New MIX Sites Up | The Coffeehouse

HumanCompiler
Compiling humans...and code

For those interested in web stuff, the new MIX 09 conference site is up as well as the new MIX Online site. The Channel 9 dev team built the new MIX Online site using ASP.NET MVC. Thomas Lewis's team did the design and content for the site.

For those interested, we will be publishing the source code for the site.

Zeus
Why is the caption missing??

What I am interested in, is why you are not basing the site on the EvNet codebase ... why build a site from the ground up ?

CKurt
while( ( !succeed=try() ) ) { }

Okay, first tought.. Awfull
Where did the slick clean interface go? Way to crowed in my humble opinion.

But mix still is a cool conference.

Dodo
I'm your creativity creator™ :)

It does look... different Smiley

stevo_
Human after all

In reply to Dodo

#Oct 22nd, 2008 @ 8:57 AM

It looks very cool and I like most it, theres just a few places where they could of done it a little cleaner, javascript I'm not sure how to comment because the xhtml strict websites really require javascript to function properly.. I think a small notice to non-js enabled clients would be nice.. instead of leaving people with uhh? moments a plenty.

harumscarum
out of memory

So would you use MVC again for a site?

jeffsand
Inch by Inch

In reply to Zeus

#Oct 22nd, 2008 @ 1:40 AM

This is a subset of EvNet. The underlying database and services are EvNet, with much simpler front-end written in ASP.NET MVC.

This is a partnership so part the content side the team did the design and the base HTML/CSS. It made sense to use MVC to keep it clean and easily take this client code and factor in with preserving the HTML. We're taking a very different approach Mix Online than the rest of EvNet, that I think is a good one. Instead of yet another video blog, this site is a place for the team to push up articles and code that relate to web/design.

It also helps us with less "big sites" to maintain and more time for 9.

Duncan, Sampy, Erik and Nathan will certainly share their experiences with MVC. It was a good one.

HumanCompiler
Compiling humans...and code

In reply to jeffsand

#Oct 22nd, 2008 @ 10:57 AM

What he said. On a personal level it's something we all wanted to learn too. It was a win-win going with MVC. It kept things simple and allowed us to build exactly what the content team wanted.

As for our experience with MVC, yah, it was awesome! There are a few gotchyas here and there (especially on the data side with LINQ to SQL), but we're 99% happy with it. We'll be sharing more about it after PDC.

Sampy
This will be the sixth time we have destroyed it and we have become exceedingly efficient at it

In reply to HumanCompiler

#Oct 22nd, 2008 @ 11:07 AM

For those speculating, the "after PDC" part is just because we have lots of stuff to do for PDC so we'll be doing that Smiley

Zeus
Why is the caption missing??

In reply to HumanCompiler

#Oct 22nd, 2008 @ 11:07 AM

Kudos guys, the site looks awesome, and works quite well. There are a few kinks that could have been more MVC friendly, but all in all, great job.

At my company our internal time tracking application uses MVC Preview 4 (moving to Beta 1 as we speek) and I just love it. We use LINQ quite a bit, the newest batch of Telerik UI controls with client site databanding and more goodies, and we were very happy with the speed of development.

When I started doing that application, MVC was in Preview 1, and I have had to do quite a bit of code rewriting every time MVC has moved up a Preview level.

jamie

In reply to Zeus

#Oct 22nd, 2008 @ 2:36 PM

cool site

i dont know if id have used black for a conference site - not as if anyone would need to print it i guess..

looks cool though - i like the bars

perfect for the young crowd your aiming this at.

glad i dont have to use or read it though Tongue Out

jamie

In reply to jamie

#Oct 22nd, 2008 @ 5:08 PM

actually - let me explain that...

c9 / mix / 10 etc all look like the new ms.

but the rest of ms looks like the old ms

or other ms sites look like other - new- ms's

my only critisism is - apple sites ALL look like apple.

there isnt a cool c9 apple that looks better or newer than other apple things

its all one thing - and while i cant stand macs, i like the simple design on their site (minus the lame jaggy body font they use)

jeffsand
Inch by Inch

In reply to jamie

#Oct 22nd, 2008 @ 5:12 PM

we're actually making a seperation between conference and event site.

http://www.visitmix.com - is the year round blog and http://2009.visitmix.com is the site for this years event (subtle connections in the design). think of the relationship of the event site to the blog how http://www.aneventapart.com/ relates to http://www.alistapart.com/

CKurt
while( ( !succeed=try() ) ) { }

In reply to jeffsand

#Oct 22nd, 2008 @ 5:27 PM

Where did the silverlight app go that hosted all the sessions and keynotes from mix07 , mix08 ?

