To make your JavaScript more manageable, you should have a template engine of choice. I have been using Mustache.js for quite some time and love it. Instead of doing this:

var content = 'This is a ' + testA + ' test to ' + testB + ' put strings ' + testC;

You really should be doing this:

var template = 'This is a {{testA}} test to {{testB}} put strings {{testC}}';
var data = { testA: 'blog', testB: 'efficiently', testC: 'together' };
var content = Mustache.render(template, data);

Sure it looks like more lines of code, but throw ...
Telerik’s Sitefinity CMS has been advancing at a tremendous pace. We’ve loved all the great new features, most notably the support for MVC, the inclusion of Kendo UI and the various client side features that come along with these technologies. After building several Sitefinity widgets that relied heavily on JavaScript, including the wildly successful Falafel Dashboard, a slick HTML5 replacement for Sitefinity’s default, we realized that we were relying on Visual Studio less and less. We eventually reached a point where we didn’t really need Visual Studio at all. So we decided to build Falafel Tornado and empower Sitefinity developers everywhere ...
Falafel Software is pleased to announce FalafelCon 2013, the new annual training conference for software developers.

Capitola CA - 29th January, 2013 - Falafel Software’s new annual training conference, FalafelCon, will take place at Microsoft’s Silicon Valley Campus on June 10 and 11th, offering software developers four co-located events and 40 technical sessions to choose from.

FalafelCon’s four co-located events include Web and Mobile specific events that explore cutting edge software development techniques with Microsoft development tools. Advanced development topics include Azure tips and tricks, cross platform mobile development, NFC with Windows Phone, Windows 8 sensor integration and ...

Telerik's Kendo UI controls are efficient, client-side controls for web pages that are built on top of JavaScript/jQuery. The control suite includes all the usual suspects, i.e. grid, calendar, drop down lists, navigation controls (tab strip, panel bar, menu), tree views and windows. You may be a web designer, JavaScript/jQuery programmer or perhaps happier programming on the server-side. Stay tuned, because each development style has its own approach for creating Kendo UI controls.

Web Designers

Let's say you have a web page with existing content. You'd like to use Kendo UI controls in place of the HTML but don't want to dive ...

Every year, October kicks off a very busy season at Falafel : “Conference Season”. Multiple members of the team travel across the country and around world to share their expertise on a number of technologies. All Falafel Software team members spend their days, and often their nights, helping design and build cutting edge solutions for our customers. Their technical presentations draw from these real world experiences and are assembled, practiced, and presented in what little spare time they have. That’s why we call them “Rock Stars”.

This weekend at Silicon Valley Code Camp, Falafel’s entire team from around the ...

MVC 4 bundles and minifies scripts and style sheets for best performance.  This clean framework has some great selling points:

  • Automatically uses minified versions when you're running in production but leaves everything uncompressed and easily readable when you're debugging.
  • Reduces the markup needed to declare JavaScript and style files. Yet you can still control the order that files load in.
  • Allows bundling by using wild cards and variables. This allows you to load all the "Kendo" JavaScript files, for example.

A new MVC 4 app will bundle scripts and styles for jQuery, Knockout and Modernizr automatically, but you can create ...

In this post, I would like to open your eyes to a new way of developing JavaScript applications. We will be building modular JavaScript code on an MVC architecture while also handling dependencies. With these techniques, you can join a new era of web development and stop coding like it's 1999!

Prince - 1999

Asynchronous Module Definition (AMD)

First, let us get some terminology out the way. The Asynchronous Module Definition, or AMD, is a mechanism for defining modules such that the module and its dependencies can be asynchronously loaded. In other words, JavaScript files and units of code can be loaded via ...

To Sitefinity and Beyond! That’s where you’ll find Falafel Software CEO Lino Tadros sharing his Sitefinity knowledge and experience. Lino will join the Sitefinity team at the event to help educate and guide the community on Sitefinity development and best practices. His talk, “Deploying High Performing and Scalable Web Solutions” draws from the experience of developing over 150 Sitefinity solutions and will explain exactly how to optimize Sitefinity for the demands of the enterprise. You’ll learn how to configure IIS, properly cache data, eliminate ViewState, pre-compile sites, optimize JavaScript, use single sign on, load balance mutliple sites ...

Falafel just released a video explaining how the Dashboard works, how to install it, configure it and display it instead of the built in Sitefinity Dashboard.  The video is embedded below or you are welcome to view it on YouTube.


Get the Falafel DashBoard for Sitefinity MVC.


Sitefinity 5.1 was released a few weeks ago, bringing the flexibility and speed of ASP.NET MVC + Razor to Telerik’s award winning CMS. We’ve always been big fans of MVC and this new programming model has made it even easier to include JavaScript and use our favorite Kendo UI widgets on Sitefinity web sites.  

Anticipating the new Sitefinity release, we put together a Foundations of Sitefinity 5.1 Package that combined online training with hands on guidance from our consultants. The response was tremendous. We received many requests to break the package into two separate options and we were happy ...

With ASP.NET MVC Razor and the ability to easily leverage Kendo UI, Sitefinity 5.1 is the fastest and most flexible version of Sitefinity yet. At Falafel Software, we want to be sure you understand how to make the most of these new techniques and tools. Our Foundations of Sitefinity 5.1 Package will do just that. Part training class, part mentoring program, you’ll learn to bring all the tools together to build your first cutting edge Sitefinity 5.1 site with MVC Razor and Kendo UI. Then you’ll have your own personal consultant to help you build or update your Sitefinity projects....

Telerik is releasing Sitefinity 5.1, the most comprehensive update to Sitefinity since 4.0. This begs the question, are you ready to take advantage of all Sitefinity 5.1 has to offer? 

Telerik packed this new release full of great new features and enhancements. Developers will be delighted with the new technical enhancements that allow Sitefinity to be easily extended with ASP.NET MVC and Razor. Couple that with Telerik’s Kendo UI integration and you have the most flexible and speedy version of Sitefinity ever built. 

There is a lot for administrators to get excited about in Sitefinity 5.1 too. New features allow ...
JavaScript has been turning up everywhere. With nearly every desktop and mobile web browser on the planet coming equipped with a JavaScript engine, the language has become the de facto standard for client side code. There is just no better way to guarantee your audience can access the full feature set of your application.

Although JavaScript has typically been regarded as a client side technology, in-roads have been made in other areas in recent years. Frameworks like node.js are powering major server side applications and JavaScript can even be found querying some of the major NoSQL databases.

Here at Falafel ...
Our good friends at Telerik were invited to show off Kendo UI in the exclusive Google Developer Sandbox at Google I/O 2012. At Falafel Software, we were especially excited about one of Telerik’s demonstrations; a web-based photo booth application that leverages Kendo UI and new cutting edge HTML5 features available in Google’s updated Chrome browser, codenamed “Canary”.  This web application uses the Media Source API and other early stage HTML5 elements to access your webcam, analyze a constant stream of video data to detect and track multiple faces, overlay a number of props and effects (think funhouse mirrors, ...