Ajax.BeginForm with MVC 4

Posted by: on | Friday, September 21, 2012     Comments

Using Ajax.BeginForm in your MVC View gives you an easy way of doing a partial postback via an AJAX call.  In its simplest form, our view would look something like this:

@model MyProject.Models.Person
 
<div id="myForm">
    @using (Ajax.BeginForm(new AjaxOptions())
    {
        <fieldset>
            <legend>This is a demo form.</legend>
            @Html.LabelFor(model => model.Name)
            @Html.TextBoxFor(model => model.Name)
 
            <input type="submit" value="Save" />
        </fieldset>
    }
</div>

The BeginForm method has several overloads which allow you to pass in ...

Relative paths in MVC Razor

Posted by: on | Thursday, September 13, 2012     Comments

Did you know in Razor markup you can do this:


<img src="~/Images/downarrow.gif" />
<a href="~/somehwere">Link</a>

And it will get auto-resolved on render, such as:


<img src="/MyApp/Images/downarrow.gif" />
<a href="/MyApp/somehwere">Link</a>

Another welcomed gem in MVC 4 :)

Minify your JavaScript and CSS

Posted by: on | Tuesday, September 04, 2012     Comments

When building a full-featured MVC web site (or any web site), it is likely that you will have lots of JavaScript and CSS resources.  In addition, when you are using 3rd-party libraries, you can often get "minified" versions of the files, but you may end up with a handful or even dozens of separate js files.  It is important to reduce the load times of these files as much as possible.  There are a few concepts that help speed up page loads:
  1. Minify files: remove unnecessary spaces and line breaks so the file size is as small as possible.
  2. Combine ...

"Hello World" guide to custom widgets for Falafel Dashboard

Posted by: on | Monday, August 13, 2012     Comments

Falafel Dashboard is a new state-of-the-art dashboard for Sitefinity MVC. Falafel Dashboard can be easily extended by the introduction of custom widgets for the Dashboard. In this column, we are going to create a “Hello World” widget and add it to the Dashboard.

 

The “Hello World” widget albeit very simple resembles the other widgets that are included out-of-the-box by being a standard Sitefinity MVC widget.

 

Let us start by creating the “Hello World” MVC widget:

 

The model:

namespace SitefinityWebApp.Mvc.Areas.HelloWorld.Models
{
    public class HelloWorldViewModel
    {
        public string Message { get; set; }...

Falafel Dashboard for Sitefinity MVC Video

Posted by: on | Sunday, August 12, 2012     Comments

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.


Falafel Dashboard for Sitefinity MVC is Released

Posted by: on | Wednesday, August 08, 2012     Comments

It is with great pleasure that we, at Falafel Software, introduce to you the Falafel Dashboard. 

With the latest release of Sitefinity 5.1, we were all treated to a great feature and a major change in the ability of the framework by introducing MVC in Sitefinity.

It was a clean and robust implementation that Falafel Software jumped on the opportunity and started to think about add-ons and plug-ins that will add value and benefit all Sitefinity content shareholders everywhere.

The current Dashboard in Sitefinity 4, 5 and 5.1 is pretty much a placeholder in our opinion.  It can show a ...

Learn the Foundations of Sitefinity 5.1

Posted by: on | Tuesday, August 07, 2012     Comments

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 ...

Sitefinity Dashboard ReImagined #2

Posted by: on | Thursday, July 19, 2012     Comments

Another teaser to show where we are going with all the possibilities with the new Falafel Dashboard for Sitefinity 5.1

Please feel free to comment here to request more features, input, must haves, etc…

 

We continue to be very excited about the new release of 5.1 and the world of possibilities it opened to build robust widgets and modules in MVC with the razor syntax

 

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MVC Comes to Sitefinity 5.1!

Posted by: on | Tuesday, July 17, 2012     Comments

Update: To learn more, we're now offering an instructor-led Foundations of Sitefinity 5.1 class, where you'll learn how to use ASP.NET MVC + Razor, JavaScript and Kendo UI in Sitefinity 5.1. 

Sitefinity joins the MVC ranks with its 5.1 release and boy is it impressive. What makes it so unique is that Web Forms is still offered in the platform for developers to use as an alternative or hybrid approach. You heard that right, mix Web Form and MVC controls on the same page! Furthermore, with the MVC-only implementation, page templates are rendered as pure, unpolluted HTML pages. This is ...

Exceed Expectations with Sitefinity 5.1 and Falafel Software

Posted by: on | Monday, July 16, 2012     Comments

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 ...

Convert a C# Object to JavaScript in MVC Razor

Posted by: on | Wednesday, May 16, 2012     Comments

Update:  Find more of these tips and tricks in our Foundations of Sitefinity 5.1 class, where you'll learn how to use JavaScript, KendoUI and ASP.NET MVC + Razor in Telerik's Sitefinity CMS. Sign up for Foundations of Sitefinity 5.1.

 Creating a JavaScript application on top of ASP.NET MVC is becoming more common these days. Rightfully so, especially with the new Web API addition to MVC 4. The clear separation between client-side and server-side is an elegant architecture indeed!

Retrieving collections and objects from MVC is simply a matter of calling the REST URL via AJAX. The result will give you ...