HTML5 Development For ASP.NET Developers

This week I diverted all available memory from my Mac to my Windows 7 Virtual Machine. I opened up Visual Studio, fired up Camtasia and let the cameras roll. Today marks the first in a long series of posts and screencasts that will eventually be aggregated in a central place with the rest of our documentation. We are pleased to be bringing you a broadly requested topic from top to bottom.

HTML5 Development For ASP.NET Developers

While Kendo UI is a platform agnostic HTML5 web and mobile application development toolkit, chances are that you are working with some sort of server technology - especially if you are doing data rich enterprise development. This series is meant to help ASP.NET Developers (both WebForms and MVC) to know how to incorporate Kendo UI into the platform that they are using today. If you are using WebForms, there is no need for you to switch platforms just to do HTML5 development. WebForms is a robust and extremely mature web platform that is ripe for HTML5 Development.

ASP.NET MVC has gotten a bit more attention lately in the open web community and the HTML5 community at large. It’s widely recognized as a fantastic framework for building rich, RESTful applications and even ships with jQuery and jQuery UI components for developing the interface.

I have broken down the course into several modules. I am going to start at the very beginning to make sure that I don’t throw things at you in later modules that I didn’t cover first. Here is your syllabus for the course:

Hello jQuery

In this module I will do a very brief introduction to jQuery and how we will be using it in later modules.  Everyone has heard of jQuery, but if JavaScript is a new and daunting thing for you, this module will show you how to integrate it in with Visual Studio for Intellisense support, debug it in your browser and use it with ASP.NET WebForms.  I’ll also leave you with some resources that can turn you into a jQuery expert in 30 days flat.

Hello Services

Who is this Jason guy and why do I need him?  Architecting good services is key to HTML5 development and in this section I will go over several strategies for creating services that your UI can consume including WCF, Page Methods, Controller Methods and maybe even some WebAPI if time permits. The goal here is for you to see how you can easily expose your SQL Server data to your UI as JSON, demystify this whole AJAX thing and show you how to use F12 Developer tools in IE to see what’s going on behind the scenes.

Hello Kendo UI

This is an introduction to Kendo UI and how it’s different pieces fit together.  There will be a strong focus here on not just Kendo UI, but HTML5 itself.  There is quite a bit of confusion around what HTML5 is and what it isn’t. While I expect that if you are reading this blog you are somewhat familiar with Kendo UI, this module should put the pieces together and give you a good overall view of the tools that are at your disposal in Kendo UI and a better, more concise understanding of HTML5.

Kendo UI + WebForms

This will be a two part screencast where I dive into creating applications with HTML5 / Kendo UI and ASP.NET WebForms. I’ll wire up to a SQL Server database and we’ll discuss local and server data manipulation as well as how you can integrate Kendo UI directly into your existing WebForms projects today.

Kendo UI + MVC

Similar to the WebForms modules, this will be a two part module which will go through using Kendo UI in depth with ASP.NET MVC. I expect that MVC developers have a better idea of how to get rolling with Kendo UI as much of the abstraction between .NET and the raw web is removed in the MVC pattern.

Final Product

I plan to write a blog post that essentially goes over the exact same content as each video, so if you prefer to consume your content by reading, I’ve got you covered. At the end, I’ll compile all of my learning blog posts into a concise and clear publication for ASP.NET Developers to refer to for not just how to get rolling with Kendo UI, but also with HTML5 in general. I’ll include all of the handy links, tips, tricks and other pieces of awesomeness that I use every day in my HTML5 Development, as well as some workflow tips when using Visual Studio.

The first module, Hello jQuery will post tomorrow right here on the Kendo UI blogs.  I will publish a subsequent module each week in the same format.

What Do You Want To See?

If there are things that you would love to see in these screencasts and posts, now is the time to ask! I’m open to anything. I want to create the content that will be most useful for you, so please weigh in with what you would like to see covered.