LiveUI is a powerful, flexible & open source rich internet application framework for .NET.

It has a modular system which allows sharing .ascx user controls & resources between ASP.NET web applications.

Working with JavaScript from ASP.NET applications becomes simple as the framework includes tools for JavaScript generation, caching, dependency management & more.

LiveUI has an Extjs.Controls module which includes ASP.NET wrappers for all ExtJS components making usage of them so easy inside ASP.NET pages.

Also, there is a built-in solution for URL parsing & generation which means creating user friendly URLs is not a problem with the framework.

MonoDevelop is a free & advanced IDE that is mainly built for C# & other .NET languages.

It works in Linux, Windows & Mac OSX which is great, specially for developers who use multiple platforms but still want to work from the same interface.

MonoDevelop comes with advanced text editing features like code completion support for C# 3, code templates & code folding.

It also has an integrated debugger, web server (for instantly testing ASP.NET applications) & a GTK# visual designer.

The software also offers much more features like source control, makefile integration, unit testing, packaging & deployment, localization & more.

Today, e-mails are one of the most important parts of a web application as the app. may need to:

• connect to the user's e-mail addresses,
• send large volumes of e-mails,
• detect if the e-mails sent are bounced back or not,
• & much more that are vital for the application to function correctly

MailBee.NET Objects is a set of powerful & flexible .NET components for accomplishing any e-mail related task easily.

There are 6 components provided: SMTP, POP3, IMAP, Security, AntiSpam & Outlook where each of them can be bought seperately or as a bundle with serious discounts (upto 66%).

What are the components?

SMTP

It is the component for composing & sending e-mails with just a line of code.

E-mails can be sent with/without (can perform DNS MX lookups) a relay server & it supports every authentication type.

SMTP component can also send bulk mail + do mail merge over database, track accepted/refused recipients & much more.

POP3

It downloads mail from POP3 servers, parses them & prepares for display.

If wanted, the component can download only the headers & get "already downloaded messages" (great for broken connections).

It also has support for secure TLS/SSL connections out-of-box (supports Gmail, etc.) which is generally a headache without such a component.

IMAP

It is the POP3 component + download/manage folders, search, flag, upload, move, copy messages, download message envelopes or any specific parts or attributes of messages, etc.

Security

This is for enabling MailBee.NET objects to communicate with TLS/SSL enabled mail servers & use S/MIME for e-mail encryption.

It can sign e-mails with a digital signature, DomainKeys and/or DKIM signature.

AntiSpam

Using the AntiSpam component, it is possible to analyze messages using the Bayesian filters, return a spam score & take action (if necessary).

The best part is, it offers an auto-learning feature that will help keeping the spam database up-to-date.

Outlook

It simply makes converting e-mails from .MSG format into .EML format & vice versa possible with a single line of code.

Conclusion

To sum up, MailBee.NET Objects offer every feature that can be expected from e-mail components. And, they go few steps further & enable processing server-side tasks like DNS MX lookups or antispam.

Also, the components are very well documented with samples & supported by a professional company + an active community.

P.S. This post is a sponsored review.

IZWebFileManager is a powerful open source file manager control for ASP.NET 2.

It works very similar to Windows Explorer & can copy/move/rename/delete (multiple) files and folders.

The file manager supports:

• file upload
  
• displaying hidden files and folders
  
• drag'n drop
  
• right-click context menu
  
• keyboard controls
  
• & more..
  

IZWebFileManager has a multilingual interface & offers a permission control where any feature can be disabled.

AJAX Upload is a free script for easily impelementing Ajaxed upload interfaces.

It comes with ready-to-use server-side code for PHP, ASP.NET & Coldfusion.

The script doesn't require any JS library to run & compatible with any of them (the example code uses jQuery).

As the upload function is fired with JavaScript, it is possible to use any object/image as the upload button which makes stying much easier.

AJAX Upload provides access to every level of the upload process (before, after, onComplete) for a better customization.

nopCommerce is an open source shopping cart software that is built with ASP.NET & uses MSSQL for storing the data.

It comes with a powerful backend & highly customizable frontend.

nopCommerce has all the features of a standard e-commerce websites & offers more like:

• support for kit products (e.g. build your own computer)
• real-time currency exchange rates
• multilingual interface
• compare selected products
• highly flexible shipping calculation (integrated providers, width/height/order total based & more)
• tax calculations by country/state/product & more
• built-in forum & polls
• wishlist

One of the most impressive parts of the software is the integrated marketing capabilities it has. You can customize the design of a product or category page, create any type of discounts & even activate an affiliate system.

nopCommerce supports most of the popular payment gateways & with its pluggable modular/layered architecture, new ones can be added with ease (some are already created).

