Agilis Software News Feed

Current Work

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 08:23:04 GMT

Agilis are in progress with a few websites currently. These are mostly utilising .NET 3.5 now, which has shown a marked improvement in time taken to build the sites which in turn has reduced our lead times and costs.

Once dynamic data has been officially released we will aim to incorporate this into our new websites.

We are also finishing off a windows application for the malachi trust which is in testing currently. This project utilised sql CE 3.5 along with linq.

Linq and Paging

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 07:59:15 GMT

Whilst working on a website, we had to implement paging on a list of images, so you could browse thumbnails. The list of images is never going to be very large, so we wondered if we could utilise Linq to achieve this.

We first created a repeater with an image in the ItemTemplate, something like this:

<asp:Repeater ID="Repeater1" runat="server">
    <ItemTemplate>
    <img src='Uploads\Thumbs\<%#Eval("Thumbnail") %>' width="100" />
    </ItemTemplate>
</asp:Repeater>

We then found some nice Linq features (Skip & Take). These allow you to skip the first number of items and take the specified next items. We stored the current index in ViewState and then bound the repeater to Linq code like this:

using (DataClassesDataContext context = new DataClassesDataContext())
{
            List<Portfolio> portfolios = (from p in context.Portfolios
                                                 where p.IsVisible == true
                                                 orderby p.Priority descending
                                                 select p).ToList();

IEnumerable<Portfolio> ports = portfolios.Skip(int.Parse(ViewState["skip"].ToString())).Take(pageSize);

this.Repeater1.DataSource = ports;
this.Repeater1.DataBind();
}

We have further added to this code by disabling/enabling the navigation buttons at appropriate points. We would not recommend this solution for large collections as it is in memory paging which will not perform as well as SQL paging, but for small collections it works great as a quick solution.

As a further addition we wrapped the repeater and navigation buttons in an Ajax update panel, which gives the user a better experience as no postbacks happen when the user pages the images.

Freetextbox image upload

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 13:29:59 GMT

We have utilised freetextbox as a tool for our bespoke content management systems for a number of years now.

One issue we had involved the image gallery control that enables you to upload images to the server and reference them in freetextbox, it does not physically resize the image. This meant that novice users would sometimes upload 2MB images and the resulting page that was displayed took a long time to download the images.

Thankfully we found an alternative image upload component on the freetextbox forum that allows the user to specify the size of the image and the control will resize the physical image.

This was good but the resize wasn't done using a good interpolation mode which results in poor quality images like this:

Therefore, we altered the source code to resize the image using High Quality Bicubic interpolation, which produces better quality like this:

We also only allow the user to specify a width or height for the image as the resultant image should retain the aspect ratio. The code below does the resizing. I will upload all the files in a few days.

Note there seems to be a bug with the high quality bicubic resize as it leaves a black line on the top and left of the resultant image, I got around this by starting at -1,-1 on the redraw (System.Drawing.Rectangle(-1, -1, width + 1, destHeight + 1)).

private System.Drawing.Bitmap MakeImage(System.Drawing.Bitmap bmOrig, int width, string savePath)
{

int destHeight = bmOrig.Height * width / bmOrig.Width;

System.Drawing.Bitmap bm = new System.Drawing.Bitmap(width, destHeight,

System.Drawing.Imaging.PixelFormat.Format24bppRgb);

bm.SetResolution(bmOrig.HorizontalResolution,

bmOrig.VerticalResolution);

System.Drawing.Graphics grPhoto = System.Drawing.Graphics.FromImage(bm);

grPhoto.InterpolationMode = System.Drawing.Drawing2D.InterpolationMode.HighQualityBicubic;

grPhoto.DrawImage(bmOrig,

new System.Drawing.Rectangle(-1, -1, width + 1, destHeight + 1),

new System.Drawing.Rectangle(0, 0, bmOrig.Width, bmOrig.Height),

System.Drawing.GraphicsUnit.Pixel);

grPhoto.Dispose();

bm.Save(savePath);

return bm;

}

Dynamic Data

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 08:16:48 GMT

90% of bespoke software we create at Agilis often involves the mundane task of creating CRUD operations on multiple database tables. This has been helped largely by Linq2Sql, which I mention in my previous post:

http://www.agilissoftware.co.uk/WebDesignNewsItems.aspx?newsid=22

This has helped in minimising the time taken to map our relational database into our OO coding model.

