dataset in the latest 'RELEASE' version of ASP.NET

It keeps on giving some 'Circular Reference Error' while deserializing a ASP.NET dataset.

After lot of researching on the web , this is how I solved it

1. Downloaded ASP.NET ATLAS JAN CTP from here:

2. Added reference to Microsoft.Web.Preview.dll

3.Added following lines to web.config

<converters>
<add name="DataSetConverter" type="Microsoft.Web.Preview.Script.Serialization.Converters.DataSetConverter, Microsoft.Web.Preview"/>
<add name="DataRowConverter" type="Microsoft.Web.Preview.Script.Serialization.Converters.DataRowConverter, Microsoft.Web.Preview"/>
<add name="DataTableConverter" type="Microsoft.Web.Preview.Script.Serialization.Converters.DataTableConverter, Microsoft.Web.Preview"/>
</converters>

4. My web service returns a typed dataset with ID and Name columns.

Now these javascript lines work:

result.tables[0].rows[0].ID
result.tables[0].rows[0].Name

Planning to write a game!

Couldn’t think of better way of learning a new language. I am seriously thinking of writing a game using Ruby and SDL. I know ruby is not the best language to do this, but
I just want to get exposed to the field.

Here is the list of things I need to learn for making my first game:

1] SDL (Simple Device Layer)
2] Sprites (I find the concept very interesting)
3] Collision detection (I guess will be complex)
4] Free music and sounds (Yes! They are very important)
5] Game loop (Is that what is it called?)


Right now I am desperate to find more information on above stuff. My first game would be very simple, maybe car racing or shooting.

Hmmmm ....some real interesting time ahead.
My 'First Game'!!

AJAX Bar Graph with ASP.NET

Just posted script, demos and article for creating AJAX Bar Graph with ASP.NET(2.0). Using my script you can create AJAX Bar Graphs using only HTML and ASP.NET. They can be used to show real time information like cricket scores, stock quotes, temperature or any numeric data streaming form a web server.

Download the code and run it from your local machine. Here is the link http://ashishware.com/AJAXGraph.shtml

I am also working on page that demonstrates how to use the script with any server side programing language. Once it is ready , you will find it on my website !


Technorati Profile

Started Learning Ruby!

'But why?' Is the first question people ask.

I heard of Ruby long ago. That time I only knew that it was invented and pretty popular in Japan. But then came ‘Ruby On Rails’. Being a web developer, I couldn’t overlook its popularity.

So one fine day, I decided to try ‘Rails’ myself. But I soon realized, I needed to learn ‘Ruby’ first. Seemed logical. (You need to learn C++, before you can do anything with MFC).

So, I am learning Ruby. I would have preferred learning Python, but I found learning Ruby (and Ruby on Rails) could be more beneficial to my professional. That doesn’t mean I am giving up ASP.NET.

This is a common problem, which I see with people. When they see someone learning something not ‘directly’ related to his/her work, they think he/she is looking for a switch. Many of us (at least here in India) grow up learning ‘C’ like languages. Our (including myself) conception of a programming language is something very close to ‘C’. This is the reason I am very comfortable with languages like C\C++\Java\C#\Javascript etc. Anything different becomes hard to digest as a programming language. It is in no way a reason to worry because I can solve the problem which I am supposed to!

This is not a question of ‘my language is better than yours’. Learning new languages teaches valuable lessons on programming style, concepts and elegance. Performance and utility are entirely different topics. Every language has its strong points and ways of writing elegant code. There can be no single language that can have all the best features.

I am reading the book ‘Programming Ruby’ by Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt, and believe me just skimming thorough the book has exposed me to scores of different programming concepts, constructs and strategies. Imagine how much will I gain when I actually start working on Rails!!

So next time when I code at work, I’ll probably ask myself ‘why I can’t do something like that in this language’ and the answer will surely help me understand the language and programming better.

AJAX tooltip for ASP.NET

Recently uploaded an AJAX tooltip example for the ASP.NET DataGrid. The sample code demonstrates how to add a cool AJAX tooltip to an ASP.NET DataGrid (DataGridView to be specific).

It uses my javascript based tooltip script along with the prototype.js(for AJAX).With minor modifications, I am sure that the code can be made to work with ASP.Net 1.x.