UI development technologies for web applications

Technologies: ASP.NET MVC with HTML5 support

ASP.NET MVC with HTML5 support

·         Use for flexible modern and mobile web apps, cross-browser compatibility, mobile web clients that can run on any modern device, and to take advantage of the ASP.NET MVC mobile features (such as using different pages and rendering based on detection of the current browser user agent).

·         Offers a full HTML rendering control, better unit testing support, and faking capabilities.

·         HTML5: Use libraries like Modernizer for detecting HTML5 features support and workarounds.

·         Use CSS3 for less script and more maintainable code.

·         Use JavaScript and jQuery for client-side programming.

·         MVC allows Search Engine Optimizations (SEO) customizations.

·         Restful URLs are an integral part of MVC.

ASP.NET SPA

Single Page Application (SPA) based on ASP.NET MVC, HTML5/JavaScript, Knockout, and Breeze

·         SPA is not a framework but a design pattern that can be implemented by using ASP.NET MVC and heavy use of JavaScript libraries like Knockout (for supporting the MVVM pattern within JavaScript) and like the Breeze JavaScript library for advanced data management and JavaScript frameworks like Durandal.

·         Use it for highly interactive web applications and smooth UI updates (minimum server page reload and visible round trips) and when including significant client-side interactions using HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript.

·         Take advantage of the open-source SignalR JavaScript client library for bi-directional communication between the client and server.

·         Consume ASP.NET Web API services from JavaScript.

HTML5 client for LightSwitch projects

LightSwitch HTML5 client

·         Use if your web application or module is mostly data-driven (CRUD [Create, Read, Update, and Delete]).

·         The LightSwitch HTML5 client is the easiest way to create data-centric, cross-browser, and mobile web applications that can run on any modern device, take advantage of automatic HTML rendering, and adapt to different form factors

·         Take advantage of CSS3, JavaScript, and OSS JavaScript libraries like jQuery Mobile and themes.

·         Coupled to the end-to-end LightSwitch runtime server engine which is built on top of ASP.NET.

ASP.NET Web Pages

ASP.NET Web Pages

·         ASP.NET Web Pages and the Razor syntax provide a fast, approachable, and lightweight way to combine server code with HTML to create dynamic web content.