Unfortunately, we still have to create admin screens which manage the objects and perform the CRUD operations. We have standard CSS templates we use now and it has almost become second nature, but it still takes time better spent on implementing the logic of the project. So it is great news to hear that Microsoft are releasing something called 'Dynamic Data'. This will essentially take your LINQ2SQL mapping class and build web pages to manage the entities.

It will also put validators on fields if they are nullable and by default not show foreign/primary keys as well as provide hooks and integration points. All of this logic can be altered and you can give dynamic data templates to use for each data type. This will save us a lot of time in implementing admin screens to manage our data models.

Instead of providing a run-through, it is better to look at the folllowing blog which provides good examples as well as a more detailed overview.

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/12/14/new-asp-net-dynamic-data-support.aspx

We are hoping this kind of RAD development will enable us to be more cost efficient on bespoke small-medium sized software projects

Back from holiday

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 08:22:50 GMT

Its back to work after a lovely break in Portugal. Agilis have won a couple more website projects and are quoting on two large projects for us. I will post more information shortly, when I get back into work mode.

On another point, SP1 for Visual Studo 2008 will be available this summer. Check out Scott Guthries blog for the exciting new features:

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/05/12/visual-studio-2008-and-net-framework-3-5-service-pack-1-beta.aspx

New Work

Fri, 09 May 2008 11:05:19 GMT

Agilis Software are pleased to announce that we have won two more web projects.

These are the development of a new content management system and website for Employment relations.

The other is working on new developments for Uk Girl Thing

We will keep you posted as the projects progress

PageRank Update

Thu, 08 May 2008 11:40:09 GMT

The latest PageRank update has been rolled out. Agilis Software has felt the full force with a drop from 5 to 3!. We are assuming this is down to the sponsored links we have added recently. We are currently deciding whether to remove these and lose revenue.

On a positive note most of the sites we have been involved with have experienced positive results in pagerank changes.

Photos of run

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 09:02:30 GMT

The weather ended up being quite good for the half marathon on Sunday monrning, just a light drizzle and no wind. It was a well organised event and a record number of entries (5500)

I managed to achieve a time of 1:27:23 coming in at position 198, roll on robin hood marathon.

Sheffield H/Marathon

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 15:45:19 GMT

The Sheffield half marathon is almost upon us (April 27th). I am aiming for a personal best of under 1:27. Good luck to anyone else doing it. Will post some pics after the event

Stephen Stone

WPF Progress bar

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 10:31:50 GMT

As part of the WPF project we are developing, it is a requirement for the application to communicate with a central server as part of the occassionally connected scenario.

The synchronisation process required a progress bar, in order to keep the user informed of the process.

We acheived this by creating a new XAML window and setting its border to none, in fact rather than me attempting to explain, here is the XAML:

The XAML is very simple, you will notice the ViewBox we added to the window, this is to acheive text displayed on top of the progress bar.

The following resources show how the bar has been styled:

Once styled, we could now get on with updating the bar. This was done by utilising the Backgroundworker component. We setup the component in the constructor of the page:

worker = new BackgroundWorker();
worker.DoWork += new DoWorkEventHandler(worker_DoWork);
worker.ProgressChanged += new ProgressChangedEventHandler(worker_ProgressChanged);
worker.WorkerReportsProgress = true;
worker.RunWorkerCompleted += new RunWorkerCompletedEventHandler(worker_RunWorkerCompleted);
this.progressBar1.Value = 0;
this.Cursor = Cursors.Wait;
worker.RunWorkerAsync();