When I have some spare time i love watching ons of those.

Duncanma
Just Coding for Fun...

In reply to CKurt

#Oct 23rd, 2008 @ 8:08 AM

Still at http://sessions.visitmix.com/, sorry if we've made it harder to find

Duncanma
Just Coding for Fun...

In reply to Zeus

#Oct 22nd, 2008 @ 2:36 PM

don't take this as being argumentative, I'm just very curious what you mean by

Zeus said:

There are a few kinks that could have been more MVC friendly, but all in all, great job.

What about the site, that you can see from the external UI, is not MVC friendly?

littleguru
<3 Seattle

The site is very nice Smiley

Great works guys.

Zeus
Why is the caption missing??

In reply to Duncanma

#Oct 23rd, 2008 @ 8:33 AM

What I meant was that you could have used MVC further, on the search page:

Now:
http://visitmix.com/Search?Tag=Announcements
http://visitmix.com/Search?Term=Homer+Rocks

Change into:
http://visitmix.com/Search/Tag/Announcements
http://visitmix.com/Search/Term/Homer+Rocks

Just makes the URL's a little more pretty Smiley

stevo_
Human after all

In reply to Zeus

#Oct 23rd, 2008 @ 1:30 PM

How are you suposed to do that from vanilla http gets? you'd have to intercept the search form submit event, and instead redirect.. you could do this considering the javascript.. but - why? you'd still have to support both types of urls from lack of javascript support issues or errors.

Sampy
This will be the sixth time we have destroyed it and we have become exceedingly efficient at it

In reply to Zeus

#Oct 23rd, 2008 @ 1:30 PM

To be a bit pedantic, that's more of a "not using routing" than an MVC thing. Tongue Out

The reason we didn't go that route (pun intended) was that searchs are queries so using a query string here isn't such a bad thing. Query strings for permalinks are things we like to get rid of but for a search we think it's okay.

Zeus
Why is the caption missing??

In reply to Sampy

#Oct 23rd, 2008 @ 1:58 PM

True Sampy, lack of routing, that is a more correct naming ... I am just a perfectionist on these things ... when I started working with MVC, I tried to have ALL urls use the routing, not just some ... but that's just me Smiley

I like the site though, the main navigation is a bit too confusing, but all-in-all a great job ...

Duncanma
Just Coding for Fun...

In reply to Zeus

#Oct 23rd, 2008 @ 4:33 PM

It is also worth noting that you could do that same result using regular ASP.NET, in fact search on on10.net worked like that (/search/xbox) but we changed it because we felt the query string was more representative of what you were doing... and it made the zero results case seem more normal as well (we return a page that says 'nothing found', versus a 404).

Definitely something to consider, but as Sampy mentioned, friendly URLs and such isn't really anything to do with MVC ... this site uses them already (for example /forums/Coffeehouse/434598-New-MIX-Sites-Up/ for this page)

Zeus
Why is the caption missing??

In reply to Duncanma

#Oct 23rd, 2008 @ 5:09 PM

Absolutely true ... MVC is not just the routing mechanism, it has so much to offer. I used the [Authorize] property in the controllers quite a bit, thought that was quite an intuitive approach to access control.

stevo_
Human after all

In reply to Zeus

#Oct 23rd, 2008 @ 6:06 PM

Although the attributes are badly designed.. since the attribute instance itself is the one that gets called during points of the request.. while this works for most things you want to do.. it makes it messy when you want your execution to be in context of a group of attributes.. (such as permission sets).

Currently you'd have to apply an attribute that then went to find marker attributes.. I've always thought it would be a lot better to have a wcf channel like approach, where elements are defined on the channel and they have the chance to make a distinct change to the way the action is prepared.

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