I've just released my re-designed website and blog. I finally decided it was time to give up the blue and yellow look for a more inviting green and orange look. Below are some notable changes:

• The major structure and content has stayed the same, but I have made some perks to drive more traffic to portions of the site. All incoming links remain the same.
• I have also decided to ditch the full width of your browser to a more appealing 1024px width. This gives me the opportunity for placement of information.
• I've added a quicklinks and a quickblog section to the right sidebar allowing for quick access to the most important information easily.
• There's no more "ideas" page - mainly because it was just a page that didn't get looked at or where I wouldn't take ideas from anymore.

If you come across any issues, please contact me or leave a comment!

Just wanted to share the beta of my re-designed website. Please kick the tires some for me and give me some honest criticism. The first thing you'll notice is the ditching of the yellow & blue with a more fun green & orange.

You'll also notice that I did a bit of re-organization within the menu, but for the most common tasks - I added a "quicklinks" section that hopefully has the most common tasks one is looking for. I've also tied my blog in with the new design, displaying the last 10 entries, hoping to drive more visitors to the site.

Again, please enjoy this and comment on what you like, don't like, whatever!

Linky to Beta

Version 2.0.6 of Excentrics World Server Controls, targeting the .NET 3.5 framework has just been released. This is purely a re-compilation against .NET 3.5 framework including the basic binaries and Microsoft Ajax.

This version can be downloaded by visiting http://www.eworldui.net/Download.aspx and choosing "3.5" as your framework version. The official build number for this release is the same (2.0.6.2393).

My hosting company installed Microsoft AJAX 1.0 RTM this evening and broke my website temporarily. I've since then rebuild my website against the RTM bits myself, however have noticed in certain areas you may need to delete your cache (or do a shift+refresh) to get the download form to work. Sorry for any inconvenience this caused, but it was out of my hands!

Version 2.0.6 of Excentrics World Server Controls has just been released targeting Microsoft AJAX Extensions, RTM (didn't know it was released, visit ScottGu's blog post announcing it!) to ensure continued full compatibility as well as a few bug fixes. It should be noted with this release, the control set's compatibility layer will no longer be compatible with any prior versions of Microsoft AJAX Extensions. A breaking change from 2.0.5 to 2.0.6 is that the compatibility layer no longer includes validation controls, following suit with Microsoft AJAX.

The items that were fixed are:

• Fixed issue where the culture, if not set, was pulling from CurrentUICulture instead of CurrentCulture for the CalendarPopup and TimePicker.
• Fixed issue where if the culture set for the CalendarPopup or TimePicker was a neutral culture, that it would attempt to resolve a specific culture for parsing of the date & time.
• Fixed an issue where pasting into the NumericBox in IE with valid text that had whitespace surrounding it would fail.

The updated version can be downloaded by visiting http://www.eworldui.net/Download.aspx. The official build number for this release is 2.0.6.2393.

Version 2.0.5 of Excentrics World Server Controls has just been released targeting Microsoft AJAX Extensions, RC1 to ensure continued full compatibility as well as some other bug fixes. It should be noted that with this release, the control set will no longer be compatible with any prior versions of Microsoft AJAX Extensions. The items that were added/fixed are:

• Added disabling auto-complete for the calendar/timepicker textbox.
• Fixed issue where supplying less decimal characters than the max specified would throw an exception upon postback for the Numeric Box.
• Fixed issue where readonly was enabled on the Numeric Box and typing over selected text would delete the text.
• Fixed enabling or disabling the Calendar Popup control via client script multiple times so that the control doesn't display the calendar when clicking on the image.
• Fixed issue where setting Nullable=True, the visible date was 1/1/1900 on the Calendar Popup.
• Fixed month/year popup from jumping 10 years down to 5 years since that is what is displayed on the Calendar Popup.

The updated version can be downloaded by visiting http://www.eworldui.net/Download.aspx. The official build number for this release is 2.0.5.2356.

Version 2.0.4 of Excentrics World Server Controls has just been released targeting just two annoyance bugs that were introduced with v2.0.3. The control set has also been compiled against Microsoft AJAX Extensions, Beta 2 to ensure continued full compatibility - however it'll still function just fine with Beta 1. The bugs that were fixed were:

• Fixed issue where the *Image types for the CalendarPopup and TimePicker were not being rendered correctly to the client.
• Fixed issue where the next month link or image was being displayed outside of the calendar.

The updated version can be downloaded by visiting http://www.eworldui.net/Download.aspx. The official build number for this release is 2.0.4.2327.

I'm happy to announce that Excentrics World Server Controls has hit version 2.0.3. This version focuses primarily on Microsoft AJAX Extensions, Beta 1 support enabling developers to utilize the Excentrics World Server Controls through a compatibility layer. The full change-list is as follows:

• Full compatibility with Microsoft AJAX Extensions, Beta 1.
• Added support for applying the ToolTip to the title hyperlink in the CollapsablePanel.
• Added support for a valid alpha or numeric character within the MaskedTextBox using the character 'x' as the indicator.
• Fixed issue where setting the calendar width was not applying correctly in the CalendarPopup.
• Fixed issue where selecting the same date/time would raise client side events in the CalendarPopup and TimePicker.
• Fixed issue where setting the Page Culture to something other than en-US would not display the calendar correctly in the CalendarPopup.
• Fixed issue where special day styling was not being applied correctly to weekdays and weekends in the CalendarPopup.
• Fixed issue with Internet Explorer when the control is contained within a scrollable div in the CalendarPopup and TimePicker.

For information regarding the compatibility mode with Microsoft AJAX Extensions, Beta 1, please view the Read Me document installed with the setup utility.

The updated version can be downloaded by visiting http://www.eworldui.net/Download.aspx. The official build number for this release is 2.0.3.2310.

With the latest release of Microsoft AJAX, Beta 1 - things have drastically changed requiring a more stricter model which forces controls to register themselves through the ScriptManager versus using Page.ClientScript. This change, unfortunately, breaks just about every control out on the market when being used within the UpdatePanel control (including ASP.NET controls). Changes need to be made to Excentrics World Server Controls to enable full compatibility, and these changes are under-way. More information will be distributed concerning the new compatibility layer being developed as it is completed and released. Until then, if you require the use of UpdatePanel and Excentrics World Server Controls, I would recommend staying on the July CTP.