Web Development News & Articles

In today’s high-tech world, companies rarely have it in them to wage full-on war against their competition, but any seasoned Web geek knows that’s simply because they’re too busy trying to outdo each other.

Of course, this isn’t always so. In fact, two of the biggest names in technology duke it out all the time. In their most recent tiff, IBM plays the schoolyard bully while Microsoft attempts to save face with a cool yet scathing blog response. The fire starter? Oh, just what's being called the most destructive force in technology.

There's been a little buzz in recent weeks about the possibility that SharePoint Designer 2007 -- Microsoft's reincarnation of FrontPage -- would become a free product. Well that buzz has been officially confirmed.

As of April 1, 2009, SharePoint Designer 2007 can be downloaded for free. According to Microsoft, offering the Designer free is their way of promoting continued custom development on the SharePoint platform.

Many customers saw the Designer as a natural extension of SharePoint and they wanted to use it to create dynamic websites on SharePoint.

SharePoint Designer is a product that puts a lot of power into the hands of power users, along with developers. So you may want to think carefully before you unleash it to your organization. If you do want to understand ways to lock down where and how the Designer can be used, read this blog post from the MSDN SharePoint Designer Team Blog.

All future releases of SharePoint Designer will also be free, including the new version expected to come with the next version of SharePoint.

For those customers who have SharePoint Designer as part of their Software Assurance Package, as compensation for it now being free, they will be granted rights to Expression Web.

You can download your free copy here and learn everything you need to know about SharePoint Designer 2007 on its website. Also, watch this interview with Tom Rizzo,Sr. Director of Product Management for SharePoint, on why they have made this move and what it means to you.

MindTouch (news,site) is all about the enterprise. This open source collaboration platform is all over connecting enterprise applications, web services and Web 2.0 applications for teams to work together fulfilling business objectives.

But MindTouch has decided it wants to go just a little bit farther. They have announced MindTouch 2009 -- a new developer platform for social collaboration and communities. And to go along with that, a bi-directional message bus that extends their collaborative capabilities even further.

Kentico (news site), a Czech vendor of web content management solutions built on ASP.NET, has just announced details of its 4.1 version, scheduled for release next August.

Founder and CEO Petr Palas, on Kentico’s blog, said this latest version carries a full text search engine based on Lucene.NET as well as improvements on the current engine based on SQL queries.

It's going to be an interesting Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco next week. Among the announcements, you can expect to hear from IGLOO Software. At the conference they will be unveiling their new framework for building community solutions.

The new Online Community Platform has four primary components to it including:

• Theme Manager: Control the brand of your community through layouts and design.
• Global Configuration Panel: Turn applications on and off
• Widget Manager: Drag and drop capability as well as create and configure custom built widgets
• Open API's: Integration with other applications and solutions including CRM, ERP and cloud-based solutions such as Salesforce.com and Google Gadgets.

IGLOO is banking on their Open API's and widget based architecture to push their Online Community Platform to the forefront as it will enable organizations to get a community up and running quickly. Integration with key third party content and applications will also contribute to its ability to deliver. After all, it's clear that a community that operates in a silo does not add advantage to an organization.

"The new platform is all about flexibility and modular applications that enable interconnected networks of teams and individuals within an organization to work together more efficiently and effectively," says David Shak, VP of Platform Development for IGLOO Inc.

Want to see how easy their framework is to use? Watch this video or read the presentation.

Information access software company Endeca Technologies has just announced the availability of its McKinley release Information Access Platform. The platform provides a new architecture for building standards-based search applications.

After two years of research the new platform will allow for the rapid development and maintenance of search applications that offer Endeca’s Guided Navigation user experience across structured and unstructured enterprise data.

SQL Data Services (SDS) has been on the radar since MIX08, when it was first announced as an online data storage and query processing service that could be accessed using the standard internet protocols. It has come a long way since then. At MIX09, Microsoft demonstrated some of the newest capabilities of SDS -- specifically its new relational database capabilities.

That's right, Microsoft will offer a relational database in the Azure cloud.

MIX09 is now over, but many of the sessions are still available to view. Of particular note are the ASP.NET MVC tutorials that will help you better understand this new development framework.

