I attended Deeper in .NET yesterday, along with a few hundred others. It was an excellent day filled with .NET goodness. I’m not sure what the actual attendance count was, but I guess it was higher than last year’s event.

We learned about:

1. WCF (formerly Indigo) Top to Bottom with Michele Leroux Bustamante
2. Anatomy of a Successful ASP.NET Application: Inside DasBlog with Scott Hanselman
3. ADO.NET 2.0 Integration with SQL Server 2005 with Julia Lerman
4. AJAX and Atlas with Bill Hatfield
5. Using WPF (formerly Avalon) to Create Compelling User Interfaces with Jason Beres

The presentations were excellent and at least as good as last year. The best part about the event is the fact that it’s completely FREE to attend! If you missed out this year, then you don’t want to miss it next year.

The users group held an evangelism blogging contest for the event. To participate all you had to do was blog about the event ahead of time and send an email to register in the WI .NET Users Group Evangelist Directory. Then the WI .NET Users Group Executive Committee would collectively choose a winner and announce the winner at the Deeper in .NET 2006 event. The grand prize for the contest was a copy of MSDN Premium Subscription with Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite, worth over $10,000.

I am happy to say that I entered the blogging contest and won! I now have my very own MSDN Subscription for one year. Now that is an awesome prize!

There was also a total of about $70,000 dollars worth of prizes given away through out the day, so I wasn’t the only one that brought something home. One of the prizes given away was another MSDN Subscription.

If you’re a .NET developer and aren’t already a member of the Wisconsin .NET Users Group then go to the official site (http://wi-ineta.org) and join; after all it’s FREE.

Update 4/24/2006:

I have to thank all the members of the WI .NET Users Group Executive Commitee, the MVP's that donated the subscription and any one else involved with the Evangelist Blogging contest. This is a great prize and awesome community recognition for my blogging efforts. It really inspires me to blog more and get more involved with the WI .NET Users Group.

Friday night, two days ago, the Wisconsin .NET Users Group held a dinner to thank some of the most active and influential people in the community. I was lucky enough to get invited because I’m one of the more active Bloggers in the users group. The dinner offered the chance to enjoy live local music, learn more about the WI .NET Users Group and meet/talk with the speakers that would be presenting at Deeper in .NET 2006. How could I pass on this great opportunity?

Well, since I’m sort of shy and not that social, I didn’t end up talking with very many people that night. This is something I’m trying to change; after all I did go to the dinner instead of just staying home. I also brought one of my co-workers along.

We were able to meet and talk with Scott Hanselman for a few minutes. I asked him what it was like to be so well known (in the .NET world) and be sort of a “.NET Rock Star.” He basically replied by saying he’s just a developer like you or I who talks louder. (He was going to stand up on a chair to demonstrate this but there weren’t any close by.)

It's really neat to meet the people who author some of the books, blogs and/or podcasts you listen to or read.

Since ASP.NET "Atlas" has a Go Live license, I decided to check it out. I looked at the quick start samples and a short video that Scott Guthrie posted on using "Atlas". I've done some cool things with Ajax in Classic ASP and ASP.NET by hand coding all the JavaScript myseleft. Now with "Atlas" it's extremely simple to do, and you don't even need to know JavaScript to add Ajax support to your existing applications! It couldn't be easier to do. I can't wait to dig in to the more advanced features of "Atlas".

I don't have an excuse anymore not to add Ajax to my blog. Time consuming? Not anymore!

Scott Guthrie's Blog: Pointers to Great ASP.NET Atlas Content

On April 22nd at the Wisconsin .NET Users Group's Deeper in .NET 2006 event, Scott Hanselman will be presenting on "Anatomy of a Successful ASP.NET Application: Inside DasBlog". DasBlog is one of the most popular ASP.NET blogging engines. In this presentation Scott will cover creative uses of HttpModules and HttpHandlers, using background threads within ASP.NET, internationalization, caching, skinning, creating a macro language, Web Services that are more than SOAP and more.

This day long event is completely FREE to attend, and features a total of 5 speakers, FREE lunch and FREE books and software as door prizes. In fact over $15,000 worth of door prizes will be given away for FREE! Attendance is limited so sign up today! You don't want to miss out on this awesome event.

Find out how to Register to attend Deeper in .NET 2006 here: http://www.wi-ineta.org/didn/06

More information about DasBlog can be found here: http://www.dasblog.info/

In ASP.NET 1.x controls had to be registered in each page they were used. New to ASP.NET 2.0, controls can be registered in the web.config file. Visual Studio 2005 supports full intellisense when editing .aspx pages. This feature allows commonly used controls to be more easily used through out your application.

Web.Config

Use the control in an .aspx page

The MaintainScrollPositionOnPostback page directive attribute allows pages to automatically maintain the current scroll position across postbacks. This feature is usefull for large pages where scrolling is necessary to view input controls down further on the page.

A simple but very usefull feature.

If you place a file named app_offline.htm into the root of an ASP.NET 2.0 application, the application will shutdown and any page request for the application will return this file instead. This feature makes it extremely easy to take down an application while a large update is being made. As soon as you remove the file any page requests to the application will continue as normal.

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2005/10/06/426755.aspx

At last, the new March ASP.NET "Atlas" CTP comes with Go-Live. I downloaded the latest release and am planning on playing around with it alot soon. I've been waiting for it to have a Go-Live license so I can use it in some of my personal projects I'm working on.

If you don't know what ASP.NET "Atlas" is; it's basically an AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript And Xml) framework for ASP.NET 2.0.

They are also expected to be releaseing an Atlas Refresh this month, which includes bug fixes and more features. Also, this month they are to be releasing an Atlas Control pack that features a set of easy to use, re-usable UI controls (cascading dropdown lists, drag-panels, collapsible panels, etc., etc.) So far I've been hand coding all my "Web 2.0" AJAX stuff, but I'm excited to see what ASP.NET "Atlas" has to offer.

ASP.NET "Atlas": http://atlas.asp.net
Scott Guthrie: Upcoming ASP.NET Releases in April