Microblogging, with the wide usage of Twitter, is a hot subject in today’s web.

Using few words & spending less effort compared to the standard blogging, it becomes possible to share knowledge, feelings, etc. And, it keeps users connected to other users with the simple yet powerful community features.

While there are very popular microblogging services like Twitter, Tumblr or Plurk, being a rival may not be (or may be) the best idea. However, in order to create something unique, a community for a closed group or a microblog for a single user, there are still huge opportunities.

Here are 9 open source microblogging applications to create your own:

StatusNet (PHP)

StatusNet (previously Laconica) is the engine which runs the popular microblogging site Identi.ca.

It is built with PHP/MySQL & offers a smooth usage as it is a widely used, mature application.

P.S. The source can be found here.

Yonkly (Asp.Net)

Yonkly is an Asp.Net-powered Twitter-clone for creating your own microblogging community network.

Besides the open source version, it has a hosted & an advanced standalone version.

Read the rest of this entry »

Kentico CMS is a powerful, flexible & complete content management system that is built with ASP.NET.

It has various modules that make building any type of website possible from blogs to e-commerce or wikis to social networking.

The application comes with an easy-to-use WYSIWYG editor for creating/editing the content.

One of the unique features Kentico offers is the worklow management. It allows you to control the process of content creation & modifications by creating custom approval steps (like proofreading, editing, approval, etc.).

Kentico is multilingual & can manage multiple websites from the same administrator panel.

It has an API that allows you to script any Kentico CMS operation (like creating a new document, user or even the whole web site) which is great for integrations with any 3rd party software. On the other hand, with the modules integrated, there is almost no extra function needed. Here are all the modules it offers:

• Blogs
• Booking system
• Content Rating
• Content Staging
• E-commerce
• Event calendar
• Forums
• Friends
• Geomapping
• Groups
• Image Gallery
• Media Library
• Message Boards
• Messaging
• Newsletter
• On-line Forms
• Polls
• Reporting
• Taxonomy
• Wiki
• Web Farm Support
• Web Analytics

which simply show what the application is capable of.

And, these are not all it has. Kentico generates SEO-friendly URLs, has full-text search support, a powerful role-based security system & much more..

Besides the paid versions, it offers a limited free version which is ideal for smaller websites. The free edition have no time limitation & can be used even for commercial purposes with no additional cost. It can be downloaded from here.

Kentico CMS is reliable and stable product & I didn’t came to any bug. But if that occurs, the company promises to fix it within 7 working days, furthermore they plant a tree in the name of the client who finds the bug. You can read more about this interesting initiative here.

The product can be evaluated by downloading the TRIAL or FREE editions. Other way is to use the Virtual Lab service which allows you to test-drive Kentico CMS on-line, without installing anything on your local PC.

P.S. This post is a sponsored review.

Forums are clearly one of the most standard ways of sharing knowledge on the net. With easy-to-use interfaces & strong community features, they are still very functional & popular.

They can be easily integrated into a website by customizing the look & feel or used as a framework which is sometimes a good idea considering the features they offer.

Here are 9 widely-used, open-source & free forum softwares, where most of them are built with PHP, that you may consider using:

phpBB (PHP)

phpBB is one of the oldest & widely used forum softwares around. It is being updated frequently with improvements in speed, security & features.

It comes with a powerful administrator panel where all aspects of the system can be managed & supports almost any database.

The software has a very crowded community which makes it easier to get support.

MyBB (PHP)

This free forum software works with MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite.

MyBB has nice features like calendar/events, mass mailing to members, a built-in theme editor & more.

Besides an admin panel, a moderator panel helps managing the system by multiple users.

Read the rest of this entry »

FormFields is a very handy resource which makes it easier to produce more usable form entry fields with ASP.NET.

Rather than writing markup over and over for things like validation, regular expressions, dropdownlist databinding, etc., FormFields handles all the hassle for you.

Here is an example date input with a date picker & validation:

<formField:textBox ID="tb_SchoolDate" runat="server" Type="Date" Required="True"  Title="School Date" />

Yes, that easy & with a clean markup (the look & feel can be customized via CSS).

FormFields requires .Net Framework 3.5 & AjaxControlToolkit to run.