We then coded the event handlers for the worker, the following is test code and has been replaced by our synchronisation code:

void worker_DoWork(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
{
for (int i = 1; i <= 10; i++)
{
Thread.Sleep(4000);
worker.ReportProgress(i * 10);
}
}

Here is the code to update the progress and the text, notice we don't have to call invoke even though we are on a seperate thread to the UI, because we used the backgroundworker, it handles it for us.

void worker_ProgressChanged(object sender, ProgressChangedEventArgs e)
{
this.progressBar1.Value = e.ProgressPercentage;
this.textBlock.Text = e.ProgressPercentage.ToString() + "...";
}

Finally, we have the code for the synch completing:

void worker_RunWorkerCompleted(object sender, RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs e)
{
this.Cursor = Cursors.Arrow;
if (e.Error == null)
{
this.Close();
}
else
{
MessageBox.Show(e.Error.Message);
this.Close();
}
}

The example achieves a nice looking progress bar that enables you to provide a realistic view of the progress of a process.

SQL CE and LINQ

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 09:49:38 GMT

As part of the Malachi project we are developing. A requirement is to have windows applications running on occassionally connected laptops.

Therefore, we had the requirement to store data locally. We didn't want to leave a large footprint, so opted for SQL CE 3.5 as this now supports LINQ.

Creating the schema

First of all we needed to create the database schema, this was the first problem. SQL management studio 2005 only supports sql CE 3.1, so you cannot use it. Luckily VS2008 does support it, but using the limited server explorer view, which did not provide us with something like query analyser to run T-SQL commands in order to execute DDL. SQL server 2008 does support editing CE 3.5, but is still in CTP.

Luckliy, we came across a nice application called Data port console, a trial version for 30 days can be downloaded from here: http://www.primeworks-mobile.com/Downloads/DPCon.html This allows scripts to be run against 3.5 databases.

The next issue was to create the DDL commands, we already had a similar schema on the server side using SQL Server Express edition, which would be storing all the data when the laptops connect, so we scripted the tables out. First I tried to run the exact script, which failed. We then realised that the syntax would obviously be slightly different, for instance there is no varchar datatype just nvarchar in the compact edition. We edited the file and managed to reproduce the schema in the SQL CE database.

Using LINQ

Next we wanted to create a LINQ dbml file from the CE database. After receiving errors from the LINQ designer that the provider was not supported, we found out that you can only use SqlMetal.exe from the command line. So we generated the dbml from this utility and added it to the project, this added an entry to define the connection string in the app.config.

Finally, we tested this by trying updates/inserts using LINQ which worked fine. The next stage is building the WPF and binding to the Exceed datagrid, as WPF does not provide a datagrid.... will keep you posted!!

Deep Zoom Example

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 00:00:00 GMT

We have uploaded a great example of a new feature in Silverlight 2 called Deep Zoom (codename: seadragon). We took a high resoltion shot of a piece of jewellery (thanks to stonesilver) and created the following:

http://ring.agilissoftware.co.uk

The demo is simply showing the capabilities. We need to edit the photo as there are a few imperfections with the image. We are also going to create a montage of images, so the user can browse a whole product range at once. You will need to install the latest silverlight plug-in. This can be done by simply going to the link above.

Simply left click the image to activate it. You can then do the following

Zoom in (Left click)
Zoom out (Shift + Left click)
Pan (Hold left mouse button and move cursor)

The code required to produce this is very small, and the original code is taken from Scott Hanselman's blog.

I must give a big thank you to Antony Croft for making us aware of this new feature.

Build Investment Live

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 21:28:25 GMT

Agilis have finally completed the Buildinvestment website.

Build Investment provide services to help customers buy and rent houses. They wanted a professional looking brochure site, which would advertise their services and demonstrate case studies.

The site was built using ASP.NET 2

New Silverlight Project

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 08:25:51 GMT

Well lots of exciting projects seem to be underway at the moment, utilising the latest technologies offerred by Microsoft.

We are excited to announce that we have won the contract to develop a new jewellery website (StoneSilver), we have decided on incorporating a few silverlight elements into this, which will really alter the standard user experience for people on the site.

