Mashup 101: Virtual Earth and ASP.NET Atlas (Part II)

Posted By: keydet | Apr 24th, 2006 @ 6:00 AM | 51,107 Views | 14 Comments

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In Part II of this two part screencast, Microsoft Federal Developer Evangelist Marc Schweigert demonstrates how ASP.NET Atlas abstracts the complexities of AJAX programming and provides a new set of tools to your developer toolbox to build richer, more engaging web user interfaces. You'll see how much easier it is to build the solution from Part I using ASP.NET Atlas.

This screencast was inspired by various tutorials and walkthroughs from the following:

http://atlas.asp.net/
http://spaces.msn.com/virtualearth/blog/
http://blogs.msdn.com/jhawk/
http://viavirtualearth.com/

The source code for this screencast is available here. Don't forget to check out the Federal D&PE blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/federaldev/.

-Marc

Tags: ASP.NET, CSharp, Internet Explorer, MSN, Virtual Earth, Visual Studio, Web Services, Windows Live

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coderama

Very useful walkthrough.

Is there a way to place a pushpin where you click using Atlas Declarative Syntax like you had in part 1 ?

Does the Atlas library implement all of Virtual Earth's API ? Is is documented anywhere ?

Thanks very much.

Steven10000

What software application are you using to record your screencast?

richieboy1980

keydet

Camtasia Studio from TechSmith.

keydet

Coderama,

There isn't any public documentation for the Atlas VE control (that I know of). I used the JavaScript source code and some samples other folks posted on the web. Having looked at the source code, I don't believe the Atlas VE control has as much capability as using the JavaScript library from the VE team. We should see more in future builds.

keydet

I just came across this today...

Go to http://atlas.asp.net/docs/Client/Browser/jsBrowser.aspx
Select "Sys.UI" from the namespace dropdown
Select "VirualEarthMap" from the type dropdown

You'll see the properties, methods, and events for the control.

Bob1

Marc,
these demos start with a htm page not an aspx. Can you comment on that.

Thanks

keydet

Sure. The first screencast (part I) starts off with a .htm file because there is nothing ASP.NET specific about the page. I just use HTML, Javascript, the VE JavaScript control, and XMLHTTP. Part of the point was to show people that you can build VE solutions even if you aren't an ASP.NET developer. In part II, I leverage ASP.NET "Atlas" features to build the same thing cleaner/easier. Hope that answered your question.

-Marc

coderama

In that case, is it possible, whilst using the Atlas Sys.UI.VirtualEarthMap object to access the underlying Msn.VE.MapControl for added functionality.

For example, I would like to display the coordinates where the pointer position is as the mouse is moved around the map. How to do this using Atlas ?