… is unlikely. But we’re working hard on it. That’s why we’re looking for a Web Application Developer who helps us build the sexiest translation workflow tool in the world. One that will scare the bejesus out of XTM, Wordbee and MyGengo.

Our Team:

We’re a team of 10 people from Switzerland, Germany, Italy, France and the Philippines. Two of us work in IT. So you will be number 3. We currently have three open positions, which means that we’ll count 12-14 people at the end of this year. Our annual growth rate has come to over 50% ever since we were founded in 2006.

The Company

When we started five years ago, we were the first copywriting agency on the internet. As we grew, we expanded into the translation business that now generates the majority of our work. Our office is located in the heart of Zurich, in the hot Kreis 5 area.

Our Technology:

Fairly straightforward ASP.NET 4.0 Web App with MySQL backend. We are currently migrating from WebForms to MVC and replacing UpdatePanels with jQuery.

Our app handles everything from the order management, handling of translation jobs, crm, billing, etc. We currently have three portals; one for us, one for the customers and one for our freelance translators.

What’s missing is either a good integration with a 3^rd party translation tool or our own implementation of some basic features. Likely, it will be a combination of both.

Your Job

We’re looking for an experienced web developer, but since we are a small company, your job will be very versatile. This means you’ll be working on the following things:

• Frontend with HTML, CSS and jQuery, including some UI/Usability design
• Backend in ASP.NET in C#
• REST API with the ASP.MVC Web API
• MySQL Database development and maintenance
• The occasional client projects (CMS export, file format conversion, etc.)
• Some desktop utility tools or scripts

Willingness to relocate to Zürich is a must. But after all, this is the city with one of the highest living standards in the world.

If you are interested, send your application to remy AT supertext DOT ch.

If you get this message after you upgraded to ASP.NET 3.5 and possible SP1, make sure you have the following settings correctly in your web.config file:

<assemblies>
  <add assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/>

<pages>
  <controls>
    <add tagPrefix="asp" namespace="System.Web.UI" assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/>
    <add tagPrefix="asp" namespace="System.Web.UI.WebControls" assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/>
  </controls>
</pages>

And by the way, there is no ASP.NET 3.5 Version on the ASP.NET tab in the IIS 6.0. It’s still running on 2.0. Just in case you were trying to figure out what was wrong with your installation (I was too).

Jon Galloway already had some interesting thoughts about uploading large files with ASP.NET. Unfortunately he didn’t really advise on one good solution.
So I decided (or had) to take a look myself. What I needed is an upload button with a progress bar that works on a Mac and on a PC with a reasonable recent browser.

And here are the results:

Convincing Solutions: (They normally worked on IE, but not necessarily on Mac)

KUpload
A bit a confusing product palette and pricing, but looks like it starts at $79 plus $19 for the progress bar. Or $499 with Source Code. Demo works fine. Web-Site looks a little unprofessional.

DEXTUpload .NET
Component seems to work fine, nice progress bar and decent pricing for $338. Homepage works a bit strange, but info is there. No success on Mac.

SlickUpload
Nice simple online Demo and webpage. Starts at $149. Progress Bar updates nicely with infos about uploaded kBytes and time remaining. Forum has posts and lots of views. Last update was on the 06/24/2007. Works on Mac Safari, FF and on Windows.

Dart File Upload for ASP.NET
Looks professional and the online Demo works fine. Nice progress bar with additional information. Skinning possibilities and a special File Dialog button, so you don’t see the “Browse” button. Starts at $249.
Progress Bar does not really move on Safari or FF on Mac.

Essential Objects Ajax Uploaded
Another nice component with a good online Demo. Pricing starts at $149. Multiple Postback options and different skinning possibilities. Works fine in all tested browsers.

Telerik RadUpload Promoetheus
Telerik is a big provider of ASP.NET components with a pretty good reputation as far as I know. Their Upload component seems to be one of the more powerful on this list. The individual control starts at $249 and the whole suit is $799.
Based on this info, I decided to give it a try. Unfortunately, it does not currently work in Integrated Mode with IIS 7. Neither does the Progress Bar work in Safari 3 on a Mac 10.5.1 (Leopard). Very disappointing.

Not so convincing Solutions: (Demo’s did not work on my Vista IE7)

UpFilesBE
Look more like a hobbyist component, also, no updates since a while, no forum, etc. On the other hand, it’s only $49.

Update: Original Link does not work anymore: http://www.datanyms.com, but got a comment with a new Link to expanData AND a new price, now its $999. I tested it again. Looks like the demo is still the old one. It works fine in IE, but still not in Safari.

AsyncFileUpload
The only one that even mentions Ajax Panel compatibility, other than that, not much there. No Progress Bar either. $69 is ok. Last update was on May 2007.

