For over a year now, I’ve been using a 13” MacBook Air as my only laptop. Though it’s a bit underpowered and I prefer Windows to OS X, I was ultimately unable to resist Apple’s build quality compared to the Dell I had used previously.

However, I never fully resigned myself to accepting a dichotomy between quality construction and operating system. Thankfully, the recent proliferation of Windows-based Ultrabook™ machines seems to be rapidly bridging that divide.

Given my already-growing desire to find an alternative, when I was contacted about reviewing the ASUS’ Zenbook UX31 Ultrabook™, I decided to give it a go. I know I’m not alone in having been frustrated with a choice between machines that run Windows well and quality hardware, so I hope that you’ll find my experience of trying to move back from the MacBook hardware useful.

Disclaimer: Up front, I want you to know that I’m receiving a complementary UX31 in return for evaluating it and writing a few posts about that experience. I’ll give you my honest assessment of it and only recommend it if it meets my own standards, but I also think it’s important to be transparent and not potentially abuse your trust.

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As I ponder the title of this post, I’m conflicted.

I clearly remember writing last year’s post and thinking that it didn’t seem like four years could have possibly passed since I started publishing here. As I write this one, I find myself feeling like it’s surely been much longer than five years.

I guess you could say 2011 has been a long year?

Relativity aside, this week saw the fifth anniversary of the night that I hastily threw this site together and published my first post. So, I guess it’s that time again.

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One of the longest running themes here has been the compelling intersection between ASP.NET and jQuery. Beginning with my post about using jQuery to circumvent ASP.NET AJAX’s client-side apparatus for calling ASMX services, I’ve been writing about using ASP.NET and jQuery since the Spring of 2008.

As these related posts have accumulated over the years, I’ve made an effort to weave a thread of cross-links between them posts where appropriate. However, it’s nearly impossible to anticipate every possible entry point and subsequent path that someone might find themselves following here.

So, I’ve decided to finally do what I should have done a year or two ago: Create a top-level index to organize and improve the accessibility of my content for ASP.NET developers interested in integrating jQuery into their sites.

You can see my first draft of that here: jQuery for the ASP.NET Developer

Unlike the other content here, I’m publishing this one long before it’s “finished”. My hope is that I can solicit early feedback to help better construct a useful narrative while the document is still in its formative stages. So, if you have any feedback on the current page or what you think should ultimately be there, please leave me a comment on either this post or that page, contact me directly, or even @mention it my way on Twitter.

They aren’t the most glamorous projects, but thousands of developers have integrated my Highslide JS .NET and PostBack Ritalin controls into their sites and applications over the years. PostBack Ritalin was even included in Subtext at one point. It’s definitely a great feeling to see your work put to good use (in fact, this motivator can be even more powerful than monetary gain).

As jQuery has risen in popularity among the ASP.NET community, both controls seem somewhat superfluous to me, yet they have surprisingly remained very much in-demand. As long as people are using them, keeping them working and bug-free(ish) is something that I’ll continue to pursue.

I wouldn’t mind some help though.

Over the years, I didn’t keep the source code for these controls closed due to any illusions of ever turning them into commercial products. Rather, they were the first server controls I had built for general consumption and the quality of their code is not great. For the same sort of reasons that developers “go dark”, I always preferred to keep that code hidden in my junk drawer.

At this point though, keeping their source hidden just to protect my delicate programmer-pride is counterproductive, so I’ve open-sourced both controls on GitHub. Go forth and fork them – pull requests are welcomed.

Fork PostBackRitalin on GitHub

Fork Highslide JS .NET on GitHub

I’ve been considering a change in the permalink structure for my posts for some time now. The /yyyy/mm/dd/post-name/ structure I started with is certainly nicer than what WordPress defaults to, but a problem with those dated URLs has emerged over the past few years: link ageism.

Link ageism is what I’ve begun calling the tendency most of us have to avoid URLs that indicate links to older content. With the year of publication front and center, my old URL structure was particularly susceptible to link ageism. When I began hearing from new readers who almost skipped over my still-relevant content just because the URL looked old, the dated URLs had to go.

