Project Silk

The patterns & practices Web Guidance Team has been working on Project Silk and has just published Drop 7 here on 4/26/2011.

View a 5 minute HD video on the Mileage Stats application here.

The Mileage Stats application is a multi-page interactive web application where the pages are rendered without requiring a post back. This creates the illusion of a desktop application. The lack of post backs enable rich UI transitions between states (pages.) The browser application runs very fast because of the client-side data caching.

The Mileage Stat application JavaScript is modularized using jQuery UI Widgets. The widgets allow breaking the UI into small discrete stateful objects; providing a clean separation of responsibilities and concerns. I published a QuickStart on jQuery UI Widgets here.

Project Silk went through an independent security review last week. No security defects were found in the application or use of the ASP.NET MVC3 feature set.

Mileage Stats uses OpenID for authentication.

Mileage Stats leverages Internet Explorer 9 Pinned Sites features. Below you can see the notification icon that indicates there are more than 3 outstanding maintenance tasks for the owner’s three vehicles. Mileage Stats also displays dynamic jump lists for maintenance tasks. 

Mileage Stats sports a rich chart page that allows the selection of three charts, vehicle selection and begin and end date, data selection. The chart data requires no post back and runs very fast.

The Web Guidance Team has started writing a book about Project Silk and creating interactive web applications.  The team plans to drop every Tuesday between now and the end of May 2011. You can preview and comments on the book content each week and get an updated version of the above application from the http://silk.codeplex.com site.

Book Table of Contents

Preface
Ch1: Introduction
Ch2: Client-side Architecture
Ch3: jQuery Widgets
Ch4: Client-Side Navigation
Ch5: Client-Side UI Design and Layout
Ch6: Client-Side UI
Ch7: Client-Side Data Management, Caching, Validation
Ch8: IE9 Shell Support
Ch9: Server-side Architecture
Ch10: Testing Web Applications
Ch11: Security
Ch12: Performance and Minification
Appendix A: How-to Topic Listing (in the book)
Appendix B: Widget QuickStart
Appendix C: Testing How-to Topics

We welcome and appreciate your feedback on the application and book content.

Have a great day,

Just a grain of sand on the worlds beaches.