Recently (and specially after Web 2.0 revolution) many websites started to use more complicated CAPTCHA solutions on their websites in order to prevent spam and bot attacks. There are many free solutions and tools for users and developers to implement CAPTCHA technology in their applications. There are also many ASP.NET controls and components for this approach but many of them are so simple to hijack or don't offer features that these days we see on professional websites (some features like reload function, voice, etc.).

A few days ago I found a link to reCAPTCHA on Yahoo!. reCAPTCHA is a free (but professional) tool for basic users and also developers. To use this service you should first signup, receive an API Key for your website (you can receive as many as you need) and use one of easy-to-install plugnins provided. And good news for ASP.NET developers is that you can download and use a server side control and enjoy reCAPTCHA with two lines of code! The API Key guarantees your website and prevents attackers collect answers from visitors and use them. There are three different themes to choose.

If you want to use reCAPTCHA on a Web 2.0 website you can use AJAX API just by adding this line of code to you html or webform file: I strongly suggest you download and test this tool in your web applications.

Quick Links: reCAPTCHA.net | Live Demo | Why reCAPTCHA | Signup | reCAPTCHA.NET Control | Email Protection With reCAPTCHA

 

Omar Al Zabir has recently listed 10 cool articles about ASP.NET, AJAX, ... which he has published this year. From my personal view these articles are interesting:

• Cleanup inactive anonymous users from ASP.NET Membership Tables
• Prevent Denial of Service (DOS) attacks in your web application
• 13 disasters for production website and their solutions

 

Since its launch, Gmail has been one of the most popular free email services on the web. Ease of use, huge storage space, amazing AJAX interface, POP3 features, etc. make Gmail a good choice for those who look for a free email service.

I think the sole weakness of Gmail is its very simple user interface. There were some movements to improve Gmail UI; for example Gmail Skins and Better Gmail extensions for FireFox. These days a blog post appeared on various blogs and websites such as Mashabale, Googling Google and BlogoWogo talking about a new Gmail UI. Everything started from a "Newer Version" word translation request on Google In Your Language program that was found by a user [See this image].

After Gmail Mobile inhancements in these days, it seems that Google wants to surprise their users with a great work in near future. We should wait!


P.S.: I think from the beauty point of view, only Google Analytics is pretty and eye catching and all other just offer powerfull features not a good looking environment!

 

AjaxLoad is a good website for you to generate eye catching loading indicators in gif format. Just choose your desired indicator type from a list, choose background and foreground colors and click on Generate It!, then you can see a preview and download it as a .gif file easily.

 

It's a few months that Yahoo! and MSN (or Live) users can use a single Messenger to communicate with their friends. If you have a Yahoo! ID and use Yahoo! Messenger then you can add your friends which have an MSN Messenger or Live ID and vice versa. But many users still use Messengers other than Yahoo! and Live. For example Google Talk have recently found many spectators because of its simple and fast desktop client and ease of use, or many old Internet users still prefer their AOL account.

In addition, if you have multiple IDs in various networks and you have to use all of them at same time you need to have at least 3 messengers (GTalk, Yahoo or Live and AIM). It is equal to waste of memory and resources of your PC. So what the solution is?

Recently I found meebo.com, a web based Instant Messaging service for Yahoo!, MSN, AIM and Google Talk. You can enter your login information and start instant messaging immediately in one browser page. meebo uses AJAX to communicate with server and has a user friendly environment.

You can also chat with other meebo users in its rooms, use meebome.com on your personal website to chat with your visitors and more.

 

UPDATE: Forgot to mention that meebo supports many languages including Persian and also support ICQ and Jabber.

 

You may recently heared something about Yahoo! new mail system which is powered by AJAX technology. Yahoo has provided a page for its users to sign up for this new service and try it. After you sign up, Yahoo! may invite you to try it. But here's a short way for you to try it before Yahoo invites you. Just follow these steps:

1- Login to your Yahoo! mailbox.
2- Click on Options at the right side.
3- Click on Account Information at the left side. (You may need to re-enter your password in this step.)
4- In the Member Information section click on Edit link.
5- In the next page you see a section named "General Preferences"; locate Preferred Content, then click on the link provided there (e.g.: Yahoo U.S.).
6- In the next page select Yahoo! United Kingdom for New Setting and click on Finished button.
7- Accept Terms of Service of Yahoo! UK & Ireland.
8- Now, sign out of your account and re-login to your mailbox.
9- You see a page with this message: "It's the New Yahoo! Mail Beta... and you're invited."
10- Click on Try Beta Now yellow button at the right side.
11- Enjoy Yahoo! Mail Beta ;)

 

If you are working on Ajax based application you may feel you should show the user a "Please wait..." or "Activity is in progress..." message. Why not showing them animated icons like Flash preload frames along with your text message? AjaxLessons.com has linked to a web site containing many animated icons for this purpose, you can find various sizes from tiny icons to large linear ones there. See them all here.

 

AjaxLessons.com is a workshop for Ajax and Web 2.0 concepts. You can find many useful articles, tips on discussion board and etc. Also if you have a running web site you have a chance to win 3 free books about Ajax [See here] ;)

 

Yesterday, I was talking to Nima about some new web development tools he has found out these days. One of amazing open-source tools he introduced to me was Rico. Today morning I saw a link to Rico at del.icio.us too. So you can guess how popular it became! (Many links have been made, you see!).

As seen on Rico's web site, Rico in an open-source JavaScript library for creating rich internet applications. It provides full Ajax support, darg 'n drop management and a cinematic effects library.

To see how Rico can reduce your time, take a look at one of its demos here. You have a colored box built using a DIV tag and want to round its corners. Use complicated CSS? Use four images at the corners? Other solutions...? Rico answers: new Rico.Effect.Round( tagName, className, options). Yes, finished!

Many other effects are available too and you can use it in you own applications. Save your time!

Rico: Home | Demos | Features | Download

 

Recently, using Ajax has been dramatically increased among web developers. After Google started its free email service called GMail and used Ajax in it, this technology became more popular and many developers and companies tried to build tools and frameworks for various server side technologies to be able to use Ajax benefits more easily.

From my personal view, Ajax will give your visitors a better surf and they will not bother from multiple refreshes for a single task. I have tested and used Ajax.NET Pro in my recent projects. This framework was written in C# by Michael Schwarz. I think that this framework is powerful and easy to use and implement.
Michael has a personal blog in which he writes about his open source framework. He has also created a group at Google for Ajax.NET Pro.

Two different versions of Ajax.NET Pro are available for ASP.NET 1.x and 2.0.

If you want to know more about other Ajax tools for ASP.NET take a glance at this comparison.

I'm so glad to see that many Iranian developers are using Ajax in their web sites. Even if you use Ajax in a small part of you web site it is admirable. For example quick vote and tell a friend sections at ketabeavval.ir that has been programmed by my dear friend Mohammadreza Taheri.

I have shown some simple usages of Ajax in razmpa.com. If you are an ASP.NET developer and have used Ajax in your projects please send their URLs and I will put them in an update in this post.