We will keep you up to date as this project develops, but having completed the prototypes for one of the areas, it is looking very good.

Sage Integration

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 08:18:46 GMT

Agilis have successfully helped Internet Gardener integrate website orders with their Sage Line 50 accounting software.

As orders come into the website, they are seamlesly transferred into the sage software, which can then manage stock allocations and create purchase orders and invoices.

The cost of this integration was relatively inexpensive to the amount of time saved in administration. If you would like to find out more about integrating with Sage or any other software systems you may run, please contact Agilis Software

LINQ Example

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 21:35:26 GMT

As promised, I am going to give you a run through of how we implemented a job search facility by utilising SQL LINQ.

The article should give you a good idea of how simple the process is.

First WPF project

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 21:29:32 GMT

Agilis Software are to develop their first windows forms software application utilising WPF

We have recently won a contract to develop software for Malachi Community Trust. The software will enable remote users to enter information through the software which will then be synchronised with a central remote server.

By utilising WPF we will be able to provide a more attractive user interface quickly by utilising the design tools within Blend.

The project will also incorporate SQL Server Compact edition (v3.5) as the data store for the software, as we needed something with a small footprint that would still allow us to utilise the benefits of LINQ.

We will keep you up to date with progress. We are looking to complete the project within 2 months.

Job Search with LINQ

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 21:08:06 GMT

Agilis are in the process of adding extra functionality to the turner stubbs website. We are adding a job search facility with an administration site to manage the jobs.

We have chosen LINQ to develop this as it will enable us to build the architecture a lot quicker by use of the SQL LINQ ORM. The search should go live in the next week or two.

Agilis have found SQL LINQ very efficient in allowing us to reduce our lead time and costs for producing bespoke elements to websites. I will be posting some example code shortly which goes through how we implemented the job search.

Agilis Photos

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 15:33:27 GMT

As part of a recent publicity campaign, we had some professional photos taken for articles that appeared in the press. A big thanks to Spike Photography for the excellent pictures

Proturf LIVE!!

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 20:37:26 GMT

After a few months of work, the new Proturf website has been put live.

The site offers an e-commerce system as well as a complicated delivery calcualtion which is based on delivery postal area. All of this is configured through a seperate administration website.

The site has been built using ASP.NET 2 and SQL2005

Turner Stubbs goes live

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 14:14:59 GMT

We released the new Turner Stubbs website mid-week, they are an industrial recruitment company. They were looking for a website to present a fresh, clean and professional image.

Recognition for Agilis

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 20:22:16 GMT

A big thank you to Business Link for helping us develop as a company.

We appeared in the evening post as part of a weekly feature detailing the success stories of various companies around the midlands.

The article can be viewed here:

Article

Protx Partner

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 21:06:12 GMT

Agilis Software are proud to anounce joining the Protx partner scheme, this should allow us to offer clients more advice/offers and information regarding the payment provider.

Comodo Partner

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 08:59:43 GMT

Agilis Software are now enrolled in the Comodo partner program.
This will allow us to offer significant cost savings on the purchase of digital certificates, contact us to find out more.

New Int. Gardener website

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 15:55:43 GMT

Agilis have released the new version of the Internet Gardener website.

The internet gardener experienced great success when they launched the first site 2 years ago, since then Agilis have helped redesign the new site, which is now more user friendly and offers friendly URLs as well as a host of new administration options.

The final stage of the project, will be to link the website to their Sage accounts system.

Thanks Labarde

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 20:21:45 GMT

I would like to say a big thank you to Brian, Jenny, Paul, Anna and Lucy for a lovely time at Labarde.
We had a great New Years in France. I will be uploading some photos when I get a chance.

Happy Christmas

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 21:12:35 GMT

Agilis Software would like to wish everyone involved with us over the past year a happy christmas and a great new year.