Phil Haack, a Senior Program Manager with the ASP.NET team who has been an integral part of the ASP.NET MVC Framework, did two of these sessions:

• ASP.NET MVC: America’s Next Top Model View Controller Framework: The building of a simple application that demonstrates some of the key capabilities of the MVC framework. You'll also see some new tooling features that should help you develop apps based on the MVC framework more easily.
• ASP.NET MVC Ninjas on Fire Black Belt Tips: Get some good tips and tricks on making the most of the MVC framework.

Phil indicates on his blog that he intends to offer these demos in blog format in the near future, so keep an eye out for those.

In addition to these sessions, Jared Eischen and John Stockton of Ascentium did a session on using MVC to build mobile device views of your website. And you'll find some sessions covering the future of ASP.NET. All sessions are available on a special website that contains many of MIX09 sessions.

Sessions are downloadable as PPT, Zune Video or Windows Media Video.

You can get ASP.NET MVC 1.0 using the Web Platform Installer, download a free eBook covering the first chapter of the Wrox book on the subject and find a newly updated MSDN section telling you everything you need to know about ASP.NET MVC.

It is clear that Microsoft is excited about this new framework and wants to ensure you have everything you need to get up to speed quickly.

The majority of data on the web and elsewhere is unstructured, meaning that you cannot make assumptions that easily break the data down into components for processing. So what do you do when you need to process such information?

OASIS, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (news, site), has approved Version 1.0 of the Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA), which allows some level of structure to be assigned to the documents, email, speech, images and video produced during human communication.

As you may remember, Windows Azure got some serious play late last year when Open Text announced their records management and archiving capabilities designed specifically for the cloud-based operating system.

Continuing on the path to clear (cloudy) skies, and perhaps in order to attract even more big names from the enterprise content management world, Microsoft recently announced some upgrades to the platform.

Revealed alongside Silverlight 3 beta at the MIX09 conference, Azure’s new capabilities include non-.NET language support via FastCGI, and geolocation. The new features are aimed directly at the hearts of developers who dream of being able to host data and code across more than one US-based center.

Gartner predicted cloud computing to be one of the top 10 strategic technologies for 2009, and so far it looks like they were right. Besides appealing to developers, the Cloud route means customers too can store data in multiple locations without IT involvement, and for significantly less money. And as much as we’d hate to see ECM trampled into oblivion, we must admit that benefits like that are hard to beat.

Follow Open Text’s continued efforts to stay afloat here, or check out more details on Azure here.

A new version of the Visual Studio 2008 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, v1.3 has recently been released as a CTP (community technology preview). What's new in this release that will make SharePoint developers happy?

The latest edition of Microsoft Commerce Server has been announced. Commerce Server 2009 includes new capabilities to help you get a store-front up and running quickly. What's even more interesting is that it also includes out of the box interoperability and integration with SharePoint Server 2007.

Internet Explorer 8 has been officially released. Now it's time to download it and start seeing what it really does to your website or web application. For some, things may go smoothly, for others, not so much. Trouble is, IE8 may be new, but is it already obsolete?

No doubt you’ve heard of, and even anticipated, the release of Microsoft Silverlight 3. The third version of the runtime comes a mere eighteen months after the initial launch in 2007.

Such a quick turnover has understandably made a few folks skeptical, as has the rumor that this will be the only beta before the official Silverlight 3 ships later this year. But so far positive reviews are coming in by the truckload, securing Silverlight in the ring with Adobe Flash for what will likely be a pretty good fight.

Despite some concerns, it looks like there are still enough clever folks left at VIGN not only to tackle the latest Vignette Content Management 7.6 release, but also to deliver a new admin module called the Vignette Transfer Tool.

We glanced at V7.6 earlier this year, so let’s switch our attention to the Transfer Tool. This module is designed to make techies happier and to simplify deployment, configuration and administration of Vignette Content Management environments.

In essence, it allows replicating QA or development environments in a simpler than before fashion, among (we would expect) other things.

In addition, despite recent losses, it looks like Vignette is investing more money in R&D and promises to release additional components for its web content management system in the coming months, including improved integration with SharePoint (the MOSS-VIGN relationship started in 2006).

What’s piqued our interest even more are updates coming to the company's Social Media Solutions. These revolve around web 2.0, social collaboration and video management. We will, of course, keep you posted as details unfold.