DISQUS

@peter: Do you have any links or reference to support your claim that jQuery is faster?

@Duncan: thanks for the tip - I didn't know. I wonder how fast do they get new versions to Google code for hosting???

@Mladen: jQuery minified and zipped is 16kb. And according to this chart http://ajaxian.com/archives/yui-setting-the-rec... YUI will be at 8.9kb. without animation and drang and drop and 18.4kb with them. So size is not that big of a deal - specially if it is hosted for free :)

@Dan: I might actually do that. I love jQuery's syntax too much to completely give it up. I am glad to hear that you are already doing that and not having problems.

@Ross: Never heard of JSTR but I will check it out. thanks.

@king take a look at http://forums.asp.net/t/1237051.aspx

@king you need to install asp.net mvc on your machine, visit www.asp.net/mvc for more information.

@Net framework programmer, I am not sure how to do that. I haven't used the routing library with non-MVC projects. Good luck and let us know what you find out.

@Nik, you are absolutely right which is why I force user names to be 4 characters or longer. This way, worst-case-scenario, I can create a 3 letter controller. Not ideal, but a workaround.

@david I haven't done anywork with ajax control toolkit and mvc, so I am not sure I can help you. I decided to do all my javascript and ajax using the jQuery library because I found it really easy to use and light weight. It does require more knowledge of JavaScript compared to the toolkit where you just create an update panel and you are done.

I highly recommend looking at www.jquery.com and look at yonkly's source code and javascript to see how i do ajax. there is a ton of material out there.

If you do figure it out, please come back and tell us about it. Thanks and good luck.

@captain: The code in my first comment doesn't create a task it retrieves all the tasks... Here it is again:

Dim ns As Outlook.NameSpace
ns = MyApp.Application.GetNamespace(”MAPI”)
outlookTasksAll = ns.GetDefaultFolder(Outlook.OlDefaultFolders.olFolderTasks).Items

Again, you can download the source code from the link in my first comment and take a look at it.

One more thing... if you want to create a new task, you do it like this:

Dim MyApp As Outlook.Application = New Outlook.Application()

Dim outlookTask As Outlook.TaskItem = MyApp.Application.CreateItem(Outlook.OlItemType.olTaskItem)

Outlook.OlTaskStatus.olTaskComplete _
).ToList

You can take a look at my open source project that syncs RTM with Outlook you might find what you are looking for in the source code. There is more info at http://www.emadibrahim.com/2008/04/14/synchroni...

@david: I believe that you can use express with mvc project but you will have to install the mvc framework preview 3 which should install the project templates and then you will be able to open it. Here are some links I found that might help you:
http://jason.whitehorn.ws/2007/12/10/Using+ASPN...

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/06/...

@Vyrotek: I am not sure what is causing that. The project file was upgraded to the latest version of MVC, so that might be the problem. You might want to try and create a new empty project and copy the yonkly files into it... Anyway, let us know how you end up fixing it.

Source code is available over here

@tomas: thanks for pointing this out. I have uploaded that dll to codeplex as a patch. You can get it at http://www.codeplex.com/rtmos/SourceControl/Pat...

@Pieter: thanks for sharing your findings
@Christian: I am not sure what is going on here. I personally never used ContainsDataItem method on ViewData because I always used a typed ViewData.

I have a BaseViewData that is used on the master page and every page using that master and then I create derived classes for ViewData for each page e.g. UserInfoViewData, etc...

@azzam: I didn't test in opera. Being a 1-developer team, I figured targeting 90% of the user base should be ok. I actually use a jquery plugin for the reply popup, so my guess is that the plugin is the one not working with opera :)

Someone made a similar suggestion about creating a distributed twitter-like platform. But that is one tough problem... I haven't had time to really think about it but just dealing with data on multiple servers and authentication alone would cause you a headache...

So let's say we have server a and server b. Each has its own version of the database and a different set of users. How would you deal with user a on server wanting to friend user b on server b? Sure you can server a talk to server b but then what if we have 20 servers?

Or another scenario, user a leaves a message while on server a, how will this message show on the other servers? Having every server query every server on every request would just not work...

Eventually one server/provider would be the most popular and you will end up with the same problem of a centralized twitter system... It's kind of similar to OpenID, sure there are several providers, but in a few months/years, 80% of the users will be with 20% of the providers - probably one of the bigger players (yahoo or aol).

How would you handle upgrading the servers and multiple versions of the protocol floating around?

A more important question, why would anyone bother hosting one on there servers? I mean, what is the financial benefit to them?

Obviously, I haven't thought this through but it is not a simple problem...

I would love to hear what others think. Any ideas?

@mark: Thanks for pointing out the Translate() method, I looked into it and that wouldn't solve my problem. For starters using reflection works well for me because I can dynamically populate the list of columns in a checkboxlist and then dynamically create the LINQ query...

Using reflection and custom attribute also allowed me to specify which columns can be exported and which ones can't. So that alone, would prevent me from using regular sql strings and executing on a command.

On the other hand, you are right, almost everything I did could have been done with a sql string and a command but where is the fun in that :)

Thanks for the string.Join... I am embarrassed to say that I have never used it before and looking at your code snippet - I LOVE IT.

@A'braham Barakhyahu: That's another task on my list. Maybe, we should tackle that before OpenID integration

@Vyrotek: Contact me through the contact page and I can set you with access to the source code. I just have to do a few things to package so people can play with it.

@Antonio thanks for the comments, I fixed the class definition. I thought about writing a book exactly like yours but I am still a Ruby beginner. Looking forward to it.

@A'braham Barakhyahu I have never used castle and don't know much about it... Good luck getting comfortable with MVC... I think you will like it. By the way, your twitter link doesn't work - you can find me at http://twitter.com/eibrahim

@Matthew I am glad to hear that all this writing is not going to waste :) Thanks for the comment and you might like my new "crumbs" post. I will keep adding more as I learn my ways.

@Jared I have been very disappointed with performance too. Unfortunately, I feel stuck and unable to move all the years of data anywhere else.

A friend told me that he archives his data every year which keeps his file small and improves performance. I did that and it improved performance but not as much as I would like.

@Jonatha thanks. It's a little challenging being that everything is different, OS, tools, platform, syntax, language, etc... I am lucky I have been playing with asp.net mvc because the transition is a little easier.

@Antonio great tips. thanks...

One thing that sucks so far has been the documentation.

@Albert, I have already added the code to assembla but it is not public yet. I have just had a new member join the team and we will try to get this to a point where we can make it public i.e. add documentation and installation scripts. Stay tuned.

@Oscar the utility as it is right now is not for "consumers" it is more of a technical preview and you need to be a programmer and have visual studio to be able to compile it and run it. I am hoping someone in the community will volunteer and create an installer for everyone to use. Stay tuned and I will announce any updates here.