Lincliff-Task goes live

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 21:07:23 GMT

The Lincliff-Task website has now been completed and can be viewed here: www.lincliff-task.co.uk

Receptor Fire goes live

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 15:30:23 GMT

Receptor fire was put live on the 11th of December.
The site is a complete redesign of the original website.

Take a look at http://www.firefirefire.co.uk

Karina Jewellery released

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Karina fashion jewellery was put live on the 3rd of December.
The site showcases karinas range of jewellery and is integrated with the Protx payment system.

take a look at www.karinafashionjewellery.co.uk
We have also optimised the website for various keyphrases and are already showing up on the first or second page of google for key phrases like 'Fashion Jewellery Nottingham'

Thanks Internet Gardener

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 12:29:18 GMT

Agilis developed the Internet gardener website (www.internetgardener.co.uk) a couple of years ago. Since then they seem to be going from strength to strength. With an anticipated turnover this year of �500,000 they are starting to challenge the major gardening sites. More recently they have appeared in the evening post and Radio Nottingham, during which they mentioned Agilis Software (thanks for the plug).

They are now the finallists in the young retailer of the year awards, and will find out later this month whether they have won.

Agilis have helped Internet Gardener achieve over 1000 hits per day through organic search engine referrals.

Silverlight emerging

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 08:06:17 GMT

Microsoft are about to release their new browser plugin Silverlight, which will offer a rich user experience for users that is far beyond anything we experience at the moment. Scott Guthrie is one of the people involved in the development of silverlight and offers a comprehensive view of it on his blog:

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/05/07/silverlight.aspx

Silverlight opens up a lot of opportunities to build significantly richer client experiences that run cross platform and cross browser. For .NET developers, it means that you can now write .NET code using any development language (VB, C#, Javascript, Python, Ruby and more), so you don't need to get bogged down with javascript, but it is there if you want it. Silverlight works with a subset of WPF, so the expression toolset can be used for building the UI.

Developers can download the following poster, to give them an idea of namespaces and features.

Finally, for anyone wanting to write a silverlight application, we have found the following demo a good starting point:

Analogue Clock

Agile Development

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 16:44:27 GMT

Agile development seems to have firmly replaced traditional waterfall methodologies in the software development industry.

As our name implies we are a firm beleiver in agile development methodologies and implement test driven development within iterative cycles....

.NET 3.5 is here

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 16:28:50 GMT

The release of .NET 3 and 3.5 seems to have opened up a whole array of design possibilities.

It incorporates WPF (Windows Presentation Framework) which enables designers to build rich user interfaces, these designs can then be merged into the developers code through the use of XAML to describe the interface. We have been looking at Expression Blend and are very impressed so far. You can get a free trial from here: http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/overview.aspx?key=blend

WPF is just part of it. The new version also brings LINQ, WCF, workflow and various syntax changes to the languages to allow for a better coding experience.

ECFG Goes live

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Our latest website to go fully live is ECFG (European Commission on Fungal Genetics). The site incorporates Microsoft Virtual Earth and is built using ASP.NET 2. We had to customise the popups in the map to enable to achieve the requirements. Take a look

Free ASP.NET Forum

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:00:00 GMT

A big thanks to YetAnotherForum.net. They provide an open source Forum written in ASP.NET 2, that provides one of the most comprehensive and flexible forums we have ever used. Take a look at our forum which is built using this platform.

If anyone has a requirement for a forum on their website, contact us or download the source code from YetAnotherForum. A big advantage of forums apart from it being a valuable resource for your customers is that it helps you rank well in the search engines based on the content being focused to your sector, as the forum discussions are crawled by search engines.

!!NEW website!!

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 00:00:00 GMT

We have added this blog along with a forum, all of this is available through RSS Feeds just click on the image to get the RSS feed. Hopefully, the site will allow everyone to keep up to date with our services and developments.

For those of you with a technical background, we will be using the blog and forum to discuss programming/web development features. Agilis Software primarily develop using the .NET platform, so this will be the main area of discussion.

If you have any comments/questions, just contact us here or call Stephen Stone on 07973 766989