Originally a helper-project for Einar Ingebrigtsen, we decided to leverage and contribute to Bifrost as an open sourced platform for web-app development. At it’s very heart Bifrost adheres to CQRS and is taking it “to the next level” by delivering a platform to deliver rich web applications.

Basic archtecture with an MVC application frontend - from Bifrost docs

Because of the way Bifrost as a platform was conceived, it has evolved in parallel with the product we are building. As project needs arise, amendments are made in Bifrost. This enables steady, controlled development on Bifrost without introducing features (too far) ahead of time. Though this is a good way of driving the project forward, it isn’t building out all the aspects of Bifrost. On the plus side, the platform is well-tested, thought through, and works well (with some known limitations and needed improvements).

On the web aspect of things Bifrost supports ASP.NET MVC and works well with the framework. Validation and binding of commands is something that just works, and I’m sure it’s something that people will appreciate. The next natural step is to actually not depend on MVC, and build out the client-side aspect of the platform. For this Knockoutjs comes in handy.

Knockoutjs is a JavaScript library that adheres to the MVVM pattern, which can be traced back to WPF and Silverlight. This allows the view (html) and viewModel (data, behaviour, commands) to be separate, sharable pieces of code. What this gives us is a clear way to bind our Query data from the server to a UI, and allow commands to be fired back into the system.

Bifrost has its implementation of CQRS quite well done already, and with it you can go in and whip up a great app with what’s there now, but you’re going to get little, to no help in regards to client-side features. There’s a clear focus on developing for the client-side aspect of things as well, which will enable Bifrost as an application platform. It’s a great convention-based platform that can solve many business needs, and its future looks bright :)

I hope to write more about the different aspects of Bifrost in the coming weeks. Until then, here’s some further reading:

• Einar Ingebrigtsens blog
• Bifrost: https://github.com/dolittlestudios/bifrost
• CQRS, Task Based UIs, Event Sourcing agh! – Greg Young
• DDD: http://domaindrivendesign.org/

A friend of mine is going on about his big hairy goal. It’s intimidating and inspiring. Here are some things I’m hoping to dive into this coming year:

• JavaScript
• Norwegian .NET User Group
• Bifrost – CQRS for the rest of us
• Oslo Marathon

Not necessarily in that order.

Web platform installer

Microsoft Download Center

Be sure to read the release notes for the breaking changes since Release Candidate 2

Intellisense, brace-highlighting, current variable highlighting, code comments…all gone….until now!

Microsoft Corp has just released JScript Editor Extensions, a Visual Studio extension that enables all of the above, along with code outlines. I admit it’s nothing revolutionary compared to other well-established web-IDE’s, but it’s still great to have extended tooling support within Visual Studio itself.

Here’s a look at what the IDE looks like with bracing support and outlining. Notice the collapsed ‘complete’ and ‘success’ functions

Brace-highlighting, collapsible code

Head over to the Visual Studio Gallery and try out JScript Editor Extensions.

I dug this link up the other day, and thought I’d spread the love :)

If you’ve ever had debugging issues with your jQuery selectors. Or would like to experiment a bit then the Interactive jQuery tester is a great solution. You paste your HTML, then type in the selectors. The elements that are actually selected are then highlighted, which gives instant feedback.

Hope you find this as useful as  I have in the past.

.. is what greeted us when we registered for the MSDNLive event in oslo yesterday (21. October).  With a focus on guiding and inspiring the attendees to unlock their potential, along the lines of Luke and Obi-Wan, the scene was set for the day’s sessions.

The show was opened by the Community Marketing Manager in Microsoft Norway; Petri Wilhelmsen and Microsoft Architect Børge Lund.

it’s all in the clouds

There was a strong focus on cloud computing and appfabric in the first sessions. Olav Tollefsen dived into the hands-on experience of creating and deploying an MVC2 project to azure, as well as going into SQL Azure and tables/blobs. Børge Lund talked about Windows server AppFabric, which turned out to be an extremely interesting topic.

calling out for web standards

Jonas Follesoe, Microsoft MVP, concluded the day with 2 excellent sessions on Windows Phone 7 and HTML5/IE9. He made some great points of diffusing the HTML5 buzzword; emphasizing how it shouldn’t become the new “Web 2.0″, but used as a correct term with other new standards like CSS3 / SVG.

Be forward-compatible!

Jonas mentioned strategies of enhancing the user experience for users with browsers with advanced capabilities, but not compromising the experience for existing users. Instead of using graceful degradation for older browsers, use it for current browsers. This is quite easily accomplished with browser feature detection instead of user agent sniffing.

where to get more info?

Videos of the talks from msdnlive are going to be published here, so keep an eye out for upcoming content.

I wasn’t one of the lucky to be there, but I got to watch the live-stream of the keynotes and some of the Channel 9 live stuff. Also, another GREAT feature is that most (if not all) the talks are available for viewing on the PDC site.

Some of the big stuff that was released were:

• Office 2010 beta
• Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2
• Silverlight 4 Beta
• ASP.NET MVC 2 Beta
• Sharepoint 2010 Beta

So, lots of videos on exciting topics, including stuff on C# 4.0, Windows 7 and more… Check them out.

Drop me a line if you’re interested..it’s first come first serve  so.. :)

..This SDK contains rich social features and offers something for almost any kind of Facebook developer who is building with Microsoft technology, whether you’re implementing Facebook Connect or are building a Web-based or desktop application…

Microsoft has also supplied a great SDK Overview that will get you started with facebook development in technologies like Silverlight, WinForms, WebForms /ASP.Net, ASP.Net MVC. There are several examples along with the documentation that should be more than sufficient to get the ball rolling.

So, you’ve written that great article, you’ve shared it to your friends on facebook, and you’re looking to spread the word even further. Through Twittter, your url can reach entire diffrent audiences than Facebook sharing. Getting those first few important re-tweets on Twitter will start to spread your new blogpost like wildfire.

If Twitter is still a great mystery to you, I’d recommend Scott Hanselman’s introduction to twitter. You may also be interested in reading Twitter’s own brief “about us” page.

Time to get our hands dirty

It’s extremely simple to send an update to twitter using their public share url like so:

http://twitter.com/home?status=Currently reading http://pavsaund.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/share-your-url-to-twitter-share

So now you know how to do it, there’s no reason not to just add a tweet this icon!