FileUp
For $499 from SoftArtisans. There is no Progress Bar, at least in the Online Demo. Rather weak online presentation, but seems to be one of the players in the Upload Component Area.

PowUpload
With $199 in the middle field if it comes to pricing. Demo works fine, but the Progress Bar clearly reloads after each update and runs in a Popup. There are better solutions out there.

ABCUpload .Net
One of the more expensive tools for $899. The Upload happens in Popup Window, which I don’t really like too much, also the price is pretty high and I’ve never heard from this company before.

Mediachase FileUploader.NET
Starts at $310 and goes up to $3625 for a Corporate License. Progress Bar is in a Popup, but did not work in my test.

csNetUpload
Only $50, but no online demo or forum available, so I didn’t test this any further.

UploadProgressTracker
Again only $50, but looks like there has been no update since 2006, not really a good candidate either. Demo works fine though.

JUpload, Active Upload, Upload Friendly need a Java Applet to work, which is not something we want to do. So I didn’t look at them any further.

Open Source

NeatUpload
Looks like a pretty cool Open Source Component. The Progress Bar is in an IFrame and seems to do its job, but the update steps are not very fine grained. Also supports Mono!
Unfortunately it also does not work with Integrated Mode in IIS7. Please help voting so that Microsoft fixes this issue.
Passed the test in all my browsers (Mac and PC). Forum is full and recent, support seems to be available.

SWFUpload
The only Flash based component in this test. Was my longtime favorite and still is to a certain degree. We used this for Supertext for a while now. Really like the architecture and the features, unfortunately we had many users for which it didn’t work. Would be my first choice for an Intranet solution or if you have a limited user base.

FileUploadAjax
Didn’t see much Ajax or even a Progress Bar on my quick test, but does have decent amount of online examples.
Forum has tons of posts and latest version is from the 7/27/2007.

SharpUpload
Looks like this is rather a helper component to handle uploaded files, than something like the other tool that come with progress bars. etc.

Multiple File Upload With Progress Bar Using Flash and ASP.NET
From the Codeproject Website. Got really good reviews, but didn’t get around to try it out yet.

Summary
HORRIBLE! More than half of the products don’t really work, most of them don’t do anything on a Mac. Not sure why this has to be such an issue. Is this only an IIS/ASP issue?
The only 3 Components that really worked in our quick tests were SlickUpload, Essential Objects and NeatUpload. We kinda liked SlickUpload, but decided to give NeatUpload a try. Will keep you posted about the results.

Would really love to hear what experiences that other people had?

Highrise and other new Ajax enabled tools have this feature that when you type in a search query, it automatically updates the search results below. It’s almost like a Auto-Complete Box, but with full results on the page instead of a drop down list below the control. Unfortunately I didn’t find anything like this in the Microsoft ASP.NET Ajax Toolkit.

So there was only one solution, build it myself.

Here is the result:

Live Demo
VS 2008 Solution with Source Code
There is some other stuff in there too, but the demo for this project is under /RemyExamples/DelayedSubmitExample and the source code for the Control under /DelayedSubmit.

It’s my first Ajax Control, so I’m sure there is room for improvements. I’ve tested it in IE7, FF and Safari. Seems to work fine in all of them.

I used the Membership Editor Example from Peter Keller and TextChangedBehavior.js from Garbin as my inspiration and resource, but started with a VS ASP.NET Ajax Control Project to get the framework up and running.

The only thing the code really does is start a time on the keyup event, stop the time on keydown and after the time fires, it executes the onchange method of the associated Textbox. This way we get a delayed postback after the user stopped typing and not tons of postbacks when he’s still writing something.

_onkeyup : function(ev) {
    var k = ev.keyCode ? ev.keyCode : 
                ev.rawEvent.keyCode;        
    if (k != Sys.UI.Key.Tab) {
        this._timer.set_enabled(true);
    }        
},


_onkeydown : function(ev) {
    this._timer.set_enabled(false);
},


_onTimerTick : function(sender, eventArgs) {
    this._timer.set_enabled(false);
    
    if(this._text != this.get_element().value) {
        this._text = this.get_element().value;
        
        this.get_element().onchange(); 
    }
},

Everthing else is just setup and teardown code. In the ASP page, one can just add this Control like any other Extender and add an OnChange handler to the textbox.

<cc1:DelayedSubmitExtender ID="DelayedSubmit" 
    runat="server" Timeout="1000" 
    TargetControlID="TextBox1"/>
<asp:TextBox ID="TextBox1" runat="server" 
    AutoPostBack="True" 
    OnTextChanged="TextBox1_TextChanged" 
    Columns="50"></asp:TextBox>        

Please let me know how it goes and if it is of any use. Good luck!