Along with the obvious problem of redirecting old URLs to new, I ran into another issue that I hadn’t given much consideration before the change. The new URL scheme caused the counters on my Twitter and Delicious sharing widgets to reset to zero on all my existing posts.

Luckily, I was able to find a solution to the sharing counter problem, and I thought that workaround might be useful to others. What I’ll describe is specific to WordPress and the particular URL change that I made, but the same approach could be applied to save social sharing counters when changing URLs on most any publishing platform.

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Years ago, Joe Stagner was one of the first people at Microsoft that I happened to get in touch with about ASP.NET and the topics I was blogging about here. In fact, he was responsible for the first real bump in traffic my blog received back in 2007. So, when Joe asked me to come on his podcast earlier this year, I was eager.

We talked about a wide variety of topics, including dealing with plagiarism, how to become a Microsoft MVP, and selling new web technology to non-technical decision makers. Fair warning: it was unscripted and less jQuery, ASP.NET, or JavaScript themed than other podcasts you may have heard me on in the past, but I think it turned out pretty well if you’re interested in broader topics surrounding the technology.

You can download or listen to it here on Joe’s site: Podcast – Dave Ward Encosia

I was talking JavaScript with Scott Hanselman recently, discussing different approaches to client-side development and the complications that surround them. Part way through, he decided that we, along with Elijah Manor, should sit down and make a podcast out of it.

So, we did.

It was just a touch nerve wracking to sit down and record with no agenda, firm topic, or preparation, but Scott’s a pro and guided us smoothly through. Within an hour of him saying “let’s record a podcast,” he had pulled recording equipment and a quiet room out of thin air, and we were finished.

If you’re a regular reader here, the discussion may be below your level of expertise, but it potentially good for sharing with colleagues who aren’t yet at your level on the client-side.

You can listen to it here: <JavaScript and jQuery: Moving beyond Alert() />

Also be sure to check out Elijah’s summary of what we talked about, which includes links to most of the resources we discussed: Hanselminutes #256: JavaScript & jQuery: Moving beyond Alert()

It’s December 21st as I write this, which means it’s time for my yearly recap and a recounting of this year’s most popular posts. The way 2010 began, it threatened to be a tough fourth year of Encosia, but has eventually turned out to be a great year in the end.

Encosia-related metrics are up across the board, from page views, to RSS subscribers, to Twitter followers. In fact, the site has served right at one and a quarter million page views to JavaScript-enabled, human visitors in the past year. That’s chump change for a lot of larger sites, but it’s a number that’s truly hard for me to fathom in the context of my paltry trickle of niche content.

The year wasn’t all smooth sailing though…

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526 entries later, it’s time to announce the winners of the 2010 Encosia Holiday Giveaway. Without further ado:

• One free month at TekPub: afasyah, tdryan, and Zoran (Comment).
• One free year at TekPub: James Sheldon (TekPub Voting).
• Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN: Richard Kimber (Comment).

Congratulations! I’m contacting each of you right now via email or Twitter to get your prizes to you. If you haven’t received anything from me in the next 24 hours, please get in touch with me directly to be sure my attempt wasn’t marked as spam or otherwise thwarted.

I want to thank my friends James and Rob at TekPub for providing the TekPub memberships, and of course Microsoft for providing the MSDN subscription.

Finally, I want to thank everyone for participating. The topic suggestions, both in comments and the TekPub voting area have been even higher quality than I had expected. You can be sure that your feedback will influence what you read here and see at TekPub over the course of the next year.

Each year around the 21st of December, I’ve ended the year with a brief recap and a list of the year’s most popular posts. That has worked well in the past, but this year I find myself in the position to give more than just information back to the community. So, as I close in on my fourth full year here at Encosia, I’m going to try something a bit different this time around.

This year, I’m going to precede that yearly recap giving away some great prizes, including a full free year at TekPub and Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with a year-long subscription to the MSDN library.

Additionally, I know that many of you will already be spending time offline with your friends and family by the 21st of December. So, I’m also going to move things up a bit this year to make sure that everyone’s able to participate.

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